True nature of reality - How can I create things I don't know?

[Rajec]

At first I would like to thanks Steve for his podcast.

If I understand it right basic idea is that you are creator of your reality not just someone ho perceive reality. So everything you experience in this world is something you created.

Steve talked about gravitation for example. Thing is that I have no idea about gravitation when I was born. Some person told me about it. I have no idea about dissease some person told me about it. So how can I created it?

[Brutha]

I have no idea about dissease some person told me about it.

From where did you get that idea?

[Dharma]

Did you ever suspect that you're a much bigger and diverse being than the personality that you think you are?

Why of course you created all your experiences. You created the experience of telling yourself about gravity and about disease.

[Maguru]

Originally Posted by Rajec

At first I would like to thanks Steve for his podcast.

If I understand it right basic idea is that you are creator of your reality not just someone ho perceive reality. So everything you experience in this world is something you created.

Steve talked about gravitation for example. Thing is that I have no idea about gravitation when I was born. Some person told me about it. I have no idea about dissease some person told me about it. So how can I created it?

We can look back at anything and say we created it in another realm. I guess Steve is coming from the concept of 'oneness' before we manifest in human form. So the concept of you creating gravity is built upon the concept of 'oneness'.

If we are creators of our existence, I think it would be more plausable (at this stage) to say we are 'co-creators'. We don't need the 'concept of another realm' to know we are co-creating our life experiences/reality at the present time. To what extent and the how's and why's is yet to be determined.

[Maguru]

Originally Posted by Dharma

Did you ever suspect that you're a much bigger and diverse being than the personality that you think you are?

Why of course you created all your experiences. You created the experience of telling yourself about gravity and about disease.

Isn't this just a theory? How does that work?

[Rajec]

Originally Posted by Brutha

From where did you get that idea?

I was born in to the world with gravity or I should say my body was. Then someone told me Hey you know why you don't fly? Its gravitation.

Maybe I missed it in podcast but when was all these rules, knowledge about world was created according to Steve? If I understand well I've even created other worlds and nations(if I created gravitation why not right?) but how can I?

[Rajec]

Originally Posted by Dharma

Did you ever suspect that you're a much bigger and diverse being than the personality that you think you are?

Why of course you created all your experiences. You created the experience of telling yourself about gravity and about disease.

Thanks for reply !!

What you mean by that? I understand quite a concept from book Power of now, or what Buddhists call observer of mind.

My point how can I created gravity by thinking about it if didn't now about it at first place?
Why I would think about something bad as diseases if every human being wants to be happy at first place? Did my consciousness just started of thinking like:
Hmm I have body, can I somehow kill it? From there I created AIDS?

[Marco Polo]

There's a difference between saying that a) you can create, b) you can create anything, and c) that you've created everything. The first (a) is true. Simply type on you keyboard right now, and you'll see that you're a conscious creator. The second (b) is impossible to know since you haven't tried everything, but to my knowledge it's at least possible. The third (c), that you've created the set "everything", is unfounded. Reality could have been put there by a blue starfish from the Seashell galaxy. On this topic it's best not to absorb the thoughts of a single person, even if it's Steve Pavlina. I personally don't think of gravity as something I created, because there's no reason to. But I can interact with gravity and defy it. In that sense, gravity is not, at least to my perception, a static/unchangeable force.

Generally in philosophy, it's best to be humble. If you don't know something, admit it. It took me a long time before I realized how little I know. Anyone who says something conclusively about Truth will have the gods laughing at them, as Albert Einstein said (although I think one of the Greek philosophers said it first).

[themaster]

It's my understanding a lot of our beliefs are *downloaded* telepathically from our parents before the age of 3.. just cause you've never heard of disease doesn't mean you don't have some sort of belief for it..

[Rajec]

Originally Posted by themaster

It's my understanding a lot of our beliefs are *downloaded* telepathically from our parents before the age of 3.. just cause you've never heard of disease doesn't mean you don't have some sort of belief for it..

Thinks is that according to this theory you created your parents too . I think Steve could explain it the most. I will probably let this belief for now and take a look at it later.

[Judge]

Originally Posted by Rajec

Thing is that I have no idea about gravitation when I was born. Some person told me about it. I have no idea about dissease some person told me about it. So how can I created it?

How could you ever truly enjoy the overall experience if you knew you created everything? That means that anything is possible, that you can do it and that you also know exactly how everything will turn out.

Doesn't sound like much fun does it

Judge

[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by Rajec

My point how can I created gravity by thinking about it if didn't now about it at first place?

Consider this: When you sleep, you dream. When you dream, all sorts of events and circumstances occur in your dream, including quite impossible things you had never thought about in the first place. How could you have created all that?

And yet ..... you did. Your dream, and everything in it, is entirely a product of your consciousness.

Now consider this: Your everyday waking reality; and every single thing you have ever known, perceived or understood about it, is also a product of your consciousness.

Why? Because knowledge, perception and understanding are all processes of your consciousness. Therefore everything you have ever known, perceived and understood about your reality is a process of your consciousness.

Whatever you have ever understood gravitation to be - is your understanding, and therefore a process of your own consciousness.

[Marco Polo]

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

Consider this: When you sleep, you dream. When you dream, all sorts of events and circumstances occur in your dream, including quite impossible things you had never thought about in the first place. How could you have created all that?

And yet ..... you did. Your dream, and everything in it, is entirely a product of your consciousness.

Now consider this: Your everyday waking reality; and every single thing you have ever known, perceived or understood about it, is also a product of your consciousness.

Why? Because knowledge, perception and understanding are all processes of your consciousness. Therefore everything you have ever known, perceived and understood about your reality is a process of your consciousness.

Whatever you have ever understood gravitation to be - is your understanding, and therefore a process of your own consciousness.

I'm assuming you understand the distinction between a product and a process? It's questionable whether they can be interchanged. Just because gravity is contained (or processed) within consciousness, that doesn't mean we've located where it was produced. It just means that you're engaged by it.

[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by Marco Polo

I'm assuming you understand the distinction between a product and a process? It's questionable whether they can be interchanged. Just because gravity is contained (or processed) within consciousness, that doesn't mean we've located where it was produced. It just means that you're engaged by it.

I would have explained further, but I think Rajec might be confused already.

F = Gm1m2/r square

This is the equation that describes the gravitational force exerted by any two masses on each other. F is force; G is the gravitational constant; m1 and m2 are the two masses; and r is the distance between the two masses.

And what is mass? How is it created? If we trace the inquiry back to its smallest units, back into the realm of quantum physics, we go back to the collapse of the wavefunction , leading to the creation of either (1) energy, or (2) mass.

And what collapses the wavefunction? Well, you know the theories. One of the major theories is the "consciousness causes collapse" theory. You know where that ultimately takes us, don't you. Consciousness is necessarily required for the creation of matter (mass).

And since the existence of gravity (or gravitational force) depends on the existence of mass, therefore the existence of gravity depends on consciousness.

This is one way that I could have answered Rajec's query, but I suspected that it would not have made much sense for him.

Another way I could respond to your comment is to point out that as a matter of strict logic, you have no way of knowing whether a product (any product) has ever existed without your consciousness. For what can you ever know, except by knowing it? And what is knowing, but a process of your consciousness?

Now some readers of this forum may begin to feel that I am being difficult, deliberately arguing for the sake of arguing. And I would elaborate further, but what is the point. Seriously, not many people would bother to examine reality that far. I can only quote from Einstein's letter to Erwin Scrodinger in 1950, where Einstein wrote:

"You are the only contemporary physicist, besides Laue, who sees that one cannot get around the assumption of reality—if only one is honest. Most of them simply do not see what sort of risky game they are playing with reality—reality as something independent of what is experimentally established."

What Einstein is saying here is that in a lot of physics research, scientists assume that there is such a thing as reality - without even realising that they are making an assumption. They assume, like you do, that if a "product" exists, it possesses some kind of inherent existence. And they do not see that this is merely an assumption, a risky assumption, one that is not at all experimentally established.

Interestingly, Buddhism already concluded that in fact, objects (or "products", if you like) in fact do not have any inherent existence. But that's a topic for another day.

[Eisho]

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

And what collapses the wavefunction? Well, you know the theories. One of the major theories is the "consciousness causes collapse" theory. You know where that ultimately takes us, don't you. Consciousness is necessarily required for the creation of matter (mass).

And some kind of apparatus (consciousness??) is required to make that observation.

At the end of the day no-one knows if quantum physics is the be all and end all or just yet another temporary stop on the road to what may or may not be perfect knowledge. Elements in the field of PD seems to have picked up on quantum mechanics, avoided studying it any great depth, and arrived at far reaching conclusions that may well prove transient.

And maybe Buddhism is correct that all is change...or maybe there is a permanent 'soul' (atman).

We are all trapped using words culturally associated with phenomena. We can't escape that living in the phenomenal world. Imperfect as our understanding is, that's all we have.

When I meet someone who is able to shape their world the way they want it, I will become a believer. Until then, I believe that in the phenomenal world our desires and actions do impact our experience...but so do the desires and actions of others that are beyond our control.

Cheers,

Eisho

[Marco Polo]

Acting Like Godot,

I can see you're a QM fan. Awsome. I agree that that Rajec is probably confused at this point. Nonetheless, let's move on, keeping in mind the limitations of QM and the limits of the human intellect itself.

“Consciousness causes collapse” is a theory which asserts that consciousness itself causes the collapse of the wave function. It can be viewed as a normal, falsifiable theory. However, it can also be viewed as part of a larger spiritual branch of QM, used to add mystery to people's lives. Which, by the way, isn't necessarily a bad thing.

In some other theories, the collapse function itself is redundant. But let's assume that "consciousness causes collapse" is true. Does that mean we've discovered the true origin of perceptions? No. It means we've explained how interactions within consciousness fit with current mathematical models.

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

They assume, like you do, that if a "product" exists, it possesses some kind of inherent existence.

I didn't make that assumption.

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

Another way I could respond to your comment is to point out that as a matter of strict logic, you have no way of knowing whether a product (any product) has ever existed without your consciousness. For what can you ever know, except by knowing it? And what is knowing, but a process of your consciousness?

Again, the processing of perceptions within our consciousness doesn't mean that we created those perceptions. Even if we use one of the Wikipedia definitions - that's to say, a process is “a set of transformations of input elements into products with specific properties” - this begs the question of where the input comes from. From consciousness, you suggest. But consciousness is, as you know, reality itself. So what you’ve basically written is that perceptions come from reality. For the purpose of finding the origin of perception, “consciousness” is a redundant word because it doesn't refer to anything specific. Consciousness is everything.

If our perceptions are products, on what basis should we assume that all were created by us - or by you, if you're truly a subjectivist - and not just some of them? If there is such a basis, which part of us created the perceptions that appeared without us consciously intending them? These are open questions, but I don't assume you have the answers.

[mercuryrising]

Originally Posted by Rajec

At first I would like to thanks Steve for his podcast.

If I understand it right basic idea is that you are creator of your reality not just someone ho perceive reality. So everything you experience in this world is something you created.

Steve talked about gravitation for example. Thing is that I have no idea about gravitation when I was born. Some person told me about it. I have no idea about dissease some person told me about it. So how can I created it?

Just keep it simple.

Life is just as it is. You determine what is good and bad about it. From that determination, you create a reality; a story with you as a main character, the people around you as supporting characters and a plot that defines what you want, how you will get it, what obstacles need to be overcome, etc.

The more you recognize that there is nothing inherently good or bad and the more you question the story and identity you've created, the more power you have to change who you are and the reality you've developed around it.
You aren't as emotionally attached to what happens and what other people do. You aren't defined by your circumstances.

Whether you created the universe or not may be an interesting topic of discussion. But even if you didn't create gravity or disease, the concept that you create your own reality can still be useful to you.

[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by Eisho

When I meet someone who is able to shape their world the way they want it

When you meet someone who is able to shape his world the way he wants it, this will mean nothing to you.

Until you believe that he is someone who is able to shape his world the way he wants it. If you do not believe this, then in your reality the chap is just another ordinary bloke on the street.

It all begins with yourself, you see? After all, your reality is shaped entirely by your own thoughts.

[Judge]

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

It all begins with yourself, you see? After all, your reality is shaped entirely by your own thoughts.

I agree that is true, but I can see why other's don't agree, they don't want the overall responsibility, they don't want to be god.

Being god (consciousness/energy source/the unmanifested/etc) is a seemingly massive responsibility and from a singular enitity POV it would imply some kind of loneliness.

If god (pick your favorite term) was self knowing on any level, then it must know it's the only thing that truly exsits. Seperation adds content and form so as to not sense that god (you) are the only one.

Problem is, that when you start to sense all the seperation is illusionary, then you end up back and home sitting by yourself with the truth.....you are the only conscious being all alone.

Could an all encompassing being that can know itself on any level suffer loneliness? I don't see whay not. If it can sense itself. why can't it sense it's the only self.

Now you know why no one wants to be God

Judge

[Eisho]

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

When you meet someone who is able to shape his world the way he wants it, this will mean nothing to you.

Until you believe that he is someone who is able to shape his world the way he wants it. If you do not believe this, then in your reality the chap is just another ordinary bloke on the street.

It all begins with yourself, you see? After all, your reality is shaped entirely by your own thoughts.

I accept that my thoughts shape my reality...or perhaps my experience of reality...

The problem with belief for me is that it is just that...belief...it is too easy to explain away anomalies using phrases like 'Yeah, he failed to manifest...but that was because he didn't believe'. It is like a Christian who prays and the prayer isn't answered. A Christian understands this as evidence that God has got something better planned...rather than as damning evidence of the non-existence of God.

Another's beliefs are their own business but let's identify them for what they are: beliefs. The Buddha believed reality was shaped by his consciousness. Great...for him. I read your 30 day challenge and you seem confident that you used LoA on several occasions to manifest what you wanted. That is great too...for you. But you can't prove to me or to yourself that it was LoA and not fortuitous happenstance. You seem to me to be very intelligent, very hard working and well connected. I would suggest your success comes from a combination of those attributes.

Cheers,

Eisho

[Acting Like Godot]

Of course. Whatever you believe.

[Acting Like Godot]

I don't really want to go into this QM stuff, because I don't feel it's necessary for the sake of learning to apply the LOA for practical purposes (which is my real interest, at this point of time anyway). So this will be my last post on the QM aspects.

Originally Posted by Marco Polo

In some other theories, the collapse function itself is redundant.

Right. In all those theories, the description of reality is also extremely far from what we normally perceive as reality. Therefore when considering Rajec's questions, it's useful to bear the above in mind. What we normally perceive as reality is pretty much an illusion. This is an excellent starting point for an attempt to understand LOA / SR better.

Where people often go wrong is that they try to reconcile LOA/SR with their ordinary perception of reality. It may be useful for them to bear this in mind - their ordinary perception of reality is illusory and false. Science tells us so.

But let's assume that "consciousness causes collapse" is true. Does that mean we've discovered the true origin of perceptions? No. It means we've explained how interactions within consciousness fit with current mathematical models.

Not really. No SI units in physics reflect anything about consciousness. At best we may say that consciousness generates electrical activity in the brain which is measurable by amperes. However, clearly this is quite inadequate because consciousness is not electricity.

Also, the ccc theory is not just a mathematical model. It's a phenomenological theory. Which means that it wasn't just dreamed up by some crazy physicist for fun. Instead it is a theory offered to explain actual experimental phenomena which can be replicated again and again under lab conditions.

What the "consciousness causes collapse" theory shows, (if it is true) is that consciousness creates matter (and actually, also energy, but this is probably less relevant for the purposes of the present discussion).

You speak of perception. This is predicated on the existence of a perceiver, and a perceived thing (eg an object). The essential point here is that the object is matter, and what creates matter is consciousness perceiving it. If there is no consciousness, there is no matter. Therefore it is meaningless to speak of an object as existing independently of a perceiver.

(Or, to put it in the Buddhist way, "objects do not inherently exist"; alternatively, "reality is an illusion of the mind").

The question then arises, "Does this mean that if I walk out of my bedroom, and stop thinking about it, then my bedroom no longer exists?". And I suspect that the answer is "probably not".

Which ultimately leads, by a process of strict logic, to the conclusion that if the universe exists in a more-or-less stable form, then there must be a constant, omniscient, all-present consciousness observing it at all times. You could call it "God" if you like, but that term often comes with too much cultural baggage to be useful.

At a much smaller level, (eg your own individual reality) it holds true nonetheless that whatever you sense, perceive, know, understand or feel about it ...

... is merely your sensing, perception, knowledge, understanding or feeling about it. All of which are processes of your own consciousness. In other words, whatever your reality is to you, you created it.

[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by Eisho

Elements in the field of PD seems to have picked up on quantum mechanics, avoided studying it any great depth,

Admittedly it is difficult to understand.

If you would like to study it in greater depth, I would recommend Gary Zukav's award-winning book on the topic.

Gary Zukav is a New Age writer. His book won an award. Not for "Best New Age Book of the Year". But for "Best Science Book of the Year".

But really it is not an easy book for mass consumption.

[Plato]

Good point Rajec. Even weirder -- why do things exist rather than nothing? Clearly there's something funny going on here.

[Eisho]

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

Admittedly it is difficult to understand.

If you would like to study it in greater depth, I would recommend Gary Zukav's award-winning book on the topic.

Gary Zukav is a New Age writer. His book won an award. Not for "Best New Age Book of the Year". But for "Best Science Book of the Year".

But really it is not an easy book for mass consumption.

Thanks, I will check it out after the New Year holiday. My current knowledge is limited to what Michio Kaku has written.

Cheers,

Eisho

[Marco Polo]

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

I don't really want to go into this QM stuff, because I don't feel it's necessary for the sake of learning to apply the LOA for practical purposes […].

The Law of Attraction, which, by the way, is no more a formal scientific law than the “Laws of Karma” or the Ten Commandments, asserts that our conscious and subconscious thoughts dictate reality (wiki). But we can’t assume the subconscious exists, for the same reason that we can’t assume a fixed, material reality exists. It’s outside our consciousness, hence the prefix “sub-”.

If it's good for practical purposes, thumbs up. I'm all for pragmatism.

Until you believe that he is someone who is able to shape his world the way he wants it. If you do not believe this, then in your reality the chap is just another ordinary bloke on the street. [my highlighting]

You keep referring to ”your” reality as if there was a distinction between ”yours” and ”mine”. How do you figure?

their ordinary perception of reality is illusory and false

If you assert that a perception is false, you’re implicitly assuming there’s a true perception hidden beyond the false one. So far we’ve attempted to drop unfounded assumptions. Let’s drop this one. It's no different from assuming that there's a material existance outside our consciousness. Nonetheless, we can describe reality from different perspectives, and argue that one perspective is more useful than another.

What the "consciousness causes collapse" theory shows, (if it is true) is that consciousness creates matter [...]

If we accept that matter is contained within (and is subject to) your consciousness, what you’ve said in this sentence is that consciousness creates part of your consciousness. To avoid redundancy, the best we can do is probably to assume, like most quantum theories do, correctly or incorrectly, that consciousness interacts with unconscious matter/energy.

The “consciousness causes collapse” theory relies on the wave function collapse. The wave function collapse is one possible explanation of how quantum systems evolve. It implies that we need to interact with matter/energy to determine its state. To begin with there are two possibilities in the form of “probability amplitudes” – mathematics - but when we observe a system we can determine a final physical state. This was the point of Schrodinger’s cat experiment. Whether the wave function collapse is a physical event in itself remains questionable. Unfortunately, the “consciousness causes collapse” theory doesn’t conclusively explain how the consciousness or the matter were initially created. Like I wrote in my first post, reality could've been put there by a blue starfish from the Seashell galaxy. The most important reason why most scientists reject the "consciousness causes collapse" theory is because they consider it unfalsifiable.

If you can't be bothered to pursue these QM aspects, no problem.

You speak of perception. This is predicated on the existence of a perceiver, and a perceived thing (eg an object). The essential point here is that the object is matter, and what creates matter is consciousness perceiving it. If there is no consciousness, there is no matter. Therefore it is meaningless to speak of an object as existing independently of a perceiver.

(Or, to put it in the Buddhist way, "objects do not inherently exist"; alternatively, "reality is an illusion of the mind").

The question then arises, "Does this mean that if I walk out of my bedroom, and stop thinking about it, then my bedroom no longer exists?". And I suspect that the answer is "probably not".

Which ultimately leads, by a process of strict logic, to the conclusion that if the universe exists in a more-or-less stable form, then there must be a constant, omniscient, all-present consciousness observing it at all times. You could call it "God" if you like, but that term often comes with too much cultural baggage to be useful.

You repeatedly assert that “consciousness creates matter”. Currently in our discussion this assertion is inconclusive. As for your bedroom, we don’t know if it exists when you’re not perceiving it. If it does, then we've demonstrated that a conscious observer isn’t always necessary for something to exist. This makes the God hypothesis superfluous. However, I do think we can refer to God in aesthetic or even biological terms.

Since we're recommending books, I recommend the enlightenment philosopher David Hume. Many of his ideas on this topic are still relevant today, centuries after his death. Meanwhile, I should probably pick up my copy of the "Tao of Physics", since it's collecting dust on my bookshelf.

[eQuanimity]

Originally Posted by Rajec

At first I would like to thanks Steve for his podcast.

If I understand it right basic idea is that you are creator of your reality not just someone ho perceive reality. So everything you experience in this world is something you created.

Steve talked about gravitation for example. Thing is that I have no idea about gravitation when I was born. Some person told me about it. I have no idea about dissease some person told me about it. So how can I created it?

Hi there,

Kinda new here but theres a possible way of explaining this which I feel keeps it more simple than whats seen winding its way through this thread.

It's Resultant from the basic nature of the Fields of Consiousness itself. When born our consiousness is equipped with a mind(like it -or probably not lol) which is interconnected to all other minds creating a seeming collective consciousness. Anything within this collective can therefore be automatically accessed by our seeming individual minds setting an apparent start to reality regardless of how issusiory it is in a true state of Reality.

Eg: TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT

Collective consciousness represents the horizontal head of the "T"s; Individual minds & consciousness the vertical roots by which they access all information contained within. The CC would be the overall attractor field within which the more dominant or powerful fields/ideas/beliefs etc such as gravity would hold an almost inescapable pull. Beyond this as we grow we would then be picking up(or exposed to) the other more selective fields within the CC which would be heavily dictated by our surroundings, people, consciousness level etc.

You'll have to forgive me if this seems a touch vague as my heads been rather hazy with flu for several weeks now. Hopefully though it will aid the topic in some way.

Thank you,

eQ

[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by Marco Polo

But we can’t assume the subconscious exists, for the same reason that we can’t assume a fixed, material reality exists. It’s outside our consciousness, hence the prefix “sub-”.

No. You're confusing "sub" with "supra" or "super".

Refer to psychology for a discussion on the conscious, the sub-conscious and the unconscious. Freud may be a useful starting point.

You keep referring to ”your” reality as if there was a distinction between ”yours” and ”mine”. How do you figure?

Your reality is quite different from mine, because we:

(a) perceive everything differently
(b) interpret those perceptions differently.

There will be some lowest common denominator. For example, you and I may both agree that:

(1) "This is a chessboard";
(2) "That is a cat"
(3) "This is a piece of classical music"
(4) "Here is a stone"

Nonetheless, yours and my perceptions and interpretations are all different. To give a clear example, if I am a cat-loving chess grandmaster and you are a serious classical musician and part-time gemologist, then we do not perceive & interpret chessboards, cars, classical music and stones in the same way.

The fact is that when a person perceives anything, that perception (or its interpretation by that person) is generally overlaid with a huge amount of personal memories, opinions, knowledge, biases and understanding of that person. When I pick up my guitar and play a Christmas carol "Silent Night", what happens next is shaped by my memories of the 5,000 previous times I have picked up my guitar and played a song; plus my memories of my perceptions of the 1,000,000 times I have heard the guitar being played before by anyone else; plus all my past experiences & memories of what Christmas means, going to my early childhood ..... plus ... plus ... plus ... .

So my reality is different from yours. My thoughts ensure this. So do yours. For example, if you are a Chinese-speaking communist who has never celebrated Christmas before, you and I may be in the same room as I play the song, but we are not in the same reality. Another example - if 3 years ago your beloved grandmother had died peacefully in her sleep while you were softly singing "Silent Night" to her, once again, your experience of my song would be very different from my experience of my song.

This extends to every other aspect of our respective realities. Those realities may intersect (because co-creation is possible) and have similarities, but they are still distinctly yours and mine. For example, a husband and wife may co-exist; and a teacher and student may co-exist, and a robber and his victim may co-exist. but their realities are not the same.

Important to note that the above applies not merely to the interpretations of perceptions, but also to perception itself.

For instance, if I had a dog's sense of smell; a homing pigeon's ability to sense the earth's magnetic patterns; a bat's ability to echolocate; and an adder's ability to detect small differences in heat (this is how snakes hunt in the dark - by sensing the position of their prey by the body heat the prey's body emanates), no doubt reality would be very, very different to me.

Yet one cannot say that a dog's reality, or a homing pigeon's reality, or a bat's reality etc is any less genuine than mine. It is simply that our respective differences in perception methods create a different reality for each of us.

In your reality, for example, when you stand still, you probably perceive yourself as standing still. In a sense, this however may be said to be just an illusion. In fact you are hurtling through space at the speed of hundreds of kilometres per second, as the earth rotates on its axis. However, since your senses don't perceive that, the reality your mind creates is just one where you are still, when you stand still.

If you assert that a perception is false, you’re implicitly assuming there’s a true perception hidden beyond the false one. So far we’ve attempted to drop unfounded assumptions. Let’s drop this one. It's no different from assuming that there's a material existance outside our consciousness. Nonetheless, we can describe reality from different perspectives, and argue that one perspective is more useful than another.

I will not discuss the above, because it will lead to too lengthy a discussion. I will limit myself to discussing your words here: "If you assert that a perception is false ...".

If you do not like the word "false", you may replace it with the idea that perceptions are highly subjective, and very different perceptions of the same "thing" are possible, and in fact occur all the time.

Eg some people love bungee jumping; some people are terrified by the idea; some people are bored by it by now.

The “consciousness causes collapse” theory relies on the wave function collapse. The wave function collapse is one possible explanation of how quantum systems evolve. It implies that we need to interact with matter/energy to determine its state. To begin with there are two possibilities in the form of “probability amplitudes” – mathematics - but when we observe a system we can determine a final physical state. This was the point of Schrodinger’s cat experiment. Whether the wave function collapse is a physical event in itself remains questionable. Unfortunately, the “consciousness causes collapse” theory doesn’t conclusively explain how the consciousness or the matter were initially created. Like I wrote in my first post, reality could've been put there by a blue starfish from the Seashell galaxy. The most important reason why most scientists reject the "consciousness causes collapse" theory is because they consider it unfalsifiable.

If you can't be bothered to pursue these QM aspects, no problem.

You repeatedly assert that “consciousness creates matter”. Currently in our discussion this assertion is inconclusive.

It was you who said "Let's assume the CCC theory is true". That was the basis of our further discussion.

It is correct to say that CCC theory is not the most widely popular theory among physicists. In the 1990s, a survey was done among leading physicists and the most popular theory among them was Hugh Everitt's "Many Worlds" theory which postulates that we simultaneously exist in different realities / dimensions.

This comes much closer to the LOA explanations given by Seth (the entity channeled by Jane Roberts). Important to note that neither the CCC theory nor the "Many Worlds" theory contradict each other; that is to say, both might well be true.

However that's a separate topic. More relevant for now is this point which I reiterate - whatever theory in QM you prefer, all of them point to reality being very, very different from what we ordinarily perceive it to be, so much so that it is very justifiable to say that our ordinary perception of reality is false / illusory / extremely subjective (choose your preferred adjective).

Understanding this point - that our ordinary perception of reality is false - is, IMO, an excellent starting point for understanding the possible-ness of LOA theories much better.

Finally the scientific non-falsifiability of any theory must be understood in its proper context. It does not mean that the theory is false; it merely means that at the current time, scientists do not see how they can endeavour to prove the theory false by scientific methods.

So, for instance, the law of supply and demand in economics is scientifically non-falsifiable, and must be rejected by scientists. It does not mean that I should reject the law of supply and demand.

[Judge]

If one thing exists outside of my awareness, then everything could and that includes every single person I will never know and/or meet and every possible thing yet to be discovered and/or invented, including the entire universe.

I don't buy it. It may be a good way to justify seperation, but it seems pointless to me, like there's a god and no matter how much control I may consider I have, in truth I have none.

I can never prove that anything outside my awareness exists, so there is no point (for me) in assuming that is true. I could be wrong, but if I am, it won't matter

Judge

[Marco Polo]

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

No. You're confusing "sub" with "supra" or "super".

Refer to psychology for a discussion on the conscious, the sub-conscious and the unconscious. Freud may be a useful starting point.

I'm not unfamiliar with Freud. He applied slightly different meanings to words than we do today. In any case, "sub" means under. The subconscious is beyond our awareness. You can’t prove the existence of your subconscious because to do that, you’d have to be conscious about it. Even the tip-of-tongue phenomenon associated with your preconscious is, in fact, consciously experienced.

The best we can do is to claim that the existance of a subconscious is likely (for stated reasons x, y and z), and our everyday experience may lead us to think that its non-existance would be absurd. A similar line of reasoning could be applied to other things that we suspect exist outside your awareness.

Those realities may intersect (because co-creation is possible) and have similarities, but they are still distinctly yours and mine.

If “you” and “me” are distinct, then these are not just symbols on your monitor, but the output of a distinct consciousness (let's say, a young man sitting at his computer somewhere). This assumes that there’s something beyond your own consciousness, and it implies that there’s a larger context in which we’re both acting. If this is true, it could be interesting to explore the properties of this larger context.

More relevant for now is this point which I reiterate - whatever theory in QM you prefer, all of them point to reality being very, very different from what we ordinarily perceive it to be, so much so that it is very justifiable to say that our ordinary perception of reality is false / illusory / extremely subjective (choose your preferred adjective).

"Subjective” is more useful and correct. But keep in mind that for "subjective" to be a meaningful word, it needs to be juxtaposed to "objective". For most purposes, "subjective" means individual and "objective" means shared.

Finally the scientific non-falsifiability of any theory must be understood in its proper context. It does not mean that the theory is false; it merely means that at the current time, scientists do not see how they can endeavour to prove the theory false by scientific methods.

So, for instance, the law of supply and demand in economics is scientifically non-falsifiable, and must be rejected by scientists. It does not mean that I should reject the law of supply and demand.

The proponents of “consciousness collapse theory” assert its validity on scientific grounds, and therefore it’s subject to all scientific criteria, including falsifiability. Economics is a social science, which makes it subject to different criteria.

The law of attraction isn't a law of any academic discipline, although some of the definitions for it basically contain scientific claims. The most valid line of reasoning I've heard is that thoughts are powerful and we're able to consciously influence our reality to a great extent by using techniques a, b and c (insert your favored techniques). Which, of course, is a far cry from claiming that you created gravity.