Subjective Reality Simplified (Blog)

[Seth 2]

Thanks for this article, Steve. I think I understand exactly what you mean by subjective reality. Would it be possible to simplify all your confusing terminology into the idea, “We are all droplets in the ocean of consciousness. We can identify ourselves as individual droplets, the entire ocean, or any combination we want?”

Monotheism: I am a droplet, but I am NOT the ocean. Only the one true God is the ocean, and I am not HIM.

Solipsism: I am the one true droplet, and the ocean is a projection of me.

Atheism: There is no ocean. We are all droplets, nothing more and nothing less.

Any other spiritual belief will fit into the ocean-droplet metaphor you call “subjective reality,” making it the simplest explanation without OVER-simplifying. (That is the definition of Occam’s Razor).

True?


Edit: I realize I just wrote a post about how your beliefs are impossible to define, but it seems that with this latest article you really want to nail down your definition of subjective reality. Am I understanding you?

[Andwan]

So, Steve, basically all spirits are just simply having this dream that we call life, correct? Do I finally have it right?

[geekchic9]

Originally Posted by Seth 2

Thanks for this article, Steve. I think I understand exactly what you mean by subjective reality. Would it be possible to simplify all your confusing terminology into the idea, “We are all droplets in the ocean of consciousness. We can identify ourselves as individual droplets, the entire ocean, or any combination we want?”

Monotheism: I am a droplet, but I am NOT the ocean. Only the one true God is the ocean, and I am not HIM.

Solipsism: I am the one true droplet, and the ocean is a projection of me.

Atheism: There is no ocean. We are all droplets, nothing more and nothing less.

Any other spiritual belief will fit into the ocean-droplet metaphor you call “subjective reality,” making it the simplest explanation without OVER-simplifying. (That is the definition of Occam’s Razor).

True?


Edit: I realize I just wrote a post about how your beliefs are impossible to define, but it seems that with this latest article you really want to nail down your definition of subjective reality. Am I understanding you?

I like this analogy a lot. The only disadvantage I see to it is that it makes many other perspectives look sillier than others:

Objective Reality: Each of us is a droplet, but there is no scientific evidence of an ocean of droplets.

Pantheism: All droplets are the ocean, and the ocean is all droplets.

Monism: There is only one ocean, and the idea that we are droplets is an illusion.

Dualism: The ocean is separate from the droplets it created.

Hard polytheism: There is no ocean. There are only special droplets that look like oceans (because of their special powers.) The rest of the droplets worship the special ones.

Soft polytheism: There is an ocean which includes special droplets that themselves look like oceans (because of their special powers.) The rest of the droplets worship the special ones, but really, we're all the same ocean.

Zen: It appears that we are all separate droplets, and that there is a separate ocean. We each need to overcome the illusion that we are separate, because we are really one ocean.

I could go on, but I think I've made my point.

[Rose of Cairo]

I find SR easy to understand.

Maybe that's because something happened to me as a child. At the age of 2 or 3, I was walking around in the meadow and found a big, white stone. On this stone there were little red points moving around. I noticed that when I put my finger on one of those points, it stopped moving around. I found this very funny and had a nice time drawing a beautiful symmetrical picture on that white stone, waiting for the red points to be at the right place and then putting my finger on them.

Then suddenly, I don't know how, I had a very, very strange and strong feeling. I felt tiny, infinitesimal, like a dust particle, and I felt the universe was huuuuuuge. (At that time I already had talked with my mother about God, Planets, Galaxies and the Universe among other topics, and I really felt "the universe", that's not something I am interpreting now). At the same time, I felt that I was huuuuuge myself, enourmous, I dilated myself to the size of the universe. I don't know how to explain it, it was more than my body, it was more than bending forward looking at the universe, no, it was being infinitely tiny and infinitely huge at the same time and being the universe myself. I was the whole universe, I could feel it entirely. But I felt no "power", it was more something like knowledge or the pure feeling of existing. It was an amazing feeling!

And then I kind of "came back" and understood that those little red points were little spiders, and that putting my finger on them I was killing them. I understood what killing was, I could feel it, that's not the same as just knowing it. (but I cannot explain it) And I understood that I have no right to do such a thing. For the first time in my life I had an idea of death and an idea of something terribly forbidden.

I never forgot about this amazing feeling. I still feel strange when thinking of it now. As I first read about SR, I immediately remembered this feeling, and I remember it every time I think of SR. I guess it makes the whole thing much easier to understand or to accept for me. It's just like meeting an old friend again

Maybe this can help some of you who have difficulties with SR? Try to imagine how tiny you are compared to the universe. And then try to feel how big the universe is. Try to imagine yourself as the universe. Try to feel everything in the universe inside of you.

[geekchic9]

Originally Posted by Rose of Cairo

Maybe this can help some of you who have difficulties with SR? Try to imagine how tiny you are compared to the universe. And then try to feel how big the universe is. Try to imagine yourself as the universe. Try to feel everything in the universe inside of you.

Your story reminds me of a supposedly Jewish (not sure of the source) saying: If you kill a person, you kill a world. SR just basically says you not only kill a world, you kill an entire universe.

Or, to use the droplet analogy, each droplet contains the ocean, and the ocean contains many droplets, simultaneously. I hope that makes sense to someone besides me.

[Seth 2]

Originally Posted by geekchic9

Or, to use the droplet analogy, each droplet contains the ocean, and the ocean contains many droplets, simultaneously. I hope that makes sense to someone besides me.

Makes sense to me! However, "each droplet contains the ocean" is a confusing turn of phrase. It's like saying "each cell contains the body." It's true that each cell contains the DNA necessary to create the whole body... but the body is more important than an individual cell. Take the death penalty, for example. Is it better for the body to quarantine a harmful cell for an indefinite period of time, or destroy it? Does the cell have the "right" to continue living at the body's expense, or should it be cleansed? (Science tells us that white blood cells kill that crap, which is why I support the death penalty).

Thanks for continuing my list of droplet-ocean analogies! I don't see it as a "disadvantage" to reveal how silly people's beliefs are. Most people's beliefs are stupid, and now I have a nice way to categorize them.

ps: My God encompasses your God.

[Mark Lapierre]

Do OR and SR contradict each other?

This depends on your perspective.

Quite right, it does depend on your perspective. And I disagree with yours of the SR model within the OR model, Steve.

While describing the OR model of reality within the SR model, you encapsulates the OR perspective inside a filtered (dream world/simulation) version of the SR perspective.

However, you don't do the same when encapsulating the SR model within the OR model. By assuming the OR model views the SR model as false, you're disqualifying it unfairly.

A fair, and valid comparison would require encapsulating the SR model within the OR model in a similar manner to the reverse. This is how I see it:

From an OR perspective, the SR perspective is a subjectively filtered version of reality which, through the natural pattern-seeking/pattern-matching functions of our brain, generates attributes for reality which don't exist in the OR perspective. Our brain is quite capable of generating convincing experiences which we perceive as real.

It's like dreaming. From an OR perspective, while in the dream (as long as it's not lucid) our dream self considers everything to be real. While dreaming we don't think that the strange things that happen are strange at all. Yet when we wake up we realise that it didn't really happen, and that it was just a natural function of our brain. Another natural function (lucid dreaming) allows the dream to be seen for what it is (from the OR perspective, purely a dream).

Note that this treatment of the SR perspective within the OR model doesn't describe mechanisms of the representation of the SR model in an objective sense. Again this is fair because the same has not been done for the description of the OR perspective within the SR model.

[Michael Chui]

Originally Posted by Mark Lapierre

However, you don't do the same when encapsulating the SR model within the OR model. By assuming the OR model views the SR model as false, you're disqualifying it unfairly.

*muses*

I don't quite understand the point of comparing them or putting them in each other. That seems... useless. The comparison of each perspective has been made, many times, to colored lenses. What's the difference between blue and red? Erm. And if you look through the blue one, and then the red one... or the red one, and then the blue one... it's not blue OR red, is it? It does not seem to clarify either blueness or redness at all.

[Mark Lapierre]

I suspect part of it is to reach an understanding of behaviour. People who look through blue filters all the time might continually bump into blue objects. It seems obvious to the red filter people that an obstacle is there, but the blue filter people keep on bumping into it...

At least if the red filter people know that the blue filter people can't see the obstacles, they'll know why the blue filter people keep doing what appears stupid to them. (and if they're aware enough, they'll understand why they sometimes run into obstacles they didn't see coming...)

(btw, can you see any holes in my treatment? (assuming you care enough to look, which I don't mind if you don't). Also, why the hell am I using the word 'treatment'? )

[Max Power]

Originally Posted by Mark Lapierre

I suspect part of it is to reach an understanding of behaviour. People who look through blue filters all the time might continually bump into blue objects. It seems obvious to the red filter people that an obstacle is there, but the blue filter people keep on bumping into it...

At least if the red filter people know that the blue filter people can't see the obstacles, they'll know why the blue filter people keep doing what appears stupid to them. (and if they're aware enough, they'll understand why they sometimes run into obstacles they didn't see coming...)

(btw, can you see any holes in my treatment? (assuming you care enough to look, which I don't mind if you don't). Also, why the hell am I using the word 'treatment'? )

Filters (too me) implies changing perspective at will. While I can see how OR might be acceptable underneath SR or within it, I think it just creates more confusion. It's like saying we believe in SR, but within SR I can beleive in a religious god.

Seems counterproductive.

Max

Maybe you need special treatment

[Steve Pavlina]

Originally Posted by Rose of Cairo

I never forgot about this amazing feeling. I still feel strange when thinking of it now. As I first read about SR, I immediately remembered this feeling, and I remember it every time I think of SR. I guess it makes the whole thing much easier to understand or to accept for me. It's just like meeting an old friend again.

SR is indeed a feeling or a sensing. It may help to grasp the perspective on an intellectual level, but the real experience is seeing reality through the SR lens and noticing how incredibly wondrous everything becomes.

[Mark Lapierre]

Originally Posted by Max Power

Maybe you need special treatment

That's a definite, not a maybe!

[Seth 2]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

SR is indeed a feeling or a sensing. It may help to grasp the perspective on an intellectual level, but the real experience is seeing reality through the SR lens and noticing how incredibly wondrous everything becomes.

Steve, I don’t mean to troll, (I know how that ends), but why bother trying to “simplify” subjective reality if you’re going to explicitly say it can’t be defined on an intellectual level? You just said that we can discuss this forever, and understand it as much as we want, but the REAL experience is when everything becomes incredibly wondrous.

Simple check: Is everything incredibly wondrous? No? You don’t “get” subjective reality.

Do you have any comment on the ocean-droplet metaphor?

Thanks.

[Michael Chui]

This took me, like, a bloody 90 minutes to write, Mark. *shakes fist at you* Fortunately, space pirates died during the middle of it, so I forgive you.

Originally Posted by Mark Lapierre

I suspect part of it is to reach an understanding of behaviour. People who look through blue filters all the time might continually bump into blue objects. It seems obvious to the red filter people that an obstacle is there, but the blue filter people keep on bumping into it...

But that doesn't require comparison or this "putting one in the other" deal. It requires the declaration and agreement that "red != blue". This is really easy to accept: everyone seems to agree that this is true.

Originally Posted by Mark Lapierre

(btw, can you see any holes in my treatment? (assuming you care enough to look, which I don't mind if you don't). Also, why the hell am I using the word 'treatment'? )

Erm, you mean, other than the method of treatment itself?

I can see why you do it, though. "Fairness" isn't really the best term. Perhaps "useful"? "Valid"? I don't even think that you're understanding Steve's intentions correctly, but I think that that section of Steve's post is... not so good.

So, instead of answering you directly, I'll go over what I've concluded in the past week or two based on his recent posts and my understanding of Stuff All-Encompassing. I want to note that this is my model, not Steve's (though I admit they might be one and the same ).

Instead of using Steve's terminology, I'm going to invent my own: Analytic Lens (NL) and Active Lens (CL). The analytic lens is for analysis; the active lens is for activity. In case that wasn't clear.

Words to associate with CL: creative, responsible, control, related and self-conscious.
Words to associate with NL: predictable, discoverable, isolation, disassociated, awareness.

The premise of CL is response; the premise of NL is reaction. (ref: Reaction vs. Response) Take any phenomenon: it happened. According to CL, it happened because you caused it to happen; according to NL, that's preposterous. The rhetorical question, "Who do you think you are? God?", comes to mind.

No one uses NL or CL exclusively: everyone mixes them. If you don't, then your philosophy gets a little problematic.

From CL, you get things like survivor's guilt and solipsism. CL demands responsibility for anything and everything that happens.

From NL, you get things like determinism and objectivism. NL necessarily rejects responsibility for phenomena. Under NL, free will cannot exist, because "the will" is not all-encompassing and thus cannot be free.

And yet, we're pretty convinced that the will does indeed exist. Why? Because we use both CL and NL.

The above problems arise from not partaking sufficiently in both perspectives. Survivor guilt (differently, undeserved pride or arrogance) comes from a failure to recognize that things happen irrespective of you. Solipsism comes from failing to recognize that things exist irrespective of you. Determinism happens when you completely reject personal volition. Objectivism happens when you completely reject similarity in favor of differences.

Or, summarily, because one lens is being used without the other. If it sounds like I'm implying a value judgment, well, of course I am. If you choose to take any of what I've called "problems" for your own, that's your choice; simply don't expect my respect for it.

Okay, so I've rambled on a bit trying to explain what each Lens is, and I've explained the negative aspects of just using one. For my next act, I'll explain what they're good at, individually, and why you should blend them anyways.

The weaknesses of each lens is also its strength. The Analytic Lens (NL) turns you deterministic and objectivist, but this also means that it is predictive and isolating. Isolation means that one thing is not another, which is terribly useful for prediction, which says that one thing is the cause of another. The reason prediction is so useful is because, knowing cause and effect lets you reliably produce effects. To take an example that may hit home: if you intend, so you will manifest. Cause, effect.

The Activity Lens (CL) flips this inside-out. It can produce wrongful responsibility (survivor's guilt), but it can also effect appropriate responsibility. If you can do something that is right, then you should do it. If you can avoid doing something that is wrong, then you should avoid it. You are punished for your crimes, because you chose to do it. Whether the punisher is an external force, such as law enforcement, or self-generated, like karma, wrongfulness remains wrong.

I'll diverge a little, now, and skip ahead to the blend. A problem with the obsession with cause and effect is that you have the eventual philosophical quandary of First Cause. If everything had a cause, what started it the dominos falling? NL has no answer; CL, on the other hand, says, "You started it."

This moves us to the final act. The ultimate point of activity is action. You do stuff. You create, sustain, and destroy. Ad nauseum. The ultimate point of analysis is knowledge. You figure stuff out. You isolate, determine, and conclude. Ad nauseum. The problem with action is that the act has to be, well, just that. The word "action" is too generic to be useful: the action itself is specific, purposed, aimed. To paraphrase the Merovingian, towards ...what? And you have the same problem with knowledge. To know is useless unless it transfers into action of some kind: that's what a use is: a means.

I'm done with the lenses, at this point, except simply to say that it is an ouroborus. You analyze so that you may act so that you may analyze. You blend the two perspectives such that you recognize yourself as both an ignorant person and an omnipotent existence, each building up the other. Due to ignorance, you gain knowledge and through gaining knowledge, acquire power, simply to gain more knowledge that you can access more power. Or would that be... empowering?

By now, you have undoubtedly guessed that these were sourced from Steve's terms of two "realities" or "perspectives". I feel I've tweaked his ideas a bit afield from what he actually thinks, but eh. It works for me.

[stigma]

I frankly still dont get the notions, maybe i find them too theoretical for my understanding (for somethinh that's supposed to be very pratical, on day-to-day basis). You're losing me with the dreams and dreamworld definition.

The only difference I see is to do with interpretation. Let me see if this is what you mean:

OR: Events are interpret as they happen, and my reaction to them is automatic.

Solipism: My interpretation of any event is that I am the cause/source of it.

SR: I can interpret the events of my life as I wish (the most empowering way is best).

what do you think?
It's been a while since I've been reading Steve and I would sincerely appreciate a non spiritual/metaphysical/dream world allusion.

[Joeschmoe]

Wow, this is a lot of complication given to a really simple concept. Two ways of looking at things, one is more verifiable. Steve has very many articles that explain the reasoning that led him to SR, if you go aback and read some of them maybe it will be better explained.

I think people are over thinking it, which is sort of an OR problem.

OR- There is a provable ongoing world outside of my SELF. That i perceive through my senses.

SR- Everything I perceive, remember, speculate, think, feel is part of my SELF.

Self has to be identified as that which is aware outside of thought and senses. You are not your thoughts. I am that, has a lot about this.

In the simplest terms it's not a matter of what is true or not. It's a matter of what you can possibly perceive. Even from an OR standpoint, anything you perceive as being outside yourself is only detectable within your own body/mind. So even if there is an object outside your body you don't perceive it outside you body, all of that happens in your sensory organs and brain. Everything that happens in the "outside" world is detected and interpreted inside yourself anyway.

My 2 cents

[geekchic9]

Originally Posted by Seth 2

Makes sense to me! However, "each droplet contains the ocean" is a confusing turn of phrase. It's like saying "each cell contains the body." It's true that each cell contains the DNA necessary to create the whole body... but the body is more important than an individual cell.

I know how I wrote it was confusing, hence why I wrote "I hope that makes sense to someone besides me."

Thanks for continuing my list of droplet-ocean analogies! I don't see it as a "disadvantage" to reveal how silly people's beliefs are. Most people's beliefs are stupid, and now I have a nice way to categorize them.

You're welcome.

[Steve Pavlina]

Originally Posted by Seth 2

Steve, I don’t mean to troll, (I know how that ends), but why bother trying to “simplify” subjective reality if you’re going to explicitly say it can’t be defined on an intellectual level? You just said that we can discuss this forever, and understand it as much as we want, but the REAL experience is when everything becomes incredibly wondrous.

Simple check: Is everything incredibly wondrous? No? You don’t “get” subjective reality.

Do you have any comment on the ocean-droplet metaphor?

Thanks.

Intellectual understanding is a step in the right direction, but I'd have to agree that you don't really "get" something until you own it internally. This isn't just about SR but about understanding in general. For example, someone may say, "I should break up with my g/f," and produce a long list of reasons why they should end it, but they won't take action until they really get it at a gut level. The intellectual understanding is a good and important step, but you don't want to be stuck there forever -- it's a limbo state between desire and fulfillment.

As for the ocean-droplet metaphor, IMO it doesn't quite get there as a way of explaining SR, but it's a nice way of depicting that we're all parts of the same whole.