Ultimate Reality

[JewishPhysics]

Recent article:

when we escape the barriers of our own consciousness, we can perceive reality as it is, which has aspects of the infinite to it. When we perceive the infinite, and its earthly conduit the highly-ordered thought or thinker (genius), we achieve a transcendent state in which we realize life has purpose and our own deaths by fitting into this purpose make sense. In this transcendent state, we are both realist (perceiving tangible cause/effect) and idealist (recognizing the patterns of cause/effect that are not visible), and many thinkers dance around this state of mind as Nirvana, seeing Ultimate Reality, having clarity, Plato's forms, etc.

The interesting thing is that old school Hindu thinking takes that even further: consciousness is not our own. We are all little slices of God's intelligence, or to be more scientific about it, the intelligence that "is" the universe whether conscious or not, and it is our quest to discover it and enhance its degree of organization so that we can outpace its entropy and constantly create new objectives, goals and struggles to keep our minds active.

I'm not sure what is meant by escaping the barriers of our own consciousness.  One cannot do that.  We understand Ultimate Reality by inference.  There is no method of directly perceiving it, or if there is I am completely ignorant of such a thing and would love for someone to clue me in.  Barring that, I'm in agreement with the general notions of Transcendental Idealism.

This idea of of the universe being, or being constituted of, intelligence seems like a product of projection to me.  I have more objections but I feel I should hold them off until someone can at least clarify what is meant and why this is believed.

[Cargést]

The problem with Enlightenment is that it's entirely self-contained - you have to be Enlightened to understand Enlightenment, and you have to understand Enlightenment to be Enlightened.

Reality operates as a system/subsystem at least one level higher than our own consciousness(es?).  It is currently perceived to be impossible to move into a higher system than that which one exists in.  Human intellect has so far failed to create a machine or process which can move outside of its own confines; however, I am not so sure that we haven't been able to create machines/processes which have been able to look outside of their own confines, though only by instruction, and not by any "intuition".  Certainly, forays into the field of Artificial Intelligence may, one day, prove that it is possible for an entity to propel itself into a system higher than that in which it was placed.  While it is impossible that we could physically or mentally shift into absolute coexistence with the cosmos, it may, somehow, be possible for us to observe "Ultimate Reality", if we are designed ("programmed") to be able to do so.

There have been times in my life when the actuality of reality has become apparent.  These times have always been entirely transient, to the extent that I can no longer even remember the revelations contained within, merely the fact of there having been revelations.  I am, however, simultaneously certain that my manner of acting/thinking/being has altered significantly after each one, quite possibly reflecting the epiphany.

As for your second point, "intelligence" is, as far as I'm aware, incredibly taxing to define, as almost everyone will have a problem with almost every definition.  As for my own beliefs with regard to the universe "being intelligent", it is not possible, to my mind at least, for so structured and consistent (within my definitions) a Reality to have been created without a certain amount of guiding force.  To my understanding, it is far more a leap of faith to assume that everything that exists has come into being purely through chance, than it is to assume that some kind of purposeful motion or ambient will has lead to the propagation of chaos to the extent that absolute order has arisen from, potentially, "nothing".

[scourge]

There have been times in my life when the actuality of reality has become apparent.  These times have always been entirely transient, to the extent that I can no longer even remember the revelations contained within, merely the fact of there having been revelations.  I am, however, simultaneously certain that my manner of acting/thinking/being has altered significantly after each one, quite possibly reflecting the epiphany.

That could have been some nice restructuring going on in the prefrontal cortex.

As for the rest, I believe the universe intelligence from the article refers to the sentient beings emerging from this universe acting as evolved agents for intelligence. Collectively, this is effectively the universe's intelligence of which our sentience is for all we know yet, the whole of.

[indjaseemun]

I think that a person who is a total atheist and against all forms of spirituality, who considers himself to be nothing but merely a bunch of particles that move, should consider all his toughts as feelings not as unreal, but as real as the toughts of an entity called god expressed trought writing, because "himself" does not exist, it is only organized chaos, like a chain reaction, like we are not really seeing stuff but we are actually our brains and the connectins they make to the body and the images we see are just the existing images inside or brains.

[Cargést]

Regardless of how factual such an outlook may be, Mr. Marcus, it's stupid.  In fact, it's absolutely as stupid as the average Christian's ideas about God being a big dude up in the sky with a beard and a son and a whole load of goodies hanging out etc. - both viewpoints are entirely useless.

[indjaseemun]

Well, I don't really know what you got from my message. I was trying to say I don't necessairly adhere to that viewpoint, thus I used the words "If the person is a total atheist" wich I am not. But that outlook seems to me like the only difference between a human being and a big complex machine is that the human is just light years more advanced technology. I don't consider that stupid, I just don't know. But I guess that since you consider it stupid, it may be that you have some strong spiritual beliefs.

[Conservationist]

I'm not sure what is meant by escaping the barriers of our own consciousness.  One cannot do that.

I disagree. When one can recognize and filter out the bias of consciousness, it can be removed on a practical level from thinking. It requires a conscious will to do so.

[Cargést]

Well, I don't really know what you got from my message. I was trying to say I don't necessairly adhere to that viewpoint, thus I used the words "If the person is a total atheist" wich I am not. But that outlook seems to me like the only difference between a human being and a big complex machine is that the human is just light years more advanced technology. I don't consider that stupid, I just don't know. But I guess that since you consider it stupid, it may be that you have some strong spiritual beliefs.

Yes, I understand that you yourself don't see the world that way - I'm simply pointing out that such a viewpoint is more inhibiting than it is liberating.  Consider, for example, that we, as humans, can only observe three dimensions on a 2D plane (i.e. our minds create a 2D image of the 3D world around us).  It has already been proven, mathematically, that there are up to eleven dimensions.  To put this in perspective, just under 73% of what might exist is totally invisible to us, and is, quite possibly, undetectable by any means.  For all we know, God inhabits the fourth, fifth, and sixth dimensions.

[JewishPhysics]

I'm not sure what is meant by escaping the barriers of our own consciousness.  One cannot do that.

I disagree. When one can recognize and filter out the bias of consciousness, it can be removed on a practical level from thinking. It requires a conscious will to do so.

What exactly are talking about when you say "bias of consciousness" (maybe you could give a specific example)?  If you mean things like the social filters we process information through, then I agree when can alter or even remove them from our thinking, but we still remain trapped within the boundaries of consciousness.  You even say that the process you describe "requires a conscious will."  This means you are still operating within the bounds of consciousness and any conclusions drawn from such a state about ultimate reality are still only relegated to inference and deduction, not direct perception.

[Conservationist]

I'm not sure what is meant by escaping the barriers of our own consciousness.  One cannot do that.

I disagree. When one can recognize and filter out the bias of consciousness, it can be removed on a practical level from thinking. It requires a conscious will to do so.

What exactly are talking about when you say "bias of consciousness" (maybe you could give a specific example)?  If you mean things like the social filters we process information through, then I agree when can alter or even remove them from our thinking, but we still remain trapped within the boundaries of consciousness. 

We are our own consciousness. What I am saying is that we can remove the bias of our consciousness and perceive ourselves as continuous with the world. We basically agree but are having a language problem here.

[JewishPhysics]

We are our own consciousness. What I am saying is that we can remove the bias of our consciousness and perceive ourselves as continuous with the world. We basically agree but are having a language problem here.

I see what you're talking about now, the waning of the ego and such.

[scourge]

We understand Ultimate Reality by inference.  There is no method of directly perceiving it, or if there is I am completely ignorant of such a thing and would love for someone to clue me in.  Barring that, I'm in agreement with the general notions of Transcendental Idealism.

This idea of of the universe being, or being constituted of, intelligence seems like a product of projection to me.  I have more objections but I feel I should hold them off until someone can at least clarify what is meant and why this is believed.

I'd say individual people slide dynamically along something like a greyscale gradient. Pure white would be ultimate reality and pure black would be sheer ignorance, no sensory input or thoughts, or death. Sleep or depression may sink us down into a greyer state for a while. A bright person with plenty of sleep perked up on coffee will be in one of the lightest states attainable.

[Eleison]

I'm not sure what is meant by escaping the barriers of our own consciousness.  One cannot do that.

I disagree. When one can recognize and filter out the bias of consciousness, it can be removed on a practical level from thinking. It requires a conscious will to do so.

What exactly are talking about when you say "bias of consciousness" (maybe you could give a specific example)?  If you mean things like the social filters we process information through, then I agree when can alter or even remove them from our thinking, but we still remain trapped within the boundaries of consciousness. 

We are our own consciousness. What I am saying is that we can remove the bias of our consciousness and perceive ourselves as continuous with the world. We basically agree but are having a language problem here.

This is true in a completely literal sense.  This is what most Hindu scriptures are about.

[NHA]

Yes, I understand that you yourself don't see the world that way - I'm simply pointing out that such a viewpoint is more inhibiting than it is liberating.  Consider, for example, that we, as humans, can only observe three dimensions on a 2D plane (i.e. our minds create a 2D image of the 3D world around us).  It has already been proven, mathematically, that there are up to eleven dimensions.  To put this in perspective, just under 73% of what might exist is totally invisible to us, and is, quite possibly, undetectable by any means.  For all we know, God inhabits the fourth, fifth, and sixth dimensions.

Not that its particularly relevant to your reply to him, but my understanding of it is that what they call dimensions are just properties that describe the state of some given matter under various forces. Four dimensions doesn't automatically imply that were talking about hypercubes but that we just need to add time as a properly to describe the state of an object.

[Cargést]

A Tesseract is the "shadow" of a hypercube, in three dimensions, as the hypercube moves through our ("our") three dimensions.  It's not actually a hypercube.  It is entirely impossible for us to witness a hypercube, because we cannot see any dimension other than length, width, and height.  That is not to say that hypercubes actually exist (or not), or that other spatial dimensions exist (or not).

The idea of "time" being the 4th dimension is separate from the mathematical basis for there being 11 spatial dimensions, as far as I understand it.  Then again, "time" being a measurable constant (?), our interpretation of time as a succession of moments could be simply that - our interpretation.