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Permalink Reply by Katinka Hesselink on March 30, 2009 at 4:25am

Those are good questions - each would be enough for a discussion on it's own.

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Permalink Reply by Philippe Vermeersch on April 1, 2009 at 1:28pm

"Who is the master that makes the grass green?"
This seminal question was once raised by Robert Anton Wilson.
According to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics, one of the 10 or 14 (number depending on the dominant paradigm) ways of looking at its implications, what we experience only tells us about the way we experience. “Is the thought of a rock a real thought?” (Robert Anton Wilson) There seems to exist some consensus reality at some degree (hence the possibility to perform a reality check, sometimes to have the bullshitmeter buzzing), but according to this theory, all we'll ever acknowledge is the process of consciousness. A very zen-like reality tunnel. When the father of QM, Niels bohr, was knighted, he chose the symbol of the Yin-Yang for his coat-of-arms.
"It must be recognized that we are here dealing with a purely symbolic procedure...Hence our whole space-time view of physical phenomena depends ultimately upon these abstractions." (Niels Bohr)
In my personal experience I choose to consider synchronicities as the whistle-blowing way of a deeper layer of reality to make itself present through the illusion of everyday life. An illusion we have to live with of course, I don't intend to walk through a closed door to prove my point.
We're like the five blind men and the Irrelevant.

A last quote from Bob Wilson: " We never experience "thoughts," "feelings," "perceptions," "intuitions," "sensations," etc. We invent those categories after the fact. What we experience, nanosecond by nanosecond, consists of continuous synergetic reactions of the organism-as-a-whole to the environment-as-a-whole, including incoming verbal signals from others in the same predicament. These incoming verbal signals also produce in us reactions of the organism-as-a-whole sometimes culminating in a return signal.”

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Permalink Reply by Jon Knebel on April 1, 2009 at 4:37pm

The quote from Wilson "reactions of the organism-as-a-whole to the environment-as-a-whole" presumes that there is an "organism-as-a-whole" separate from "the environment-as-a-whole." Is there an "environment-as-a-whole" "out there"?
"Is the thought of a rock a real thought?” Is the thought of a rock the real rock?
I have come to believe that the entire universe (including this keyboard and these fingers, the Theosophical Network and your comments, the fellow peering over my shoulder, ad infinitum) exists solely in my awareness. There is no "out there" out there. As per Ramana Maharsi, it all goes away when I go to sleep. The universe and "I" miraculously (re?)appear when "I" wake up. While in deep sleep, there is no subject, nor object. Yet I must have continued to exist while asleep.
Yes, there does seem to exist some consensus reality, but I do not let that indicate separateness. If I find myself talking to someone about a chair, that chair and person exist in my awareness. Even this 'other' person's description of said chair is just in my awareness. Whether or not there is another chair existing in some other awareness, I cannot know, but to believe it so would be a mistaken assumption.
Now this change in philosophy does not alter the nature of my perceived reality or discount the laws of physics, it just means that physics, including Bohr's QM, is a school of psychology.
And indeed, I have little voices in my head.

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