Look, freedom is freedom. Period. Your version of freedom doesn't follow some set pattern because you *are* that freedom. There isn't some law of physics out there that can predict what you're gonna do next. Asking "who am I?" is just a way of acknowledging that I exist. So, I am who I am. Who's to blame? You are. Who can fix it? You are.
In case anyone’s actually curious... I’ve felt this weird shift in body proportions before. Not like getting buff or anything, but more like an elongation effect—it’s as if my arms, resting on my knees, suddenly feel miles away. As for meditation, I just stick to my own method: sitting still and focusing entirely on myself. It’s a solid way to go, provided you can actually pull it off.
A fool outweighs any number of arguments. And what even counts as an argument? Smart people? So, does a fool outnumber the smart ones? Is one single argument worth anything, or is it just worth two fools? Or maybe having too many arguments actually weakens the whole point? Maybe one argument is barely worth a tenth of a fool. But what does that actually mean? What units are we using here, and how are we supposed to weigh this stuff? If it's stupid enough, one fool is all you need, because an argument applied to a fool is invariant, just like an operator trace on a database display. Man... oh, John...
gentleseal3, I’ve chewed through Hegel, Berkeley, Husserl, Kant, Heidegger, Nietzsche, and all the rest... I don't know if you caught it, but there's basically nothing actually being said there. If you think otherwise, fine... or maybe you just didn't get what I was asking.
Honestly, I’m stoked that someone actually bothered to swing by my little corner of the internet and check out this thread. Some people clearly caught my drift or at least gauged the level I was playing at. Others? Not so much. But whatever. Relationships between phenomena? It feels like this illusion of "understanding" is all we really have, but it’s an understanding rooted in practice—that typical objectivist, scientific mindset. It reminds me of what Pascal once wrote: humans marvel at things that are rare, yet they take the everyday stuff for granted, even if they can't explain it to save their lives. It’s just pure habit. Once the world becomes a routine, people decide it’s been "explained." But it seems philosophy moves in the opposite direction, using its own questions, rather than answers, to sketch out the world.
The Sufis have this one beautiful saying: God sleeps in stone, dreams in plants, stirs within animals, and finally wakes up in man. It’s all just consciousness. That’s the foundation.
What even is an explanation for a phenomenon? And what does that explanation actually signify? What does it truly mean to "understand" something? Why did people look up at the stars and assume they were something more than just tiny little glowing pebbles floating in the sky? Why do we insist that things aren't what they seem, and where did this obsession with demanding an explanation come from in the first place? What is an explanation, anyway? It feels like we’re just running in circles here.
It’s all about interpretation, and that’s exactly what I was trying to get at, mistyfox812. If everything boils down to interpretation, then everything depends on our own consciousness. As a physicist—yeah, yeah, I'm a junior in an engineering program—Newtonian mechanics isn't any clearer to me than quantum stuff is. It's all built on a bunch of assumptions that only make sense to you because you've been feeding those ideas to your brain your whole life. It isn't hard to imagine a new generation of physicists who look at Newtonian mechanics and find it just as absurd as we do when we look at Aristotle's laws of motion today.
Look, quantum theory is just as murky as anything else in this universe. Pascal said it best: when you see something for the first time, it blows your mind because you can't wrap your head around it, but once you see it every day, you take it for granted and think it's obvious. We can't even explain what color actually is, let alone consciousness or the fabric of reality itself, so how can we expect to nail this down? And look, I'm not trying to explain one mystery with another mystery. My point is that quantum theory is the first physical theory that actually forced physicists to face the fact that non-material reality exists. That whole deal with Schrödinger's cat basically proves that the world doesn't exist as a concrete reality until we actually take a look at it.😲 The setup is simple: a cat is trapped in a box, linked to a quantum system that's tied to a dose of poison. If the system is in state A, the poison is released; if it's in state B, nothing happens. But here's the kicker: until we peek inside and check on that system, it isn't in state A OR state B. So what's the deal with the cat? Is it dead or alive? The answer is: neither. It only settles into one of those two states the moment we open the box. That's basically a wall—one of those barriers created by a closed-minded, agnostic, materialistic view of the universe as just some mindless void that we happen to inhabit as thinking beings. Observation is what separates theory from reality—but that wasn't an issue until the 20th century and all these new discoveries hit us. What about feelings? Are they real? If we claim they aren't, despite being able to feel them, then what the hell IS real? Seriously, if we don't want to get bogged down in endless philosophical debates, we have to accept consciousness phenomena as real, even if they aren't physical. Are they beyond the reach of science? Maybe, but that doesn't mean we can't experience them. Anyway, there you go. Another one for mistyfox812 to ignore.
It’s not even really a "problem"—it's just an interesting point. I’ve said this a million times before: if we want serious scientific research, consciousness has to be part of the equation. If we look at Western thinkers, I’d have to point to two guys first—Jung and Berkeley. Now, Berkeley wasn't even a scientist, he was a philosopher, but he argued quite convincingly based on his own observations that consciousness is everything, and there’s nothing outside of it. Of course, Eastern masters (Buddhist, yogic, etc.) understood way more about consciousness long before anyone in the West caught up. If we were actually trying to build a legitimate scientific theory, I think you’d have to start with quantum physics. It's the first field that actually brought consciousness into play by interacting with the so-called "objective" or external world. Your model is an interesting concept, but honestly? I don't think it's quite right.😁 There's a massive amount of solid evidence suggesting that consciousness isn't a byproduct of physiology, nor is it tied exclusively to this material body we inhabit. Even the famous thought experiment involving Schrödinger's cat points toward some pretty wild implications. Just Google "quantum theory of consciousness." There's some fascinating stuff out there.
Look, we can pretty much assume your consciousness doesn't just vanish; it’s just that it isn't perceiving anything, so nothing feels clear. If you could manage to stay more alert during that initial drift into sleep, you might actually realize you can remain conscious while you're out. But then you gotta ask yourself: who’s actually awake and who’s sleeping, right? So, here's the drill—as you're sinking into sleep, try to visualize somewhere you know like the back of your hand as clearly as possible. Use every single sense to build that place in your mind. At the same time, try to stay aware for as long as you can. Give it about thirty days, and you should start seeing some real results.