False Awakening & Unknowable Reality
There's this notion of false awakening where a person believes s/he has woken up but is actually asleep and dreaming; hence false awakening.
The idea has another, philosophical, meaning - describing a person who believes s/he has grasped true reality but actually hasn't; maybe s/he misunderstands, or s/he has only a partial understanding of, true reality.
If we bring these two meanings of false awakening together we get the picture of a person who thinks s/he's awake and understands true reality but is actually asleep, dreaming and still in the grips of an illusion, stuck, as it were, in false reality.
Consider now what we take to be true reality - the world in which we spend our "waking" lives in. We distinguish it from dreams we experience in sleep and declare, quite adamantly in my view, that the "waking" life we go through is true reality and the dream is an ilusion.
Bring to bear on the above notion we have of what true reality is, the idea of false awakening and suddenly we're no longer in a position to claim that our "waking" lives constitute an experience of true reality. To entertain this possibility is not to say anything new - Descartes' evil demon and the brain in a vat are old and well-known thought experiments. What bothers me at this point is whether any amount of "awakening" is sufficient to permit us to make the claim this, for sure, is true reality.?
To give you a glimpse of the problem we're faced with imagine me as asleep, dreaming and I "wake up" and realize that I was dreaming. I sit up in my bed and then the thought that I could be a brain in vat crosses my mind. I'm now no longer certain that the bed I'm sitting on, the watch whose alarm woke me up, the toothbrush I'll use, etc. are real. Imagine now that I am a brain in a vat and "wake up" to that fact - I see myself, the brain, connected to a supercomputer simulating the world I thought was real and so on. What about this reality, myself as a brain in a vat, can assuredly prevent me from thinking this too might be an illusion? "Nothing" is the right word I suspect.
It seems that to whatever level of reality one "awakens" to, the same problem exists - it could be a false awakening and the specter of an illusory reality constantly looms over us. Bottomline, every awakening could be a false awakening and although true reality maybe within reach, we can never really know it is that.
Comments...
The idea has another, philosophical, meaning - describing a person who believes s/he has grasped true reality but actually hasn't; maybe s/he misunderstands, or s/he has only a partial understanding of, true reality.
If we bring these two meanings of false awakening together we get the picture of a person who thinks s/he's awake and understands true reality but is actually asleep, dreaming and still in the grips of an illusion, stuck, as it were, in false reality.
Consider now what we take to be true reality - the world in which we spend our "waking" lives in. We distinguish it from dreams we experience in sleep and declare, quite adamantly in my view, that the "waking" life we go through is true reality and the dream is an ilusion.
Bring to bear on the above notion we have of what true reality is, the idea of false awakening and suddenly we're no longer in a position to claim that our "waking" lives constitute an experience of true reality. To entertain this possibility is not to say anything new - Descartes' evil demon and the brain in a vat are old and well-known thought experiments. What bothers me at this point is whether any amount of "awakening" is sufficient to permit us to make the claim this, for sure, is true reality.?
To give you a glimpse of the problem we're faced with imagine me as asleep, dreaming and I "wake up" and realize that I was dreaming. I sit up in my bed and then the thought that I could be a brain in vat crosses my mind. I'm now no longer certain that the bed I'm sitting on, the watch whose alarm woke me up, the toothbrush I'll use, etc. are real. Imagine now that I am a brain in a vat and "wake up" to that fact - I see myself, the brain, connected to a supercomputer simulating the world I thought was real and so on. What about this reality, myself as a brain in a vat, can assuredly prevent me from thinking this too might be an illusion? "Nothing" is the right word I suspect.
It seems that to whatever level of reality one "awakens" to, the same problem exists - it could be a false awakening and the specter of an illusory reality constantly looms over us. Bottomline, every awakening could be a false awakening and although true reality maybe within reach, we can never really know it is that.
Comments...
Comments (57)
I guess in this light, we are all waking up to the reality that we are only dreamers?
...or it could be a true awakening.
ASAP.
And meanwhile:
Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream
Merrily merrily, merrily, merrily
Life is but a dream.
Or,
Comes a time when the blind man takes your hand
Says, "Don't you see?
Gotta make it somehow on the dreams you still believe
Don't give it up, you got an empty cup
That only love can fill, only love can fill"
Quoting Banno
And even if it isn't, one has to take it that one is awake, because snoring is boring.
Whatever understanding is possessed by an individual(ity) is limited to and by that individual(ity). Only the absolute is and has absoluteness. Those who are awake (enlightened) know their limitations better than those below them on that scale.
Therefore, it is a true awakening.
I have the memory of so many days here, in this awakened state.
My argument is that because life is consistent, it can be understood by a measure of this consistency, as real; oppose to a dream which is understood shortly after as unreal.
Dreams can be known too, but when discussing the validity of life, per se - where did your dreamer body come from?
I thought the OP was speaking metaphorically, so not a literal exposition of the epistemological status of the dream-state was intended.
Oh, ok, my mistake.
For example, let's say you're a Freudian or a shaman. You might in the dream been running from a bear. You wake up and I would suppose that even shamans are relieved on one level, even if they take the dream more seriously than those who think dreams have no meaning or reflect anything real relevent to this world. So the Freudian or shaman thinks, glad that wasn't the kind of bear that kills me hear, but both would likely consider the bear real, as symbol of something going on in me, or some message from the underworld or actualy contact with spirits. Even people not formally into interpreting dreams or assigning them sucha formal other reality category that a shaman might, will still, often consider the dream to have meaning and reality, just not that their waking bodies were actually about to be chomped.
I think it is an interesting idea that there could be more awakenings (a bit like the film the 13th floor with simulated universes) but I wanted to emphasize that even if this is the case one could also be getting very useful knowledge and need not be negating a lower level. In this case the lower levels are less aware of the higher ones. They don't encompass them but are encompassed by them. Of course lucid dreaming, for example, can make this more complicated.
I read the whole thing very intently and think this can be a very interesting thread if pursued.
A lot of "enlightened" people have claimed that in the "waking state" you don't bother anymore about false realities, true realities, etc. It so humbles you that all your seeking dissapears. You find yourself not asking for anything else. Now, this has been the popular notion.
So, can we explore this and see if there is any truth in this? If I somehow slide into an altered state one fine morning but, still find myself conflicted and asking if there is more, then I think, there certainly is more, if the archaic wisdom is to be heeded to. Also, seeking in itself, according to the old lores, is what serves as an anchor keeping you dreaming.
So this sentence is not referring true reality, then?Quoting neonspectraltoastNor this one.
Quoting neonspectraltoastIt seems like this is a claim to understanding reality, including the obvious reasons If there are obvious reasons for something don't we understand it then. And isn't the it in this case a part of reality?
I can tell you the rain felt wet, and obviously you know this is no substitute for dancing in a downpour.
As often as language helps us understand, it is a distraction from the truth.
:up: Thanks
Quoting Banno
possibly...Quoting ztaziz
There's nothing that precludes two or more people having the same dream - such dreams would be consistent but still not real.
I guess the implication of what I wrote is that knowledge of true reality, though possible, can never be known to be as that. There never will be a time when one could be 100% confident that the reality to which one has "awakened" to is the true reality.
Quoting Coben
Right! There is a sense of progression in the notion of "awakening" , each level of it lifting the veil that covers truth just that bit higher, and the hope here is that there will be a time when we can finally behold the truth in all its beauty.
I don't want to be the grinch here but what if "awakening" is circular in nature: I awake to a state y from a dream x and I awake to a state z from the dream y and then, completing the circle, I awake to the state x from the dream z.
Every level of awakening is then just a dream and since we're going around in circles, the sense of progress is lost.
[quote=Dogen]]Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment,mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters.[/quote]
What are these various levels of reality you are talking about? Would be great if you could please refer me to some texts.
Sorry, these are my personal thoughts on reality and I have no texts to refer you to. Each time one feels one has "awakened" it implies that what one awakened from is a different level of reality than the one one experiences after the "awakening".
I'm going to take a non-philosophical type response here and react more intuitively. This seems to me a very heady, hypothetical concern. One that could give anxiety, potentially, to someone. When I say hypothetical, it's very much of the vibe of 'what if my wife has been pretending all these years to love me'. I say heady, because on a lived level we can't get some utterly perfect transcendent viewpoint to relax such anxieties, but really, I think they are about something else. And we can live the in situ experiences of awakening from sleep and awakening in waking life of now having greater perspective than we did.
Now in a way it is not fair to react this way to your post. You are in a philosophical forum and investigating something philosophically. And it's an interesting topic and you've included interesting nuances, now with this cycle idea. So not only is there nothing wrong with doing this, it's interesting and absolutely belongs in this forum as a discussion.
I reacted in the way I did because I am always trying to see what a philosophy or position is in an actual lived person. What is it doing? What are the emotions around it? Not just as possible ideas.
In the world of ideal skepticism, perhaps what you just argued and seems to make sense on paper as it were, actually doesn't. Any argument or conclusion may turn out - in brain in vat scenarios or perverse deity scenarios or simulated universe scenarios - be false even if the empirical evidence is overwhelming. There's always and asterisk, heck even this might be wrong.
So yes to your point in some abstract way, but in any practical sense, I am not sure how it helps us in life, however interesting as speculative philosophy.
Yeah, but it's not as if that Zen thing is saying one is in the same boat, in that third level as one was in the first. In Zen that second mountains are mountains you are, according to that tradition, much more aware of and consciously connnect to reality than in the first.
And I quoted your language, where you told us your understanding of reality. It's a cake and eat it too situation. You were describing what was possible what was not based on verbal understandings of reality and giving us verbal understandings of reality. You can't then go on to say, which you actually did simultaneously, that one cannot do this. Your own acts in those parts of the post I quoted indicate that you don't believe what you are saying.Quoting neonspectraltoastThen why would you tell me this? I am pointing out that your posts are doing precisely what they say is impossible. I'ts one thing to shush someone talking about the forest, babblling, while they walk through it, in the hope they will focus on it. It's another to you can't have understanding of reality becauase......
The latter is self-contradictory. Clearly you think you have unerstanding of reality, since perception and epistemology and what we are like are all parts of reality. You are using works to tell us how things work and do not work. You are even justifying this, again with words.
With no consciousness, no universe exists.
It is just another dream in the mix, so it can be thought about as an existent. In this moment 'it exists'.
Whatever the fuck our interpretation of existence is.
I propose that eyes make unreal movements, crossing unreal angles. Think about the speeds at which the eyes move and twitch, they are moving so fast.
"Language is insufficient for describing reality."
"BuT youR uSINg LaNgUAgE!"
Quoting neonspectraltoastNotice the difference? huh?
So here you cherry pick a less absolute statement of understanding (by the way) that you made...iow you present a less problematic statement than the ones I quoted, as part of a mocking non-response.
Then you misrepresent me as if my position was so simple.
And given how you think we cannot put much truth in language and language is insufficient it's ironic how smug and sure you seem. Pardon me for respectfully challenging your ideas.
Lazyass rudeness. I'll ignore you from here on out.
The OP concerns multiple layers of dreams (or realities). The argument you've posed focuses on dreams in a literal sense. What the OP concerns, I guess, is the fact that people are living life in a dream state unaware of a so-called higher awareness or consciousness. This higher awareness has a lot of literature written about it but I am unaware of any which concerns with multiple layers of realities except for a Linklater movie.
In Linklater's Waking Life, Poet David Jewell, in conversation with Zahedi, points out the various layers of awareness when attempting to engage in the “holy moment” such as the holy moment itself, and one’s efforts at achieving this moment. Some people claim that they can strip away all the extraneous layers and experience the pure holy moment itself.
Very true. And yet language is all we have. Anything that is beyond the realm of thought can't be articulated with thought (language) yet people have since ages tried to do just that. Why do think that is?
What does that even mean, being much more aware of and consciously connected to reality?
I think we simply tend to be less anxious the closer we get to realizing that there’s no difference between illusion and reality.
Just because people are inquisitive and get excited about their thoughts. It's just fun to think.
Unfortubately, ego is a factor for most people, too, and they refuse to accept the fact that they'll never be god, with all the answers. Anybody with a modicum of consideration realizes that reality is ultimately an ineffable mystery.
I don’t follow, whatever the guy without the dog is doing he’s consciously aware of and interacting with something that must exist for him, unless he’s pretending.
In the following picture, do you see a young woman or an old one? Does seeing one or the other mean that you’re more or less aware of and consciously connected to reality? It could mean that you failed to correctly see the image that the drawer intended, if that were their intention. It wasn’t of course.
It seems like the implicit argument here would then conclude that we all have the same grip on reality. There are no differences. The man who thinks he can fly on an acid trip and who dies when jumping off a highway overpass, is just as connected to reality as the person who avoids falling or jumping off high places. Even if the first guy wouldn't have wanted to die. He was surprised to be falling towards the highway and the trucks.
Or that when I realize, for example, that I have been telling myself my girlfriend really loves me, despite her behavior, I have not come in closer contact with reality when I finally own up to the fact that she treats me poorly and does not really like or respect me. And realize I was afraid to notice this. No, when this happens I am not coming closer to an undertanding of what is going on. I am just having a different one. There is no way to come to a deeper knowledge of something or to realize a mistake one had in interpretation. There are not mistakes in perception or interpretation.
Even I wasn't wrong in my sense of reality, though oddly you disagreed with me. Was I wrong about the two guys with the dog and no-dog? Why didn't you allow my interpretation to also be real. But it seems like my perceptions are wrong. I feel unfairly treated.:razz:
If I see Amanda on the street and wave to her and wonder why she is looking oddly at me, I have not come any closer to reality when I realize she looks a tiny bit like Amanda, but isn't her at all.
No, in both those instances, I was being just as realistic. One can never gain deeper insight or get closer to a realistic understanding of something.
My first impressions of everyone are just are realistic appraisals of their personality than I would ever get if I spent time living with them.
The picture is a ridiculous example. It is precisely intended to be something that has two possible images in it. If I see a picture of myself and think the artist drew me, am I, perhaps, less connected to reality than those who see the old woman and the young woman and do not think that the image was made for them personally by the artist, just them, as a mirror?
In both instances, you were consciously aware of and had a connection to someone that you believed to be real. It was a prediction error, simply.
Insight and understanding have value because they help us do 'realistic' or practical things. What I'm suggesting is that our reality is shaped by our intents and purposes. In the absence of all intents and purposes, can real or unreal still be distinguished? I guess that's a silly question because discernment requires purpose.
At no point is anyone not connected to reality. To be mistaken is not to be unreal.
Yep. Moreover, it's not me here, reality over there. One is embedded.
The problem i have with this is it points to that we should accept post-modernism. I would argue if some one's awakening doesnt fully embrace practicality or close to practicality its not helping themselves nor others.
Noah Harrari (the book: Sapiens) addresses the human species practical need to believe false things such as money, legal fictions and also fictions such as Religion.
As far as anyone being unreal, I never said anything remotely like that. Then my map would be seriously diconnected from reality - though physically present as a part of it. I am trying to be careful by repeating things so you'll keep up and stop being a nag, as you put it.
To me the Sun is real, it is an established object.
With all objects in local array, it produces a 'realness'; a consistency, an establishment.
I don't think what we're questioning is reality, but rather a new word, a neutral, between real and unreal.
We're discussing 'is it a part of existence', when existence I think is based on interest.
For some people, others universes DON'T exist... But, they do existentially.
We're asking if things are existent, and thus if so they are real. It should be more about harmony than existence. As I said establishment of some sort.
I'm bound to observe the star, what's going on around me is real on account of consistency and establishment.
I have been thinking about this concept recently and as you said, there is no way to determine if we are in 'reality' or a waking life now. I would suggest that death is the only way to discover a more legitimate reality. But the the question is raised, how many times would one have to die to be in the life that is true and what would be different or more worthwhile about being in a real reality? You have articulated my train of thought over the last few weeks perfectly, thank you.
Oddly, you're the one who seems to come closest to making this assumption. A map has the potential to have value in a variety of uses. It doesn't only have value, or depending on the circumstances and how it's used, even the best value used as a map. If someone were using a map of Paris to navigate London, wouldn't we need to assume that the map was providing some sort of value, even if we couldn't determine what their purpose was? They'd be aware of and consciously connected to whatever they were experiencing, regardless if they were what others would consider delusional.
Maybe a little more practical example will sell the point. Imagine someone from an alien culture who has no concept of money. If they were to witness you exchanging items that they considered highly valuable for a piece of paper money, they might think you were delusional, at least initially, before they came to understand the social construct. Does believing in the value of paper money make you less connected to reality? No.
Glad to know my views resonate with yours. As for death, you're absolutely right in that giving it the requisite attention plays a major role in constructing a worldview that's more attuned to reality and in that sense aids and nurtures what we all seem to identify as "awakening".
The one religion I'm familiar with that actively encourages contemplation of death on a daily basis is Buddhism - the doctrine of impermanence being its basic premise. When we think of death and how utterly complete and final it is in erasing all traces of you from existence, all other problems look like a picnic. The Buddha was known as The Awakened One and for a good reason it seems.
Ah how interesting, I’ll have to do more reading up about Buddhism then.
Everyone experiences a world unique to them and so because we all are experiencing a slightly different world and there is absolutely no way to experience reality exactly the same way as someone else then this means that objective reality is an elution and what we call the world of elution is infact the only world .
So then if a person "wakes up and sees the elution " and says to everyone "I know the objective reality " you can confidently assume that they have only accomplished tricking themselves and are now living in an even more complex elution then before.
True but that doesn't add or take away from my previous post so I'm not sure what your point is?
There was nothing new, nothing that wasn't already known, in your post. However, I may have missed something; do feel free to point out what you think I missed.
So you replied to me with a neutral statement because I had said something that you already knew?
Not really. I was just putting my thoughts across to you.
Quoting MAYAEL
How can you be sure of this and, more importantly, how can anyone ever know they've finally figured it all out. It's not that there's a university handing out degrees to seekers of truth certifying that those who get the degree have grasped true reality.
What is there to figure out really? What is is. Until it changes. Then it's not. Then that is. Lol. Not too complicated really.
You maybe right you know. It could be as plain as the nose on my face even though I never am able to see my nose.
On the other hand, things could be far more complicated than we assume it to be. I'm not sure.
The statement is proven accurate in a subjective way at least. In the 1600s "space travel is not possible" was a fact- subjectively. When it's dark where you're at saying "it's night" is true. Until it's not. There is more to it of course. Space travel was not objectively "impossible" at that time (someone could have in theory built a functional rocket ship if they knew how and had the materials) nor was it night halfway around the world.
Depends what aspect we're going for. Duality vs. non-duality comes to mind. There's reason never to become too accustomed or comfortable with things to the point of passivity. Complacency kills- and is the single greatest destroyer of not just lives and civilizations but worlds. Why is it so insidious? Because you intrinsically don't perceive it as a threat. It's what everyone works to gain. And no one fears to lose.
Go on. What do you have to say about duality? I'm deeply interested in that concept but doubt its ability to serve as a foundational paradigm in a world that's supposedly fuzzy.
I'm sure of it because I have lived through it
I have been the sleeping person and the awakening person then the enlightened person then the person escaping the matrix/ tech
And then I was liberated from all of those masks and was free. And it's not anything I can verbally convey and there is no method to tell so that you can achieve it too
And I have no means of proving it to anyone nor would anyone understand it if they haven't achieved it them self's
So it's just my opinion nothing more nothing less.