Levels of reality

[Orbit]

I was just thinking this morning, "would we tell someone that nightmares are not real?"; when they have adrenaline and elevated heart rate, how is it any less real for most purposes? Buddhists consider dreams to be another state of consciousness; another reality.

Are meditative states similarly "real"? Do they have their own logic, or is it a non-logical state?

 

[BSM1]

Reality is subjective. Levels of consciousness would probably be closer to the concept.

 

[Quintessence]

If it can be experienced or known in any fashion, I see no reason to call it anything other than real. This cultural standard of only calling that which is part of the consensus, apparent reality "real" is quite nonsensical to me.

 

[Windwalker]

All levels of consciousness are relatively real. I mean by relative, relative to another state of consciousness (as well as stages). When you are in the state, it is real. If you take the basic states of consciousness; waking, dreaming, and dreamless sleep, each of those are real when you are in them. They define reality, it is your experience of reality. The sneaky thing is that in waking state, it too appears real to us. When you move into the Witnessing state beyond the waking state, you realize you were "dreaming" your whole life. That that was an illusion of the mind, just as when you awaken from sleep you realize that dream world was an illusion of mind.

So then the question becomes what the hell is *real* reality then? That would be where there are no conditional truths. It would be where all relative truths are seen as held as true to themselves to that particular mode of reality. We co-create reality through our perceptions of reality, which affect our interactions with them and ourselves within them. It's all a dream state, relatively speaking. When you break down the waking state into different modes of waking consciousness, you now move into stages of development where each stage within the waking state is a reality of co-creation as well. Using Gebsers model from archaic, to magic, to mythic, to rational, to pluralistic, to integral, all these stages of consciousness help create a normative, "consensus consciousness", or "consensus trance" as Tart calls it within the culture the individual participates within which supports and feeds it back to the individual which then are reinforced as "reality" to them. Call these different types of "dream states" within the waking state, relative to the Witnessing state.

All this simply means is that when we Awaken, beyond the waking state, we realize it's all relative truths to the states we inhabit at the time. You don't quit going into dream states and dreaming because you realize it's an illusion of the mind when you are awake, do you? Same thing with all the rest. Yes, all the stages of egoic based realities are an illusion to the Witnessing state, but that doesn't mean we don't enter into those realms and inhabit them. We are just aware they are not Reality from that particular set of eyes, just as we become aware during dream states we are in fact dreaming. Prior to first Awakening however, we are embedded within the dream, and there is no reality but the dream state. Most people are still sleeping yet and haven't awakened the first time. This is why it is so blinding to us when our eyes are first opened to the world, like a child seeing light the first time being born out of the mother's womb.

 

[jonathan180iq]

No one has ever denied experience, that I know of. What's being questioned, with regards to things like dreams, are their objective realities.

Experiences are all relative and subjective, as I'm sure almost everyone would agree. But when asked whether or not that experience can manifest itself without the subjective cognition of the dreamer, the answer has to be no.

The experience can be very real, subjectively. And the fact that a cognizant being intrapersonally created a subjective experience is also without question, which makes it part of reality. But the Experience itself is not manifest objective reality.

 

[MysticSang'ha]

Hmmmm...

As much as people (all of us) would prefer to segregate dualities of subjective experience and objective empiricism; qualitative/quantitative analysis; there is more overlap than distinction. There is that bridge in between the two that I prefer to dance in or to seek. Too much living in empiricism, and certainty kills imagination. Too much living in the subjective, and fantasy clouds discernment.

So the impacts of nightmares, IMO, are as real as oxytocin firing on all 8 cylinders when falling in love. They don't just exist in our heads when experiences and perspectives have these consequences. But neither do they have their own inherent existence without our perspective or observation or capacity for memory recall.

I like this topic.

 

[Orbit]

All levels of consciousness are relatively real. I mean by relative, relative to another state of consciousness (as well as stages). When you are in the state, it is real.

This is actually quite freeing. I'm so often told that the only reality there is is rocks, trees, and chemical reactions, so to speak. It helps to hear that it is real because it lets me stop "holding back" in meditation, with that materialist doubt.

When you move into the Witnessing state beyond the waking state, you realize you were "dreaming" your whole life. That that was an illusion of the mind, just as when you awaken from sleep you realize that dream world was an illusion of mind.

What exactly is the "witnessing state"? Is that what you are calling the meditative state?

You don't quit going into dream states and dreaming because you realize it's an illusion of the mind when you are awake, do you? Same thing with all the rest. Yes, all the stages of egoic based realities are an illusion to the Witnessing state, but that doesn't mean we don't enter into those realms and inhabit them. We are just aware they are not Reality from that particular set of eyes, just as we become aware during dream states we are in fact dreaming. Prior to first Awakening however, we are embedded within the dream, and there is no reality but the dream state. Most people are still sleeping yet and haven't awakened the first time. This is why it is so blinding to us when our eyes are first opened to the world, like a child seeing light the first time being born out of the mother's womb.

I suppose this presents a challenge: how do we sort out and manage our realities?

 

[Brickjectivity]

All levels of consciousness are relatively real

I agree with that if reality is based upon consciousness. What if reality isn't based on consciousness? Make it a thought experiment. Think of reality as something where everything is connected and where reality does not depend upon consciousness. Make the basis of reality be connection. I don't know if there are levels, but there are things that don't mesh together, so we call them impossible. They are not connected to us in any way and are not consistent with our existence. I wouldn't think of them as levels but as at least separate. Levels would be arbitrary. For example in our reality a rock does not suffer, because that is impossible not because of a level of consciousness. Maybe there is a reality where rocks suffer, but it would not happen in ours. In a reality where rocks could suffer we would not fit or happen, so we would not exist in it. We would be impossible there but no less real in a separate reality, this one, in which we are consistent with the way things work and with our particular history.

 

[Windwalker]

No one has ever denied experience, that I know of. What's being questioned, with regards to things like dreams, are their objective realities.

I think you'll find that objective realities are a part of subjective realities. They are merely agreed upon truths, which are in fact relative to the person, or group holding them as truth. The "myth of the given", is the idea that reality is laying around out there for us to discover and as it is without any subjective influences in its understanding. But this has been shown to be fallacious, hence why it's called the myth of the given, or the myth of the pre-given world as another way it's stated. The observer is always as much a part of that understanding, and the scientific method does not get us beyond that, because the empiric-analytic approach will always color what it observes with its own assumptions. It becomes in this sense part of the "consensus reality" or consensus trance, where what is seen is part of the sets of eyes looking at it. There is no "in itself" to be understood without the observer himself as part of it.

And all this is understood from the postmodernist perspective, which just happens to come closer to what mystics have been saying all along. I'll get to this later.

Experiences are all relative and subjective, as I'm sure almost everyone would agree. But when asked whether or not that experience can manifest itself without the subjective cognition of the dreamer, the answer has to be no.

The experience can be very real, subjectively. And the fact that a cognizant being intrapersonally created a subjective experience is also without question. But the Experience itself is not manifest objective reality.

Exactly. No matter what manifests itself in the world, it has us as observer and interpreter as part of it. All that is happening in dream states is the imagination putting mental objects upon phenomena. All that happens in the waking state is the imagination putting mental objects created through the imagination upon phenomena.

Here's what happens in the waking state, and follow this carefully. The individual has an experience. That experience is then instantly split out into two parts in the mind of the perceiver. It is split into two questions; "what was that?" and "what does it mean?". That is the subject/object split. "What was that", is a question of what something is outside of yourself, its objective truth. "What does it mean", is the subjective question. What does it mean to me personally on the inside? Is it a threat, is it helpful, is it something I want, what are its implications to me. This same process occurs at the group level as well, where the group collectively encounters phenomena and asks its objective meaning (science and observation), and it subjective meanings (philosophy and religion, the value spheres).

Now, when it comes to "objective reality", regardless of the power of the tools used to look at phenomena, you still have all the relative frameworks that the individual, or by extension the group, the collective mutually uses - the same set of lenses each looks through. That set of lenses has and continues to change, and to mistake the enormous successes with a particular set of lenses with having achieved a true escape velocity in order to be able to break free from the gravity of the subjective is itself, a subjective hope, desire, and dream inserting itself as a belief. Logically it can be shown that even the scientific method, as powerful as it is in united a common approach, is itself a bit of an illusion of mind, to say the least. It asks only questions in selective areas it feels it can answer, it deals only with the most stable systems such as physics, etc.

On the other hand you have phenomenologists who think if you can look sufficiently into the experience itself it will reveal its true nature. This is the opposite side of the street between materialism and phenomenology who seeks to make reality the subjective experience itself. But this too has been shown to lack an understanding of the role of cultural, as well as developmental influences in how one perceives truth and reality. This too cannot escape the gravity of the influences of the structures of culture, or in this case the objective influence on the subjective experience. Cultural phenomena is in a sense an object to the individual, just like the material word is an object, outside the individual.

Yet it all interacts with each other. Ultimate reality cannot be understood by looking outside the subject to the material world using science. Despite the enormous understandings that have opened to us, it can never escape the subjective or the culture, the group, the inter-subjective influences. It is still relative, not ultimate, and can never be understood excluding the subjective. Likewise Ultimate reality cannot be understood by looking solely at subjective experience of reality. It too is relative to the influences of culture, language, and developmental stages.

So where does all this leave us? Enter here the mystic. When you drop all the lenses of subject and object, drop all relative truths, drop all objects of thought, and simply rest in Being itself, "mindlessly", as it were, it experiences 'being itself', which is all phenomena, all objects. They all simply arise and fall within Awareness itself. They are not themselves inherently true. A person is not a person, but everything in the universe. Even this can be understood when looking at what science shows. We are atoms and molecules. We both exist and do not exist. And what is more is it is realized in the state of being itself, before all divisions of subject and object. But in reality, this realization is the nondual realization, that arises after all phenomena dissolves into Emptiness and your rest in this Nothingness. Understanding that, the entire parade of phenomena is a world of unfolding realities. Including the modern revolution of science. The manifest world, Ultimate Reality, includes all relative realities, as well as the Emptiness of everything itself. It is neither this nor that, not not-that but this, but it is Nothing and Everything. It is a dance of notes played by evolving individuals on the very strings that vibrate in everything that exists and does not exist.

Ultimate Truth does not deny relative truths. It does not deny the subjective, nor deny the objective. It embraces everythings and holds nothing. It is objective reality and subjective reality at once within itself.

 

[lovemuffin]

I think you'll find that objective realities are a part of subjective realities.

I think the point is well taken that the subject is also part of the very reality that it is aware of as "object", but I'd probably prefer to say both that objective realities are part of subjective ones, and also the other way around. Subjective realities are also part of objective realities. If stated the one way, it seems to reduce to idealism (the subjective is the ultimate), and the other, to a reductive realism (only the objective is real), but I think both might be inadequate.

There is another way of speaking about this, in different (and obviously religiously grounded) symbols, that I am fond of: Logos and Pneuma. Logos standing both for that which is rationally intelligible and for our faculty which allows us to perceive and understand reality as logos. It is the intelligibility of the world. It is that intelligibility that allows for the objectification of knowledge, although these categories are not identical to "subjective" and "objective". Our reasoning thinking is "subjective" but also logos. "I think" in Greek is logizomai.

Pneuma by contrast stands both for that which is unintelligible, unthinkable, ungraspable, ineffable, and that human faculty that allows us to be aware of this aspect of the "real" without reducing it to logos. This is the realm of mysticism as we've been discussing it.

Panikkar makes an interesting observation about how Parmenides' famous equation of Thinking and Being (Logos and Reality, in the terms I'm using), taken as axiomatic, has fundamentally influenced western thought in such a way as to make Pneuma "unreal". This can be seen in the way we speak about the law of non-contradiction in logic:

Here is where the strength and limitation of the principle appear. The principle does not simply affirm that what is contradictory cannot be said (a contra-diction), but goes further to deduce that it cannot be thought, and even cannot be. In other words, we convert a logical axiom into a principium cognitionis (a principle of knowing).

"What cannot be said", of course, means "what cannot be meaningfully said", and fair enough...

The first trait of the principle leads quite logically to the conclusion that not all can be said, and therefore that not all is said. There is a realm of Silence: apophatism.
The second trait concludes that not all can be logically thought -- and even that not all is thought. There is a realm of Mysticism: the ungraspable.

But the third trait upgrades itself to a principle of Being. What cannot be thought (because it cannot be said, being contra-dictory) simply cannot be. The insight of Parmenides is the basic paradigm of theism. Thinking and Being correspond to Being and Thinking. Being is Thinking, that is Intelligibility, not certainly for an individual mind, but as such. Here is the ultimate basis for the famous ontological argument for God's existence. But this scheme of Parmenides is not the only philosophical paradigm. If this identification between Thinking and Being were not the case, we would be open to a realm of Emptiness: Being empty of Thought. (Rhythm of Being, p. 118)​

 

[jonathan180iq]

I think you'll find that objective realities are a part of subjective realities. They are merely agreed upon truths, which are in fact relative to the person, or group holding them as truth. The "myth of the given", is the idea that reality is laying around out there for us to discover and as it is without any subjective influences in its understanding. But this has been shown to be fallacious, hence why it's called the myth of the given, or the myth of the pre-given world as another way it's stated. The observer is always as much a part of that understanding, and the scientific method does not get us beyond that, because the empiric-analytic approach will always color what it observes with its own assumptions. It becomes in this sense part of the "consensus reality" or consensus trance, where what is seen is part of the sets of eyes looking at it. There is no "in itself" to be understood without the observer himself as part of it.

And all this is understood from the postmodernist perspective, which just happens to come closer to what mystics have been saying all along. I'll get to this later.

No. I think you're using Objective Reality differently than I am meaning it here. There is only one Objective Reality and it has little or nothing to do with what you and I, or 7 billion people, agree upon it being. It simply is the state of existence without any subjectivity.

If you imagine a hypothetical room with nothing in it but a chair, and then place 100 people in that room, you will have 100 subjective perceptions of the chair and of the room. That chair does not exist in the room simply because we agree that it exists. The chair is objectively in the room, regardless of belief. Likewise, if you remove the 100 people from the room, leaving only the chair, the chair is still there, right? That's Objective Reality.

To suggest otherwise is to imply that all of existence (objective morality) is simply willed into being by our perceptions, isn't it?

Exactly. No matter what manifests itself in the world, it has us as observer and interpreter as part of it. All that is happening in dream states is the imagination putting mental objects upon phenomena. All that happens in the waking state is the imagination putting mental objects created through the imagination upon phenomena.

Interpretations operate that way, certainly. But Objective Reality is removed from that.

I've long said that even the staunchest naturalist or atheist subscribes to some amount of hokum. Those individual perceptions and manifestations of perceptions upon reality are what you are talking about. But they in no way, shape, or form, alter or change Objective Reality.

Ultimate Truth does not deny relative truths. It does not deny the subjective, nor deny the objective. It embraces everythings and holds nothing. It is objective reality and subjective reality at once within itself.

Objective Reality doesn't deny subjective realities. On the contrary, subjective realities are quite obviously a part of the one expression of the Objective. But Objective Reality is not affected by subjectivity.

 

[Thief]

Note the term....pavornocturnum.

 

[Windwalker]

I think the point is well taken that the subject is also part of the very reality that it is aware of as "object", but I'd probably prefer to say both that objective realities are part of subjective ones, and also the other way around. Subjective realities are also part of objective realities. If stated the one way, it seems to reduce to idealism (the subjective is the ultimate), and the other, to a reductive realism (only the objective is real), but I think both might be inadequate.

I was only singling that out because of the immediate context I was addressing. I did go into the problem of flipping over to the other side as well in the rest of the post, which you are addressing as well here. I fully agree. I like the term domain absolutism to describe these different camps at war with each other over which domain is reliable and which is not. I realize the interpenetration of these domains, or I prefer Wilber's AQAL model of fours quadrants: two Interior on the left side, and two Exterior on the right side; Individual-Subjective in the upper left quadrant; Plural-Subjective in the lower left; Individual-Exterior in the upper right; and Plural-Exterior in the lower right. The breaks down into the interpenetration of the domains of the individual subjective self, with the plural intersubjective culture, with the component level objective reality of individual parts of matter, with plural objective or interactive, holistic systems of objects, ecosystems, social structures, and so forth. All of these interpenetrate and affect the shape and form these things take. And to understand "reality" you cannot flatten everything over to one single quadrant, which is what materialism does, or idealism, and so forth. The quadrants "tetra-evolve".

Even though this too is all relative, it is an understanding of reality that is far more holistic, as opposed to reductionistic. It's a model that brings all the different domains of knowing together, respecting each relative perspective without privileging one over the other.

There is another way of speaking about this, in different (and obviously religiously grounded) symbols, that I am fond of: Logos and Pneuma. Logos standing both for that which is rationally intelligible and for our faculty which allows us to perceive and understand reality as logos. It is the intelligibility of the world. It is that intelligibility that allows for the objectification of knowledge, although these categories are not identical to "subjective" and "objective". Our reasoning thinking is "subjective" but also logos. "I think" in Greek is logizomai.

Pneuma by contrast stands both for that which is unintelligible, unthinkable, ungraspable, ineffable, and that human faculty that allows us to be aware of this aspect of the "real" without reducing it to logos. This is the realm of mysticism as we've been discussing it.

Panikkar makes an interesting observation about how Parmenides' famous equation of Thinking and Being (Logos and Reality, in the terms I'm using), taken as axiomatic, has fundamentally influenced western thought in such a way as to make Pneuma "unreal". This can be seen in the way we speak about the law of non-contradiction in logic:

Here is where the strength and limitation of the principle appear. The principle does not simply affirm that what is contradictory cannot be said (a contra-diction), but goes further to deduce that it cannot be thought, and even cannot be. In other words, we convert a logical axiom into a principium cognitionis (a principle of knowing).

"What cannot be said", of course, means "what cannot be meaningfully said", and fair enough...

The first trait of the principle leads quite logically to the conclusion that not all can be said, and therefore that not all is said. There is a realm of Silence: apophatism.
The second trait concludes that not all can be logically thought -- and even that not all is thought. There is a realm of Mysticism: the ungraspable.

But the third trait upgrades itself to a principle of Being. What cannot be thought (because it cannot be said, being contra-dictory) simply cannot be. The insight of Parmenides is the basic paradigm of theism. Thinking and Being correspond to Being and Thinking. Being is Thinking, that is Intelligibility, not certainly for an individual mind, but as such. Here is the ultimate basis for the famous ontological argument for God's existence. But this scheme of Parmenides is not the only philosophical paradigm. If this identification between Thinking and Being were not the case, we would be open to a realm of Emptiness: Being empty of Thought. (Rhythm of Being, p. 118)​

I think I touched on this in my post towards the end where I begin asking, "So where does this leave us?" What follows corresponds with this.

 

[lovemuffin]

I was only singling that out because of the immediate context I was addressing. I did go into the problem of flipping over to the other side as well in the rest of the post, which you are addressing as well here.

I think I touched on this in my post towards the end where I begin asking, "So where does this leave us?" What follows corresponds with this.

You definitely did mention the same ideas. You ever get excited and just have to say something in your own words? I'm probably guilty of that, and in so doing of not quite addressing your post We do tend to think very similarly about all this

 

[Windwalker]

No. I think you're using Objective Reality differently than I am meaning it here. There is only one Objective Reality and it has little or nothing to do with what you and I, or 7 billion people, agree upon it being. It simply is the state of existence without any subjectivity.

If you mean Emptiness, then I agree. But there is no "thing in itself". That does not exist. Let's look at your example..

If you imagine a hypothetical room with nothing in it but a chair, and then place 100 people in that room, you will have 100 subjective perceptions of the chair and of the room. That chair does not exist in the room simply because we agree that it exists. The chair is objectively in the room, regardless of belief. Likewise, if you remove the 100 people from the room, leaving only the chair, the chair is still there, right? That's Objective Reality.

A chair does not exist in itself. It is a chair, only because we subjectively, and collectively understand it as a chair. It's actually nothing at all, from a certain subjective point of view. If you were to view it from the atom's point of view, there is no chair at all. All the atom sees is atoms. It cannot see nor understand molecules because it cannot see anything beyond its own reality. Molecules do not exist in the atom's world, only other atoms do. Humans do not exist to the atom, and nor do chairs. However, to a molecule atoms exist because atoms are a part of the molecule's world. They are included in its perceptual reality, so to speak. Likewise human being do not exist in the molecule's word because humans are constructions above their reality. All molecules see are themselves, other molecules, and everything that they are made of. They are not made of humans. You follow so far?

There is no "chair". A chair is simply a collection of atoms and molecules assembled into an object by humans, imbuing it with form and function, meaning and utility. All of which are coming from a subjective perception from the human being itself. If you remove the human, the chair is not a chair. It's nothing. It's atoms to an atom, molecules to a molecule, a vertical object to a centipede, a piece of wood to a squirrel, etc. All only seeing what fits within their relative "objective" realities. It is only objective relative to the one perceiving. Put another way, without the subject, objective reality does not exist. The chair does not exist "objectively" in itself. It exists relative to the perceiver.

To suggest otherwise is to imply that all of existence (objective morality) is simply willed into being by our perceptions, isn't it?

Nope. I don't believe we "will" reality into being. I believe we co-create reality. The atoms become a chair to us because we make it a chair. In fact, atoms become atoms to us because we co-create them with the objects of our mental constructs. They are not are mental constructs in reality, are they? No, they are simply beyond our ideas, unknowable "in themselves", by us. We understand them through the particular lenses we are creating their reality to us through. Then we look to this world of mental objects, our little two-dimensional stick figure models of reality as actually being reflective of reality beyond ourselves! This is the grand illusion of mind.

Reality exists, but we cannot know it "as it is" through the eyes of our relative being.

Interpretations operate that way, certainly. But Objective Reality is removed from that.

And what value is it to speak of it in absolutes from a relative position? Can you speak of it from a non-relative position? Can you speak of it from the point of view of a moth? Can you speak of it from the point of view of an atom? Can you speak of it from any point of view other than human? And can you speak of it from all points of views of all humans? You cannot.

I've long said that even the staunchest naturalist or atheist subscribes to some amount of hokum. Those individual perceptions and manifestations of perceptions upon reality are what you are talking about. But they in no way, shape, or form, alter or change Objective Reality.

We are partially in agreement here, which is good. But I'll focus on my point about co-creation though. The subject is part of this "Objective Reality". It is included within it, not excluded from it. In this sense the there is no objective nor subjective reality in the Absolute sense. Right? Subject and object only exist in the relative plane, not the Absolute. So you cannot call Reality, "Objective Reality" because it excludes the subject and therefore is not Reality itself which includes all relative realities, subjective and objective.

So what happens in this co-creation, is the world of the subjective as perceiver, will interact with the world of objects, including the other person, and that interaction will directly affect the shape, forms, and directions of the objects it interacts with. But here is the key to understanding this. It's a matter of degrees of influence. Obviously, my sitting here thinking I'll like to see the moon turn into swiss cheese is not going to have any effect whatsoever. But my thinking I want peace within the domains of my influence, will in fact affect changes, in myself and in others. I can literally change the world from a thought this way. It's not magic. The mere fact we participate within the world, means we affect the world. We are in fact, as it appears now, the destroyers of worlds! And that is a fact. We are creating our own extinction, for starters. That objective reality is being co-created by us into the vehicle of our own death. Or, through love, we can transform it into life. We are part of that reality, we are reality itself, creating and destroying as we go.

I can be a lot more specific, but this example can show the direction I'm taking thought about this actual interpenetration of realities, subjective and objective. The world isn't just laying around out there pure and true independent of the subjective in all of nature, not just humanity.

Objective Reality doesn't deny subjective realities. On the contrary, subjective realities are quite obviously a part of the one expression of the Objective. But Objective Reality is not affected by subjectivity.

Oh yes it is. How is it not? Remember "objective" reality is only relevant in speaking of the relative plane of existence of dualities, not the Absolute. You cannot have an object without a subject. That's the nature of duality.

 

[lovemuffin]

There is no "chair". A chair is simply a collection of atoms and molecules assembled into an object by humans, imbuing it with form and function, meaning and utility. All of which are coming from a subjective perception from the human being itself. If you remove the human, the chair is not a chair. It's nothing. It's atoms to an atom, molecules to a molecule, a vertical object to a centipede, a piece of wood to a squirrel, etc. All only seeing what fits within their relative "objective" realities. It is only objective relative to the one perceiving. Put another way, without the subject, objective reality does not exist. The chair does not exist "objectively" in itself. It exists relative to the perceiver.

While I think it's useful to disentangle "chair" in all its conceptual and even symbolic richness from its usage as a simple sign ("that chair"), I think it's wrong to say that apart from the subject the chair is nothing. It is true of "chair" as concept and as symbol, but not entirely true of "chair" as a sign that refers to the concrete and distinguishable part of reality that we can otherwise recognize (again conceptually) as atoms, molecules, wood, or etc. A "chair" as representation in the mind of a person, or a chipmunk, or even a centipede to whatever extent that is possible, does not exist apart from the subjectivity that is connected to representation, but the point of saying that there is something, referred to by the word "chair", which is objectively real, is in saying that it does not subsist entirely in us. Its reality transcends our subjectivity, even if we can have no possible awareness of it apart from our own subjectivity, conditioned as that awareness is by our concepts and modes of perception. To say that the chair is "nothing" falls back into that philosophical idealism which I think isn't tenable. Apart from the subject, the object does not exist for the subject, but that is not the same as saying that it does not exist at all, unless we give the subject ontological priority and embrace idealism. It seems too much to me to elaborate right here on why I prefer something more like a qualified realism, but suffice to say that I think the recognition we have of the regularity and stability of our perceptions, and the intelligibility of the world as it presents itself to us, suggests this ontological realism of the referent of the phrase "that chair", even if it doesn't prove it logically, even taking into account that the phrase "that chair" does more than just refer simply and directly to an "external" reality.

What I would say is that it's true that even our objective descriptions of a chair (in terms of physics, for example) are not free of the conditioning of our own perception, and our own categories and concepts. But the objectivity of those descriptions is in how they capture the intelligibility of the phenomena that the words refer to. "electron" is a concept, and one with limits, as can be directly realized in the problem of the supposed wave/particle duality, just as an example (in which neither concept turns out to be sufficient to capture reality), but "electron" also is more than a concept (both subjectively and objectively). It has an ek-sistence, a standing-out, that doesn't entirely depend on us, even though in one sense its existence does also depend on us.

Where I disagree with Jonathan is where he says that "Objective Reality is not affected by subjectivity", which is sort of technically true, but in an irrelevant way, since it would only be true in some sense of the reality "in-itself" apart from any perception of it, which is an abstraction disconnected from the fact that for us there can be no awareness of even the objectifiable element of that reality apart from our subjective awareness. The problem is, in a sense, the possibility of mistaking the conceptual map for the territory, and that only what can be mapped (say in the physical, mathematical model of an electron) can be ontologically fundamental. That only what can be encapsulated by a thinking which can be universally thought (with conceptual rigor) can truly exist. The strength of science, methodologically, is of course that when done rigorously it avoids ontologizing its own models. The recognition of that possible trap is a principle of epistemic humility.

Nevertheless, the phrase "levels of reality" does imply a recognition that the reality of the content of a dream seems reasonably to us to be distinct from the reality of the contents of our waking perception.

 

[Jumi]

If your mind is awake when you are having a nightmare, is it still a nightmare? No. You can do anything you want. Most mental states are like this once you stop identifying with your emotions and thoughts.

 

[suncowiam]

There's only one reality regardless of what ones' senses tell him/her.

It's one's perception that is subjective.

Kind of like looking at art. Reality would dictate that its a canvas with multi color patterns and textures. Humans would spend millions of dollars on the history and origin of particular pieces.

 

[Kirran]

Even if one does wake up to parmathika, to Absolute Reality, how can we know that's not just another 'dream level'? Maybe we aren't capable of waking up fully.

Either way, one 'higher level' is still an incredibly worthy goal, in my opinion.

It seems to me that when we look at levels of reality (for example, the three traditional levels of reality in Advaita Vedanta: Parmathika (Absolute Reality), Vyavaharika (the reality we're experiencing now) and Prathibhasika (imaginary reality - a rope is a snake, or dreams)) there's a decreasing 'degree' of subjectivity as you go 'up'.

 

[Thief]

If your mind is awake when you are having a nightmare, is it still a nightmare? No. You can do anything you want. Most mental states are like this once you stop identifying with your emotions and thoughts.

Note the term....pavornocturnum...