Do we live in a Matrix – Is Matter a virtual Simulation?

[Altair]

Originally Posted by ketzer

I went back and read my posts on this thread. I believe I have been consistent as one could be when discussing a topic such as this one. You are the one who started in with the "You must mean this.... wow I can't believe you think that... aren't you ridiculous" stuff. And yet, never offered any alternative other than your own experience. Sadly, there is actually a rational and scientific explanation (hypothesis) to explain how such things, the miraculous ones you find ridiculous and deny could ever happen, could in fact happen, though perhaps rarely experienced in a the context of an overlapping shared reality experience.
But I don't think you are here to understand anything so I won't bother to lay it out for you. I put you on my ignore list when you whined and cried to the moderators when your thread in astrology did not go in the direction you wanted and got it shut down. I then though perhaps I am being hasty and removed you, that was a mistake. Back on you go. Perhaps you could do me the courtesy of placing me upon yours as well.

I care about practical examples Ketzer. I always use them because it's too easy to get away with any belief system or philosophy if it isn't questioned in reality. If what you say is true (lets toy with that thought for now..) then drugged and drunk people jumping from a high building would survive the fall, since many of them can be trapped in a sense of invulnerability, and nothing could in fact harm them provided they have a *belief* or *thought* like Neo has in the Matrix after a bit of training. Simple isn't it? But this doesn't happen in reality. Same way, people who think excessive drinking is harmless, or abusing another person or pet is harmless, eventually realize it doesn't really work that way, because these things aren't 'illusions' in some fake Matrix world. We live in a world where actions have consequences. The Matrix from the movies is a VR and it would be more correct to think of its participants as video game characters.

The human mind can be delusional. It can imagine that any limitation or responsibility is a prison, but actually the idea that it can do whatever it pleases without consequences is the prison.

You have ranted at me now, as well in your previous post, and saying that I am ''in denial''. Well Ketzer, don't call me being in denial. It's not my job to prove your points, why don't you provide us with practical examples and evidence that what you say is true. Lets start with a video of someone flying by flapping their arms? Possibly right? Thoughts and beliefs create the reality! You just gotta believe hard enough..

As for the astro thread, it got no relevance here. In my defence here though, it does prove I am no materialist and very open minded towards a lot of things. However I do acknowledge we are also limited in this world, and there's nothing to suggest a mere thought or belief of a human being can bend reality to the extent that you are suggesting.

[Siemens]

Originally Posted by ketzer

Do you perhaps believe there is some other "real" physical reality (like in the movie) that is creating the virtual reality that you are in? I do not believe there is.

YES!!! This is exactly the point!

Originally Posted by ketzer

I do not believe there is.

Why not? Isn’t this most plausible? Maybe it helps if I give you my full theory of the universe. Could you please tell me were you agree/disagee:

1) There is an energetic structure that gives rise to my conscious experiences (feelings, perceptions, thought, mind, ego). It exists completely outside and independent of our virtual world. It would still exist if our material world wouldn’t exist. It were still able to generate conscious experiences (feelings, perceptions, thought, mind, ego) even if our material world wouldn’t exist. We ARE these energetic structures.

2) We (structures of energy) have the ability to hallucinate or visualize virtual worlds within ourselves. These worlds are fully arbitrary and are not required to generate our ego, mind or feelings. The only influence virtual worlds have on us is in form of providing us data to perceive.

3) We, as structures of energy, visualize the material world in which we currently live in order to develop or in order to have fun.



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FURTHER EXPLANATION

Originally Posted by ketzer

Consciousness gives rise to space, time, and matter (which is virtual or dreamstuff if you prefer) along with other aspects of "physical reality". It then creates with that virtual "matter" the human body and brain (which creates the ego)

The last sentence is the point from were, I think, you start being wrong. The ego is something that is consciously experienced. It derives directly from the energetic structures that lie outside our virtual matter. The energetic structures don’t need “virtual matter” i.e. a brain to experience something like the ego. The energetic structures can experience the ego without visualizing a brain or any other sort of matter.

Originally Posted by ketzer

I don't see why you can't derive explanations or causal relations from observations of virtual matter, especially if that virtual creation is underlied and driven by information about causal relationships. Isn't' this what computer models do all the time?

There is underlying information about causal relationships but this information is fully arbitrary.
The “physic engine” underlying our virtual matter contains certain rules and relations. But they only influence our perception of matter and nothing else. This is because ego, mind, thought,.... is generated fully within the energetic structures (which I call souls) that lie outside our virtual world. Ego, mind, thought,... do not arise from virtual matter or the brain. They are totally independent of it.

Originally Posted by ketzer

Yes, I don’t try to define it so much anymore. I am. That is about as far as I can get with any degree of certainty. Anything further is just for the fun and art of speculation.

I prefer the Moody Blues on this - "I think I am, therefore, am I?"

Originally Posted by ketzer

Yes in the copenhagen interpretation the wave collapses, but I actually prefer the many worlds interpretation, where the wave itself does not collapse. The problem with solid matter is that upon closer inspection, there is nothing solid about it. It is, I believe, the observer who selects what reality they will experience from the infinity of possibilities contained in the information within the wave. The wave itself remains, but for that observer (and those entangled along with it), those other possibilities are no longer available. Like the signal for the television set, the electromagnetic spectrum contains any number of video or audio signals, and they do not collapse just because someone tunes into one of them.

Interesting parallels with Spirituality though. Radio and TV signals are never in a state of being particles though, and I think that's the distinction here, and is there any superposition and entanglement with radio and TV signals and the receivers? I think EM radiation is very different to quantum effects though.



As to the multiverse theory, well that goes into realms of possibilities but then going back to quantum theory, can those multiverses only exist if there is a consciousness to bring them into being? That's the understanding from quantum theory, it's the "And in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" concept. Do the multiple Universe exist and we become conscious of them, or do they exist because of consciousness?

Originally Posted by ketzer

Yes, that is what I am saying. And that is the only you I could ever be acquainted with. Even if there is such a thing as an objective independent reality, I can not access it. I live forever in the dream universe created within my own mind / consciousness. There is where I create you (either from scratch or from the information you provide me, actually both) and that is the only you I can interact with. My you is more me than you and always will be (which is why my you looks like that funny elf looking character).

That's a concept that so many Spiritual people seem to have difficulty grasping though, that reality is only what's in their heads.

Originally Posted by ketzer

Well, mathematics is just supposed to give you space, time, matter, force and movement. I suppose you could find some heat in all that, but that kind of warmth is a bit out of its realm. Science has its limits as well, but I suppose it is good to have one's own limits for those occasions when some scientists take it beyond those limits.

I prefer to have mysteries, and if that sounds child-like I don't care. I wonder how boring the Universe would be if were were omniscient.

Originally Posted by ketzer

Yes, that is true. I suspect in more, and more profound, ways than most are conscious of.

Exactly, and that makes Life so much more interesting.

[quote=Siemens]YES!!! This is exactly the point!



Why not? Isn’t this most plausible? Maybe it helps if I give you my full theory of the universe. Could you please tell me were you agree/disagee:

When one first subscribes to the “physical reality is an illusion” postulate, the next thing they typically do is start looking for the “real reality” behind/creating the illusion. Looking for the computer creating the matrix (metaphorically speaking). I contemplated this for a long time before I decided it is a chicken or the egg type of mind game, so I gave up and decided that the “illusion is reality” is just as true a statement. Yeah, I know it is circular, but I can fix that by using an “=” sign instead of the word “is”, an old math trick. Our “reality” is always whatever we are creating within our consciousness, that we are aware of, in the present moment. As soon as I postulate an underlying “structure”, then I have to explain where that comes from or what generates that. Not to mention that I need at least 3 or 4 dimensions to contemplate it in and I have to explain where those dimensions came from as well (spoiler alert, I am creating them all). So I stop the spinning wheel on black, let go of any sort of underlying physical reality, and say that ultimately there is no base “physically real” layer to reality that is generating my virtual world. Whatever the truth may be, I think it lies somewhere out there in the fog which my mind runs into when I get to looking for it. This is the point where philosophers far better than I seem to punt the ball to Gödel and say one cannot see beyond the boundaries of a system from within it. Which is perhaps just another way of saying I am hungry and want to go get lunch.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B...eness_theorems

1) There is an energetic structure that gives rise to my conscious experiences (feelings, perceptions, thought, mind, ego). It exists completely outside and independent of our virtual world. It would still exist if our material world wouldn’t exist. It were still able to generate conscious experiences (feelings, perceptions, thought, mind, ego) even if our material world wouldn’t exist. We ARE these energetic structures.

Ironically, when you think about it, that first sentence is true in any sort of modern scientific framework, even the ‘brain creates consciousness’ crowd could use it, but essentially I agree that it is true enough for our purposes.

I don’t like the word “structure”, but I don’t have a better one. It does exist outside of our virtual world and I suppose is independent of it, but I think it is dependent upon the creation of the virtual world within to be aware that it exists at all. I am aware of__, therefore, I am that which is aware of ___, beyond that I think we run back into Gödel…or maybe even back into ourselves (which might explain why I keep finding my head stuck up my …. donkey). Yes this is circular, but I sense I have to choose between that and an infinitely long conga line full of “I”s, so I am willing to live with that for now. I tend to look at that second to last sentence in the other direction. Generating the virtual material world is how consciousness creates the feelings, perceptions, thoughts, mind, ego .. (experience) which it perceives. Perhaps it can do so without generating the virtual world, but if so, that seems to be beyond the limits of what my mind can conceive. Maybe it is that evil demon Gödel again. But despite all those qualifiers, I basically agree, saying “We are these energetic structures”, is more or less in line with how I envision it.

2) We (structures of energy) have the ability to hallucinate or visualize virtual worlds within ourselves. These worlds are fully arbitrary and are not required to generate our ego, mind or feelings. The only influence virtual worlds have on us is in form of providing us data to perceive.

Yes on the first sentence. I don’t like the phrase “fully arbitrary” in the second, but perhaps I am not sure in what sense you are using it. I do see creation of a non arbitrary virtual world as necessary to generate our ego, mind, and feelings (explained in answer to the first point). Yes on the last sentence, but I would point out that this is circular as well, and can go clockwise or counterclockwise. For example, the photons bouncing off the tree trigger the optic nerves when striking the retina to generate neuronal data that the brain uses to create a virtual world within that we perceive… but… but...but… the tree, photons, eyes, and neurons are part of a virtual reality themselves… and around and around we go. Information shapes energy, matter is a property of energy, information is represented through matter, reality is constructed from the perception of that information… and around and around we go. Matter tells space how to curve, space tells matter how to move, matter moves along the curves, and off the two go, waltzing through our perception.

3) We, as structures of energy, visualize the material world in which we currently live in order to develop or in order to have fun.

Yes, more or less.



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FURTHER EXPLANATION


The last sentence is the point from were, I think, you start being wrong. The ego is something that is consciously experienced. It derives directly from the energetic structures that lie outside our virtual matter. The energetic structures don’t need “virtual matter” i.e. a brain to experience something like the ego. The energetic structures can experience the ego without visualizing a brain or any other sort of matter.

I don’t like the word “wrong” in that first sentence, LOL, but I suppose it is as likely a fit as any other word. Again, if we can experience the ego without creating a “something” from which it arises, my mind can’t conceptualize how. Perhaps this is just a limitation of my mind, I don’t know what I can’t know. Yes the ego itself is not a “matter” thing, but it does arise out of the conceptualization of a “self”, which we always conceptualize as a thing of some sort, which in the end we always use virtual “stuff” of one sort or another to do. We say that the “I” is formless, and indeed we can’t find any one form to attach it to, yet “I” always has an implicit if subtle “form” quality to it (formyness?), perhaps because it is all forms. If so, then is that “self” a form Mr Russell? https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russell-paradox/ One will often hear it said that we are the “empty open space of awareness”, yet to conceptualize this we need to become that “eye” looking out into that open empty space. It seems that to conceptualize any form of self (ego along with the rest), we have to separate into subject and object (which we visualize in some way) and say we are both, ….. but not really either. There is that circle again, I create a virtual construct and say, “That is what I am.” Then I say, “Who knows that that is what I am?” “I know this.” I answer. “Who knows that I knows this?” I retort, … and around and around I go until someone shows me some mercy and slaps my face….Whose face was slapped? Damn that Gödel!

There is underlying information about causal relationships but this information is fully arbitrary.
The “physic engine” underlying our virtual matter contains certain rules and relations. But they only influence our perception of matter and nothing else. This is because ego, mind, thought,.... is generated fully within the energetic structures (which I call souls) that lie outside our virtual world. Ego, mind, thought,... do not arise from virtual matter or the brain. They are totally independent of it.

That first sentence seems self contradictory to me. If that underlying information is about causal relationships, then I can’t see how it can be fully arbitrary unless the relationships are not causal but arbitrary as well (just happenstance). Although, I suppose our souls selection of which information to become aware of (i.e. used to create the VR) could be arbitrary. Yet I do tend to think the soul has method behind this seeming madness, as my mind perceives causality behind life. Yes, the “psysic engine” does have rules and relations. I expect these are the rules of quantum mechanics, relativity, and I would suppose rules yet to be discovered. For example the wave function describes the mathematical entity that is the quantum field from which we can draw information to create our virtual reality through our observations. And yes, this does only influence our perception of the virtual matter which we create within consciousness. However, it is through the perception of that virtual matter, or more so its movement, that the mind, ego, thoughts, and feelings, (the experience of life) arises. There is that circle again, the non-physical giving rise to the physical, which in turn gives rise to something non-physical. It is like a dance. The dancers are not the dance, the dance is in the choreographed movements, yet without the dancers, virtual or otherwise, one cannot experience the dance. The experience of life is not in the experience of the virtual matter itself. Matter, all matter, even the matter within you and I, is just dead stuff, not really even there in any “material” sense, if looked at closely enough it dissolves into the nebulous nonphysical concept of “energy”. It is only when we set that virtual matter (that perceived property of the energy structure) into movement that everything else we experience as life arises within perception. The ego arises out of that perceived experience of life. We are not born with it, we accumulate and shape it from the clay that we extract from the virtual world of our own creation in which our life takes place. It is a reflection of the world we create within, both that which we perceive directly as “I”, and the reflections off of “other” that we perceive as reflections of “I”. I don’t see the ego as totally independent of the forms, but rather a perceived form arising from the experience of them (or rather their action). The ego is a form which integrates the myriad experiences of life, experienced, as a subject, through the perception of objects, and through the reflection of the subject from those objects, into an integrated representation of “I”.

Though it is often a painful and pain in the a$$ sort of character, which many say they hope to get rid of, the ego is actually a valuable tool when trying to holistically comprehend, through either/both thought and emotion, what this life experience is all about. It provides a means of direct first person experience of life from which there is perhaps no other way to comprehend the moral of its story, to experience the meaning in the dance. You have to have the dancers to experience the dance, without them, there is nothing there to perceive. Thankfully, the dancers and the dance never stops, at least not that I am is aware of anyway.

[quote=Greenslade]I prefer the Moody Blues on this - "I think I am, therefore, am I?"

Well, it's better than Descartes, according to him I didn’t exist through much of my teen years.

Interesting parallels with Spirituality though. Radio and TV signals are never in a state of being particles though, and I think that's the distinction here, and is there any superposition and entanglement with radio and TV signals and the receivers? I think EM radiation is very different to quantum effects though.

Well, that depends on how you look at it. With the old CRTs, one could say the EM waves were in the state of being electrons when traveling between the gun and the screen. One could envision the signal in the fiber optic cable is a superposition of many signals until your modem / TV selects just one which is rendered into Pixels upon your screen. Yet the signal does not “collapse” for your neighbors TV in the same way. I suppose we can play with this metaphor all day. Anyway, the effects we can observe in our daily lives appear very different than the bizarre quantum effects seen at subatomic levels. But technically, everything is “quantum effects”, as that and relativity underly the macroscopic world. So ultimately, EM radiation is a quantum effect. But yes, the bizarre outcomes get filtered out by probability by the time anything becomes noticeable by us. Yet there are times when the principles become directly apparent in everyday life (e.g. light spreads out wider as it passes through an ever narrowing slit).

As to the multiverse theory, well that goes into realms of possibilities but then going back to quantum theory, can those multiverses only exist if there is a consciousness to bring them into being? That's the understanding from quantum theory, it's the "And in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" concept. Do the multiple Universe exist and we become conscious of them, or do they exist because of consciousness?

Good questions, there are multianswers, to the mulitquesions, about the multiverse. I don’t know if any of this is settled science in any way. But at present I would say yes to both of those questions (the second part of the latter one), but it depends on what one means by exist, so I would accept no as an equally good answer. Perhaps outside of consciousness those other universes exist as the potentiamultiverse ©, waiting to be realized.

That's a concept that so many Spiritual people seem to have difficulty grasping though, that reality is only what's in their heads.

I hear ya, and then you tell them that their heads are all in their heads and then they really think you are nuts.

I prefer to have mysteries, and if that sounds child-like I don't care. I wonder how boring the Universe would be if were were omniscient.

Good question. Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell you what it is like even if I did know. Maybe both the forest and the trees each have wonder and beauty in their own ways. Anyway, if you are child-like, you will have good playmates.

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead —his eyes are closed. The insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, has also given rise to religion. To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.”
― Albert Einstein, Living Philosophies

How dull life would be if my human mind was able to sound its deepest mysteries and comprehend their vastness within its horizons.

[Siemens]

Originally Posted by ketzer

Yes on the first sentence. I don’t like the phrase “fully arbitrary” in the second, but perhaps I am not sure in what sense you are using it. I do see creation of a non arbitrary virtual world as necessary to generate our ego, mind, and feelings (explained in answer to the first point).

Okay, the virtual world we live in is not fully arbitrary. It follows certain rules but only to give us the perception of a consistent universe in which we can act or indentify ourselves.

Originally Posted by ketzer

[the energetic structure that gives rise to my conscious] does exist outside of our virtual world and I suppose is independent of it, but I think it is dependent upon the creation of the virtual world within to be aware that it exists at all.

But it doesn’t depend on the visualization of its brain.

Originally Posted by ketzer

if we can experience the ego without creating a “something” from which it arises, my mind can’t conceptualize how.

Do you agree if I reformulate it that way:
“The energetic structures don’t need a brain to experience something like the ego. The energetic structures can experience the ego without visualizing a brain.”

Originally Posted by Siemens

Okay, the virtual world we live in is not fully arbitrary. It follows certain rules but only to give us the perception of a consistent universe in which we can act or indentify ourselves.

Yes, a consistent set of rules that allows us, among those reasons and other things, to interact with each other within common frames of reality. You want to join a particular virtual reality "game", you have to play by the rules or leave.

But it doesn’t depend on the visualization of its brain.
Do you agree if I reformulate it that way:
“The energetic structures don’t need a brain to experience something like the ego. The energetic structures can experience the ego without visualizing a brain.”

Well, yes "something like the ego" opens the door a bit wider. One experiences the ego now without literally visualizing the brain, but the brain is the construction within the energy construct that limits and focuses awareness to give the impression of being human and the ego is the reflection within that construct that is both fed from and feeds into that brain construct. The brain / body / ego construct is like a subroutine or an object as in object oriented programing. It serves to filter the life experience to create that first person point of view that allows us to feel like we are living the experience rather than just watching it.

Anyway, as far as I can figure, the EGO, whether or not it could exist outside the brain construct, is something developed during a life experience and something that "dies" at the end of it. I am curious as to why you seem to hold it important that it exist independent of the virtual reality construct... if I am understanding you correctly.

[Siemens]

Originally Posted by ketzer

Anyway, as far as I can figure, the EGO, whether or not it could exist outside the brain construct, is something developed during a life experience and something that "dies" at the end of it.
I am curious as to why you seem to hold it important that it exist independent of the virtual reality construct... if I am understanding you correctly.

I do not differentiate between the "ego" and the "I" - or between ego and consciousness of self. By my understanding the ego or I exists even when we are not incarnated because it emerges from the self-understanding of the energetic structure, which I am. We, as energetic structures, can think and feel even if when we do not participate in a simulation.

When we are in the beyond we might have the option to merge in one unity. But it is still possible to segregate yourself, as one energetic structure, from other energetic structures. This segregation is what generates individuality, I, or ego - even outside the virtual, physical world.

Originally Posted by ketzer

Yes, a consistent set of rules that allows us, among those reasons and other things, to interact with each other within common frames of reality. You want to join a particular virtual reality "game", you have to play by the rules or leave.

Okay, this is in essence how I see it. But...


... I don’t understand what leads you to this conclusion:

Originally Posted by ketzer

One experiences the ego now without literally visualizing the brain, but the brain is the construction within the energy construct that limits and focuses awareness to give the impression of being human and the ego is the reflection within that construct that is both fed from and feeds into that brain construct.

I mean WHY DO YOU NEED A BRAIN TO EXPERIENCE TO EGO?
Thinking happens in the “energetic structure” that generates our conscious experience. You agreed that we are the “energetic structure” and that it is visualizing all we perceive as matter. The visualization follows only that rules we collectively agreed on – in order to have a consistent reality.

So, do you think that the reason why we would need the brain to experience the ego is just because we defined it as a rule that we would need a brain to think? If not, I cannot make head or tail of it.


Earlier you said:

Originally Posted by ketzer

yes, this [physic engine] does only influence our perception of the virtual matter which we create within consciousness. However, it is through the perception of that virtual matter, or more so its movement, that the mind, ego, thoughts, and feelings, (the experience of life) arises.

Why and how should it be that the perception and movement of that virtual matter cause “that the mind, ego, thoughts, and feelings, arises”. Imaging we all were blind and nobody had ever seen a brain, so there is no perception and visulaization of a brain. Would this mean that we were unable to think?

Originally Posted by ketzer

There is that circle again, the non-physical giving rise to the physical, which in turn gives rise to something non-physical. It is like a dance. The dancers are not the dance, the dance is in the choreographed movements, yet without the dancers, virtual or otherwise, one cannot experience the dance.

The problem with this metaphor is that you tacitly assumed that there is a dance between two instances. Who says that two are needed for the dance? Can’t one dance alone? By my understanding only the energetic structure dances (thinks). The virtual brain is just the mirror image that reflects the dance (of one person) in a completely passive way.

Clear what I mean?

Originally Posted by ketzer

Well, it's better than Descartes, according to him I didn’t exist through much of my teen years.

Monty Python had a slant on him in their song
"And Renee Descartes
Was a drunken fart
I drink therefore I am."


Considering how Pythonesque this thread has become, might as well go the whole hog.

Originally Posted by ketzer

Well, that depends on how you look at it. With the old CRTs, one could say the EM waves were in the state of being electrons when traveling between the gun and the screen. One could envision the signal in the fiber optic cable is a superposition of many signals until your modem / TV selects just one which is rendered into Pixels upon your screen. Yet the signal does not “collapse” for your neighbors TV in the same way. I suppose we can play with this metaphor all day. Anyway, the effects we can observe in our daily lives appear very different than the bizarre quantum effects seen at subatomic levels. But technically, everything is “quantum effects”, as that and relativity underly the macroscopic world. So ultimately, EM radiation is a quantum effect. But yes, the bizarre outcomes get filtered out by probability by the time anything becomes noticeable by us. Yet there are times when the principles become directly apparent in everyday life (e.g. light spreads out wider as it passes through an ever narrowing slit).

I think what you're talking about is more of a transfer of energy as the signal changes the state of the antenna which then sends a signal down the wires, so the original signal is unchanged itself but causes changes.

Originally Posted by ketzer

Good questions, there are multianswers, to the mulitquesions, about the multiverse. I don’t know if any of this is settled science in any way. But at present I would say yes to both of those questions (the second part of the latter one), but it depends on what one means by exist, so I would accept no as an equally good answer. Perhaps outside of consciousness those other universes exist as the potentiamultiverse ©, waiting to be realized.

Then again in our own Universe even the outer planets of our solar system were there before we became conscious of them, which seems to be the way round that it works in the realms of form. Astronomers saw the gravitational effects of the planets before they saw the planets themselves. Often the theories sound great but at the moment they're mathematical constructs, so isn't that putting the cart before the horse?

Originally Posted by ketzer

I hear ya, and then you tell them that their heads are all in their heads and then they really think you are nuts.

When they know the Absolute Truth and the Absolute Reality they don't want to hear that stuff.

Originally Posted by ketzer

Good question. Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell you what it is like even if I did know. Maybe both the forest and the trees each have wonder and beauty in their own ways. Anyway, if you are child-like, you will have good playmates.

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead —his eyes are closed. The insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, has also given rise to religion. To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.”
― Albert Einstein, Living Philosophies

How dull life would be if my human mind was able to sound its deepest mysteries and comprehend their vastness within its horizons.

I'm border-line schizophrenic and have an always on clairsentience so playmates always around, both inside and outside. It makes Life interesting.


I can't help but wonder at how a sceintist can come up with some of the quotes he has, it's as though there are two or three opposing trains of thought in his head at the same time. But perhaps that's why we chose to forget, so that we could rediscover the Universe again, for the first time.

[hallow]

Originally Posted by Siemens

What is life about? I don’t know the full answer but obviously we, souls, incarnate and lead material lives because we want to make experiences. The reason why we want to make these experiences remains unclear. Either we want to transform through experience, or we just want to have fun in the material world, or we incarnate due to other reasons. In any case we choose the life we live intentionally.

If we use matter in order to make particular experiences, isn’t it quite probable that what we perceive as material world is nothing more than a virtual simulation devised for precisely that purpose of giving us a tool to make these experiences?
I think of matter as being a kind of computer game – a multidimensional global computer game in which we, as souls, log in over the course of an incarnation and make experiences.

Some believe that matter is a sort of substance in which we enwrap ourselves. They imagine our physical body and brain as a sort of substance to which our soul gets connected when we incarnate. They further imagine the world surrounding our body as material play-ground suitable to allow for all kinds of experiences. Like the Virtual-Matrix-Theory this explanation also implies that matter is kind of s system that’s created for to purpose of enabling us to make experiences within it. But it’s much more plausible that matter isn’t a substance but rather a virtual simulation because of two reasons:
(1) A virtual computer-game would enable us, as its users, to make precisely that experiences we would like to make. I.e. there were no physical constrains.
(2) Virtual worlds were much more economic and frugal to establish and to operate.

had to chuckle on this one. My theory on this one is, because of technology we made things to easy for ourselves. Being human we thrive on challenges so we sit and think how can I challenge myself and make this situation more difficult then it needs to be. Before computer technology we never thought of a virtual world. Because what we did we truly felt, saw, smelt, and tasted. We knew it was real. We talked to people face to face, or on the phone. We could hear the tone of there voice, see there body language. All those things are becoming rare just in the 20 years. Before that we simply got out and lived. Experienced life with all our sences. It was a great time, we never questioned what was real and what wasn't. Good luck finding your matrix.