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

Originally Posted by Siemens

Instead of the “mind of god” I would say the computer is our own mind. I define “soul” as the entity that gives rise to my consciousness resp. conscious experience. So why shouldn’t be the soul itself be the thing that simulates the matrix in itself without any external help; neither god nor a computer? This would mean that we just dream our physical environment even when we are “awake”.

Well, its both really. If we want to have a shared reality experience, then we would need the participation of "Others", otherwise it is all an elaborate lucid dream. You might think of it like a client server situation. The client computer creates the VR environment locally, but gets information to do so from the central server. All of the client computers send info to the server, and the server sends back information to create the shared reality experience. One can create alone as well, but then it is just you in your universe alone.

Originally Posted by Siemens

This makes sense only from the perspective of your philosophy you outlined in the “what is consciousness”-thread. But I don’t believe in your worldview. My conception of the universe goes at follows:

1) There is an energetic structure that gives rise to my conscious experiences; I call it soul.

2) Souls have the ability to hallucinate or visualize virtual worlds within themselves. Souls can do this collectively or alone.

3) We, as souls, visualize the material world in which we currently live - in order to develop or in oder to have fun.

That’s it! This is the simplest explanation of ourselves, this planet, the universe and all that exists and therefore the most likely.
The consequence is that what we perceive as matter does not really exist! Matter, atoms, trees, and buildings – our biological body and our brain, all material things just exist in form of hallucinations just like the props in our dreams at night. A second consequence is that the brain can’t produce consciousness, because (as a part of the material world) it's just a hallucination and does not really exist.

The only real difference between that and my own worldview is that I have a question mark as to the nature of the Soul itself and whether we have one or not. We are individuated aspects of the Universe, because if we weren't we'd have no relationship with anything or anyone including ourselves because there wouldn't be one, therefore no subjective experience. Call that a Soul if you like.

The mind/brain has the ability to and does hallucinate and if we have a Soul then there is communication or a sharing of perceptions in whatever manner that happens to be. What use would a Soul have for hallucinations when the mind creates your reality by processing and re-processing input? Did you know that you're consciousness exists 200ms in the past and that you're not actually capable of conscious thought? You have thoughts then 200ms later you are conscious of them. What you do with that is not up to your Spirituality but to the 'committee' that comprises of your subconscious mind - and your ego. Oh, and the lizard brain that's been keeping you from being eaten since your ancestors came out of the trees.

So matter is hallucination??? If you'd liketo test your theory by jumping off a high place I'd be interested in the results, because you and I both know that it's going to have a messy conclusion. If you're going down the road of sci-fi and say that if you die in the Matrix you die in real Life - which is a common theme - you should be able to work out what's going on from there. Your mind creates your reality, not your consciousness and when you're hurtling earthwards, no matter what your consciousness is if your mind believes it's going to hit the floor with a sickening thud, that's the reality.

Who creates the hallucination, and if you know that it's an hallucination what are you doing here? Because if you are here, you have chosen the hallucination as your reality the same as everyone else. Can you learn from an hallucination? If your whole brain/mind/consciousness construct is built on an hallucination, does your consciousness then have any validity? How do you know the hallucination isn't an hallucination that you've created? Because by the time you become conscious of it the reality that it's an hallucination it has already been created by your subconscious mind and taken as reality by your conscious mind.


So here's the one question that will answer everything for you. "What are you conscious of?"

Originally Posted by Siemens

We suffer because suffering cause transformation. Soul evolution exists.

We suffer because we are not conscious of how we create our own realities. 'Suffering' is the definition that creates our realities. Once you understand the 'basics' it's easily extrapolated to understand your Matrix and how we interact with it.

If Spirituality is to be believed why would a perfect Soul need to evolve? Evolution implies lack or 'not there yet, and evolution only happens within the perception of a linear time that doesn't exist. Allegedly.

Originally Posted by Siemens

That we live in a matrix is very probable just because it wouldn’t make any sense that we do not live in a matrix.
But how can I find to final proof that our planet earth indeed is a matrix?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qa4JkgKDaR0
But 'final' and 'proof' are of th egoic mind

Originally Posted by Siemens

Instead of the “mind of god” I would say the computer is our own mind. I define “soul” as the entity that gives rise to my consciousness resp. conscious experience. So why shouldn’t be the soul itself be the thing that simulates the matrix in itself without any external help; neither god nor a computer? This would mean that we just dream our physical environment even when we are “awake”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monad

[Siemens]

Originally Posted by Altair

If there is a 'soul' that evolves it means it was something different in the past and will be something different in the future. This means the 'soul' is subject to changes and it means we assume divinity is change itself.

I do not believe this to be the case.

But I do!

Originally Posted by Altair

Divinity is everlasting, non-changing.

Now, I do not believe this to be the case. (In general I recommend against using the word divinity.)

[Siemens]

Originally Posted by ketzer

Well, its both really. If we want to have a shared reality experience, then we would need the participation of "Others", otherwise it is all an elaborate lucid dream.

Yes, that’s true! You are the first person I met in this form that seems to have a rational understanding of the subject.

The phenomenon of lucid dreaming is very interesting in this regard – because it proves (almost with certainty) that the-thing-that-generates-our-consciousness is able to simulate a high definition virtual reality within itself. And...

If we already KNOW that the-thing-that-generates-our-consciousness has the capability to experience virtual realities as real, we have no reason to believe that our current reality is anything else than a virtual simulation.

Originally Posted by ketzer

You might think of it like a client server situation. The client computer creates the VR environment locally, but gets information to do so from the central server. All of the client computers send info to the server, and the server sends back information to create the shared reality experience. One can create alone as well, but then it is just you in your universe alone.

I think about it in a similar way. If I am currently in a virtual simulation, then I am either alone, and all of you were just simulations, or we are all together in a collective game. Also a combination would be possible:
I sometimes make the experience that things that happen in my environment fit perfectly with my private course of development. Could it be that we sometimes switch from a multi-player to a single-player-mode within one incarnation? And is it possible that even the collective mode is a dynamic, variable condition? It would be plausible that we could temporarily group together in groups of tens or hundreds to make common experiences detached from the rest of the world.



--------------------------------------------

Originally Posted by Greenslade

So matter is hallucination??? If you'd like to test your theory by jumping off a high place I'd be interested in the results, because you and I both know that it's going to have a messy conclusion.

And this messy conclusion would be a simulation too.

Originally Posted by Greenslade

Your mind creates your reality, not your consciousness

My mind IS my consciousness. And I didn’t say that my consciousness creates the hallucination; I said the thing that generates my consciousness creates the hallucination.

Originally Posted by Greenslade

if you know that it's an hallucination what are you doing here? Because if you are here, you have chosen the hallucination as your reality the same as everyone else.

Yes, that’s true I have chosen the hallucination as my reality the same as everyone else. What am I doing here? Making experiences in order to develop or have fun like everyone else. (In my case it’s primarily the former)

Originally Posted by Greenslade

Can you learn from an hallucination?

Yes!

Originally Posted by Greenslade

If your whole brain/mind/consciousness construct is built on an hallucination, does your consciousness then have any validity?

My brain has no validity. I said this many times to you: I don’t believe that the brain does anything – it’s just a mockup. My consciousness, by contrast, has validity because it exists outside the material world.

Originally Posted by Greenslade

How do you know the hallucination isn't an hallucination that you've created?

I think, that the hallucination indeed is a hallucination I created. (See above)

Originally Posted by Greenslade

So here's the one question that will answer everything for you. "What are you conscious of?"

As I already said:

Originally Posted by Siemens

(1) There is an energetic structure that gives rise to my conscious experiences; I call it soul.

Consciousness is the phenomenological (aware) aspect of this energetic structure in form of conscious experience.

[Dan_SF]

@Op, my take on the matrix:


Matrix, the movie is an action based movie. When Neo awakens from the Matrix, he has to fight. (To Fight in the matrix and fighting outside of it).
Imagine Matrix the movie, where when Neo awakens, he finds total peace and total lack for any reason to fight.
This would ruin the Action part of the movie totally.

To understand correlation between God and us (this will be useful for my further explaining):

God is like Sun, and we are like Sunbeams. We are the power of light, which our source is using to expand itself. This is its joy, and it is the Creation of God. It is unchangeable in itself.
A Sunbeam consist of the first particle, which you can imagine round, just like the sun.
But if sun would send only 1 particle out, there would be no "sunbeam". So logically the sun is sending many particles, which builds this beam.
And if you would examine it further, the sun is sending countless sunbeams all around itself.

Unlike Sun (which is material based), God is able to provide unlimited energy supply.

This one sun-particle, would represent our Soul, which is unchangeable in itself.

If the Light is perfection and everything, then the 'space' in which the expansion is happening is not 'darkness' but 'Nothingness', an unoccupied space (as yet).
God and its sunbeams do not care about time, because they know that it does not exist. The power supply, if and where needed, is provided instantly, and this does not involve time at all.

And here is a bit of speculation of what may have happened (it explains the time and eternity correlation too, in a way)
One of the sunbeams believed that it saw a darkness(emptiness) in the place where it was. And looking back, from the "next" position, it saw that there was this emptiness (because it saw its previous thoughts). And so probably started to perpetuate the emptiness instead of light.
But all that it did, is, it got asleep on his way through eternity stood still in a place and created a loop (or snake or what we call time). And in this emptiness, this world is seen.
Not because it is there, but because we give light to it.

Time can be seen and understood as delay, in this case.


The Matrix, if we think that we are living in one, would be based on untruth, lies, fighting and death.
For these are the properties which the "emptiness" would bring, and if you see it,it is because you imagine your power wasted in it, not recognizing that God is supplying your soul with power, constantly.

Outside of this matrix would be total joy, happiness, peace and the life eternal.
But while inside the matrix, you do not know this or do not want to know this (because of fear).

What is keeping you in the matrix ? The belief of the opposites of perfection.

Hate and love in this world represents the opposites. But Perfection represent a state in which Both would go.
And only one of these two can get you into the state in which you can recognize the perfection.

Originally Posted by Siemens

The phenomenon of lucid dreaming is very interesting in this regard – because it proves (almost with certainty) that the-thing-that-generates-our-consciousness is able to simulate a high definition virtual reality within itself.

And...

If we already KNOW that the-thing-that-generates-our-consciousness has the capability to experience virtual realities as real, we have no reason to believe that our current reality is anything else than a virtual simulation.

....

I think about it in a similar way. If I am currently in a virtual simulation, then I am either alone, and all of you were just simulations, or we are all together in a collective game. Also a combination would be possible:
I sometimes make the experience that things that happen in my environment fit perfectly with my private course of development. Could it be that we sometimes switch from a multi-player to a single-player-mode within one incarnation? And is it possible that even the collective mode is a dynamic, variable condition? It would be plausible that we could temporarily group together in groups of tens or hundreds to make common experiences detached from the rest of the world.

Yes, lucid dreaming tells us that the mind is capable of creating an entire simulation even when the senses are not feeding it data. While awake, even simple biology will tell us that all the brain could ever see is a pattern of neurons firing or not firing. It is based on that pattern that a virtual reality simulation is created within in which we live. That would not get rid of objective independent physical reality entirely, but I do believe the implications of modern cosmology do. And some of the latest laboratory experiments have continued to mount evidence that this is the case. It is not that hard to fit together the puzzle pieces in physics to start to see this picture emerging.

I tend to think it is the combination one. Not just only combined in a VR simulation with other consciousnesses, but a combination of overlapping individual VR universes moving through the cause and effect matrix on imperfect parallel paths. I have begun to notice events (some rather major) taking place in my life that seem a bit too difficult (though not impossible) to ascribe to random chance. This leads me to think that what is actually going on within my consciousness is multidimensional in nature and impossible to fully grasp with the restricted viewpoint of my mind when limited by the brain and egoic construct. The life experience is a first person point of view, what one would see in third person omniscient is far more complex.

Originally Posted by Greenslade

The mind/brain has the ability to and does hallucinate and if we have a Soul then there is communication or a sharing of perceptions in whatever manner that happens to be. What use would a Soul have for hallucinations when the mind creates your reality by processing and re-processing input? Did you know that you're consciousness exists 200ms in the past and that you're not actually capable of conscious thought? You have thoughts then 200ms later you are conscious of them. What you do with that is not up to your Spirituality but to the 'committee' that comprises of your subconscious mind - and your ego. Oh, and the lizard brain that's been keeping you from being eaten since your ancestors came out of the trees.

I have actually seen some research that pushed that back as far as 7 seconds. I think the timing has a lot to do with the urgency of the decision being made. I suppose whether we are or are not capable of conscious thoughts depends on how one defines “ME”. If I look at me as the overall mind, that which is, and is greater than, the sum of those parts, then “I” become aware of my thoughts after “I” create them. Consciousness can and is sometimes talked about as a doing, rather than a being.

So matter is hallucination??? If you'd liketo test your theory by jumping off a high place I'd be interested in the results, because you and I both know that it's going to have a messy conclusion. If you're going down the road of sci-fi and say that if you die in the Matrix you die in real Life - which is a common theme - you should be able to work out what's going on from there. Your mind creates your reality, not your consciousness and when you're hurtling earthwards, no matter what your consciousness is if your mind believes it's going to hit the floor with a sickening thud, that's the reality.

Not necessarily. Modern physical theory and recent experiments suggest that two different observers can have two opposing views of reality and neither is wrong.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/6...ctive-reality/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7Efa0mQuNQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cj6oiFDEXc

Who creates the hallucination, and if you know that it's an hallucination what are you doing here? Because if you are here, you have chosen the hallucination as your reality the same as everyone else. Can you learn from an hallucination? If your whole brain/mind/consciousness construct is built on an hallucination, does your consciousness then have any validity? How do you know the hallucination isn't an hallucination that you've created? Because by the time you become conscious of it the reality that it's an hallucination it has already been created by your subconscious mind and taken as reality by your conscious mind.

I create the hallucination, though I may not be creating all the data. I am in the hallucination because it is the only place I can exist, which makes it hard to experience things if I don’t, which is why we chose to create and experience it. My consciousness is the only thing that has validity within my hallucination, but then since everything here is my consciousness, so does everything else. My brain and ego are constructed within to give me a first person point of view, which you might say makes the experience a lot more person-al. All hallucinations that I experience are hallucinations that I have created, however, I may be (probably am) getting input from beyond my consciousness to do so. For example, I am getting data and input from you on this forum, though “you” are really just a hallucination within my mind that I am assuming is “not me”. But in a sense that I cannot escape, you “are me” because I must create you first within my conscounsess before I can interact with you on this forum. And thanks to your picture, I have created you to look rather funny. I can create you within my subconscious mind, and then interact with you with my conscience mind, which is nice, otherwise I would feel like I am talking to myself…… which I sort of am ya know.

So here's the one question that will answer everything for you. "What are you conscious of?"

Well, that is a question not yet completely answered, IMO. But for one big thing, you are conscious of this, and it would seem that your consciousness is quite the mathematician.
https://futurism.com/this-is-the-clo...f-the-universe

But of course, this is not really the theory of "everything". Even if complete it would only answer the "how" of physical reality. It cannot even touch the real question that we all want to know. "Why?" Or as this thread started out, "What is life about?" That, perhaps, I certainly hope so anyway, cannot be captured in a physics equation, no matter how complex. How our reality is created is, I think, fascinating, but less important then what we do with it. Is is not the stage, the theater, or the dancers that are most important to the ballet, it is the dance. That cannot be conveyed in an equation, it must be experienced.

[Altair]

I don't know why we keep using this Matrix-trope to discuss the nature of reality. Have people seen those movies or just re-imagining 'facts' about it, as in a sense of cultural *hands-on*, ''knowledge of the streets'' understanding of the concept of the matrix without having watched the movies carefully.............?

We can believe as hard as we want a fall from a high tower won't kill us but as a matter of fact, unless we have parachute or jump in some deep enough body of water beneath it, we will simply die. In the Matrix movie this is not necessarily the case, it's all about the power of mind. In the real world this is not the case because the mind doesn't have that power even though it wants to imagine at times that it can do whatever it pleases (usually when it's on drugs).

That's why the entire Matrix analogy is kind of silly. Our world isn't like the matrix at all, and our beliefs do not determine reality, they only determine how we may act and what we choose to do, but it doesn't change physics or biology. In the Matrix movies there is basically no real physics and biology because the ''world'' the trapped peeps are in is a computer programme, so they are all sleeping and dreaming, and act like characters in a video game.

[Found Goat]

Originally Posted by inavalan

Smart posting.

When someone uses terms as the ones I quoted, I can't not think about their relativity to their user's bias. From this vantage point I doubt that they're meaningful in the bigger scheme of things. They result from our tendency of anthropomorphisation of the larger multi/uni-verse, and wishful thinking.

Ah, relativism, that cultural buzzword of this primarily godless age of “post-truth,” where one man’s expressed, subjective take on a speculative topic of a hyperphysical nature can be another man’s perceived bias ... and rightfully so.

The spirit of this post of mine a simple, casual reply as I too do not care for arguments, especially over something as potentially fantastical as this topic of discussion.

Obviously, in the sharing of our thoughts here, each of us are only offering theories or subjective truths. Hence, we are all to some degree biased in our perspectives.

The terms another poster highlighted which are deemed as not meaningful to the concept of a matrix is true maybe to him but it’s not to me.

In response to this above-highlighted quote, and simply to expand on my own position and thus directed at no one in particular...

The way I perceive it, ethics and morality, and an appreciation of these as invaluable factors to conscious existence, be that in human or above-human form, is what makes us sentient, non-artificial creatures divine, thus making the antithesis of an anthropomorphic worldview.

If anything, one who strives in self-improvement to become more ethical and moral (i.e. more loving) might be thought of to be theocratic or God-centric, or whatever term one, in faith, wishes to refer to the infinite realm beyond the – mechanical?, inhuman(e)? – matrix.

The idea that ethics and morality are unimportant or meaningless in the grand scheme of things is a falsehood, in my opinion, and one I fully recognize to be not an absolute one.

Incidentally, my intensive biblical schooling at an early age has never left me, and although I have intellectually distanced myself from much of it, whenever ultramundane topics of this labyrinthine complexity or pseudo-simplicity are discussed, my mind cannot help but recall certain passages recorded in scripture (Colossians 2:8; 1 Timothy 4:1; Revelation 2:24), whether there is any merit to them or not. A large part of me suspects not, yet I would certainly never give in to such hubris to ever discount entirely the possibility of it being so, as one who, in the end, prefers truth and recantation (if need be) to wishful thinking.

I shall leave it at that. (I contemplated as to whether this here post was even necessary to add, but there you have it.)