Are we even really real?

Everything we believe in, everything that we are, everything that makes us who we are, and everything that has been and ever will be --- has all been thought up/created by man.

Now some people believe in a God. Well okay, but I can say God is a human belief and therefore humans came up with the concept of God - Okay, and you may say well you need to have faith - well I can say faith is something humans came up with to condition their emotions.

You may say we have a consciousness and are able to think, and feel emotions - and I may say, well we may have a consciousness and be aware of our surroundings, but what if all of this is just made up? What if this is all just one paradox we've created over time and that is how 'man' was created? This 'multiple dimensional universal consciousness' [so to speak] of which that we have created has allowed us to form every idea ever, and every idea that will come to pass.

I don't know why exactly I am posting this other than to hear some responses but honestly tell me what I just said doesn't hold some merit?

Maybe we are testing ourselves, maybe we are here for a reason I really don't know anything for sure, neither does any single living human being on this earth. I thought I knew so much and believed within my heart in so many things, but to be honest, how do I know these things? Am I really coming to conclusions or am I just adjusting my beliefs to suit the needs of my emotions? The strength of society has also caused us to be much different people than we'd be if we were 'free' (and when I say free I mean free from everything; able to think for oneself without being subliminally and/or subconsciously being told told what to do). Free love, free openness to all and ourselves, free everything - I can only imagine... maybe if we all believe in it hard enough it will actually be.

So, maybe my beliefs of which I knew to be fact to myself that there is one consciousness of which we are all connected, is indeed true - maybe we are just doing what is best for one another and creating what you see around yourself. What I see as blue, you see as blue, but why is that? It's not because the noun is blue, but it's because we have been told the noun is blue. And since we've been told these things are a color, in this case blue, then man has come up with said color therefore how can we prove it to be such?

The old saying comes to play here "And eye for an eye, the whole world goes blind." But really the universal consciousness (if there is one) needs to stay in a balance (but then again how would I know because this is just a concept of my imagination right?); it corrects itself. Look at 'mother earth' for example - it is fully alive and kicking... speaking of kicking, right now it's kicking are a$$.

So where does it end, or more so when did it begin - is it just beginning right now? Are our eyes just opening or are they still closed? I could go on and on as could anyone else with these paradox's, you could probably drive yourself insane, maybe we're all already insane I have no clue.

Dictionary: par·a·dox - A statement contrary to received opinion.

I ask you all the ultimate question. Can you prove anything is real? And no this is not court, I don't want any 'with a reasonable doubt' answers to this question.

For those of you who brush this thread off as just some guy pondering life and move on without thinking about anything I just said, all you're really doing is pushing away the questions that we all seek, so why not take a second, a minute, a day, a year, your whole life, to try and figure out the answer(s)?

[edit on 24/7/2010 by highlyoriginal]

"I think, therefore I am."

The thought of reality is something that will eventually make you go crazy. Some poeple have dreams that are so real they cannot tell the difference when they are awake as when they are sleeping.

In the end it's all chemical signals sent through the brain telling you that what you are seeing is in fact real.

I've had personal experiences with ghosts and things not of this world, but I have to comprehend the idea before it becomes real.

King

reply to post by highlyoriginal
You should definitely read the theories regarding a holographic universe. It's very interesting and sounds like it would be right up your alley.

reply to post by Kingalbrect79


I've had out of body experiences and met with my spirit guides and found 'answers' to questions but how to do I know if it was real? I always have based everything off of that but not to question everything is stupid, because otherwise you're just buying into whatever you're mind is telling you.

There is so much I could go into detail about, but it would take my whole life to explain or try to at least

One thing is for sure, to find ANY true meaning, if there is even a meaning to life or us whatsoever, you need to shed your ego and get away from society. At least that is something I wish I could do, it would be my first step into figuring anything out if there is an answer to anything.

I mean, I was just pondering this... Think of a million years, and then break it down until you get to a microsecond, and now apply that to anything you believe in -- it keeps going and going if you keep asking "why" -- why, why, why, why, why? So on and so forth...

[edit on 24/7/2010 by highlyoriginal]

reply to post by Emilyh


Thanks for the tip, I've read into it somewhat and have some links on the concept, maybe I will check it out more.

But at this very moment I feel almost as if I could just self combust if I keep asking the right question (whatever they may be) and breaking them down to the point of oblivion.

Honestly we cant be sure any of us or this really truely exist, for all we know all our emotions and thought and actions and even what we believe to be free will is infact just a belief a simulation if you will like the sims games or the matrix, we could just be walking around and doing whatever someone is controling us is wanting us to do and we are just the characters in the game but the only thing we can be sure of is that we are here be it real or fake or even part of a dream. we exist now for the moment in some way or form.

reply to post by highlyoriginal


We will always question everything until the point of our death. Even then there is no guarantee that our answers will be revealed.

Reality is a very difficult concept to argue for the most part. As I said, if I think it, it's real. People with chemical deficiencies or mental illness hear voices, see people, claim to talk to god, whatever, yet they are no more real to us than the easter bunny. However to that person they are completely real.

My sister in law is psychic, and I am planning on posting a new thread here soon about an experience I can't explain that lasted for ten years that came to fruition within the last couple weeks. I've had visions of the future that came true, dreams that haunted me for several weeks and then real events that followed.

I understand your need to question, I really do. Being spiritual yet not religious is a tough position to be in when you really think about what is real and what is simply a man made concept. There is so much we do not understand, and yet so much we strive to learn before we breathe our last breath of air.

King

Originally posted by Emilyh
reply to post by highlyoriginal

 

You should definitely read the theories regarding a holographic universe. It's very interesting and sounds like it would be right up your alley.

Oh I wanted to add this as I was just reading about the holographic universe.

It's just a concept, created by man, and a theory at best. Even if it makes sense to me, how do I put 'faith' into it? Why would I put faith into it? What is the point? What would motivate me to do so? What motivates us to do anything?

Society & ego.

reply to post by highlyoriginal


me thinks the really answer to the question is somewhere inbetween yes and no, or maybe outside the realms of yes's and no's reach.

on the bright side, if we are not real then maybe nothing is real.

and there is a lot more nothing according to what may or may not be very real at all.

Contemplating reality is like trying to stop a tank by throwing bologna, it's still gonna be there and you just lost out on a sandwich.

We may have advanced intellectually in the thousands of years of human evolution, but we are still not intellectually capable of thought that is outside our dimensional barriers. There is so much complexity to the universe, our bodies and just sheer open space in the universe that the term "reality" is a moot concept.

Image if the world was that of the final scene in Men In Black and we were just marbles in a game? We cannot concieve of such a thing because of our perspective. I don't know what else to say when it comes to questioning reality. It's an very narrow topic, yet the concepts required to understand it can reach infinity.

King

reply to post by highlyoriginal


Thanks for the post. You are being very honest with yourself. Can Your Self take honesty? Do I sit in front of the computer and write this or am I in a straight jacket, frothing at the mouth, halucinate about being a guy sitting at the computer... My guess is nothing is real except energy. Everything else is various assemblage points (as Castaneda would put it)

Originally posted by Kingalbrect79
I don't know what else to say when it comes to questioning reality. It's an very narrow topic, yet the concepts required to understand it can reach infinity.

I completely agree with you there. Questioning everything is something you just cannot do or you'd be sitting in a chair looking like a zombie although I really wouldn't care because I don't think 'evolution' is going anywhere anytime fast, and I've always thought time [past, present, and future] is all occurring at once - and if it is, then all knowledge is known already and everything has already happened but it's infinite so what is the meaning of it all? Is there an end to it this 'project' (aka life, at least as a human)? At what point do we realize that everything is a joke and that everything we believe in is nothing but a waste of time because we will find out eventually that everything is nothing but a man made thought or perspective.

At its deeper level reality is a sort of superhologram in which the past, present, and future all exist simultaneously.

See, the above quote really gets to me because as I keep getting older and putting things together (or so I think I am doing so) I realize my whole life I've known these things - been questions these things and that all along I was right (or so what we believe to be right). As time goes on we just keep realizing one thing after another, but it all overlaps because every new discovery disproves an older one, or provides more information to a theory that has already existed.

If we are all truly connected, and time is happening all at once (past, present, and future) then all knowledge is within our reach and it is us who need to realize this and tap into this 'knowledge base'.

Every answer is there, but you may spend your whole life trying to figure out the answer to one simple question and actually never find the end to such question, but over time people keep continuing others work and find more information and so on and so forth and evolution occurs the same way.

I mean literally moving my hand through the air actually effects the whole world - I know that may sound crazy, but I just moved particles within the air, which pushed off other particles and eventually they caused something to happen which caused something else to happen etc etc...

If you can wrap your mind around that, then really me getting up walking around is actually effecting everything in existence, but we have no control or no way to know what we are doing is going to do, if we could figure that out then everyone would be happy and life would be peachy but I can't see that ever being possible because to comprehend such a thing creates a paradox and a paradox such as this just keeps creating more.

However, I guess a paradox may be solved, and then you can break it down from there and realize something new, and we expand more and more evolution occurs. But with all the negative energy flowing throughout the entire existence of everything it will never be possible to make everything perfect. Negative energy exists and cannot be dissembled or destroyed, just like we learned in school "matter can neither be created nor destroyed" well same goes for this concept I'm speaking of.

And damn I know this is getting way out there, but at this very moment I see no point in anything, but see every point in nothingness if that makes any sense. There is no end to all of this, we can destroy ourselves but the particles live on, and what happens with them we do not know - maybe they are reassembled and put back together in what we know as human form or maybe they are spread apart and have new jobs... Jeez, I'm literally driving myself nuts right now.

One more thing too add...

All these people who are labeled as crazy and such and are given medications to basically make them zombies, well what if they should not be given medication but be allowed to deal with their existence the way it was meant to be rather than some synthetic means which are forced upon them? Who knows, maybe some people labeled as crazy have the answers and we're just so egotistical that we brush it off as craziness and such.

Chemical imbalances within the brain happen for a reason, they make us who we are really - they decide how angry of a person we are generally, or how nice, and all the other emotions. Why are some wrong and some right, and some okay to feel sometimes and others not at all? Who decided, what decided, what is what? MANKIND. How did we get to this point???

Now some people believe in a God. Well okay, but I can say God is a human belief and therefore humans came up with the concept of God - Okay, and you may say well you need to have faith - well I can say faith is something humans came up with to condition their emotions.

What if god is rather a colletion on human made descriptions of enlightement. Or... if we all are part of universal consciousness, how it could be stated that we don't get help without us noticing it?

Maybe we are testing ourselves, maybe we are here for a reason I really don't know anything for sure, neither does any single living human being on this earth.

But still you ask us to prove if anything is real? It is as well impossible to prove, but at the moment I can feel myself to exist.

So, maybe my beliefs of which I knew to be fact to myself that there is one consciousness of which we are all connected, is indeed true - maybe we are just doing what is best for one another and creating what you see around yourself. What I see as blue, you see as blue, but why is that? It's not because the noun is blue, but it's because we have been told the noun is blue. And since we've been told these things are a color, in this case blue, then man has come up with said color therefore how can we prove it to be such?

In psychology thee is also a term for this, I just can't remember what it was. However, this is also something that you cannot prove. If one sees blue color it can be different experience than for some other, but is it important if we speak of the same.

I ask you all the ultimate question. Can you prove anything is real? And no this is not court, I don't want any 'with a reasonable doubt' answers to this question.

About anything physical as we understand it, I can't. And in my opinion nobody can. I really understand the pain in this. Earlier I used to think that only thing that is real is our experiences, feelings and emotions. Occasionally I start to wonder if those also are just some illusion related to physical body, but I believe that if some feeling happened it is part of universe.

For those of you who brush this thread off as just some guy pondering life and move on without thinking about anything I just said, all you're really doing is pushing away the questions that we all seek, so why not take a second, a minute, a day, a year, your whole life, to try and figure out the answer(s)?

I took 15 minutes to share this, let's challenge others

Originally posted by Stateless Person
reply to post by highlyoriginal

 

Thanks for the post. You are being very honest with yourself. Can Your Self take honesty? Do I sit in front of the computer and write this or am I in a straight jacket, frothing at the mouth, halucinate about being a guy sitting at the computer... My guess is nothing is real except energy. Everything else is various assemblage points (as Castaneda would put it)

Well see you're on the same page with me then. I have always thought we are energy, everything is energy and when we experience physical death we are left with the energy that was once within our consciousness - so it lives on and is still apart of all the rest of the energy.

And it's funny you say "nothing is real" because if we truly believe that, then why do we not just sit in a chair and let ourselves die? Why do we fight to live?

It comes down to motivation, but this is all conceived within the mind, so it differs from person to person or energy signatures (that's what I think we really are and we what we leave behind - like a trail). Seriously if your life is in the gutter and you don't want to 'live' anymore, what really is the point in living? What is the point of motivating (or trying to motivate) yourself to do something? Since everything will keep going no matter what, evolution will never stop, in fact we could all kill one another literally, and nothing would stop it would keep going with or without us, so what is our point of existence in this form of energy?

As I said from the beginning, this just keeps getting deeper and deeper and you can drive yourself to insanity (if you're not already there) if you keep questioning reality as I am doing right now.

Don't forget that all of humanity may just be an advanced computer simulation

Jump to 3:20 if you don't want to watch the whole thing, or to 6:55 for some theoretical evidence based upon quantum mechanics.



[edit on 24-7-2010 by Blazer]

Originally posted by Blazer
Don't forget that all of humanity may just be an advanced computer simulation

I've thought of this before as well, even before hearing about it from another human being, as I have with just about every form of possible existence of human beings (I think we all have pondered these questions are whole life and come up with an infinite amount of answers).

All I know is my head hurts right now, so whomever is in control of me right now can you please hit the "give aspirin" button to highlyoriginal so my migraine goes away? Thanks.

reply to post by highlyoriginal


We are as real as anything else . Depends on the definition of reality and what "you" are because everything you are is not "man-made". What was the first man made from? NOt a man and definitely not a woman and no way a monkey or such. The matter I am compsed is not man-made... etc.


I believe what we perceive is just perception of stimuli we find useful through evolution. A bee perceives something totally different. Is what the bee perceives real or is ours real?

Originally posted by highlyoriginal

Originally posted by Kingalbrect79
I don't know what else to say when it comes to questioning reality. It's an very narrow topic, yet the concepts required to understand it can reach infinity.

I completely agree with you there. Questioning everything is something you just cannot do or you'd be sitting in a chair looking like a zombie although I really wouldn't care because I don't think 'evolution' is going anywhere anytime fast, and I've always thought time [past, present, and future] is all occurring at once - and if it is, then all knowledge is known already and everything has already happened but it's infinite so what is the meaning of it all? Is there an end to it this 'project' (aka life, at least as a human)? At what point do we realize that everything is a joke and that everything we believe in is nothing but a waste of time because we will find out eventually that everything is nothing but a man made thought or perspective.

Originally posted by highlyoriginal
And damn I know this is getting way out there, but at this very moment I see no point in anything, but see every point in nothingness if that makes any sense. There is no end to all of this, we can destroy ourselves but the particles live on, and what happens with them we do not know - maybe they are reassembled and put back together in what we know as human form or maybe they are spread apart and have new jobs... Jeez, I'm literally driving myself nuts right now.

This might sound a bit cold (belive it is not), but I think that it is very right to jus setlle down to the basic question of existence just to cope with it. I myself have accepted a fact for me that nothing really exists and that there might be some agenda why we are here. I however believe that I cannot determine it and if some day I get help for that, I will act on it. Meanwhile, I just seek for more, but mostly sit back and enjoy.

I quess I'm just trying to convince that there are things that we cannot determine and in my opinion it is very justified not to loose mind with it.

Together with discussion with others and own thoughtwork I'll try to figure it out. ...and ofcourse help other to figure it out. Not yet there still

reply to post by highlyoriginal


Well... we can be depressed about it or we can adopt admirable approach of existencialists like Sartr or Camus and fake it to make it (in a sense of going on despite understanding futility and absurd of our situation and condition). In this way "fake it to make it" becomes the art. It's like we multiply absurd by itself (Absurd Squared) in order to turn it into its opposite.

reply to post by Stateless Person


Well there is always an in-between but I guess deep down you are one sided when it comes to reality and what it really means to you. It may change over time but in the end you figure out what you figure out - right or wrong, it's what you believe or what you're conditioned to believe.

I just feel bad for those who allow themselves or are unable to get away from, being manipulated into thinking certain aspects of human existence started and are a certain way. This is the fundamental reason why I am against organized religion. You can't read a book (the bible) and take what you want from it and apply it to everyday life and every week assume that this or that is referred to in the bible and that the world is going to end.

I guess the main thing is, take everything with a grain of salt, and if it suits you leave it be, but keep an open mind - shut your mind and you become a coward towards what you are (whatever that is). I say coward because if you close your mind towards questioning reality then all you're doing is accepting societies BS and allowing yourself purposefully to 'look the other way' and just pretend that everything is fine and dandy.

I miss those days of childhood innocence where you just lived life for the joy, unfortunately (fortunately?) I questioned everything at a young age. I think it had a lot to do with being put in Catholic school up until 2nd grade, even though that isn't that long it still made me question what the hell I was being told and why I was told it was what I was supposed to believe.

After 2nd grade I was given the choice to go back to Catholic school or go to public school, and I believe I made the right choice and got away from Catholic school. Although intellectually all that money for a private school probably gets you a better education, I was lucky I was a smart kid, and things worked out for me for the most part until I got older. But that's a whole other story.

No matter what our purpose here is, if there is one, I will never stop trying to find out what it is (if there is one). I question everything no matter what; I will spend hours researching until I pass out on my desk if I must, I'm just that kind of person. When I need to know something I need to know right away, it's a good and a bad thing at the same time - I don't mind it, but it does get annoying sometimes I will admit since this is pretty much how my face looks after a while, ha.