Where do you know anything, experience everything? Consciousness. There is nowhere else for anything to be known or experienced. And that’s not unique to you or us. That goes for anything known or experienced by any ‘entity’: only in consciousness can ‘they’ ever experience anything.
Imagine being Neo from the Matrix. You wake up in a new reality and someone explains to you that this one is the real reality, the ultimate underlying reality. But how do you know if that is true? Whatever is known about this reality can still – just like the previous reality – only be known in consciousness. Nothing can be known or experienced outside of consciousness by anyone or anything in any reality.
But then the question arises: what can we know about any reality? Nothing whatsoever, other than as experience in consciousness. Whatever is known or experienced always is known or experienced only as experience in consciousness.
The next question is: why assume any reality – underlying or otherwise – beyond just experience?
Nothing can be known or experienced beyond experience. If underlying realities were on offer, they could only be known about or experienced in consciousness. As experience. So… why make any assumptions beyond just the experience? It’s a superfluous step without any merit or justification.
Underlying realities, matter and things are figments of the imagination with zero (0) evidence and zero (0) probability.
No one, anywhere, ever could know anything but experience. No exceptions.
Everything beyond just experience is an assumption. Any hypothetical underlying reality can never be known, only assumed. Matter: assumption. Things: assumption. You – as a human, in a world made of stuff, yourself made of stuff and real beyond an appearance in consciousness: assumption.
Why assume anything without evidence? That’s not very scientific… so don’t.
But then what are we left with? Experience in consciousness. And nothing more. Or less.
A dream.
What does that make me (the human)? A character in a dream, no more solid than that, no more real than that. How important is the character? As important as a character in a dream.
But, but, but… my feelings!
Never mind your feelings. Follow the logic first, we’ll get back to your feelings. The logic is very simple, yes? And watertight, yes? If not, go back and let me know where it fails.
Experience is all that can be known, in principle, by definition. Everything else can only be assumed, imagined, dreamt.
That includes you – the human – as a ‘real’ being, whatever that means. You are exactly as real as a character in a dream.
Back to the feelings. It feels as if the world is real, right? Shouldn’t that count for something? I feel real and so does the world. And so do dreams…
Our feelings are meaningless. Like our assumptions. The logic doesn’t work so we should change our perspective. You’re not the character in your dreams, you’re the dreamer. Same deal here, I’m not Jorma, I’m the witness to the dream with him in it. I’m the dreamer, not the dreamt.
I’m consciousness itself.
I can only know experience.
Everything else can only be assumed or dreamt. I am a dreamer of dreams. I can have no container. And my content can’t touch me. Because it doesn’t exist and nothing is real except me – consciousness.