Re: Re: Re: Light things.
Originally posted by lifegazer to Sindai
The external universe - even if it existed - neither knows nor cares nor has the power to impose such experience upon said entity.
You can bash a rock on the head for eternity, but if that rock does not choose to feel and so create ~inner-pain~ as a response to your actions, the rock will feel nothing.
All sensation is the same as pain in this respect. It is experienced by choice and it is created by that entity alone.
The distinction I continue to find arbitrary is that, although you are a solipsist, you grant a limited form of existence to other perspectives, like me, under the caveat of the "experience of Atlas".
A non-comatose person has a very strong tendency to choose to feel a rock in the head. And ok, he produces his own inner pain. I will grant you that, not because I believe we can choose or not choose to feel cuts and burns and rocks in the head, but because it seems to relate to the rest of perceived existence just as well. So I am granting an enlarged definition of 'choose' and 'feel'.
The choice to feel pain when I am cut seems similar to the choice of the rock to crumble when struck. That is, not so much a choice but a predictable natural order.
And the rock has it's long slow dull "experience" within creation as parts of many human experiences. The Gate Stones on a college campus can be repainted often by prankster students or dressed up some other way. Over time any protrusions choose to be worn down by the activity according to the nature it has been imbued with within EXISTENCE ITSELF.
If in Existence you recognize the validity of other perceived entities having experience, why deny the piece of colored art around it a similar experience. The bugs, bees, birds and trees - they surely have a "consciousness" and a free will - albeit one that is bound by and shaped by their own natures. The rocks similarly choose to sit and experience existence quietly.
But there seems nothing in your idea of human experience that does not permit singing and dancing rocks. All we would have to do is choose to experience that. Jesus, on his way into Jerusalem seemed to say as much.
Luke 19 around verse 40 - "the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying, 'Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!" Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, 'Teacher, order you disciples to stop.' He answered, 'I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.'"
Interestingly, they didn't. Why? They didn't choose to because the people were shouting.
When marbles and billiard balls carom with their friends we perceive their movements as more predictable within Existence than we do the so called experiences of other humans within existence. No doubt they choose to experience Existence much the same way that humans choose to experience existence. As a solipsist you cannot know whether the rock is more conscious or less conscious or is even an angel watching over existence and perhaps emanating "solid" energies into it's suroundings so that our perceptions can choose to experience solidity. Or rather, you could choose that as your reality.
As a Monist you know that all there is, is God. But the energies of Will and Omnipotence express themselves wondrously. You seem to be making an arbitrary assumption that the only valid experience within Existence is that which is felt or chosen to be felt by lifegazer and experiences like him. Existence may be choosing to experience it's own reality from consciousness and unconsciousness alike. You could not know within your small experience but if you reject the possibility you are putting you omnipotent chooser in a box of your own tiny mind.
If you respond, please try to refrain from scolding me that "Only God is God" or similar high level refutations of the concept that "I am God" just because it might please you to be contrary this morning. I have heard that before. I am asking about the reality that I perceive and that appears to perceive me. Certainly the colors are God, the trees are God, the rocks are God, no less than I. They may have their own experience within Existence. It is merely of a different order.
Ok, a color is not a tree. But how is it not an expression of God within God? Why would solidity be less possible or desirable a platform for experience than thought?
But then again at this point I guess you would qualify for being "blind."
