@Frank Apisa,
Quote:I disagree with you completely on that...as have several others here. A "fact" is something that truly exists or happens : something that has actual existence...WHETHER WE CAN PROVE OR DEMONSTRATE THAT IT EXISTS. It IS...whatever actually IS.
nothing truly exists or happens. nothing has actual existence. proving and demonstrating things only makes facts and truths appear to exist. nothing actually is.
Quote:Well...you may think that, but I see no reason to suppose the only "facts" are those things which we humans can demonstrate are facts. Fact is...there may be many "facts" that are completely beyond our abilities.
you live from a belief system. you see no reason to 'suppose' facts must be demonstrable. but you don't need to suppose anything. but you do decide to 'suppose' that facts, truth and reality definitely exist, without question.
Quote:No you are not. You are engaging in speculating...or hypothesizing...or supposing...or conjecturing...or ...well, you get the picture.
so is every human whenever they say anything.
Quote:Yeah...Ptolemy did that at one point in our history. He wanted to make as few assumptions as possible...and he ended up putting the Earth at the center of the universe and at the center of existence.
He was wrong. The FACT is that the Earth is not even at the center of our solar system.
this only proves there are no facts. you are just naively sticking to the apparent 'facts' of current scientific knowledge. they will all be proven wrong in time, giving rise to a million new apparent 'facts and knowledge'.
Quote:We know what we experience...and that MAY BE a part of REALITY. It may not even be that! But that does not make it the REALITY. It only makes it the part of REALITY that we are able to experience.
if you fully 'know what you experience', you would be at the same conclusion as me: 'no reality'. because you are still speculating about reality, it means you do not fully 'know what you experience'.
you are the one that attaches 'reality' to 'what you experience'. if you actually look into it, you see that it has no absolute reality. but nobody looks into it because it is too obvious. the experience of self is so intimately 'what we are', that we don't question it completely, instead we question everything else. we question everything that we are aware OF, but not the awareness itself.
Quote:Perhaps. But I still maintain that I do not know the true nature of the REALITY of existence...and I suspect you don't either. For either of us (assuming there is a Cyracuz and a Frank) to exclude anything from being part of REALITY (except for definitionally inconsistent things like a square circle) ...is inappropriate.
you are excluding your own experience. in your own experience right now is the solution to the question of reality. if you pay enough attention to your own experience, the fact that there are no facts becomes apparent.
your own experience is not a fact. you have no control over it, ever, the illusion of control comes from being aware of verbal thoughts in time, and noticing the coordination of these verbal thoughts with body action. then you assume the identity of the 'thinker', and believe that you are in control of your actions. but thoughts occur involuntarily to the 'thinker', and actions also follow these involuntarily. the idea of voluntary vs involuntary action only exists because of the flawed concept of individual thought, which does not exist.
thought is always an appearance in consciousness, occurring as part of an involuntary process of reaction to various stimuli. the idea that reality exists, facts exist, the universe exists, all come from consciousness and thought.
this is why cyracuz was making the point that we can speculate that reality exists outside 'human experience', but it cannot be called 'fact'.
frank and fil's rebuttals of this argument are simple but flawed; that 'fact' refers to an absolute truth which exists regardless of human consciousness.
this is nothing but the involuntary ideations of the intellect. if it begins to accept the possibility of non-existence, it begins to 'die' or 'lose identity'. therefore, at first, it will always revolt against it, just like frank and fil. but the intellect cannot be controlled, and so once it begins to see its own limited nature, it automatically attracts itself to its own demise.
this is why i said earlier that frank is already beginning to see the compelling evidence that his own mind is the only 'existence'. that's why he said things earlier like "what if my mind is the only thing that exists?" etc. this is the intellect naturally taking its course, figuring things out. the denial of this possibility will last as long as the stubbornness to prevent ego death. after ego death, non duality is born, or apparent again as the only eternal truth. it is apparent as an eternal dance between observer and observed, without the possibility of a resolution as neither are absolute.
