False Awakening & Unknowable Reality

TheMadFool

There's this notion of false awakening where a person believes s/he has woken up but is actually asleep and dreaming; hence false awakening.

The idea has another, philosophical, meaning - describing a person who believes s/he has grasped true reality but actually hasn't; maybe s/he misunderstands, or s/he has only a partial understanding of, true reality.

If we bring these two meanings of false awakening together we get the picture of a person who thinks s/he's awake and understands true reality but is actually asleep, dreaming and still in the grips of an illusion, stuck, as it were, in false reality.

Consider now what we take to be true reality - the world in which we spend our "waking" lives in. We distinguish it from dreams we experience in sleep and declare, quite adamantly in my view, that the "waking" life we go through is true reality and the dream is an ilusion.

Bring to bear on the above notion we have of what true reality is, the idea of false awakening and suddenly we're no longer in a position to claim that our "waking" lives constitute an experience of true reality. To entertain this possibility is not to say anything new - Descartes' evil demon and the brain in a vat are old and well-known thought experiments. What bothers me at this point is whether any amount of "awakening" is sufficient to permit us to make the claim this, for sure, is true reality.?

To give you a glimpse of the problem we're faced with imagine me as asleep, dreaming and I "wake up" and realize that I was dreaming. I sit up in my bed and then the thought that I could be a brain in vat crosses my mind. I'm now no longer certain that the bed I'm sitting on, the watch whose alarm woke me up, the toothbrush I'll use, etc. are real. Imagine now that I am a brain in a vat and "wake up" to that fact - I see myself, the brain, connected to a supercomputer simulating the world I thought was real and so on. What about this reality, myself as a brain in a vat, can assuredly prevent me from thinking this too might be an illusion? "Nothing" is the right word I suspect.

It seems that to whatever level of reality one "awakens" to, the same problem exists - it could be a false awakening and the specter of an illusory reality constantly looms over us. Bottomline, every awakening could be a false awakening and although true reality maybe within reach, we can never really know it is that.

Comments...

Pantagruel

I like this notion. I would like to add to it the idea that there really is no such thing as "true understanding". As examples, Socrates', to know is that you know nothing. Or Richard Feynman, if you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't really understand quantum mechanics.

I guess in this light, we are all waking up to the reality that we are only dreamers?

Banno

every awakening could be a false awakening — TheMadFool

...or it could be a true awakening.

unenlightened

Read Ursula LeGuin's The Lathe of Heaven.
ASAP.
And meanwhile:

Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream
Merrily merrily, merrily, merrily
Life is but a dream.

Or,

Comes a time when the blind man takes your hand
Says, "Don't you see?
Gotta make it somehow on the dreams you still believe
Don't give it up, you got an empty cup
That only love can fill, only love can fill"

...or it could be a true awakening. — Banno

And even if it isn't, one has to take it that one is awake, because snoring is boring.

BrianW

The idea has another, philosophical, meaning - describing a person who believes s/he has grasped true reality but actually hasn't; maybe s/he misunderstands, or s/he has only a partial understanding of, true reality. — TheMadFool

Whatever understanding is possessed by an individual(ity) is limited to and by that individual(ity). Only the absolute is and has absoluteness. Those who are awake (enlightened) know their limitations better than those below them on that scale.

ztaziz

Isn't life consistent whereas a dream is inconsistent? I haven't woke up, realised it was false and went back to dreaming.

Therefore, it is a true awakening.

I have the memory of so many days here, in this awakened state.

My argument is that because life is consistent, it can be understood by a measure of this consistency, as real; oppose to a dream which is understood shortly after as unreal.

Dreams can be known too, but when discussing the validity of life, per se - where did your dreamer body come from?

Pantagruel

My argument is that because life is consistent, it can be known, as oppose to a dream which is understood shortly after as unreal. — ztaziz

I thought the OP was speaking metaphorically, so not a literal exposition of the epistemological status of the dream-state was intended.

ztaziz

↪Pantagruel

Oh, ok, my mistake.

deletedusercb

What bothers me at this point is whether any amount of "awakening" is sufficient to permit us to make the claim this, for sure, is true reality.? — TheMadFool

First off when you wake up from dreaming, you get a wider context that includes the dreaming level. IOW you know what that was like and then you place it in a broader context. The dream isn't unreal, it is what is. But it was an experiencing. It would depend on your culture or subculture exactly how you contrasted the two states of dreaming and waking. So even if waking is not the final level, you have still made a gain, AND you don't have to throw away the dreaming.

For example, let's say you're a Freudian or a shaman. You might in the dream been running from a bear. You wake up and I would suppose that even shamans are relieved on one level, even if they take the dream more seriously than those who think dreams have no meaning or reflect anything real relevent to this world. So the Freudian or shaman thinks, glad that wasn't the kind of bear that kills me hear, but both would likely consider the bear real, as symbol of something going on in me, or some message from the underworld or actualy contact with spirits. Even people not formally into interpreting dreams or assigning them sucha formal other reality category that a shaman might, will still, often consider the dream to have meaning and reality, just not that their waking bodies were actually about to be chomped.

I think it is an interesting idea that there could be more awakenings (a bit like the film the 13th floor with simulated universes) but I wanted to emphasize that even if this is the case one could also be getting very useful knowledge and need not be negating a lower level. In this case the lower levels are less aware of the higher ones. They don't encompass them but are encompassed by them. Of course lucid dreaming, for example, can make this more complicated.

Zeus

What bothers me at this point is whether any amount of "awakening" is sufficient to permit us to make the claim this, for sure, is true reality? — TheMadFool

I read the whole thing very intently and think this can be a very interesting thread if pursued.

A lot of "enlightened" people have claimed that in the "waking state" you don't bother anymore about false realities, true realities, etc. It so humbles you that all your seeking dissapears. You find yourself not asking for anything else. Now, this has been the popular notion.

So, can we explore this and see if there is any truth in this? If I somehow slide into an altered state one fine morning but, still find myself conflicted and asking if there is more, then I think, there certainly is more, if the archaic wisdom is to be heeded to. Also, seeking in itself, according to the old lores, is what serves as an anchor keeping you dreaming.

neonspectraltoast

There is no understanding true reality. True reality is experienced. It isn't verbalized, as anyone who has ever attempted to describe what it was like can profess. It is felt and experienced, but, for reasons that should be obvious, can't be understood.

deletedusercb

There is no understanding true reality. — neonspectraltoast

So this sentence is not referring true reality, then?

True reality is experienced. — neonspectraltoast

Nor this one.

It is felt and experienced, but, for reasons that should be obvious, can't be understood. — neonspectraltoast

It seems like this is a claim to understanding reality, including the obvious reasons If there are obvious reasons for something don't we understand it then. And isn't the it in this case a part of reality?

neonspectraltoast

It isn't. Understanding implies language. Language isn't the nature of direct experience. All we can do is try to understand via descriptions of our experience, but the descriptions never suffice. Certainly not so they could be a meaningful substitute for the experience itself.

I can tell you the rain felt wet, and obviously you know this is no substitute for dancing in a downpour.

As often as language helps us understand, it is a distraction from the truth.

TheMadFool

Read Ursula LeGuin's The Lathe of Heaven.
ASAP. — unenlightened

:up: Thanks

...or it could be a true awakening. — Banno

possibly...

Isn't life consistent whereas a dream is inconsistent? — ztaziz

There's nothing that precludes two or more people having the same dream - such dreams would be consistent but still not real.

↪Zeus

I guess the implication of what I wrote is that knowledge of true reality, though possible, can never be known to be as that. There never will be a time when one could be 100% confident that the reality to which one has "awakened" to is the true reality.

I wanted to emphasize that even if this is the case one could also be getting very useful knowledge — Coben

Right! There is a sense of progression in the notion of "awakening" , each level of it lifting the veil that covers truth just that bit higher, and the hope here is that there will be a time when we can finally behold the truth in all its beauty.

I don't want to be the grinch here but what if "awakening" is circular in nature: I awake to a state y from a dream x and I awake to a state z from the dream y and then, completing the circle, I awake to the state x from the dream z.

Every level of awakening is then just a dream and since we're going around in circles, the sense of progress is lost.

]Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment,mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters. — Dogen

Zeus

I guess the implication of what I wrote is that knowledge of true reality, though possible, can never be known to be as that. There never will be a time when one could be 100% confident that the reality to which one has "awakened" to is the true reality. — TheMadFool

What are these various levels of reality you are talking about? Would be great if you could please refer me to some texts.

TheMadFool

What are these various levels of reality you are talking about? Would be great if you could please refer me to some texts. — Zeus

Sorry, these are my personal thoughts on reality and I have no texts to refer you to. Each time one feels one has "awakened" it implies that what one awakened from is a different level of reality than the one one experiences after the "awakening".

deletedusercb

I don't want to be the grinch here but what if "awakening" is circular in nature: I awake to a state y from a dream x and I awake to a state z from the dream y and then, completing the circle, I awake to the state x from the dream z. — TheMadFool

I'm going to take a non-philosophical type response here and react more intuitively. This seems to me a very heady, hypothetical concern. One that could give anxiety, potentially, to someone. When I say hypothetical, it's very much of the vibe of 'what if my wife has been pretending all these years to love me'. I say heady, because on a lived level we can't get some utterly perfect transcendent viewpoint to relax such anxieties, but really, I think they are about something else. And we can live the in situ experiences of awakening from sleep and awakening in waking life of now having greater perspective than we did.

Now in a way it is not fair to react this way to your post. You are in a philosophical forum and investigating something philosophically. And it's an interesting topic and you've included interesting nuances, now with this cycle idea. So not only is there nothing wrong with doing this, it's interesting and absolutely belongs in this forum as a discussion.

I reacted in the way I did because I am always trying to see what a philosophy or position is in an actual lived person. What is it doing? What are the emotions around it? Not just as possible ideas.

In the world of ideal skepticism, perhaps what you just argued and seems to make sense on paper as it were, actually doesn't. Any argument or conclusion may turn out - in brain in vat scenarios or perverse deity scenarios or simulated universe scenarios - be false even if the empirical evidence is overwhelming. There's always and asterisk, heck even this might be wrong.

So yes to your point in some abstract way, but in any practical sense, I am not sure how it helps us in life, however interesting as speculative philosophy.

]Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment,mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters. — Dogen

Yeah, but it's not as if that Zen thing is saying one is in the same boat, in that third level as one was in the first. In Zen that second mountains are mountains you are, according to that tradition, much more aware of and consciously connnect to reality than in the first.

deletedusercb

It isn't. Understanding implies language. — neonspectraltoast

And I quoted your language, where you told us your understanding of reality. It's a cake and eat it too situation. You were describing what was possible what was not based on verbal understandings of reality and giving us verbal understandings of reality. You can't then go on to say, which you actually did simultaneously, that one cannot do this. Your own acts in those parts of the post I quoted indicate that you don't believe what you are saying.

As often as language helps us understand, it is a distraction from the truth. — neonspectraltoast

Then why would you tell me this? I am pointing out that your posts are doing precisely what they say is impossible. I'ts one thing to shush someone talking about the forest, babblling, while they walk through it, in the hope they will focus on it. It's another to you can't have understanding of reality becauase......

The latter is self-contradictory. Clearly you think you have unerstanding of reality, since perception and epistemology and what we are like are all parts of reality. You are using works to tell us how things work and do not work. You are even justifying this, again with words.

TheMadFool

↪Coben

:up: :ok:

ztaziz

The universe isn't real, as much as it isn't unreal - it's both real and unreal. Realness is a theoretical still or framing of the state of affairs which is vague due to all of motion.

With no consciousness, no universe exists.

It is just another dream in the mix, so it can be thought about as an existent. In this moment 'it exists'.

Whatever the fuck our interpretation of existence is.

I propose that eyes make unreal movements, crossing unreal angles. Think about the speeds at which the eyes move and twitch, they are moving so fast.

neonspectraltoast

↪Coben

"Language is insufficient for describing reality."

"BuT youR uSINg LaNgUAgE!"

deletedusercb

↪neonspectraltoast

You misrepresented both yourself and me. You made statements like this.....

there is no understanding true reality. — neonspectraltoast

Notice the difference? huh?

So here you cherry pick a less absolute statement of understanding (by the way) that you made...iow you present a less problematic statement than the ones I quoted, as part of a mocking non-response.

Then you misrepresent me as if my position was so simple.

And given how you think we cannot put much truth in language and language is insufficient it's ironic how smug and sure you seem. Pardon me for respectfully challenging your ideas.

Lazyass rudeness. I'll ignore you from here on out.

neonspectraltoast

I'll ignore you, too. Nothing but a pretentious nag.

deletedusercb

So, can we explore this and see if there is any truth in this? — Zeus

It would be hard to explore this in some important ways without actually trying to experience what the thread is focused on.

Zeus

It would be hard to explore this in some important ways without actually trying to experience what the thread is focused on. — Coben

The OP concerns multiple layers of dreams (or realities). The argument you've posed focuses on dreams in a literal sense. What the OP concerns, I guess, is the fact that people are living life in a dream state unaware of a so-called higher awareness or consciousness. This higher awareness has a lot of literature written about it but I am unaware of any which concerns with multiple layers of realities except for a Linklater movie.

In Linklater's Waking Life, Poet David Jewell, in conversation with Zahedi, points out the various layers of awareness when attempting to engage in the “holy moment” such as the holy moment itself, and one’s efforts at achieving this moment. Some people claim that they can strip away all the extraneous layers and experience the pure holy moment itself.

Zeus

As often as language helps us understand, it is a distraction from the truth. — neonspectraltoast

Very true. And yet language is all we have. Anything that is beyond the realm of thought can't be articulated with thought (language) yet people have since ages tried to do just that. Why do think that is?

praxis

Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment,mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters.
— Dogen

Yeah, but it's not as if that Zen thing is saying one is in the same boat, in that third level as one was in the first. In Zen that second mountains are mountains you are, according to that tradition, much more aware of and consciously connnect to reality than in the first. — Coben

What does that even mean, being much more aware of and consciously connected to reality?

I think we simply tend to be less anxious the closer we get to realizing that there’s no difference between illusion and reality.

neonspectraltoast

Very true. And yet language is all we have. Anything that is beyond the realm of thought can't be articulated with thought (language) yet people have since ages tried to do just that. Why do think that is?
4h — Zeus

Just because people are inquisitive and get excited about their thoughts. It's just fun to think.

Unfortubately, ego is a factor for most people, too, and they refuse to accept the fact that they'll never be god, with all the answers. Anybody with a modicum of consideration realizes that reality is ultimately an ineffable mystery.

deletedusercb

What does that even mean, being much more aware of and consciously connected to reality? — praxis

it depends. I see one guy petting and training his dog and I see another guy petting nothing and actively training nothing in the same park. I suspect the latter probably is less connected in those activities. Of course, maybe I'm dreaming, maybe the latter is making a film. But I think it is a meaningful concept Of course I was reacting to his use of Zen as if the third way of seeing was just a return to the first.

I think we simply tend to be less anxious the closer we get to realizing that there’s no difference between illusion and reality. — praxis

I am not sure Illusion is the best opposite, or at least the only one, to reality. I think one can simply be confused, but there is no illusion. Once can have faulty assumptions. I don't consider dreams illusions, for example.

neonspectraltoast

There exists in reality the subconscious, and it is full of surprises.

praxis

I see one guy petting and training his dog and I see another guy petting nothing and actively training nothing in the same park. I suspect the latter probably is less connected in those activities. Of course, maybe I'm dreaming, maybe the latter is making a film. — Coben

I don’t follow, whatever the guy without the dog is doing he’s consciously aware of and interacting with something that must exist for him, unless he’s pretending.

In the following picture, do you see a young woman or an old one? Does seeing one or the other mean that you’re more or less aware of and consciously connected to reality? It could mean that you failed to correctly see the image that the drawer intended, if that were their intention. It wasn’t of course.

False Awakening & Unknowable Reality

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