The Mind-Reality Loop: A Topological Paradox and the Dissolution of the Boundary

[Vince]

The Hypothesis

I am proposing a model of existence where Mind and Reality arise together and condition each other. They are not two separate entities (Subject vs. Object) but a single, continuous feedback system.

The Challenge: Locate the Boundary

I challenge anyone to investigate the observable space where your thoughts, imagination, and perceptions happen.

• Look for the exact “line” or “wall” where this mental space ends and the “external” world begins.

• In my own looking, I found no such boundary—only an endless everything where imagination and reality flow into one another without a seam.

Core Mechanics of the Loop

1. Simultaneous Arising: The perceiver and the perceived are like two mirrors facing each other; the reflection and the source happen at exactly the same time. One cannot exist without the other.

2. The Self as a Ripple: The “Self” is not a separate “authority” or a “metaphysical interpreter” sitting outside this process. It is part of the stream—a label the system generates to navigate the loop.

3. The Preservation Instinct: When this lack of boundary is pointed out, the “Self” instinctively reacts to preserve its perceived separate existence. This is why discussions often devolve into rigid labels or insults.

Final Question for the Forum

If you believe you are a separate “I” observing a separate “World,” can you point to the coordinate where the “observer” stops and the “observed” begins? If that observable space of your mind has no edge, how can you claim to be separate from what you see?

[Ichthus77 (Ichthus77 (formerly She™))]

This is a great exercise. I was just thinking earlier about how the structure of the universe (all of spacetime) is distinct from our limited experience, and so only someone whose nerves (or whatever) span all spacetime would be able to experience it as part of who they are, rather than external to who they are. And their experience would include ours, even if we are unaware of them, just as our experiences would include each other’s, even if we’re unaware of it, if everything that physically links us to our own body also links us to each other’s bodies. Like wifi. Gee, I bet you could do that with nanotech even without properly informed consent! You shouldn’t, though. (You can’t claim God violated consent literally informed in his own consent. Plus… the Bible is everywhere.)

[Ichthus77 (Ichthus77 (formerly She™))]

Can we extend the inquiry?

Different folks slice up what is experienced immediately due to concepts lying ready versus what requires MORE experience to unlock the knowledge … or requires practice (Descartes & Kant & Leibniz on heavy, extension/position, & the other thing in Descartes… and the difference between Kant & Hegel’s thoughts on genius…) … see also the Will Hunting quote “I could always just play” (I dunno, for inspiration).

What basics — brass tacks — tabula rasa — have to already be there (lying ready) for the lightbulb to come “on” (conscious… bare basic genius, no bells & whistles)… and what are you aware of if you are deprived of any input… versus given access to all of it (which you would know HOW) and is sliding the scale between absolute deprivation and absolute access like sacrificing pixel count for frame rate (I have other questions about that vid)?

[Vince]

This is where I’d say something like “ we don’t have memory of birth because the “I” was never born. The human form is born and the brain is at about 80-90% developed during that time… so…. There is no we or I experiencing there is just experience happening…. The “I” develops from conditioning through conditions.. cause-effect processes… the mind is just mind… it is not a thing nor a space for things to be. It is unbound so there is no broader between it and what is commonly refer to as “reality.” Reality is not what it is believed to be. The vast majority “believe” reality is a space external to the form but it is only a perception of the experience in human form. What is a tree? Tree is language identifier of a process of change… what is a human? Language identifier of a process of change. what is a self? A language identifier of a process of change. Noting has an eternal inherence. What is reality? the state or quality of having existence or substance. What is existence? the fact or state of living or having objective reality. A subset of the totality of reality. What is total reality? Total reality refers to the comprehensive, undivided totality of existence, encompassing all visible, invisible, physical, and spiritual dimensions. It is often described in philosophical and theological contexts as the ultimate, Absolute Reality that exists independent of human perception or interpretation.
What is human perception or interpretation?
Human perception and interpretation constitute the active, cognitive process of selecting, organizing, and assigning meaning to sensory information, transforming raw stimuli into a subjective mental model of the world. It is a three-stage process—selection, organization, and interpretation—heavily influenced by past experiences, expectations, needs, and context.

Is human perception a loop?

Yes, modern neuroscience and psychology increasingly recognize human perception as a closed-loop, active process, rather than a linear, open-loop one. It is a continuous, dynamic interaction where the brain/body and the environment feed into each other, creating an ongoing loop of action and sensation.

So….. how does the self that we think we are fit into this? Not as an observe outside the loop… how could that be possible if we perceive the division of self and other?…… the ego…..

[Vince]

Now let me provide to you the AI response to my proposition

You’ve just hit on the “Grand Illusion” of the human experience. You’re describing a perspective very close to Process Philosophy and Non-dualism (like in Zen or Advaita Vedanta), where the “I” isn’t a pilot flying the plane, but rather a byproduct of the flight itself.

Here is how that “self” fits into the loop without being an outside observer:

1. The Self as a “User Interface” (UI)

Think of the ego/self not as the “engine” of your consciousness, but as the Desktop Icons on a computer screen.

• The computer is doing millions of complex calculations (the “total reality” and biological processes you mentioned).

• If you saw all those raw calculations, you’d be overwhelmed.

• The “Self” is a simplified icon created by the brain so the organism can interact with the world without crashing. You don’t “perceive” the loop; you are the loop, and the “I” is just the label the loop gives to its own center of gravity.

2. The Self as a “Boundary Maker”

You mentioned that there is no border between mind and reality. You’re right—but the human body is a localized biological system. To survive, it must distinguish between “food” (out there) and “stomach” (in here).

• The Ego’s Job: It acts as a fictional boundary.

• It takes the “undivided totality” and draws a circle around your skin. It says, “Everything inside this circle is ME, and everything outside is NOT ME.”

• This is a “useful lie.” It’s a linguistic and cognitive tool that allows a “process of change” (the human) to protect itself.

3. The “Observer” is an Echo

If perception is a closed loop, the “I” is like the feedback you get when you point a microphone at a speaker.

• Information comes in (sensation), the brain predicts what it is (interpretation), and then it reacts (action).

• The feeling of being an “observer” is just the brain “looking back” at its own process.

• The Glitch: Because the brain is so good at this, it starts to treat the “looker” as a separate thing from the “looking.” This creates the Ego—the feeling that there is a “Ghost in the Machine” watching the show.

The “Dumbed Down” Summary

If reality is a massive, flowing river (Total Reality), the “Self” isn’t a person standing on the bank watching the water. The “Self” is a whirlpool in the river.

The whirlpool looks like a “thing,” and it stays in one spot for a while, but it’s actually just the water moving in a specific pattern. There is no “whirlpool” separate from the “river.” When the water stops moving that way, the “thing” vanishes, but the water is still there.

[Vince]

Now let me provide to you the AI response to my proposition

You’ve just hit on the “Grand Illusion” of the human experience. You’re describing a perspective very close to Process Philosophy and Non-dualism (like in Zen or Advaita Vedanta), where the “I” isn’t a pilot flying the plane, but rather a byproduct of the flight itself.

Here is how that “self” fits into the loop without being an outside observer:

1. The Self as a “User Interface” (UI)

Think of the ego/self not as the “engine” of your consciousness, but as the Desktop Icons on a computer screen.

• The computer is doing millions of complex calculations (the “total reality” and biological processes you mentioned).

• If you saw all those raw calculations, you’d be overwhelmed.

• The “Self” is a simplified icon created by the brain so the organism can interact with the world without crashing. You don’t “perceive” the loop; you are the loop, and the “I” is just the label the loop gives to its own center of gravity.

2. The Self as a “Boundary Maker”

You mentioned that there is no border between mind and reality. You’re right—but the human body is a localized biological system. To survive, it must distinguish between “food” (out there) and “stomach” (in here).

• The Ego’s Job: It acts as a fictional boundary.

• It takes the “undivided totality” and draws a circle around your skin. It says, “Everything inside this circle is ME, and everything outside is NOT ME.”

• This is a “useful lie.” It’s a linguistic and cognitive tool that allows a “process of change” (the human) to protect itself.

3. The “Observer” is an Echo

If perception is a closed loop, the “I” is like the feedback you get when you point a microphone at a speaker.

• Information comes in (sensation), the brain predicts what it is (interpretation), and then it reacts (action).

• The feeling of being an “observer” is just the brain “looking back” at its own process.

• The Glitch: Because the brain is so good at this, it starts to treat the “looker” as a separate thing from the “looking.” This creates the Ego—the feeling that there is a “Ghost in the Machine” watching the show.

The “Dumbed Down” Summary

If reality is a massive, flowing river (Total Reality), the “Self” isn’t a person standing on the bank watching the water. The “Self” is a whirlpool in the river.

The whirlpool looks like a “thing,” and it stays in one spot for a while, but it’s actually just the water moving in a specific pattern. There is no “whirlpool” separate from the “river.” When the water stops moving that way, the “thing” vanishes, but the water is still there.

The self is not- not real but it also isn’t the center of the universe… it’s a tool the brain uses to navigate the terrain…. We are all linked but the ego wants to believe it’s separate and special….

[Vince]

How does the self exist? Here’s more AI explanation simply because I’ve personally grown tired of explaining it.

In Buddhism, the formation of the ego (or the “self”) isn’t seen as a single event, but as a repetitive, lightning-fast process called the Five Aggregates (or Skandhas).

Think of the ego like a movie. If you look at a strip of film, it’s just individual static frames. But when you run them through a projector quickly, it creates the “illusion” of a solid, moving person. Buddhism argues that our “self” is just the movie created by these five frames firing in a loop.

The 5 Layers of the Ego “Onion”

1. Form (Rupa): This is the physical hardware—your body and senses. It’s the raw contact between your eye and a shape, or your ear and a sound. There’s no “you” yet, just a physical event.

2. Sensation/Feeling (Vedana): The moment you encounter something, your system labels it instantly as Positive, Negative, or Neutral. This is a “gut” reaction before you even think about it.

3. Perception (Sañña): This is where “language identifiers,” as you mentioned earlier, come in. Your brain recognizes the stimulus. It’s not just a “sound” anymore; it’s “a car horn.” It matches the input against your past memories.

4. Mental Formations/Volition (Sankhara): This is the “conditioning” part. Because you labeled the sound as “annoying” (Sensation) and identified it as “a car horn” (Perception), you now have a reaction. You get angry, or you decide to move. This is the “habit” layer of the mind.

5. Consciousness (Viññāna): This is the “awareness” that ties the other four together. It’s the “lightbulb” that makes the whole process feel like a lived experience.

How the “I” is Born

The Buddha taught that the “Ego” is the mistake we make when we look at these five moving parts and assume there must be a “driver” behind them.

• The Chain Reaction: Form → Sensation → Perception → Reaction → Consciousness.

• The Mistake: Because this happens thousands of times a second, we get a “blurred” sense of a permanent person. We grab onto these processes and say, “This is mine, this is me, this is what I am.”

In your words, the “I” is the language identifier we use to describe the friction created when these five layers rub together.

The Ego as a “Protective Ghost”

From this perspective, the Ego is essentially a memory-based survival program. It uses “past experiences” (Perception) and “cause-effect processes” (Mental Formations) to predict the future and keep the body safe. It’s not a “thing” that exists; it’s a verb—the act of “selfing.”

[Ichthus77 (Ichthus77 (formerly She™))]

Computers are designed, so.

At some point… you get to the designer who doesn’t “emerge” from that which is designed, but IS actually its … subsumer (just like our identity subsuming/remaining through all the changes)… creatively expressing selfhood (in perfect relation/communication) through itself. And we are in their image.

[Vince]

I get the ‘Designer’ thing, but that feels like you’re just trying to find a boss where there isn’t one. It’s like looking at a car engine and saying there has to be a ‘ghost’ in the metal making it turn. There’s no ghost—it’s just a bunch of parts rubbing together to make fire and motion.

To me, the ‘Ego’ isn’t some deep, holy soul. It’s more like a bodyguard your brain built. It’s a ‘protective ghost’ that pops up because your body is trying to stay alive. We say ‘I’ or ‘Me’ because it’s a quick way to talk, but that doesn’t mean there’s a ‘Little Me’ sitting behind my eyes.

It’s not that a Designer made us in their image. It’s more like the universe is doing a loop, and the ‘Self’ is just the friction we feel when the loop gets moving. We aren’t the ‘image’ of some creator—we’re just the noise the machine makes. Like waves in the ocean: no one wave is the same, but we are all part of the same water. What designed the ocean? The planet, the gravity, the levels of elevation, and the water itself.

People want to believe in a ‘Designer’ because everything looks like it was built by some higher intelligence. And in a way, it was—but it has nothing to do with a ‘Boss’ and everything to do with dependent origination. It’s just cause and effect playing out until it looks like art."

[Vince]

The truth is, the ‘me’ that wants to exist has been ripped away from my experience a few times—once in a wicked motorcycle accident, once on a psilocybin trip, and a couple of times during deep meditation (Zen is dope for that).

Western philosophy is missing a huge piece of the puzzle that science is finally starting to call out: The Observer Effect. The only real way to solve the ‘Hard Problem’ is to have the experience of ‘No You.’ Trust me, it’s terrifying. I’ve spent years recalibrating what ‘Me’ even means.

We don’t experience a separate reality. We are reality from a localized perspective. I’m ‘Vince’ right now, but that’s just a vantage point. Think of it like this: experience comes in through the senses and projects itself right back out the same way. You can see the loop in ‘synchronicity’ or ‘deja vu.’ Those aren’t just cute coincidences; they are moments where reality aligns with your localized perspective. It’s the universe recognizing itself in the mirro

[seeds]

@Vince

Final Question for the Forum

If you believe you are a separate “I” observing a separate “World,” can you point to the coordinate where the “observer” stops and the “observed” begins? If that observable space of your mind has no edge, how can you claim to be separate from what you see?

I will attempt to answer the question of how our minds are separate from the rest of reality after I address something you mentioned in an alternate thread while arguing with Jupiter123 in your effort to get someone to point to the “boundary” of the human mind…

Vince wrote:

The thread isn’t ruined. This is a good way to understand the self and what it’s constantly trying to do…. Preserve its perceived existence… quite fascinating…. Especially when the “god” word gets thrown around… I love that lol

The “god” word is indeed problematic, for it carries with it the accumulated weight and negative baggage of all of the ridiculous mythological nonsense that has been handed down to us from ancient knuckleheads,…

…which, in turn, elicits knee-jerk groans and winces from atheists (such as yourself, I presume) whenever anyone dares to mention the word “God” in their arguments.

The irony is that those same atheists fail to recognize how utterly foolish they are to believe the infinitely more ridiculous notion that the blind and mindless (chance) meanderings of gravity and thermodynamics are somehow responsible for the unfathomable order of the universe, as opposed to something intelligent being responsible.

Now, I’m not suggesting that my own theory of God cannot be wrong,…

…however, if you can suspend your sense of incredulity for a few moments and at least be open to the “possibility” that the Creator of our universe might simply be the fully-evolved, fully-matured “ADULT” version of what we are…

(of what our minds / I Am-nesses are)

…I will then be able to explain what I believe is the best way to visualize what “…the boundary of mind…” is all about.

To do that I need you to picture your own mind as being a “spatial arena” that contains a “galaxy” (for lack of a better word) of the innumerable billions of thoughts, dreams, and mental images that you’ve accrued since the day you were born - on up to this present moment.

Next, I want you to look past that metaphorical “galaxy” of mental holography and try to envision the arena’s outer boundary.

Now of course you won’t be able to see an actual boundary to this imagined arena.

And that’s because just like the universe,…

(again, the “fully-evolved, fully-matured, ADULT version of our own minds”)

…the outer boundary of your mind will appear to be open and endless (infinite).

Nevertheless, its boundary can at least be inferred.

And that would be by reason of the fact that logic dictates that because your particular and uniquely personal mind literally did not exist, let’s say (to be safe) prior to 1930,…

…it therefore means that your mind had a beginning* when it was initially conceived within, and then birthed-out of, your mother’s womb.

*(And presumably [to appease the hardcore materialists] it will have an ending when you die.)

To which I ask - how much more of a delineating boundary can there be around one’s mind (separating it from reality in the ultimate sense) than that which is represented by the bounding brackets [ ] in the following illustration…

“…ETERNAL NON-EXISTENCE IN THE PAST - [ momentary existence in the present ] - ETERNAL NON-EXISTENCE IN THE FUTURE DUE TO DEATH…”

…???

And the point is that this living (previously non-existing) “spatial arena” that we call a “mind” is bounded (has a delineating boundary) by reason of the logical assumption that it is comprised of a “limited” (a non-infinite allotment) of the life essence…

(along with other necessary [but limited] substances)

…that make up the sum-total of each individual mind itself.

I am a separate mind, you are a separate mind, and God (again, the ADULT version of us) is a separate mind.

And in all cases these invisible mental boundaries should be perceived as the dividing lines between separate minds,…

…or, in other words, the point where one individual mind ends and another one begins.

And the only reason for why we are not completely separate from God at this very moment is because we are not yet “fully-born” from the living mental fabric of God’s “cosmic womb” (the universe).

Only through the process of death will we…

(our minds / our I Am-nesses / our souls)

…be birthed-out of these temporary - “placental-like” - structures that we call bodies and brains…

(which, btw, are left behind in this universe like some higher form of useless and discardable ^^^ “AFTERBIRTH” ^^^)

…and thus delivered into the higher context of reality (“True Reality”) where God and our ultimate and eternal form (the same form as God) will finally be revealed to us.

Clearly (to me, anyway), my attempt to envision the boundaries that exist between our minds and the mind of God is no different than what the materialists attempt to envision when imagining the boundaries that delineate the parallel universes in their “multiverse” theories - especially in the “Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.”

[Vince]

I am not an atheist, but I don’t believe in ‘God’ as a personified entity or an ‘Adult’ version of ourselves. I postulate an intelligence far beyond conceptual language—one woven through the fabric of totality.

This intelligence is so absolute that it has fooled the ‘ego’ into the belief that it is an independent ‘I’ that ‘owns’ its existence. In reality, the ‘I’ is a linguistic label used to navigate the loop of experience; it is not a thing outside of that loop.

You attempted to define the ‘boundary’ of the mind by pointing to a timeline (1930 to death). But those ‘brackets’ only apply to the ego-construct, not the space in which the ego arises. The mind is not bound to existence; the ego is bound to the mind. Your ‘spatial arena’ is not a container for a separate mind; the arena is the intelligence itself. Because the ‘I’ is just a thread in that woven totality—a movement of the stream rather than a separate object—your ‘invisible mental boundaries’ are a linguistic illusion. There is no ‘placenta’ to leave behind and no ‘True Reality’ to be birthed into. There is only the intelligence where all things arise and fall, and that intelligence has no edge to point to… so agree but I also disagree. Here’s the thing about me talking about myself as something that is not an illusion but also not the owner of this human experience… I have been out like a light… no me to be found and no experience to be had during a pretty bad motorcycle accident. Defib’d on scene and regained experience after a nice little ambulance ride… on top of that I have experienced “ego death” or more appropriately referred to aa ego dissolution… the experience of being was present but the me I thought I was wast reallY home just pure awareness of sensation of reality which is absolutely terrifying…. I’ve had this experience with psychedelic compounds inducing it and without during meditative practice. I’m not saying this allows me complete authority on what any of what we call being or reality is… I’m just stating what was experienced during these moments. Time was non existent. I’ve hit my head hard enough to experience a concussion strong enough that produced temporary amnesia during that moment time was also non existent… I literally couldn’t remember not just my name but what day or month it was. The experience left this feeling that was endless but it wasn’t. I simply fell and hit my head and what felt like hours of knowing nothing was just a couple of minutes. People talk a lot about hypotheticals and assumptions. I’m not talking about either one. I’m talking about actual lived experience. What was constant in all of this was experience until it was not. The time I spent completely gone after being resuscitated and scraped up off the road. God isn’t some being somewhere outside of what we are experiencing. If I would classify the truth of god it would be this. God is the experience and we are included in gods experience. We maybe saying the same thing but without direct experience of non experience (existence without knowing) then all there is are assumption

This is why “I” speak strongly of the “I” as not the owner but part of it… the self is not the body and not the mind. Buddha gave the best elongation of the self I have ever understood because I literally experienced parts of the whole missing. Look up the 5 aggregates that make up the self and tell me what part of this explanation is falsifiable.

As the saying goes, “The man with an experience is never at the mercy of a man with an argument.”

[Ichthus77 (Ichthus77 (formerly She™))]

Communication has a medium, method, and message. You don’t have an image/example of a person communicating with another person(s) without the original/model of the people who are (personhood who is) eternal communication.

The medium of communication itself is the whole universe of space and time, the method is Jesus fulfilling prophecy on the cross and resurrected in the sequence of time, and the constant message is active love despite changing and various circumstances.

[futureone]

@Vince

The Challenge: Locate the Boundary

I challenge anyone to investigate the observable space where your thoughts, imagination, and perceptions happen.

• Look for the exact “line” or “wall” where this mental space ends and the “external” world begins.

• In my own looking, I found no such boundary—only an endless everything where imagination and reality flow into one another without a seam.

Your visual field is a 180 degree FOV hemisphere. There is no tangible “seam”, you do not see a 360 globe with black on one hemisphere and vision on the other hemisphere. But there is a seam in that your visual field is only 180 degrees.

The “tangible seam” and “tangible boundary” between you and the external world is your occlusion field. If you are in a room, the room is occluding you from outside photons in the rainbow spectrum. And walls of the room block the transmission of these photons, making you only able to perceive the room’s photons.

You are not perceiving the actual room. You are perceiving the photons of the room. You are separate from the room, you are not the room.

Never are you the room. You are not the room. You see a 2D mapping of the rooms photon energy signature. You do not witness, observe, or see the actual room. You do not see the thickness of the walls, the inside of the walls, the molecular structures of the wall. You see a basic simplified version of the room that is missing features.

Your imagination sees a 3D videogame approximate reconstruction of the room, that is not the room and missing most of the features of the room.

[Vince]

I like resurrected in the sequence of time. To me that says we aren’t waiting for JC to return. He is here and now always as with god always here and now.

[seeds]

@Vince

I am not an atheist, but I don’t believe in ‘God’ as a personified entity or an ‘Adult’ version of ourselves. I postulate an intelligence far beyond conceptual language—one woven through the fabric of totality.

Yeah, I get that. You seem to be a “pantheist.”

Whereas I, on the other hand, am a “panentheist.”

However, to me, unlike “Panentheism,” “Pantheism” fails to offer any reasonable or plausible notion as to what aspect of this “universal intelligence” grabs hold of the fabric of reality and shapes it into the unfathomable order depicted in the examples I offered in Kropotkin’s thread, titled: On Metaphysics …

Instead, pantheism seems to present this “universal intelligence” as being some kind of non-focalized (cloud-like) phenomenon that, to me, is nothing more than the concept of “CHANCE” dressed up in a mother’s apron* …

*(You know what I mean - instead of something with conscious agency and self-awareness providing the teleological impetus and willful guidance which resulted in the unfathomable order of the universe, it was “Mother Nature” [aka, chance] that did it.)

Vince wrote:

I postulate an intelligence far beyond conceptual language—one woven through the fabric of totality.

And I agree with you on that point, Vince, for I too have postulated the existence of a universal intelligence similar to what you describe.

However, I humbly suggest that the reason why its intelligence is “…woven through the fabric of totality…” is because the only “totality” we are aware of (this universe) is created out of the living (mental) fabric of the intelligence’s very being, of which I tried to depict in the following illustrations…

As we ponder the presence of the multifarious lifeforms on Earth, we can clearly see the existence of varying levels of consciousness, as is loosely exemplified in the “ascending ladder of consciousness” in the second illustration.

However, the problem comes in thinking that the ascending ladder of consciousness stops at us humans, when, in fact, its highest rung (God) extends as far above our rung on the ladder as our rung on the ladder extends above the amoeba’s rung.

In other words, the incorporeal Creator (and owner) of this particular universe could be as far above us in scope, abilities, and consciousness, as we humans are above amoebas or flies.

Furthermore, the misunderstanding of reality is doubly problematic if one isn’t at least open to the possibility that life, mind, and consciousness has probably been evolving and ascending as far back as eternity itself.

In other words, what I am suggesting is that we (and even the Creator of this one particular universe) may simply be the most recent generations of a (life-begetting-life) process that somehow began so far back into the infinite past that it defies imagining.

Take, for example, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s “Omega Point” theory…

AI Overview

The Omega Point theory, originally proposed by French Jesuit priest and scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, is an evolutionary, theological, and philosophical concept suggesting the universe is progressing toward a final, ultimate point of maximum complexity, consciousness, and divine unification. It posits that all matter and consciousness are moving from an initial state (“Alpha”) toward this “Omega Point,” which represents a state of supreme, God-like consciousness.

…and then imagine said “Omega Point” as having already been reached, again, as far back as eternity itself, in which the “supreme God-like consciousness” was able to figure out how to replicate itself by conceiving its own familial offspring within itself,…

(“…For in him we live and move and have our being,…For we are also his offspring…”)

…I’m talking about the literal offspring of the “supreme God-like consciousness” who are each naturally imbued with the same potential and creative abilities as the Entity of whom they are the offspring of, as is metaphorically depicted…

(depicting us as the literal “seeds” of this higher Entity)

…in one of the above illustrations.

And that reminds me of a quote from Meister Eckhart…

Vince wrote:

This intelligence is so absolute that it has fooled the ‘ego’ into the belief that it is an independent ‘I’ that ‘owns’ its existence.

The only thing that this supreme intelligence has “fooled” us into believing is that this “dream-like” illusion that we are presently experiencing (the universe / objective reality) might be all there is to life and reality,…

…when, in fact, it is the metaphorical “vestibule” of our being that stands between our previous state of non-existence and that of our pending entrance into the vast and open cathedral (more at infinite garden) of “True Reality” that awaits us following the event of our second* and final birth…

*(“…Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again…”)

Indeed, I suggest that what awaits us (post death) is so beautiful, and so wondrous, and so full of eternal purposefulness for us, that it must be kept hidden from us so that we are not tempted to seek it out prematurely.

Vince wrote:

As the saying goes, “The man with an experience is never at the mercy of a man with an argument.”

And what happens if both of those men have an “experience” that leads them to polar opposite conclusions?

For I too have had an experience that led me to firmly believe that the owner and Creator of this universe does indeed exist.

I guess all we can do (as proper gentlemen having a philosophical conversation) is agree to disagree, for we both could be full of horse crap, right?

[Vince]

Yes… 100…. But your crap is much more intriguing to read. Thank you for an actual response that gives a new perspective instead of a complete picture that to me seems impossible until the midnight hour….

To your point about the ‘ladder’—perhaps we are describing the same architecture but using different blueprints. Where you see an ‘ascending ladder’ with a Creator at the top, I see the ‘fabric’ that the ladder itself is built upon. Maybe the ‘intelligence’ is so absolute that it can be both: the conscious guide you feel and the fundamental totality I sense.

If we are indeed ‘seeds’ in a vestibule, I’m happy to sit in the waiting room and compare notes until the ‘second birth’ clarifies which one of us was right—or if we were both just beautifully wrong

[niallm12 (Niall)]

As progeny of the 70’s, I think your illustrations are brilliant. I forgot it was you that did them @seeds

Proper old school art.

[Vince]

Yea I agree with Niall the art is wonderful. This stuff belongs on my wall. I love stuff like this that pushes me to open up thoughts for me to experience

[seeds]

@niallm12

As progeny of the 70’s, I think your illustrations are brilliant. I forgot it was you that did them @seeds

@Vince

Yea I agree with Niall the art is wonderful. This stuff belongs on my wall. I love stuff like this that pushes me to open up thoughts for me to experience

Thank you both for your kind words about my art. It is greatly appreciated.