5 Planes of Existence

[Terry Sampson]

Iirc he also has a categorization of being that includes emotions, which I reject for reasons given in the OP (Not a thing).

I'm pleased that you're still on speaking terms with me after my first post in this thread.
Here, I may be well off-track in understanding your goal, but the realm of the unconscious mind seems, IMO, to be so important that to dismiss it as irrelevant because it is not real seems like a premature decision. But what the heck? I'll play this round with you and see how and where it goes.

 

[WhyIsThatSo]

So, what is your model (or the one you favour)? And why is it better than mine?

There are 2 "below" us (hell, hades, sheol, the "underworld") whatever you want to call it
There is 1 here (earth)
There are 7 "above" us ( spiritual realms (heavens) of the cosmic forces or sons of the Demiurge )
There is 1 "above" the cosmic forces ( home of the Demiurge )
There is 1 "ABOVE" all ( as it contains all ).....the "Pleroma" (Fullness) and home (Kingdom) of the Father.

 

[Heyo]

I'm pleased that you're still on speaking terms with me after my first post in this thread.

You answered my questions and didn't try to derail the thread. When I put out an OP, I'm prepared to receive criticism (and called nuts).

Here, I may be well off-track in understanding your goal, but the realm of the unconscious mind seems, IMO, to be so important that to dismiss it as irrelevant because it is not real seems like a premature decision. But what the heck? I'll play this round with you and see how and where it goes.

My goal is to help make discussions about existence easier by providing categories of different states of existence. I don't exclude the "realm of the unconscious mind" (I think you are talking about what I call "illusion"?) but think that they are fundamentally different from the other categories. Categorizing is a tool for not comparing apples and oranges.

 

[Heyo]

There are 2 "below" us (hell, hades, sheol, the "underworld") whatever you want to call it
There is 1 here (earth)
There are 7 "above" us ( spiritual realms (heavens) of the cosmic forces or sons of the Demiurge )
There is 1 "above" the cosmic forces ( home of the Demiurge )
There is 1 "ABOVE" all ( as it contains all ).....the "Pleroma" (Fullness) and home (Kingdom) of the Father.

How does that help you to categorize things?
Where do you place a) a Platypus, b) the number pi, c) the constitution of the US, d) Harry Potter, e) lizard people?
Can you give examples of other things existing in those plains?

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

High School? How old are you, kid? I took my first and only course in GS back in the spring or fall of 1974, at San Francisco State University, when S.I. Hayakawa (the "Shining Public Face" of GS) was the university president. I've grown old, but a couple of things still stick in my mind:

• "The map is not the territory" - non-identity premise. Reality, or that portion of what we abstract from it, is not what we say it is.
• "The map is not all of the territory - non-allness premise. What we abstract from reality is far less than the reality from which we abstracted, and what we say about what we abstracted is not all than could be said, even if we had words to describe the abstraction.
• "Maps can be self-reflexive" - self-reflection premise. We can say things about things that we say about things.

Or something like that. At the time, the stuff I learn expanded my brain more than any drug I ever consumed. Ahhh, those were the days ...

took the course during the 76/77 school year, my senior year...I'll turn 62 a bit later this year...

Yeah, it was heady stuff to learn...but it was fun to realize that the stuff was showing up in some of the fiction I was reading (especially Dune...)...

 

[dybmh]

1. Reality
2. The plane of numbers and forms a.k.a. the plane of ideals
3. Constructs
4. Fantasies a.k.a. Fiction
5. Illusions

Question: where does Love, Trust, Competition, Justice, etc, fit in these 5 categories? Perhaps Constructs?

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

You answered my questions and didn't try to derail the thread. When I put out an OP, I'm prepared to receive criticism (and called nuts).
My goal is to help make discussions about existence easier by providing categories of different states of existence. I don't exclude the "realm of the unconscious mind" (I think you are talking about what I call "illusion"?) but think that they are fundamentally different from the other categories. Categorizing is a tool for not comparing apples and oranges.

my take: anything that can be categorized is a map of the territory/thing, and does not really exist except as that conceived entity. It is not even our experience of that entity.

 

[Heyo]

Question: where does Love, Trust, Competition, Justice, etc, fit in these 5 categories? Perhaps Constructs?

Justice is (at least partly) a construct, the others are "not things"; they are verbs. There s no such thing as love or trust. We do trust, we do love, but love as a noun is just a grammatical invention.

 

[TransmutingSoul]

Justice is (at least partly) a construct, the others are "not things"; they are verbs. There s no such thing as love or trust. We do trust, we do love, but love as a noun is just a grammatical invention.

Is not Love, or the act of Loving, the source of our life? Unless one may see Lust as the source.

Regards Tony

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

An important realization - but irrelevant as it only deals with our perception of existence, not with existence itself.

how do we know anything about existence itself, except through abstractions, which are our maps of the territory?

We experience things (including our emotions, imaginings, abstractions, etc.). But we do not experience physical reality, only our sensory impressions that arise from that interaction...how the 'real' affects our biological systems.

 

[Terry Sampson]

where does Love, Trust, Competition, Justice, etc, fit in these 5 categories?

Just an amateur guess, but I don't think Heyo's a fan or would be a fan of the Kabbala's Ein Sof, four Olams, and the Sefirot, no?

 

[WhyIsThatSo]

How does that help you to categorize things?
Where do you place a) a Platypus, b) the number pi, c) the constitution of the US, d) Harry Potter, e) lizard people?
Can you give examples of other things existing in those plains?

Well, you see.....that's the secret, because in every "plane of existence", NOTHING is "real"...nothing has come into true "existence"
yet , except the One that contains them ALL. ( of which we are part )

 

[bobhikes]

(Trigger warning: this is going to be a long and philosophical OP. If you are bored by this stuff, this OP is not for you.)

Does god exist? That question is currently unanswerable and will probably remain so for a long time or even never be answerable due to a lack of an agreed upon definition of "god". But what about the definition of "existence"? I want to suggest a classification of 5 planes of existence that make it easier to talk about existence.

1. Reality

Real are all those things that can be measured with a scientific instrument, repeatedly, objective and independent. Particles, forces and fields are real (and nothing else is). Reality is the subject of the "hard" sciences, physics, chemistry, biology, etc.​

2. The plane of numbers and forms a.k.a. the plane of ideals

This is taken from Plato's idea of ideals. But other than Plato, I don't call them "real". These are things that must exist by necessity. They are found by sapient beings, not constructed. Mathematicians and philosophers deal with ideals.​

3. Constructs

Things that exist only by consensus, like laws, nations or borders. This is the domain of lawyers, politicians and the "soft" sciences like sociology.​

4. Fantasies a.k.a. Fiction

Fantasies are shared ideas of the unreal. We accept that they are not real but we can talk about them as if they were real. We say that Dumbledore exists in the Harry Potter "universe". This is the realm of literature and lore.​

5. Illusions

The most unreal and hardly existing things are illusions. These are the things that exist only through a skewed perception like dreams and hallucinations. Unfortunately some people take them for real. When that happens, this is the problem of psychology.​

Not a thing

The English language allows us to substantivise verbs and adjectives. That creates artificial, only grammatical "things" that aren't. That's why I reject the idea to include a plane for emotions. Love is not a thing, it is something we do.​

?

1) In our reality everything is unique there a no two things exactly the same and everything is constantly changing unless kept in a vacuum or at absolute zero because of this all we have is scientific consensus which is arbitrary. If you are talking microscopic then for example things to the nano is acceptable. If we are talking houses then less centi is acceptable. If we are talking about the universe then less than light years is acceptable.

2) Numbers are made up as proven by Zeno's paradox and math's own laws. Zero is either a number or not a number depending on if you are adding, subtracting, multiplying or dividing(you can't do this). The square root of a negative number is a number time "j". As just a few problems.

3) Construct as the above argue everything is a construct an agreement to perceive something as part of a group based on an agreed upon tolerance. Depending on who you talk to the construct may fall apart. For example is Race Human or is Race Ethnic. Can you and a color blind person really see reality the same way. Why is your way right, some animals and insects see the world is a completely different way.

4) Fantasies do not have to be shared and would be impossible to share exactly as is reality.

5) Illusions are impossible to prove they don't exist for they surely do exist to the mind in the moment and the mind is what interprets all of reality.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Here are mine:
I don't believe in existence. I believe in experiences.

• External experiences. The physical and all that.
• The logic and math. That which makes rationally and abstractly sense.
• The intersubjective. That which I experience externally as other minds and how we interact, including their feelings as their subjectivity.
• The subjective. My feelings.
• Imagination. I learned that one from you.
• Objective reality, What it all is independently of my experiences. That is where God belongs along with objective reality as philosophical naturalism and the rest of metaphysics and ontology.

Regards
Mikkel

That is an interesting arrangement. The most interesting thing about it is that you have (rightly, I think) relegated "objective reality" to the end, and conceded that it is the one you can actually know the least about. And therefore, one must assume, the one that we can actually say the least about with any sort of authority.

We already know, for example, that the bees in your garden "see" the flowers there very differently than you do. Or we can remember Thomas Nagel's essay "What is it like to be a bat?"

The problem is that our only real access to "reality" is and must be subjective -- everything is filtered through our own senses and how they work, and through our own perceptions and beliefs. We are never, ever, totally objective, nor can we possibly be.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Well, you see.....that's the secret, because in every "plane of existence", NOTHING is "real"...nothing has come into true "existence"
yet , except the One that contains them ALL. ( of which we are part )

Be careful -- this one will trip you up!

When you discover that "nothing" is impossible (and understand what that means), you'll be on the verge of opening your mind in ways that you are so far incapable of.

 

[blü 2]

(Trigger warning: this is going to be a long and philosophical OP. If you are bored by this stuff, this OP is not for you.)

Does god exist? That question is currently unanswerable and will probably remain so for a long time or even never be answerable due to a lack of an agreed upon definition of "god". But what about the definition of "existence"? I want to suggest a classification of 5 planes of existence that make it easier to talk about existence.

1. Reality

Real are all those things that can be measured with a scientific instrument, repeatedly, objective and independent. Particles, forces and fields are real (and nothing else is). Reality is the subject of the "hard" sciences, physics, chemistry, biology, etc.​

2. The plane of numbers and forms a.k.a. the plane of ideals

This is taken from Plato's idea of ideals. But other than Plato, I don't call them "real". These are things that must exist by necessity. They are found by sapient beings, not constructed. Mathematicians and philosophers deal with ideals.​

3. Constructs

Things that exist only by consensus, like laws, nations or borders. This is the domain of lawyers, politicians and the "soft" sciences like sociology.​

4. Fantasies a.k.a. Fiction

Fantasies are shared ideas of the unreal. We accept that they are not real but we can talk about them as if they were real. We say that Dumbledore exists in the Harry Potter "universe". This is the realm of literature and lore.​

5. Illusions

The most unreal and hardly existing things are illusions. These are the things that exist only through a skewed perception like dreams and hallucinations. Unfortunately some people take them for real. When that happens, this is the problem of psychology.​

Not a thing

The English language allows us to substantivise verbs and adjectives. That creates artificial, only grammatical "things" that aren't. That's why I reject the idea to include a plane for emotions. Love is not a thing, it is something we do.​

What do you think? Would that make the discussion of the existence of gods and other things easier?

Always an interesting topic.

I think there are only two ways things exist.

Either they have objective existence (are part of reality, the world external to the self)

or they're subjective, arising from the functionings of the brain of the individual.

So I agree about your first category.

And I think all your other categories (including 'Not a thing') are just varieties of the subjective.

 

[Heyo]

Is not Love, or the act of Loving, the source of our life? Unless one may see Lust as the source.

Regards Tony

Yes - and no. Life is not a thing either. You can't determine whether something is living from a photo. Living is a process.

 

[Heyo]

Just an amateur guess, but I don't think Heyo's a fan or would be a fan of the Kabbala's Ein Sof, four Olams, and the Sefirot, no?

Independent of me being no fan, the Kabbalah is not philosophy, at least not the kind of philosophy to deal rationally with problems of existence.

 

[Heyo]

Well, you see.....that's the secret, because in every "plane of existence", NOTHING is "real"...nothing has come into true "existence"
yet , except the One that contains them ALL. ( of which we are part )

You have been mislead. You have stumbled into the philosophy section of RF. This is where we think and have rational arguments. Preaching isn't helping you here.

 

[Heyo]

And I think all your other categories (including 'Not a thing') are just varieties of the subjective.

I agree that the first divide is between objective reality and unreality. But things can be unreal in different ways. The existence of constructs like laws and borders have real life consequences whereas the consequences of the existence of fantasies are minute. If you can't distinguish between the two you'll be in trouble soon.