How do we conceive reality?

[Valjean]

You forget that it is an inward journey. Nobody is handing it to you on a silver platter. Everything has been revealed. Western and eastern religions converged and sprouted ideas over a century ago.
Secret societies containing this wisdom are centuries old.

You forget the laws of nature.
Does a dog choose to be a dog?
Does a man choose to eat?
Do magnets choose to bounce away from one another? (I do not know the wording)
How do you assume God had any choice beyond what was natural? You don't.

God is the natural force behind everything.

A dog doesn't choose to be a dog, But a dog chooses to eat. As a sentient being it has intention.
Magnets obey the blind, automatic, intentionless laws of nature. They are not sentient.

I think I see where you're coming from, though. My confusion was due to your use of "God" and your apparent imputation of intention or purpose to "Him."

God is almost always depicted as a personage; as having a mind, intentions, likes, dislikes, wants, &c.
"God" is not what makes magnets repel or attract, or the sun to shine or matter accrete into planets. These are the blind, unintentional Laws of Nature, this is physics and chemistry. There's no Personage involved.

There is Nature and there is God. If you personify Nature -- conceive of it as a sentient, intentional person -- you have created a God.

I'm getting the impression you're talking about a mystical understanding, or a subjective "revelation" by mystical sages. This is all well and good, but if you start bringing in sentience or intention you confuse us.

Hindus have a a concept called Brahman. It's featureless Reality; Nature non-personified. Brahman has no purpose, desires or intentions. Impute any of these qualities to it and then you have God -- Ishwara.

 

[Valjean]

As parts of a greater, transcendent whole? (Just clarifying "gestalt")

Yes, pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that can only be grokked in their totality.

 

[Segev Moran]

Must we break down reality into its individual ports and study it selectively? Or collectively?
How do you do it?

Your perception of reality is done using your brain.
You have billions of neurons creating an "electrical networks" in your brain.
Everything you feel, smell, see, hear and taste is being processed by those neurons.
This processing of information, generates patterns in your brain. those pattern are what makes your brain "understand" reality.

A blind man have a very different perception of this reality. as a result of less information coming from the sight sensors, more neurons can "handle" the other information and a whole new set of patterns is generated.

Those patterns are what helps your brain understand colors, smells, faces, animals and every bit of information you have ever encountered.

As many in the past theorized, and recently it is backed up by a scientific understanding, our brain has a very unique ability to "program" this neural network.

We (humans) learned how to manipulate it and control it (freedom of choice can be a great way to describe it).

So humans, have the ability to completely change the way they perceive the information they absorb. this literally makes you able to change your reality. not in the sense of controlling nature or something like that, rather changing the way you process the information.

Animals lack this ability as it seems. interesting.

 

[PureX]

A dog doesn't choose to be a dog, But a dog chooses to eat. As a sentient being it has intention.
Magnets obey the blind, automatic, intentionless laws of nature. They are not sentient.

We don't know that they are blind or intention less. As the cells of plants expand or contract with the heat of the sun, they cause the plant to change it's orientation to the sun's rays, enabling the plant to better photosynthesize the sunlight it receives. We would not label the plant "sentient" and yet the plant is deliberately moving in such a way as to benefit itself. And it is doing so simply by "obeying the intention-less laws of nature". The plant expresses a specific intention as it obeys those supposedly intention-less laws.

Those same "intention-less" laws have created the human brain, which we hold to be the very expression of sentience and intent.

The point being that the pathway to cognitive will comes through, and then transcends, natural law. It is not a separate and different existential phenomena.

 

[Sir Doom]

Must we break down reality into its individual ports and study it selectively? Or collectively?
How do you do it?

I am incapable of perceiving reality in its entirety as I simply lack the sensory input necessary to do so. If I did not compartmentalize even the small piece of reality that I perceive into easily manageable chunks, I would be bogged down in mountains of inconsequential details.

Imagine, I awake on this fine August morning and meet my neighbor remarking, "Autumn has come early! The leaves are everywhere!"

This would be an utterly incomprehensible remark! Autumn? Leaves? What are these things? Small pieces of reality separated from the whole. Perhaps on a cosmic level this is not such a problem. What matter to all of reality is a conversation on weather? But such is the way with everything on a cosmic level. If you pull your imagined perspective far enough away from perceptual reality, nihilism is what you'll find. All the universe is nought but a speck and you and I barely even specks within that. Take comfort in our limited viewpoint. There is only madness and despair on the other side. That, of course, is merely my opinion.

 

[Brickjectivity]

I am incapable of perceiving reality in its entirety as I simply lack the sensory input necessary to do so. If I did not compartmentalize even the small piece of reality that I perceive into easily manageable chunks, I would be bogged down in mountains of inconsequential details.

Imagine, I awake on this fine August morning and meet my neighbor remarking, "Autumn has come early! The leaves are everywhere!"

This would be an utterly incomprehensible remark! Autumn? Leaves? What are these things? Small pieces of reality separated from the whole. Perhaps on a cosmic level this is not such a problem. What matter to all of reality is a conversation on weather? But such is the way with everything on a cosmic level. If you pull your imagined perspective far enough away from perceptual reality, nihilism is what you'll find. All the universe is nought but a speck and you and I barely even specks within that. Take comfort in our limited viewpoint. There is only madness and despair on the other side. That, of course, is merely my opinion.

I agree and add that human Psychology is fragile. A good crack on the head, and for a little while reality shrinks to a dot then nothing. This has happened to me several times. It looks a lot like one of the old TV sets getting turned off.

Must we break down reality into its individual ports and study it selectively? Or collectively?
How do you do it?

I dont presume we exist. The world we think we see and we ourselves could just exist as potential things. Look at what Einstein found out. Look what John Dalton found out. Where's the beef in the atom? Where are the signs that we have been created or formed or crystallized? Everything is empty, form without substance. Even so we continue as if existing, but when it comes to the opening post I point out the assumption is a questionable one.

 

[Windwalker]

Must we break down reality into its individual ports and study it selectively? Or collectively?
How do you do it?

How do you conceive of any experience? Isn't reality a subjective experience?

 

[Sir Doom]

I agree and add that human Psychology is fragile. A good crack on the head, and for a little while reality shrinks to a dot then nothing. This has happened to me several times. It looks a lot like one of the old TV sets getting turned off.

I've been choked out during combative training more than once and yes, I know that old TV feeling, well!