How do you verify something outside your own mind?

a reply to: crowdedskies

My uncle, as a theosophist and mystic, would always say "aim for the highest", but he always did it from within a philosophy. He was always disecting the world into planes and judging everything accordingly.

When I started to see for myself, I found the world was nothing like the books said it was. Admittedly, I love going to all those places that one is warned not to go a well as nice places, but bowing down is how humans operate. Everyone who is not human have a different system. While survival of the fitest is true, there is a well developed etiquette of mutual respect and non trespassing. There is an informal honor system that is favor owed for favor done. Personally, I use hugs as currency (seriously, and interesting hugs too) to nullify debts owed. There is no Law of Karma, only consequences of action.

I do wonder if higher and lower are a human arrangement of perspective. My verification for this is my own observation. Plus the consensis among non-human beings is that it is so. So in keeping with Op's post I think there can be outside verification, the minds of others and observation.

By the way, the gods I fought were just deluded people with followings amoung the dead. But they can be a bother when they are on a "mission from God". The negative side of the higher/lower thinking. Sadly, they think themselves invincible and will fight in the name of God to the end.

(grin) just out of interest. If humans have four 'cylinders' and some entities have one, there are, within reach of humans, entities with eight, sixteen and twentyfour 'cylinders'.

I'm not exactly sure what you meant by "cylinders" but some of my 'girls' (entity friends) seem to.

Anyway, I waffle on sometimes.

originally posted by: Whatsthisthen


(grin) just out of interest. If humans have four 'cylinders' and some entities have one, there are, within reach of humans, entities with eight, sixteen and twentyfour 'cylinders'.

I'm not exactly sure what you meant by "cylinders" but some of my 'girls' (entity friends) seem to.

Sorry, I should have elaborated. In my esoteric understanding everything is fourfold and also aligns with the four letters of the Tetragramaton.

The best illustration was given to me by an old qabalistic teacher a long time ago. He compared it to a car running on all 4 cylinders. Sure, we have six cylinders now, but still his example brought home the notion. It was easy for me to imagine my little old banger of a car (in my student days) firing on only one cylinder because the other 3 spark plugs were deficient.

Having these four aspects as an incarnated being gives us the edge over all entities . That does not mean that we are automatically stronger but it means that we are complete and potentially stronger. This is not to say you should get close to the Archangel Michael (Fire) ; it would be like standing in the middle of a Nuclear bomb, even if he represents only one of four aspect.

You mentioned Theosophy. I met a few Theosophists. Their approach is quite scientific and mind orientated. Not for me.

a reply to: crowdedskies

Thanks for the clarification.

If I follow correctly, cylindars equal the four elementals. Nice plain english illustration, I like your thinking.

Whereas I was thinking in aspects.

While entity friends were seeing things slightly different again.

Okay, I follow now.

I know a little about qabalistic concepts from time with the AMORC and I have seen the effects of the darker side of magic on the unseen.

I'm not knowledgeable esoterically in a human sense but I get to see heaps of interesting things from the entity point of view, through their awareness.

So through their eyes, if incarnate humans have four aspects, I am informed the Sun has eight aspects. Incidentally, non incarnate humans have the potential for eight aspects too. Which gives a hint to the origin of humans here

The big Spirit entity that has the Sun as a physical body has twentyfour aspects.

In interstellar space the entities get bigger still, but the number of aspects differ, the big manta rays looking critters who are big brothers to our cetaceans have six aspects. They also sing like whales do.

The ones I spend time with just say many aspects, my 'girls' have the four like humans do, probably because of the same ancestry as the human container (physical body we live in).

Having written that, I think my definition of entity might be a little broarder then most people would use.

I know what you mean by the scientific and mind oriented view, it is not for me either, partly why I dumped the thinking for a more emotional approach. One makes more friends that way.

a reply to: Whatsthisthen

I don't think there can be more that 4 basic aspects in our manifested world . The rest flow from them.

I am not sure who your entity "girls" are. My imagination is going wild here and some paintings are already taking shape in my mind.

a reply to: crowdedskies

I quite agree, only the four here in the manefest world. I mind sorta goes blank when I try to conceive more then the standard four. Might be higher levels or octaves. Come to think of it, I haven't had much to do with elementals.

But usually this sort of thing is said now and years later it makes sense. I have enough trouble fitting the idea of dimensions into the scheme of things. I wonder if other dimensions actually exist.

The designation 'girls' is a catch-all, mostly because it is an endearing term that helps build a comfy interactive interface between two different consciousnesses. Took years to build the relationships to where a human is trusted.

Interestingly, I only come across masculine when I focus on the Solar side of things.

originally posted by: crowdedskies
a reply to: Whatsthisthen

I don't think there can be more that 4 basic aspects in our manifested world . The rest flow from them.

I am not sure who your entity "girls" are. My imagination is going wild here and some paintings are already taking shape in my mind.

The 'painting' (image) that is appearing is the manifested - there can only ever be the one that is - there is not 4.
The manifest (that which is appearing) is constantly appearing different - but the screen on which it appears never changes.

a reply to: Itisnowagain

'day Itisnowagain,

The 'painting' (image) that is appearing is the manifested - there can only ever be the one that is - there is not 4.

Who or what is the 'one'?

The manifest (that which is appearing) is constantly appearing different - but the screen on which it appears never changes.

Do you mean screen = mind?

I understand everything is in a state of change, one can see that in the world around us. But I know not of the screen.

a reply to: Whatsthisthen

I understand everything is in a state of change, one can see that in the world around us. But I know not of the screen.

What is seen is changing. What is seeing is not changing - the screen of awareness.
The screen can never be known. The screen is the unconditional space that allows the appearance to appear.

Like the tv screen - it is the backdrop to all the colour and movement - but gets overlooked - it has to be present for any apparent appearance.

a reply to: Itisnowagain

It's much more fun for me to just take those I meet as they are. While disecting what is is the way of the human mind, it doesn't need to be that way.

One makes more friends when one doesn't disect them.

a reply to: Whatsthisthen

The thing is; you cannot do anything about what arises in awareness because there is no you separate from what is arising.
The seer and the seen arise as one seamless happening.

originally posted by: Whatsthisthen
a reply to: crowdedskies

I quite agree, only the four here in the manefest world. Might be higher levels or octaves.

Perhaps more like sub groups than octaves. Octave would be synonymous to same things at higher/lower level.

The designation 'girls' is a catch-all, mostly because it is an endearing term that helps build a comfy interactive interface between two different consciousnesses. Took years to build the relationships to where a human is trusted.

Oh bummer. Here I was thinking about pretty girls with nice tails.

Seriously there is a lot going on inside our psyche; lots of inhabitants so to speak. All in our psyche also reflected outward except they often have names.

a reply to: crowdedskies

Don't dispair crowdedskies, the cute girls with tails and wings are there. So are the wood nymphs and others.

It's odd, I find many feminine and females. Males are few and far between. I wonder if the feminine is the original archetype and the division into male and female developed later. It seems so from observation.


The elementals are a wonder. Perhaps as living humans in this physical world there are only four. That they are the four colours of the artistic pallet?

When one of the girls said humans in the higher world have the potential for eight, perhaps she was suggesting there is a future where we can experience a world with more colours, shall we say.

She makes these little statements from time to time and I get the feeling she enjoys enlargening worlds

While writting this, I can see the Sun in the physical yet also surrounded by delicate looking and undulating ribbons, finer materials and a Being's upper half. Along with " There is far more then you realise".

I'll keep an open mind I think.

But back to the important things, yes there are cute girls with wings and tails, wood nymphs bathing in the woods, and as a fellow ATS gentleman pointed out to me just today, Valkyries too.

I think, the only way to verify somerhing outside the mind would be, if was completely True. In other words, Divine intervention. 'Seek, and ye shall be found.' We can't go to Truth unless it comes to us, but it won't come to us unless we're tunning towards it. Seems like a paradox, it is. Its called: Cooperation. reply to: Profusion

Ah, but you see, you just simultaneously disproved yourself , and answered OP in one fell swoop, and here i am to point it out. I freely admit, its a bastard, take it or leave it: 'the screen can never be known. the screen is the unconditional space(nice term you got there for nothing/everything, I'll take it) in which the appearance appears that right there is knowing the unkowable, you literally just said it. By knowing the uunkowble, one becomes unknowable, in spite of ones knowness.(Being and not, nothing and everything, there is no difference and that is the key. Realizing this, you know: since everything is nothing, too then my mind is nothing, too.

Its a concept, you see, that describes a lack of everything, including(of course) these words, this computer, me and you, even concepts themselves. But, just as you can't have everything without nothing you can't have nothing without everything either. This is how you verify outside the mind: by realizing that you can know the unkowable, because its a concept! A paradoxical concept, that sets us free! Only, I realize now: it sadly can be denied, but only by our own selves. To quote a friend'we[humans] judge ourselves too harshly. The way out of the rabbithole, is simply by realizing that it's endless, or all of everything, which means its starless, or all of nothing!

Only, since these are all paradoxes why not throw one more in for good measure'the beginning and the end of the limitless. This is because nothing is obscured by everything, and yet everything is surrounded by nothing. The only way to start and end everything, is with nothing! So you see the paradox aka rabbit hole never ever ends, until you realize its nothing. Of course, that realization flies in the face of,literally everything, so unlesa youre willing to duscount literally everything else but this one fact, you cant join it. To use a chriatian metaphor'run the opposite way of the world' guess what the world is everything else too. Only way out, us nothing which, cant be experienced directly with our understandings, howevrr i do think i did a helluva good job trying to point. Well see. y 'a reply to: Itisnowagain

Am I crazy, or am i right? You Decide! (Hence why i said, its a bastard.) Also, thats why it takes, not great faith, bit Absolute faith! After all, your literally placing your faith in the unkowable, because you catch a tiny glimpse.

Completely right OP: 'one can know god, but obly subjwctively' thats why it has to be a cooperation, between the subjective and the objective. By definition, its the Objectives game. Guess what, i just thought of? I cant think of anything more objective, than nothingneas itaelf. a reply to: 5leepingWarrior

a reply to: Profusion

I think you can "verify" things by comparing and contrasting the perceptions of others or of technological devices.

BUT

Even there, I believe it is of limited use in confirming an objective reality. I don't think I can be totally sure anything exists at all, so I have let go of that notion. I decided it doesn't matter.
Even a collective hallucination would indicate a common perception upon which we can all meet, and interact with.
So I try to discern my personal perspectives from collective ones, but even that can be a thin or vague line.
There is, for example, a collective world view I see from in my american identity, that is collective- when I am amongst other americans, we see the same way.
Yet, when I am amongst french people only, it is considered my own, very individual and uncommon (therefore false for them) view of reality.

The second flaw in the OP's argument (the first flaw is that it is guilty of solipsism) is his assumption that something can be outside the mind, raising the question of how the mind can ever verify its existence. NOTHING is outside the mind in its widest sense. Anything that appears new is merely that which has been outside the awareness and past experience of the conscious mind. EVERYTHING is knowable in principle. You just have to move beyond the concepts acquired by experiences based upon the five senses.....The contention that what can be known and verified by one mind cannot be proved to exist for all minds - so that "everything exists only in your mind" - implies that the universe is ultimately your own private hallucination. If this were true, there would be no reason why all out private dream worlds would have anything in common.

Those who fall back on believing that their universe is ultimately subjective fail to understand how this is consistent with the scientific enterprise of repeatable experiments confirming universal laws of nature unchanging in time. We all have different windows on the world. The fact, however, that they are different does not imply that the "world" is not objective because it is only viewed through a subjective window shaped by ideosyncratic experiences. The fact that all these windows can construct a consensus reality in the first place is not trivial. It should not be possible at all if "reality" were merely the gestalt fabricated by the majority. Don't let us dismiss the classical notion of "objective reality" because our window on it has to be subjective, or observer-dependent. Otherwise, we may as well regard ourselves as nothing better than psychotic inmates of an insane asylum. Those who argue that reality cannot be known because we can never move beyond our individual experiences of it forget that, as Plato explained, those experiences are but shadows cast on the cave walls of our consciousness by invisible events outside it. It is the purpose of scientists to understand the behaviour of the shadows (phenomena). It is the aim of the mystic to know those events in their own terms (Kant's "noumena"). It is the purpose of the most evolved soul to be able to maintain both perspectives.

How do you verify something outside your own mind when verification is an act of the mind?

My biggest problem with all religions and most belief systems is summed up in the implications of that question.

Your logic is flawed. That was the very reason why religions like Hinduism started. When philosophers realized their search for truth was limited by the senses they turned their attention inwards using meditation. They soon learned by increasing prana through the meridians they could witness a greater truth invisible to the normal senses.

Today our scientist have more tools at their disposal. But the deeper they pierce through maya (great illusion) using theories like quantum mechanics, the stranger reality appears. Then you have theories like string theory that propose we are merely vibrations on a single brane inside a bulk (hyperspace),

The bottom line is you don't have to believe in any religious books. You are free to learn meditation and search for a greater truth for yourself.