Are we real?

[satay]

This is similar to the quesion that 'Awaiting' has asked in another thread. This is an interesting question to say the least.

An inquiring mind longs to find satisfactory answers to this and similar questions like is there a soul? is it apart from the body? is there God? Does he care about us? Is he only dreaming...etc etc.

It is my opinion that there are no logical answers to statisfy such longing. Only Knowledge of Brahman can break the 'fetters of the heart' and solve all doubts. This is the Sanatan Dharma view. The more a man's intelligence or capacity deepens, the more his heart is made pure, the more he will understand and appreciate the teachings of the rishis. These teachings have been preserved in the Vedas and Upanishads.

Knowledge is of two kinds. One is derived from the sense organs. This type of knowledge falls under the category of physical sciences. The second one is transcendent and is the subject matter of the Vedas.

A scientist seeks to understand the universe using logic and reason through his/her sense organs. The rishis on the other hand did not entirely depend on reason. They developed another faculty of understanding. This faculty is called BODHI or deeper conciousness.

The seeker of Brahmavidya wakens the subtle power of the mind by means of concetration and self control. Yoga, meditation, concentration all are means to get to this subtle part of mind.

Badarayana Vyasa, in the Brhama Sutras describes Brahman as that from which proceeds the origin, the sustenance, and the dissolution. It is Brahman alone that appears as the universe. All is indeed Brahman, the soul is Brahman, the no-soul is Brahman, Brahman is conciousness and bliss.

The upanishads discuss Brahman from three standpoints; as a theological dogma, as a mystical experience which transcends the senses and as a metaphysical reality established by universally accepted reasoning.

Even the greek philosophers Parmenides and Plato have asserted that objects are a mere show or a shadow of reality. Similarly, Upanishads declared that the world is maya and that empirical knowledge does not give true Knowledge.

Our experience due to our gross sense organs shows merely how things appear to be, not how they are in themselves.

OM Namho Narayana
OM Namho Shivya
Buddham Sharanam Gacchami

satay

[Abogado del Diablo]

Originally Posted by satay

It is my opinion that there are no logical answers to statisfy such longing. Only Knowledge of Brahman can break the 'fetters of the heart' and solve all doubts.

This is very similar to the Gnostic Christian teaching of awakening into Gnosis.

[earl]

Buddhism would definitely say we're "real;" only many of the things we usually take for reality are impermanent and not independently "self-" existing. You could say most of the Buddhist spiritual path is geared toward discovering what is "real" when you see past all that other stuff. Take care, Earl

[InLove]

Hi, Peace,

Yes, I believe we are "real". As individuals, we may all perceive that reality in different capacities.

Does "reality" care? I believe so. I believe so because I believe we are all connected to the Reality so awesome that it causes us to even ask these questions.

InPeace,
InLove

[satay]

Originally Posted by InLove

Hi, Peace,

Yes, I believe we are "real". As individuals, we may all perceive that reality in different capacities.

Does "reality" care? I believe so. I believe so because I believe we are all connected to the Reality so awesome that it causes us to even ask these questions.

InPeace,
InLove

We are real from the relative standpoint.

[17th Angel]

We are not real.... This... This is just some messed up dream of some twenty-seven eyed six legged bright pink and green alien being called Rodney..... When we sleep, it wakes up... When we wake up... It sleeps.

[Snoopy]

I'm real.

[Dondi]

Define real.

[I, Brian]

There seems to be quite a pervasive member of our being a "dream within a dream" - that our existence is a dream played in the subsconciousness of a Creator.

I believe I've encountered it in Hinduism, and also in some native pantheons, such as of the Bushmen of the Kalahari. Possibly Aboriginal Australians as well. Now reminded also of Plato's cave shadows analogy.

There's something persistent, almost persuasive, about the statement as a spiritual philosophical construct.

However, suggesting any concrete meaning from it seems a remarkable challenge.

We are here, we appear to experience the world in a conscience way. The natural reaction is to presume that conscience experience is entirely separate - we definite ourselves as "I" and separate ourselves from the world - rather than as a fragment of a greater whole.

[Snoopy]

Originally Posted by Dondi

Define real.

Well I’m guessing you don’t just want someone to look it up in a dictionary; you want to kick it around yes?!

Real to you? Real to me? Real to everyone? (i.e. is there just one real). I’m in the middle of making my world and you yours. When I die, my world will die (and with it, my reality). Ditto you.

Relative real: You typing at your keyboard. Me making a cup of tea. Absolute real: All living beings will die. Or will they?

If I have not attained awakening then I need to penetrate into the meaning of reality. How is this to be done? If our mind has determined us to be separate from the rest of the universe (as suggested by I, Brian) then we need to un-separate because there is one thing that no telescope can see, and that is itself.

s.

[flowperson]

Hmmmm...At a time in the past, and not so long ago, if someone were to tell you that you were not real if your conception took place in a petri dish and you grew into embryonic viability before being implanted into a female uterus to eventually be birthed in the usual manner, you might have agreed with them to a point. And that, my friends, began in the UK with the first test tube baby going on thirty years ago. She still lives as a real human, and is able to reproduce in the usual way I understand.

Without dispute the conditions under which conception took place were not "real" but were "artificial" according to the prevailing standards of the past. But as the technology of artificial insemination and implantation have progressed over time, it is not an out of the ordinary thing to begin a human life in such a manner if you have enough money and have had no success in having children in the conventional way.

About twenty years ago some of us began to realize that "reality" and "artificiality" judgements based upon traditional religious and moral codes were going to begin flying out the window. This has been due to the inexorable technological changes being made in all of our lives. These changes in perspective over the past 150 years require us to adjust societal views as to what is real or artificial. We no longer, most of us, live in nature as much as we live in artificial environments.

Think about it.

flow....

[flowperson]

Hi.

Of course as soon as I posted the above I ran across this. Does anyone really believe that just because something is made illegal that some idiot won't do it anyhow ? History proves otherwise.

flow....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/s...081755,00.html

[Tariki]

Originally Posted by earl

Buddhism would definitely say we're "real;" only many of the things we usually take for reality are impermanent and not independently "self-" existing. You could say most of the Buddhist spiritual path is geared toward discovering what is "real" when you see past all that other stuff. Take care, Earl

In my understanding, what is "real" can only BE, it cannot be thought or defined. Earl - in 2005!! - seems to point this way. We are real in as much as we obviously are, yet we have no experience of the potentials of our "reality" because of misconceptions, "viewpoints" and illusions........because more often than not we "think" our life rather than live it - and we "think" it as a succession of anticipations and epitaphs!

Buddhism, concerning the "real", speaks of the "middle way", not a third position lying between two extremes but a no-position that supercedes them both. As Thomas Merton said concerning the Buddhist question of the nature of the "true/real" self, the Buddha's aim was not to give a "final" speculative answer but to be free from all theories and to know, by experience, "the nature of form and how form arises and how form perishes".

It does seem to me that it this question of what truly constitutes the Person - of what is meant by the word - that should be at the centre of future Inter-faith dialogue.

[Snoopy]

I think the OP's question is eliciting answers on different kinds of real! As in real as opposed to artificial and real as opposed to delusion. And that's just for starters!

Following on from Tariki; Thomas Merton again:

The truth makes us real.

[Postmaster]

"Cogito ergo sum" (I think therefore I am).