Inner Reality vs. Outer Reality

[Kendrah]

For the life of me, I can't remember were I've heard this (other then the Zen and buddist texts I read in the long lost past of mine) but someone lit a candle under me this weekend on this concept...

The concept being that the outter world around us is all illusion where upon the inner is the truth. In one sense I hold this true: if you can't find it within, you'll never find it without (but that's another issue.) To me, if the outer is an illusion, so is the inner. We define the outer by the inner and the inner by the outer (if that makes sense).

So I have a problem calling on an illusion and not the other. For those who have contemplated this, what say you and why.

Thanks, all'ya'll's. :)

[Valnorran]

If the outer world is illusion, then why do people on drugs jump out of windows convinced they can fly go splat? If the outer world is an illusion, then so am I. Thus, to me the illusion is real.

[Chesna]

I was wondering if they meant that our outer reality is based on our inner reality. The way I see it, is that our inner reality is what we know and feel and think, which gets played out into the outer reality, where everyone else is playing out there outer relaities. So, it maynot be thattheyare illussions, just millions upon millions of outer realities that get played out. The truth is in us, thus our inner realities.

Make sense??

No!?? That's ok.. it was all off the top of my head!!

Chesna

[Sibylle]

Fact is that we don't KNOW the "outer world" other than through the inner. What I mean is that we can never perceive "reality", as some people foolishly believe. Quite simply, our senses aren't equipped to deal with the amount of information, so they HAVE to make a selection. What the selection looks like very much depends on choice - optimists choose to perceive mostly that which they deem good, pessimists do the opposite, and others choose some good, some bad, and fool themselves into thinking they are "realists" (when really there's no such thing). Since our senses, and our perception, are individual and personal, we have no way of knowing what the world, or reality REALLY is like. We cannot perceive it in any other way than through that personal "filter".

My twocents... jeez, I'm one philosophical hag today.

Hugs!!

[Philbo]

According to Einstein, each of us carries with us our own personal time and space. He was one of the first scientists to explore the idea that reality is not objective, but subject to the point of view of the individual.

[Temptation]

Wow. Ok, I'm going to try and wrap my brain around this one.

We each have or own little personal inner world. We live in our inner reality 24/7. Everything that we feel, sense and think happens on the inside. There's no escaping it. We're all trapped inside our inner reality.

We perceive what happens on the outside and in the inner realities of those around us according to our own inner vision. Even though outside infuences affect us we react to them from the inside, each in our own unique way. Thus we rewrite what's really going on out there in a language that will make sense inside. We each have a different software to do this. The results will obviously vary greatly depending on how good we are at using the transaltion tools we've got.

The really amazing thing is that, somehow, in spite of it all, we still manage to connect and communicate with each other in a way that creates a common reality. Kind of like a buffer zone between to inner and outer reality. :)