The Nature of Reality

You made the statement, "Conscious thought has been documented as physically emerging from our emotions." I'm asking for you to explain that statement and the words contained in it. I don't have to explain anything.

 

We can only be conscious of what we can remember. Actively conscious. While we can react to stimuli without being conscious, as in reacting to a hot stove, we are not conscious of our reaction unless we can remember that reaction. Likewise, we can only remember what we have been conscious of.

Objects are never perceived without being filtered through the senses.
The apprehension of the external world and our notion of it is formed by our reaction to sensory input.

 

What was the rhetorical question?

 

SENSORY PERCEPTION AND THE NOTION OF OBJECTS​

Time to get down to meat and potatoes.
As Wolf Angel stated, "Reality is that which we are living in the moment."
But the question remains, who are we and what are experiencing in that moment?

The senses sense, or become aware of that which they sense. They cannot be separated from what they sense.
But what they sense has no real materiality other than what the senses can detect. Something has been sensed, but it isn't a separate, independent object. Without the "form" given to what is sensed, no object exists, only formlessness. The senses impart height, width, depth, color, smell, etc. to what is being perceived.
Nothing can be perceived without the senses and any seemingly independent object disappears if it cannot be sensed.
And by extension, if nothing is perceived, there is no one to perceive it.

 

I would say reality can be perceived, but what is perceived is filtered through the senses and social constructs.

 

".....there is at no time a stimulus external to the senses." That doesn't mean that something (which is not a thing until sensed) doesn't exist. Merely that the "something" that is sensed is not external to the senses. Both the senses and the "external" object exist together.

 

All sensations occur in the brain due to changes in the brain cells. But the sensations are felt not in the brain, but in the sense organs themselves.

And now we define reality: Reality is that which does not change.
In dreamless sleep there is no change. From the view of the sleeper nothing happens, no time transpires.
Dreamless sleep and its related states is the realm of the immutable self which doesn't change but experiences change. Being unchanging an individual, cannot experience reality, defined as that which doesn't change, as the individual s always changing...except for his or center of unchanging reality.

 

Objects only exist when they are perceived. When they are perceived they are thought of. As we can have only one thought at a time, we can only perceive one object at a time. As such we believe we perceive more than one object at a time due to memory. Rapid thoughts about rapid perceptions lead us to believe the perceived "objects" exist simultaneously. They do not.

 

Existence is. Of course existence doesn't rely on someone observing it.
But objects, as such, only exist when sensed. as Tyrson said, everything you perceive is already gone. Let's look at a table. We observe a certain manifestation of atoms and due to many factors that I won't get into now we perceive a table. Light strikes the table, some of it is absorbed, some is reflected into our eyes. Light travels at 186,282 miles per second and it takes from 50 to 13 milliseconds for messages to be sent from the retina to the brain.

What this means is the object you perceive is already gone, it has already changed. The finish has faded in the sun and the wood has become wetter or dryer, it has expanded or contracted, etc. we don't notice the changes but the table we perceive is different from the one that exists in the now moment.
Ah, you say but it's still a table! No, the thing you perceive as a table is really only a continually changing conglomeration of atoms that we identify as a table. It is a learned notion, nothing more.

 

To repeat, without perception nothing can be said to have length, breath, aroma, solidity, weight, etc. To be clear something exists, but it can not be differentiated from the sum total of reality until it is perceived and then given particular attributes. And remember the attributes that are given are always given to which was perceived in the past, as the very act of perception takes time, however short, and that which has been perceived has already changed.

 

THE BODY AND THE SENSORY FACULTY​

One's body is only apparent through the senses. One's body is only seen to be present when other objects are sensed.
Commonly man only knows of his or her awareness through the awareness of other objects. If other objects are not present, neither is the body. This leads to the false idea that the body is subjective, outside of the mind, in reality there is no separation.