There is a interesting theory that we are living in a simulation. Maybe, we are just a brain in a jar, hooked up to a lot of electrical inputs. Or maybe, we are all in god's computer, and think we are alive, until god returns from getting coffee and reboots the server.
There is all kinds of evidence that supports this. Like, the universe has lazy rendering. Meaning, it doesn't render things unless it is actually being looked at. (See extensions of the double slit experiment) Atoms aren't there, unless someone is trying to interact with them. A tape filled with random beeps doesn't have anything on it until someone listens to it.
All of these things are things a game programmer uses to make their game run faster without affecting game play.
So, instead of being living, breathing creatures, running around in a real universe on a real planet, we could just be in a pod, hooked up to the net.
The Matrix
How many dreams/levels did Neo have to wake up from before he was in the real world? Was he in the real world then?
- So, Mr. Anderson thought he was living in the real world of late 90s Chicago (Filmed in Sydney).
- And then he was awakened to their being more to this reality. Like, men in black, and robot bugs that can live inside you.
- And then he takes the red pill and wakes up in a pod, gets flushed, finds out that his whole life was in a simulation.
- Then he meets the Oracle and learns of destiny
- Then he meets the Architect and learns that this has repeated at least 5 times
- Then he meets the Computer which is seemingly running all the simulations
- But, really the Computer is just part of this world, and there is more
Did you notice that each of the trilogy starts off with the sacred masculine being asleep, and the sacred feminine being in danger?
If you talk to any Rinpoche (named Buddhist) they will talk about all of these layers. (and more) Many say that these monks are looking for Nirvana, however, that is the last describable earthly step in waking up. The meditation of Nirvana is about getting through absolute bliss to the other side.
Most humans are only aware of awake and asleep. Never even realizing the depths of each of those states, let alone think that there are more states.
The universe is recreated 22 trillion times per second
You could say that our lives are like individual pictures on a movie reel. Each moment the universe is created, and then collapses, and then is recreated, and then collapses…
This is very analogous to TV screens/computer monitors.
Our movement is like a video game characters movement. First you are at x, and the next frame you are at x+1…
And, what really messes with people is that the next frame doesn't have to flow from the last one. But it is, usually, for you to not get freaked out. However, many people have been in an accident where they find themselves where they were not a moment before.
Further, talking about accidents, many people watch an accident happen in very slow motion. Seeing all kinds of frames, that are usually just a blur.
So, you take all this, and it is very easy to say that we are in a simulation. It is so computer game like, that this must be a game.
This is a simulation, but so what?
Being in a dream does not mean that the world you wake up in is not real.
You may be able to totally prove that this world is a simulation, still, you put your hand on a hot stove, and it hurts. There are real consequences to your actions in this world. Simulation or not.
Even when you become aware of your "higher self" (that part of self that lives outside of space and time. You might call it the person playing the video game, and you are the character in the video game.) you know that you are still very much in this "reality".
The best you can work out is that you cannot quit the game, and you are going to stay repeating this level until you master it and beat it. So, you better take this "simulation" very seriously, like your life depended on it.
The thing is, this world may indeed be a simulation, however, it is a VERY REAL simulation. And the consequences of this are far deeper than we can comprehend.
We have a lot more control over this world than Modern Materialistic Science would have you believe. And this is why Modern Materialistic Science was shoved down our throats. To keep us from comprehending our own world.
And, although this world could be described as a simulation, it was a simulation created by you and for you. And you, that part that started this universe, wants to play this game through. And so you, the avatar, does not have any way of just quitting. (if you die, by your own hand, you will wind up back in a pretty similar experience, except that you will be worse off then you are now. (Taking your life hurts. And you will continue to feel that pain, until you heal it. You, in the next life, who can't remember, heals what you did to yourself last time)
The one good thing about thinking of this life as a game, is it allows you to focus more on what really matters, and not the repetitive tasks of maintaining your life. You don't have to be so serious. And that helps. Laughing really helps.
I laugh a lot. I suspect we are in some sort of simulation or video game to which we don't know all the rules.
I think it's often too easy to adopt the attitude of not taking life seriously anymore because we realize that it's a simulation or a dream of sorts that's quite insubstantial. But this is only a half truth, especially from a higher point of view. The simulation is also a testing ground or a gateway of sorts to other levels of reality.
It is indeed to easy to not take life seriously.
The yogis found that they had to meditate on life being completely non-serious, and then to meditate on life being completely serious. Doing one and not the other leads to bad things happening.
Definitely, some level of balance is needed between these two states, similar to how balance is sort in many other aspects of existence.
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STOPYou ever hear of parsimony? The principle of parsimony is that the simplest explanation is most likely to be true. So, ask yourself, is it more likely that when you stub your toe you were clumsy and your body feels pain because that alerts you to damage and encourages you to be more careful, or that some vast AI engine somewhere is torturing another AI program (you), and that every aspect of reality is a fiction deliberately constructed for some reason, and that some whole actual reality also exists that hasn't been fabricated that this simulation is written in?
Yeah, naw. There's so much additional complexity necessary to try to make this a simulation of reality that it's vastly less likely than that what we see is what we get. Now, we are just clever monkeys that evolved the ability to guesstimate the trajectory of a rock thrown at fleeing prey well enough to usually eat of a day, so we don't have UV sight, or vast, planet sized brains to understand this big universe we are part of. We only have a little view of things and have to figure out the rest as best we can.
That's what makes it fun.
Thanks!
Yes, except some weird anomalies.
Quantum science finds that objects never really touch.
Some people do not get hurt when shot.
And this one brain surgeon tested how fast the nerves transmit information to the brain.
He found the spot in the brain that registered pain from pricking a finger.
When he triggered the spot in the brain, there was a noticeable lag from stimulation to when the patient felt it.
When he pricked the finger, the patient felt it immediately, there was no discernible lag.
Like I said, we have woefully inadequate brains - if that's even relevant - to understanding the universe. We're lucky to be able to tie shoes.
You wanna know something weird about pricked fingers? When I was a kid in Alaska the beach was my main playground. We lived right on it. At really high tides the water would lap up against the basement door, and if that happened to coincide with a storm, the basement would flood. Once a fair sized log actually bashed the basement door open, and after the storm subsided Dad had to cut it up with a chainsaw to be able the shut the door again.
The beach was all large boulders, from the size of an easy chair, to the size of a small car, and in some places there were outcroppings of basaltic bedrock, like the cabins and decks of ships proudly rising up above the lesser rocks around them. Lot's of tidepools. For fun we would catch the little fish in the tidepools, tiny sculpins from an inch to several inches long. We came up with all sorts of ways to catch them, from little harpoon guns made with clothespins, matchsticks, and sewing needles, to tiny little fishing rods with thread strings to which bait was attached, to the good 'ol snatch with a bare hand. That last was the most challenging, because these sculpins had absolutely amazing burst speed, and reaction time that was ridiculously daunting, so that was my favorite. I was always trying to best the best, as it were, to be faster than these faster little fish.
The bait we used to attract them lived all over the rocks at low tide: the small snail-like limpets, like the Chinese hats from cartoons, and in fact that's what we called them. Chinese hats. I learned to quickly remove the limpets from the rocks they were on, which was almost as challenging as catching the sculpins, because they could suck down tight to the rocks very quickly and did (which is why there were any limpets at all, because most everything wanted to eat them, so if they were slow to suck tight to the rock, they were something's lunch), and I also learned how to scoop them out of their shells with a flick of my thumb, like flipping a coin.
One day I was going sculpin fishing and got a nice limpet. I scooped it from it's shell with my thumb. To my surprise the shell shattered. It must have been weak or something. Well, I had the bait, so I dropped it into a likely spot in a little tidal pond and lurked over it with my ready hand, like a heron or an egret poises still above the water, waiting to stab down and catch their dinner, as I awaited my prey. As I lurked motionless, I saw a drop hit the water below my hand. That was odd, because it wasn't raining, and I hadn't gotten wet. The drop was inexplicable.
I turned my hand and looked at it intently. I saw my thumb was bleeding profusely, the razor sharp conchoidal fracture of the hard shell had sliced deep into the pad of my thumb so easily I hadn't even felt the pressure of it pushing through the meat of my thumb. I hadn't felt it at all, despite I was deeply cut and bleeding.
But I suddenly felt it then! As soon as I saw I was bleeding, the sharp, burning pain of the cut was very much noticed. It really hurt! Now, I was only eight but I instantly realized that the pain of the wound was entirely in my mind, that it was only because I could see that I was cut that it hurt at all, as it hadn't hurt at all until I saw it. I tried to not hurt from the cut.
No such mastery of my mind was potential to me. Now that I saw the cut, I hurt - a lot - and no matter that I knew the pain was all in my mind, I couldn't not hurt by any mental mastery of my mind. I ran back to the house, clutching my oozing thumb hard enough to slow the blood loss like a tourniquet of fear, crying, for Mom to kiss it and make the pain stop by putting a bandage on it. And that's exactly what happened (I don't recall the kiss, which would have been kinda gross, because it was bleeding pretty good). The bandage substantially reduced the pain, and after a bit I could even ignore it.
All these sensations and realizations made considerable impression on my young mind, and have informed me ever since. I am convinced to this day that explains why people shot in the head multiple times never even felt it, because they didn't see it, and other such unseen, unnoticed injuries were similarly not painful. I was also convinced that a spiritual guru could decide to not feel pain, but that such mastery of my mind was something I hadn't achieved, and never expected to, because such self mastery was like wishing I could fly and flying.
I did attain a degree of self control though. I didn't have to cry when I got injured and could maintain my composure well enough to handle cleaning and dressing a wound, and whatever extraction or such that needed to be done. But wounds didn't not hurt, and I still reckoned it should be within my power to control whether they did or not. Lacking that self mastery is an indictment of my competence as a rational being, to my mind. In the decades since then I have occasionally again been injured without noticing it while I was busy doing some work or other, only spotting the injuries later. Sometimes those injuries never did hurt, because by the time I noticed them they were scabbed over, but I don't account that as that zen mastery I thought was potential as a child, because injuries generally quit hurting after a while. It just demonstrated that sometimes having nerves isn't enough to get the signal that we've been injured, and sometimes, for whatever reason, we need to notice we've been injured to feel it.
Kinda sad still about not being a zen master spiritual guru. I disappoint me. I console myself that at least I can restrain my composure during injurious events and act rationally when between rocks and hard places while I extricate myself instead of just thrashing about like a fish on a hook. Even Paul Atreides felt the pain of the Gom Jabbar, after all, and only needed to not pull his hand back in order to be considered human. At least I am human.