Is Perception Reality?

If you promise to take me around Disneyland, I can land at your place next weekend to shake hands with you.

That salvo of intellectual-sounding headlines was not to impress or overtake your homespun and elegant dissemination of the same thoughts, without pretentious markup, but was only to confer that your inquiry is not unnatural or abstruse as it has been widely studied and recorded. Your inquiry along the same lines demonstrated that human thought converges across time and culture. You, I, public intellectuals, Eskimos and Cretans raised the same doubts — nature of reality and how to pursue it, though none harnessed the absolute truth but progressed into self-growth. Similarly, you and I don't envisage to resolve the ontological debate but leverage such inquiry in our self-actualization.

Prefer verbal interactions to courteous gestures as I have too much to convey (on everything) that cannot be encapsulated in a presumptive click.

I am quite a slapstick newbie who plunged into ludic philosophy quite late in the game. Since then, enjoyed reading the philosophical waves of inquiry since medieval times. I remarked once that you and I are two sides of the same coin in that we amuse ourselves in our penchant to meditate on randomness in the universe. The inquiry may be characteristic of our wantonness to learn by adaptation and not by strangling the certitude. We simply take on what ever comes our way ...and attend to it with curiosity more than reverence. We philosophize as reflection more than instruction. So, I do get you when you excite in your discovery and learning in your incessant and auto-didactic track. I am no different! Remember, the coin.

Conjecture : I have a feeling that our striking and cultivated traits are the upshot of such winding inquiry. Yours — overlook hostile interactions from the past. Mine — savage resilience. Imagine if we didn't philosophize about our vulnerabilities and vanities, and compared our notes on intersubjectivity, would we have acquired that mental constitution in life?

 

Dear V sir,

I wanted to include this in my response yesterday but could not locate the exact stanzas. In fact, I happened to read your snippet right after my Gita class and I am assuming you are trying to tell what the gist of these two stanzas from the Gita are trying to say.

Ch 3, Shloka 34 says - It is natural for each organ to feel attraction or aversion in respect of objects pertaining to each sense. Do not come under their sway, for they are enemies (of all spiritual aspirants)

And then goes on to say in the same chapter Shloka 42 - The senses are great, they say. Superior to the senses is mind (manas), and superior even to the mind is intellect (buddhi). What is superior even to the intellect is He, the Atman!

And here we are perceiving at the level of senses and maybe taking it to the level of mind. To reach the state you mention here below with the mind even is a lot of work - nothing that cannot be done in several lifetimes and then Atman after several more!

And I have often heard people say if we reach that level of Atman, are we dead or alive (as we want to see) in the human sense!

PS: I feel again all this makes a lot more sense yet again a lot less sense at the same time! Perceptions I tell you!
PPS: My study of Gita is purely from Sanskrit learning perspective, just a coincidence yesterday that I finish these two sholakas and your snippet comes up and I took myself by surprise that I had actually paid attention to the meaning - when I could relate your snippet to the shlokas!