Q: How do I know that experience is the right litmus test for reality?

View fullsize

Near Crump Lake in the high desert of South Central Oregon

I used to reference thought as my basis of reality.  Now my teacher says that I should instead base it on experience.

How do I know that experience is the right litmus test for reality?

Maybe there is something else?

All paths point to the same place.  Some may be more direct than others, but even the most indirect ends up in the "same place".

It's not likely that your teacher is saying that you must use experience, but she is instead offering it as one "path".   She is probably also suggesting that if you choose to use the mind as your path of exploration, then do so with integrity.

The inquiry into what is "real" is an exploration that usually begins with the belief that a "rock", or a "tree", or a "thought" is in an absolute sense separate and distinct for other objects.   For this discussion, we can start by defining "real" to mean immutable, indivisible, and always true. 

When we begin to explore what we "know" to be true, we quickly bump into the recognition that what we believe "real" is more conceptual than concrete. 

For example, is it complete to say "I know the sky is blue"?  No, of course not.  

How about: "The sky above my head is blue"?  

Or "Right now the space above my head appears blue."  

Or "Within my vision, my ocular nerves are sending signals that my brain then translates into 'blue sky'."  

Or "Neurons are firing and the thought 'Blue sky' is appearing."

Or "Carbon, oxygen, et al, are combining and recombining in billions of combinations…."

Or "Electrons and neutrons are interacting in statistically significant ways and they…."

… etc, down the rabbit hole of "knowledge".  Everywhere we start, we quickly recognize it is conceptual, based upon a previous layer of concepts, and thus it is a belief built upon a previous conceptualization of "reality".  Yet each layer can be divided, broken down into more basic parts.  In the end we hit a wall and must concede: I don't know anything for certain!

What I "know" is simply what I believe I know…  and a belief is just a thought.  So if our knowledge isn't safe to base our understanding on, then what is?  At this point in our exploration, we might begin to explore our experience.

What do you really know other than your experience?  And while we are at it: What is this thing that we call "experience"? 

Testing our experience, we can of course go through the same exercise as we did above, but in the end, we again bump into a wall (as I am sure your teacher has walked you towards).  So instead, for simplicity, we will take another tack and consider experience itself.

When we say:  "I had an experience", we really mean: "I am now experiencing remembering that experience".  After all, is it possible to have a past experience?  Of course not.  So that means that all experience is simply the "recalling" now of a "past experience."

We can also recognize that an experience occurs in time, and therefore must include the past.  This is true because there can be no measurement of time in the immediacy of this singular moment, and therefore an experience must be an object in time because it describes an event, or sequence of events, which has a start and an end (the start being the more distant past and the end being a less distant past).

Again: Is it possible to experience something in the past?  No.  So how can an experience really exist if it can't exist now?  It can't!

So we have again come full circle, via another path of exploration within our "experience", and we conclude:

All we can possible know is experiencing itself.  Just the experiencing of the immediacy of NOW.

Be clear: what is being pointed to by your teacher is just a pointing.  It offers the "individual" a way of questioning its existence as a separate self.  Our belief in the subject-object model is just a belief.  It is just a conceptualization…  and it is happening right NOW!

What is actually happening right now?  Right NOW?

Is this real?