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Dreamed Up Reality: Diving into the Mind to Uncover the Astonishing Hidden Tale of Nature
Kastrup, Bernardo

Chapter 1: The Tale of an Imaged Universe
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The world each one of us lives in is the subjective inner world of our own perceptions and other experiences.
Chapter 2: The Insufficiency of Science for Uncovering the True Nature of Reality
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ontology; that is, the study of the true nature of being and existence. Indeed, science models the relationships between things, but is surprisingly limited in clarifying their underlying nature.
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science is the quintessential third-person investigatory method. The key historical premises of the scientific method are two-fold:
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first, one must assume that there is an objective reality “out there” that does not depend on one as observer of it.
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Second, one must assume that one’s first-person observations of reality are unreliable and suspicious.
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through mechanisms yet unknown to science, our minds have direct access to a largely untapped repository of knowledge about reality. Under the right circumstances, we can gain direct awareness of aspects of nature inaccessible through objective means, thereby tapping into knowledge not previously present in the structures of the brain.
Chapter 3: A field of Mind as a Universal Repository of Knowledge
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If these speculations are correct, then the most direct and efficient way to acquire knowledge about reality is through a partial and temporary disablement of the filtering mechanisms of the brain.
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the hypothesis I am postulating here is the following: consciousness is a non-local field phenomenon not caused by, nor reducible to, the brain, but simply associated in some manner with the brain. All understanding and knowledge ever registered by a conscious entity survives ad infinitum in the field of consciousness as permanent experiences, or qualia. Therefore, all universal knowledge is, in principle, accessible by any conscious entity. It is the local attention filters of the nervous system, evolved as a consequence of earlier survival advantages, which prevent us from accessing this universal repository of knowledge. But through perturbations of ordinary brain operation, which partially and temporarily disable or bypass some of these filters, one can gain awareness of it. The
Chapter 5: Before the Experiments
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The hypothesis I have set out to verify is whether, through the technologies of awareness expansion, one can access knowledge about reality not previously recorded in, or misleadingly generated by, the brain.
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All that is changed is the mental model one uses to perceive reality; that is, one’s worldview.
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one of my main objectives is to analytically verify, to my own satisfaction, whether external knowledge can be imprinted onto my physical memory through a mechanism that, through a process of elimination, can be ascertained to bypass all known physical means. No orthodox, reductionist explanation of the transcendent experience could account for such an input of impressions.”
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The problem with using language to describe a transcendent experience is that what one experiences may sometimes bear so little resemblance to anything else that precious little semantic anchoring exists. One is then left with precarious and imprecise metaphors to try and capture at least a smidgen of what has been perceived or understood.
Chapter 6: First Experiment: Returning Home from Exile
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The experience was not only about me; the experience was me.
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As I finally begun to reconstitute my ego and regain some composure, I crash-landed onto the memories of the less desirable elements of my life. Indeed, I learned that, while recovering one’s ego provides welcome relief from the disorientation of the return, along with one’s ego come one’s ghosts. Have you ever had the experience of waking up immediately after a blissful, light, carefree dream, just to remember the bummers of your life? In those initial moments of wakefulness, when your defenses are still down and you have grown accustomed to the lightness of your dream, the bummers of your life jump out at you with a vengeance; until you finally manage to file them back into the mental drawers that keep them in check. The specifics of my experience re-encountering my private bummers are philosophically irrelevant, so I will spare you the details. All that is worth mentioning is that it was hard. Yet, in a way, it was a learning experience too. Through it, I became a lot more aware of the fears, frustrations, and machinations lurking in obfuscated layers of my own mind.
Chapter 8: Third Experiment: Gazing in Awe at the Backstage of Reality
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Some of the images seemed vaguely to resemble some weird form of visual art, akin to cubism. Whatever it was, it was very peculiar, as if I were tapping into a mind not my own; as if I were witnessing things, events, images, thoughts, and emotions that did not belong to me, or to any normal human being for that matter. It was not scary though:
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I was relaxed, open-minded and, frankly, very curious.
Chapter 9: Fourth Experiment: Bathing in that We are Made of
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the thought occurred to me that consciousness was surely a non-local phenomenon in both time and space. That is, I had the certainty that consciousness was not limited to the here and now of my physical brain but could, under certain circumstances, gain awareness of places and times beyond, whether real or imaginary–the difference between real and imaginary, once again, appearing nonsensical to me.
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universal manifold of vibrating subjectivity.
Chapter 10: Stepping Back and Pondering
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which cannot be reached while one is dressed in the clothes of the ego and carrying the mental baggage we normally associate to sanity
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Intellect cannot survive this confrontation for very long.