Sorry , I didn ' t mean single dude as a relationship thing , but more a just me thing . I see your point , I probably should ' ve worded it one person or only me . Either way , I hope you enjoyed the day . <| sep |> Firstly I want to ask , are you already in full acceptance that your belief is definitively true ? Or do you think that your belief is seemingly the most logical , but you ' re open to the possibility that it could be false ? Lightwaves is the mental picture we have for what ' s happening , what we actually see is just what we see , with or without that explanation . So in a sense what we see is always just what we see , and the way we describe it makes no difference to it . Well , the machines are just a combination of experience and thoughts , aren ' t they ? To me , this seems like a case of circular reasoning , unless I ' ve missed something . You start with the premise that the machines are just thoughts and experience . But how do you know they aren ' t there irrespective of our consciousness or existence ? Don ' t you have to take that first step in creating an argument to convince me someone who doesn ' t think my reality is just within my mind why those things don ' t objectively exist ? The thing that ' s happening here is that you see yourself only as a particular part or entity within your experience and you say that that isn ' t everything . Of course you ' re right , but I ' m saying you ' re all of your experience at once and no particular part of it can be called you or not you . See what I mean ? Of course , again , it totally makes sense to talk about bodies and minds and people and whatever the culture uses as ways to express our experience , but they ' re not fundamentally what ' s going on , they ' re ways of description . I understand the idea you ' re putting forward here , I ' m just missing the premises that lead to this conclusion . Your ability to experience anything in particular would cease , experience subsist . Existence subsists and you ' re not other than existence . I don ' t quite understand this . Seems complicated . you can always test this empirically , more or less , by trying every way you can to get away from experience . You cannot . the ultimate experience is of course , dying , to test this , but that can be done , and it ' s part of what Zen is about . Stepping out of yourself to see what ' s there . How tempted are you by the idea of dying in order to test this belief ? What ' s stopping you ? This might be a bit tangential but if some hypothetical entity were to offer me the truth of the universe and existence in a way that I can magically comprehend , in exchange for a bullet to the head , there ' s a fair chance I would take it . Not because I ' m suicidal , just simply because all else would seem insignificant and pointless . I would obtain information that our civilization may never obtain for eternity , even if it ' s just for a brief moment . I have another question for you and I hope this is relevant . Am I more or less correct in vaguely summarizing your belief as reality and existence are simply the results of your consciousness andor experiences ? If so , how do you describe the period of time when you were an infant ? Say , when you were 2 weeks old , 6 months old , 1 year old . I don ' t suppose you have any explicit memories or awareness of when you at those ages . So by your beliefs , how do you justify that you existed ? Or is the implication that you didn ' t exist at those times ?