You lean very skeptical on all of these issues, but then affirm the reality, and validity, of consciousness, even if by accident. You imply consciousness is real, and reliable.
All the 5 khandas are “real.” Like, it’s undeniable that an experience is happening, and that the experience at this moment is thus. I deny that consciousness has existence independent of its objects. All knowledge seems to run through consciousness as all knowledge is of consciousness and its objects. I suspect there’s something else beyond consciousness and its objects in the form of nibbana, which I’ll talk about more below. But on this side of nibbana, it’s all namarupa.
This confirms that consciousness is and/or does impart knowledge.
Consciousness is the knower, at least that’s the subjective experience. Its objects are what is known, at least that’s the subjective experience as well.
That said, if you truly feel that your consciousness has any reality or validity, please keep in mind that this then means you should be able to use that consciousness to do the Classical Theravada practices that allow you to become an arahant and see the objective world that underlies your conceptual world of pannatti that you currently experience. You will then confirm the objective reality that makes up the world. That, or you should be able to percieve some other valid, real perception. If this is impossible, then consciousness is not reliable at all.
I suspect nibbana is the extinguishment of consciousness and thus objects as well. It’s unconditioned, and since all the khandas are conditioned, it’s outside all the khandas. The arupajhanas still have consciousness-object as their theme. The object is just very subtle. “Nothingness” is still an object. Thus, no, I don’t believe consciousness to be “reliable” in this way. It cannot know nibbana.
I also suspect that the mind of an arahant is beyond comprehension of the unenlightened for this reason. The way it looks like on this side of things is that consciousness is the knower and there is no knower outside consciousness.
In other words, if consciousness is real, then so is perception, and percieved objects.
Yes, this is true. I never deny this. You’re still conflating the forms you perceive with physical objects though. You’re still assuming direct realism in order to prove direct realism. Where I’m coming from doesn’t assume a view, it just looks at what is present, here and now, and then I do my best to describe it with words. I don’t “see” physical objects. I just see forms. “That form is a physical object that exists independently of me” is a thought that is projected onto the perception, but it doesn’t come with the direct perception itself. It’s added on in the mind. The idea of self works the same way, just more subtly.
Further, dreams only make sense when held up to the comparison of real life. Without real life, the word dream is meaningless.
Well, no, that’s not true. “Waking life” is just a different kind of dream. The essential quality of it: experienced, is the same, but there is a different subjective quality to this place. Memory is much stronger/more prominent so it is experienced as having a continuity, independent existence, and sense of permanence. But none of that really is the case, it’s just the result of the prominence of memory compared to a nighttime dream.
This reminds me, I once had a dream I was trying to convince other dream characters that I was dreaming lol! Spent the dream trying to fly for a group of people, but kept just going like 20 feet up and coming back down. For some reason they were unconvinced. I woke up thinking that was asinine and a waste of a good dream lol!
I had a similar dream once. I walked up a wall and they weren’t convinced.
That’s basically what’s happening now. Except there’s no “real life” to wake up to. It’s just all dreams. Rebirth is just changing dreams. Going to sleep is just changing dreams. There’s just a series of mind moments, and the theme of them is such that they give the illusion of a permanent, objective world of impermanent, independently existing objects that almost everyone calls “the real world.” But it can be likened to another dream: it’s impermanent, unserious, made of components that the mind assembles into cohesive but illusory perceptions, etc.
In real life, I cannot fly.
Now who’s going against the suttas? I suspect you’d say people can’t fly in real life and not just yourself…but there’s tons of examples of the Buddha and arahants doing all sorts of supernormal things.