And so how do we solve the problem of Solipsism?

I didn't want to face this because in the past it has always dragged me back into the sense that I AM and what I sense is mine.

But actually the solution is simple.

So lets start at the bottom again.

I put myself in a room close and lock the door. Only I in all the world are seeing the inside of this room. I lie on the bed and look at the ceiling that is all mine. There may be 8 billion people out there but only one is seeing what I see. A moment of private peace and bliss. World outside; me inside. Doubly blissful if I own this room, then it is even more about me.

So this seems irrefutable. There is simply no doubt that only one person is experiencing this, and that person is me. When someone else experiences anything I don't see that. I don't see what the neighbour is seeing and they don't see what I am seeing.

(1) First point to note. There is a circularity here. By definition the person seeing anything is me. How do I know I am in the room? I have already said it: only one person is seeing the contents of the room. From that I deduce it is me! Who else could "I" be? By definition I am the one seeing the inside of this room. It is not like I have any choice. Can I freely go and experience someone else's eyes? No! Whatever these eyes see is what I see. In fact I cannot be anywhere else but where this body is. When it goes in the room and locks the door, without any choice so I am in that room. The two are inseparable. That is a bit odd. The driver of the car cannot get out. Where ever the car goes so does the driver? Hmm who is driving who?

Now we normally think ourselves out of this by saying I chose to go in the room and the body did what I wanted and now I am lying on the bed experiencing what only I can experience.

But the cracks are showing. What is the difference between the body just doing that and there being no "me" being dragged along? The body goes in the room and stares at the ceiling and true it is the only body in the world doing this, but there is no "me" there as well, there is just the ceiling and the inside of the room. There is no separate person relishing all this as their own experience. There is just the experience. I mean if there was who is relishing that person's experience?

(2) That is one avenue of approach. But the new one is much simpler but I don't know if any more illuminating.

Let us not argue about the self, let us just allow it to be there; the driver inside the body going into the room, locking the door and enjoying the private experiences that no one else is experiencing.

So now we begin by contemplate the nature of the relative world.

The relative world first all comes in separate things. You can't have relations between things that are the same. This must not be that, for this to stand beside that.

Once the world is separated then relations start and things become big and small, light and dark, green and blue, etc etc.

Where previously I was confused I thought that consciousness was somehow a field in which relative things appeared.

So lets be clear what that refers to. That is the light switching on and suddenly the room appearing. That "presencing" is not just seeing, it is becoming conscious of. The light comes on, we become conscious of light. But we may not be conscious of things in the room yet that takes some work. Our eyes scan around picking up things which we process and decide what they are and they emerge into our experience and we are conscious of them.

The point of this analysis is to note that consciousness is still in the relative world! We go to sleep and consciousness fades, and then sparks back around a dream. If consciousness was a single thing we would be conscious of the same thing all the time. Consciousness is the final stage of experiencing where things becomes present. The researcher saying "tell me when you become conscious of the sound" means almost the same as "tell me when you hear it." But if we had just read some important news that got us concentrating on something else we might very well not hear the sound. In fact that is in accurate, we may well hear the sound, but we don't become conscious of it. There are those times when while not becoming conscious of the sound, we examine our memory and we do remember a sound but we paid no attention to it. Conscious brings things to the front of our mind to be present. They may well be there but in lower states of consciousness.

Now that we see consciousness as still part of the relative world it frees up the final absolute realm.

How do we know when we become conscious of something?

There is a stage prior to consciousness that is not this or that. That transcends the discrete boundaries of consciousness and of things. This is often called Pure Awareness.

The problem with bundling everything into the conscious realm is that everything becomes a thing. And once it is a thing it can become my thing and it can then be switched on side a room and when that happened I have a hook on which to hang myself. The only way there is a view from side this room is because there must be me in there seeing it. It all fits together neatly in a relative world.

But once we separate the conscious into the relative world that frees the Awareness to fit around the edges of the discrete world. To even fit between the conscious events. Just the presence of things is not enough to complete the picture. We also need the screen onto which all this is projected so that things can be consciously present and also no consciousness and the difference can be known.

Awareness is not a thing. Awareness cannot step outside itself to grab a glance back and see what it is like. It doesn't need to: it already is itself and self knowing. But those are poorly chosen words because ordinary knowing is when one thing knows about something else. For Awareness there is no this and that, it can't know anything other than itself. If awareness ever tried to hold up a mirror, it would be held up inside itself. There is no getting out (and there is no inside to get to either). All relative things occur within Awareness.

And now the great turmoil of the solipsist is seen to just be a rotating swirling mass feeding on itself. Each part trying to claim the centre and be the "self" around which everything else rotates.

But it is just confusion because it all unfolds within Awareness.

When the mass lets go and stops turning in on itself in a desperate race to get to the centre, or the pinnacle, or the end then it becomes peaceful. For awareness which is both this and that, it all makes no difference. Awareness is there for the confused mind lying on the bed thinking that all this is it's, Awareness is there for the relaxed mind just experiencing all this. The relaxed mind is useful though because it gives awareness a chance to shine.