According to Bernardo Kastrup: Analytical Idealism, a hypothesis that makes sense.

Reflection questions that he tends to ask are the following:

1-Do we see the world as it is in itself (i.e., as it really is)

• The incoherence of our ordinary intuitions.
  • Example: Sunrise and Sunset
  • Our intuitions are influenced by culture and language
• Evolution is conducive to survival not to seeing things as they are in themselves;
  • Examples: dashboard on airplane, files in a computer, are instruments
• The physical world is the instrument through which we navigate our lives, and we perceive the output of the instruments;
• Something that tells you about the world is not the world;
• Every species has their own filters, their own dashboard;
• Dashboards convey information, just as a pilots fly by instruments of the plane, so we fly by our senses;
• We assume that the shapes and forms we see are how the world is in itself.

About the mainstream way that we conceive of reality which is called physicalism. (How Bernardo Kastrup talks about physicalism)

2- Physicalism

Wikipedia: In philosophy, physicalism is the metaphysical thesis that “everything is physical”, that there is “nothing over and above” the physical, or that everything supervenes on the physical.

• These are the principles of physicalism:
• What we perceive through our brain is actually how the world is in itself
• Qualities (emotions and sensory experiences) are generated through matter (our brains)
• Arrangement matter (of particles in the brain) explain feelings, pain, love.
• Only quantities (matter) exist and they explain qualities.
• What we experience with our senses we call ultimate reality, therefore ultimate reality is matter
• Counterargument to physicalism: A reduction in brain activity is accompanied by an increase in the richness and intensity of experience. Example NDE’s.

About the hypothesis of analytic idealism according to Bernardo Kastrup.

3-  Analytic idealism Hypothesis

• Matter is the dashboard of dials. (a REPRESENTATION of the world as it really is).
• There is a universal mind which we can compare with an ocean, and we are like ripples in the ocean.
• A ripple has no stand-alone existence, we cannot pick up and hold it. It is an excitation of the lake. In the same way, an experience is an excitation of cosmic consciousness (the experiencer, consciousness).
• We, humans are like the ripples in the ocean. We share the same world, the same ocean which is cosmic consciousness.
• Physics and Science study the behavior of nature, not what nature is. Science settles questions of behavior, not of being.
• Our experience correlates with Brain Function
• Brain (made of matter) function is a perceptual experience, but we are culturally conditioned to consider it reality and the origin of our mind.
• There is nothing to the dance but the movement of the dancer (you do not exist, only the dance does). As in Buddhism, the self does not really exist as an entity.

Experience can be reduced or explained in terms of the excitation of the experience.

4- How can come Cosmic Consciousness create the appearance of the dashboard?

Bernardo bases his answer on what nature already does by using the example of dissociative identity disorder which used to be called Multiple Personality Disorder

• Dissociative Identity Disorder based on (DSM5) is:
  a) One mind dissociates and different perspectives can emerge (including different sensorial experiences – sight, different health issues, etc.)
  b) The personalities do not access each other’s memories.
• THEREFORE: Bernardo calls us the dissociative alters of universal consciousness. And the dissociative boundary is the screen of perception (it is what we perceive)
• The screen of perception is the dashboard that gives us information about the world
• As an alter (like us), we only have access to the dashboard
• Universal dissociation looks like something (a bird, a cat, a human)

THE WORLD HAS 2 ASPECTS: ITS ESSENCE (WHAT IT REALLY IS IN ITSELF) AND ITS APPEARANCE (HOW WE OBSERVE IT)

5- Implications of Idealism

Consequence of physicalism: loss of transcendence, loss of meaning, loss of identity with something higher, inflated importance of the individual and its ability to control.

Idealism could imply

There is more to reality and existence than what we perceive.

• Life is not about ‘me’
• To be of service
• To aspire to higher modes of being
• Death is not the end of consciousness

Bibliography

Bernardo Kastrup official website
https://www.bernardokastrup.com/

Essentia Foundation – Bernardo Kastrup, Executive Director

Essentia Foundation aims at communicating, in an accurate yet accessible way, the latest analytic and scientific indications that metaphysical materialism is fundamentally flawed. Indeed, clear reasoning and the evidence at hand indicate that metaphysical idealism or nondualism—the notion that nature is essentially mental—is the best explanatory model we currently have. This is known in specialist communities, but hasn’t yet been openly communicated, in an accessible manner, to the culture at large. Essentia Foundation hopes to help close this communication gap.
https://www.essentiafoundation.org/

Essentia Foundation: Our free Analytic Idealism Course is now online!
https://www.essentiafoundation.org/our-free-analytic-idealism-course-is-now-online/learning/

Today we’re releasing a complete, carefully produced but free online course on Analytic Idealism, perhaps the most modern and intellectually compelling formulation of Idealism currently available. The course is based on a series of seven videos, totaling over 6 hours of content. It is conducted by Essentia Foundation’s executive director, Bernardo Kastrup.

Rupert Spira and Bernardo Kastrup podcast on idealism and materialism (March 27, 2022)
https://www.actualized.org/forum/topic/79594-rupert-spira-and-bernardo-kastrup-podcast-on-idealism-and-materialism/