Berkeleyian idealism is interesting. Basically that all of the world as we know it exists in our minds. That there is nothing outside of the mental realm. The idea that trees and rocks and stuff exist is an illusion. Or you have Kantian idealism which essentially says the same thing that we only know things through our sense and that the "actual" real world is far different from the way our sense experience it. Maybe your experiences come from some ability to access the "real" real world. If I'm off on my descriptions of these philosophies someone please jump in and inform me.
Isn't that pretty much an accepted fact by now? There are colours we can't see, sounds we can't hear, energies we can't feel. The real, "unfiltered" world is quite unlike the one we live in...Or you have Kantian idealism which essentially says the same thing that we only know things through our sense and that the "actual" real world is far different from the way our sense experience it.
Then I think about higher dimensional beings that we only see partial aspects of. Like flatland. Or Douglas Adam's hyperintelligent pandimensional shades of the color blue. Or the H.P. Lovecraft quote "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."
But, if everything exists within our minds how could one explain things which should be unknowable based on one's limited experience? Is the only two alternatives then that: 1. Reality is not just within our minds... 2. If reality is within our minds, then our minds are much more expansive than we are led to believe?
Give an example. You only know things based on your senses anyway. This is basically what Decartes, Berkeley, Kant, etc were interested in. Kant actually wrote a lot about ethics too, but he began with that "how do we know what's real" question.
We don't know what's real. That's my point. The issue is how much "encompasses" reality, if you know what I mean. Like why do some people live "normal" existences completely unaware of X, Y, and Z, while others have extraordinary realities/perceptions since they were young?
Not necessarily. It is possible to believe in idealism and still believe that there are multiple people. Just that we inhabit a world of ideas. Basically "we're all in God's mind" kind of.