“Are things continuous or intermittent in their existence? If the answer is “continuous”, then one is dealing with some form of naïve realism. If the answer is “intermittent”, then one has transcendental idealism. But if the answer is that they are, on the one hand, continuous (as contents of the absolute consciousness, or as unconscious mental pictures, or as possibilities of perception), but on the other hand, intermittent (as contents of limited consciousness), then transcendental realism is established.

When three people are sitting at a table, how many distinct tables are there: Whoever answers “one” is a naïve realist; whoever answers “three” is a transcendental idealist; but whoever answers “four” is a transcendental realist. Here, of course, it is assumed that it is legitimate to embrace such different things as the one table as a thing-in-itself and the three tables as perceptual objects in the three consciousnesses under the common designation of “a table”. If this seems too great a liberty to anyone, he will have to answer “one and three” instead of “four”.

When two people are alone together in a room, how many distinct persons are there: Whoever answers “two” is a naïve realist. Whoever answers “four” (namely, one self and one other person in each of the two consciousnesses) is a transcendental idealist. Whoever answers “six” (namely, two persons as “things-in-themselves” and four persons as mentally pictured objects in the two consciousnesses) is a transcendental realist.”

— Eric Nye in the Carlos Casteneda Private Group

I do not trust these kinds of answers to such questions, because the manifold of being and identity cannot be reasonably disambiguated in the ways described above, however instructive this little formulation may be.

We have intuitions about answers, and, eventually, perspectives… however incomplete these are. The question sort of makes sense, but explicit answers do not. What I see here is a catalog of perspectives, not answers.

Also, I see that to get to this kind of setup one has to become extremely abstract and theoretical about such matters, which is almost never how (or why) they are experienced… it is my experience and suspicion that ‘the answers’ are far too strange to fit into the kinds of logical and exclusive categories we have developed to receive them.