[litehaus]

“the physical universe we live in is only our perception and once our physical bodies die, there is an infinite beyond.”

If there are No living beings,No consciousness,is there a universe? Must there be a sentient being for ANYTHING to exist?
Suspect the stone, water,trees are there whether we are here to ‘experience’ them or not...

[servantoftheservant]

No, stone is simply energy. We have senses which receive the energy, paint a picture in the mind, which allows consciousness to perceive it as stone. A different set of sense would likely perceive the same world (time/space location) in a totally different way. The perceiver is the necessary integer, and 'the world is in the mind' as Berkeley said.

[Boogieman]

“Suspect the stone, water,trees are there whether we are here to ‘experience’ them or not...”

Well, according to some interpretations of quantum physics (mainstream interpretations, not quack theories), an observation is required to “resolve” anything from simple quantum probabilities to the apparently deterministic universe that we perceive. We do know with a certainty that, at the atomic/subatomic level at least, things behave quite differently depending on whether we are observing them or not.