This thread may be unpopular; so be it. If I reach a single person, that is enough.
Seven years ago, I discovered my life's purpose -- but didn't realize it at the time. I had discovered Buddhism, and this notion that one could attain perfect happiness without a single material possession instantly lifted up my spirit from the depths it had remained in since childhood, since I had learned of death, and had heard those stories of children who become orphans from a plane crash, knowing that the only thing separating us from them is a stroke of luck. And that chasing any happiness in this world is to embrace a dice roll with a good probability of immense suffering. You can call it silly, but to single-digit-age me, consigning yourself to fate like this was more or less insane, and that was only confirmed by the large quantity of childhood suffering outside of my control. So from there I ducked out of (most) socializing to learn everything I could, unconsciously in response to this issue.
When I discovered Buddhism, I was truly elated for the first time in years, to this doctrine promising everything that I had desired. But as I dug deeper, I encountered problems with this scripture, and meditation and so on that could only build to one conclusion: Enlightenment is not real. The pieces building up to this conclusion are too numerous to list, but essentially there is little evidence to believe in a state of enlightenment qua profound transformation of your moment-to-moment experience where the problem of change is solved. What does happen though is a non-dualist revelation analogous to the mystic experiences of all religions. In fact, for the Hindus and Jains it was this experience that led to liberation in the next life. Nothing came afterward. Now consider that yoga and meditation were practiced in India for a solid millennium before Buddhism, and if such a state existed the Hindus and Jains would have surely noted it. So this revelation is quite achievable, but it is functionally the end of the mystic path. There is almost no evidence to suggest otherwise.
Now, why am I writing this post...? Because I can't accept that outcome. I refuse to believe it simply ends there, and we have a healthy amount of evidence that is largely ignored which gives us reason to be skeptics. Here's a brief list:
- Meditative jhanas exist, and they are (allegedly) the most pleasant sensation a human can experience, they can be sustained for hours, and demand very little energy. These show up on brain scans.
- You can take drugs in a lucid dream, and this produces the effects of the drug (for the majority). What's more, if you imagine a drug you've never tried, it will match whatever you expect to occur.
- The human body functions remarkably well on drugs, or in other altered states of consciousness.
- LSD has been observed to produce virtually any symptoms imaginable, or even no symptoms at all.
- LSD-like effects may be obtained easily through hyperventilation, at no cost to oneself (save a little energy).
- I have myself replicated some effects of alcohol and cough syrup through meditation.
- Predictive processing is a fact at this point; we humans play an active role in constructing our perceptions.
- Meditation has effects on the parasympathetic nervous system we did not know were possible until recently. Wim Hoff and Tummo do as well.
Hence the following conclusion:
- There is little reason to believe in the "No free lunch" theory of human happiness, that is to say, that our good must be obtained at some expense.
You can take a very, very tentative stance that our body's homeostasis lends itself to survival by default, but that perhaps by some mysterious process this homeostasis may be changed, and so effects that are normally won through bitter exertion are now had easily.
I am aware this is fringe -- probably too fringe for here, honestly. But be aware you are my best shot. The Buddhists are too dogmatic, the dreamers are too "spiritual". There is clearly something worth investigating here, but apparently nobody is doing so. My tag is crashestoearth on discord, but I'm responsive here as well. Add me if you're curious, and skeptics too please chime in. If you are a Buddhist dogmatist though I'm not interested. Thanks for reading.
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Notes -
I know at least two organizations. Center for the Study of Non-Symbolic Consciousness does a study on the effects of "persistent non-symbolic experience" on one's body and mind as seen from the outside. Has a heavy financial incentive. Qualia Research Institute tries to define the experience "from the inside"
"Enlightment" is real. Just not in a metaphysical sense, but rather as a shift in perception. Nothing magical or divine in it. I've been going mad over exploring this state over the month of December, and I have been journaling my experience obsessively (at least for a first week), going into it blind with no knowledge of related context whatsoever, it was intentional. I would be happy to have anyone to discuss it with https://telegra.ph/My-Magnum-Opus-11-04. Discord tag at the top; I will send a friend request.
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Hey, I don't know if you remember me, I hung out around here six months ago and then flounced off after a poorly received post (in my defence at the time I was disassociating hard due to the election, and what I saw at the time as insane behaviour from my (blue tribe) circle of friends and family but I'll own up to it, I handled it poorly.) At the time you gave me advice that I took to heart, it was a great post I thought on a lot, to the point where for a few weeks my personal mantra was 'all the best teachers are dead'. I really can't thank you enough for that post, it sent me down multiple rabbit holes which I have found hugely helpful and I do believe if I hadn't read it I would be incarcerated in some fashion by now.
If all I wanted to do was thank you I would have just pmed you, but I always pay attention when I notice synchronicity, so when I read this post (I've been lurking since just before the election) I knew I had to log in and say something. Because while I loved Juvenal and Gracian, the author whose insight helped me the most wasn't one you listed - it was none other than Siddhartha Gautama. I have been devouring books on Buddhism for the past six months, it utterly blows my mind how smart and insightful the Dhammapada is. Like you I have no interest in Buddhist dogma, and in reality I've spent most of my time trying to jam sutras into my default pseudo-Christian perspective (they actually go together quite well in my opinion but I understand why Buddhists and Christians don't like hearing that), but it has had a huge influence on my outlook.
I ended up reaching a similar conclusion to you, although I think I picked a different resolution. See my conclusion was that enlightenment is functionally identical to insanity. You can not attain it until you let go of everything - including the ability to understand and be understood. That is the most difficult thing in the world to give up, because you can't do it deliberately - just the act of trying itself is failing. And the idea of going insane isn't particularly appealing to most people either. Once it happens you realise you were making a big deal about very little, but it's like virginity, once it's gone you can never really get it back.
Thanks! Glad to hear you stayed safe. That quote seems to ring a bell, but I can't find the original post/thread now so the context is lost. I'll try to respond regardless.
You may be interested in Schopenhauer's definition of insanity: The thread of memory is severed. In our scientific epoch, knowing the material and efficient causes of any phenomenon is considered absolute knowledge, in other words, "There are those who think they know the bird having seen the egg it crawled out of". So for the insane man who has lost access to this mode of knowledge, he must instead observe the phenomenon directly and consider its qualities per se for knowledge. For Schopenhauer, this was the only way to obtain true knowledge of anything, and there's a good chance Plato held a similar view; both lend to the shamanistic/mystic side of philosophy, and shamanism itself is nothing other than reading into the forms, which is why an insane person could do it.
Personally, I'm skeptical of it. You should look into P.G. Krishnamurti's view. It's fascinating, and it would be healthier than idolizing literal schizophrenia too, lol.
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Your conclusions so far sound about right, except I don't think that hyperventilation and LSD are harmless (You could develop HPPD for instance).
Everything else seems true. Human happiness is not zero-sum, this is trivial to conclude since it's possible to experience more suffering than happiness. This implies that the opposite is possible, and that our brains just prevent this because the negative bias helps with survival. In other words, you're trying to hack your own reward centers, and your brain made this difficult to do because it knows that it can be dangerous. If you try to lucid dream and your dream characters get angry with you, it's probably for the same reason.
What further path are you hoping for? That you can learn to control or influence reality with willpower, that you can shift into a better timeline/reality by adjusting your energy, that you can re-program yourself, that you can live in constant bliss or reach a higher level of consciousness?
Some say that deep meditation allows us to realize that we're one with everyone, meet "god" or some infinite source of energy (gateway process, etc), experience "non-duality" (this is just messing with the human perception which separates things), or to be able to contact anyone connected to the earths magnetic field.
Some say that beliefs can influence the world, that the world matches your level of energy/chakra/frequency/vibration, that you and the world are one (Hermetic principles), that the questions you ask decide what questions you get (John Wheeler), that human consciousness controls the wave function collapse (this direction unifies mysticism and science a bit), or that reality is agreement (that everything is a game. The EST seminars go in this direction a bit in their approach to enlightenment).
You can program yourself, hypnotize yourself and others, manipulate your own belief structures and other fun stuff. Every article on here is high-quality, and I recommend reading it because it contains a bunch of warnings that I don't want you to lose out on: https://cognitiveengineer.blogspot.com/2011/11/resources.html
Living in constant bliss (which should be possible given that these mechanisms don't rely on dopamine or other neurotransmitters, but occur in the processing of sensations) probably just requires a strong concentration, then to focus on a pleasant experience in your body, and keep the focus such that a feedback-loop occurs. When your focus is strong enough, it will feel like a hand grabbing the object of focus. This is likely the origin of the idea of telekinesis. In states of mania or otherwise inflated confidence, your willpower might also be so strong that it feels like you can do anything (and you may actually manage to do some things that in retrospec are impressive)
I've also read about egregores, divining, magic, the collective unconsciousness, synchronicities, demons, DMT creatures, oracles, the law of attraction, etc. And I can probably explain these logically and kill the fun. I could also give you reasons to believe in them, just to keep things a little interesting. Man, I should really spend my time better. Oh well.
"Trusting the universe" helps peace of mind. Not trying to control what you can't control saves a lot of cognitive energy, which is probably why it's recommended by so many spiritual people (to me, they're just a type of psychologists though). Anyway, I've written enough for now. Which parts interest you?
Good stuff, thanks for the links.
Hereabouts. The more perception-related stuff like reality shifting and kasina meditation is like playing with fire. I do recall hearing that the Tibetans practice some kind of "emotional alchemy", where one emotion is changed into another, and that this is one of the most dangerous meditations on earth as if it backfires you can go insane or become a psychopathic murderer and the likes, but maybe that's hearsay. There is though a staple of Vajrayana, where you "become" the pure embodiment of some emotion or idea for a time, like a "demon of hatred", but this is just embracing a current emotion and letting it all out, which is what we all do during therapy. Pretty simple.
This is basically the process behind all serious meditative/psychedelic states, no? Some kind of feedback loop. The dhyanas are triggered by noticing some pleasant tingles in the hands, and with your brain in a very plastic and vulnerable state, the observation of these tingles magnifies the sensation, and on repeat observations the feeling builds, up until you reach immense pleasure. And this is qualitatively different from a high state of samadhi, which is typically based on a cool feeling of the breath, and so manifests more as a profound relaxation.
But a feedback loop like that simply doesn't happen while sober, and it is evidently not something you can condition through meditation (with our current knowledge). But there is a whole bunch of crap related to kundalini awakening that seems potentially promising, but feels like digging through your weird old relative's house where everything's dirty and smells weird. Mainly I just don't have any good leads. Perhaps you do though.
It is probably dangerous if you achieve higher control of yourself than average people can. Changing an emotion into another is fairly exotic, but changing the target of emotions is a common defense mechanism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Displacement_(psychology) As far as I'm concerned, all alchemy is actually psychology, but projected into the real world. Embodying an emotion sounds like it could just be a result of attention directed towards an emotion, such that said emotion is the meditation object?
Am I right to assume that you've read this? https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/20/meditative-states-as-mental-feedback-loops/ I think the main take away is that feedback loops are unnatural, and that the brain tries to prevent them by default. Which is why you need a great concentration and ability to avoid distractions. When accelerating in a fast car or listening to music, I sometimes get chills (ASMR response), but it depends on how I tune my attention. I have to sort of "surf" on the stimuli. This likely generalizes to all senses and emotional responses (chills doing massages and the build-up of tension/anticipation doing important scenes in movies, etc). Does this not imply that feedback loops are the norm? Merely that with most peoples ability to concentrate, they only last a few seconds.
The link you sent sounds like a manic episode. heightened energy, racing thoughts, feeling that things are connected, higher and higher escalation. I sometimes feel like that on stimulants, and when I think about important things thoroughly until I have very strong beliefs (in other words, tidying up doubts and loose ends and other internal conflicts and inconsistencies. If you want to feel really great, spend a few hours doing this). I've often heard that Kundalini has strong effects, and that the "out of body" aspect is dangerous (makes some people go crazy). I think the positive effects come from focusing on your body, mainly the "chakra" areas, and creating feedback-loops on these sensations. By the way, the reason why "out of body" experiences is bad may be because our perception of yourself has a specific place in your head, say between the eyes and back a bit, and that it's dangerous to disconnect from this. You know how it feels like you're floating doing sleep paralysis? This is the brains model of the body, often called the spirit body by mystics, and it may be related to our sense of Proprioception. I don't know if you can accidentally mess up this sense, but it's possible. I personally experience discomfort at times because it feels like my "point of self" is slightly off center, maybe because the left and right side of my face have different sensitivities. Anyway, I've heard that some cultures place their "selves" in the heart rather than in the head, and some crazy book (I forgot which one) recommend shifting this area around as an exercise, so maybe it's not that dangerous as long as you don't move outside of your body, but this is guesswork on my part.
I'm not sure why just focusing on ones heart (or chakras, or kundalini) has strong positive effects, but our brains relation to the body is probably more important than we thought (hence Yoga and such). Books like "The body keeps the score" and some obscure books claim that discomfort and even trauma is basically located in the body and causes muscle stiffness and "blockades" in the "flow of energy" whatever that means.
And about consciousness, what people call "awake" is simply not living on autopilot. To have a consistent sense of self rather than periodic self-awareness with blurs in between, you make your sense of self the object of meditation and train yourself to maintain it at all times. I've read a book on this once as well, but I don't remember the name. Sometimes, meditating on something strengthens it, but sometimes it breaks it down (say a word over and over again and it will lose meaning). I'm not sure how meditation which strengthens the self and meditation which dissolves the self are different. The ways to reinforce things and destroy things seem eerly similar. Meditation makes some people more alert, more alive and more anchored in the moment, while it causes other people to disassociate, have no ego, and become apathetic or stoic. I wish I knew the tiny differences in approach which causes these wildly different outcomes.
Finally, I have a bonus insight for you. The strength of your senses is what makes you feel alive. Having dirty glasses, ears blocked by earwax, a loss of smell due to a cold, etc. always makes me feel like reality is less real. So it seems like sensory inputs is what ground us in reality (which may be why the numbening effects of dissociation makes reality feel like a game, movie or dream rather than reality). I hope these insights were useful! If you want, I will try to dig up the titles of some of the books I've read on this, though 40% of it is my own original ideas and guesses.
AFAIK the point is letting your guard down so that the emotion completely consumes you in a controlled environment. The idea is to "sublimate it" like therapy, but to such a degree that your attachment to this emotion in general burns away.
Yeah, this is true. This is why Indian rituals have long made sport of overwhelming the senses above all, through things like kirtan. I seem to remember some old anthropology quote about how naive and barbaric pagans are, because their idols and rituals are so loud and noisy that there simply can't be any deeper feeling behind it. But more than likely, the overstimulating nature of pagan rituals all across the world serves to overwhelm the senses, so that the brain is tossed on a sea of confusion for a brief time and is more open to processing the raw experience. You can replicate that now by listening to this. When the brain lacks confidence it's more open. Etc.
I've definitely had the "thinking center" of my brain change places a few times before. Once a few weeks ago, during a particularly bad episode of insomnia, it was like a bunch of thread had fallen loose from the spool and took extra energy to reach my "thoughts". Another time was during meditation, where it did a very bizarre rotation down to my throat and rotated back up. Yet another was an incredibly neat phenomenon where I was meditating in a chair, and for a brief feeling it was like my perspective rose "up and over" my head, and I realized then our perception of reality is based on the tiny nook in our minds from which we see everything normally, and if you happen to see from anywhere else, everything will appear differently.
Mm, yeah, it's good. But I still have no great leads. There's no desperation for these weird Eastern practices to be true, or whatever -- it's more like "We have several millennia of records, they claim incredible things, some of them have already proven to be correct, but nobody is reading them". Personally it astounds me that the Indian discovery (and Chinese discovery for that matter) met with such little fanfare during the Enlightenment. It was by integrating the mystic traditions of Eastern high priests that the Greeks began their scientific golden age, and so to see the Eastern world met with either profound apathy, or religious fanaticism, is really strange. Because obviously when you tell someone about the Tao and it sounds dumb and impractical, the move isn't to say wow these Chinese sure were bad at philosophy, but to realize the very book is telling you words suck at conveying meaning, and virtually all intent behind its writing is lost, and to get at it you've got to dig and dig and dig and dig. And I would absolutely love to do it, but I'm on Japan now, and next comes India, and I'll be in a casket before I have time for China. But anyway... have you looked at the Tibetan practices or tantra at all? That's the most promising area IMO
Before I reply to this comment, let me first write this: Enlightenment is real. It changes how you experience things, the only question is how much it changes and how great this experience is.
"Letting your guard down" makes you more receptive, but I don't think it starts the feedback loop. Otherwise, the same feeling would appear every time, but instead I think it's the feeling you start with which gets amplified.
Common advice related to meditation techniques contradicts itself. It's sold as a way of removing attachment, but also as a way of experiencing the moment. As a way of finding yourself, but also of destroying your sense of self. I don't want to experiment more with meditation before somebody can tell me if it results in dissociation or if it helps one get rid of it, for I've had "experts" tell me both. This is a shame, as I would otherwise have much more data for you. "Mindfulness" is good though, at least people who practice it have stronger ASMR responses according to research.
This part is interesting because it's new to me. I suppose it's related to predictive processing? I struggle a bit with numbness, and one of my solutions is mentally removing the constraints on future states by telling myself that every situation is new and that I don't know what may happen.
This sounds different. I meant the location of the "I" inside the head. Thoughts being hard to reach does resonate with me, but I think that's a side-effect of exhaustion or low dopamine. An energy drink fixes it, at least until the energy drink wears off. On second thought, maybe you meant that you felt further away from yourself than usual. Your other experiences are very interesting, but I haven't tried anything like them myself.
Training yourself to hold your focus fully on something (emotion, feeling, an area of your body or your sense of self) and creating a feedback-loop would allow you to test out like 7 different practices all at once. By the way, it seems like you're losing faith in these teachings because you think they should be more popular if they actually worked? But many of them were intentionally kept hidden, and it wasn't uncommon to believe that these things couldn't be communicated. An attitude of "He who knows, does not speak. He who speaks, does not know" probably held back the popularity of much of this.
Also, what would you need in order for spiritual practices to be "real"? You can experience a state of mind in which everything feels profound, but that doesn't mean that the profound connections you see have real depth. Are you fine with the experience, or are you looking for more scientific results which influence the outside world and not just the mind?
I can tell you that these are true at least:
1: Visualization generally works. This relates to "praying" and "desiring", which tunes your brain towards getting or experiencing specific things using the same system which makes you able to wake up at exactly 7am if you wish (most people have experienced this, right?). A quote from The Alchemist goes "When you want something, the whole universe conspires in order for you to achieve it". I'm still not sure if the subconsciousness is stronger than we think, or if human consciousness can influence the probability of things (my visualization sometimes affect the behaviour of other people)
2: You can feel really great just by having strong beliefs. You get that feeling of certaincy which is not much unlike confidence. It feels a bit like being in the flow state or like everything is within your control. If you do something with enough confidence, other people are unlikely to question you, so in the personal and social realm, this is quite powerful. It can just fall apart when you engage with more objective things.
3: The first jhana is real at the minimum, this suggests that other methods of focusing are likely to work.
4: If you escape the state of constantly distracting yourself, and pay attention to the bigger picture, you will often experience enough coincidences that it's just a little bit weird. This adds a lot of meaning and depth to life, so I don't even want to try to disillusion myself about it.
5: Changing ones body temperature and heartbeat by will is possible. The power of placebo is quite strong, so most of the things you're trying to do are probably possible through imagining that they occur (What I think happening when you do drugs in dreams, and likely similar to how hypnosis works)
6: The "energy scale" is basically true: https://www.actualized.org/forum/uploads/monthly_2022_11/636af7340097d_LevelsofEnergy.png.41f9c93fecfbb701a3ec558364120c5d.png
(But enlightenment is likely not a level of energy, but rather a change in perception in which much less categorization and mental modeling takes place) When I reached the highest state a few years back, I experienced some strange things. The environment around me felt smaller, more familiar and like it was my own. (When I'm depressed, the environment feels bigger and hostile/foreign). At some point I thought about my girlfriend leaving for somebody better than me, and the idea made me happy on her behalf. It's the abundancy mindset taken to the limit. At one point I waited on a friend for more than an hour after we had agreed to meet up, and not only did I feel fantastic the entire time, I also did not get bored, and I wasn't in a hurry to do anything.
If you just want small superpowers by modifying or training your perception, then I suggest psychonetics: https://web.archive.org/web/20211015001108/https://deconcentration-of-attention.com/psychonetics.html (I don't recommend doing any of the exercises which requires you to strain your eyes, though)
And if you're just looking for happiness, bliss, peace of mind, or immunity to stress, then just ask, I will try to explain how to achieve these. They are quite easy, they're just dangerous as they can result in complacency, or in guilt (when a loved one dies and your mood somehow doesn't seem too affected)
By the way, I once walked outside with my brother, and suddenly got a really bad feeling. We stopped walking at the same time, looked at eachother, and said something like "we need to get out of here" at the same time. A sudden, shared sense of impending doom. We also once got a strong dejavu at the exact same moment. We just froze and then started talking about it at the same time. Two minor experiences I have had were: Feeling a sudden sense of familiarity with a place I had only been a few times before (it felt as if I had been there for many years), and for a moment before falling asleep, having my entire perception overwritten by an image of an eye and a strong feeling of being observed for like half a second. These experiences were more extreme, but they're much easier to dismiss since they happened to just one person. By the way, unlike people on the subreddit you linked, I've never touched psychedelics. I will be experimenting more with bodily sensations, but I always have a million small projects going on at once, so I may get distracted before I have anything fun to report. Edit: Oh, one more thing! You can get the best relaxation ever if you just kind of give up for about 30 minutes. Set an alarm as you shouldn't even keep track of time. Don't worry about any sounds you hear. Yes, this means that your house could catch on fire without you noticing, that's how determined you have to be to just forget everything completely. When I did this, it felt like I had gotten 5 hours of solid sleep, it was amazing.
I know very little about this, but it seems to be about turning off all defense mechanisms which separates people, and then indulging in pleasure? I haven't done the sex part, but I've removed these defense mechanisms which separated me from other people before, and it allows me to meet a week of social needs in just a few hours, it's really great. I only allow myself to do this around unvulgar people, though. I could be one with my environment or nature as well if I trusted it, but at the moment thoughts of germs, bugs and other danger/uncleanliness causes me to separate myself from my environment. I can't even enjoy my soft bed unless I'm really tired. If I removed these negative associations, I could become like a cat just chilling on a whim. So what I gather from a quick Google search is that Tantra is like the physical version of enlightenment/acceptance/non-duality/lack of separation. Being on friendly terms with everything.
I need to read more about this as well. Is this the practices you're refering to? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibetan_tantric_practice
Yep. Here's the initiation ceremony for Saiva Tantrikas, for example.
Try holotropic breathing. Like meditation or psychedelics it gets stronger across consecutive days.
Non-dual perspectives are fine, but we need to draw a distinction between metaphysical truths on the one hand, and perceptive shifts on the other. You can make yourself believe in any religion you'd like, it's easy, happens all the time.
The brain is trying to maintain homeostasis at all times, and part of that homeostasis is a consistent world-view, which is why a huge fraction of the pain when something horrific happens isn't just the pain, but the fact it wasn't supposed to be this way! yet it is. There's basically a high floor of cognitive dissonance that you, I, and everyone else are operating on at all times where we assume that certain very bad things in this world simply won't happen to us. Other people get ball cancer, but me...? Nah. You rejoinder Oh that would be a waste of mental energy, duh, we're just being practical! but the point is we don't have a plan for when things go really south, which is why most cases of psychosis happen precisely because our mental models are exploded, and it's why the zenith of LSD experience is the whole universe aligning to a single purpose, while the nadir of LSD is a total fracture of your world view, like "Oh shit I was a chair rotting in an abandoned factory for 20 years and my previous life was a lie!". We're the only species that has psychosis, and the only one that has "world views". Your body will do some truly impressive shit to maintain homeostasis, which is the premise behind meditation, and this thread. Including the placebo effect. This is an area that's not being explored.
Wanna try an experiment? Do some heavy thinking during sex, and pay attention to your thoughts during orgasm. There should be a brief, brief period of ecstasy where your thoughts connect and everything naturally clicks into place. It's very neat.
Curious, I'll look it over.
I mentioned Krishnamurti downthread; this is probably how he achieved his "calamity". For any worries about going insane, I'd like to suggest the likelihood of going insane from any altered state of consciousness correlates with the amount of thinking you do during the state. Doing heavy thinking while deep in meditation is essentially screwing with the wiring of your perception, you are almost definitely in over your head, while Zen-style "no-thoughts-head-empty" is harmless if you have the discipline to do it properly.
Tantra and Tibetan practices are the most confusing side of Buddhism, and I've yet to find a good resource on it. So yeah, sorry. I really need to get back into looking around.
Interesting, thanks! By the way, if you want a modern take on possession, read "Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre". It has a section on masks and letting yourself getting possessed by characters. Psychologically, they probably have a lot in common. There's also some research on how virtual avatars and characters, and even ones social rules, affect ones identity and behaviour. As for the ceremony, is the bell and incense used? For that would affect the senses. The whole divinity/godly aspects are almost required in order for one to take something seriously. Things have the weight we give them, so we use rituals in order to legitimize them. Praying, for instance, is likely a form of visualization, but we envoke the idea of god because we cannot believe in our own power. Tarot cards and Rorschach tests help you read yourself without filter, but in order to believe in the power of their subconsciousness, people need to believe that a diety is present (The oracle). People can barely meet a wise character in a dream without thinking that some external being helped them. It seems like we need to believe in something higher than ourselves, or even in something higher within ourselves (being made in the image of god, the transcendental function, being connected to a higher power, etc). Not that we should take all the credit for ourselves, making ourselves out to be gods (at least not the ego or the self we identify with). Nietzsche kind of tried with the ubermensch thing, he regards the human body as divine because all of this is hidden within it.
Anyway, that was a bit of a tangent. I will try various breathing techniques, but only when I feel certain that I won't be giving myself brain-damage (I'm a bit high in neuroticism).
We experience life through ourselves, so truths about ourselves are truths about the world as we experience it, or truths about our relation to the world (not the agent nor the environment, but the agent-environment interaction). But the truth simply is, right? Figuring our a profound truth feels good, and results in viewing the world differently, but it doesn't change anything. By the way, I do believe that these ancient sages did figure out important things. The hermetic principles and modern physics have a lot in common. Can you understand the world just by thinking? Probably to an extent, Einstein seemed to manage this, and Tesla also ran physics experiments in his working memory (which was huge, likely due to anesthesia with his visual field or spatial intuition).
This is a huge factor in what's called enlightenment. But isn't this just a function of the ego? It thinks it can control reality by rejecting parts of it. It even thinks that having negative thoughts against something helps protect against it or weaken it. That worrying about a family member helps in keeping them safe. But you can "let go" of all of this tension and just let things happen, and everything will continue as it did before, because you never controlled anything. The river flows all the same, and all your resistance amounted to was exhausting yourself. The truth is always bearable for you're already enduring it. What's false can ever harm you, as it cannot exist. It's realizations like this which helps people relax and approach the mindset of a sage. The brain wants to be correct, and to have what it already believes confirmed. It's like your memories and beliefs themselves are afraid of death, or like the brain sees the loss of a belief as the loss of a part of yourself, and reacts as if somebody tried to cut off your hand when somebody attacks a belief or a value you have.
And to generalize these contradictions: All splitting, multiple personality disorders, internal conflicts, etc. are caused by internal contradictions. Nietzsche wrote a lot about this, especially about how willpower affects our ability to control these fragments rather than getting swept away from them. But he also spoke of the positives of contradictions: "Because we forget that valuation is always from a perspective, a single individual contains within him a vast confusion of contradictory valuations and consequently of contradictory drives. This is the expression of the diseased condition in man, in contrast to the animals in which all existing instincts answer to quite definite tasks. This contradictory creature has in his nature, however, a great method of acquiring knowledge: he feels many pros and cons, he raises himself to justice-to comprehension beyond esteeming things good and evil. The wisest man would be the one richest in contradictions, who has, as it were, antennae for all types of men - as well as his great moments of grand harmony - a rare accident even in us!" By the way, if you try to solve all contradictions by taking the intersection of all beliefs and knowledge, you will likely end up with the empty set. Like I said in another comment, there's no one true worldview, you simply need to choose one.
I also want to point out that contrast between two things are required in order to feel much of anything. To feel your strength at the gym, you need to lift a weight which makes you use this power. To feel heroic, you need to feel like you're facing a great difficulty. Even the flow state requires a task with sufficient stimulation and resistance. Some people feel a lot of hate, but they don't want to point it at other people, so they ultimately point it at themselves. If they could just point this at a safe target, like "Poverty", then they could allow themselves to feel this emotion and even use it towards a constructive goal. In other words, be careful of removing any Yins as the Yangs will disappear as well. As I got less lonely, I found myself caring about other people less. As I got more confident, I started valuing compliments less. My Youtube feed is recommending a video called "How to never feel shy again", but it's considered bad to be "shameless" for a reason. Shyness is cute, I don't want to destroy it. I agree with everything you wrote here, though!
Haha, I might try this!
Looked him up now. His "insanity", so to speak, of letting go of memories is actually just letting go of the map and living in the territory, no? To live in pure experience, rather than living in cognitive models of the world. I found a quote saying "To live in the eternal present there must be death to the past, to memory. In this death there is timeless renewal". Earlier I wrote that the ego just wants its memories validated, and like you said, for its models to be correct, and to feel bad when there's a conflict between reality and ones model of it (the experience of cognitive dissonance). I too wish to experience life like I experienced as a child, and if possible, experience things as if experiencing them for the first time - but this means to erase ones memory, at least in a sense. I don't think this is "insanity". Do you know how some people lose faith in love because they deconstruct it to being mere chemicals? That is to overwrite life and experience by creating lifeless mental models and making them out to be actual reality. What sages tells us to do is merely the opposite of that. To deem reality and experience as real, and mental models as false, rather than doing the opposite and becoming excessively objective and robotic.
Interesting idea. I don't think it's false, but we have two models of thinking, system 1 and 2, in other words, conscious and unconscious processing. Ever felt down and then suddenly felt better with no explanation? I think that's what happens when subconscious processing resolves a conflict. So "thinking" is still taking place doing this, unless even the subconsciousness is calmed.
I found a book on libgen called "Mahamudra and Related Instructions: Core Teachings of the Kagyu Schools". Page 31 starts out by mentioning impermanence, but we already know that "Change is the only constant" and why getting stuck in the past is not a good idea. The book recomments letting go of this life (as it's not permanent anyway). By the way, this is probably for the same reason that one can't think clearly on topics that they're biased about. In order to see things as they are, you must not have beliefs about how they ought to be (resulting in that cognitive dissonance) so it makes sense that understanding these teachings is helped by being alright with any conclusion and implication, even when they suggest something that most people feel threatened by. Then it mentions the "ultimate bodhicitta" which is basically just letting your mind do its thing, letting things be like they are, and accepting what comes, as it's all there is. In the words of Werner Erhard: "Take what you get, for its all you get".
What's new to me is how Buddhism practices good and morality, rather than just complete indifference. This seems a little inconsistent of them, but I suppose they just assume that morality and altruism the true default which is corrupted by the ego and the brains self-survival medhanisms. There's 780 more pages than this, but I believe that I already got the general point of Buddhism, and I've come to like Samsara, and since I've learned to enjoy life despite my suffering, escaping Samsara would be a loss for me. If you can modify your perception as much as the Buddhists recommend, then you can certainly learn how to enjoy imperfection, in which case there's no need to escape anything. This worldview would probably offend a lot of gurus though.. If they're still capable of being offended, I'm not sure. And there may be more interesting ideas covering psychology that I don't yet know, I'm just very unconscientious/lazy. And sorry about my arrogance, I hope the information makes up for it.
I definitely get you overall. Though IMO, there's a danger of getting lost out in the weeds making neat discoveries, while you cease to make true, profound progress. What we've covered so far is documented more or less by the ancient sages and practiced in their faiths, but if that alone were enough, we would surely have a better world than we do now. Even if some unbelievable truths were unearthed and documented in antiquity which had the power to perfect our lives if only we knew of them, the error still lies in a failure to communicate those truths to us, and we'd have to restate them in such a way they wouldn't be lost again. But that's assuming some incredible thing has been discovered, which I'm fairly pessimistic/skeptical of. All the things we've covered are neat, but they fall within the bounds of conventional religion/wisdom, so nothing mind-blowing -- like pieces to some grander puzzle we have no reckoning of. Take Nietzsche's "new psychology" for example which tears down the old antitheses of good and evil or pleasure and pain. This new psychology does not exist, because every man with the sagacity to notice that possibility does not pursue it, because there is a more comfortable road of easy discoveries and insights open to him. But that road's been walked for millennia; they unearth the same truths, and get the same results. For example...
This is true, but why? There's clearly some rules in effect here -- like, just as Aristotle's says: "When humans think, there's a small set of axioms we assume like the principle of non-contradiction that are necessary for thought to occur". In the same way, there's a determined logic to the human mind and perspective, a set of rules to perception and feeling that we currently don't know. Why is it psychedelic/meditative experiences require a guru? Why is the parent/child relation so incredibly effective in religion? Is it because we have this deeply ingrained relation from childhood? Or (more likely) is it a natural part of the human mind? Which constructs of the human mind are innate, and which are constructed? Could we create a methodology to produce the perfect LSD trip? Could we eliminate the dark night of the soul from The Path? Could we create some environmental trigger that produces good dreams in us every night? These questions and more lie open, and they depend on strict and consistent rules that have yet to be found.
Society doesn't work in a way which supports human well-being. Advertisement for instance attempts to create a need that it then tries to fulfill. And it's possible that even if we managed to make all of a society enlightened, they would cease to exist in a single generation as they either renounced marriage, or became so uninterested in conflict that another country could easily conquer them. I also believe that Postmodernism has made society worse, even though it has correctly identified that some things are social constructs (and incorrectly made human nature out to be a construct). But yeah, Chesterton's fence applies here. Many bad things have good second-order effects, and maybe good things have bad second-order effects.
Teaching these things is difficult, but only because we're so corrupted by societies teachings. I believe that a child would grasp them more easily.
There's a small possibility that we all have weak reality-bending powers in that our subconsciousness can affect the universe, and there's a chance that one can make this power stronger. I once visualized that I got an A in a class that I had barely studies for, and I somehow did. How? My presentation was mediocre at best. The situation with my brother is also not understood by neither science nor old books (except those which cover mind-blowing things).
John Wheeler was an extremely intelligent scientist and won many awards, and he arrived at a "participatory universe theory". And the general ratio of highly intelligent people who believe in strange things is quite high. There's also some research by the CIA like the gateway process: https://www.vice.com/en/article/found-page-25-of-the-cias-gateway-report-on-astral-projection/
And it's possible that beliefs influences reality in a way such that reality is the superimposing of all beliefs, which means that the doubts of many can cancel out the beliefs of few (which may be why many cultures warn that one should not say their wishes out loud). Another theory of mine is that things cannot change state while they're observed (the Quantum Zeno effect?), which means that they need to be unobserved in order to be malleable. Lets again use Tarot cards as an example, but shuffling the cards while you're not observing them, you create unobserved states, and the cards become "undecided". Now, as you observe a card, it's decided, and your subconsciousness (or your past and future trajectory) somehow influences this choice. Some call the set of unobserved/undecided things "Chaos". For chaotic things, very small inputs can result in vastly different outputs, but this means that the energy of the human brain is enough (as the future trajectory of events can be altered by spending a few calories worth of energy). Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kia_(magic)
But isn't it more fun to find these truths yourself? If you figure everything out, you will be bored (this seems a bit like your current problem actually) And if somebody discover a "mind-blowing" secret before us, and gets access to a higher power, we may be in trouble. Especially if some government gets their hand on said knowledge.
Your quote by Aristotle seems to be the same thing I wrote earlier about there being no true language and no true axiomatic system, but that "You must choose one". It's like when we talk - we have to choose a language in order to talk. Any language will do, but we cannot speak of anything which does not have a word in that language, trapping us.
There's a rule in effect, but it's difficult to construct a rule which explains all examples. I think that submission to a higher power vs making oneself out to be the higher power is the difference between white magic and black magic. There's many warnings that black magic can destroy you or make you go insane. It may just be that being humble has a lot of benefits for the psyche - after all, basically ever culture to ever exist has spoken positively about humility. It's possible that herd morality is to blame for this virtue of humility (an aspect of human nature in normies say "The nail which sticks out gets hammered down") but even non-conformists tend to come up with a saying similar to "Those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted." It's possible that "authorities" just have higher, well, authority over the programming of the mind. After all, most socities have leaders whose words are absolute. Just like humans crave external validation and overestimate the importance of others opinions, our brain may value the worldview of authorities very highly.
I know some of them. One is that contradiction works differently than you'd think. Trying to be positive, and trying not to be negative are not the same. You can be positive, but the more you try "not to be negative" the harder you will fail. This is related to "Do or do not, there is no try". Also sometimes communicated like this: "When you try to be happy, you reinforce the idea that you're not already happy, which makes you stuck in the unhappy stage". The Tao Te Ching also has a bunch of rules which are just the opposite of what one would expect.
I think I've seen something like that over at https://qualiacomputing.com While I don't think you can solve reality or human nature with mathematics, these are the guys who have come the closest to being able to do this so far.
Like the attempt to eliminate evil and the attempt to eliminate suffering, eliminating the dark night of the soul may be naive. The dark night could be an important step in reaching enlightenment, like how getting your pulse up is an important step in lowering your resting heart rate, and kind of like how nihilism can be a transitory state between belief in the external and belief in the self. You can eliminate bad dreams quite easily, but I believe that they're just reflections of your general situation in life, or even important messages from your subconsciousness. Anyway, if you want to eliminate bad dreams, you need to tell yourself that these dreams do you no good, and have conflicting parts of yourself agree with this. Hypnosis should work as well, as long as your subconsciousness perceive the person who hypnotizes you as an authority. But again, even so-called bad things exist for a reason. There's a duality principle here as well. Or perhaps this "bad" thing is a part of something bigger. We don't like having red lights in traffic, but eliminating red lights would be a terrible idea. We only know this because we know why traffic lights exist, but some things seem bad without us knowing why they exist, so getting rid of them is dangerous.
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Are you trying to find the path to some sort of optimal equanamity or state of elation? I just want to make sure I understand the root interest.
I don’t think this is the case as described. I can believe that there is a euphoric experience that is obtained through meditation, and I’ve experienced something like that approximately twice, so maybe brain scans show a meditative euphoria. But claiming that the euphoric experience can be had without a “come down” period is the psychological equivalent of belief in a perpetual motion machine. Euphoria is the experience of an unusual amount of pleasure, and an experience which provides euphoria will eventually provide “mere pleasantness” when repeated. And if repeated long enough it will provide “mere baseline”. The experience of euphoria is relative to the experience of non-euphoria, so even without getting into neuroscience, how is it possible to continually experience euphoria without experiencing something less-preferred to relate it to?
Let’s suppose you could self-administer euphoria on command. This would be similar to heroin addiction. What would be your incentive to fulfill the hours of necessary daily tasks to maintain health, if you could summon euphoria at will? Once you exit that state of euphoria you would feel abysmal because now your body has to utilize so much energy and effort to, like, get groceries while in a state of displeasure. It’s questionable whether you would even continue to participate in society, as socializing is a requirement for the pursuit of contingent rewards which you apparently can summon in your mind whenever you want.
I don’t think you are treating these eastern spiritual claims with enough skepticism. The idea that a human can experience an eternally preferable state (a bliss) without the experience of a negative emotional state to refer back to is illogical. The idea that we can train our brain to treat endogenous opiate release differently is unfounded. And finally, the idea that this would be preferable to how we are designed is unevidenced. Re the last point: let’s say a new form of fentanyl was invented that lacked any come down. You could take it forever and experience bliss forever. (Suspend belief in neuroscience). Well, if you decide to enter into this bliss, you will immediately lack any interest in: basis human activity like walking and eating, learning any new information, socializing, morality. You would be in a permanent vegetative state. Is this actually preferable, even if it is bliss? Clearly no. There’s some higher order part of ourself that finds this repulsive and actually demands the necessity of pain in order to adapt to biological, external, and social reality.
If it’s the case that humans habituate to pleasures and pains and can never maintain a steady supply of pleasure, and that we have a higher “moral pleasure” which justifies (and requires) the existence of pain and painful experience in order to maximize our cognitive and physical adaption to physical reality, then the greatest path to an optimal emotional state isn’t meditative practices or stoic practices but a philosophy that promotes the most adaption (pleasure, pain and all).. That is, a philosophy that doesn’t try to maximize pleasure or reduce pain, but instead tries to maximize the things which we intuitively find right regardless of pleasure and pain. Even though pleasure cannot actually be pursued in such a way that we obtain it indefinitely, and all shortcuts fail, humans seem to be designed to find certain things right and preferable regardless of pleasure and pain (participating in reality is “more right” than seeing someone in an opium den, even if opium lacked a come-down in an imagined world; experiencing pain for loved ones is “right” despite its obvious pain; beautiful nature is “right”; a purposeful but painful life is “more right” than pleasure; etc).
Okay, so which moral system promotes “acknowledging we must experience pain in order to pursue a higher feeling of rightness which is pleasure-ambivalent, because that’s actually greater than the pursuit of pleasure”? My vote is Christianity right now, as the central figure is someone being tortured and dying for his purpose despite feeling forsaken. That’s a handy way to at least remember our underlying moral principle. Maybe there are some other ones.
Back in the day, senior monks used to spend all day in the dhyana states to the point of neglecting to instruct the younger monks. AFAIK the pleasure of the jhanas does not dimish.
Obviously if we were just seeking to replicate heroin or MDMA the whole idea would be stupid. The point here is that drugs like heroin and MDMA operate within a certain paradigm, they work by throwing a giant monkey wrench in the face of your sobriety, and so the way to healthy unique experiences is not by fucking with your sobriety through a medley of strange chemicals, but by changing the nature of your sobriety through meditation and other practices, which is already done in a number of ways by monks and tantrikas.
It's an incredible claim, and for now I don't believe it either. However, there are two facts which make me hesitate here:
Meditative states can produce virtually any emotion or experience, with enough effort and time. Imagine it, and it will happen.
Effects from meditative states can and often do carry into sober existence.
Now, the logical link between these two facts and "You can achieve a lasting state of bliss in sobriety" does not exist. But the logical link of "Meditation (and psychedelic experiences in general) leave lasting impacts on your sobriety, and we don't know how" does. The anecdotes are endless. So I'm not pursuing something ridiculous like a state of meditative bliss out the gate, but rather inquiring where the line is drawn, to see on paper the maximum benefit we can derive from these practices, and hopefully to find the origin of their negative aspects like psychosis and the Long Dark Night of the Soul. This is important because current meditation traditions have no interest in that. They're dogmatists as I've mentioned, and their approach is to wait until a disaster happens and only then clean up the mess. Personally, I'm not confident a lasting bliss-like state may be achieved, because the nature of lasting meditative effects tend to be more perceptive like floaters, fuzzy borders, and high-visual clarity as opposed to concrete feelings. And yet, those absolutely do happen -- particularly from 'metta'.
Do you think about all that stuff in the 5~ seconds after you orgasm? Personally, I bask in the waves of bliss. I think you ought to read up on some of the meditative stuff ITT to see just how far out these states can get.
I don’t buy that meditation can reliably lead to “any emotion or experience”. I don’t think the evidence is weighty enough to support that idea. Certainly you can’t trust the old writings of an institution of monks who are interested in getting monks to meditate as much as possible.
This is a more realistic aim. Non-effortful meditation is probably beneficial for the Domain Mode Network, resulting in greater rest and general awareness. But if anything, I’d bet the benefits of meditation are precisely insofar as they don’t cause a preferable emotional state. If meditation is boring, unpleasant, but restful, then your “real life” will be more interesting, pleasant, and energetic. It’s like a nap.
Yeah, fair. This is more or less a supposition that meditation has the same mechanism as a psychedelic experience, but even if that's true, you can do virtually anything on something like LSD whereas meditation is limiting your experiences as much as humanly possible, so by the time you get to a profound state there's a small handful of consistent attainments we can get, and these become the jhana states, deep samadhi, etc.
You're making the opposite error of me, which is lowballing it while I'm aiming too high. We're not sure what these practices amount to at most, but they absolutely give us more than restful sleep and greater focus.
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I get the point you are making, but this reminds me of people that take SSRIs everyday and never plan to stop. The SSRI state is preferable to the non-SSRI state and people are still able to function normally in the SSRI state. In the SSRI state people have increased interest in basic human activity.
The SSRI example shows that there are altered states of consciousness that are preferable to the default state of consciousness, and that some people can experience altered states of consciousness with negligible/manageable side effects. Therefore, it makes sense that there could be other alerted states of consciousness that are permanently achievable with minimal side effects. They may require lots of effort/training to discover and maintain, but once they are learned a person could permanently remain in the altered state for as long as they desire. You always have the memory of the less desirable state so there is no need to leave the altered to state to experience a more painful state.
Another example is someone who receives eye surgery to achieve perfect vision. The altered state of perfect vision is strictly preferable to that person. There are no drawbacks to remaining in the preferred state after the surgery is complete.
Eye surgery is beneficial but the elation post-surgery does not stay with a person throughout their entire life. The elation, or bliss, is experienced directly after the surgery and gradually diminishes in potency until mood returns to normal, as it does with sports winners and lottery winners. Just like we are not currently in a state of a elation because we have all been seriously sick with something at some point in our past. I’m not disputing that there could be some form of meditation that, when incorporated into a routine, momentarily results in elation as someone realizes its benefit (eg it aids in their adaption to life). But once this routine is settled, the elation disappears as the benefit is habitualized, even though the routine may still be valued as part of one’s lifestyle. (I can’t reply to the SSRI example because I have too many doubts on the efficacy and evidence regarding them).
What OP appears to be suggesting is that there could be a meditative technique that reliably results in bliss in the longterm, not just results in benefit. I think this is impossible and also wouldn’t be preferred if it were possible. The problem with heroin is that it will always result in a state that is exponentially more pleasurable than your default state — the mood enhancement isn’t transient, it’s always the result, yet at the same time the “default” mood plunges lower and lower. If you found meditative strategy that always resulted in bliss, the same thing would happen. But there are probably meditative practices that just result in a benefit.
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Have you explored the work of John Vervaeke? His YouTube series Awakening from the Meaning Crisis is a true masterpiece, seamlessly blending cognitive science, philosophy, and meditation. It’s probably the most well-thought-out lecture series I've ever come across online. Vervaeke himself identifies as a Buddhist, and I have a strong feeling that you would be the perfect audience for his insights - perhaps you’re already familiar with it. If not, I highly recommend giving it your full attention. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time or mental capacity to delve into the details right now, but I genuinely hope it might help you break free from any sense of apathy. By the way, what is your vision of Enlightenment? I believe in some form of Enlightenment, but not necessarily in Buddhist Enlightenment, more in gnosis - the knowledge that transforms the self.
Awakening from the Meaning Crisis is what came to my mind too. The first 25 lectures are also now in book format. I think the book presents the material in an even better way because John gained additional experience in communicating the material since the lecture series.
I am curious how the series practically improved your life? For me it provided deep insights into modern problems and explained how we need an ecology of practices to address them. We need to go deeper than propositional knowledge (statements that are true or false) and utilize the other ways of knowing (procedural, perspectival, and participatory). One thing I'm kind of stuck on is the Philosophical Silk Road (in the lecture series it is the idea about a Religion that is not a Religion). I see the necessity of distributed cognition (i.e. collective intelligence), but I haven't had success in finding a like-minded group of people locally that is interested in John's work.
@roche Episode 8 (The Buddha and "Mindfulness"),9 (Insight), and 11+12 (Higher States of Consciousness) are particularly relevant to your post.
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I don't suppose I could interest you in psychoanalysis? This would be a "skeptical" position by your standards, but, hopefully it's a type of skepticism that may provide some illumination:
This strain of analysis is limited, because one pillar of the Indian perspective we struggle to understand is the jewel analogy, the kaleidoscopic view of the capital-t Truth where it changes depending on where we stand, hence Kathenotheism, hence Syadvada. Hence Samsara as being an arrow that soars out of oblivion and lands in your rib. It doesn't matter where the arrow came from; it's a problem and it needs to go. Unfortunately, I don't see much in your quote. To me it seems like a rehashed and watered-down Schopenhauer's Will.
Is this not just relativism? If you think about anything long enough, you will find that there's no one true answer, no matter if the subject is morality, meaning, philosophy, or mathematics (incompleteness theorems). Everything is fundamentally relative. And while there's no "one true" path, god or set of values, you must yet choose something, you can't just not have values, beliefs and direction. So you choose something arbitrary, knowing that it's not everything. Kathenotheism seems perfectly logical
A special kind of relativism, yeah. But...
Careful here. This train of logic contradicts relativism, because you're saying if anyone thinks long enough they'll arrive at the relativist position, whereas a true relativist knows this only applies to himself and the others "destined" for relativism, and it's wholly natural for Muslims and Christians to collide with the same ideas as you and bounce off into becoming even more fervent Muslims and Christians. For them there is no "choosing" in the process. It's simply the truth.
I'm not sure I follow your reasoning. It requires a rather high intelligence to notice that everything is necessarily relative, and people usually don't if they can convince themselves that something is fundamental. Convincing yourself, for instance, that the earth is the center of everything, or that god is the center of everything, or that morality is objective, gives you a reference point, and it takes a lot of questioning to realize that neither of these are true.
Whenever there's a conflict between A and B, A will be correct from As perspective, and B will be correct from Bs perspective. A parent perspective C can be used to judge A and B, but there's no perspective for which you cannot create a conflicting perspective such that both seem equally value, and you're in need of a parent perspective. If two Christians disagree, then then a priest may be the judge. If two priests disagree, then the bible may be the judge. If two religions disagree, then what? You always need something "higher", but there's no "highest". It's also for this reason that there cannot be an authority of truth. The authority will be unable to judge itself, so it won't know if it's mistaken. This limitation applies to everything from the government, to cultures, to mathematics itself. Something merely seems universal when everyone agrees on it. If humanity could agree on morality, it would seem universal until an alien race came along and said something different. Who judges the judges? It's judges all the way down. Who created the universe, god? Well, who created god? Math is based on set theory, well, how do we prove the axioms of set theory are correct? The problem of infinite regres is everywhere. You can arrive at it by thinking, which is why ancient philosophy often says "There's no one true path". It's why Nietzsche said that there's no facts but only interpretations (perspectivism). It's also how Einstein could discover relativity. The axiom "everything is connected" is also derived from this line of thinking.
When you try to orientent, compare, and judge things, in any field, you run into infinite regress. This is generally why thinking too much leads to nihilism, you realize that everything is arbitrary and mistakenly believe that this means that it's counterfeit.
I get you, but IMO this is a "High intelligence + High openness" result. There are some profoundly intelligent people like Schopenhauer who never second-guessed their axioms or sought out a higher authority or basis for them, and when questioned on what authority they're derived from, he and others always defer to Plato's forms or the "laws of nature" or whatever. And rather than infinite regress, they arrive at some bedrock idea like entelechy and say "Yep, this explains everything" and there is nothing before it. And to their defense is the Eleatic argument that something cannot come from nothing, and this is the most widely loved idea by philosophers because it spits in the face of infinite regress.
I suppose so, yeah. Some people arrive at axioms "I think therefore I am", others arrive at nothingness "Nothing is real" or at least the conclusion that thinking is fundamentally limited "The dao of which can be spoken is not the real dao", "where one cannot speak one must be silent", "I can only know that I know nothing", "Life is absurd".
That "something cannot come from nothing" does not take into account the mystery of why anything exists at all, it also doesn't imply that anything is truly universal - but that something arbitrary seems to be all which exists. You can call laws of physics, human nature, and the universe fundamental, but they're "specific", things which exist in themselves, and thus not thing which generalize outside of themselves. Different people could exist, different universes, different laws of physics. Ours just happen to be what we were given.
And in all honesty, we cannot even communicate or think unless we use a foundation, so I think it's fine just to choose something. Just like it's fine to choose a language, a culture, a religion, an axiomatic system, a system of values, a morality. None of them will be universally valid, but they will be valid in the scope in which they exist, and that's good enough. It's the same for me, I must have a personality, a job, and a social role. I can only specialize, as general improvement stop being possible at a certain point (since the areas of further improvement contradict eachother). I actually recommend not learning too much or growing too wise, as you may lose your ability to believe in the arbitrary things that you've chosen. The alternative to having both pros and cons is simply having nothing at all, which is worse. In other words, we must be egoistic and take actions which from certain perspectives, are mistakes. Our locally valid ideas are only valid in a limited scope, but we must believe in them nonetheless. We must believe in ourselves with no external validation beyond the fact that we exist. We solve nihilism by rejecting the idea that universal validity/external proof is required for something to be real (in other words, rather than solving the problem, we reject the problem). In the words of Max Stirner "I have based my affair on nothing" (meaning on himself I suppose). My own existence is an axiom to me, that's the solution to any existential problems I may have.
The primary lesson is that it all falls apart once you get to the edges, so we shouldn't dwell too long there. Hence most of our bright philosophers like Descartes, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Leibniz doubling as scientists, historians, politicians, missionaries and giving the rag of philosophy a squeeze to extract whatever potential was in it. Any effort you'd like to invest in philosophy should be redirected toward psychology, IMO.
I agree, but not many people realize that psychology is the way to go, and get stuck trying to solve life using logic. I think what I wrote above is quite important, since it may help some people take the "leap of faith". When the brain gets anxious it starts questioning and deconstructing things, as well at looking for holes or imperfections which is how we even come up with crazy ideas like "What if you're actually in a coma right and imagining all this?" or "What if you're the only conscious person?". Once the brain hits something unfalsifiable, we get stuck, and that's mainly how philosophy is created.
It's great once people realize that they're a human and that everything important is inside themselves, but to fully go this route, one needs to realize that the subjective is more important than the objective, or that objectivity is limited in the first place, which is difficult for many intelligent people to do
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Zizek explicitly distinguishes the death drive from Schopenhauer’s concept of Will:
The death drive is the point where the subject contradicts and undermines himself; it belongs to the domain of the unconscious. It is what makes a final state of completion or satisfaction (even in the purely negative sense of being free from desire) impossible. It certainly has nothing to do with any conscious willing or desire.
I didn’t quote the part where he references Schopenhauer by name, but if you check the video, he does mention him.
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@TowardsPanna is the right guy for this as he's a more experienced meditation practitioner than I am.
With regards to enlightenment, there are various paths in various traditions. I am not on the Buddhist track that many follow and I can't comment on the ideas about enlightenment properly though I will come back to this after a few days.
I have been meditating on and off for two years and nothing comes close to the equanimity I feel once I practice. It may be true that how you say people perceive enlightenment may not exist as we think it does but the benefits of meditation are profound, way stronger than any intoxicant I've tried and I've tried some.
Also jains and Hindus aren't the same. Buddhist meditation practices and the good Hindu ones come from the himalayas where you had intermingling of traditions, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh and Tibet being places where bulk of what we do indirectly has roots to. Ultimately I don't care about enlightenment as much, not because kashmir shaivism the school I'm a part of via tantra illuminated doesn't talk about it but because even getting closer to it than where I'm at would be life changing in the most literal sense.
There are people I've spoken to who are probably in a similar boat as you, but they can't recommend this stuff enough for the same reason. I'd definitely like to hear more, but for any theory, @TowardsPanna is the guy. I just paid 10 dollars for a three-month membership for Tantra Illuminated, so I was surprised to see this here. Happy coincidence.
edit - another happy coincidence, I saw this video of Shinzen Young describing the benefits of long-term meditation
Sure, there are benefits to meditation both in the moment and long-term. But there's a massive discrepancy between what is being promised, and what is actually happening for long-term practitioners. People go in expecting something like Krishnamurti's natural state, where the qualitative nature of moment-to-moment experience and behavior is permanently changed, but all you really get is a mild feeling of equanimity and non-dualism -- though you can reach immensely powerful states during meditation and shortly after. There is an obvious mismatch between what manifests and the type of thing promised in the suttas. And yet, our meditation is entirely a reconstruction from the ancient texts; one that emphasizes vipassana while the ancients emphasized samadhi.
It is tragic that meditation is so closely tied to a religion, because this means effectively one side of the population will not take it seriously, while the other half embraces it like pure magic. And this extends to our scientists. Someone who's done his reading knows the almost cartoonish way our scientists flip on a dime when shown a few good proofs of eastern medicine. When the Greeks found their high arts among the Egyptian priests, they saw to separating the mystical from the material. It is a third position that is exceedingly hard to come by now.
Why is it tragic? Religion is fundamental to human existence, and even Christians have a school of contemplative practise. Though the Himalayas had the best schools for it. I dont want that side to do it then. If chanting a mantra for lord shiva is such a pain then people are best suited to the Sam Harris School of meditation which is not far off from Hustlers University in terms of rigor when compared to real schools.
No one I know started with the explicit goal to achieve enlightenment of the kind Shinzen Young had and it took him decades to get there. This is not me being rude, I am a noob at life but do you not think that the only correct answer for this for your own perspective can only come once you spend 5-10 years of following a proper path? You may have in which case I have nothing to add.
There is no mismatch, there has never been any mismatch and the people I know who do meditate never think about enlightenment as a goal. Might be because we are all beginners compared to someone like Hareesh Wallis. I have crippling ADHD, extreme issues not just from my lifestyle, life choices but also at a neurological level. I find profound benefits in this and was recommended to meditate even by my therapist in my psychiatrist's office.
You can meditate to be more grounded on a moment-to-moment basis. That, to me, is liberating, and anyone who sticks with it can give a decent answer for it. Enlightenment likely is real, but I can only know if I sit daily for an hour or more for decades on end. I purposefully dont read about it, I want to just sit and do whats needed, I can only experience things once I do that, anything else and I am ensuring that I dont get there.
Until recently it was also natural that infant mortality rates were 30% to 50% during childbirth, and that a single cut from a rock may prove fatal. Natural too, then, is the fact that this mystical path really ends in no profound change, and this is owed not to the weakness of our methods, but the poor karma of most practitioners. So the Buddha is said to have stored countless lifetimes of accumulated good will, and that for any man to become awakened it is like digging through a mountain with a spoon. In the end it's all promises, and I've seen it too many times. Dig through the layer of promises and you hit the bottom.
Sure. Freedom from ADHD. Freedom from anxiety. These are all wonderful things. But it's not what was advertised.
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