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 -
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
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