Leo Gura

That's because you're looking at it from a Stage Orange, selfish perspective. As long as it makes your dick hard, you're good. But there are other concerns. For example, have you considered how such overly-sexualized depictions affect the self-esteem of young girls? What if you had a daughter and she grew up with self-esteem problems because her tits did not look like those of Tomb Raider? Then you, as the father, would have to deal with that. Sarkisian's point is not that all sexuality should be banned, but that things are overly-sexualized in ways which are designed to cater to men's desires, and that women are not fairly depicted as they really are, but as men want them to be for their sexual gratification. How would you feel if all video games were made to please the desires of butch lesbians? You wouldn't like it. How would you feel if all guys in video games were depicted with giant dicks, making your girlfriend ask you, "Why is your dick so small?" See, when the shoe is on the other foot, you start to cry and whine about how unfair things are. But when things are skewed in your favor, you think it's great and there is no problem. I'm not saying Sarkisian never goes too far. She's certainly stuck in unhealthy Green. But the problem is that you still don't understand her. Which is a problem not for her, but for you.

Not a fair point when you take into account scale. It's a totally different challenge to provide 1+ billion people with toilets. Everybody overlooks the problems that come with scale. How to organize 1 billion people is a problem of epic proportions requiring a God-like intellect to solve. Not to mention that technology has advanced far beyond toilets.

Not sure what your problem is here. What he said is fairly reasonable. You should distinguish between a thing being true vs how others might use it to justify whatever devilry they want. For example, it is a general truism that men are physically stronger than women. But some devil could use this to justify raping women. Just because he does that does not undermine the original truth. Truth is always used by devils for selfish purposes. Clearly Sadhguru is not doing that. He's not justifying anything, he's explaining the notion of Samskara, which is a very powerful notion that would be worth your time studying and understanding. Samskara is not just genetics, it's broader and more profound than that. Hehe... yeah. That's exactly what high-consciousness teachings sound like. Because you are judging them from a low level of consciousness, lacking Sadhguru's decades of deep mystical experience. To understand a sage you must access the states of consciousness he has accessed.

@jd1279 None of what you said contradicts what I said. All of that is dependent on different starting conditions. What the conditions and who is advantaged or disadvantaged is irrelevant, since reality unfolds in chaotic and backward ways, with one part sloping up, another sloping down, and then many oscillations and reversals. The development of nations is not linear, it is chaotic. Europe had a tremendous amount of competition which lead to lots of development. The actual details of the history are not important. What's important is the general principle that in a chaotic system small differences in starting conditions lead to very different evolutionary paths. And the ultimate point is that it is foolish to blame anyone for these developmental paths. The paths are precisely whatever they are and no one is to blame (as Sam Harris likes to do). It is like blaming a 3rd grader for not yet being a 5th grader. Well, some people take longer to reach 5th grade. Rather than blaming them, help them along.

@Principium Nexus If you like that, you'll love some of the books about infinity in my book list.

Anita Sarkisian is a great example of Stage Green SJW-type: And the whole GamerGate reaction against her is mostly grounded in stage Blue/Orange. GamerGate is a great example of how Tier 1 fights with itself, not able to understand each other. Each side feels self-righteous and therefore unable to learn from the other side.

You'd have to study a lot of history and culture of the Middle East. The classic book: Gun, Germs, and Steel makes some interesting points about how geographical conditions shape development of nations and cultures. It's not exactly rocket science to suggest that geography plays an important role in how nations develop and survive. Arabian culture was highly tribal because survival in harsh desert climates is no easy business. That strong tribalism is evident even today. You can think of nations almost like species. Different bird species develop and survive in different ways depending on the geography they must survive in -- as Darwin discovered and catalogued. Well, same thing with nations. Some nations develop quickly because their environment demands it. Other nations develop slowly because their environment allows for it. Some species like crocodiles have not changed much in the last 50 million years while others like birds and primates had to evolve rapidly to adapt to new emerging environments. To reduce all this complexity to problematic passages within the Quran is rather silly. The Quran itself is a byproduct of this evolutionary process of survival. Islam is a religion uniquely suited to survival within the conditions where it arose. Unfortunately as the world becomes more globalized Islam has difficulty adapting to more modern times. But this problem is not unique to Islam. All religions face this problem to some extent. Fundamentalism is a reactionary movement against modernization and secularism. Fundamentalist movements exist within Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, etc. Fundamentalism is an ego backlash against modernity and post-modernity.

Even so, he exaggerates his results. But of course his underlying material is solid.

I want your help. As I do research for my book, I want to gather a potent collection of objections to spirituality, nonduality, enlightenment, mysticism, the paranormal, etc. I want legit objections that newbies and skeptics commonly have in this work. Here are some examples to get you thinking along the right lines: How can you trust that a subjective experience reveals Absolute Truth? Isn't awakening just a subjective brain phenomenon? Could awakening be a self-deception? Is it possible that there's something beyond Absolute Truth which you could be missing? How is awakening different from solipsism? How is awakening different from nihilism? How is awakening different from pantheism? Why do awakened people still commit evil acts like sexually abusing their students? If God is real, why would God hide himself from people? Why isn't God evident to all people in the same way that the sun is? If awakening is true, why do all the religions disagree so much? You say reality is infinite, but doesn't quantum mechanics say there is a fundamental lower limit to space known as the Planck Length? Why is love, beauty, goodness, and intelligence a fundamental property of the universe but hate, ugliness, evil, and stupidity are not? If God is so loving why would he allow so much evil in the world like rape, torture, genocide, war, etc? How can you trust psychedelics reveal valid truths and aren't just subjective hallucinations? If science is as wrong about the fundamental metaphysics of reality as you say, how come it's so successful at manipulating reality? Why couldn't there be more than one God? If physical reality is imaginary, why can't I imagine a million dollars into my bank account or imagine away a physical illness? If what you say is true, how come serious scientists aren't talking about it? Where is your Nobel prize? I want stuff like that in this thread. Note: I won't necessarily resolve your objections in this thread. I'm simply trying to gather a solid list of them. Please formulate your question/objection clearly and concisely.

That's right. Because we have a hierarchy here. Welcome to society. No one here is forcing you to trust us. You decide who you trust.

In practice maintaining a harem requires a lot of lying and manipulating. The girls are never satisfied being in the harem long-term. Girls inevitably drop out and must be replaced with new ones. But it's easy for the guy to justify it to himself because he's getting laid so much.

The average person has zero chance of awakening up. So it's a moot point. When you try to make awakening mainstream, it turns into crap like Catholicism or Mormonism.

Yes, the normal thing is to form unhealthy attachments to those who you idolize. Which is why you must be extra mindful not to form such attachments. Work extra hard not to get attached to me. Maybe it will help if you imagine me boiling a basket of kittens in hot oil

That's actually a promising sign. Things tend to get very intense towards the end. Of course, be careful. Only you can know how much you can handle.

And this is dangerous because the student must assume the guru is valid and truthful, which the student is not qualified to know. So he's taking a huge gamble. It's like getting married to a random girl before you've even slept with her. Then later you find out she's a total pyscho. But the danger is you will become a sheep who walks off a cliff along with the herd. This work is full of dangers. Which is why so few people truly master it. You can go deeply by yourself. You don't need to crawl up someone's ass to go deep. RationalWiki doesn't need to blindly follow me. All they need to do is sit down and do the practices by themselves. It would also be a mistake for RationalWiki to only listen to my teachings. They should cross-reference my teachings with those of a 100 other gurus, yogis, mystics, philosophers, psychonauts, etc. to find the common ground. Working through this material carefully by yourself is the key. Nothing can be taken for granted, believed, or assumed.

It's important to distinguish between have an orgie with sexual assaulting people. If women freely elect to sleep with Bentinho, that's their business. Of course the trick is that his presence draws them in and charms them. So it's easy for him to build a harem if he wants.

@infinitelove You'll have to face that and come out the other end. The mind and body are full of various impurities which must be burned out before one is able to settle comfortably and joyfully in the Void. Much of this "pain" is fear, trauma, and mental resistance of various sorts.

I have no serious criticisms of him. He knows his shit. He doesn't deny love. He talks quite a bit about Eros (his term of Love), and he says that the driving force behind all evolution is love. Which is correct in my view, although even that doesn't go far enough to underscore the importance of Love in all of Creation. He might not be as explicit about Infinite Love as I am, equating Love & Truth. But that's probably because he has not accessed some of the deepest insights I have accessed via psychedelics. I think his understanding of reality would be deeper if he went deeply into psychedelics. But oh well. It's good enough. You can only ask so much of a guy. He has done several life-times-worth of amazing work. Ken is one of the greatest Western philosophers and intellectuals who has ever lived. We are lucky to be alive alongside him. It's sad that his health as deteriorated so quickly.

@Pouya Of course, that's what meditation & yoga are about.

Taking a break.

Yes Because materialism and sex is not other than spirit. Enlightenment does not limit your actions in any way. It sets you radically free.

@Javfly33 Yes. Really, the question becomes so internalized that it melt away and all you're left with is the raw present moment. Self-inquiry must take you out of your mind. If you're doing it as the level of mind, that's not going to do much. Out of your mind is the key. You must leave behind the verbal / logical domain. Psychedelics work by effortlessly taking you out of your mind.

A) You can certainly find cheaper trainings. B) You'd get a lot more value out of simply connecting with a few experienced wingmen in your city who can show you the ropes for free. Bootcamps can be a good way to get yourself in the game but the chief problem is that they are too short. Your results will not come from the bootcamp but from the daily follow-up work you do. The follow-up work is the most important part. Because every weekend needs to become your personal bootcamp. Don't underestimate the importance of having just 1 or 2 experienced wingmen to go out with every weekend. This is HUGE! It's worth much more than a bootcamp in terms of results. But if you got the money to burn, a bootcamp can be a good way to jumpstart this whole process. I did a bootcamp for $2000, but I got a lot more value from finding great wingmen. I also had lots of money to burn, so $2000 was not a big deal to spend. You can find wingmen via online forums or by attending an RSD FreeTour in your city. Befriend everyone at the FreeTour. Get their phone numbers and start going out with them every night. All that a bootcamp really is, is some dude telling you to approach girls and forcing you to do it all night long. If you can discipline yourself to approach all night long, you don't really need a bootcamp. But of course this discipline is really hard for newbies, so you may need it. If we were doing a bootcamp, we would just walk into a club and I would point out random girls and force you to approach them. After you fail, I would just tell you to immediately approach the next girl. We would do this 20-50 times over 3-4 hours.

Doesn't matter how many hookers he banged, 5-MeO-DMT is still awesome!

Keep in mind that the Absolute is distinct from the structures of the mind/brain/self. Which means it's possible to awaken but still have addictions. Because addictions are baked into the structure of the mind/brain/self. Awakening itself does not necessarily change the mind/self. Which is why an awakened person can still smoke cigs, have a porn addiction, etc. You can think of it this way: awakening disidentifies you from your mind. But the mind still continues to fire according to its lifetime of karma. If you spent a lifetime watching porn, your mind has been programmed with that habit, and awakening will not automatically remove all that. You will have to retrain your mind. This is why many awakened people are still flawed and still have bad habits and cravings. The mistaken assumption is that awakening will perfect the mind. This is simply untrue in practice. What perfects the mind is deliberate training, which many people neglect to do, especially after an awakening or two. Perfecting the mind is harder than awakening. In practice you could get many awakened people hooked on heroin. Because in truth they ain't that awake.