WaveInTheOcean

Well, if a scientist truly knew EVERYTHING about the brain and eyes and sophisticated AI nano-technology, he could without a sweat make a neurological operation on himself that would allow him to see colours again and thus experience the existential nature of red.

anyway, what matters just as much as which psychedelic is the set and setting. Set = your mindset, how you're feeling, your mental preparation, your intentions setting = your immediate environment. Is it cozy and clean and safe?

shed that ego=)

Dno if it has been posted here before, but Schmachtenberger is a brilliant example of a guy who's REALLY good at systems thinking. Very interesting talk about the future of humanity.

A talk about the future of psychedelics in scientific and clinical contexts. Interesting. Exciting future ahead. Btw @Leo Gura Anil Seth calls himself a strict materialist and says accordingly: "As a firm materialist, I believe every experience that we have has a basis in the activity of our brain". Do you agree/disagree with that statement? It's hard to disagree with. Everything is consciousness and our brains are computers that create a special form of "software" that we call the individiual separated self aka ego. Since God/Consciousness is fundamentally the only "thing" that exists, it is God that is imagining all this: the brain, the experiences, the separated self. It is also hard to make a causal order here. Does the psychedelic/mystical experience induce a special observable brain-state or is it the other way around, as Anil Seth wants us to believe? Perhaps it is both. They rise simultaneously. In the philosophy of mind, double-aspect theory is the view that the mental and the physical are two aspects of, or perspectives on, the same substance. "God is love. And Love must love. And to love there must be a Beloved. But since God is Existence infinite and eternal there is no one for Him to love but Himself. And in order to love Himself, He must imagine Himself as the Beloved whom He as the lover imagines He loves. Beloved and lover implies separation. And separation creates longing; and longing causes search. And the wider and the more intense the search, the greater the separation and the more terrible the longing. When longing is at its intensest, separation is complete, and the purpose of separation, which was that love might experience itself as lover and Beloved, is fulfilled; and union follows. And when union is attained, the lover knows that he himself was all along the Beloved, whom he loved and desired union with; and that all the impossible situations that he overcame were obstacles which he himself had placed in the path to himself. To attain union is so impossibly difficult because it is impossible to become what you already are!" - Meher Baba

Dude, do your own research . For example try google "psilocybin depression study" and you'll see that psychedelics in the right context has the potential to be 1000x stronger than tradtional anti-depressants in fighting depression.

@CreamCat "Also, if God is infinitely powerful, God can invent imitations that can fool humans for long enough." There are no humans, absolutely speaking. The only one he's fooling is himself.

"I guess a regular materialist would just say that the brain is in the universe, and that the perception of the universe is happening in the brain. " The idea that you can have an outside external world (aka universe) exisiting independent of a brain is flawed. It's equivalent to believing you can have selling without buying. They go together, i.e. each one gives rise to the other.

brilliant talk

A mystical experience is also a hallucination. It's just a hallucination wherein you realize that reality is a hallucination. A strange loop.:)

"It's possible that a person that I see has no conscious experiences of one's own. You simply cannot know without directly experiencing others' conscious experiences. In the future, non-playable characters will become numerous due to artificial intelligence. Theoretically, nothing prevents people from creating artificially intelligent robots that look and behave like humans without a self." You as a person - and all other persons - are imaginary. You imagine yourself as CreamCat, just as I imagine myself as WaveInTheOcean and just as you imagine all other persons you meet in your life. You = I = God. God imagines everything. A seperated self is a special form of "software" programmed to survive. Everything that is programmed to have a self -- that is to survive -- is capable of feeling pain. Because pain is nothing else than an activity imagined to resist being swallowed back into the infinity of Nothingness/God (= resisting death which is also imaginary). There are varying degrees of pain, no doubt. And selfs that are more abstract, more complex no doubt has a higher capacity of feeling pain. "In the future, non-playable characters will become numerous due to artificial intelligence." No. "Non-playable and playable characters" is an artifical dualistic construct you have created in your mind. There is no such thing as non-playable characters. If we are capable -- through the means of hardware and programming -- of creating a robot/an AI that behaves exactly like a human being, then it should have the same rights as you and me... Because it IS a seperated self by definition. And everything that is a seperated self is experienced as such by You = Me = God. "Theoretically, nothing prevents people from creating artificially intelligent robots that look and behave like humans without a self." You are wrong. It is impossible to create an artifical human being that behave exactly like a non-artifical-human being and doesn't have a self. It is quite easy to see why. A human being CANNOT "have" a separated self, because a human being IS a separated self. You=Me=God have infinite seperated selfs as the persons we believe we are and meet in life. *separated =))) EDIT: The reason more abstract/complex selfs have higher capacties for feeling pain (and thus also blissfulness) is because the more abstract/complex a self is, the more separated away from God it is, and the more separated away from God it is, the more it on the outside (explicate order) fears death (union with God) and the more it on the inside (implicate order) is longning for self-death/ego-death (union with God).

I think that's a brilliant way to put it, yes. Yeah that's probably one of the most human thing about us. That we believe that we should always fight for something in order to get it. Suffer for it. Because then when I get it, I'll be one of hell of a guy, yeah - special. The ego is so tricky. In one of his talks, Alan says the following (a snippet from it): - https://www.organism.earth/library/document/25 By the way, I listened to a talk by Adyashanti recently, which I found pretty illuminating. He's a brilliant and very clear conveyer of what spirituality is all about. Or actually, because I'm lazy, I only listened to like 5 minutes of it and then just read the transcript, because that's quicker, but none-the-less, a very good read at least then: https://www.organism.earth/library/document/101 (both transcript and audio-file is here). I can really recommend checking that one out. It's about -- among other things -- how it is really important not to view spiritual enlightenment as a goal, as an end-destination. It's also in general about truth and letting go -- at one point he uses kids as an example. Adyashanti says that the only real 'thing' that can come to an end, is the ignorance about one's own nature:

Alan Watts: The four dominant characteristics of a mystical psychedelic experience. Taken from his book: The Joyous Cosmology.

Yeah, but that's how the ego works, I guess. You gotta obey the ego's playbook to a certain degree. After all, it is through the dissolution of the ego that enlightenment comes. The ego has to dissolve, but you can't make that happen by just wanting it to happen. It has to happen spontaneously, as when you fall asleep lying in the sofa, tired. But how do you make it happen spontaneously? You cannot of course, because then it wouldn't be spontaneous The only way is to go on the road, try really hard. And then maybe, at some point the ego realizes the silliness of it all, the cosmic joke of it all, and then it happens, it surrenders. The presence of the ego implies distinction; a division between subject and object. The ego works by mechanisms whereby it desires to get something it doesn't already have, let it be a girlfriend, money, success or, yes, enlightenment. You have to play by the rules to a certain degree, because there is no alternative. Or that would maybe be a strong psychedelic experience (5-MeO) or just luck. I guess, what I am trying to say, is that you have to search in order to find out that there is nothing to search for Reality is so paradoxical. Some snippets from Osho's own description of his enlightenment:

It's not that Truth is 'beyond' thoughts. The Truth is here and now. Always have been. Always will be. You need nothing to grasp the Truth. Thoughts and all other form of experience are of course expressions of the Truth (what else could they be?). But most experiences in life, most thoughts people have, they are mostly viewed by people as pointers to something else forward in time. "If I go to school, someday I will get a degree" "Now I got my degree. now I will soon get a job, and when I get a job I will get succesful, and then happy". "I will get enlightened if i do X" Experiences and thoughts that point to themselves -- i.e. seem to be self-referring and paradoxical -- are IMO the best pointers to the Truth. I.e. they are not only expressions of Truth, but they also tries to express the Truth itself. I also think that's why koans are used so much by Zen Masters. By using koans, they try to get their students to see the paradoxical nature of everything. Music is maybe the best example of an experience that obviously points to nothing but itself. Music has no meaning besides itself. Of course, ultimately speaking, all experiences are the Truth and thus points to nothing else than the Truth. But relatively speaking, some experiences -- some kind of language -- "more obviously" point to the Truth than other experiences. ----------------------------------------------------------- Thoughts can never approximate the Truth. That's a trap. They can only point to it. And their ability to point or not depends as much on the lisenter as on what is being said. But you can't describe the Truth! In no way! ALL conceptual frameworks are equally infinitely close and infinitely far away from the Truth itself. You can never understand the Truth/Absolute/God/Nothingness/Consciousness/God/Tao through language. Conceptual frameworks/teachings can only be tools ("maps") that can help you in getting you to realize what is and what has ALWAYS been the Truth. In that sense some conceptual frameworks can be useful in the quest for enlightenment, but they can also be traps. Depends on what you do with them. They can help you to start doing the actual 'work', i.e. meditation, self-inquiry, psychedelics, etc. They can help you to start looking at yourself and your attachments, and see what you're clinging to. They can maybe point out to you the massively illusionary nature of your ego, of your thoughts, of your life. A hammer is usually best used to hammer a nail into something, not to look at and sanctify. If you cling to your conceptual framework as something that is approximating the Truth, then naturally that's a great obstacle, but that's your own fault. --------------------------------------------- koans. making them see the paradoxical nature of all their beliefs. making them see how their thoughts are very limited. art. music. poetry. dno. ---------------------------------------- Some conceptual random words: "If you use your mind to study reality, you won't understand either your mind or reality. If you study reality without using your mind, you'll understand both." - This is a great quote by the Zen Master, Bodhidharma. Thoughts come & go, you stay. Emotions come & go, you stay. Sensations come & go, you stay. Image of ’you’ come & go, you stay. Story of ’you’ come & go, you stay. That which doesn't come and go is you. It is really that simple. Awareness naturally gives attention to the comings and goings. Pull identity back from these comings and goings. That which you are trying to look for is that which you are already looking from. Truth is so simple - so effortless. ---------------------------------------------------- “A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts. So he loses touch with reality, and lives in a world of illusion.” "Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth." "If you ask me, then, why am I talking? Well, I could say I’m making a living this way, or I have a message that I want to get across to you. But that is not the reason. I’m talking for the same reason that birds sing and for the same reason that the stars shine. I dig it. Why do you dig it? Well, I could go on answering all sorts of questions about human motivation and psychology, but they wouldn’t explain a thing because explaining things by the past is really a refusal to explain them at all. All you’re doing is postponing the explanation. You’re putting it back, and back, and back, and back, and that explains nothing." The present needs no explanation.

Agreed. You don't have to Leo, I think. if you do it anyway, make it somewhat short and precise with a Spiral Dynamics-perspective

Saying there is no truth in journalism as a hard core fact = presenting it as 'a truth' that there is no truth in journalism :-) You got very little clue about what post-modernism and deconstruction is. That's clear. To say that all that deconstruction is saying is 'that there is no absolute truth' is a gross oversimplification of what deconstruction actually is. This is actually a great little video giving some key insights into what Derrida was up to with his "deconstruction".

You seem to have great trust in yourself. Trump doesn't say there's no truth. He's doing the opposite, actually.

We tend to define everything that has DNA as 'natural'. If you have a self-aware AI that is not programmed by DNA, but programmed by computer code, that would qualify as 'artificial' I guess. The distinction is arbitrary. I might as well say that you and I are AI. And I'm just as wrong/right as if someone are saying I'm a "NI". (Natural Intelligence).

Neat idea, but that has kind of already been done with Westworld (in Season 2 at least), although that's a TV series, not a game. Or well, not exactly the same idea, as your idea seems a bit more extreme,. "A humanoid AI in a virtual reality can cut open its skull and damage its brain without affecting its consciousness because that brain is a total cosmetic illusion that has no function" IMO you are contradicting yourself here, kinda. Because 'virtual reality' is something that is digital but resembles reality. Right? And therefore in that VR-game, the humanoid AI should lose consciousness if severe damage is being made to the brain. In our reality, the one you and I are in right now, the brain is not a cosmetic thing. It's useful. It's as useful as something can get,. The word 'consciousness' is a tricky word. All people have slightly different interpretations of the word when they use it/hear it. For me, it means different things based on context. In a medical, biological context, consciousness to me just refers to being awake vs. being unconscious. In a spiritual context, consciousness to me refers to the substance of reality, God. A VR-world where you can just cut your skull open and stick a knife through the brain without affecting consciousness (biological context) would be a silly VR-game, what's the fun then? It has to be dangerous. It has to make 'sense', otherwise it's just pure chaos without any meaning. And meaning -- even though it's always artifical -- is "GOOD" .. it's fun, it's necessary to run the drama of life. Consciousness (in a spiritual, metaphysical context) IS the GROUND of reality, i.e. it's what everything is made out of, it's prior to the material world, it's prior the human mind. So the brain is not the CREATOR of consciousness, it's "merely" a device that CREATES and OPERATES the human mind, i.e. the brain is the material version of you as a PERSON, as a human being, it's the hardware that runs your mind (the software). However, ultimately speaking, the real you, what you really are is not the mind nor the brain, but God, the consciousness that's prior to the human mind. You are God observing itself, i.e. observing the human mind, observing the ego, observing the world (and also creating itself, out of itself, knowing itself). By the way, the world is merely a reflection of the human mind. To me, the human brain is a duality creator of consciousness. The brain creates duality by making a distinction between ME - myself, my mind -- and "not-me"; the 'outside world'. And with me, I mean God. I am God. And I created this human brain to split myself up. To lose myself into the drama of life. I forgot who I am. Now I believe I'm WaveInTheOcean existing independelty of itself in a material world, which is outside and independent of me. But this is the comisc joke. Both WaveInTheOcean and everything that I define as 'outside of me', is actually ALL ME. It's all ME. It's all one substance, God, me. It's all consciousness. The brain is merely making an artifical distinction in order to create drama, to create tension, to create oscillations. To create duality. I am the non-dual consciousness observing it all (and being it all). I am NOT WaveInTheOcean. That's a character I'm - as God - is playing. So it's all me. It's all mind-stuff. It's all one big mind (the mind of God) with smaller limited minds inside God's mind. WaveInTheOcean is one limited mind. But dualistically, relatively speaking, I am a person, I am a mind, a brain existing in the outside world. That's how the game operates. The world is fundamentally dualistic; as long as you are a human being, you are operating with duality. The trick is, either you are aware of it, or you're not. Either you are aware of the game, or you're not. If you're not aware of the game, then you are so stuck in duality that you think it's all rock-solid, real and 110% serious. When we talk about non-duality, we are merely talking abut the reality of the world, about the nature of reality. And yes, reality is non-dual. But that's hard to become aware of, because duality is so seducing. It's much easier to be a poor victim and make distinctions/dualities of "us" vs "them", of "good" vs "evil" and so on. Ultimately, everything is perfect as it is. The game is running according to God's intentions, how could it not? lol. But still, within the game, things are messy, Trump is in the world etc. There are things we, as humans, should do to make the planet Earth a 'better' place to be. This is just my opinion though, that is, WaveInTheOcean's opinion. I hope ya fellows agree with me:D But yeah, realize that this messiness is good. If everything were perfect (relatively speaking, cus ultimately speaking, of course it's perfect, it cannot not be) then it would be boring to be alive, and we would have to create VR-games where things were messy. When you load up a PC game it's no fun to the difficulty to 'easy', we almost always chose 'medium' or 'hard', because that gives us the thrills, it has to be hard. We enjoy suffering. Im just ranting sorry

the dude in this video getting interviewed is an archetype unmature orange guy. A more mature version of an orange archetype would be Sam Harris, who already got some green in him, which is why he's more mature, hehe.

like this or Joe Rogan, Derrida, Einstein, Obama, Elon Musk, Wittgenstein, Freeman Dyson, David Bohm (although he was close to turquoise), Graves, Don beck. Many others (and then again rare compared to orange.)

well. I thought earlier that JP was yellow. Btw I'm probably myself green beginning to transition into you yellow myself, so yeah I'm not at a level where I'm able to spot yellow people so easily yet. Exactly because I'm green and generally find intellectual people interesting (cos JP is smart, he is intellectual, he has a lot of knowledge, but being smart/high IQ/intellectual/knowing a lot is independent of which stage you are at the spiral, mostly), so naturally I thought that JP was yellow, especially because I'm starting to see the limits of green, my own stage, so the critique he was giving of green was intriguing to me, and I thought it was coming from someone above, me, i.e. yellow. However, the more videos I watch with him now, the more I see that he's actually below green. He's pretty clearly orange-blue. I mean a yellow would not be so ideological about that law in Canada, whereas JP is just going to war against it, which is a typical way of doing things in the lower stages, i.e. blue orange. If you want to see someone who's yellow, check out Noam Chomsky, lot's of videos with him on the internet. By the way, it's clear to me that the law in Canada is made by green. From a yellow standpoint the law is not smart, but not a catastrophe either. From a blueish/orangish standpoit, the law is indeed a catastrophe, which is why you see JP acting the way he does right now.