electroBeam

@SBB4746 thanks! How long does it last? And how easily do you develop a tolerance to it? Like can you take 1 tab every working day and still not develop a tolerance to it?

I'm not being a victim, and that's why im asking for advice here. Just saying 'try harder' doesn't solve the problem, you need a method or tool to solve it. Being a victim isn't the problem here. No, do you find nootropics to be quite effective with this sort of stuff? I think drugs can be effective, but I would like a more permanent, deeply rooted resolution first before deciding to rely on drugs.

people who say this statement are actually correct. Mental states ARE physiological reactions. but what are physiological reactions? what is physiology? Its atoms bouncing around in a set order. What are atoms? Spherical balls What are Spherical balls? A mental construct as far as I'm concerned. (well whatever you believe they are, you cannot say they are material, because they are underneathe material/built ontop of material) What is a mental construct? A phenomena (we don't know of what, we can't say its a materialistic phenomena because this phenomena is underneathe materialism) Ahhhhh atoms are undefinable phenomena (or if you keep questioning, they are actually illusions). So materialism isn't WRONG (unlike what Leo and others here try to make out) its just a self consistent layer ontop of the truth. Its like a high level programming language. Python/java/c# etc are not wrong, they are just built on top of assembly lang.

why not do both? Master a craft that you are passionate about?

it might be possible to actually not be aware of voidness during those blanks, if you were not prepared (as in you were not meditating) There are many times where I would zone out and voidness would be present, but I would not notice it, yet when I'm meditating and zone out it would be clear that voidness exist. Maybe you need to actually be looking for voidness when you blank out. An analogy is pain. Everybody feels suffering and pain, but does anyone actually inspect and observe what pain is actually made of? If they did they would realize pain isn't actually pain, its something totally different to what they thought it was, it looked different when you didn't inspect it, when you inspected it now it looks like ordinary phenomena like everything else. This is how illusions work. another analogy is this: imaging looking at your window, thinking its dirty, now imagine the owner of the window says 'that window is made of diamond' now you will be shitting yourself. But both before and after the other dude said that, the appearance was the same. Voidness and pain are the same, the appearance remains the same but awareness is like the dude. It shines an understanding onto that appearance.

but that thing doesn't exist. How is that at all related to everything? EDIT: actually it does exist, a better word is undefinable. EDIT 2: actually, that's energy

@Serotoninluv in fact, there is a teacher who taught mathematics non-dually. look here He came to the conclusion though, in one of his books, that language can arouse spiritual insight, but it can never be it. He obviously thought that mathematics is a great way to arouse nondual insight, and so that's why he taught it. He felt like mathematics could provide very high levels of thought, which almost reaches non duality (well at least reaches non duality much more than english) but it never ever can contain all of it, for that would defeat the whole premise of a language itself. You're sort of asking, can a toy car every replace a real car? Sure you can add bigger wheels to the car, maybe give the toy car a toy engine, but for the toy car to ever be as useful as a real car, it needs to be a real car. This perhaps is probably one of the only true absolute, existential laws that exist out there. If you want a mathematical equation to be a non dual insight, it has to be a non dual insight, not a maths equation. Although mathematics gets very close, much closer than english. But there's a tipping point, and tipping point simply is not reached symbollically.

+1 +1 nice share thanks! Yeah abstract thought (the thing underneathe mathematics) feels a lot like post rational insight to me rather than typical scientific information. Maybe there's a link going on? In fact franklin merrel wolfs book has a lot of detail on abstract thought and its relationship to deep existential insight/absolute reality. Of course you always get frustrated because reading things like this though, because no matter how hard you contemplate, and no matter how close you get, you never get to the answer. Its like a pot at the end of a rainbow.

@graded24 interesting points, especially the last paragraph. Wow, if what you are saying is true, that's very strange to me. Maybe I am assuming something that isn't actually true. I'm definitely aware of chaos theory though. A pendulum behaves appropriately with newtonian physics, but when you do something like add a double pendulum, newtonian physics stops predicting the right thing. But if quantum mechanics is predicting things more accurately the closer you zoom in, then that's the opposite effect of newtonian physics (newtonian physics predicts more accurately the more you zoom out). Yeah its a tough one, why is mathematics aligning with empirical knowledge? Like why? What is so special about the laws of mathematics? Surely you can't just make up a formal system like mathematics and expect it to have the ability to predict empirical phenomena?

Firstly, I think where we are disagreeing here is our understanding of what mathematics is. The materialist paradigm is an ideology. It contains properties commonly found in ideologies, because it is one. Its a system that contains a bunch of assumptions (called definitions) and rules for which these assumptions can interact with each other. The whole reason why quantum mechanics isn't working is simply because these definitions and rules are not conforming to empirical evaluations. What I'm saying is, and this is where we may disagree, mathematics is also an ideology. It contains a set of rules that must be followed, and a set of definitions. Where the beauty comes in with mathematics is that its a highly flexible ideology. It can describe many things because it's definitions are not constrained to specific physical gross phenomena, unlike the materialistic paradigm. you can allow x = a position, amount of apples you have, qualitative features like somebody's mood, etc. This is why Plato loved mathematics so much, because it was so flexible that he mistakenly confused it as the language of god. But its still an ideology. Really what I am asking is, does mathematics, with all its rules and definitions, really have the power and right form to explain quantum mechanics consistently? Of course you could twist your way into making it true, to some extent at least, by coming up with weird definitions like matrices describing a position, but is this because reality is adhering to the laws of mathematics, or because you want it to and so you're putting in the effort to twist reality into the mathematical paradigm? Also yes the mathematical formulas and models may be working in quantum mechanics, and may be giving you the correct results, but the whole point to having a theory is so that the human race has an understanding of how reality is working. Abstract thought (or 'mathematics' as you are using the term in your responses) do not provide this understanding. They provide results, and instructions for how to get those results, but this is simply just observing thought phenomena, this is not understanding anything.

@graded24 but the mathematical language is definitely not 'fuzzy' either. The mathematical language is a typical formal system which inherents clearly defined, consistent sets of rules for how a particular idea is to behave. From what you are describing in the 'fuzzy' sense, it seems like the electrons are performing inconsistently, and unclearly. Furthermore, as you said above, this is not due to our inability to measure precisely, but because the very nature of the system itself inherets inconsistency and undefined behaviours. Quantum physcicists try to get away with this problem by using the theory of probability, but see I personally believe they are using the wrong tool for the wrong job. Probability was designed to define things which we couldn't measure accurately, in quantum mechanics this is not the case. Am I wrong in these assertions and if so why?

A Scientist and an Artist Walks into a bar... The scientist is socially awkward, got scraggly, untrimmed hair which never ceases to go beyond the imagination of the people around him. He triumphs forth with his chemical cups and flasks, and as confident as an alpha ape, gets out his equipment and takes very precise, measurable data on the phenomena he's looking at. He believes that the power of the universe is in understanding reality as deeply as possible, he's a post rationalist, and makes his living giving lectures about deep epistemological insight about reality. He cared about his work so much that he called it a secret name, a name that sounds spiritual to remind him of how deep his work is. He called it 'CHIT'. Yet there was one problem, his best friend was dying of cancer, and all he did and cared about was pray to Jesus. No matter how much the scientist proclaimed to his friend "jesus is an illusion in the mind, all there is, is the one omnipresent god, do not pray to jesus for he is an illusion" it had no effect on the best friend's mental state. The wise old scientist felt depressed. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't cure his friend. Then a woman with long, very straight, very curtailed hair walks in. she's wearing a spotted vest, full of paint. He clothe's are ragged but beautiful, sort of a wabi-sabi style. She believes the point of life, rather, is to make life highly emotionally/feely energetic. She makes emotionally captivating paintings about god, how beautiful her body is, how compassionate his heart is, how wise his mind is. Everyone cries at the sight of her paintings, so much so that their worlds disappear, and bathe in the beauty of the energy. She cared about her work so much that she called it a secret name, a name that sounds spiritual to remind her of how deep her work is. She called it 'ANANDA'. Yet there was one problem, she was so creative, that she was starting to loose her mind. She couldn't tell right from wrong, truth from falsehood, she felt like she was turning schizophrenic. The scientist spots the woman, drawing on a canvas, for what he couldn't see as it was facing her and not him, and laughs "how do you waste so much time drawing bullshit on a canvas" he disgustedly proclaimed. "All you do is draw delusion after delusion, when will you grow up?". The woman proclaims "how are you so cold and harsh! All you do is measure and measure, yet do you even know why you measure?, I'm drawing heart and soul, and this is my greatest painting yet!" The main arrogantly smirks, and for curiosity, looks to see what she's drawing. He first giggled at the sight, but then contemplated closer. It was a brown haired man, slightly tanned. The scientist had no choice but to admit, it may be bullshit, but it was the most beautiful bullshit he had ever seen, he couldn't resist but to drop a few tears. "Its Jesus" proudly explained the woman. The scientist gave a few tips, "you know, if you add a few more wrinkles to his face, you could make the painting look that bit more realistic and ..." the scientist continued on. The woman was delighted to get such sound advice! The conversation got so deep that the woman even asked about her psychosis and how to resolve it, of course the scientist knew all about delusion, and so he explained. The scientist also had a brilliant idea to show this picture to his friend dying of cancer, which made both him and his friend feel profoundly fulfilled in life. They ended up living their life together, feeling complete. The woman and the scientist ended up marrying and having 1 child, later known as the buddha. He use to sit under a tree a lot meditating, so they called him 'SAT'. He was the union of both, ANANDA and CHIT, the perfect balance. 'the end' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satcitananda

@Leo Gura I'm heavily experienced with setting up computer/electrical equipment. Let me know if you want to get a webcam/live video system setup, I would be glad to help.

Ahhh, the devil once again is giving me fools gold. What I think Truth is, is actually Maya. Thankyou for your compassionate words winterknight.

@Ampresus of course it can, Try finding abstract patterns and relationships between the qualia of the tree and other qualia experienced in reality: the tree has a root and branches, like a hierarchy of a company it has root and branches trying to reach a sun, like a meditator trying to reach enlightenment it has the root and branches is like a pathway leading to something, like a road or ant trail it has oval shape trees, like the oval shape of an old sailing boat from the top down view some leaves are clumped together, other leaves are spread out, like the human, animal, etc population spread throughout the planet its shape (including the trees) are messy but have form, like clouds .... make 1000 more yourself.

Are illusions Real, with a capital R? How does one get deluded, if the thing that is deluding them doesn't exist?

Firstly, I will just brielfy summarize my opinions about the use of psychedelics, and then further clarify my question based on my beliefs. Some personal observations I have noticed with people who DO take psychedelics are that: - people who have never heard of spirituality before, tend to at least develop a tiny bit of motivation to meditate after having the experience. They also get shocked, provoked, and tend to misrepresent their experiences massively (which is of course expected). Yet they mostly remain completely clueless and fail to develop a regular meditation habit for at least the next 5 yrs if not for their entire lifespan. - people who do regularly meditate, and are on 'the path' and take psychedelics, tend to have quite amazing experiences during the trip, and they develop very interesting and alternative memories about reality, yet they usually completely fail to integrate the experience to levels necessary to really take full opportunity of the experience. Also psychedelics usually do not, in my experience, supercharge somebody's meditation experience if they have been regularly meditating. If they are a 'noob' and meditate once a week, then psychedelics supercharge their experience massively. But if they already meditate for at least 30 minutes to 1 hour a day, their meditation practice usually doesn't get supercharged, and apart from the cool memories, the person's spiritual growth remains unaltered. From these opinions/observations, I pose 3 questions: - Are my observations correct? If not what am I observing incorrectly? - If psychedelics do not have much of an effect of changing your brain's synaptic connections that much, then what is the point of taking psychedelics? Why are they useful? - Is there a meditation type system out that which very wisely and methodologically uses psychedelics to supercharge a person's spiritual growth? And if so would you kindly point me in the right direction (NOTE: I have looked at various south american shamanic practices, yet the ones I have seen do not particularly enhance your spiritual growth, but rather your ability to heal through non ordinary reality. There is a subtle difference to what I am looking for, I am looking for Atman/Brahman not non ordinary states of reality). Thanks!

@Charlotte I use to like science in HS, but then I started hating it because of how wrong it really was (after contemplation) but now im starting to like it again. Why? Because I about a year or 2 ago I was a black and white thinker. If science was slightly wrong about something, I would palm it off as completely incorrect and stupid. Now I'm starting to realize this is a silly way to go about things. Yes a scientific model might be 90% wrong, full of lies, dogmas and self prejudice, but there is usually a 10% of the model that actually is enlightening and correct, and quite insightful. While what science is saying in an absolute, concrete sense is wrong, its relationships, patterns and connections with other subject usually can give you some valuable insight, if looked at it sceptically and holistically. Take for example Netwton's laws of mechancis. Of course these laws are technically wrong in an absolute sense, yet there does seem to be a relationship between objects falling to the ground. Is this relationship a constructed illusion? Could be, but even if it is an illusion, it gives you an insight into how the mind creates illusions, and also gives you insight into the cultural paradigms and ways of thinking in either Newton's head or the culture Newton was brought up in. F=ma starts to break down at a molecular level, but its not completely incorrect. There is still that 10% of it which is true, the other 90% is covered by quantum mechanics.

@Salvijus yeah, I can see that psychedelics obviously bring awakening experiences, but is it a wise, grounded way to do it? My gut is saying no. Small incremental steps + order seems to be a wiser choice than sporatic, chaotic leaps. @Strikr How did you integrate the experience to make the awakening permanent? How do you practice psychedelics? Do you meditate?

on most days(not all) I feel a constant fatigue feeling throughout my body. Description of the feeling: There is an overall tiredness feeling. Its slightly different to the feeling of sleepiness, in that the feeling has a bit of an irritation feeling, its highly linked to anger: causes anger in myself, and also amplifies my brain's resistance to emotionally and physically laborious tasks, such as meditation, engineering work, maths work, etc. If I try and sleep, that feeling will still be there, yet I doubt my body will actually sleep. The feeling is hard to localise, but it feels like its coming from my head and chest (heart and 3rd eye chakras). What I have tried to overcome it, and the results that came after it: 1. I have tried sleeping more (9 hours a day). There have been days where I have felt more energy (at the levels I want) where I slept 12-13 hours that night, yet these days are inconsistent and only very rare. On most days I sleep better, I would feel just as tired, and my body would spontaneously wake up tired, where I wouldn't be able to go back to sleep(it would spontaneously wake up with only 6-7 hours of sleep in a few cases, with no external stimuli to cause it, my body rarely can keep asleep for more than 8 hours) 2. Lower carb diet: I have tried a medium low carb diet, say about 30-50 grams of carbs a day. The diet would mainly consist of eggs, meat a small amount of kale and onion and tomato and cocoa fat (from 90% dark chocolate), all cooked not raw. After trying this diet, I have not noticed a change in my tiredness, what I have noticed suprisingly is that I actually feel slightly less tired when I have more carbs. On this diet I barely have any fruit and definitely no sugar. Other information: I regularly meditate on a daily basis (for about 1 hour) I do have ingestion problems. If I have gluten or milk, I will have diarrhoea. I have had a gluten and dairy diet ever since I was a child, up to a year ago, because my parents didn't know any better/were ignorant on the harmful effects of a child having diarrhoea weekly. While I do occasionally have gluten and lactose (maybe at most once a month) since then (due to changing diets after all this time being a real struggle), on most days I will have a lower carb gluten and lactose free and organic diet. I have been doing this diet for about 8 months now. I also feel more hungry than I should be, considering I eat about 1800 to 2000 calories a day. I definitely do not feel full, and I even feel slightly hungry constantly. Yet this could just be because I am fatigued (it certainly feels this way). Another weird thing I have, is difficulty catching my breathe. I constantly feel like I am not getting enough oxygen, and consequently yawn a lot. What possibly could I try to relieve my fatigue? Of course as expected, the local GP has done a very poor, infact negative job on my condition. Would you suggest any specific alternative medicine sect to try which is especially good at fatigue resolution? What about diet? Is there anything I'm missing?

I was under the border for both b12 and iron in my youth (4 years ago) but now b12 is hovering just above the border after my diet changes. I should have payed more attention to Iron though. The doctor didnt test me on that because he felt like it wasn't a problem. My blood pressure is around 146 units. right now its 64. I was diagnosed with having a murmur at birth and can hear every beat of my heart without touching my pulse. No wheezing that I can hear. I have a very strong sensation that my throat is closed. It sort of feels like when you get a cramp in your neck muscles and your neck is squeezing. Not sure if this is relevant, but I constantly have a very irritating lump of mucus/snot inside my throat. It feels like (feels not saying its actually true, just describing a sensation) that the mucus is also contributing to the throat close problem. 6-7am almost repetitively. I haven't to be honest, thanks for the suggestion. Which tests would you suggest I should ask for next time I see a doctor? The doctor routinely gives me generic advice on how to solve the problem. He tells me to ensure I am not depressed, getting enough sleep and excising. I wish my problem would go away with doing those things, but it hasn't. What would you suggest for the doctor to prompt him to look for a more deep cause if there is anything I could say? And would you suggest any particular diet changes I should make + any breathing exercises to make my throat bigger?

@Gerhard Hey mate, you will derive heaps and heaps of value by contemplating on this idea: "treat your customers as human beings, rather than just another object helping you get donations". Engagement of customers is a huge factor in your business model. With engagement, you will get more people using your site, and more donations per person. Through the site, give your customers a more personal feel. Make them feel like they are valued, and that they are meaningful/important. Get them involved in the business and give them a sense of ownership with your business. Include them into your business as if they are apart of your family. To give you a concrete example (for the sake of conveying my idea, I'm not telling you to actually implement this), consider the following redesign of your site: Give them ownership and autonomous control over what they donate to. - When buying things from the book depository, they get to choose what to donate to. They have the ability to choose a donation that is deeply meaningful to them. For example, just say a person on your site had a family member with a heart attack, they can actually choose to donate to heart attacks rather than just "preventing malaria and deworming treatments". If that isn't possible for now, would be great to have the ability to choose between those 2, or even give them the ability to suggest things to donate to, like a democratic thing where you provide them a list, and you tally up which areas your customer base wants to fund raise to. If you can personalize it even further, like allowing them to choose the country they donate to, etc, even better. The more personal it is, the higher amount of donation money you will get. Give your customers real statistics on how their money is making an impact. Make them feel special and important, and really trigger their empathy and compassionate side. Don't just provide this site and not give them feedback, why would they donate to a site like that? Be as transparent and open as possible. - for example: show that you care about their involvement and you have a really strong passion with making them involved in the process, not just on the money side but also on the emotional side. Really show you appreciate their help. you could do this by: After they buy an item from one of your stores (like ebay) a very interesting, fun and fascinating interactive page pops up, showing how africa was before your donations, and how it is after. Show them statistics of the lives saved (with emotional pictures of malaria treatments inside the hospital). Keep them updated on your progress. Make it exciting for your customers to use your site: - You could give them 'compassion dollars' where every time they buy a product with your sites, they get compassion dollars (like 2 compassion dollars). If they get 20 compassion dollars, they get a free meaningful gift or humanitarian voucher. For example, they get a free teddy bear with an anti-malaria shirt on it.

For my life purpose I need to practice some skills that are not easily defined. Because of this I'm really struggling to nail down what exactly I need to do, and ways in which I can measure my progress and how well I went on a particular trial round. Here is the skills I want to master: Understanding reality as realistically and truthully as possible. I basically want to master the skill of western science. I want to understand experimental phenomena as realistically with as most clarity as possible. Yet how do I practice this haha? What practice drills can I tangibly put in place to master the art of observation itself? Master understanding and clarity itself? How do I figure out how well I am doing? Secondly I want to master the art of teaching others a skill/ teaching others so that they understand certain phenomena in very clear, clarified and deep ways too. Again how do you practice teaching someone a concept? How do I measure myself and how good I am at this? This is similar to mastering the skill of zazen. How the fuck do zen people train in zazen????? There is nothing tangible to measure? And even if you ask yourself questions personally like how much more clarity do I have on a daily basis, is my confusion decreasing, etc. These questions could be biased because you are biased + these questions may not even relate to zen. Its not like karate where its very tangible and specific what the move looks like, what the effect of the move is, etc. Any resources would be greatly appreciated!

I challenge your view of 'evolution'. Consider the possibility that living organisms (including humans) don't evolve in a linear, stagewise fashion, but evolve cyclically, more like a spiral. To give you a concrete example, the post-rational mind as you refer to has already existed since the beginning of man kind. Ancient siddha/Tamil Nadu tribes, ancient Egypt and South American and Australian shamans already expressed post rational features, not just in minor areas of their traditions, but integrated into the very ecosystem of their cultures. These cultures have existed post rationally since the last 10000 to 20000 years. Us as a society are moving up and down constantly in periods, like a sine wave. We move from pre rational, rational, to post rational, and back down again. What changes and 'evolves' are the themes in which these periods reside in. These themes are cultural, political or technological adaptations that change depending on the social or physical environment, and as long as the world's social or physical environment keeps changing, so will these adaptations. Examples of adaption range from the industrial revolution, to social movements like feminism, to the first invention of the bronze spade. You will find highly 'advanced' people and cultures from all walks of the time scale, from 10000 years ago, and there will exist post rational individuals 100000 thousand years from now, yet apart from the themes, I am certain that these individual will be no more advanced or sophisticated than the individuals 10000 years ago. Maybe the whole idea of linear, evolving progressions gives you a better insight into the cultural and mental beliefs the western society; ones who observed the phenomena, had, rather than the actual phenomena(evolution) they were observing itself.

Thanks great suggestions! so something like asking the students for feedback, indirectly questioning them to get a sense of whether or not they deeply learnt the deep empirical phenomena, etc.