winterknight

I am an expert on the nondual path of spirituality in the Hindu advaita tradition, heavily influenced by Ramana Maharshi (but with my own twists). I'm making myself available here for sincere seekers who want help or clarification on their own path. I'm not really interested in: a) proving my bona fides (you'll have to get that from my answers) b) giving an autobiographical description of my path, my realizations, etc. I probably won't respond to requests for these. Other than that, anything's game if you're bothered by it. This is a playful experiment... let's see how it goes.

I appreciate what you've done in allowing me to reach out to people here. For that, I thank you. That said, buddy, you are profoundly deluded. You have no idea what you are talking about. I'm not talking about emptiness and no-self. I'm talking about something which destroys the notion of all 'degrees' or 'facets' or 'awakening to' things. This is the only freedom. The rest is dream garbage. This is the sole and only realization. It is not even that. It is not merely intellectual neo-advaita stuff. It is the direct truth. You are in the grips of massive narcissistic, egotistical self-deception fueled by delusions of grandeur from psychedelics and from being worshipped unconditionally on this community. It's actually quite a problem. It is going to lead you years or perhaps lifetimes off the true path if you don't take care of it. If you ever want to talk about it, reach out and I will help you without judgment or a grudge. I'm going to take this cue to leave this community and thread, which I'd been contemplating for a while anyway. If anyone wants to reach me -- come to my website. Adios.

Not to mention that you can do both. Many do. I did. They are potentially complementary. There's no reason to have to choose.

Only at one level of understanding. At a deeper level, there is no enlightenment. But a seeker must act as if there is enlightenment. The traditional answer is that in deep sleep ignorance still remains, only there is no awareness of objects. Objects are not the cause of confusion — ignorance is.

You’re not comprehending my argument. I’m saying that what therapy does is relevantly similar to building a skill like playing a violin. The repertoire of social-psychological patterns cannot be magicked into existence by anything other than sustained social interaction in a crucible of mutual reflection. You are demonstrating precisely the dangers of psychedelics, which is to take the by-definition psychotic mental agitations that result to be Truth. There is no such thing as existential realizations of God or Love or ‘facets of the Absolute.’ These are all gibberish dream ideas. What’s happening is that you are laboring under delusions that your consistent and continuous use of psychedelics are reinforcing. It’s precisely why the ancient traditions were cautious about the use of these substances. If you don’t understand why it is that there is no God, no Love, and indeed no such thing as realization or enlightenment, you have much farther to go. You might want to start by stopping the psychedelics and entering analysis for a year and seeing what happens.

Yes. So when there are suggestions that psychedelics are 1000x more effective than therapy, etc., it shows a misunderstanding of the what these two activities are to each other.

If objective reality is but a chemical state, then why is it that the amazing ultimate psychedelic teacher by which you know the entire universe and the workings of God can’t do the simplest little thing like teach you to play the violin? You can’t have it both ways, calling objective reality a nothing and also claiming that psychedelics are the best way to liberate the mind emotionally (a claim about the objective), “but don’t hold me to any standards of proof or demonstration because there is no objective world.” And if objective reality is a dream, then there are no possible truths about it, then certainly all the talk about knowing how God works is nothing more than incoherent dream words... that certainly must follow, since language is part of the dream. As far as why you would do analysis, the answer is obviously I’m suggesting you have zero idea what analysis will do, either theoretically or practically, and therefore no basis of comparison with psychedelics, and yet you seem willing to declaim quite liberally about them... So if you want to do that, why not get the experience and see for yourself? If you talk to the top psychedelics researchers in the world, none of them would put forth the absurd position that psychedelics are a total replacement for therapy. It’s truly a dumb suggestion.

No, not everything is a chemical by that logic. Basically you are importing your dream-like psychedelic “insights” into objective reality., taking them as true in a philosophically naive way. I’ve talked to entities via psychedelics too. But I don’t confuse that with truths in consensus reality. As you admit, you can talk to machine elves but can’t play the violin, which is such child’s play that you can’t do it. That should tell you something about the limitations of machine elves. Why not go get a year of 4x/week psychoanalysis from a top-notch analyst and come back and talk about how trivial it was compared to tripping?

Sorry to disappoint, we’re basically done

You can be as proof-less as you want as long as you’re talking about pure subjectivity. As soon as you start talking about how some things change other things, you’re making claims about the material, one way or the other. And if those claims cannot be demonstrated in any way, that’s self-deception.

Well, there’s never a perfect way, but one measure is, like I said, objectively observable results. The claims that people are making here are not just of internal states but of grand changes that ought to be externally observable. Psychedelics can no doubt be beneficial and powerful... but the sort of unbridled adoration of them, the belief that they’re a replacement for all other emotional and spiritual work, makes no theoretical sense and has no evidence for it.

I think you asked and I answered this above, but in a nutshell if the realization is merely verbal it’s not enough. If the realization is more than merely verbal, then sure, but by the same token such a realization goes beyond all concepts, including non-doership.

Great, so use a psychedelic and learn a language instantly that you didn’t know before using this universal teacher. There’s a whole lot of intense self-deception about psychedelics here, that’s what I see.

1 - that depends on your definitions and context. Ultimately truth is beyond all words and concepts 2 - again a matter of definitions. Traditionally in Vedanta God is the creator, but Self is beyond even that manifest creator. 3 - if a creator God exists, then yes the devil could be said to exist too. But in fact both are ultimately illusions. Or we could say the devil exists as ignorance. But ignorance itself doesn’t ultimately exist, even though as a seeker you must act as if it does 4 - spiritual reading and the company of the wise. Becoming more emotionally honest about what you want and feel 5 - this is not a good or possible goal. Be honest about what you want, not to control yourself

Yes I think this is often the case.

I mean it’s something which is both relational (that happens between people) and symbolic (having to do with symbols or language). In this case, therapy has to do with making meaning with another person. That involves both relation and symbol.

Therapy isn’t about talking someone into something. That’s a misconception There’s nothing magical about therapy, but actually the overwhelming evidence of 100+ years of talk therapy shows that in fact therapy does work. Nothing even remotely close to the weight of that evidence exists for psychedelics sans therapy. And therapy is a relational-symbolic activity, that teaches how to be in the world, a skill that, like playing the violin, cannot be had through a drug, no matter how much one may wish it were so. That said, of course not all therapy “works” for everyone. Therapists vary in competence. Patient match matters. Patient condition matters. There’s a reason I recommend analysis and not just therapy in general. Even the very idea of “solving” problems is itself a simplistic way of looking at things. The complicating factors go on and on. But the mind is far, far more complex, not less complex, than is usually imagined. Symbolic questions cannot be ultimately solved through chemical means. That’s what’s termed in the philosophy business a category mistake. Well good for you, but your conclusions don’t really follow from your experience. You went for three years. You wouldn’t have done that if you hadn’t been getting something out of it. We’d have to really see who you were before and after to judge. Not to mention that orthodox Freudian psychoanalysis is only one type of analysis. And you ended up someone still intensely interested in self-discovery and self-improvement. Sounds like not a bad outcome.

It can indeed be somewhat simplistic, although I think his feel for nonduality itself is among the best of that style of teacher.

Well, desire is always king. You’re right that it’s a sign of not being ready. But the point is that often people aren’t internally ready but then blame it on lack of access, when the real issue is their own internal conflict.

Mandy talked about some people not having access to therapy — like there are no therapists where they live, presumably, or they can’t afford it.

Everything has drawbacks, and people very often make excuses about access that are really about conflicted motivation. But there are other complimentary options to psychoanalysis: careful expression of feelings in symbolic mediums (journaling, creative painting, etc.) combined with the pursuit of one’s desire, further creative expression, and so on. The right spiritual guru. Sometimes the right kind of social group, support group, new group of friends, mentor. Sometimes even a significant other. But of them, analysis and creative expression are the most reliably recommendable.

Yes, I have. Self-inquiry has nothing to do with mystical states of the kind that psychedelics induce. That’s the misconception. Psychedelics can be useful, and they certainly can be very cool and cosmic, but they’re not a substitute for other kinds of therapeutic emotional work. Nor are they a substitute for the rest of the spiritual path.

I’ve tripped, I’ve talked to people who’ve tripped, I have extensive spiritual and psychological practice, and have studied philosophy and psychology for more than 20 years. It’s enough to understand that consuming a chemical, however wondrous, cannot substitute for interpersonal, symbolic relationship-and perspectival-restructuring that necessarily happens over time. Psychedelics can be useful, but they have their limits.

I’ve never said psychedelics can’t be useful. But they’re not going to be the reason why today’s therapy will seem “crude and rudimentary.” The belief that the mind is some kind of simple object that can be cracked with some innovative technique is wrong. Maybe for certain very delimited kinda of issues. But not generally.

Yes, I have. Just shows a profound ignorance of the mind to make statements like you’re making.