BipolarGrowth

You made a statement with huge moral implications, and I’d bet that you were bringing in some moral elements when you were saying this type of testing shouldn’t be done whether you’d like to admit it or not. Obviously the risk was calculated, quite low, and the procedure of testing was done in a painstaking way (at least in Shulgin’s case if you watch the video I posted) that produced a happy man with an impactful life who lived just fine doing this type of testing at a stupendous volume over decades. The need for testing on animals was eliminated by simply looking at the reality of how things occurred. If he wasn’t dosing so low at the beginning of testing, using animals would make more sense.

Great thread as usual ?? @Fearless_Bum

“how can one just stop the thoughts and just feel the pain in the moment?” You’ll need some solid levels of mindfulness likely paired with sensate and practical understanding of the three characteristics (no self, dukkha, impermanence) which you have brought into actuality through applying the understanding of the three characteristics with direct vipassana practice in my experience. “If there were no thoughts there would be no pain.” This is simply not true. You can be in a rather complete and continuous state of no-mind and still experience emotional pain. “One can’t be thoughtless for a long period of time, so the moment thoughts come back, the pain comes back.” This is also not true. I’ve been in a continuous state of no-mind for two weeks on two separate occasions. I’m sure many people have been in this for much longer. Also, realize that you keep talking about pain. Make sure to be clear on the distinction between pain and suffering. Suffering is an amplification of pain by identification. You can have thoughts which are just accurate descriptions of the pain which is experienced which do not amplify it. The most direct way I’ve found to become more successful at reducing suffering is working with the three characteristics through vipassana practices.

I see a lot of value and accuracy in Rupert Spira’s quote if we are considering more what is pointed to through going through cessation as the nothing. The gap of experience brought about by cessation presents itself as what a full/hard nothing would actually be like in the sense Rupert is potentially bringing up here. I’ve personally had reality shattering insight into the same type of something vs. nothing that Leo seems to describe in multiple videos and forum posts. This is fundamentally different than the type of nothing pointed to in the non-experience aspect of cessation. It seems like people commenting here are not actually refuting the quote at all but rather reinforcing it with their responses. There is not actually disagreement other than clashes in lexicon, at least how I see it. I personally would not use nothing as the word. I would use non-existence. I think this would be less vague/more precise to showcase the point he appears to be making from my perspective. Maybe Rupert is meaning something totally different. More context for that quote would be nice to see exactly what he meant.

What do you mean by it? Enlightenment? Things are going really well spiritually. I’m having to work toward building up my finances, relationships, and other foundations after almost an entire year more or less focused heavily on spirituality above all things. It’s looking like I’m set up for a great yet challenging opportunity to embody and integrate what I’ve learned/become into the more mundane facets of life. I’m down to talk whenever btw.

My authentic reaction:

Yeah he explained it right. Keep doing crazy spiritual practices until one day they show you that nothing ever needed to be done in the first place, yet it was necessary to go through all that shit to understand it was unnecessary.

And we know this because people tried it or testing on animals. You can apply all of your logic to any lifesaving chemical solutions ever used. If you think this guy testing drugs on himself is worse than taking animals out of their environments to test drugs on them is better, I question your ethics. Either way, animal tests are not a full answer anyway. What do you suggest we do? Stop all development of new chemicals?

????

I would say what this guy and Shulgin did are both wise and intelligent. The wisdom comes in wishing to not negatively impact any other beings by first testing on yourself. The intelligence is understanding the chemistry enough to know what is safe to test in the first place this many times without ever deeply harming yourself.

Oh there are definitely degrees. I agree with you. And there are plenty of things which are mind blowing possibilities to have locked in, but he wasn’t specific about that.

Do awake people spend their time being arbiters of who is awake by making assumptions of someone else’s whole life based on a single sentence? ?

Nice. Reminds me of Alexander/Sasha Shulgin.

At first I was wondering if this was some sort of HPPD, but I discovered it’s a side effect from my psychiatric medication. I guess this is just a reminder that even prescribed medications taken properly can mess you up. I woke up a few hours ago feeling disoriented which is something completely new for me. Within 30 minutes, I started experiencing double vision. About 10 minutes after that, my vision kept pulling upward. I couldn’t even open my phone to read text. A lot of nausea was caused by this. Practicing meditation and having psychedelic experience didn’t at all fully prepare me for this new kind of experience. On that note, consciousness can always fuck your shit up. There’s so much out there we are not prepared for, no matter how experienced we get with altered states. This was like a bad trip, but I got caught trying to do normal activities. Thank God I wasn’t the one driving. I can only imagine having to try to operate at work in a state like this. It would be hell. I’m obviously making a doctor’s appointment ASAP to get this resolved.

Being awake is overrated.

This experience showed me that everything, including our beloved forum, is impermanent. I got to research some good sources on the downtime.

This will pass with time. For now, try to go spend some time with friends or family. Do some normal stuff. Fuck Liberation for now. It’ll come back later if it’s what is right for you.

In front, behind, below, above, within, without, no center (with closed eyes though, I wasn’t seeing outside of these internal visual sensations). Here are my rough notes I was working on. Keep in mind they sound grandiose, but TBH this experience was pretty grand itself lol. The Raw Edge of Infinite Perception — A New Magnitude of Awakening Infinite Concentration, Focus, & Impermanence Infinite Omni-dimensional consciousness “I can’t wait to make a video and detailed awakening post about this experience. Haha. No consciousness has ever reached this point before (maybe lol). No Buddha. No god. No yogi. This was pure raw processing power of infinite perception at work. There is nothing more satisfying. Doing vipassana with all three doors — no self, dukkha, and impermanence fused together at once in Omni-dimensional consciousness of untold rapidity of change in all locations simultaneously. You are riding on the raw edge of perception baby. All times, realities, imaginations, beings, gods, gurus, and everything else is held on the utter edge of the present moment in perfect and infinite concentration, focus, and anticipation for what is present. The true present moment is ungraspable even at the most fine capacities of perception. You are always doing processing a split second after perception. To be on the cusp of perception at no time and no distance in all directions and locations simultaneously as infinite change is occurring every nanosecond, you transcend existence and nonexistence. This is undoubtedly the highest level ever accessed (went deeper than this multiple times by now in hindsight lol). The capabilities of human beings are endless. #humanism I used the Lumenate app while listening to intense music at full volume in a car to have this experience. I took a few hits from a THC vape pen before starting, but I think this is unnecessary. I noticed that all effects of the THC were erased once I had done the practice for 20 minutes. This was done with a style of vipassana noting as each sensation occurs/changes. Normally people do noting with labeling, but this is far too slow to keep up with the capacities of perception. Some make a single sound or mental note such as “blip” every time a sensation is noted. This is better, but it is still too slow. At this level, noticing a sensation will have to count as noting it. Every separate thing that can be felt, witnessed, heard, thought, smelled, etc. counts as a data point. The goal of this practice is to achieve the overclocked processing power of the Godhead to an infinite degree. Really to call this the Godhead is kind of going to far as it’s all just you. It’s just a good example for grasping the magnitude of this practice at its peak. I focused on noticing four types of sensations. The primary focus was on changes to visual phenomena, then audible changes, followed by the vibrations of the music, and lastly the location and feel of body parts as they were witnessed. A fifth type of sensation could be said to be the different emotions that arose, but these were so far in the background they likely had little effect on the result. As the visuals started to come in, at first it was seen in 2D like a screen. Further concentration took this to a 3D effect. It was at this point that the visual field completely surrounded me. All that can ever be accessed is the perpetually shifting sands of perception. Feeling, perception, and sensation is all there is. Feeling more deeply is the secret to embodiment. Insight, concentration, and truth are all based on becoming more connected to what is present in experience.”

This is what I suspected. I think the metaphor is useful, but it also really oversells itself. I have experienced a sort of true 360 degree perception with my eyes closed while using the Lumenate app. I figured people weren’t actually claiming to be doing that in waking normal life because that would be pretty easy to objectively disprove lol. You’d probably be able to turn water to wine around the time you can do that in waking life

Nice stuff. Can you describe the 360 sphere of vision in more detail? I’m assuming you’re not seeing behind your back, under your feet, and, above your head. Is my assumption right or wrong?

Language is a rather gigantic complex system. If you look at all of the permutations… INFINITY

“how people are not running outside naked in mass frenzy consumed by gnawing madness” Luckily, this is only reserved for the professionals.

I expected to find a good movie. I found content I enjoyed multiple times already. Good shit though if people are unaware of it. I also liked this similar video although some of the content is more questionable. Still good though.

The good part is that Reality already took care of the fears of being famous for most of us. It’ll simply never happen in almost all cases.

He’s definitely gotten somewhere. His tone felt too negative, so I stopped watching. It just didn’t resonate pretty quickly for me. If he’s talking about hatred for people and things of that nature as you mentioned in the first post, he’s still missing a lot. Awakening includes a lot of nihilistic discoveries and difficult experiences/partial truths, but overall, it should spark some deep Love and compassion if it’s running on all cylinders IMO