Pramit

Due to personal circumstances, I sometimes find myself alone in a small room for extended periods of time - with very little human contact. In these circumstances, I experience a gradual sense of numbness and lethargy. Then when this period ends, I find myself relieved when I talk to someone - like I am myself again. I will not lie, I am a loner - I find it difficult to make friends easily, and it is just getting harder as time passes and I find myself increasingly isolated due to various personal reasons. Thus, I find it surprising that I am not good with solitude (at least not as good as I thought I was). I know that there is a fascination with going out of society for the spiritually minded person. Moving out of the artificial constructs of society, the false sense of security, can sometimes induce feelings of euphoria that is outside the realm of ordinary consciousness. I have experienced these feelings myself. But these things are temporary, a symptom of the cognitive enrichment that occurs when one goes outside their niche. True solitude, like a solitary confinement is much more difficult to bear, almost like we are part of a hive mind and going outside it causes pain and suffering. But I know the stories - it has been done. And I also know that its not as good as it sounds - nothing is ever as good as it sounds. So I would like to ask this question - how can one live a life of solitude without losing oneself? And should one even try to attempt this?

I don't have much to write about. May be I will just focus on writing about my present thoughts and actions. I am currently in the middle of my third semester. I have started my project work, although its a bit slow. I am working with honeybees. The rest is confidential. The idea isn't mine, it belongs to my guide, I wish it were, then it would be interesting. I will be giving a presentation on swarming behaviour, I hope I can do the topic justice. I created a routine. It is a template that is supposed to help keep me from chasing obsessions. I tried to get another person to also follow this template - thinking that it would make motivation easier. It didn't work - the other person quit in day 1 (lol). I also experienced something horrible during meditation. I was focusing on the question 'Where am I?', until it suddenly happening. I immediately freaked out and woke up. The experience was like falling into a dark well - from which there is no return. No security , no safety - just sudden death. No one will find you afterwards , you will be forever lost in a maze. It is like going about your every day life, making plans, then suddenly a car hits you and everything is gone. The idea of such a death isn't scary for me, in fact I care very little about my egoic personality - I would rather disappear - even if such a disappearance has no meaning. But the very raw feeling of such a demise - it shook me. I have been advised that I should keep practicing, such that I get used to it. So far I haven't been able to replicate it. What can I say to the pramit of the future? Keep your head up, and read some of the tenets of stoicism (Epictetus). You must practice your shit everyday, or else you will forget things. What is the insight that I am currently finding most valuable? That every perspective, every emotion, is passing. That nothing can cling. Everything is temporary - except 'you' - not the observer(there is no observer), but the act of observation.

may not be directly related to your question, but it might help :

I was meditating on "where am I?" It was inside my room. I closed my eyes and sat for some time. I was losing some sensation of my fingers, I could no longer tell the digits apart. But I was gaining sensation of warmth on my palm. Anyway, I can't remember much since I immediately forgot the important bits after I got up. But this is all I can remember: I was focusing on 'where am i?' Am I in my room? No. What is a 'room'? I felt the cool air hitting my body. I realized at this point, superficially at least, that I have always been where I was the whole time - I haven't moved an inch. If reality is ultimately a bunch of sensations from which I infer the environment, then my reality must not have changed - only my inference has. And that inference itself is also a stable inference - like a clockwork circle. Am I in my head? No. What is a 'head'? I felt the sensation of my face. Then my head. Then my brain enclosed inside my head. My eyes, and the darkness that I 'saw'. I realized that I am not in my room. I am not in my head. I focused deeply on the sensation of what appeared as my head(sorry, I have limited vocabulary). I was getting lost in it. I keep going deeper and deeper. EVERYTHING WAS DISAPPEARING SUDDENLY. WHERE THE FUCK AM I? WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING? I got very uncomfortable with the revelation. I know this..or I thought I knew. Either way it doesn't matter. I know that the ego - which initiates the meditation - will never ever kill itself so easily, at least not in such a 'primal' way. There is no sense of satisfaction in such a death - it is like going down a deep hole that keeps going forever. Even if I had motivation to kill myself, I would never kill myself in this manner. I was going to ask a question in this thread - like 'Should I go down this tunnel?' or 'How can I get the courage to face this?' or 'If I go down, will I even be able to wake up from meditation, or will it be the end of me?'. But I don't think any of the answers I will get, will be of any help. Not because you are not knowledgable, you all are. Because ultimately, I, the ego, can't beat this. I can overcome anything, but not this. So no amount of 'knowledge' will serve me..truly. But to those who have faced this(or who think they have faced it) - please advise me on what to do next. Also- if this is what awaits me in death - fuck i am screwed..

This is such a funny question. Do you understand what it truly means for ego to drop? It means DEATH. Not metaphorical death - literal death. There is no 'you' and 'ego' - you who wrote this post, you are the ego. There is no way you can drop your ego without first dropping the concept of dropping your ego - i.e., first you must get rid of the desire to drop your ego to even have a chance at dropping your ego. Now do you understand why its so difficult? Of course you must understand that I who is writing this post is also an ego - so you are being advised by another ego.

Simple questions, would appreciate honest and seirous answers : 1) Why did I create all this? 2) Why am I experiencing consciousness individually? 3) If the buddha broke the cycle of rebirth, how am I still here?

My internship has ended. Looking back at when i first started, i believe i have learnt a lot. It didn't take 1 week to do one experiment, more like 1 day for each experiment. Experiment was the easy (but time consuming) part. The analysis was the more important part, but I couldn't do much in the limited time frame. Eventually I lost interest because all I was doing were experiments, without any analysis or conclusions. However, for some reason my advisor thinks i am very competent, so he wants me to come again for my thesis. I also attended a summer school on computational biology - which was really interesting and taught me a lot. I have taken good notes, with references for further exploration. There were some significant events. First, I stopped caring for social approval. I no longer work towards getting this approval. This happened when I was getting late for work many times, and I just stopped caring altogether. In the first place I never cared about my survival, so why should I care for this. Secondly, I found some answers in the forest. I stopped walking, and looked at the world for the first time through my eyes. Perhaps I did this when I was first born. I looked at my own vision. And I understood what Alan watts meant when he talked about the perpetual hide and seek. I am hiding within myself, and seeking comes through activities like these. I have attempted to stop compulsive use of technology - something I tried many times in the past, which I am now trying again. There are no answers to be found through words. The game of describing through words is just an extension of the 'hide' in hide and seek. I find it easier to control and observe myself at this moment. I am not afraid of letting go. A question still remains. Why? Why did I create the universe and then hide within myself? And once again, I will not seek the answer through words.

welcome to my world. Enjoy your trip in everlasting hell. Where even the experience of being in hell is an illusion.

I have started my internship. I will be looking at swarming in fish. The experiments have not yet started, but we are getting there! Gosh, I had no idea just getting the experiment set up would take so much time and effort. And each replicate(trial) will involve a lot of effort. One trial a week - that's all we can manage apparently. Kind of a shame I won't be able to do much in 2months. I have already spend 1.5 weeks doing nothing but waiting for stuff to come and setting the stage in the meantime. Not sure what else to write. Seems kinda pointless, the only person who can understand is the one I am now. Old thoughts going in circles, guided by new and old conditionings and symptoms. Like a tree, I record every scratch in my trunk. The rings are there, only a figment of what was. I am time itself. The world does not understand, does not need to. Understanding is a part of our biological mechanism - just like everything else it is a lie. The concept of truth is a lie! I am not lying. I am telling the truth. Believe me, won't you, Pramit? What is the value of anything, detached from its context? Like a maze, everything we do - its all definitions containing relationship to other things. Remove the floor, and you leave it naked. And this is where the existential dilemma comes from. The chair - a place to sit, becomes something alien, otherworldly, when you consider it without that function. Who made this instrument and for what? Think of the human - so strange, with two arms, two legs, the ability to make noises and sounds, ghastly teeth to tear and crush, who gives itself 'meaning', a capability to deceive itself if things get too weird. I am a human writing this - I can never see myself that way. Because to see myself in that way, I must first learn how to not see. Impossible. The whole thing is a paradox - a illogical part of our imagination. I am lost again. And perhaps that is the way it is meant to be. Its okay. I am whoever I need to be. I am the world. I am free in the truest sense of the world. The symbol of my freedom lies in the chains on my body. Writing this post reminds me of a alzheimers patient - he wakes up every day to write in his journal 'I am awake', 'now I am awake', 'now I am really awake', 'the other pages are false - today I am truly awake'. A classic case. This is the conditioning for our awakening. I am awake.

For the past few days, I have been struggling with the idea of 'choice'. How do you choose between two activities? Seems like a easy thing - but when you know that all paths lead nowhere, that death is inevitable, and more important, you can clearly see yourself feeling the things that you would possibly feel because you have played those roles in the past. For eg, you can feel a sense of accomplishment at doing something 'worthwhile', and before you do the activity, you remember this feeling. On the other hand, you can feel a sense of pleasure at doing something 'pleasurable', and you feel that before you do the activity as a sort of memory. And then you compare the two feelings - and you are lost. Because they both seem to go nowhere, mean nothing significant. Thus you cannot choose. So the decision of choice becomes arbitrary. But what kind of arbitrariness are we talking about here? Some things I will not go - I will not shoot myself with heroin, or commit suicide in the name of truth(at least not easily). So there is some criteria in my mind. These are the unconscious criteria. But you could have more definite criteria. For example, the kind of activity that I want to do could be based on what I want to achieve, if I want to have some theoretical understanding of my place in this world, then I would choose intellectually rewarding activities. But within those activities, there are some which are easy and some which are difficult. I would choose the difficult one, because I want mastery in what I do. https://medium.com/personal-growth/if-its-not-hard-it-won-t-be-rewarding-5a9f85b072d8 There aren't always paths that are so clear cut. Sometimes a choice is made for you and there is nothing you can do about it. The very idea of having choices goes against all manner of understanding of the self, if there is no you then there is no choice either.

Almost at the end of my second semester. This has been a good semester I think, and I have learnt a lot. And more importantly, I now better idea of the things I need to explore. Of course there are some bad teachers, but dealing with bad teachers is part of the game I guess. A teacher is just someone you arbitrarily give respect to, it is a social position more than anything. What is valued is the knowledge they can pass on to you, and that is going on depend on more than just their position. Anyway, coming to myself - I am seeing more people on the same path as I am, or was. Same in the sense that they seek truth, but they know not what it means to seek truth. I cannot communicate with them properly about the issues that they will inevitably face, but I can help them a little. Show some compassion, because this path can be a lonely one..full of unseen sacrifices. As Nietzsche wrote, the biggest risk here is to die in a place where no one can see you or hear you. The path I took, I will keep walking. Because that is inevitable. I cannot stop walking. But I can watch the birds, enjoy the trees and the nightsky. The road is an endless one, with occasional stops called death. I fantasized about the end, but now I know what it is. It is this moment - the moment where birth and death happens simultaneously. The moment where infinity is generated is this present moment. If any of those people who walk the path of truth read this, they would think I have lost my mind. Perhaps I have. But then you need to lose your mind to realize the truth anyway. If you get it, you don't get it. If you understand, you have not understood. If you are silent, it speaks. If you speak, it is silent. It is contradictory to certain state of consciousness, yet intuitive to another. As Alan Watts said, 'You must go out of your mind to stay sane'. Ok, I should talk about some neuroscience. Haven't done that in a while in this journal. Neuroscience hasn't really been going well. It has been going really badly. I feel as if all my prior interest in the subject has been squeezed out. I imagined that no matter how bad the teacher, at least I would have the freedom of self study (Which I did not have prior to coming here). But I miscalculated the effect of the environment on me. On the bright side, I have gained new knowledge and insights, especially in philosophy and computation. I have stopped counting days. May be I am just lazy, or maybe its more of a philosophical reason. Regarding time, currently I know not much, but I am interested in knowing what mechanisms that brain uses to maintain the experience of time passing. I am currently reading the literature on B theory of time(https://philpapers.org/archive/PROWDT.pdf). Alan watts had something interesting to say here(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af85afJIeBo).

when you discover you are god, the first question you will ask is - is everyone else god as well? but then you realize this is a irrelevant question. It is irrelevant because you are using old causality intuition here. You think there is a causal relation between events - past to present. But if you have understood why you are calling yourself god correctly, you may recall that the argument for your godhood is simply that you are the generator of reality. Everything arises out of you. There is no causality between the past and the present. Thus it doesn't matter if other beings are gods in their own rights. No matter what they are, they will always be extensions of you. And by you, I mean me. You are all part of me. "But Pramit, if you think that I am a part of you, then surely you will be able to predict my response? How is it that processes are seeming to happen independent of you?" The answer is simply - you are part of yourself also. The state of being aware is a function of mentality, but it is not the source of mentality. Thus being aware is not a necessary condition, but it is something extraneous. Your identity, and your mental functions, are also generated by god(who is you). Thus your interpretation of events are irrelevant, you simply exist, and your existence creates the universe. That's it. You are done.

To observe is to create out of nothing. Rather than saying, 'I am observing this chair', we can say, 'I am creating this chair'. But this leads to problems because there are two meanings of 'I' - the 'I' in the sense that you are god, and the 'I' of social identity. If its the former, then the statement is correct, otherwise its not. You cannot create the chair because you yourself must be created first. On a similar argument, there doesn't need to be a brain either, because the brain is also created by the reality that god imposes. Think of a computer that creates the software first, and then the software simulates a fake hardware. And then everything that happens in the hardware is correlated with things that happen in the software. But what is the sense of correlation? (Above post on ways to answer some of the meaningful questions) One issue with the realization of the utter meaninglessness of the universe is that you feel ecstatic. If nothing matters, then surely I have every right to not take this game seriously and just enjoy the show. The problem of this kind of realization is that its beyond human intuition. If you come to this point, and even attempt to understand it, you will come up with many questions. And those questions do not have answers because of certain constraints. But are there really constraints? What is a constraint and how do you identify one? Can you imagine a limitless system? I bet that you can't simply because no matter how you realize the world it will always have 'constraint'. Since a no-constraint world is not possible, a world with constraint is a pointless concept. This the question becomes invalid. And I can go back and forth on these kinds of arguments. Perhaps the biggest question is - 'What exactly is the concept of control, and is it necessarily to understand reality?' because I think that's where most people (here most people is used in the sense that I might keep thinking of this) get stuck. If I am god, then who is creating me? Who is controlling me? If you go by the fact that a constrained world is a pointless concept, then clearly there is no need for a controller. Because living things impose control/order by creating constraints. I believe that such questions are not necessary, because to impose a question is to imply that there are constraints. A limitless world is a absurd world where questions are meaningless because anything is possible. But why do humans exist in such a world, if we are really in a limitless world? To that, we must go back to the beginning and ask - what is this 'we' you are talking about? I think that the main issue is that you are using your ego to formulate the questions. I am reluctant to use such words as 'ego' but in this case its the best way to understand it (And these explanations are not meant for anyone other than Pramit anyway). I think I might think of the questions and emotional after-affects as a symptom of some medicinal treatment(in this case, meditation).

I wish it was so simple to put into words and explain it in this post. But its beyond symbolic manipulation that we humans seem to be so adept in. And that is why this path is something that you must explore for yourself, good or bad. As Alan Watts said, you must persist in the folly first. Because the human psyche requires all..this, making posts, discussing with others, discussing with 'gurus', meditating for thousands of hours, etc. It is a pointless exercise, and yet it is the most fruitful thing you'll ever do in your life. How is that possible? Well, life is a zero sum game.

Summer is approaching. It is already hot. How much does the noise inside my brain play a role in my behavior? I am not executing things like a robot, my thoughts are all over the places, my motor actions, however finely tuned to the situation, are always in a constant flux. There are some fundamental things that are constant, for example, my pooping behavior, my writing behavior, my behavior in class. But inside there are minor fluctuations, reflecting the chaos in my brain. Fluctuations play a very important role in evolution, and enzymology. If the gene was impervious to mutation, life may not have evolved past single cells. And if enzymes were too rigid, they wouldn't have the energy to change conformation and do biochemistry. Too much chaos however, and we are unable to do anything at all. We are at the border of order and chaos. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_of_chaos Something serious happened this week. A professor got ousted from a course he taught. The reason(for me) : poor quality of teaching. I had a good rapport with the guy, so I feel moderately bad for him. I honestly don't know how he is reacting to this. But what I am most worried about, regrettably, is the potential loss of my good relation with that man. As bad a teacher he might be, he is still a professor. Which means he is a source of knowledge. And a source of recommendation letters for a potential pHD. I don't regret my decision. I did the right thing, the honest thing, and that is what matters. What I regret is not doing it sooner, and not saying these issues directly to him. Life is chaotic, sometimes things happen that you don't expect from unexpected sources. Sometimes a decision you are unable to take, resolves itself. Life is a fluctuation. It is the edge of chaos. The decision that hangs over my head is who do I work with? The best action as of right now is to gather more information by talking to more professors. So I am going to do just that. To the best of my ability.

Sometimes you can't make one person happy without making another person(or many others) unhappy. For eg, if i want to talk about philosophy in a group that just wants to talk about that food item they ate 2 days ago. There is nothing you can do to make me happy there, I would just have to leave. But I might stay along for my own reasons. May be I want to observe some people and how they behave. What will you do then? Will I have to force myself to be happy just so I can convince you that I am happy? Sometimes trying to help other people can be a real hindrance to them.

The problem is that most scientist aren't taught philosophy as part of an essential curriculum. And the people who control funding, mostly politicians, aren't enlightened people themselves. The target is to get the quickest result in the shortest time possible, and this selection pressure gives us a certain breed of scientist. I used to look up a lot of information, and my primary way to gain information was self learning. Only after having a course called 'philosophy of mind' do I understand just how much information and work people have done on the paradigm of reality and what science should represent. You can explore everything by yourself, but having a teacher just makes it so much easier to find information. Want to be a hardcore believe in materialism? There is a theory for that. Want to be a soft believer in materialism? there is a theory for that. Want to abandon it all together? There is not one, but a few theories for that. It's like picking ice cream where you get to choose the flavors. Personally, I am in favor of what alan watts understood a long time ago - that symbols do not represent reality adequately, there is no division between the physical and mental, reality is constructed in the human mind. Maybe I'll try to formalize these beliefs once I have some free time. The issue is that you can't really 'prove' anything in philosophy, you can only disprove using arguments and rational statements, which is sort of like mathematics. And just like mathematics, without real experiments, no matter how beautiful your theory is, it must go to the trash (according to current scientific paradigm). Nothing is falsifiable at this point. The science we are at may be 'new' with regard to techniques and all, but in philosophy it is at least 300 years old. There is nothing 'modern' about science. Its an old tradition that still works because we haven't hit the wall on technological progress and groundbreaking discovering..yet.

why do you take on that responsibility? friendly bullying? although i think love/humour is the main component of many 'friendship', it is based on some dynamic that utilizes that.

Suffering from a fever. Will hopefully recover in 2-3 days time (it has already been 1 day). Two observations i made during fever : 1) My ball sacks hang out when the body temperature is higher than usual. Which means that sleeping with a blanket during fever will most definitely kill some sperms. 2) Constipation during fever - possible sign of bacterial infection of gut? or perhaps the fever negatively affects the enteric nervous system? I bought a lot of grapes and apples to help me recover quickly.

Made myself a psuedo bookshelf(feel like I finally have space to study things). Also fixed violin, so I have started practicing again. Two weeks ago, I started 'Project Boredom'. The objection was to ween myself of social media and other distractions. Now, I typically don't spend much(if any) time on social media, so for me 'social media' usually means youtube where I tend to binge watch funny videos (or videos that make me feel good). I find that the more time I am lazy, the harder it is to start working. Many days were lost to these things. Another aspect is porn. Although I don't get a lot of chances to masturbate in my room (since I share it with other people), I was at one point addicted to it. And it can happen again. Because there is a lot of academic pressure sometimes, I might give myself the excuse to do it. I am not stopping masturbation, only porn. I think masturbation is fine..as long as its not porn induced. My strategy is to use artificial currency. Every day I get a set amount of money (4 coins, each coin representing a value of real world money- I call this Becoin for behavioral coins). I can either spend it on stuff, or I can spend it on distractions (food from my mess, which is usually crappy, is excluded). I can also get more Becoin for doing things like meditating, or keeping good habits, or studying (these are only for consecutive days, and the reward increases as the streak increases). So far, these are the results : 1) I have cheated a few times, making what seemed at that time 'rational argument'. It is really easy to deceive yourself. When under stress, my emotional brain(or addicted brain) can easily recruit all my logical faculties and put them to work on convincing me to break the system. 2) I have made a decision to add a little bit of flexibility. One day of the week, I can buckle under the pressure. This won't come without consequences, as I will not be able to buy myself anything on that day. 3) Results have been mixed. Some days were great, other days I lost Becoins due to distractions. 4) I have been able to work at least for some time every day. Advice : 1) I need to get myself hooked on using the coins, and not hoarding them. It seems I must fight one addiction with another.. 2) I am still trying to figure out the right balance of reward and punishment. Currently I am losing 2 Becoins for extended distractions(more than 10 minutes), and 3 Becoins for bigger distractions(like a movie of 2 hours). Yes, perhaps I should keep the scale a little more even, but I am scared..scared of losing everything I have accumulated just for that one day where I can't keep myself under control.

The game is called - Doki doki literature club. Visual novel seems pretty ordinary at first, but keep playing and you'll find out.

Day 369: Reading my previous dilemma on when to ask question, i must admit that all of it is based on some risk calculation. And risk calculations, taken from a certain perspective of alan watts, are pointless. What is the risk really? death? you know you can't die. To directly quote Alan Watts - 'You can't make a mistake. The acorn is not better than the oak.' But if both asking and not asking are equivalent, then the issue does not have a resolution. In which case, I will go with asking. And maybe I'll continue with that path based on societal reinforcement (i.e. not getting scolded by the teacher for asking, and as long as the teacher isn't stupid. Asking the question must have a certain value for me, a value which is only partly intrinsic). What is understanding? Understanding is a description of the patterns we find in our environment. The description is encoded into neural connections which are also patterns. This is the classical case of patterns learning patterns. For example, an organism needs to distinguish between water and land to survive. So it gives water the color red and land the color orange. Red is encoded by one neural configuration, orange is encoded by another. When water is observed, because of some physical environmental property, the red neural configuration is activated, and the organism advances(it likes water). But does it really have something like red? what is red? Notice that even with the physical description, the mental property is still a mystery. So may be I have not taken into account the actual complexity. May be this basic perception discrimination is not really understanding. But I do strongly believe that in the end they are encoded by neural configurations. So physical patterns are just correlating with other physical patterns to produce physical behavior which allows an organism to survive (predictive mind hypothesis). Now if there was something other than physical property, that something cannot be understood (because physical systems can only understand other physical systems). But what if that something affected some physical property of some physical system? Then by sheer correlation, we might be able to make it a 'factor' (like dark energy - we don't know what it is, but we can give it a name).

what do you think about donald hoffman? also, i am training to become a neuroscientist.