An young being

Trust is relative. You trust science because it gives you more proof logically. You trust direct experience because it seems realer to your mind self. Science has proved that mind cannot be trusted because it is very good in making illusions. Direct experience has proved that science cannot be trusted because it was not able to explain the logic behind consciousness and still struggles to do so. In the end, it's like this: Science starts somewhere in the middle, which is our logical brain and tries to reach the end of zero and infinity which it can never seems to achieve. Direct experience of reality puts us straight to infinity but using only our logical brain does not help to explain clearly how it gets linked with our logical world. So, to understand reality, you need to use science to grasp the meaning of direct experience, atleast to the extent human brain can comprehend.

The brain is a bunch of thoughts storing machine. There happens to be no relation between memories and consciousness and people claiming to remember past lives never give enough proof and unfortunately most tell a lot of lies. This means even if what you call 'you', a bunch of thoughts manage to go into another individual's perspective, you will not remember because you don't carry the old self memories with you. So, the only thing that gives you an individual sense of self is the brain. The only way to experience another's perspective is to clone the body and insert your old self memories into that. That is definitely possible going by the current trends, so soon the uniqueness of individuality may disappear because of science.

Yeah, for understanding it's fine but for having fun, we need the individual.

You use the glass to get water from the pot, so you can drink it. You use the body to perceive yourself from different angles so that you can enjoy it. When you shed the body, you realize that even the glass and water are no different.

Being selfish is a good thing, it helps you to take care of your body and mind. But if you wish to have deeper insights into the world, you need to be selfless. It will be a hindrance when the truth gets revealed. Don't have any regrets for what you had done. Shed them all.

That's what differentiates living and the dead. Everything is moving and the same force drives the movement. The ones with less movement are the dead ones and the ones with more 'visible' movement are the living ones. There is no denying of the movement, the only denial is the sense of an individual controlling only its own movement. Either the individual controls all the movements in the universe or no movement at all.

The whole world is one and the boundaries are imaginary. That's the base and unarguable truth. The world exists whether there is a perceiving body or not. The theory that the world simply disappears when we die is only a theory that can never be verified by experiment or insight. Then why do we have boundaries and perceptions? If you really want the truth, It is simply created by the brain to make this piece of organic matter exist for a longer time which scientists explain using evolution and survival. Why does this individual need to survive? Simply because the individuals that need not survive don't exist beyond certain time and they have gone extinct because of individuals that wants to survive. Individual pieces of matter that don't have boundaries have less chance of survival than individual with boundaries. Is there a purpose for this individual? In my opinion, there are two possibilities: 1) There is nothing called purpose, the feeling that we have some purpose is one again a result of the brain that wants to survive. All possibilities exist in the world and we are living in all possibilities except that the brain is capable of only showing us one which is again is a limiting ability of the brain helping us to survive. Whether the brain has control over choosing the possibility is debatable. 2) There is indeed some purpose in the fundamental nature of the universe but not as an individual. There is a driving force that chooses the most probable version by some kind of programming. Free will is the fundamental code that we can write using the program which the brain managed to connect with. The universe decides on which direction the world moves. We as beings with a sense of individuality and purpose have the same control as that of universe. There are lot of stuff on the universe that our scientific mind may not have discovered but the brain had already discovered unconsciously. In the end, once again, it's all theories except the first one. Everything is built around that concrete fact

It's your stupid brain playing with you. No offence, everybody's brain is stupid. It always looks for miracles. It helps you to stay alive longer. It's always better to shut down the brain for sometime if you want a better life.

Free will doesn't exist when it comes to making our day to day choices. When it comes to free will of the universe, either all the possibilities of the universe exists simultaneously and we get to experience something random or some rules define what we are supposed to experience most probably. ( Although there is a tiny connection within us that dictates what direction we proceed which ultimately can be called free will, as far as my understanding goes. But the sense of self needs to be lost and hence we can only be called an observer,)

There are only two things, what you want and the opposite of it. If we are attracting things opposite of what we want, then LOA doesn't work. Suddenly, if we seem to attract what we want and you are getting lot of coincidences, it is working. Unfortunately, people are satisfied with positive results and forget negative ones. Anyway it's all balanced out, it doesn't matter. But still, the truth is LOA WORKS. Follow these simple steps and see the results : Go into deep meditative state where thoughts stop arising and your focus is razor sharp. Focus on what you wanted but now don't think that you want it. What you desire, you will never get. Instead think that it's happening already with extremely strong belief that there is no other option. You need to break the mental shackles that drive your beliefs. Do this regularly and weird coincidences start to happen. Why LOA doesn't seem to work is because it is a very tiny thread buried deep within us, and it isn't as simple as thinking about wanting something and getting it. It need a desire less mind to work. Anyway it's all bullshit because if you don't desire something, why do you want it anyways?

Free will ultimately boils down to the fact of what 'you' choose to experience in the infinite probabilities happening in the universe. You are the creator of your own story but it's buried too deep within you that you fail to notice it and you trick yourself into believing that everything is happening because of God or karma. You can't change the things that had already happened due to the rules of universe but the future course of actions you definitely have control over. Not only the choices you as an individual make but how the whole world makes the choice.

Even direct experience has the assumption that whatever we experience directly is the absolute truth. It can be a relatively more fundamental truth, but there is no guarantee that it is the absolute truth. Just like we believe that dream is an illusion when we wake up.

The problem with spirituality is that people can be easily deceived by wrong guidance and practices. There are a bunch of spiritual gurus who read pseudoscience from internet and claim that they have discovered something great by mixing science and spirituality. Since people believe magical spiritual gurus blindly, they get mass number of followers whereas 'real' spiritual gurus who are more passionate in knowing the truth rather than gaining popularity have lot of wisdom but very few followers. People always want something more than reality. They want magic. Science can do great new magic but spirituality can only show that everything is magical.

@Inliytened1 one can be both but most people are either this or that. Yeah, science is too young and stuck in its own world but it's rapidly improvising. There are many scientists who are more eager to understand consciousness nowadays and are having an open mind.

Both materialists and non dualists deny each other, and believe they are capable of knowing the absolute truth. Scientists discover things which are tinier and tinier and feel they are moving closer towards knowing the secret of the universe but there might never be an end to the search. Similarly, non dualists experience directly the absoluteness , they do it repeatedly and get several insights into the truth, but different people have different insights for the same version. They see the truth but not able to explain it with clarity. We as human beings are stuck with an analytical mind which analyses thoughts and memories and come to a conclusion. As long as we do that, we will never know the absolute truth.

Life is there to experience something different other than blissfullness, be it joy, fear, anger or even a joke.

A good example of selfless animal will be dolphins. They love to save people. Unfortunately, from what I believe, some animals are selfless simply because they could survive longer that way. Those genes managed to survive but most animals don't have the selfless character because they were all killed and eaten by selfish creatures. Human beings are different though, because we are so advanced that nothing can kill us, and we are free to choose whether to be selfish or selfless. But, being selfless, for some reasons, allows us to realize our true nature of self by shutting the deceitful brain and revealing there is no self.

Sure, we can have dreams and imaginations running in our mind and see it, but what about the external world? Can I see it closing my eyes by some means? Can I know who is standing in front of me without using my eyes or other common senses?

@Bulgarianspirit right, awareness is independent of seeing or any other senses, but can the sense of being alone enable us to feel what's around me, even if I am blind? @Corpus Does the more realistic world with psychedelics consist of a single constant world with the same elements during a single experience or is it constantly changing abstractly? @Pookie are you able to do it? Did it happen naturally or during a particular incident or while using meditation / psychedelics? @The0Self

Maybe you were already experiencing that during that time as a wife, just that you had forgotten.

Is there anybody in this world right now who can do such things?

These memories are not illusions only if you are able to recall something that seemed very real but you had never ever seen that before. Take this for example : If you are experiencing yourself eating something white and round ( if you were a South Indian in your past life ) but you had never seen or heard about it but able to vividly experience the appearance and taste of it, then you have proved that reincarnation is real. Any other kind of proof which originate from existing memory you had in this life has a good chance of turning out to be the result of powerful imagination.

A perspective for easy understanding of pain: Physical pain arises from nerves which are connected to the brain. All thoughts are created by the brain including painful sensations. We may not have control over the external environment which causes, but we always have more control than we imagine over our own mind. All sufferings are created by our own mind. When it comes to thoughts related to sensations, the process can be considered to have two sections. The first one allows you to feel the painful sensations. We may choose to ignore these thoughts but they may come back sooner or later. The second one reacts to the pain by causing undesirable effects like sadness, discomfort and all the negative emotions. This part we have the full control and by doing meditation for longer durations and focusing and observing on pain itself and the thoughts associated with them, we realize that these thoughts can simply be switched off or felt in a good way at the moment. It's all about programming our mind, tricking it into believe that pain is not a bad sensation. A good place to start will be to start believing consciously they pain is not a bad thing even if it's not true. Start thinking where theSE sensations occur, do they occur at the place where you scratch your body, in the brain or somewhere else? Placebo effect is a good example to prove that suffering is in fact within our grasp of control. But it's not possible consciously and instantaneously. That's why it's very easy to believe that we have no control over it. Meditation surely helps to reduce our suffering 'practically'.

Law of attraction is a good example for what you say. It is just a belief that never seems to work and turns tired people against spirituality. The placebo effect only works for the physical body and the mind and not for the whole world. Even that doesn't protect us from the external factors such as bacteria and viruses. Spirituality changes our perception of the world and hence reduces the perception of our suffering, not cure it by changing reality. All that quantum mechanics changing reality stuff, as far as my understanding and experience, are just stupid interpretations of funny discoveries.