Moksha

Transpersonal psychology. Not that it will wake you up, but it is one of the closer fields that the mind can comprehend. Check out Steve Taylor's research and books, as an example.

...is to solve the Self.

⚡ Meditation can awaken, according to the sages. I can't speak to that, only to the value of meditation in helping you stay awake. Either way, meditate ?

If you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend the Bhagavad Gita. It is one of the best Self-help books. Take your time with it, Consciously contemplate it, and savor it as sustenance for the soul. You will not only see, but be guided, toward the path of Self-realization. Good people come to worship me for different reasons. Some come to the spiritual life because of suffering, some in order to understand life; some come through a desire to achieve life’s purpose, and some come who are men and women of wisdom. Unwavering in devotion, always united with me, the man or woman of wisdom surpasses all the others…the wise who are always established in union, for whom there is no higher goal than me, may be regarded as my very Self…seeing me everywhere and in everything. Such great souls are very rare. - Bhagavad Gita 7:16-19 In my case, the foundation was an alloy of contemplation, renunciation, selfless service, devotion, and above all, sincere commitment to truth. It took decades of living, but that was only the foundation. The catalyst for building the house itself was suffering. Without it, I don't believe I would have been willing to let go of the ledge of certainty, and fall into the abyss of the Self. Now, meditation is my mainstay. It is one thing to see, and another to continue seeing, despite the turbulence of life that threatens to drag you back into the undercurrent of the conditioned mind. I didn't meditate before awakening. I meditate now, daily, to maintain the sleepless state of presence. Never thought of myself as a meditator, but what a gift it has been.

@Windappreciator Medication is not the cause of most mental disorders. Biology and trauma are far more likely to be the cause. Medication doesn't just mitigate; it can be transformative for certain conditions. It can also destroy lives, if prescribed by quacks who don't truly care about their patients. I agree that Ritalin is way too overprescribed.

@Windappreciator I suspect that most of the time people are committed to psych wards because they have an underlying mental illness, not due to any medication they have taken to that point. More likely, is is just the opposite. Bipolar disorder is a classic example; people often refuse to take medication like lithium that would actually help. As I said, I'm not a fan of drugs in general, and often they are overprescribed, but they do have a place.

God is you, hiding from yourself. Enjoy the dream. Something I read earlier today that may help: What does it mean to say that nothing is separate and God alone is real? Certainly not that the everyday world is an illusion. The illusion is simply that we appear separate; the underlying reality is that all of life is one. The Upanishads view the world in grades of significance: as waking is a higher reality than dreaming, so there is a level of reality higher than that. All experience is real. Confusion arises only when a dream experience is treated as reality after one awakes - or when life is viewed as nothing but sensation, without wholeness, meaning, or goal. The ideal of the Upanishads is to live in the world in full awareness of life's unity, giving and enjoying. - Eknath Easwaran, commentary on the Upanishads

There are psychological conditions, like bipolar disorder, that benefit from medication. Drugs are not the devil. That said, I have a strong predisposition against drugs, unless they are truly necessary. Psychiatrists dispense them like candy. It is an easy fix, but not a cure. People that need medication find reasons not to take it, while the converse is true for people that don't need it. If someone is committed to a psych ward, chances are there is something with their brain chemistry that would benefit from medication. Still, overmedication is a problem, and psych wards are notorious for this. If life is crazy, medicate and meditate. They are not mutually exclusive.

Bluntness only bothers you if you believe that you are you

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Angels and demons are only relatively real. Enjoy the story, but realize it is just a story.

Happiness doesn't come from thrashing your thoughts and sumo wrestling your emotional shadows. The more you engage with them, the more power you give them. The secret is not to identify with them. Let them appear, let them be, and let them go. Don't let them pull you into their undercurrent. You are the ocean, and they are flotsam.

For me, the difference between awakening and enlightenment is this: One who has merely heard of fire has ajnana, ignorance. One who has seen fire has jnana. But one who has actually built a fire and cooked on it has vijnana. - Ramakrishna It is not so rare to see the fire, but cooking on it takes true intent. It is the dissolving of attachments to transience. Enlightenment is the "end state" in which a being has become nearly translucent, before dissolving entirely. Like a wave cresting, and returning to the ocean that created it. Are the most enlightened beings the best teachers? Not necessarily. Some have moved so far beyond the delusion of individuality that they are unable to speak your language. Look for a guide that resonates at a higher frequency, but still within your bandwidth. When the resonance discrepancy resolves, find a new guide, until you have climbed to the summit of yourself.

Too much knowledge is only dangerous if you mistake it for actual knowledge. If you think you know anything that matters, don't think again. Everything that matters is directly realized.

Many experiments like this have already been conducted, and science has yet to reliably demonstrate the replicability of supernatural abilities in a controlled setting. The closest evidence I've seen are accounts of near death experiences, where the individual was able to provide information that wouldn't have been possible otherwise, for example: However, even these accounts are case studies that only suggest the possibility of the supernatural, rather than proving it under controlled settings. Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. Scientifically, it's impossible to prove something doesn't exist. You cannot accept the null hypothesis, you can only fail to reject it. The problem is that science is testing phenomena which, if they do exist, are beyond the normal parameters of human existence. Who can say these phenomena follow the same rules? To the contrary, the closer we get to the extremes of the cosmos, at both the micro- and the macro-levels, the less reliable these rules become. As Einstein showed, at the extremes of relative reality, the rules of science break down. Reality becomes subjective, and is entirely dependent on the perceiver. It's like a fish trying to prove there are no beings outside of the ocean, when the fish is bound to the ocean, and unable to see beyond it. Instead of chasing scientific proof, self-inquire. Consciousness, ultimately, can only be directly realized. Awakening is not a scientific exercise. It is direct Self-discovery.

@Endangered-EGO You're getting there, just remember that everything in the Universe is only relatively real. Ultimately, there is no time, no space, no differentiation, and no change. The Universe arises from, and returns to, ultimate Consciousness in an infinite cycle of creation and destruction. Think of ultimate Consciousness as being the depthless ocean, and the Universe as the waves that rise from the ocean and return to it. It is all the ocean, but the waves are only a transient surface expression.

Are you referring to the universe, or to Consciousness itself? The universe is the creation of Consciousness, but it is not ultimate reality. I like this analogy from the Bhagavad Gita: There is nothing that exists separate from me, Arjuna. The entire universe is suspended from me as my necklace of jewels. The universe itself is in a constant state of flux. It has been compared to the human breath, with the outflow being creation and the inflow being destruction. The sages talked about this thousands of years ago, before the Big Bang theory was formulated. Ultimate Consciousness has no attributes. Any attributes are only imagined within the world of form.

I love this. Don't chase enlightenment, as if it is a magic wand that instantly erases all of your suffering. So many people fall into this trap. The chasing itself is a hamster wheel, when what is needed is to get outside of the cage. Instead, be present in this moment. Forget about offenses of the past, or anxieties about the future. Just be, and celebrate the beauty of this. What else is there?

What is instinct, other than something that arises from a deeper part of ourselves, beyond the conscious mind? The will of God, as I see it, is infinite expression, and the love of creation. Ultimate reality is changeless, so creativity is only possible within the dream. Therefore, Consciousness dreams.

That's the catch, isn't it? Relative reality is bound by Self-imposed constraints. If a siddhi, or any other expression of Consciousness, happens outside of human range, it is not the character in the dream making it happen. That's what I meant when I said earlier that "you" and "I" are siddhis, in a sense. We are solar flares of Consciousness, just like siddhis are. Can a dream character have a superpower within the dream? Sure, as long as the dreamer imagines it to be so.

If ultimate reality was never created, it cannot be determined. It is the uncaused cause. Everything that is created is determined by it, how else could it be otherwise?

Science can only predict phenomena within the narrow band of our existence, and even then not perfectly. If siddhis, or any other phenomena, are outside the razor-thin range of human experience, the best science can do is shrug. Don't get me wrong. I love science. It is the most reliable tool we have for surviving in the dream world of individuality, but then again who is surviving?

You got it ⚡ Suffering is the result of trying to control the uncontrollable. No worries though, Consciousness has your back.

I actually attended a cool Van Gogh exhibit this week that was built within an old Masonic temple. Freemasonry has been around for several hundred years, and like other religions/societies is just another self-indulgent structure of social power.

It's even more profound than that. What if you, as a human being, are just another siddhi? Is what you do, as a human, really within your control, or is Consciousness calling the shots?