LoneWonderer

@ExploringReality Hello friend, what resources would you recommend to an absolute begginer who wants to get started with kriya yoga? I'd like to learn about it and give it a go too as I've heard it can radically shift your state. Also what effects have you personally experienced? I am recently becoming more interested in raising my base level of consciousness. Thanks

Hey everybody. As the title reads I have now attempted several times Leo's experiment of looking at an object ( in this case my hand) with great focus for an extended period of time. I will describe my results below and will leave questions in the final section. Min 3-5: As I am intensly staring at a signle point on my hand, slowly the outline and edge of my hand (starting with my fingers and slowly working it's way up) begin to be enveloped in a white light, blurring the boundary beetween my hand and the background. Also the skin on my hand begins to become waivy like like it's moving and morphing while reamaining in it's place at the same time. I am only able to witness this from the periferals of my vision as all my focus is on a single point on my hand. Throughout the experience this single point stays in focus however. Min 5-10: Slowly the edges of my hand and the background begin to merge into a type of white light, the distinction beetween background, foreground and hand begin to become blurred. My brain is struggling to deal with this. Like a camera lense that wont focus my eyes and brain keep trying to bring the hand back into focus. It's becoming increasingly difficult to focus on the single point on my hand (which remains in focus and looking like skin on a hand) as my brain screams for me to switch focus to the rest of my hand that's quicly dissapearing into white light along with the background and foreground. I am also starting to make out tiny fractal patterns in the white light. Min 15-20: This is as long as I lasted. At this point there where quick moments millisecond in duration in which parts of my entire vision in one eye gets envepoled in this white light. My brain is starting to loose focus from the point on my hand and every time I look away from my point of focus my hand reappears in it's entirety. however the second I bring focus back to my point of focus the hand is again enveloped in a whitish light. I feel it's hard to start to make a distinction beetween the border of my hand and the couch on which it is resting. I tried to do what Leo suggested of slowly moving my hand but every time I shifted focus away from my one point the entire hand came straight back into focus. I have now done this a couple of times. These have been my results. That same day I did a 30mg dose of 5 meo dmt and tried the experiment again (Note I've never had realizations of infinity on 5meo dmt either) the same thing happened when i retired the experiemnt while on the substance however it was much quicker to get to this state around min 5-10 instead took less that a minute. My Questions: Does this process sound correct to others who have attempted this experiment? I did not have any realizations into the nature of infinity and I'm wondering is it that I have to keep trying to extend these sessions beyond 20min to 1-2 hours to realize something? It all felt more like a trick of the eyes, an optical illusion. What can I do differently next time? Thank you

Quite true sir.

What about the original experience I described in the post? Is this all just self delusion? An effect of the eyes? The merging into white light? Anyone could answer this question for me?

@freddyteisen Yesterday I tried to do the experiment again on a low dose of 5mg of 5meo and I can report at least in my case it was still quite challenging. I must be very lost in Maya. 😅 Moving my hand around proved much more difficult as almost every time my mind immediately reasociated it as "my hand" when movement was detected. However there were few instances were I did notice that what was before me wasn't "a hand" but un unknown. This was sorta freaky and like member MutedMiles has described above. I will keep practicing and report back.

Thank you very much Leo! 🙏

@Inliytened1 Thank you

You are correct, I'd been concentrating on a concept (a single point on "my hand") instead of focusing on actual present experience. I hand't realized that. I will try this next time. Does this sound about right to you? Thank you

@Inliytened1 One being concepts, ideas words and the other actual experience (nameless, present experience). Is this what you mean? Yes, I understand hand as a concept and as actuality it's just I've written "My hand" in this post to help explain to people. Maybe I'm going about this wrong...I understand there is not really "My hand" That's resting on "a couch" that it's just one continuous experience...I understand these things intellectually, I've even seen it on 5 meo dmt. However no insight, no definitive lightning bolt that this is the real nature of reality. Just always felt like illusions of "a brain or mind". What I'm seeking is insight into the true nature of reality devoid of illusions and concepts.

This thread is low quality. Find your own YT videos. There is already a thread created on top YT channels by Leo check that out.

I would invest so as to get dividends of 5-6k a month and then give the rest away to charity. Buy a small house with good foundations (easier to maintain and clean) and a reliable yet not overly the top vehicle (you want to fit in stupid not ride around in a bentley plus think of the maintenance costs! 😱). I would continue doing my job but travel a lot more which I absolutely love to do.

Congratulations to both!

@Carl-RichardYou live in Norway? So cool! I was in the Lofoten region 2 years ago helping an old Norwegian run a campsite for the summer. I absolutely loved it! Also lived in Denmark for 4 years I love the Scandinavian nations! 🫡

Conformity as in any time you give your authority to other instead of thinking/working through the situation yourself. This could be good or bad such as in giving your bodily authority over to a doctor to give you an operation that will save your life or giving all your money to a scammer who tells you he can double your money if you follow his "proven risk free" investment scheme. In this latter example you have lost all your money as you gave mental faculty authority to other instead of thinking through what you were getting yourself into. A much simpler example would be: A dictator comes to power in your country. You eat up all the propaganda he tells you instead of analysing for yourself the validity of the claims said dictator makes. You have given your mental authority to other. You defend your dictator's every view on reality without independent investigation. YOU are the very definition of conformist.

@ryoko I guess so

Thanks for your input. Yes, you can be driven and be conformist. Buy into the consumerism fantasy. Buy that Lambo and instantly you'll be respected by all 13 year old's and the homies in the hood. 😂 Or even better, rent it, post a pic and under no circumstances let anyone ever know how broken you truly are.

The Proof Podcast by Simon hill on YT and Rich Roll podcast on YT.

Conformity example recontextualization: being overweight, struggling with health issues and living off a processed food diet, everyone in your community is overweight and sick too. Being a militant vegan and being a good little conformist soldier shoving your vegan manifesto down the throats of anyone who disagrees with you.

Here is an example of what I believe to be a very subtle form of conformity. Would love to know others opinion. It's a glorification of unconcious survival behaviour. It's also conformity to a type of confusian values common in China, Korea and some other Asian nations, respecting family, cleaning your room, putting family above yourself, respecting customs etc. Not to say what he is doing is bad, but still conformity. Conformity in that he is playing the "good, respectable confusian golden boy" role (at least in my view). Stuff like this in every culture and every country (some of it unavoidable to most of us if you want to live in any given nation you must fit in to some extent), culture and cultural values as conformity. *Turn on subtitles on video Other examples could be: "My daily life as a wall street banker" "My daily life as leader of North Dakota Harley Davidson bike club" "My daily life as a Model" "My daily life as a Buddhist monk" "My daily life as a minimalist" And it goes on and on....You get the idea. Being the golden child in any human domain in which following the rules of the game wins you praise and approval from your buddies in the field. Ps: I enjoyed watching this video while eating some food, dude is chilled as jejeje. PPS: I think it would be a great idea to start a conformity examples megathread.

Thanks for this example. I am very conformist myself sadly.

Hey Leo, Thank you for sharing these examples of conformity on the blog. I would love to see if you have any examples of conformity that are not as blatently obvious as botox and lip enhancement. Would love to see content on forms of conformity so lowkey that most educated people are blind to them & take for granted (excluding the domain of science).

@Leo Gura 🫡

Hey Leo, could you please elaborate a little bit on this latest quote of psychedelic depeception post and after? I didn't really understand what you meant? Could it be that there is self deception prior to taking these substances and that without proper epistemic grounding a post psychedelic trip could be a trap as one tries to piece it together but filters everything through one's biased and incomplete world view, coming to confuse and conflate the trips wisdom with one's personal selfish survival agenda? Thanks

@Wilhelm44 This channel is awesome too!

Martin Ball's channel of psychedelics: https://youtube.com/@entheogenicevolution He was one of the pioneers of 5 meo dmt research. Search his name on YT and watch his podcast interviews on other people's channels as his main channel is a little chaotic. Check out his books as they give a lot of grounding in simple language about the psychedelic experience and god realization.