OldManCorcoran

Whatever way you seem to be communicating with anyone else, is just your own thoughts in your own head and the "other person" is some sort of cardboard cutout mannequin, whatever way they are appearing to you (visual, audio, whatever). There's no sentient being in that perception. There's no living sentient being behind my eyes. My face and moving mouth is a dead lifeless perception with nothing in it, appearing in tandem with your own thoughts. Speaking to another person, it's just your own thoughts alone in your head, it just so happens to be accompanied by the sight of a face or whatever. The two aren't connected actually, there's nothing coming from the dead lifeless image, the communication is your own thoughts in your own head. And there isn't anyone else at all. All people are is an image with absolutely no sentience whatsoever. Their words are just your own thoughts happening in your own head. Same as if you were sat alone thinking to yourself, there isn't any difference compared to another person talking. You are just focusing on the dead lifeless image of a human being but there's no sentience inside it.

There straight up can't be such a thing as an external world. Because any representation of distance is mental (e.g. things looking to be far away or close). Without mental activity how exactly could anything be distant from you in the way we picture it at all?

My human face and mouth you'd be looking at if you saw me talking right now is the back wall, there's no sentient being behind these eyes. It's just a cardboard cutout. And my words are just your own thoughts, they're not this human's thoughts, there's no sentient being in these images. It's just your own thoughts lmao.

You're not even real lmao. When you look at me, you're just seeing the image of me happening in conjunction with your own thoughts. Those thoughts are my thoughts. There's not any sentient being behind the eyes of the image, the images of me or you are just appearing in your head. Nobody is actually there. You're just having thoughts and in conjunction there might appear the image of a human being. When you see me talking, it's just me seeing my human face and mouth move in tandem with my own thoughts. Just lol.

I guess it's not. You're just an image in my head bruh... I wouldn't talk to a picture of a cartoon character and think I'm actually talking to them. Because the image of your face and mouth moving happens in conjunction with the thoughts I have, I am meant to believe the thoughts I have are actually coming from the image of a human face and mouth? The human face and mouth aren't even really there let alone a sentient being behind it. Maybe there's also the image of my face and mouth moving in conjunction with some of the thoughts I'm having. Maybe that's what you see. AKA I see (because the image of you and image of me are just appearing in my head).

Chris Hitchens continued doing his atheist debates etc while he was dying with terminal cancer, seriously some people are genuinely atheists and don't just fairweather change ideas when desperate. Some people can't just choose to believe things.

I think so, I think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. There are definitely disadvantages which can't be overlooked, but overall it makes it easier to accept negative things

They are. I don't think many of them really believe it though, it's an identity for them. But many people truly are atheists too.

Yes I have, I saw Shiva or something. I don't attach any importance to it.

It seems related to tribalism. Believing in X religion gives you an identity and community. Religions are treated more like sports teams than real beliefs, by the adherents.

Yes, their identity literally defines every aspect of their life. They can't go a day without telling everyone they're gay or w.e. that's why they're all narcissistic and hateful.

I'd be seriously bothered, they go to the bathroom together etc. I couldn't handle this. I'd probably kill myself.

I noticed that there is a "naive realism" idea of time. Naive realism is the idea, for example, that certain qualia is external to the mind. So the example that there is a qualitative red apple out in the world in addition to the red apple generated to represent it in your mind. If you Google the term you will find image examples. Time is also a form of qualia. Say with a red apple there is some objective measure of that thing, so the color red is a certain frequency of light, with real time there is some objective element of math which is not qualitative. But the actual experience of a passage of time is a product of the mind, it is a very subtle element from a series of different appearances happening in a row. 10 seconds can seem really long, it can seem really short. That experienced progression is produced by the mind. Without that, time exists in exactly 0 seconds. Both the beginning and end of the universe, in absence of the mind tricks, happens entirely in 0 seconds. The end of the universe is so simultaneous with the beginning that it, in reality, does not happen at all, since it ends before it progresses from any beginning. The true face of time ought to be equivalent to in a dreamless sleep. The entirety of that deep sleep happens in precisely 0 seconds. The entire life of the universe happens in the same absolute 0 seconds. This must all be something happening within that 0, but the existence of appearing phenomena and the human mind etc is able to create a sensed "length" of time inside what is in actuality, total flat absolute 0. I wonder what to do with such information.

It is real, it is what happens when the seeming external objects like shapes and color, remain when the idea of a seeming internal ("observer") self, which is made of many perceptions like the perception of distance (me here, that there) and various thoughts, stops appearing.

Isn't the term "nothing" a label for a category that sits opposite another category of "something"? Well, all categorical divisions are a function of the mind also and not actual to objective reality. Like the seen color of red (the qualia) does not exist outside the mind, categorical divisions are made of thought and thoughts don't exist outside the mind. I.e. these two categories cannot be external to the mind because the idea that there exists such categories is made of thoughts which is a function of the mind. Actual reality is not made of categories, categories are what our mind applies onto actual reality in the form of thought.

Probably quite a lot of people since lockdowns happened. Isolation tends to drive people into revelations, and a lot of people experimented with drugs in that period out of boredom/depression.

I thought this was really good because the waves in an ocean metaphor fails on the front that waves have a sort of separate continuation. So the other metaphor is that there is a beach, and on the beach footprints appear. There aren't any feet so you have to just picture that the beach is doing it to itself... Each footprint is some sort of experience, so for example you might be seeing the color blue right now and that would be a footprint (the entire experience of the seeing of that blue). As your day unfolds, each moment is another footprint appearing on the beach. The new footprint does not contain any element of the last footprint, both footprints are just different indentations in the beach. I find this quite a bit better. The beach would be "I" would be consciousness of course. And to be clear on that, it is also the case that "I" is not conscious of anything at all. It is consciousNESS, and consciousness is very different than "conscious of". And that is the entire beach and our lives etc play out as a bunch of footprints happening in that.

No I think the suggestion is that you are appearing within what you really are, as are all of us. The you that you are referencing now is just a character appearing within what we all truly are. The "I" is meant to sort of precede us in a way, where the entire conscious experience of any individual life is something which happens inside of that. Your entire individual character contains lots of appearances like memories and sights and sounds, and all of these things appear within you. "I" is not meant to be conscious, it's meant to be consciousNESS and that is extremely different. Like footprints on a beach, each indent is an appearance happening within you, which includes your current conscious experience. There aren't any feet because there's only beach, so you have to imagine the prints just appear and fade by themselves.

Well it says you basically CAN'T die from ingesting psychedelics, so I had no qualms about using idiotic "heroic" combinations. One time I swallowed a heroic dose of acid, waited for it to peak, then smoked a bunch of DMT. Obviously it must have been incredibly intense because it made me religious. But I don't remember it anymore.

I did all the drugs, weird things happened. Now on very rare occasion weird things happen while sober, which didn't happen before I distorted my mind with potent hallucinogenic chemicals. Only a few weeks prior, I became overly aware of the stark REALNESS of the present moment. Nothing else but the extremely stark blatant in your face REALNESS of the moment. It became intense quickly but my mind panicked and because I wasn't high on drugs there was nothing to keep propelling me into it so the panic snapped me out of the state. Probably the final remnants of my drug addled brain's distorted wiring finally righting itself.

That is irrelevant and I expected that but didn't bother to preface. The point is not that you can gouge out your eyes and blind yourself, but that when your eyes are working correctly and are exposed to the world, the world renders irrespective of whether you want it to or not. When certain conditions are in place certain things happen and the person doesn't have a say in it.

I don't see how there is any chance at all. When I open my eyes I see the world around me and I can't really do anything about that in the moment it happens. I open my eyes and my mind renders a visual landscape whether I want it to or not. No matter how hard I will my eyes to fail, or my mind to not render a visual landscape, it does it.

I haven't ever personally encountered anyone who has considered otherwise. The specifics I find very difficult to understand, because it is indeed very hard to understand, that this entire expression of experience does not have a separate core. I.e. when you fall asleep and wake up the next morning, there isn't a personal separate essence which temporarily dips under the surface and returns, but rather the continuation is only the re-emergence of the experience of being you (which includes memories and whatever else). So you are dying equally as much each passing moment. The you from 5 seconds ago is as dead and non-existent as a relative of yours who died and you went to their funeral etc. The body we inhabit is only an expression of experience without a separate soul within that is tethered to it from moment to moment. So in many ways we lose it each moment anyway.

I have Avoidant Personality Disorder, psychedelics didn't have an effect on that. They only have an affect on turning me into a divine perfectly symmetrical entity with tongue lolling out of my mouth while contorting into Aztec carving esque poses, and Hindu Gods and Goddesses, sitting yogis, and statues of the Buddha manifesting before me.

Is this not a cope, given there are monks who set themselves alight and sat peacefully cross legged on the ground? It is at least theoretically possible to go an entire life with zero suffering. There are some conditions where people can't actually feel physical pain in any case, so those people at least could completely avoid suffering for a lifetime if they managed to also reign in the psychological side.