AtmanIsBrahman

My concern is that the statistical worldview precludes making meaningful statements. Sure, it’s good to be aware that (almost) everything is context-dependent and not 100% x or y, but it’s important to make clear statements too. If someone is asking for practical meditation advice, it’s probably best to give an answer one way or another based on your experience or say you don’t know rather than making a vacuous statement like “why not both” or “it depends.” I think the way of thinking you’re describing @Carl-Richard is a form of rationalism, which comes with many limitations. This is what Leo’s deconstructing rationalism series was aimed at. If you’re so much of a rationalist that you’re qualifying everything with phrases like “probably” or “most likely,” you’ve definitely gone wrong somewhere.

On this forum we’re all familiar with solipsism. But the question is, why does mainstream philosophy completely ignore it? As it turns out, there’s one philosopher who argued for a form of solipsism—admittedly not the full thing, but close enough. Caspar Hare, in his book On Myself, and Other Less Important Subjects, argues for egocentric presentism. This is the idea that my experiences are different from others’ because they are present. Others’ experiences are simply absent. He doesn’t claim that others don’t have an experience, but he does claim their experience is not present. This means that my pain is present, whereas someone else’s pain is absent. So, my pain is more important than other people’s. Caspar actually qualifies this claim by saying the quality of being present is just one ethical consideration, and isn’t decisive. I think he’s trying to avoid sounding crazy to academics, which he would if he said “my pain matters and other people’s pain doesn’t matter at all.” Hare’s solipsism is an incomplete version, but it’s close to something profound. You can read his book if you’re interested. It’s pretty technical, but it has interesting thought experiments. Of course, don’t read it if you’re a soft-brained spiritual person—that’s why I posted this on the intellectual forum. Here’s a passage that is quite interesting: 4.4 The Intelligibility of the Notion of Monadic Presence What is it for a thing to be present? Not present to me or present to you, just present? To understand egocentric presentism, you will need to have a grip on this notion of monadic presence. In an effort to give you a grip, I asked you to try out some Cartesian introspection: Wipe your epistemic slate clean. Forget where you are, forget who you are, forget that you are anybody at all. Now attend to the world. You will fi nd that there are certain things. Take their appearing at this stage of introspection to be a feature of the things, not a feature of how they appear to you. They are present. This may seem like a very strenuous mental exercise. You may be tempted to infer that the notion of presence is like plutonium. It is the sort of thing that can be brought into existence only by many hours of painstaking labor inside a philosophical labora- tory. Outside of philosophical laboratories it is nowhere to be found. But again, I think this is not right. I think it is at least pos- sible to have a pre- theoretical grip on the notion of monadic presence. Consider my childhood. When I was a child I was pos- sessed by all kinds of quasi- solipsistic fantasies, convinced that the people around me were all aliens or actors or robots or secret agents or whatever. So far so normal. As I grew up so I grew out of this phase. I stopped jumping around doors to catch the aliens off guard and generally became more mellow. But one quasi- solipsistic thought survived into my adolescence. It would arise most distinctively when I thought about death. What would my death be like? I would imagine a vicious internal cramp as my heart gives out, panic and fear as my muscles become limp and, as the blood stagnates in my head and my brain starves of oxygen, what? My school vicar said light. Homer, in a much more impres- sive way, said darkness:50Clarifi cations Achilles smote him with his sword and killed him. He struck him in the belly near the navel, so that all his bowels came gushing out on to the ground, and the darkness of death came over him as he lay gasping.6 The sword reeked with his blood, while dark death and the strong hand of fate gripped him and closed his eyes. Idomeneus speared Erymas in the mouth; the bronze point of the spear went clean through it beneath the brain, crashing in among the white bones and smashing them up. His teeth were all of them knocked out and the blood came gushing in a stream from both his eyes; it also came gurgling up from his mouth and nostrils, and the darkness of death enfolded him round about.7 But even then I understood that neither was right. After my death there would be a kind of nothingness, a kind of absence that was difficult to describe or imagine. The closest I could come to pick- ing it out with words was by appeal to precedent—things would be the way they were before I was born. But now I was struck by a thought. Isn’t it amazing and weird that for millions of years, generation after generation of sentient creatures came into being and died, came into being and died, and all the while there was this absence, and then one creature, CJH, unexceptional in all physical and psychological respects, came into being, and POW! Suddenly there were present things! Was I thinking about presence and absence in a relational sense? Clearly not, for there is nothing at all amazing or weird about the fact that for millions of years sentient creatures existed without things being present to CJH, and then CJH was born and sud- denly things were present to CJH. To the extent that I found it amazing and weird that CJH’s birth brought an end to millions of years of absence, I must have been thinking about presence and absence in the monadic sense. So the notion of monadic presence is at least sufficiently in- tuitive for a thirteen- year- old with no exposure to philosophy to grasp it and find it perplexing (putting aside, for the moment, the question of whether the thirteen- year- old should have found it perplexing.)

This guy is less well-known and seems pretty legit

Yes, I agree. But it is interesting to find theories that come somewhat close to it. This philosopher got close to solipsism. I also think some of his terms are helpful and could be used in spiritual work. E.g. monadic presence - this is a great way of describing consciousness, solipsism, and reality And the framing of experiences as absent vs. present is a great way of thinking about solipsism. Based on this line of thinking, there is clearly something special about my consciousness because experiences are present to me. That by itself is a quasi-mystical phenomenon.

Honesty is a very deep principle. It connects to treating truth as the highest value. I've been seeing interesting results just adopting the honesty principle-- it really does improve your life, counterintuitively. Obviously, consciousness can't be reduced down to principles or rules, but Ralston's principles seem like the new, actually effective version of the 10 commandments.

The answer is that there is no evil.

It’s like we’re in a video game, and there’s a rule in the code that whenever the brain gets affected, consciousness gets affected. So the brain is something generated by consciousness (which is existence) that affects consciousness, which isn’t so mysterious. Another thing worth contemplating is that you probably have no proof that the brain has anything to do with consciousness. The only way you would know is if you had a brain injury and could track the loss in cognition. Otherwise it’s just a belief. Another point is that the idea consciousness can end is unfalsifiable. It’s actually not known, just assumed. There is no proof that consciousness will end when you die. And that might be because it doesn’t actually end, it just changes form.

Spiritual swindler- Someone who spams spiritual cliches in the forum and won’t use logic or engage seriously with topics. Example: ”How do I find my life purpose?” Spiritual swindler: “Who is the one who has a life purpose? There’s only consciousness.”

Redmaxxing When you use integrating lower spiral stages as an excuse for selfish behavior Example: ”Why did you start dealing drugs?” ”I’m just redmaxxing, bro. It’s part of my spiritual path.”

No, I read Whereof One Cannot Speak and I have The Book of Not Knowing. But I’m interested in the practical principles he suggests too from a personal development perspective. Such as honor, honesty, integrity, jointing, etc. I will get to all the books eventually, but I’m curious in the meantime if anyone has lived according to these principles or has a deep understanding of them.

+1

@Davino what do you consider intelligence to be? Is it like aligning yourself with divine wisdom? Here's how I understand it. There are 2 aspects of intelligence: power and direction. Power is how quickly your mind works for doing mental calculations or processing things. Direction is where you direct your mind--choosing where the computing power goes. I think spirituality helps with the direction, but power may be largely genetic.

Yep, that's exactly right--religious indoctrination is only possible to escape from if you're genetically predisposed in that way. It's like malnourishing your child and saying if they have good height genetics they might still end up tall. That's why it's abuse.

These beliefs go together—religion is wrapped up with western culture. The idea that telling someone a couple lies is good just because it ends up being true in the long run (in a way they don’t yet understand) is completely wrong. Also, you seem to have some weird anti-mainstream views… maybe look into that.

Bringing a child to church from a young age is baptizing them in a swamp of epistemic rot. They will likely never get out of it. Even if they stop believing in the religion as adults (and most of them stick with it), they’ve still been conditioned to believe rather than seek truth. So yes, it is definitely child abuse.

Why not? It would make for a more conscious business than what most people are doing.

@Leo Gura How advanced do you consider Peter Ralston to be? If you realized everything he’s realized, how conscious would you be? The reason I ask is because I’m trying to find other teachers, and Ralston seems like one of the good ones. But I know you think he is wrong about some things (like Love) and I don’t want to get caught in his limitations.

I noticed this too when I read the book. Either Ralston has totally different terminology than @Leo Gura, or there's a big difference in how they understand consciousness.

I'm not sure. If we understand intelligence as an absolute, it becomes unclear what associations or relationships even are, because all these things break down at the absolute level.

I guess it's a "separate the wheat from the chaff" situation, like with all teachers. In general, I think we should be skeptical of gurus. The whole guru model is very corrupt and epistemically irresponsible. It's almost impossible to do the guru thing correctly. What would you consider the line between belief and direct consciousness? I agree beliefs are a problem, but it seems like you're operating based on a clear distinction between the two, which I'm not sure I agree with.

Liking the food of the culture you come from

Alcohol. Celebrations where you’re expected to drink alcohol. Denial of the unhealthiness of alcohol, and the fact it stunts your social skills.

The way I understand it is that intelligence is the fundamental substrate of the universe. Without intelligence, nothing would exist or function at all. Intelligence is what creates a human being. Then, the human being can have better or worse outlooks on how to live, what is important, etc. —and we call that wisdom. Intelligence is needed first, then wisdom can exist. So intelligence is more fundamental.

I’m not especially familiar with Adi Da, but I’m curious what you think about this: “Adi Da stated that while some "yogis, saints, and sages" had occasionally indicated some awareness of a "seventh stage", only he as a unique avatar had ever been born fully invested with the capability to embody it fully; furthermore, as the first "Seventh Stage Adept" only he would ever need to (or be capable of) doing so” -Wikipedia Seems like beliefs to me…

This is a perfect example of mankind’s hypocrisy. The guy lacks coherence. He can’t give a straight answer to a question or defend his positions properly. I’m seeing what Leo means by the connection between Truth and Good. He lacks in truth, so he lacks in Good too. The immoral behavior comes from not caring about truth.