Scholar

The way I try to formulate it looks something like this: Vision logic or post-formal thought is the capacity to adopt multiple perspectives at once and recognize that truth is a relative phenomenon, that truth is actually an aspect of the mind and not an aspect of "objective reality". Due to that recognition one can hold multiple truths at once that are seemingly contradictory, because one recognizes that each of them contains a partial truth, partial validity. It is not merely the recognition that this is true, but a capacity of the mind. It is an ability that is easily recognizable to someone who has adopted it. I get asked for research and proof that vision logic exists and I try to explain to them that I cannot as it is a very subtle phenomenon. I know from their perspective it is irrational to just believe me, or to go through the effort of trying to learn about this themselves because I am just a random person who is telling them that. So what is there to do? It seems like their formal operational cognition actually prohibits them to go beyond it. It's like there a truths in reality that, due to the limited information we have about reality, are inaccessable to us if we follow strict rationality. It might actually be rational to dismiss me and not pursue what I am trying to communicate even though I am right. So how could one possibly nudge a stage orange person in the right direction? And how does it even occur that they themselves suddenly adopt early-vision logic?

Is it recommendable to use 5-MeO as your first psychedelic experience?

Do you avoid telling people about spiral dynamics and integral psychology? Because I feel like any time I mention it people go crazy and want to know why I would ever believe in it, and it's not easy (and so far for me not possible) to make them understand.

I have been following some of Destiny's content on twitch and youtube, he is a streamer. The way he uses his audience inspired the vision. Even though I think he is dysfunctional in many ways, he is definitely onto something as far as his approach goes, even if he is doing it unconsciously. You can really observe the evolution of him, he went from orange to green and is now scratching at yellow after he started using psychedelics. The amount of knowledge he has acquired just by using his audience is quite astounding. What I envision is really an embracing of streaming into educational structures and research, which might take a few decades to manifest. Leo could be a pioneer in this, I really don't see any better option for him. He can do the traditional approach which is mediocre at best, he can keep making videos which also is sub-optimal, or he can try something new and be the first person who recontextualizes a medium for personal development. I a completely unconscious person can get that far with streaming, I can only imagine what someone like Leo could do with it. But he would have to put his ego on the line, which I think he is not yet ready to do.

What I would suggest is to censor and filter people. Streaming is used as entertainment so you cannot compare an average stream of gamers to a stream of Self-actualizers who are there to learn. If you would be saying stupid shit you would be out of the conversation, plain and simple. Cultures change as new people adopt certain technologies, the same happened for every medium that was invented in history.

I think this thread might reveal a hidden question about the process of consciousness inquiry. How do we distinguish Absolute Truth from Relative Truth? How can we ever know the extend to which our own ego deludes us? How do we know whether we are not merely inquiring into the mind, into individual consciousness? Because it is infinite? Well, who says a mind cannot be infinite? Who says each individual consciousness cannot be infinite? Materialism? "This cannot be my mind, this HAS to be everything, THE ABSOLUTE!" What if the mind is absolute? What if consciousness is an aspect of reality that is paradoxical and infinite? But what if there is something beyond consciousness, obviously inaccessible to consciousness? We know that our entire realities are consciousness, thus naturally inspecting that reality will reveal that it is entirely consciousness. It will also reveal that it is all one, and possibly even that it is all Love. Even if consciousness embraces all of itself, does not mean that there is nothing outside of it. An ego might interpret this as Absolute Infinity and God, without realizing that it is only describing this consciousness. What is Absolute might not be consciousness, but the inaccessibility to things outside of consciousness. A few things are hinting that this might be true: - No enlightened master seems to have ever acquired any information that was outside of his mind structures, or that could have been only explained in a way that would suggest he had access to something beyond his or her own mind. - There are substances which change the structure of the brain and conversely induce enlightenment experiences. - Everything we hear enlightened people say about the nature of reality can be predicted with a scary accuracy if we simply assume the position that they are inquiring into and describing their own subjective reality. - People have widely different conclusions about enlightenment experiences, despite it being supposed to be Absolute Truth. There are many similarities which can be explained away as the natural tendencies the human mind has towards the interpretation of these experiences. From the perspective of consciousness, everything is consciousness. I don't doubt that we can have great insights into reality by inquiring into consciousness, but I am yet still open minded about it not having any significant metaphysical implications outside of consciousness. Of course, any enlightened person will dismiss that anything outside of consciousness exists, which is naturally assumed because existence itself is a concept within consciousness, once it is revealed as such it will seem like that concept has no validity. But because of the mysterious nature of reality and our ability to understand anything at all, it is really hard to determined what is going on, and due to the inherent limitations of the evolved human mind, it might actually be Absolutely Impossible. I have no idea how Leo got past this other than blind faith in his experiences and the natural conclusions his mind has given him.

Is it not possible that by doing consciousness practices for years and years, one actually creates a process for becoming more conscious which exponentially increases consciousness so that it seems like, for someone who has not practice long enough, it would be impossible to reach consciousness levels as high as one does with psychedelics? Additionally, as most spiritual traditions include spiritual purification, might it not also be possible that Leo, because he cannot dedicate his entire life to spiritual purification, is hindered within the more traditional approach due to the limitations his ego put upon him? For example, if one would practice consciousness and purification, one would get to as high, if not higher levels, as on psychedelics, eventually? The reason why I am proposing this is that there seems to lack something in the psychedelic process that is present in the traditional approaches. In the traditional approaches, one actually learns a conscious approach to increase consciousness, whereas psychedelics are an unconscious approach to increasing consciousness, though it increases it far more radically. It's kind of like a photographer vs a painter. In the first few years the painter will struggle with creating beautiful and attractive visuals, whereas the photographer can do so in an instant. But the painter can eventually exceed the photographer because he learns a process which gives him deliberate control over the creation of visual that the photographer will not learn in the process of simply capturing reality. Similarly, it might be the case that having the ability to consciously increase consciousness eventually will lead to higher levels of consciousness than psychedelics would deliver, due to the fact that one has a deliberate process of increasing consciousness that gets better and better over time, but takes longer to acquire. The same is true for spiritual purification, one can do so with psychedelics or learn a process that consciously purifies oneself, which gets better and better with practice. How could Leo possibly know what kind of levels the greatest yogis reached, those yogis who truly dissolve their ego in the process of inquiry, so much so that they kill themselves in the process biologically, by for example starvation?

That is because language is primitive in regards to non-dual awareness. We don't really have concepts to describe all the different facets and aspects of consciousness, we literally have no names for the things Leo has been experiencing. That is why we come back to describe it in the same way over and over again despite the experience being different. The thing is that even if he used different words it would be meaningless to you because you have not experienced what he has experienced. What's the point of talking about all the different shades of red to a person who never has seen any red?

You are interpreting a transpersonal truth from a formal operational perspective, which will lead to delusion no matter how much you will try to make sense of it. It cannot make sense to you because currently you lack the perspective to see what is even meant by these statements. See how you are using an orange tool to understand something that was the result of an at least indigo tool.

Yes, but don't forget that this was the case in all currently first world countries when they went through the industrial revolution. Child-slavery, robber-baron capitalism etc. are all part of the evolution of a civilization. Third world countries are lagging behind and sadly have to go through the same insights, revolutions and changes that the western countries did. Due geopolitical circumstances these changes will look very different from country to country, western governments will not be capable of effectively help these countries until they reach second tier.

But the effect itself is based on it's prevalence among the population, that is really the whole point of calling it the effect Dunning-Kruger effect. Otherwise it's just normal incompetence and overestimation of ones knowledge or skill, I don't think there is a need to keep misinforming people about something that is just bad science.

Not quite on topic, but the Dunning-Kruger effect is not real:

My laziness comment was specifically referring to making us lazy about hardcore spiritual pursuits, like sitting in a cave for 20 years and giving up everything for consciousness work. I think the chances for people to take these kinds of radical steps will decrease as psychedelics increase in popularity especially, in the future, in yogic circles. As I said, I am not talking about people like you and me, but about the pioneers who dedicate their entire life's to this pursuit. Due to psychedelics a culture might be lost that cultivates conscious consciousness work in a sophistication that is not present in other cultures, like for example in this one. My point was that we cannot know whether conscious consciousness work might not get us to greater depths than psychedelic aided work would get us. It might seem that way in the beginning, but that could be due to an exponential increase in consciousness with formal training. I don't know anyone who has seriously embraced yoga, meditation and psychedelics in a 100% dedicated way, as in doing nothing but that for their entire lifes. And if I believe Leo, then I don't believe anyone has ever reached the deepest levels of consciousness because it goes infinitely deep. My entire point is that while psychedelics might be useful for increasing your consciousness level, a traditional practice, while very slow in the beginning, might exceed the consciousness levels that are reached with psychedelics due to the momentum it gains. I don't know anyone who does nothing but consciousness work while still taking psychedelics, and with consciousness work I am more specifically referring to the investigation into the nature and essence of reality.

As I understand it's because enlightenment is the absence of a limitation your mind puts upon awareness to operate in a certain way. The part of brain the that is responsible for imposing that limitation upon consciousness is what is being targeted and disabled by the psychedelic, among other things. Enlightenment is not an addition to consciousness but the removal of a certain aspect of consciousness, namely the dualism or the limited identity. We would most likely be lying to ourselves because we do not really know. It would take an enlightened superconscious yogi to take 5-meo-dmt for him to compare the experience, and even then we don't know if his consciousness work did not change something about the brain that effects the way he experiences 5-meo-dmt. Equally we cannot really tell whether 5-meo-dmt effects the brain in some way that changes how future enlightenment instances are experienced. Maybe in the distance future the inspection of the interactions between waves and particles in the brain will give us more accurate assessments for this.

I agree with that but I see a danger in psychedelics because it inherently makes us lazy, and again I think art is a great example of that. Since photography became mainstream we have not seen any sophisticated master realist painters that had the expressive power of idealization that people had in the 19th century. Art of that quality is extinct because there is no great need for it to be produces. Similarly, why would I sit down for 10 hours every day, in a cave, to purify my ego and reach higher levels of consciousness after I have taken a psychedelics that instantly gratifies me? Do you know a single person who did that? I am not talking about amateur levels of consciousness work here, I am talking about professional consciousness workers who do dedicate their entire life's to consciousness work. Yes, good painters exist today, but there is no John Singer Sargent around anymore. And yes, good consciousness workers are around who did psychedelics, but who reached the deepest levels of consciousness? That is not what I am asking. I understand that psychedelics are a good tool for most people, I am just asking who would eventually reach the greatest depth, a yogi who is talented and does consciousness work all day long or someone who took lots of psychedelics and had a amateur-esk consciousness practice? I have no idea, I just want to propose that it might be possible that the one who did the consciousness work all his life might get into the greater depth eventually. And yes, if he took psychedelics he would probably get even deeper, but as it stands people who take psychedelics seem to simply not dedicate their life's to consciousness work like for examples yogis do. I am sure that people used to do that in the past, but nowadays it seems non-present. Imagine you did what you did for the retreat for the rest of your life, non stop. That is what I imagine someone to do who is dedicated entirely to consciousness work.

@Leo Gura I have a question about something that is not directly related to this topic, I see it happening quite a bit with you and many other higher evolved individuals. I am currently making myself familiar with Ken Wilber's model of cognitive/consciousness development/evolution. When making statements like "Things only happen by God's will." are we not running into the risk of confusing and deluding people due to the stark difference in interpretation between gross, casual, subtle and non-dual state of consciousness, and also due to a difference in cognition from different cognitive stages? It seems to me like a person only capable of, for example, formal operational thought is actually incapable of correctly interpreting your statement, due to the inherent limitations of his cognition. Statements coming from vision logic or beyond will actually cease to be the same statements when viewed from formal operational cognition. When they read it and they are at that stage, and they agree with you, they are actually wrong about what they agree with you about. And if they do not agree, they are wrong too because they do not even comprehend the true meaning of the statement. Either way they will come out confused, whether they believe you or not. And to me this is a real problem in the spiritual community, especially with non-dual "truths" that are being thrown around like candy, necessarily misinterpreted by those who hear them, as they themselves cannot truly understand the meaning of those truths if they have not reached any non-dual states. In this forum alone I see countless of people who are adopting non-dual, casual, subtle or psychic intellectual positions without having even experienced these states. And furthermore it seems like these statements only make sense while being in the particular state they originated from, which further complicates everything as it can easily lead to self-delusion by the person who has temporarily experienced one of these states. What do we do about this problem? I know your style is not conducive to the zen-master riddle approach, but are you not worried about leading people on the wrong path if you give them higher truths that they are bound to be deluded and misinterpreted? Wouldn't a spiral wizard be a little more sophisticated, by for example luring a person to the next stage instead of going full non-dual on them if they are far removed from that realm?

Can you show us a screenshot?

You are right, there is no cookie-cutter solution that will work with everyone. I think there are a lot of people who might be at the verge between orange and green, in those cases I think anger makes them usually regress into orange and empathy opens their hearts green. Though even that cannot be said for everyone, there are a lot of people who respond well to the more passionate/angry narrative.

Yes, that's definitely a reasonable approach in my opinion. I just think that we need to communicate more between the different groups, as we have deeper insights into the dynamics that are playing out. I think we should not dismiss people as radical or militant on the green side, but equally not as bigoted or primitive on the orange/blue side. Instead of focusing so much on the issue itself, it might be helpful to instead communicate how and why we feel a certain way about it. We can try to explain to orange people why people feel angry and sad because of all the suffering that the animals have to endure. Even if we were to talk about terrorists, I think this approach is important. We might disagree with them, but we have to inspect why they feel so helpless and frustrated. When we call them militant or fundamentalist, we dismiss the validity of their views, even though they live and experience these perspectives day in day out. Instead of fragmenting all the groups, we can make an effort to bring us closer by establishing bridges of understanding and compassion. Yes, most people don't think we should go into restaurants and protest, or to arson butcher shops because they sell animal corpses. But we have to recognize that the people who do these kinds of things are still humans, they feel very strongly about this and I don't think we can blame them. We can educate them, but we should not demonize and dismiss them as radicals that are completely unreasonable and destructive. A lot of times we get angry because we are so sad about a situation, but if we were just honest and would show our sadness, I think people would have a much easier time to show empathy for our perspective, and how important it is to many of us. We have to show the process of empathy, so they can see why we have the perspective we have.

But why are you distancing yourself from these "extreme" vegans? What is the point of that? I understand it would not be helpful to call someone names, but again, try to have some empathy for these people. They are suffering knowing what is happening to animals, they cannot handle it. It is like torture to them, every single day of their lifes. They see great injustice, and I cannot blame them. There is so much suffering that could be avoided. It's not about whether you respect someones choices or not, it's about what kind of choices you respect. Do you respect someones choice to rape children? Why not? Because you genuinely feel like you don't want anyone to rape children. On the other hand, when people are enslaving and slaughtering sentience beings of a different species, you actually are fairly indifferent about it, aren't you? To people who actually feel like animals deserve moral treatment, it will seem like you do it out of egoic reasons. You do it because you don't want to be judges as intolerant, or because you want to maintain social relationships, hiding all of it under the veil of futility. There are other ways to go about changing people, but respecting their choices is not one of them. Again, ask yourself, if you lived among people who raped children and it was socially acceptable, would you equally respect their choices? And what would a person who would respect these choices seem like to you?

I feel like there is a lack of perspective here. Are they really extremists considering what is happening to billions of animals on this planet? To them you seem like someone who simply seeks neutrality for egoic reasons. Why is it extreme to get upset about what is happening? Would you call resistance groups who fought the Nazi's during the Jewish holocaust extremists? Veganism is an ethic, not a diet. It's defined by the believe that causing unjustified harm to animals is wrong. It's not a neutral position. Imagine if we lived in a world where women were looked at as second class citizens whom we could rape and kill whenever we want. Would you be an extremists if you were very emotional, very upset about it? And even if you were an extremist, would that be a bad thing considering in what kind of world you live in? They might not be effective in their advocacy (even though that is debatable, as they seem to convince a great amount of people of their cause), but I think you could do well to try to put yourself in the shoes of these people. If you felt that animal were more or less equal to human beings, what would you act like? Do you really expect people to have perfect composure considering the complete lack of empathy we have for certain kinds of animals? When you say "I don't care what others eat", to a person who is ethically more evolved than you it sounds much like someone telling you "I don't care who others rape and murder.".

If more developed stages are not better than less developed stages, one might want to inspect what the even mean when they say something is better. Is our society better than the roman empire that enslaved people? Is our society as good as a future society that will be fully enlightened and reduce harm to all life on this planet? Good and evil are subjective, but I would argue that if one inspected what they value internally, one would quickly come to the realization that yes, one judges more developed stages to be better, as long as they are healthily integrated. What's better, a car that can drive on a road, or a car that can drive on a road and additionally fly? We categorize and value everything, in fact even the notion that everything is relative, and that we should (!!!) think that way is itself a value judgement. The rejection of set categories is very greenish, I think it would help to understand the purpose and usefulness of these categories. Why do we call things better than other things? What will be the consequences of calling more developed stages better? What would happen if we honestly inspected our values and then without prejudice would truthfully represent them in explicit value hierarchies? Maybe we could recognize that betterness can be useful but also destructive, but that in actuality is difficult to truly go beyond these value judgments. I definitely like developed stages more than lesser developed stages, they are better by virtue of almost everything I value. I think a more useful question would be to ask yourself what you value and how any of the stages fit into that. When you see a lot of people saying that one stage is not better than the other, they really just want people to avoid feeling superior because they are more developed. The framing itself is flawed, as something cannot be better than anything else. Rape is not better than saving someones life, and it is quite trivial to say "Stage X is not better than stage Y", because betterness is not founded on objective measures. It is a misuse of language, due to a lack of inspection and self-reflection.

I have been thinking about what it means for existence to be infinite for a long time and it seems like I keep getting stuck. I am aware that one cannot contemplate oneself into true understanding about infinitude, but still I cannot let go the concept of it. If reality is absolutely boundless, does that not mean that everything we are doing is in an absolute and total way fully meaningless? It confuses me that Leo keeps talking about the importance of enlightenment, or of any other thing in life. Is it not inevitable that god manifests all possible and impossible realities no matter what will happen in this reality? Even if Leo gets enlightened now, has the best life he could possibly have, won't god experience a life in which Leo did fail? A life in which Leo never lost his weight and eventually got a heart attack? A life in which Leo keeps little children in his basement who he rapes every day? A life in which Leo, after reading this very sentence, is going to kill himself for no reason whatsoever? And if that is not the case, then how can god be limitless and infinite? And if it indeed is the case, it means that god will experience Leo in every possible form there can be for eternity, and already has experienced all of Leo's possible and impossible life's. Is everything Leo doing not a reaction of his ego, an inability to surrender to the truth? And even if it is not the case, does there not have to exist a reality in which that necessarily is the case? Either way that would mean that no matter what Leo does he cannot avoid not experiencing all the possibilities, one day he will suffer, as an unsuccessful and miserable Leo. I was thinking along these lines and then I remember something I have contemplated when I was a teenager. I had the intellectual recognition that reality had to be boundless a long time ago, by contemplating why reality would be the way it is and why it is not any other way. It seemed very obvious that there could not be anything that would limit reality, as anything that would limit it would itself have to be limited by something else so that it would limit reality in that particular way. But that begged a few very paradoxical questions: If reality is truly boundless, then does there not have to exist a reality which cancels all other realities? A reality which stretches it's tentacles into all of the infinitude of reality to root it back into nothingness? And does there not have to exist a reality outside of ALL realities? It has to exist, after all reality cannot be limited, it cannot be bound whatsoever. If this was the case though reality would be absolutely chaotic, nothing could exist because everything would immediately be taken apart by infinite destructive power, infinite death. There would be infinite realities popping into existence while immediately disappearing. It seems like these two elements would nullify each other, but then there would have to exist a reality in which they don't nullify each other. And then today, when I remembered this, I suddenly had the idea that out of that process would have to evolve intelligence, much in the same way it does in our universe. There is a force of chaos and a force of order, and because all realities which do not have strong order would be ripped apart by chaos, there would only be those realities left which had a mechanism against this chaotic power. And because this chaotic power is infinite, the realities would have to construct themselves in an infinitely intelligent way. In other words, intelligence is and unlimited limit, a limit upon Chaos with a capital C. It would be like survival and evolution were not mechanisms of nature, but rather metaphysical aspects that are unavoidable, and these aspects would then resonate into the realities which prevailed. And now it is obvious for why reality has to be love. The only reality that could manifest and not be destroyed by infinite chaos would have to be a reality which infinitely loves it's manifestation, it's own existence. If it wasn't infinitely loving it's intelligence would not be concerned for the manifestation whatsoever. In a very real sense that would mean that love is a prerequisite for existence, for only that which loves itself will preserve itself. These aspects seem to reflect in some shape or form our ordinary consciousness, as we strive to survive because of our selfish love, and that reminds me of the saying that god created us in his own image. It almost seems like for structure to exist at all there needs to be a fundamental force which keeps it from dissolving, and that force simply is love. But then the question is, would the infinite destructive power not evolve too, being put under the same evolutionary pressures, to then destroy the infinitely loving reality? Would there not be a reality which infinitely loves destruction, death and suffering? And maybe that is what our reality is, a fight between these two forces? It all just confuses me more and more, there is so much I have not even began to think about and it seems like this would go on and on for infinity. But then what is infinite intelligence, why does it exist? Does it exist precisely because this process goes on for infinity? I have no idea anymore. I guess what I would like to know is what infinite intelligence is, why it exists and whether it's existence means that not all realities will manifest, but only particular ones?

What do you mean by that?