Carl-Richard

Easy: choose analytical idealism and make transpersonal consciousness ("the ground of Being") the ontological primitive, which leaves the thing that seems to correlate with brain activity to be personal consciousness (private mind states; e.g. your thoughts vs. my thoughts). Now you don't have to solve how consciousness arises from brains, because consciousness has always existed. However, it leaves you with a different problem; "the Decombination problem": how does transpersonal consciousness divide some parts of itself into separate individual perspectives (personal consciousnesses)? For that, you can point to a phenomena described in psychology as "dissociation", but how dissociation takes place is not very much understood, but at least there is a recognized concept in science that you can point to that can account for how transpersonal consciousness becomes personal. Even though dissociation is not well-understood, by comparison, other competing ontologies (e.g. constitutive panpsychism and physicalism) do not have any better candidates for scientific concepts they can point to which can explain their respective main objections ("the Combination problem" and "the Hard problem"), like "emergence", which has different incompatible positions (strong vs. weak emergence) and are yet to provide any specific mechanisms of how the emergence takes place. So from this, it might seem that the three ontologies presented are on roughly even ground, but analytical idealism also wins on the count of conceptual parsimony (Occam's Razor), in that it postulates only one ontological category (consciousness) while panpsychism and physicalism postulate (in a roundabout way) two ontological categories (physicality and consciousness) (I'm pretty sure panpsychism does that, but feel free to arrest me).

@Javfly33 Gratz

When you find it out for yourself, that's when it truly sticks.

Two things: modern society and the materialistic worldview. Once you're hooked up to modern society, you get exposed to both hyper-salient stimuli (e.g. cakes, junk food, social media, porn) and hypo-salient stimuli (grey urban environments, office walls, lack of direct sunlight, physical inactivity) defined relative to what our minds and bodies are evolutionarily adapted to. These things erode your general sensitivity to life, because sensitivity comes from a high level of calibration of your body/mind systems, and that requires giving your body/mind exactly what it needs at any given time (neither "hyper" nor "hypo", but just right), and modern society (or the default version of it) largely fails to do that. The materialistic worldview contains within it certain assumptions about what is likely and what is not likely to experience. For example, hearing voices, seeing spirits and experiencing psychic abilities are seen as metaphysically incompatible with "reality", and to the degree you do experience these things, you will be labeled as delusional and/or slapped with a mental disorder diagnosis. Now, to the degree that you inhabit these assumptions, it will actually dictate how likely you are to experience these things. For example, the times you're walking in the dark and have an intrusive thought about some ghost being in your presence, you'll be less likely to brush it off as an irrational fear and maybe actually open yourself up to what that experience might entail when fully investigated. There is naturally some fear associated with opening yourself up to "the spiritual world", especially when you hear about stories such as entity possession, and also just the general cultural framing of it as something pathological. Also, I personally think it can possibly open you up to an endless source of actually delusional and neurotic mental behavior (e.g. "I feel kind of bad -> it must be a spirit"), a kind of spiritual hypochondriasis, especially when it's tied to narratives about the causes to these problems (e.g. "some people carry bad energies, so I must avoid them"). When we're dealing with subtle phenomena like "bad energies", which is surrounded by so much doubt and uncertainty ("is it actually there or am I projecting something"?), it can easily lead you down an actual pathological path of excess suspicion and eventually full-fledged paranoia. The only remedy to the aforementioned problems is some rational inquiry: firstly, spiritual phenomena need not be dangerous, detrimental or persecutory. The starting assumption should be that the spiritual world is neutral to whatever your human existence is, just like everyday reality. Secondly, be skeptical of narratives related to the spiritual world, especially theories about things like entity possession that have a persecutory note to them. Unless you're walking down the street minding your own business and you suddenly become 100% certain that an entity hopped into your spiritual body, you should be highly skeptical of such theories that even feed the slightest suspicion of such phenomena having an impact on your life. The skepticism towards narratives should also apply to the cultural narratives labeling them as pathological, as these will also color how you will approach this issue if you don't become consciously aware of them ("what is happening is bad"). In summary, be aware of your narrative lenses and let experience be the guide.

@Nilsi Damn, good job. I especially like the insight about holism 😉😚

The only thing that beats aristocratic tutoring for becoming a hyper-genius is getting coached by a hyper-intelligent alien. And considering that it's increasingly likely that aliens (and also psychic phenomena) are real, the smartest thing you could probably ever do would be to try to contact them telepathically 👽👻

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Your videos have a really chill vibe. You seem like a wonderful human being

Shame on you! Jk

Shame is an emotion that arises as a result of a conscious recognition of conflict between your behavior and a standard of behavior (e.g. internal moral ideals or external social expectations).

You might want to run down the usual list of essentials (diet, exercise, sleep, socializing) and see if you're missing something. I wasn't being particularly unhealthy before, but a few slight tweaks got me to a different level. If nothing works there, it might be more mental: try daily meditation, walks, technology hiatuses, writing out whatever is on your mind and finding concrete starting solutions for those things (and be clear on when you're going to start), and generally cultivate a vigorous to-do-list habit (it helps to off-load unnecessary mental load, frees up space for more important things and creativity).

What you said overlaps nicely with the finding that enlightenment correlates with a sustained reduction in activity of the Default Mode Network and conversely a sustained increase in activity of the task-positive network. Put simply, the enlightened individual is always "tasking", and thus they're always doing what needs to be done. No aimless rumination about the past, no anxious worries about the future, only what is relevant to the task at hand.

I attended this one live just earlier today. Really interesting debate I was mostly interested in the debate because of Rupert Sheldrake, but Tanya Luhrmann surprised me with her rich study of so-called extraordinary (but actually ordinary) experiences that seem to question the materialist paradigm. Anil Seth's view that the brain is not an information processing system analogous to a computer but rather indeed a complex biological system (which is one good reason to think that silicon AI is not privately conscious), resonates with some of my own intuitions (and of course of Bernardo Kastrup, my idol basically), which is also surprisingly not a mainstream view. In that sense, most of the panelists are heretics in their own way (which the moderator cheekily stated). All in all, a really enjoyable discussion. One way the discussion could've been improved is if there was a philosopher on the panel (maybe Kastrup himself) who could've nailed down some of the finer distinctions that they touched on, for example the distinction between "mind" and "consciousness", especially when it comes to differentiating between personal and transpersonal aspects of these things. Nevertheless, there were still references to concepts like panpsychism (but not idealism, sadly), panentheism (close enough), the mystical experience (the experience of Being, God, Oneness, etc.), and the value that these things can bring to our lives, both despite and in line with their objective truth value. The fact that these discussions are now taking place in mainstream spaces like this (hosted by a mainstream university) is a good sign that we're indeed moving culturally and scientifically in the direction of sincerely questioning materialism. Even if the topics themselves seem too milquetoast for this forum which is overly saturated with this kind of stuff, at least this could allow you to appreciate what is going around outside of the echo chamber.

True. That's called being deaf, blind, mute and quadriplegic.

Yup, and when you bring up the evidence (Sheldrake mentioned there are around 30 independent replications of a single ESP phenomena), they will just make vague assertions like "the evidence is not conclusive". Merely doing a bunch of research is not enough if there is a metaphysical bias against it. It will always be labeled as heresy; no mainstream journals will take it up, and there will be no large-scale coordinated efforts or funding. That is why we need people like Bernardo Kastrup who can do the work on the metaphysical level (in a way that is convincing for the Western mind).

You're not interracting with Leo daily face-to-face, the teachings given in text or video format are mostly not procedural or embodied in nature unlike physical sports, although you can certainly gain a lot by having a spiritual guru that gives you those things. Nevertheless, when the teachings are conceptual and processed alone, your focus should not be loyalty, but depth of understanding, which takes time, effort and openmindedness (which can look like loyality).

But you don't literally dissolve your human body or mind. The limitations are still there, but you've opened yourself to a larger context (a limitless one). That is why I think "being awake within the dream" is a brilliant pointer. Your dream doesn't end just because you started lucid dreaming. You still have your dream body and dream mind.

I would put it as a "change" that both subsumes and transcends these things. For example, enlightenment is not merely a change in thought or perception. It's a change ("change") in consciousness.

Spiritual masturbator*

@Javfly33 People are so conditioned to think that "the point" has to be something extrinsic to the thing itself (extrinsic value, "purpose") that they forget that the point can be intrinsic to the thing itself (intrinsic value). In fact, intrinsic value is the only point that truly exists, because some thing's extrinsic value always depends on some other thing's intrinsic value, or else there are no things, only an infinite regression of promised things. In other words, if you can't enjoy something for what it is and always keep looking for an extrinsic value (always placing the value one step outside of what currently exists), then you're not just ontologically confused, but you're setting yourself up for endless suffering.

Not for the ego. If you think you desire awakening, it's not awakening, but an idea in your mind, often based on a desire for something else entirely (e.g. safety, belonging, self-esteem). The experience itself is way beyond what you can ever imagine, let alone desire, yet you've always known it.

Sounds like tulpamancy. Tanya Luhrmann talked about it in the debate I attended live:

"Deterioration issues"? I don't personally think of random lights overlayed everyday objects as a "perceptual upgrade".

I don't know, and that's a weird and random thing to ask. Are you @AtheisticNonduality?

I bought a light therapy lamp back when I thought I was seasonally affected some years ago. It certainly gave me more energy. One of the first times I tried it, I had so much energy, I came to a seminar at my university and finished the assignments in half the time and left early Be careful to not stare directly at it, even if you feel fine while doing it (I tried it sometimes, and it made everything look a bit grey for the rest of the day, and my eyes kinda hurt). Nowadays, I try to let as much natural light into my room as possible when I wake up, independent of the seasons. Even if I wake up too early for any light, I also do short 10-minute walks up to 3 times a day, and the times I get to do morning walks, I'm basically guaranteed some light.