Carl-Richard

Thank you ChatGPT for teaching us how science works and that virtually all of behavioral science has mixed results and that even in biomedical science, up to 80% of studies in some cases fail to be replicated. If you want to make a good scientific basis for Inner Engineering, you need more studies and more high-quality studies such as the one I linked, and ironically then you also need more money. How do you think you become enlightened? And as Leo himself alluded to, there are different levels of the Inner Engineering program or the Isha system in general. Sadhguru has explicitly said there are things he is holding back and saving only for those that are ready because they are that destabilizing and transformative. That's what is missing in the individualistic New Age spirituality embraced on this forum — institutional boundaries and safety mechanisms. That's what old religions have, because they realized over the thousands of years that spirituality is no joke. Today, you only realize it for yourself when it's maybe too late. You think you can take a loaded gun of spiritual technology and play around with it willy-nilly? And you think this should be open source and that anybody who wants to maybe keep people from hurting themselves maybe irreversibly must be conmen? Go read about spiritual emergencies, go read about kundalini crises, go read about people who hospitalize themselves with psychedelics. Sadhguru and all spiritual "high priests" in history are doing you a massive favor. Places like Actualized.org, that's the real experiment.

I've one time seen what looked like a cat making a deliberate conscious decision between two options on how to hide as I was walking towards it on a road, and it chose the option which I did not predict but which in hindsight could've been way smarter: Instead of jumping into the grass on the side of the road it was on and increasing its distance from me, it chose to run across the road in my direction, decreasing its distance from me almost so I could attack it, and then under a car to hide. Before that, it was checking the grass (which seemed a bit short, and it only stretched a few meters before it hit an unassailable wall, so it maybe didn't seem safe enough), then it saw the car, and I believe it might have looked at the grass again and then the car again and then chose the car. And I was already pretty close to it when it ran towards the car (probably 4-5 meters) and it must have more than halved its distance from me before it got under the car. What struck me was how "planned" it seemed, because again, I did not predict it running towards me and then under the car, rather than just running into the grass and increasing its distance from me. It must have somehow calculated that the grass option was less safe than the car option and that it could make the run under the car before I could attack it even though they were decreasing their distance from me. That's a pretty impressive level of cognition, even though it's probably more embodied than "abstract".

Because it throws variation into your thoughts, and then you can select which ones to pursue if they're really good. It's like selection and variation in biological evolution, only abstracted into the realm of thoughts. In biological evolution, variation comes through for example mutation or genetic recombination through viral infections or sexual reproduction. Selection comes through passing your genes on simply because you were stronger than somebody else or simply because you didn't die. In the realm of thoughts, variation is simply your mind reviewing, processing and "recombining" thoughts and past experiences in a more free way than usual, and those thoughts are often related to the self, and often about the past and projections into the future. And they are that of course because that has been good for your biological evolutionary fitness. Biology and mind are of course intricately tied to each other. And when you do this more free kind of thinking, you might start seeing connections that you didn't see before, and you can have new insights (new "phenotypes"). And then selection happens when you decide to act on or explore those thoughts in a more focused way, "passing on their genes" so to speak, or simply committing them to memory ("genetic information" is after all a form of memory; here, it's mental memory).

You know what a bodhisattva is so we don't have to go there.

Inner Engineering Practices and Advanced 4-day Isha Yoga Retreat Are Associated with Cannabimimetic Effects with Increased Endocannabinoids and Short-Term and Sustained Improvement in Mental Health: A Prospective Observational Study of Meditators: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32595741/ More than 70% increase in endocannabinoids and BDNF. I don't know about you, but that sounds pretty insane (no pun intended). And that's one study out of many. Now, I would expect you could get similar results with a simple DIY meditation, but that doesn't subtract from the fact that his program has an effect (and it could be helpful for especially beginners in certain ways). Research requires funding and prior recognition. If there is no environment, if there is no soil, there is no food, no mental health (unless you're Babaji chilling in an ethereal realm). Sadhguru is not just a holistic thinker but a holistic executer, which is extremely valueable, and it would be a ridiculous undertaking if not impossible in principle without money being spent (and time is money anyways, so you're just wasting time AND money that way).

What specifically do you mean? Like performing a scientific study? "Making money" = materialist con-man, insinuating that you cannot use money for legitimate means.

There is no dilemma being suggested. Making money is an obviously smart way of getting your message spread to the most possible, not that it's an impossibility otherwise. If you simply assert so, it must be true. Yeah ok. How would you personally try to reach the most people possible?

He is sharing it for free for people who need it in the slums. But if you want to reach people, you need power and influence, and that's what money can give. This idea that you want your spiritual teacher to be poor is a weird irrational stereotypical "mental illness" in itself. There is no other scenario where you would want somebody you care about or a project you want to see grow to be poor.

Yup. If your mind and heart is open, you'll receive grace. If they're not, they must be worked on and massaged.

Da hell

It's the closest thing I've come to a sedative-anti-psychotic like Rivotril (Klonopin, clonazepam), just even more depressive and soul-draining. Your brain is literally stopped dead in its tracks. Glycine is a weird substance. It has its own receptor in the brain and is mostly inhibitory. People who take 10-20g of this shit must end up in a K-hole (if they hadn't built up tolerance to it).

One of the most effective ways of overcoming an addiction is to have a really bad experience with the said addiction that makes you associate it with that bad thing. Your brain literally rewires from "this thing I like, I must pursue it" to "this thing is horrible, I must stay away from it". I forgot to mention to @Someone here but I didn't quit for good after those things I told you about (the social pressure, the personal desires and goals, the cult beliefs): About a year later, New Years Eve, I did smoke some tiny amounts with my friends, and then I decided to take some with me home for the next day. That turned out to be a horrible mistake, because I was meditating a lot at that point and had regular closed-eye non-dual experiences, I was months into nofap (super dopaminergic state), I was hungover (downregulated GABA and upregulated NMDA; hyper-excitation of neuronal activity) and I had eaten shit food the day before, I of course hadn't smoked properly in a year or more, and on top of that, I decided to smoke while low blood sugar, and a lot (certainly for being one year off). That intense combination of factors threw me straight into the most intense and unexpected ego death experience I've ever had. I tried to find food but my eyes literally couldn't register what was in the drawer. I opened the fridge and my field of vision was completely flat and my hand flew inside the fridge like it had no weight or control behind it. I grabbed a bottle of liquor from the fridge and some dry uncooked taco shells from the drawer and started gulping that shit down while I was existing in an infinite timeless void and a hologram of a living room begging to God to be taken back to normal consensus reality. It took what felt like many hours and desperate jerking off before I could sort of relax, and I was really not myself for a week or more afterwards. Anyways, the outcome of that whole story is that after that, I've never tried weed again (in any capacity that you would call intentionally and substantively "getting high"; I've of course been exposed to weed in many situations after that).

Well I do 😛 But again, it's just the "ugh, the social convention, muh feels". To know what the person is going to say next, that's being quick. I've personally dealt with a slightly different problem that I kinda always know what the larger arch of the conversation will be, and I have had to teach myself not to find it simply boring but enjoy digging in the dirt.

Jan Esmann? I felt like Sadhguru didn't know who Dr. K was or what he was about, as if he was being interviewed by a journalist from CNN. And there have been many times he has come off as brash in earlier "in-depth" interviews, like the DiaryOfACEO one, really in most interviews that ask directed questions. That's seemingly just his style, of not giving people too much charity and just steamrolling them with his message, even if it involves cutting them off. People will get triggered by that, but it also seems to me to be a method to the madness. He is very particular with how he interrupts people, often answering what they were about to ask anyway before they got more than a few words out, and often saving time in some way. There is a sense where you getting triggered by Sadhguru is more him breaking a social convention of conversation than him being some kind of egomaniac (like, idk, Trump) that just spins bullshit or slings shit at other people. He's always focused on the message, always focused on the cause. And that's what you expect from people in these states (if I may say neuroscientifically; shutting down the default mode network means that what is active is the "doing" network). He is relentlessly doing, constantly, and it can be intense and sometimes triggering.

@Beans I'm so relaxed I could sing an opera naked. But my mind is also like a snail in a pool of glue.

Could you have predicted that the ultra-depressed person that Eckhart was, would've turned into the guru he is today? If you had told him "awakening is simply not in the cards for you, bud, some people were just born to be like that", do you see how dangerous that is? (not dangerous with respect to suicidality, but the likelihood that they will believe in it and the loss of potential).

Eckhart Tolle could've killed himself.

@everyone, I'm curious, who here feels energy when watching/listening to Sadhguru?

He is a smaller teacher. Why does that matter? It's ok to disbelieve stories, you don't need to justify it other than you just don't believe it. I one time read a note on the wall at my gym that said "we had to close the sauna because people are urinating on the heater". I said "I don't believe it" (but then over time, I actually could see it being a possibility).

You know, some people are just in the wrong situation so to speak and becoming aware of the right teachings can absolutely revolutionize their entire life, and this kind of non-self-efficacious thinking is not helping. Just in general, non-self-efficacious thinking is a self-imposed mental limitation that keeps you safely rooted in not trying. If trying and failing was extremely dangerous, you would have more of a point.

Your impression was exaggerated? There are wilder stories out there. Try for example Jan Esmann's Enlightenment story.

Crypto-materialist detected 📡🗼

Gurus talk at you most of the time. That's the default. Doing a new interview is looping. Presenting your views to a new audience means looping. That you expect Sadhguru should be talking directly to you personally through a random interview, that's to go mad.

Something tells me the extreme levels of fumbling of finding it within yourself to change the story two times (or more?) and having your friend make a response video instead of yourself (which ended up being flawed because you misinformed them), is because this happened in the weekend and he was high as fuck and completely mentally incapacitated.

Ideal depending on what juice you want. There are few sports where you pass out from lifting 2.25x your bodyweight that is done better than in a gym.