Carl-Richard

Why do you think that?

There is this woman who's name escapes me but which Rick from BATGAP often mentions in many of his interviews. She awoke at a bus stop with zero preconceived notions of what was happening to her, and she spent years trying to figure it out. Of course a mild constructivism (that thought has some effect) is always the case, because things like self-inquiry or mantra meditation work that way, but to say that thought itself is the primary factor for causing the experience is completely inconsistent. To accept the constructivist view, you cannot have had a mystical experience yourself, because then you would know without a doubt that experience comes prior to thought. I mean, the god damn state in itself is a thought-free state. Besides, even if we fully grant the constructivist view, this doesn't detract anything from the positive aspects of the experience. It's well-known in the literature that having a mystical experience will generally lead to increased functionality (relative to a society's standard of reality), which conflicts with calling it a delusion (a pathology).

and depending on the tribe, sacrificing humans in the process

The first deliberate/focused contemplation session I ever had on a "psychedelic" (weed) was "what creates the perception of time?", and I arrived at the answer: "it's determined by how often you access your memories." This was the time right before I started meditating (I was probably 18), and I've only confirmed this insight later, but I would rephrase it like this: thoughts about self creates feelings of time.

Bro, almost all your posts are about poo-pooing "Western science". It's not all hyper-materialistic, logic boner stuff. Like I mentioned earlier, W. James and A. Maslow pretty much hit the bullseye ~100 years ago

Mystical experiences per the psychological literature can either be perceptual (visions/speech from God) or pre-perceptual in nature (the experience of being God, of no self, Oneness, samadhi etc.). Tolle had the latter. Awakening is a mystical experience.

...which is why I left out most of your post from the quote Anyways, I feel your use of words is very idiosyncratic. What do you mean by "concepts", "dropping beliefs" and "restructuring perception"?

This is called the constructivist view of mysticism, and it's completely inconsistent imo. For one thing, it doesn't explain spontaneous awakenings like Eckhart Tolle.

Yeah he is just recycling Freud. "Everything is negative and bad" is Freud in a nutshell. William James and Abraham Maslow have more positive views on the mystical experience.

My brain melts every time I try to read it without the commas.

These are the three principles of the "apophatic" approach to the problem of describing God: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophatic_theology 1. Stay silent. 2. Distinguish between "the relative" and "the Absolute" (between the descriptions, thoughts or worldly manifestations of and about the transcendent and the transcendent in and of itself). 3. The apophatic language: 3.1 Metaphors of oneness: e.g. "God is an emanation, self-illuminated, like the sun." 3.2 Deontologization: God is not an object or a creature. 3.3 Dialectic between transcendence and immanence: e.g. God is both the relative and the Absolute, both form and formlessness, both thought and being, both manifest and unmanifest.

@Striving for more I can follow you perfectly fine. I also appreciate the kind words. I think for me, it's a combination of a few factors. Firstly, I've had a lot of practice just from writing almost 6k posts. I recently looked back at a post I made 2 years ago, and it had so many mistakes I was genuinely surprised. Secondly, I tend to write these kinds of posts when I feel a sudden flash of inspiration, which ties back to intrinsic motivation. Once that happens, I can more easily enter a state of flow, which makes writing effortless. The more meaningful something is, the stronger the inspiration. Also, just based on what other people have told me, I think I'm naturally inclined towards verbal and empathic abilities, which lends well to explaining things. I've also in recent years made a deliberate attempt to write as concisely as possible. I don't know if that helps, but again, thanks for the compliments

Oh no he did Bernardo dirty ?

Is this what you were trying to say?:

What the hell did I just read?

or in the words of Mr. Girl: Transcel Culture

@RMQualtrough I don't see it.

They released the video recording now

Because you highlighted just one side of the coin. Competition and cooperation happens simultaneously at all levels. Molecules go together to build cells, giving up some of their freedom in the process, but establishing a higher level of complexity. Cells go together to make multicellular life, giving up some freedom but gaining complexity. Multicellular organisms go together to make social structures, giving up freedom for complexity. The more inclusive the social structures become, the easier it becomes to spot the cooperative aspects in them, like the transition from ethnocentric to worldcentric, but this is just because of our human biases. We're more used to identifying cooperation at that level of analysis, but it has always been there, just at a lower level. So that never changed, only the level of complexity did.

All answers are at worst and best incomplete, but the simpler answers are often more complete.

That is the irony of mysticism and why some newbies get confused. They see all these people who can't stop themselves from speaking about the unspeakable, and it gives them the wrong picture. This thread is an attempt to rectify that.

I predicted what my mom and my brother got on their tests

That was the boring part of the discussion. The rest is hilarious.

Thanks for summing up the cataphatic approach! My take is that the apophatic approach is mandatory as an introduction for newbies, which essentially makes the distinction between mysticism and theology, i.e. God is an experience and not an intellectual problem. Once that lesson is understood, then you can start exploring the most accurate definitions however you like.

Same. I'm basically back to normal now.