Carl-Richard

There is something viciously pernicious about when the ego claims it's in the business of ego dissolution. It's like throwing gasoline on the fire. The self-righteousness, grandiosity and self-deception only explodes.

Whatever concepts, experience or awareness you have of it.

Rest days?

John Vervaeke relates them all through the concept of "fluency" (how fast or easily you process something): The right end of the spectrum is probably closer to your idea of "awakening". Every step in the figure contains the previous step within it (it's a holarchical structure): An insight is a sudden spike in fluency, local to some specific idea or activity, and of course local to a specific point in time. When you have an insight about something, suddenly you understand it better and process it faster. It doesn't have to be an abstract idea. It can be something embodied like tying your shoelaces ("aha, now that I know that, suddenly this got much easier!"). "Flow" is a cascade of insights; many insights extended through time, still local to some specific idea or activity (more often the latter). When you're in flow, for example while surfing, you always know what to do, instantly. It just flows through you. You're maximally fluent in your processing for that specific activity, in every moment. A mystical experience is the flow state extended not just through time but also through different activities. You can be walking or sitting or standing and have the same mystical experience. It feels like you're in flow with everything you're doing, despite how mundane or boring it otherwise may be. You can be mowing the grass or doing the dishes or sitting on the toilet, all while being in flow. Maybe this is closer to your idea of awakening. The mystical experience is still only a temporary state. It doesn't last forever, and it doesn't necessarily lead to a deep transformation of your being or stay with you for the rest of your life. But when it does, it's indeed a "transformative experience": the experience leaves a mark. Now, if it leaves such a deep mark that your baseline state is fundamentally transformed to sustain the mystical experience, then you maybe want to call this "enlightenment" (persistent non-dual baseline). I think this is a pretty good framework that ties together all these "higher" states of consciousness in a neat way.

Can insights lead to a change in consciousness and vice versa?

There is also pharmacology :>

What is your workout regimen?

Yeah.

Matter or physicality is just a description of how we perceive the world. Consciousness precedes perception, perception precedes description, and description precedes physicality. You're taught that it's the other way around: that Consciousness, perception and description is preceded by matter. The former is the actual order of how we get to know the world, which makes it the natural starting assumption. It doesn't mean that matter cannot precede Consciousness in principle, but it makes little sense to think that it does if it doesn't help you to make better sense of the world (which an idealist would claim is the case).

It's almost like we need widespread and integrated communities, teachers and practices that ensure safe spiritual exploration. 5-MeO reactivations would be an interesting neuroscientific study.

So they didn't get high?

Being in a state of addiction does that. All mind altering substances can lead insights or even radical transformations which may increase your consciousness in the long run. Using cannabis infrequently (say once every three months) or even being addicted to it for one period and then overcoming it can definitely increase your consciousness. And I would say it's more so for cannabis than other addictive substances like say alcohol (because it's a semi-psychedelic and not hopelessly toxic).

Understanding the mind and the world conceptually.

I think what you're trying to hint at is that neurons have been shown to correlate with experiences in different ways: population coding (e.g. many different neurons contributing to a movement of a limb), frequency coding (e.g. the frequency of firing coding for the experienced intensity of a stimulus), topographic maps (e.g. neurons in the visual cortex mirroring the topography of the visual field), etc. But again (and I will keep saying this), regardless of the myriad of different ways that neurons may correlate with experience, it's still just correlation. If you want to establish causality, you have multiple problems to solve: For example, you have to eliminate the type of empirical inconsistencies that I've demonstrated earlier, and you need to face the mysterious explanatory gap between neurons and experience (i.e. the Hard problem): how does the movement of ions across cell membranes, i.e. neuronal potentials (which is partially driven by active transport requiring ATP metabolism and thus glucose metabolism), lead to the experience of the color red? Whichever way you want to describe what the brain is doing (and which regardless probably boils down to glucose metabolism anyway), you're still left with at least these two problems. So I would suggest dropping the idea of causality for now and just stick with correlation. There is something called "top-down processing". For example, there is nothing inherent in the light hitting the retina that makes you perceive the dog in the first picture, or why you can switch between seeing faces and objects in the second picture: The reason you're seeing what you're seeing is because your perceptual systems are working to construct your experience, which now consists of your current normie state, including the experience of being centered in a body. The changes you see in the picture have fundamentally nothing to do with information from sensory organs. More generally, only some changes in your experience correlate with information from sensory organs. Normally, when people talk about the brain, "experiences are just changes in the brain" usually implies that the brain causes the experiences. If you want to concede that it's only correlation (which I don't know if you want), I wouldn't use that language. What do you mean by "already existing information"? Do you mean that your dreams are inspired by your past experiences? Well, sure, but these experiences still only correlate with what is happening in the brain (I won't stop repeating this ). Again, even if there aren't any current alternative explanations, that does not justify your explanation. But yes, of course, many things influence or alter (or correlate with) our state of mind other than our brain: when I stub my toe, I feel pain; when I see a sad person, I feel sad; when my tummy rumbles, I feel that. This is of course trivial, but it needs to be pointed out, because these things are indeed correlates of experience the same way the brain is. It's just that the brain is a particularly persistent correlate, and again, of some experiences. You keep repeating the same points (or assertions rather). If you're implying causality, I think you are making an extraordinary claim. If you are only implying correlation, then you aren't (but I don't think you are). And again, there are many things other than the brain that correlate with changes in experience. Again, you keep repeating the same assertions (they're not points because you're not giving an argument for them), like for the third time now Ok, so you're saying that I didn't experience seeing myself from 5-10 inches above my head? Then what actually happened do you think? And how do you "prove" or gather "actual evidence" for a subjective experience I had? Do you want to elaborate on that? The way I would put it is that the world looks the way it does because of your perceptual systems, and some of that correlates with brain activity. As for colors becoming sound (and vice versa), I would be interested in seeing the "proof" and "evidence" for that Again, it certainly seems like we need sensory organs to perceive some aspects of the world, and again, and you could make the case that they already have been exploited evolutionarily (but I haven't looked much into that; you'd have to consult Sheldrake for that). Again, some of our perceptions seem to correlate with sensory organs. As for your question, I'll answer with a question: why do animals evolve different sense organs and not just one? Why only fives senses and not a "sixth sense"? As for plants, what do you know about the experiences of plants? Again, how do you know they haven't? Even evolutionary biologists? I think you can choose something as a metaphysical grounding and still recognize that it's just a framework to understand the world, but other than that, sure: many (probably most) physicalists tend to be lost imo. What are they? I think that's exactly the question we've been grappling with, and yes, I think that's possible. Like I've reiterated ad nauseum throughout this exchange, I think you can gain information about reality independent of pure sensory information (you're doing it right now), if we define sensory information as the parts of experience that correlate tightly with the modulation of your current "normie" sensory organs (e.g. light hitting the retina). This is mainstream knowledge. The trouble I think you have is to take this knowledge outside the realm of ordinary experiences and use it to explain extraordinary experiences. For that, all I can say is: keep having them On a meta-communicative note: you commented on how tedious it is to go quote by quote (I half-assedly limited it here). Now, I think this would've been less of a problem if you didn't make so many assertions (points without arguments) and didn't repeat them sometimes 2-3 times. This is a strength with my approach, because we ended up identifying patterns like these. But it's up to you if you want to do something about it.

Why you eating no protein for breakfast?

How much larger?

https://open.spotify.com/track/4uEJMJq9FWJxHHbkPpGxcl?si=UMySUEPUQbqjrLQL0yruKA Such a monstrous song. Thordendal is a genius. If you were to describe these complex and long-distance rhythmically contorted riffs using a linguistics analogy: if you imagine a standard Metallica riff to be a 10-word sentence in 9th grade English, the riffs in this song is like a professor of analytical philosophy laying out proofs in 50-word compound sentences. It may take a while to understand what is going on, but damn, once you hook on to some of the patterns, it's like witnessing a mechanical alien laying out its code.

I sometimes feel this just by talking about my general values to people, certainly some of my old friends. If I just open my mouth about why I no longer drink or why I started implementing some structure into my life, people get self-aware about their self-destructive behavior or re-awaken some of their repressed insecurities, so I try to avoid even that. Or if I talk about meaning, people become aware of how meaningless their lives are. And that's not even touching on non-duality (explicitly). And imagine if they find out this, that I think I have to essentially treat people like a baby to not shatter their reality 🤣. I wonder if there are some things that I'm oblivious to that they have to treat me like a baby for as well 🤔 (probably some of my social insecurities).

@Schizophonia Wouldn't you say being sensitive to threats to the ego would be more accurately described by neuroticism (proneness to negative emotions, emotional instability?). If anything, a certain level of neuroticism may make you more prone to investigate a variety of different ideas because of the rapidly changing mental state, and being prone to threats could make you more prone to analyzing things in general (and also the way you analyze things could be particularly thorough). It could certainly make you more receptible to other people's emotional state as well.

I like to address all your points. Firstly, I don't understand what you mean by "neural structure of two" or "more distinctions between these states" or the points you're trying to make there. Secondly, what do you mean by "OBEs are just changes in the simulated reality of the brain" if you don't know what the brain does? What do you mean by "give rise to"? Again, we know that the brain correlates with certain experiences, but that's it. If you want to provide a causal mechanism, then go ahead: what is the mechanism? Again, if you don't know, then I don't see why you would invoke the brain to explain OBEs. You're invoking something you cannot explain to explain something else. It's a bit like invoking God. I provided the goggle analogy earlier, but I actually don't have to provide a mechanism for why it happens to suggest that you haven't provided a mechanism for how the brain makes it happen. Despite the lack of alternative explanations, the experience is still evidence against the assumption that the brain causes experience. Yes, it's extremely weird how it can be possible, but it's even more weird (or in fact impossible) if it were to happen when my brain and sensory organs cause that experience. The experience is the case (unless you want to claim that me and probably millions of other people are simply delusional and don't know how to report our experiences accurately). Your lack of explanation does not negate the experience. Again, explanatory in the sense that it correlates with dreams, or explanatory in the sense of a causal mechanism? Because that is a very important distinction as you might have guessed by now. The idea that we need a pair of "astral eyes" that interacts with photons is only an assumption, a physicalist one. Similarly to how brain states only correlate with certain experiences, sensory organs only correlate with certain experiences. It's tricky to see how much physicalist thinking can sneak into one's worldview even when you don't considers yourself a physicalist. Now, what sensory organs and neural states do seem to correlate with more than other things is so-called everyday consensus reality, or "sober normie consciousness". When we're sitting here looking into our screens and typing letters and thinking abstract thoughts, the idea that sensory organs may be the cause of our experience seems to be a plausible explanation. But when you experience altered states of consciousness, it's easier to see that this may not be the case. People like Bernado Kastrup say exactly this, that sensory organs and neural states mostly correlate with our normal egoic state of mind, or our normal state of "dissociation", i.e. the process of transpersonal consciousness individuating itself into a personalized consciousness. Now, in this model of reality, the world as we apparently see it through our sensory organs is actually "out there", but it's filtered by our current perceptual systems, which again tends to produce the "normie state". To be clear, the perceptual systems are not "in your brain", but they also just tend to correlate with some neural/sensory states. Now, when you remove some of the filtering, you might start to break down the normie state, and you might start to lose the usual boundaries of your body or the experience of being centered inside a physical body. In this situation, the world is still really out there, but you're seeing it without the usual filtering, and you might see beyond the usual boundaries that you thought were much more firm (or just reality). Then as you move over to this astral form, a slightly different set of perceptual processes take form, with a different sense of body and localization (and "sensory physics"). On the other hand, a complete deconstruction of perceptual processes are more likely seen in states like nirvikalpa samadhi (no localization, no colors, sensations or objects, no time or space). In other words, your sense of being inside a body right now is just a filtering of your current perceptual systems, and those systems can be altered or completely deconstructed, and you might end up losing your body. But yes, the world is still out there, evidenced by the fact that you can leave your body behind and look at it from the outside. That is what other people are doing after all (other people are just different versions of you with slightly different perceptual systems). This is how an idealist would explain what is going on. Earlier, I referenced the particular experiences of the survivors of cardiac arrests, which might satisfy your question. Other than that, there are many studies on other forms of extra-sensory perception that corroborate this. In the video I linked on this page, Rupert Sheldrake mentioned some studies that have been replicated around 30 times by independent researchers, and he also goes into how some psychic phenomena may actually have evolved because they were evolutionarily beneficial. The reason why the scientific mainstream doesn't throw themselves over these findings is because I believe their metaphysical convictions don't allow them to. Similarly to the conviction that brains cause experience, it has nothing to do with actual empirical evidence. And this stubbornness within science has been well-known since the 60s when Thomas Kuhn first wrote his famous book with many historical examples (Galileo didn't have it easy). Well, I recommend looking into these phenomena yourself if you want a more satisfying answer. I don't expect my limited sample of experiences to convince you (it didn't really convince me either at first; it took a bit more work to finally "ungaslight" myself ). Again, the stories from the survivors of cardiac arrest which Dr. Pim van Lommel talks about in the video I put in the hyperlink are a good start (not the Rupert Sheldrake video). Tom Campbell is someone who has actually done research on OBEs specifically, and he claims to be able to reproduce it on demand and exert a level of control over the experience. We only have our best guess, and my best guess is that physicalism is baloney Again, the experiences are real; whether or not they're explained is secondary to that. And you can explain them somewhat using an idealistic framework. These experiences are way more common than you may think. My mom talks about her precognitive experiences all the time. It's not for no reason that she went with me to see that Rupert Sheldrake debate . Also, that debate currently has a 3.5/1 like-to-dislike ratio at currently 580k views and rapidly climbing, and 2/3 panelists were researchers on extraordinary/psychic experiences. That could be indicative of how most people view these phenomena. We can observe people talking about such experiences, again irrespective of our explanations of them. And again, Tom Campbell is a good example of somebody performing this at will, specifically OBEs (not that it matters though; most of my experiences were outside my will, but they're still legitimate, in my experience ). By the way, if you don't like me going point by point, then don't make so many points. You do make a lot of them (and you sometimes repeat them as well)

Care to elaborate?

I can agree with that unless you hold those things as a proxy for spirituality (because it can be highly counterproductive for that).

Psychopaths tend to have limited affective empathy but normal cognitive empathy. People on the autism spectrum tend to have it the other way around. I think if you have problems with either, but especially cognitive empathy, then you're less likely to be openminded. Besides, whether a psychopath can or cannot be openminded is not really the question. Of course they can. We're talking about statistical correlations.

😂 I appreciate the reassurance. I think I'll go just a little more with my gut in the future, only if I'm not hopelessly sleep deprived 😝