Carl-Richard

Maybe he is not contradicting himself and maybe you're just not following. If you can't understand what I explained his position to be, maybe start there. Maybe actually address those points. Here is the short version: Leo and Martin don't actually disagree that "physical reality" (or "rules within the dream") is a useful concept. It's the thing that makes you generally unable to change into a lizard on camera on command. I think you and people here are just getting lost in semantics. "Is it a dream or is it a physical reality?" Why not both? By the way, I'd rather Kurt Cobain myself than hear one more time "he is just not awake enough", "you gotta be really awake to understand these kinds of things". Barf out, gag me with a spoon.

I'm an LGBTQ+ ally. But when I eat bananas, my brain goes nanana and my body goes bobobo (i.e. feminizing and non-vitalistic effects, PS: non-interchangeable concepts). Is it the copper? The fructose? The potassium? The magnesium? The polyphenol oxidase? What's up with this penis shaped yellow flag?

It's entirely silly to put your stock in the unknown, especially when the known itself reduced to its ultimate, is essentially indistinguishable from nothing. But you can still give the credence to the unknown, by making the distinction. In other words, asking "can there be anything outside of consciousness?" is like asking "can there be anything outside of nothing?". It's not very fruitful but you can ask the question. I.e. it doesn't make much sense for there to be something outside of nothing. But you can always postulate a something that you don't know. Non-duality is when you say "cut the crap, you don't have to postulate shit, reality still is".

You know, you gotta stop saying that. Consciousness is only within the domain of the known. When you deal with the unknown, anything is possible. But as the unknown is unknown, it doesn't make for a good stable grounding of one's metaphysics. Hence "consciousness is the ground of reality" is a good starting point. Because that is as far as what you can know. But to say you've by definition excluded the possibilities of the unknown, you're confused.

What the fuck

Do you literally believe you can turn into an alien reptile right now on camera? No. So you believe there is a distinction between waking reality and "dreams" in this sense. That's the distinction he is making. Dreams morph, waking reality is generally more stable. You can blur the boundaries with psychedelics and psychotic states and of course hypnagogic states, but you're of course aware that everyday sober waking reality is generally different from a dream in this sense. You will find your bike where you left it generally. You will say "just because reality is a dream doesn't mean it doesn't have rules". Ok, let's talk about the one set of rules we can call waking reality. Martin just calls this set of rules "not dreamlike", which is perhaps not such a dumb idea. I've said it before: you're subscribed to a flat ontology. You want everything to be just "hallucination, imagination". Ok, but we can create sub-categories within that.

Yeah because people are epistemic planktonic species. The level of context that time stamp gave (except from the word "embodied" that was cut into; zero) should give you every reason to look more into what he actually meant. The problem is viewing statements through narrow, isolated, absolutistic interpretations rather than context (which is just something cognitively simplistic people do, it's how they view the word). What words mean depend on context. "Real" can mean so many different things depending on the context it is said in. The "reality" is he talking about here is obviously tied to the effects and "reality" of embodied aspects of non-dual practices.

"The guy said 'physical reality is real', he must be completely clueless, I'll not go into anything else he said before/after that which might explain what he actually meant by that single sentence". Martin Ball criticizes the notion that physical reality is an illusion in so far (or to the extent which) it de-emphasizes embodied approaches to non-dual practices. In which case I agree.

You were ultimately never born and you'll ultimately never die. I'm scheduled to hold a speech in an 85-year-old's birthday. Wouldn't you guess the thought crossed my mind.

He should step down from his position as podcast host. Oh wait, that's another guy.

It never ceases to amaze me the low intellectual rigor and groupthink and blind attachments to words and lack of understanding of underlying concepts some people on this forum possess.

Ever since I started meditating, I always found it funny. ">:( go away, I'm trying to be 'spiritual' over here". By the way, the character is a recluse monk in the woods who a more worldly monk tells you to talk to for help during a quest. I.e., he has not yet taken the vow of the bodhisattva and is stuck perhaps only intermittently indulging in meditative states, as that is often the case when you are principally opposed to the world which is yourself.

I don't treat is a perjorative. I use it to mean a small group with weird/divergent (usually religious) beliefs relative to the larger society. It's Leo who picked up the perjorative definition from sensationalist authors who found a niche for selling books that people think are interesting "those scary and dangerous cults that manipulate you and steal your life". Cults in my and the academics who taught it to me 's definition don't identify with a larger mainstream religion; they don't treat themselves as a denomination or "the real take" on a certain World religion. They're more idiosyncratic and syncretic, because they're usually New Age, usually the product of a single charismatic individual and their machinations. And if they do, they're a sect. That's an interesting historical interpretation. Where did you learn about it? I guess the "New Age proper" is a magnified version of this process because the Death of God was widespread as a cultural phenomena and the religious critique became more severe and widespread.

If it's mainstream and society-compatible, it ain't a cult. It's culture. The reason why scholars don't like the term "New Age" as describing a unified thing or movement ("the New Age movement") is because it's a collection of cults. They're so heterogeneous, lacking in a central orienting doctrine. New Age cults happen when a charismatic leader is like "we don't need those religions, we just need ourselves and our own insights into what is true" and then people ironically gather around that leader and listen to their thoughts because they of course need religion, they just don't want the current ones.

Actually, I'm creating a new category for this: post-New-Ager. It's when you're New Age compatible but you realize 1. you're religious, 2. current religious institutions are stale but religious institutions in and of themselves are necessary, and 3. the problem with current institutions isn't as much "it's religion" as it is dogmatism. Call it a "transcend-and-include" of New Age and traditional religion, a step from Green to Yellow if you wish. The Green New Agers exclude traditional religion, that's what makes them "Tier 1". Examples of post-New-Agers: Rupert Sheldrake, John Vervaeke, myself, Bernardo Kastrup also I seem to recall.

But not the priests or rulebooks for disseminating the teachings and to whom. They want to be in charge and open-source everything, even if it leads them to losing an eye (even a third eye).

New Age are (typically) closed to many elements of traditional religiosity, like the institutional and more tightly communal aspects. Hence New Age is the religion of cults. Propose to a New Ager the idea that religion in the institutional and widespread sense might be good, even for achieving their own goals, and they'll not take you seriously. The individualistic dogma is strong.

Mysticism vs theism (they're not mutually exclusive but still distinctions). Definitely in Christianity. Faith, hope, etc. (and submission in Islam). It's a product of the Axial revolution (the evolution from a circular to a linear/transcendent worldview). You see it less in Hinduism. And nature religions that predate Christianity (e.g. Norse paganism). But it's all religion. Yes, there is a difference in cognitive development (or at least the cultural code associated with it), hence Blue vs Green. Conformism is stronger at Blue than Green. But there is still conformism, community, belief in Green and any cultural code. It's not a hard line. A category like "religion" vs not religion, you would want a hard line somewhere, a definition. A new-ager has faith and hope in awakening being real and possible, even if they're not currently awake or is yet to experience it, even despite hardship.

Did you tell them it's the office air? 😶‍🌫️

I'm not saying they are similar in every way. I'm saying they are similar with respect to whether you want to call it religiosity or not. Religiosity is a vast concept. Traditional religious people tend to be Blue, New Agers tend to be Green. They seek/aim for the highest value. The level of conviction may vary. But doubt is common even in traditional religious people. And non-dualists are of course thoroughly convinced that they have found the Absolute truth, even if they're seemingly currently in an egoic state of mind.

He is his own thing definitely, evidenced by my utterly weird description of him. All descriptions are of course partial, but we can still try. Anything involving "seeking" (a search for the ultimate value, be it God, Consciousness, Love, etc.). You can of course again make a distinction between that ("spirituality") and "traditional" religion (allegiance to a specific traditional religion), but it's quite superficial when you consider again that the people act very much the same (they tend to hold beliefs they cannot currently verify, they seek out and engage in communities of likeminded individuals, and they very often take knowledge and inspiration from existing traditions). New Age is basically what happens when you take somebody who grew up atheist or agnostic or skeptical of traditional religion and they rediscover the religious impulse but they can't pretend like Jesus is the only Lord and Savior.

Why does he think that?

Shrödinger's Cat. It used to be the name of a show I watched on TV as a kid. It was about science and it was probably my favorite program.

😂

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