Has Anyone Read 'waking Up - Spirituality Without Religion'?

[electroBeam]

31 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

No one is questioning if the pen will fall. The question, rather, is what is a pen? What is life? What is reality? 

When you try and answer those questions, you run the risk of doing the World turtle issue. When you say what is a pen? And you come up with for example a bunch of colours formed together, or maybe a bunch of plastics put together, or whatever else, you're not getting to the bottom of truth. You are just replacing your initial beliefs with new ones.

If you mean staying skeptical of the existence of a pen, sure, or the beliefs you have of it, fine. But there isn't much further you can go with deconstructing a pen.

Like there is no answer to what is a pen? All there is, is a pen and thats it. There's no hidden meaning secretly underneath a vail of self enquiry that revealed this amazing hidden network that the Egyptians used. That's preposterous. 

Edited July 8, 2017 by electroBeam

[electroBeam]

13 minutes ago, Outer said:

- believing in deities and paranormal activity

- believing reality is a dream

I would advise you to not believe in ditties and that reality is a dream.

You're gonna fuck yourself up big time by mistaking your beliefs for actual reality.

Even if you think youve got it all sorted and that you arent deluding yourself.

Talking from experience.

What if I told you actually that you don't know if deities exist or not? What about reality is all a dream? Is it really? Do you really believe that bs? Like look around you? All of that isn't a dream mate, its real. Stop being silly.

 

Did that above paragraph trigger you? Do you have an urge to set me straight aftet that? If so you may be holding your spiritual beliefs as a belief system rather than actually knowing it.

[Arizzi]

To be honest I don't understand where all this criticism of rationality or Sam Harris?  Could someone please explain?  

Harris is accused of dogmatism however, I've always felt that he's one of the least dogmatic people there are, someone who is devoted to finding out what's true.  If someone makes a claim about reality, It is a good course of action to be charitable and give the other person the benefit of the doubt, but if there is no evidence either observed or within reasonable probability (which requires trust of hopefully high-quality sources) it does not seem dogmatic to me not to accept those claims.

[Flow With Life]

5 hours ago, Arizzi said:

To be honest I don't understand where all this criticism of rationality or Sam Harris?  Could someone please explain?  

Harris is accused of dogmatism however, I've always felt that he's one of the least dogmatic people there are, someone who is devoted to finding out what's true.  If someone makes a claim about reality, It is a good course of action to be charitable and give the other person the benefit of the doubt, but if there is no evidence either observed or within reasonable probability (which requires trust of hopefully high-quality sources) it does not seem dogmatic to me not to accept those claims.

Harris is certainly one of the more spiritual and open-minded academics out there, because he is even willing to talk about not-self, no-free will, meditation, spirituality, and psychedelics.

[Leo Gura]

@Arizzi It's more his penchant for debating with people and trying to fit everything into a rational box.

[Ry4n]

Guys we need to convince Sam to take some 5meo  I actually wanna see this happen but not sure how he could be convinced.

[Shanmugam]

@Ry4n  He has already taken all kinds of psychedelics and he knows what is non-duality.

[Heart of Space]

On 7/3/2017 at 3:10 PM, Leo Gura said:

30mg of 5-meo up the nose.

That's is the perfect antidote for all atheists and rationalists. That's as tangible and scientific as spirituality gets. Which is why I like it. Because anyone who rejects it, does so purely out of closemindedness. Any serious skeptic should be ready to take the 5-meo challenge.

This deeper issue here is that Sam treats spirituality like degrees of tranquility of the mind. That is the case at the newbie stages. At the higher stages, it's not just deeper peace. It's deities, paranormal phenomena, God, Absolute Infinity, and realizing that all of reality is a dream. It's a whole order of magnitude difference.

Tranquility of mind and no-self is easy for an atheist to accept. God, however, is not. It's beyond your wildest imagination.

I kinda somewhat agree with you about Sam, but you do know he has solid experience with psychedelics right?

[Sri McDonald Trump Maharaj]

I highly recommend  Ham Sarris profound teachings! Let it all happen and surrender to the process...  

 

Edited July 11, 2017 by Sri McDonald Trump Maharaj

[Shanmugam]

@Sri McDonald Trump Maharaj  Who is Ham Sarris? 

[Sri McDonald Trump Maharaj]

7 minutes ago, Shanmugam said:

@Sri McDonald Trump Maharaj  Who is Ham Sarris? 

A parody of Sam Harris.

[Shanmugam]

@Sri McDonald Trump Maharaj  very funny 

[Sri McDonald Trump Maharaj]

@Shanmugam "Author of The End of Science, The Moral Ghetto, Keep On Sleeping and other books published in over a gazillion languages. Host of the Keep On Sleeping podcast."

[Edvard]

@Leo Gura I think that when you make such statements about a person that you have throughout this thread, I would prefer you to elaborate a little more, especially when I think many here look up to Sam, including me, and it doesn't even seem you know all that much about him. He raised my consciosness, and I would never have heard of him if it wasn't for his speeches about free will (who else dares to talk openly about that being an illusion) and debates, which you didn't like him doing. He doesn't even debate for the sake of changing the opponents mind, but to make people think about the case, and he is more into conversation rather than debate. And, like others here, I would not have stumbled into you if it wasn't for him. 

Now, when it comes to rationality; what do you mean by that? Does rationality exclude openmindedness, is that the problem? Because I didn't know that. I look at you as rational, but openminded. I also think Sam Harris is openminded. What has he ever excluded? He has even said he doesn't know what to think about death. What he is against is not even religion in itself, but dogmas taken as truth unsupported by evidence. If someone hasn't experienced God, they can't KNOW God? However, if someone HAS experienced God, ok, but that's not what he argues. It's religion in terms of dogma, they can't all be right, or can they? Please, elaborate, Leo.

[Arizzi]

@Leo Gura I would second the above, without really seeming to know much about him, you seem to dismiss him outright.  I don't see how he is any more or less "religious" than you are about the nature of reality.  What about his debating?  As for your point on the rational box perhaps I don't understand your position.  It is my understanding that you claim that there are infinite realities, or ways that our brain can experience reality, and that they are all equally valid.  OK, I don't know what to make of that exactly, and practically I don't know quite what that changes.  I'm sure its a powerful experience.  Perhaps you mean that one cannot dismiss any claims because in someone else's experience their claims actually are "true."   Please do let me know if I am misrepresenting your views. 

 However going away from the philosophical our everyday experience seems to be consistent to a degree, that we can communicate about shared experiences and make scientific laws that most people can agree apply to their reality.  (of course one could go down the rabbit hole with philosophy but this does seem to be the case)  Of course you can say no it is all subjective, but then we can't really talk about anything can we.  

 To be honest, and I mean this with no malice whatsoever towards you, I feel that you are the same or at least not too far from acting just as Harris does.  You defend your beliefs and perspective of reality the same way.  Your recent video on the paranormal is an example.  You just seem to have become dogmatic about accepting everything as true.  Does that make any sense?  To me it still feels like preaching and ideology.

Please do clarify your point, and correct me if I'm wrong.   I'm genuinely interested.

[nahtanoj]

Exactly!! @ChimpBrain I was a dogmatic atheist not so long ago. I spend thousand of hours helping atheist organisations, blogs, forums etc. It was that book that open my mind. That book is a channel for waking up from dogmatic atheism to spirituality. Without reading that book I wouldn't be here increasing my awareness and getting deeper in my spirituality. I also thank Leo for making me to shift my paradigm lock and helping me to "drop that shit" (dogmatic rationalism) like he says. The book has a big value for me.

Edited August 29, 2017 by nahtanoj