Is Academia Incompatible With A High Consciousness Life?

[Guest username]

I have noticed that academics tend to have a strong rationalist bent and are not open to things like non-duality, spirituality, and direct experience as a means of insight.

That being said, despite non-duality being my top priority, I believe I would make a great academic.

My top strengths in no particular order:

1. Abstract thinking

2. Creativity

3. Learning quickly and assimilating information

4. Patience and curiosity

5. Radical openmindedness (in theory I am open to all possibilities, in practice, I have a long way to go with this, as I can be dogmatic)

My top values:

Truth

Wisdom/understanding

Creative application and sharing of insight

Unconditional love

Peace of mind in myself and helping others achieve the same.

I am conflicted because I can see academia as detrimental to my personal non-duality work and an unrealistic environment for me to optimize my personal growth. On the other hand, I believe I'd be happy and effective as a math researcher and could help academia become more conscious if I have a strong enough sense of purpose.

I know for sure that my paths to mastery are in non-duality and mathematics, but I am still not sure on how I want to use those for creative contribution. Being a researcher in an industry with a high consciousness aim, such as medical math, is also appealing to me. 

 

Edited August 3, 2017 by username

[wavydude]

There is a interview with Martin Ball who is a proffesor at a University on Leo's channel. The interview is about consciousness and using 5MeO DMT for enlightement. So the answer is no, academia is not incompatiable with high conscioussnes life.

 

 

[Guest username]

@wavydude Yeah, I'm pretty familiar with Martin, but I don't know how constraining that would be. I didn't think of him though, so thanks for mentioning. Perhaps I should contact him and get some advice.

[Spiral]

Well academia is for understanding the outside world, spiritually the internal one. 

[Leo Gura]

@username You gotta put this into proper context. Any industry you might want to work in -- not just academia -- is corrupted with unconsciousness. The whole world is! You're gonna have to deal with some constraints no matter where you go.

There do exist some amazing academics. Of course they are rare. Anything amazing is rare by definition.

If you wanna be an academic, go show them how it ought to be done by leading by example. The only way to stamp out corruption is from the inside out.

Then again, maybe academia isn't for you. I just know that for me, for example, I would never fit in there. But that's just me. You gotta figure that out for yourself by closely examining your values and other options. There are so many options available.

Martin Ball makes it work because he's found a nice liberal-as-fuck community there in Ashland Oregon. They're pretty much all hippies and New Agers around there. That's his niche. And if you read his autobiography, he struggled though hell just to barely get by as a part-time professor. The system screwed up his whole career.

[TJ Reeves]

4 hours ago, username said:

Being a researcher in an industry with a high consciousness aim, such as medical math, is also appealing to me. 

Public Health is a wonderful career choice. You can literally save thousands of people. You can also enter a high consciousness project that exists outside of corporate america or academia. Public health is the reason we have longer life spans, not physicians/medicine/hospitals per se. The only reason you don't hear about it more often is because public health projects, when done right, function unnoticeably. 

If I were you, I would focus on starting up some cool math-related public health projects that help everyone (while adding to your credentials). Then I would getting into the best educational program possible.

Taking care of those two things will take at least a year, so don't worry about the rest. Don't talk just do: I'll bet you can get into some PH math project at school within the next month if you make a personal promise to send 1 email a day. 

Edited August 3, 2017 by TJ Reeves

[Elisabeth]

Accademia has trouble. In particular, the system of financing is terrible and leads people to compromise their ethics.

BUT (from the observations of a phd student in theoretical physics)

I don't agree that academics and in particular mathematicians are not open to spirituality. In fact, for most, I'd say mathematics itself is a spiritual endeavour of sorts. Especially for those who are not looking at applications first, it's a pursuit of Beauty.

If you're a student of the field currently, look at your teachers. Are they the kind of humans you'd like to become? I'd certainly say that some of my university teachers are self-actualizing, and after a lifetime of pursuing mathematics they're still bright and active and optimistic in their sixties and beyond, and usually kind and compassionate with their students. It's not enlightenment, but imho academia still attracts people with higher values, and with a purpose in life. 

From a practical viewpoint, as a downside to academia, you probably won't be making a terrible lot of money. As an upside, you may have a little more freedom to choose your working hours than the business 9 to 5. (You might be better of with both as a freelance programmer, IT is in.)

It's true that you can't talk about things like nonduality very publicly in academia, otherwise you risk not being taken seriously as a researcher by many; on the other hand I've known more than one who'd admit going to a meditation retreat for their vacation (and one tantra teacher who was a former IT guy) - I think mathematicians do lean towards Buddhism. Things are shifting. 

Edited August 13, 2017 by Elisabeth

[Guest username]

@Elisabeth What's your take on all the talk about quantum physics in the spiritual community.  I plan on being enlightened and knowing quantum physics some day, but my suspicion is it's mostly mumbo jumbo from people who haven't done both.

 

What's your take?

[Elisabeth]

2 hours ago, username said:

@Elisabeth What's your take on all the talk about quantum physics in the spiritual community.  I plan on being enlightened and knowing quantum physics some day, but my suspicion is it's mostly mumbo jumbo from people who haven't done both.

 

My take is clear: With very few exeptions, any time anyone who isn't a physicist says the word "quantum", you can be sure there is no physics behind it. He's just trying to be interesting. Don't trust new agers who talk about quantum theory. 

There are certainly mind-boggling counterintuitive paradoxes within quantum theory, but the leap of connecting anything that quantum theory has forecast with consciosness or thought is speculative at best from the rational point of view. Not impossible - just imho not understood, since there are few people who'd properly know about both consciousness and quantum theory. 

Physicist can only exactly compute systems with something like two particles, or an ideal crystal, perturbatively a little more complex things, like an atom or superfluid liquid with quantum theory. You can see how far we'd have to go to "explain" the universe.  

P.S.: Now I'm just expecting Leo to beat me by interpreting newest QT experiments

[Elisabeth]

As you can tell I haven't done deep consciousness work and err on the rationality side, but from another perspective: Realize quantum theory is done within the framework of physics, meaning 1) within the rationalist paradigm, and 2) it is by it's nature a conceptual and descriptive theory. Why would you expect it to illuminate consciousness? Or the nature of reality - the same reality that according to Leo can only be understood through personal direct experience? QT is designed to describe the behaviour of particles on micro scale --- although to do that it had to replace particles by much less intuitive objects like probability fields. 

To be fair, I haven't studied any evidence presented by the people who do link quantum theory and consciousness; if anyone has good material I'll be grateful for the reference. The only thing that came my way which seems to have thought put into it is something I found through this forum: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6HLjpj4Nt4  . (Please realize this is not yet a hard proof of anything - while the observed phenomena are quite confusing, and the interpretation presented is compelling, it is just one of the interpretations.)

So as I said, there might be a link, but whoever is telling you he does "quantum healing" or the like is just trying to sell you something

edit: Read up on the delayed quantum eraser experiment. There's no problem with causality under slightly different interpretations of quantum mechanics. 

Edited August 14, 2017 by Elisabeth

[cetus]

9 hours ago, Elisabeth said:

To be fair, I haven't studied any evidence presented by the people who do link quantum theory and consciousness;

@Elisabeth This would be the perfect introduction.

[Elisabeth]

@cetus56 Unfortunatelly no, not an introduction. I'm not sure what that guy talks about. He doesn't show any connection to the mathematics. I don't know if his claims about reality are coming from direct experience like Leo's, or if he's just presenting a bunch of beliefs.  Like this it's just a bunch of words.

But I looked him up - he's the Bohm from Aharonov-Bohm effect, which is indeed one of the weird discoveries described in today's QM textbooks, basically telling us that magnetic vector potential, previously introduced as a mere mathematical construct, is real in the quantum world; so I guess he's had some things to think about. Going mad from glimpsing the infinity like Cantor maybe Some of his claims seem to be counteracted by the Bell inequality, but maybe there's something there. So thanks for pointing him out, hopefully I can pursue this a little further when I have more time. 

[cetus]

@ElisabethWhenever someone mentions QM and consciousness in the same sentence, Bohm always springs to mind. Whether there is any real meat on the bone there or not you can decide. Bohm discusses this in much more depth in other interviews, while this was just a quick overview. I can say one thing about the man, he wasn't afraid to think outside the box. For whatever it's worth.

[Guest username]

@cetus56 Have you studied QM?

[cetus]

@username No, I haven't academically. I do hope that someday science can find a connection between conscionseness and Qm. Maybe through string theory, Calabi-Yau manifolds ect. Who knows what the future may unlock.

[SOUL]

Some very interesting consciousness and quantum related research has been coming from Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose. They have actually been discovering and putting together hypotheses that would contribute to the connection between consciousness and the quantum.

There is an dogmatic ideological war going on so many if not most scientists refuse to acknowledge the evidence of the connection between consciousness and quantum. They want to continually reduce consciousness so they can control that "right answers" war and it's limiting scientific discovery because of being ostracized if one doesn't capitulate to the accepted paradigm of reductionist ideology.

This same ideological war seemingly creates a rift between academia and "high consciousness" as the op put it but this is a false dichotomy. The war is exacerbated by people clinging to ideological extreme positions and ignoring any of the common ground that exists between them since both are similarly exercises in illumination.

A connection between consciousness and quantum doesn't mean that every fantastical idea someone has about consciousness and quantum has merit or is true because there ultimately may be connection between them. Too often spiritualists will seize upon the phenomena from quantum mechanics and consciousness then extrapolate it into some mystical idea claiming it as a universal truth.

Also, quantum isn't physical, meaning it doesn't adhere to the laws of classic physics and all that is observed of the quantum is the effects of it in classic physics and the physical world. Just like we don't see the wind, we just see what the wind blows so learn about the wind from what it blows.

 

 

Edited August 16, 2017 by SOUL

[Elisabeth]

4 hours ago, SOUL said:

Also, quantum isn't physical, meaning it doesn't adhere to the laws of classic physics and all that is observed of the quantum is the effects in classic physics and the physical world. Just like we don't see the wind, we just see what the wind blows so learn about the wind from what it blows.

2

@SOUL I thought your post was insightful overall, but since I've boldly positioned myself as an expert on the science of quantum mechanics in this thread O:) , I need to call you out on this last paragraph. You make it sound like "quantum" is some underlying mysterious nonphysical substance, which is an idea I can't support (otherwise I'd be contributing to this "extrapolating into mystical ideas and claiming it's an universal truth", and worse, using scientific terms to seemingly validate those "truths" - nothing wrong with mystical ideas per se). If I've misunderstood, please explain what you mean. 

If I should make a guess, while there is no substance called "quantum", there is something called "wavefunction" or "state" which indeed can't be measured directly/fully - you loose some information during measurement (for those of you who are familiar with complex numbers, you measure the amplitude, but not the phase). This wavefunction is something we use to describe an electron (or another system) and the way it behaves and interacts (where the phase does play a role in interactions). Is that what you meant - that there are some properties of matter which can't be measured directly? (but sometimes can be reconstructed from what is measured?)

Edited August 15, 2017 by Elisabeth

[SOUL]

@Elisabeth So let me get this straight, you are calling me out on your own impression of what I said and on the words you used to characterize my point? That is an interesting call out I must say.

Firstly they call individual photons quanta, so I guess more than one photon would be called quantum. Although quantum mechanics is a completely different set of phenomena and quantum physics is the physics built upon the effects from quantum mechanics which break the rules of classic physics.

 if I were to address the words you chose to characterize my point starting with mysterious I would have to agree because quantum mechanics are mysterious and from what they work are still a mystery. Then the word underlying I would have agree with as well since quantum mechanics lies under classic physics.

Finally we come to me saying quantum mechanics are not physical meaning not of classic physics. The reason I say that is because what we call quantum mechanics are really just the effects that we see in the observable universe of classic physics of it's influence since we cannot actually observe what it is that causes the effects of quantum mechanics.

 We don't even have a math that can explain what causes the effects, only a math that explains the effects in the observable universe of classic physics.

Does that clear up my point at all?

 

Edited August 16, 2017 by SOUL

[Pelin]

@username back to your original question,

Academia, as I observed, is full of ego-fighting. Sometimes you can't even choose your area of study, and your advisor sometimes just uses you as another reference to their studies. If you find a great advisor who has the same interests as yours, then it might be worth a shot at least doing a master's or a doctorate degree. Working at a university is another issue. You'll have to compete like you're in a horse race. If you're not the competitive type, you're surely going to suffer. Being a research/teaching assistant may suck, but eventually finding a department to work as a professor may be worse. People are always trying to get to the top and it's very tiring for a person like me.

All the stuff that I mention though says nothing about the love of science. I believe working deeper in mathematics or medical mathematics will expand your consciousness. But it will have a cost if you try to get by in the world of academia.

I now work as a plain instructor at a university and teach academic English. I actually had the intention of studying further, especially in the sociolinguistics or anthropology area. And as an undergrad I took some grad courses, published a study in a book on social anthropology and did a number of studies. But eventually I decided against being an academician as I saw all the bullshit going on there. And I decided to work at the university as an instructor, but not as an academician (I don't know if your country has a division like that. In my country, there are instructors who do not have to carry out research, they just teach classes around 20 hours every week. Professors though usually teach 6-12 hours, they have advisees and carry out and publish research all the time. I don't work and earn as much as a professor but I have all the time and resource at my hands to research whatever I want). I'm really happy about my decision.

[Guest username]

@Pelin I know academics can fulfill different positions, such as full time teachers or full time researchers, but I'm not sure how feasible one or the other would be.

I guess the more critical thing is I still need to hone my vision. I can make the practicalities work, somehow. There are lots of options.  Industry is equally as appealing to me, so I might go that route.

 

Edited August 16, 2017 by username