Are Trolls Real?

[Leo Gura]

9 hours ago, unknownworld said:

Except when you go to a zoo, you see everything that everyone else sees too(in most cases). When you are tripping on mushrooms, people will see different things and have different subjective experiences, that have no real ground in this reality(or maya). So no, It's not the same thing. One is the complete projection of the ego and is subjective

This is an artificial distinction.

You assume some kind of objective external world which doesn't actually exist. When you're looking at the zoo animals, you're just in a mass hallucination. And even so, your hallucination of the animals is still subjective. There is really no such thing a "objective".

And psychedelic visions are not random. They have consistent themes and patterns across people and cultures.

Giving a privileged positions to ordinary reality vs non-ordinary reality is just a bias IMO.

[Juan Cruz Giusto]

@Leo Gura yes and no... I like to use Ken Wilber four quadrants to explain reality. From a phenomenological POV, there are no false experiences (this is the first quadrant), every experience is real. On the other hand, we have 3 more quadrants left which take place in a shared reality. The way to know the upper right one is with empiricism and so on. So, yes... There is no false experience but, which is the metaphysical explanation of that experience? Some are just hallucinations, some are created by the mind, some are part of another reality and so on. 

Just saying that every experience is real or that everything is an hallucination and that there is no difference between personal and shared reality is a upper left quadrant simplification... Not because I see I ghost it means that they exist in our shared reality, which seem to obey certain rules.. The ghost I've just seen is maybe a construction of my mind. 

Edited August 16, 2017 by Juan Cruz Giusto

[Leo Gura]

Yes, consistency is the difference. The question is, why it is a meaningful difference to you? To me, it is not. It's a relative bias people have. Just because a thing is more consistent, doesn't mean much in my book.

It's quite obvious to me that "ordinary physical reality" is no more real than a dream. I don't care how consistent it is. All that does is make it a more believable illusion.

This is quite clearly acknowledged by advanced meditators and in many spiritual traditions, like Tibetan Buddhism.

The consistency of ordinary reality will start to break down as you get deeper and deeper into meditation, until eventually the notion will entirely break down. It's not that reality will become inconsistent, but your paradigm will change so much that conventional reality will fly out the window.

For an advanced Zen master, for example, when he blinks his eyes, the entire world is destroyed and re-created. There is no object-permanence. And if you learn to astral travel, you can be inside totally different realities for long periods of time, such that ordinary reality just becomes one of many realities you can inhabit.

Martin Ball is a great guy. Nothing against him. But an advanced spiritual master he is not. Like I said many times before, there is way more to spirituality than enlightenment.

[Juan Cruz Giusto]

21 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

For an advanced Zen master, for example, when he blinks his eyes, the entire world is destroyed and re-created.

There is more to reality than your personal perception. If you close your eyes and I pull out a gun, shoot you and kill you, you are for sure dead, whether you are a zen master or a homeless guy. That the gun, the zen master and the world they inhabit are made out of consciousness or mind is another matter. 

The difference between a dream and waking reality is that one is personal and the latter is shared by others. If we want to formulate metaphysical conclusions, saying that there is no difference between a dream and this reality, taking into account that other people's perspectives, is IPO nonsense. 

Notice that I'm not saying that there is a world outside of consciousness nor I'm a materialist. I think idealism makes much more sense but there is more to consciousness (or the world) than what our mind perceives. Rupert Spira is quite enlightened and have similar view, so does Bernardo Kastrup and so does Ken Wilber. 

Or we can say that everything is consciousness and me, others and the world don't exist, everything is just an illusion and we are just Maya and end of discussion. And it seems to be true to enlightened people. But if we want to make sense of our world this paradigm is just useless. 

Edited August 16, 2017 by Juan Cruz Giusto

[Leo Gura]

@Juan Cruz Giusto We're talking about the same thing basically. It's just a matter of tracing all the fine details out.

Re: "You are for sure dead"

Don't be so sure about that

The whole problem here is that we're using convention-reality labels like "dead", "zen master", "gun", "I pull a gun on you". All of these labels are thrown into question at deeper levels of consciousness.

The whole trick is that it's impossible to evaluate a paradigm without first fully stepping out of your own, and then into the other one. If you actually did start to see trolls on a regular basis, you might not consider them "merely subjective ego delusions" as you presently do from your current paradigm.

To a real Zen master, there is no such thing as a Zen master.

[Juan Cruz Giusto]

@Leo Gura it's crucial in this types of discussions to separate the Infinite/Absolute from the Finite/Relative.

From an Absolute perspective, there is no Zen Master, no gun, no dead people... But from a Relative perspective there is a gun, there is me shooting and there is a dead body of a Zen Master. 

Obviously I will have to integrate these two perspectives the more I meditate self inquire. About the trolls, if I see them in a constant basis, I'm open to the possibility of alternative realities apart from the one I'm currently experiencing - my perceptions don't tell me a whole lot about reality. Maybe there are perceptive delusions or maybe they don't and they exist in another reality we don't experience. That doesn't contradict my current worldview. Moreover, we have to explain where the mind is, paranormal phenomena, psychic powers and so forth. 

As I said, the wisest thing is to separate the Absolute from the Relative. We still have to explain much more stuff and to say that when I close my eyes the world disappear is to reduce a beautiful and perfect thing - which is the world and reality - with my perception. 

[Heart of Space]

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

This is an artificial distinction.

You assume some kind of objective external world which doesn't actually exist. When you're looking at the zoo animals, you're just in a mass hallucination. And even so, your hallucination of the animals is still subjective. There is really no such thing a "objective".

And psychedelic visions are not random. They have consistent themes and patterns across people and cultures.

Giving a privileged positions to ordinary reality vs non-ordinary reality is just a bias IMO.

It's not necessarily bias considering the reality that is referred to has a solid sense of consistency that the reality psychedelics produces simply doesn't have. There are fairly strict rules that supposed "objective" sober reality adhere's to, which is corroborated over and over again by experience and other people through language.  I wouldn't call psychedelics random, that's a poor choice of word, but they aren't grounded in a consistent set of seemingly universal rules.  

It is valid, even important, to bring up the fact that a human only ever experiences its own subjective perspective and that certainly has implications on the knowledge one can have about reality.  But regardless, you have to address the fact that there is in the very least an incredible amount of consistency, predictability, and a deterministic quality to sober reality.  Based on those qualities I would say that it is very unlikely that trolls exist in the reality that I perceive.  

Edited August 17, 2017 by Heart of Space

[Nahm]

Do you think, somewhere, there are trolls wondering if we exist?

[Leo Gura]

26 minutes ago, Nahm said:

Do you think, somewhere, there are trolls wondering if we exist?

Trolls are silent and wise. They know all is illusion

[Peace and Love]

@Leo Gura  lol OMG!  That's from Magic the Gathering! I used to play that!!  Do you still play Magic??

46 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Trolls are silent and wise. They know all is illusion

 

Edited August 17, 2017 by Peace and Love
grammar

[Nahm]

@Leo Gura Some trolls like to create..trolls.

Maybe the best party is the one that isn't even happening.

[pluto]

Everything you can imagine is real and must exist somewhere in someway shape/form or you wouldn't be able to imagine it in the first place. Now your probably thinking ok blah blah blah argument ahead but let me explain why with a question.

Tell me now young one, can you imagine non-existence?

 

Edited August 17, 2017 by pluto

[Leo Gura]

New video idea: How To Get A Hot Troll Girlfriend

Hint: Go to Iceland

[Leo Gura]

@Maxx Yes, of course, because the mind is wired for survival in this hallucination. To unwire that tendency requires 40 years of practice.

But,

A) It is possible.

B) It doesn't change the fact that it's a hallucination.

Any good scientist will tell you that there is no biological or physical reason why your child is more important than a starving child in Africa. And yet, if we put a gun to the scientist's child's head vs an African child, he will always tell you to pull the trigger on the African child. Such is the force of self-survival. It doesn't care about facts, logic, reality, truth, equality, or fairness. Its job is to actively disregard the truth that you and your entire worldview is a construction. Its purpose is purely pragmatic. It doesn't care if your child is a hallucination, it will defend that hallucination tooth and nail. That's what egos do. They fudge reality so you can keep hallucinating your existence.

Your entire existence depends on your hallucinating that you're not hallucinating.

[art]

Great Norwegian Documentary

[Joseph Maynor]

@unknownworld

1 hour ago, unknownworld said:

This is your own ego at work here. Clearly putting people who you view as "advanced meditators", "zen masters" and "spiritual masters" on a pedestal and assuming their view of reality is more accurate than Martin Ball's, well because he is not a spiritual master right? Not long ago, you were praising and claiming that Martin Ball was enlightened. Looks like you fell into another trap.

As mentioned by Maxx, you don't act like the entire reality is a hallucination. The problem with your claims, is that you have no first hand experience with it, just concepts, which you adapted from spiritual traditions, and "masters".  Martin Ball on the other hand, has all the first hand experience and he is living his truth authentically.

 

Not to butt into this discussion but to me arguing about enlightenment or who's more enlightened than whom seems so wrong to me.  It's like arguing over who's poo smells the worst objectively speaking.  Maybe we need to put the toy away for a while, we have built too many fantasies around it.   Wanting to be right and enlightenment go together like oil and water.  Enlightenment work has tempered my need to be right not fed it, but that's just me.

Edited August 17, 2017 by Joseph Maynor

[Shin]

1 hour ago, unknownworld said:

This is your own ego at work here. Clearly putting people who you view as "advanced meditators", "zen masters" and "spiritual masters" on a pedestal and assuming their view of reality is more accurate than Martin Ball's, well because he is not a spiritual master right? Not long ago, you were praising and claiming that Martin Ball was enlightened. Looks like you fell into another trap.

As mentioned by Maxx, you don't act like the entire reality is a hallucination. The problem with your claims, is that you have no first hand experience with it, just concepts, which you adapted from spiritual traditions, and "masters".  Martin Ball on the other hand, has all the first hand experience and he is living his truth authentically.

 

 

You don't even know if Martin Ball exist, just thoughts about it.
Same for Leo.

So right now you're arguing against an idea because you have an another idea that seems more plausible to you.

Interesting.

[Leo Gura]

2 hours ago, unknownworld said:

This is your own ego at work here. Clearly putting people who you view as "advanced meditators", "zen masters" and "spiritual masters" on a pedestal and assuming their view of reality is more accurate than Martin Ball's, well because he is not a spiritual master right? Not long ago, you were praising and claiming that Martin Ball was enlightened. Looks like you fell into another trap.

As mentioned by Maxx, you don't act like the entire reality is a hallucination. The problem with your claims, is that you have no first hand experience with it, just concepts, which you adapted from spiritual traditions, and "masters".  Martin Ball on the other hand, has all the first hand experience and he is living his truth authentically.

Watch out for your assumptions.

I am not making appeals to "spiritual masters" as dogma or putting them on pedestals. It's quite clear that hardcore meditators and advanced yoga practitioners with 30-40 years of experience have way deeper mastery of this stuff than Martin and have seen things and can do things which Martin may not be able to imagine.

I have enough experience and foresight to tell the difference.

Just because I have a friendly interview with someone doesn't mean I agree with everything they say, or that their views are the end-all-be-all. Why would you make Martin Ball the arbiter of things?

Nonduality is not the only thing in question here.

Lol, and just how am I supposed to act if reality is a hallucination? Should I be wearing a clown hat and running naked around the streets? Just because it's a hallucination, doesn't mean anything behavioral. Your hand would still burn if you stick in the fire. That's all part of the hallucination.

The problem is that people hear "hallucination" and they get silly images in their mind of "anything goes". Like you can walk through walls and eat poison and nothing will happen. No, shit will happen. If "you get shot in the head", the hallucination called "your life" will "end".

If you want to understand the entirety of the spiritual domain, you're gonna need a much more openminded and inquiring attitude. Picking one person and following everything they say it not gonna cut it. I have a meta-approach. I study and cross-reference dozens of sources and schools against my own experiences and deductions.

Anyways, investigate for yourself.

Any advanced practitioner will tell you reality is a hallucination. I'm not saying anything new. There are WAY more incredible things than that to discover.

[hundreth]

This thread has devolved into semantics about what "Real" means. For the sake of argument, we can reframe the question as "Are trolls really part of our materialist hallucination? or are trolls simply another hallucination within a materialist hallucination?"

In other words, can the troll pull out the gun and kill you or not?

Edited August 17, 2017 by hundreth

[Joseph Maynor]

4 hours ago, hundreth said:

This thread has devolved into semantics about what "Real" means. For the sake of argument, we can reframe the question as "Are trolls really part of our materialist hallucination? or are trolls simply another hallucination within a materialist hallucination?"

Reality makes no distinctions.  It just is.  All distinctions are egoic.  As soon as monkey-speak, illusion-city is already rearing-up.  Just be with reality, sit within it, envelop within it, like a baby snuggling into a warm blanket freshly taken out of the drier.  Once we start flapping our lips we lose something of that beauty, of that experience.  And it's the experience that has true value, not our words, our silly squawking.  Intellectuals should be humbled by enlightenment not emboldened by it.  Just my take, my monkey-view to pile onto the rest.  Do we really care about all these words?  Does Paris give a shit about some tourist's Yelp review about it?  See?  Paris could care less.  It just is.  Reality laughs at our words.  Actually, it aggrandizes us to even say it does that much.  Reality is actually indifferent to our words.

Edited August 17, 2017 by Joseph Maynor