What If The Truth Experienced In Enlightenment Is Only An Illusion From The Brain?

[Moreira]

I dont understand why those who reach enlightenment or higer states of awareness via raw meditation or with the use of psychedelics consider what they experience as the ultimate truth or the most accurate version of reality without questioning it.

Science has explanations for all the main phenomena that people report in these states.

-The oneness, samathi, non duality, I'm everything, no-separation. 

-Everything has sense now, every decision i made in the past was perfectly planned to take me where I'm now.

-Peace, stillness, love for everything.

-Accessing to hidden knowledge.

All the phenomena es related to the  deactivation of certain parts of the brain, for example:

Prefrontal cortex, the creator of the false self and all his related problems.

Amygdala, sense of fear.

Insula, bodily sensations.

I recommend to watch this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LY_83_wnk20

After that I wonder how do we know that we are one if my brain has been tricked?

Is like wearing a pink glasses and saying that the world is pink.

[hundreth]

I suspect you're right, what you experience with psychedelics is an illusion. That seems to be the greatest insight they provide, that your consciousness is like a radio that can be set to a different frequency for perceiving reality - and they are all equally real. 

The truth is, you're already wearing pink glasses. The psychedelics allow you to change the color.

[Consept]

But in the video he does say the flow state is the optimum way for us to experience reality. So if you want to call it enlightenment or flow state or whatever the words arent really important its more the perspective youre seeing the world from. 

Whatever you experience your brain and body are the conduits for that so you will be able to trace activity through that. So to me it would seem that to have our highest chance of perceiving reality we should be in our optimum state and whilst in that optimum state people do say they feel that oneness, so it doesnt make it ultimately true but its the best perspective we can achieve. 

[Leo Gura]

@Moreira You will never understand until you exit your current level of consciousness.

It's like you're an ant thinking he's got the whole universe figured out. You can't know yet just how misguided you are. It must be experienced to be believed.

Science becomes laughable once you have an awakening or two.

[str4]

4 hours ago, Moreira said:

I dont understand why those who reach enlightenment or higer states of awareness via raw meditation or with the use of psychedelics consider what they experience as the ultimate truth or the most accurate version of reality without questioning it.

Science has explanations for all the main phenomena that people report in these states.

-The oneness, samathi, non duality, I'm everything, no-separation. 

-Everything has sense now, every decision i made in the past was perfectly planned to take me where I'm now.

-Peace, stillness, love for everything.

-Accessing to hidden knowledge.

All the phenomena es related to the  deactivation of certain parts of the brain, for example:

Prefrontal cortex, the creator of the false self and all his related problems.

Amygdala, sense of fear.

Insula, bodily sensations.

I recommend to watch this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LY_83_wnk20

After that I wonder how do we know that we are one if my brain has been tricked?

Is like wearing a pink glasses and saying that the world is pink.

 

It's good that you are questioning all of this, being a skeptic is healthy, but only if you are an honest and true skeptic — meaning that you question everything.

When modern science tries to explain all of the phenomena you mentioned, it explains everything through a certain paradigm. For today's science, this paradigm is unquestionably materialism or physicalism. It postulates that everything is an arrangement of dead matter called atoms. From these building blocks, you get our brains and so on.

Now when you say that people here don't question all of this, are you sure that you are not questioning the whole scientific paradigm?

The explanations you mentioned can be verified through fMRI or similar machine, but notice that you can only see a correlation between fMRI data and brain states. You have to contemplate whether there is causation there, or if it's only correlation. 

 

[Moreira]

36 minutes ago, str4 said:

 

It's good that you are questioning all of this, being a skeptic is healthy, but only if you are an honest and true skeptic — meaning that you question everything.

When modern science tries to explain all of the phenomena you mentioned, it explains everything through a certain paradigm. For today's science, this paradigm is unquestionably materialism or physicalism. It postulates that everything is an arrangement of dead matter called atoms. From these building blocks, you get our brains and so on.

Now when you say that people here don't question all of this, are you sure that you are not questioning the whole scientific paradigm?

The explanations you mentioned can be verified through fMRI or similar machine, but notice that you can only see a correlation between fMRI data and brain states. You have to contemplate whether there is causation there, or if it's only correlation. 

 

Well, but the fact is that depending on culture, religion, beliefs change the content of the enlightened experience says that all is in the mind of that person. For example Mckenna talked anbout elves, magic entities and nonsense, an hindu will experience shiva, brahma...

If the truth experienced is not equal for everybody that means is not the true reality, but a subjective one created by the mind.

[Haumea]

Quote

Well, but the fact is that depending on culture, religion, beliefs change the content of the enlightened experience says that all is in the mind of that person. For example Mckenna talked anbout elves, magic entities and nonsense, an hindu will experience shiva, brahma...

What you specifically see in enlightened experience is inconsequential.

The nature of "self" that you experience is what matters -- and it is the same across cultures.

Not feeling like a "separate self", e.g. is a universal experience.

Whether you feel at one with Buddha or Jesus is irrelevant.  You are at one with some representation of the divine, versus most people who aren't at one with any version of the divine.

The divine is formless and static.  Different cultures create different symbols for the formless and static.   The senses do not perceive formless and static.  They perceive shape, color, etc. God isn't perceived with the senses, so what you actually "see" is irrelevant.  There's a feeling of being at one with God in a certain stage of enlightenment.  This is also universal.  There's a feeling of experiencing some version of a spiritual guide in another stage.  What shape they take is irrelevant as well.

Scientists are very good at abstract thinking, until they become willfully literal-minded when it suits their prejudices.

Edited September 8, 2017 by Haumea

[Joseph Maynor]

If you want to remain true to the truth of no self, you gotta be completely silent. 

Try this model on for size -- You are a self-aware field of no-thingness.  Do you see the duality here, but also the pointing function of these words?  When you know the destination, is is easier to appreciate all the *cute* belief-scaffolding we have.

Edited September 8, 2017 by Joseph Maynor

[Telepresent]

Well this is definitely a problem - the subjectivity issue.  I struggle with this all the time, and almost daily have to have this discussion with myself and remind myself why I reached the conclusion that the materialistic paradigm is definitely questionable.  These reasons are:

1) The absolute truth MUST account for the subjective, phenomenological experience I am having - the qualia which make up my entire life experience.  It is worth noting that the current materialist/scientific perspective actually doesn't do this: it talks of how there is this and that and other in the brain, and that this is what is 'really' happening - but offers no answer as to where, how, and from what my conscious experience takes place.  To the point that some are trying to argue that consciousness isn't real at all, because it's inconvenient to their model (I mean, what is it?  Another plane, another dimension?  If it's an illusion, an illusion in what?  Taking place where?  Nobody even ATTEMPTS to answer this)

2) Quantum physics.  Now, I'm not a physicist and there's much, much, much here that I don't and can't understand.  But I've also seen enough to recognise that there is a connection between conscious observation (and it has to be conscious observation - delayed quantum erasure has shown that) and the collapse from potential to actual.  Again, nobody seems to be connecting this to our regular subjective experience, as if somehow it doesn't matter, and at the macro level Newtonian physics still applies and we can ignore that quantum stuff because it only effects the very very very small.  Which is supposedly the very small which composes the stuff of Newtonian physics, but we'll ignore that because it's inconvenient to our modelling...

So, yeah, that's enough for me to say there's more going on than meets the materialist eye, and it seems to be centred on subjective consciousness

[Nahm]

@Telepresent 1 in you. 2 "nobody" is a conflation 3 you are awesome

[MiracleMan]

18 hours ago, Moreira said:

I dont understand why those who reach enlightenment or higer states of awareness via raw meditation or with the use of psychedelics consider what they experience as the ultimate truth or the most accurate version of reality without questioning it.

Science has explanations for all the main phenomena that people report in these states.

-The oneness, samathi, non duality, I'm everything, no-separation. 

-Everything has sense now, every decision i made in the past was perfectly planned to take me where I'm now.

-Peace, stillness, love for everything.

-Accessing to hidden knowledge.

All the phenomena es related to the  deactivation of certain parts of the brain, for example:

Prefrontal cortex, the creator of the false self and all his related problems.

Amygdala, sense of fear.

Insula, bodily sensations.

I recommend to watch this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LY_83_wnk20

After that I wonder how do we know that we are one if my brain has been tricked?

Is like wearing a pink glasses and saying that the world is pink.

There in lies the hard problem of consciousness right?  I can't show you consciousness or hand it to you, you can only know it from your perspective.  Science has the advantage of being objective because we can make measurements from without that both of us can verify together through mathematical agreement.  

If I tell you I'm feeling happy, you can't be inside of my head to verify that for a fact, no matter what instruments you plug me up to it's going to be through some sort of filter, you'll have to take my word for it, it's taken for granted how much this world operates on the faith that people say what they mean by their intentions, but really, you can't know what they are personally experiencing in the mind.  You could get very close to possibly understanding what I mean but you are alone inside your own head, you can't hear my cognitions can you?

I think this why religion in general is wrapped up in faith as a requirement, and enlightenment in a sense requires faith because from I'm told you can't have any idea what that experience (or non experience, whatever) is like until you are there, so anything the mind tries to come up with will only be a projection and not the real deal.  

 

[Be Yourself]

@Moreira Yes, it's nothing supernatural about it. Check out this non dual teacher who also explains it through science. 

 

[Moreira]

21 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

@Moreira You will never understand until you exit your current level of consciousness.

It's like you're an ant thinking he's got the whole universe figured out. You can't know yet just how misguided you are. It must be experienced to be believed.

Science becomes laughable once you have an awakening or two.

In my opinion, with a living body via your brain your eternity will be the one and once you experienced it you have seen a trick of the mind.

Only without a living body, with died brain the creation can be seen as it is. Enlightenment isnt the end, just a playschool dimension, the beginning.

Edited September 8, 2017 by Moreira

[AlwaysBeNice]

Consciousness creates matter

http://evidenceforthesoul.weebly.com/quantum-mechanics.html

[Nahm]

consciouness is Love

[orroz]

On 09/08/2017 at 0:48 AM, Moreira said:

I dont understand why those who reach enlightenment or higer states of awareness via raw meditation or with the use of psychedelics consider what they experience as the ultimate truth or the most accurate version of reality without questioning it.

Science has explanations for all the main phenomena that people report in these states.

After that I wonder how do we know that we are one if my brain has been tricked?

Is like wearing a pink glasses and saying that the world is pink.

 

1)  those who claim to reach higher states are like child on rollercoaster: just exalted speakers on high mountains. The rollercoaster has unlimited hills so their position and their claims is not relevant.

2) science has no explanations, only hypothesis more/less reliable... but not true. So also science claims are not really relevant.

Science can't explain facts, it has no accurate instrument to observe any fact, not even the basics. Offers relative models unavoidably affected by human biases.

3) the Truth Experienced In Enlightenment is just an illusion (from an illusory brain)... as whatever experience. Therefore enlightenment is not relevant.

 

Edited September 10, 2017 by orroz

[pluto]

When you see your body and your world dissolve into the illusion that it is and only consciousness/awareness remains you will understand that its much much beyond the brain. Its the direct feeling and experience that makes it beyond "what if's".

[Joseph Maynor]

Any hypothesis is a thought, not Being.  You gotta find Being stripped of all thought.  Can you locate that?  Find that.  Hint -- you can find this when you meditate.  Notice that there are times where reality sticks around even when all thoughts go away.   Being is not dependent on thoughts at all.

Edited September 11, 2017 by Joseph Maynor

[Heart of Space]

It is a delusion.  Most of what people on this forum practice is essentially just a really cleverly disguised religion.  Enlightenment doesn't exist and the tooth fairy is not real.  This is not to say mediation is not worth practicing.  

[Toby]

Enlightenment and Truth is and can not experienced. What can experienced are at best flavours / tastes of Truth which itself are not to be confused with It. At least that is how I see it right now.