Mystical experiences vs radical recontextualizations

[tsuki]

Let's take it from the @Leo Gura's latest video:

There are always contents of perception. These contents are what we call facts. Facts are self-apparent (obvious).
Facts are always explicit, even if they are arrived at through exploration of a question to which answer is unknown at first.
However, which facts are perceived is 'decided' implicitly.
No fact that is being perceived is the process by which facts become self-apparent (obvious).
This process in which facts become self-apparent is what we call context. Context is the implicit part of perception.

Context may become explicit through language, but the facts that are being 'produced' are not the context that produces them.
That is because the original context we are describing is replaced by the context of describing a context.
Therefore, the present context is always absent from perception. At the moment of the production of facts, the context is always implicit.

Both context and facts are what informs our ability to act.
Recontextualization is a way to influence actions by changing context without changing the facts.
There are various depths of recontextualization. Depending on the amount of actions it influences, the recontextualization may be radical.

In my current understanding, a mystical experience is a radical recontextualization that influences the ability to describe one's context (making it explicit).
This influence is what leaves space for novelty to arise. This is why we say that we have experienced the death of the self, because the context is what we usually identify with.

The mystical experience however does not leave us context-less. The context simply becomes unknown, and by repeated attempts to describe it, we arrive at farther and farther awakenings. That is the role of contemplation.

[Ayilton]

I like this ! You seem like doing a lot of contemplation  ! Is contemplation he best way to enlightenment  ? 

[tsuki]

2 hours ago, Ayilton said:

Is contemplation he best way to enlightenment ? 

@Ayilton That is a difficult question.

I think that there is a perspective from which all paths to enlightenment are exactly the same. I wish to arrive at that context to see it clearly.
Intuition tells me that contemplation is a way to arrive at that perspective by repeatedly explicating the unknown context we are left with after a mystical experience.

Mystical experiences are moments in which our context is made explicit and we see a way to 'punch a hole in it', or so to speak.
That movement is done through noticing the apparent duality in experience brought upon by that context and understanding from which perspective the duality comes together to form oneness.

Perhaps, this 'coming together' of dualities is what is common to all paths to enlightenment.
Their apparent differences come from the background in which they appeared.

I'm tempted to say that no - contemplation is not the best way to enlightenment. Not because there are better ways, but because all ways are exactly the same. I do not know why, though.

Edited July 24, 2018 by tsuki

[Ayilton]

thanks for the reply ! @tsuki

[Leo Gura]

@tsuki The trick is that the notion of "facts" is itself already theory-laden.

To believe in "facts" is already to buy into the false idea that there is an external objective reality independent of the subject.

What is a fact?

That is a good thing to contemplate.

The problem with facts is that they are always entangled with one's mode of perception or the questions one asks. This was the fundamental discovery of quantum mechanics: there are no actual facts. There are only responses to measurements. Change your measuring stick and the facts will also change.

Facts are in a casual strange loop relationship with who you are and your perceptual system. Such that if we change your perceptual system, or your beliefs, we can change everything you consider a fact.

The reason people disagree with and misunderstand each other so much is because they naively assume that everyone shares the same facts. This is false. A person at one level of development & consciousness will literally inhabit a different reality than a person at another level of development & consciousness.

The mind is co-creating "the facts", but denies that it does so. This is a radical paradigm shift from the conventional materialist notion of reality.

To put this very starkly, when you look at an object like a tree, there is in fact no tree there. You only see a tree because that's what your perceptual system pulls out of it. If you had a different perceptual system you would see something radically different in its place. The "actual" tree is in fact a cloud of infinite potential which crystallizes based on how your nervous system pings "it". You can get a taste for this by just walking around the tree and noticing that that tree "object" contains every possible angle from which you're viewing it. Such that what the tree really is, is all the infinite ways one can look at it (not just human, but all possible creatures).

[Forestluv]

@Leo Gura A more basic example might be:

Colors do not exist. The brain processes different wavelengths of light into the perception of what we call color. We have no idea if we all perceive the same at a wavelength of 690nm. Each indivudual agrees to call whatever they perceive “blue”. Some animals perceive fewer colors, other animals can see infrared, others can see ultraviolet- which humans cannot. The Mantis Shrimp brain is the world champion - it can create hundreds of colors humans cannot. 

So different animals perceive reality dramatically different. Who is “right”? 

Moreover, humans process less than 1% of sensory information in the environment. How delusional of humans to assume we perceive an accurate portrayal of reality! If a person was given less than 1% of the information of a newly-discovered planet - how accurately could they describe reality on that planet? If the “true” reality could be revealed, we would all laugh how far off we were. It would be the biggest joke ever. . . 

[Leo Gura]

@Serotoninluv Going even deeper, "different wavelengths of light" also do not exist. That is also a limited perception/interpretation.

[Forestluv]

19 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

@Serotoninluv Going even deeper, "different wavelengths of light" also do not exist. That is also a limited perception/interpretation.

That’s my current level of contemplation. I do realize tho that I made an assumption they exist in the example

[Leo Gura]

@Serotoninluv Right, the key thing we're really saying is that reality is groundless. There are no fixed anchor points, except for the Groundless Ground itself.

[Forestluv]

@Leo Gura As an aside, I’m impressed at how you are able to interact with people at their level of development/Consciousness. Its a skill I would like to develop. 

[Forestluv]

25 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

@Serotoninluv Right, the key thing we're really saying is that reality is groundless. There are no fixed anchor points, except for the Groundless Ground itself.

Perhaps thats why some of my awakenings can be either terrifying or liberating to my person.

[Sashaj]

5 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

@tsuki The trick is that the notion of "facts" is itself already theory-laden.

To believe in "facts" is already to buy into the false idea that there is an external objective reality independent of the subject.

What is a fact?

That is a good thing to contemplate.

The problem with facts is that they are always entangled with one's mode of perception or the questions one asks. This was the fundamental discovery of quantum mechanics: there are no actual facts. There are only responses to measurements. Change your measuring stick and the facts will also change.

Facts are in a casual strange loop relationship with who you are and your perceptual system. Such that if we change your perceptual system, or your beliefs, we can change everything you consider a fact.

The reason people disagree with and misunderstand each other so much is because they naively assume that everyone shares the same facts. This is false. A person at one level of development & consciousness will literally inhabit a different reality than a person at another level of development & consciousness.

The mind is co-creating "the facts", but denies that it does so. This is a radical paradigm shift from the conventional materialist notion of reality.

To put this very starkly, when you look at an object like a tree, there is in fact no tree there. You only see a tree because that's what your perceptual system pulls out of it. If you had a different perceptual system you would see something radically different in its place. The "actual" tree is in fact a cloud of infinite potential which crystallizes based on how your nervous system pings "it". You can get a taste for this by just walking around the tree and noticing that that tree "object" contains every possible angle from which you're viewing it. Such that what the tree really is, is all the infinite ways one can look at it (not just human, but all possible creatures).

Thanks Leo. This is helpful

[tsuki]

15 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

@tsuki The trick is that the notion of "facts" is itself already theory-laden.

To believe in "facts" is already to buy into the false idea that there is an external objective reality independent of the subject.

@Leo Gura Yes, the word 'fact' that I used is very popular and it generally means something that we can collectively agree on (through various means). That indeed means that there is the external objective paradigm at play if we assume that his word is used in its popular way.

15 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

What is a fact? That is a good thing to contemplate.

From the way in which you responded I have an intuition that you wanted to (friendly) point at an unquestioned assumption in my reasoning, but I read your post as if you agreed with me. So, just to make sure that I'm not projecting let me elaborate on what I meant by a fact:

On 23.07.2018 at 4:02 PM, tsuki said:

There are always contents of perception. These contents are what we call facts. Facts are self-apparent (obvious).
Facts are always explicit, even if they are arrived at through exploration of a question to which answer is unknown at first.
However, which facts are perceived is 'decided' implicitly.
No fact that is being perceived is the process by which facts become self-apparent (obvious).
This process in which facts become self-apparent is what we call context. Context is the implicit part of perception.

At this level of abstraction, there is nothing more of value that I can say about them.

You're right, a popular way of use of the word 'facts' as in 'information that we can agree on' fits it, but so do many other uses! For example: a tree that we see is a fact as long as it is obvious what a tree is.
As we look at a tree, the very act of looking is what makes tree a tree. We can look at a tree from various angles and the 'snapshots' of perception look nothing like the original angle but a tree is still a tree. This is what I meant by calling facts explicit: the always-present contrast of beings against themselves. Facts 'stick out', or so to speak.

That of course doesn't mean that there is anything within the concrete tree that makes it a tree. Not even in conceptual/philosophical sense of asking: 'what is common among all trees?', but in raw, perceptual sense of drawing a boundary (distinction) between the concrete tree we observe ('through our eyes') and its background.
This process in which we draw boundaries is not a fact in a sense that it is not explicit/obvious. There is nothing 'sticking out' (by itself) that we can point at and say: 'this is the obviousness itself!'. This always-absent obviousness is the link between the context and content (facts) within perception. A point at which these two disjoint categories meet.

So yes, in a sense - all being is completely groundless, but there is this non-originated grounding which seems illusory when you inspect it.
However, this illusory grounding is the basis for (any) reality and I prefer to treat reality with respect (by not calling it a lie).

15 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

The problem with facts is that they are always entangled with one's mode of perception or the questions one asks. This was the fundamental discovery of quantum mechanics: there are no actual facts. There are only responses to measurements. Change your measuring stick and the facts will also change.

That's right! The measuring stick (context) is what determines facts (content).
The problem with the measuring stick of the first-person perspective of the 'I' is that it is always absent from what 'I' can perceive.
The only hint of its presence is through the present-but-absent obviousness at which we can pull to uncover the device.
However, the measuring stick (context) which we uncover by pulling on the obviousness is not the one that we're currently in.
By the very act of pulling on the thread of obviousness by contemplation we create a new shiny measuring stick to explore.
This is the ausal strangeloop of context determining facts and facts determining context.

That is what I meant by the rest of my post:

On 23.07.2018 at 4:02 PM, tsuki said:

Both context and facts are what informs our ability to act.
Recontextualization is a way to influence actions by changing context without changing the facts.
There are various depths of recontextualization. Depending on the amount of actions it influences, the recontextualization may be radical.

In my current understanding, a mystical experience is a radical recontextualization that influences the ability to describe one's context (making it explicit).
This influence is what leaves space for novelty to arise. This is why we say that we have experienced the death of the self, because the context is what we usually identify with.

The mystical experience however does not leave us context-less. The context simply becomes unknown, and by repeated attempts to describe it, we arrive at farther and farther awakenings. That is the role of contemplation.

 

Edited August 3, 2018 by tsuki

[tsuki]

@Leo Gura There is another thing I've been meaning to ask you for quite some time, Leo:

10 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

The reason people disagree with and misunderstand each other so much is because they naively assume that everyone shares the same facts. This is false. A person at one level of development & consciousness will literally inhabit a different reality than a person at another level of development & consciousness.

Given that we agree on the strangeloop of context and content: how do you cope with the fact that all of what you wrote in the above paragraph is what you are? All of this is determined by your current context that decides that it is obvious that there are other people.

Anything we perceive from within reality is not what is the basis for its creation, so other people (regardless of their level of development) are what is being injected into your perspective. Not only that, but the hierarchy of development in which you 'sort them' into more and less developed people is entirely decided by your (internalized) understanding of your theories of development. It has nothing to do with 'them'. 'They' are like a tree that is completely blank on their own. All of that is dependent on how you pulled on the threads of obviousness.

Even the naivety part is predicated on your understanding of human nature. To me, all of that: top to bottom are thoughts about yourself. I am not saying this to somehow call you out, because I'm 'struggling' with this myself. This is what I'm doing here on the forum. Integrating this obviousness into lack of separation by making my theories account for everything. In doing that, they become ambiguous.

Edited August 3, 2018 by tsuki

[Leo Gura]

@tsuki Relative vs Absolute

Be careful about mixing up those two. When we speak of other people we are making relative distinctions for sake of convenience.

[tsuki]

42 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Be careful about mixing up those two. When we speak of other people we are making relative distinctions for sake of convenience.

@Leo Gura This distinction between relative and absolute is the root cause of the hierarchy of people with respect to consciousness.
Is it really so convenient to make this distinction from this point of view? Aren't we (both?) creating our own problems this way?

From my point of view, this distinction is the prime mechanism through which the mind 'deceives itself', like you said here:

11 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

The mind is co-creating "the facts", but denies that it does so.

 

If it feels like I'm pulling your leg over something you casually said back to me, please let me know.
I do not mean it that way.

[Zweistein]

I think @tsuki actually has a very good point there. To me it's the paradox of all paradoxes though. But what do I know.... sometimes I feel like I'm in some sort of mirror forest here in the forum*.... I guess it's time to go and clean my inner-most mirror to see clearly again though.
 

*I know this statement implies for some of you that I'm trying to blame here, but maybe you can see it as an expression of my feelings though? ;-)

P.S. Wait a second, I thought I had just learned to rather ask questions instead of giving answers. Damn it. 
So, let me re-frame: Could it be true that the distinction between relative and absolute is the root cause of the hierarchy of people with respect to consciousness?

Edited August 3, 2018 by Zweistein

[now is forever]

@Zweistein what did you expect they are philosophers ?

sorry to point that out - but that’s where it‘s all going or where it all started in philosophy isn‘t it? either materialism or idealism. either relative or absolute. the unity of opposites.

both are talking about the same but interpreting it different.

Edited August 3, 2018 by now is forever

[Leo Gura]

13 hours ago, tsuki said:

@Leo Gura This distinction between relative and absolute is the root cause of the hierarchy of people with respect to consciousness.
Is it really so convenient to make this distinction from this point of view? Aren't we (both?) creating our own problems this way?

From my point of view, this distinction is the prime mechanism through which the mind 'deceives itself', like you said here:

If it feels like I'm pulling your leg over something you casually said back to me, please let me know.
I do not mean it that way.

It's a very important distinction. If you fail to make this distinction you will get yourself into all sorts of trouble.

Most everyday language is coming from and speaking about the relative domain. This needs to be clearly understood. So if your spouse says to you: "Hey, did you take the trash out?" you do not reply with, "I don't exist and trash is just an illusion."

When a question is asked from the relative domain, the answer must meet the question where it is at.

And as for the Absolute domain, it's really hard to speak about anyway. So anything you say about it will ultimately devolve into contradictions and paradoxes because language is dualistic.

We do our best speaking about these things, always remembering that we will always fall short of the Truth with our explanations.

Do other people really exist? Nope. But we must still live life as if they do for practical reasons.

Is money real? Nope. But we still need to earn it to feed ourselves.

Is food real? Nope. But we still need to eat it in order to keep the illusion of our bodies going.

Is time real? Nope. But we still need to set our clocks to the same time so we can coordinate.

In a world of only illusion, illusion becomes the reality.

[Zweistein]

Could it be like that, that once you speak, you are automatically back in the relative domain?
Could it be like that, that once you think about what to say, you are back in the relative domain?
Could it be like that, that once you silently observe yourself thinking, you are back in the relative domain?
Could it be like that, that once you silently observe yourself silently observing yourself thinking, that you are back in the relative domain?
Could it be like that, ....?

Edited August 3, 2018 by Zweistein