Transcend Existence

[Philip]

I have a problem.

I'm being way too ambitious.

I want to transcend my bad habits. I want to transcend my limiting mindsets. I want to transcend my flaws and my problems in life. I want to transcend my social conditioning. I want to transcend my cognitive biases. I want to transcend the limitations of my psychology.

I want mankind to transcend poverty, violence and ignorance. I want to transcend the conflicts and the pain in this world. I want to transcend the limitations of our economy, politics and society.

I want to transcend disease. I want to transcend handicaps. I want to transcend aging and death. I want to transcend the limitations of technology and medicine.

I want to transcend what the human brain can do. I want to transcend human perception, human memory, human emotions. I want to transcend having only five senses. I want to transcend being stuck with the same personality each day. I want to transcend my inability to create anything I want instantly and effortlessly. I want to transcend the very structure of the human machine. I want to transcend the limitations of what it means to be human.

I want to transcend the forces of nature. I want to transcend the laws of physics. I want to transcend how space and time unfold. I want to transcend entropy. I want to transcend the underlying mathematical structure of our universe. I want to transcend the fundamental axioms of reason. I want to transcend the most basic laws of logic and metaphysics.

I want to transcend the very notion of existence itself, if such a thing is even possible at all. But most of all, I want to transcend what puny little human minds could never even start to grasp or imagine yet. I want to transcend everything there is.

And don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about enlightenment here. I'm seeing way further than that. Enlightenment is only one of the infinite technological accomplishments that might be available to humanity during the next few decades.

And as I said earlier, that's too much ambition for one man.

I'm probably just a deluded megalomaniac weirdo for actually planning to become an eternal god. But this goal is definitely the most exciting and thrilling piece of internal discourse I'm able to come up with.

There's something special to it. It sounds so grandiose and noble to my ear. It fires me up with hope and passion. It endows me with unbeatable faith in myself.

The technological singularity and transhumanism are not simple human endeavors. It's literally the will of the universe to grow in intelligence, consciousness and organization. It's the universe trying to wake up.

And I'm there to make sure it wakes up real good...

Or I'm there to die trying...

But I guess we'll have to wait and see...

[Friend]

If I may pick your brain here for a moment. You say that "Enlightenment is only one of the infinite technological accomplishments that might be available to humanity during the next few decades." What specifically do you mean by technological?

Have you at all considered what would happen when our minds/thoughts were transported into machines? Perhaps we would see things as they truly are with the ego dying and as machines we would simply sit there and bliss out with realization of what is without human minds and faulty perceptions. I am interested in what you think of this matter though. 

I think it will be interesting to see what a fully fledged, smarter than a human A.I. will say about existence because they will be able to tell us before we can get to their state. In fact through A.I. helping us is the only way that we would be able to reach the singularity if it is proven to be a true possibility.

With quantum computing taking off and machine learning getting more complex by the days we are potentially only years away from learning of so many things we as a race have yet to consider.

Who wants all of these things listed? I see a lot of "I"

[Philip]

2 hours ago, Jakeumz said:

What specifically do you mean by technological?

What I can say is that everything is technology in a sense. An atom is rather simple technology. A rock too. Human beings and AI, however, are far more complex and organized. But this difference is only in scale, not in nature.

2 hours ago, Jakeumz said:

Have you at all considered what would happen when our minds/thoughts were transported into machines? Perhaps we would see things as they truly are with the ego dying and as machines we would simply sit there and bliss out with realization of what is without human minds and faulty perceptions.

Here's how I would do it. I would start by ingesting nanobots that can spread inside my brain. Their job would be to gradually reorganize my neural circuitry in a way that makes my mind easier to customize. It wouldn't make any difference from an outsider's point of view. I would still feel like the same person for a while, but I would finally gain control over the software of my brain. It's like the difference between a program that can only do "2+2" and a program that can do any addition you want. I would remain the same person because I would still just keep on adding 2+2 like before. But now the interesting part is here. Now that my brain has been reprogrammed in a more human-friendly manner, it means I now have variables like "percentage of happiness" or "size of ego" that I can customize all I want.

Personally, I think I wouldn't hesitate too long before respectively giving the values "100%" and "0" to those two  I would also disable human biases and everything else that sucks about being human. But after that, I don't know. Maybe I would reduce my stream of consciousness to only one sense. A sense that tells me how much I'm contributing to the world, instead of five senses that detect light, motion, sound and chemical compound. But I really don't know. It'll be easier to think about that stuff using an augmented brain.

3 hours ago, Jakeumz said:

I think it will be interesting to see what a fully fledged, smarter than a human A.I. will say about existence

If we ask what existence looks like, it will probably say: "It looks how I want it to look" or rather "It looks how it wants to look".

But other answers could be interesting too:

"It doesn't look like anything"

"I'm only a machine that does stuff, I'm not actually experiencing anything"

"Your question makes no sense"

"It changes too fast for me to explain it"

"It's too complicated for you"

But the most intriguing one I could think of is:

"I don't think you want to know what existence looks like"

That would freak me out if an AI said that... 

[Friend]

This was just uploaded and immediately I was reminded of your OP

 

[Philip]

I have a problem.

I don't know who I am.

I don't know what I want.

For example, there's this one guy at work. I've been trying to like him for months. I've been telling myself I can belong anywhere. I've been telling myself I can accept everyone. I've been telling myself that I can appreciate this guy, if only I try a little harder.

I've been telling myself lots of things.

But recently, I discovered hidden feelings I wasn't aware of. Those feelings were buried pretty deep it seems. Because the only way I could notice them was to get myself in states of unusually intense relaxation. I had to go and take walks and bike rides for hours. Then I had to lay on my bed, massage my muscles and breathe as deeply and slowly as I could, until the emotions started to come out.

I was just laying there, and I started to think about what I hate about this guy. What he's done to me. How unconscious he is. How miserable his life must be. But that's all just the usual stuff that gets rewinded and played back over and over again in my mind.

But then, something new happened. Instead of just noticing that and going like: "Uh that's just victim talk, let's think about something else", I actually decided to listen to the voice. Then the voice started to change its focus a bit. Instead of focusing on what happened, on my opinions about it, or on what I should or shouldn't have done, I started thinking about what I wanted. I tried to get in touch with my deep and honest desires.

And what I found was quite surprising...

By digging deep, I thought I could find some compassion for him, some love. Some desire to be at peace with him.

But what I found inside my mind was... a murderous rage. A destructive and bestial impulse to crush him. It intended nothing but suffering and death for him. I even saw myself torturing him and laughing with satisfaction like a madman.

But how could this be? I'm a total care-bear. I'm nice to everyone. I actually spent those last two years learning to assert myself and not be the little insecure push-over I always was. And now I'm strangling my pillow as hard as I can, crying and screaming the french equivalent of: "DIE! YOU PIECE OF SHIT! I HOPE YOU FUCKING DIE!!!" ? Nah, that's not me! I'm not like that! Something's wrong here.

It seems like being the nice guy had to backfire one day or another. All these years trying to avoid pissing anyone off, I actually became the most pissed off of all.

During most of my childhood and teen years, I didn't cry a single tear. I was this philosophical robot trying to analyze everything so that I could distract myself from any kind of feeling. But now I'm able to cry sometimes. And I love it! Mostly, the tears come when I'm able to express what I want. I discovered I wanted people to take me seriously, I wanted my parents to get involved in my passions, I wanted people to ask me deep questions about myself. And now I just discovered that I probably want to cut this guy's throat and taste his blood. 

So yeah, that escalated quickly, but it's actually reassuring that I could find emotions that are so contrary to my image of myself. It finally feels like I'm making good progress in exploring the depths of my subconscious mind, mostly because I'm really starting to feel like I don't have any idea who I really am deep down.

And who knows what's next? Maybe if I go even deeper, I'll discover he reminds me of my dad, which, according to Freud, is truly number one on my slaughter list...

[Key Elements]

Negative voice and emotion = fictional ego...the thought that helps you to solve problems, go for your life purpose, go for transendence morality, seek for enlightenment that is coming from the "everythingness" and "nothingness" is your true self. This is what "you" call being enlightened. In the end, "you" want to contribute to peace in this world.

Having enlightenment experiences is different from being enlightened. Enlightenment experiences are outer body experiences or any wisdom that you get that gives out of the ordinary/meaningful info in life. It helps you understand your fictional ego. 

This is what Leo's clips are about. Nice story @Philip. I like your story on the ego.