The self-indulgence of spiritual work

[VeganAwake]

Meanwhile the grass is growing, and the birds are happily flying around.

 

[Cosmin_Visan]

@Origins Yes, I clearly agree with your points. And to add myself some points. I'm pretty much sure that if I were to take psychedelics, and one day I will, I will be able to express those experiences in words and connect them with my current understanding of consciousness. The reason why I believe people that take psychedelics are unable to express their experiences is because they have no prior philosophical interest in consciousness. It might even be the case that 99% of users have no such philosophical interests. They just have the experiences and are baffled by what they experience and they forever remain baffled. But for someone with a deep philosophical interest in the problem, I'm having for example almost a decade of thinking and writing professionally about these issues, the experiences that I will have on psychedelics will naturally fall in their place in my overall prior understanding of consciousness. For example, through reason alone (together with normal life qualia, of course), one can get to the conclusion that at the base of consciousness is an entity that I call self-reference with contradictory properties like being both form and formless and neither form nor formless, or being no-thing and every-thing both at the same time. (I talk about this in depth, for example in "On the Phenomenon of Unification": https://philpeople.org/profiles/cosmin-visan ). So reason is able to discover these paradoxical aspects of reality. You don't need psychedelics for this. So when I will use psychedelics, I am pretty sure that all those talks about infinity, will just fit perfectly with my understanding of self-reference. No big deal. But for the 99% of people who take them but are not further interested in making sense of them rationally, of course they will say that they are beyond words. No, they are not. Is just them that don't pursue the issues deeper to find ways to express them rationally.

Edited November 19, 2020 by Cosmin_Visan

[Origins]

@Cosmin_Visan Yeah its a great point, its like talking about someone who loves cars but doesn't know much about the mechanics of it. Albeit with different psychological ramifications with this driving world view, identity structure, relations with others, etc. Once you understand the nature of the beast dissonance ceases and its easier to just let people be unless you can clearly see the worldview is causing them problems in which case maybe an intervention is necessary but still most of the time, at least what I've found, intervention outside of ones immediate social reference frame is certainly not a good idea however opinion, understanding and mild (or more who knows what the right intuition is all the time) direction generally suffice if anything is necessary there. People like us can have a meta-discussion about it to add to one another's reference frames but that's about all we can do, its kind of like two mechanics get together and they say, "do you know about these car enthusiasts saying x, y, z about the Ferrari? I mean c'mon what's going on here they won't see this, this and this", and the other mechanic just aids the other mechanics in validating his own perspective "just let them go, who knows, maybe they'll try it on the Ferrari and the Ferrari will break down and they'll learn their lesson or they'll forget what they were even thinking about and wonder off onto the next subject in 5 minutes time", and the other mechanic goes, "thanks, its good to see I'm not the only one. It's like some of these people think just because they've driven a Ferrari, have sat in a Ferrari or even have just seen another person drive a Ferrari now all of a sudden they know about Ferrari's and what Ferrari's mean in terms of describing the rest of the vehicle industry." and the second mechanic goes, "yeah I know. I get it." 

It helps to have someone else in the classroom pointing out the same problem otherwise, well, at least I know I'm not this guy haha peace out and I'll check out your link there thanks! I've always been a rebel, learning to round that out as I grow in wisdom:

 

 

[Origins]

@Cosmin_Visan I've just created this special potion in my home built science lab wanted to know if you would like to try it! It doesn't make you smarter per se, it doesn't improve any of your senses but its going to contribute to you believing that:

(1) you're God (eventually, so just keep on taking my potion and everything I say about it!!!)
(2) all of reality is simply a dream and that none of this is actually happening
(3) all of reality is one (supposedly)
(4) will make you completely selfless (supposedly)
(5) oh and you'll also become more suggestible which means if you perceive me as an authority you're even more likely than before to believe what I believe if you haven't staged an intervention on your critical thinking and self ownership prowess after taking it.

Sounds pretty cool, right? Nothing suss? Nothing to worry about? No negative implications of the above and Totally and Absolutely True as a byproduct, that's the natural automatic sensible inference, right?

Obviously not.

But when I put at the bottom of the bottle it also aids people with PTSD, CPTSD, depression and so on because it has some properties within it that facilitate certain forms of neuroplastic potential, all of a sudden it becomes that much more interesting, doesn't it? That much easier to see negatives as positives and positives as even more positive, right?

Drink my potion, drink my potion, drink my potion! YES THE DISCUSSION IS SO THOROUGH! ELEPHANTS EVERYWHERE! LARGER ELEPHANT LARGER AND LARGER AND LARGER! GO!

DRINK! MORE AND MORE AND MORE AND MORE! DRINK! GULP!

Edited November 20, 2020 by Origins

[Cosmin_Visan]

@Origins Funny post. :)) But if you mentioned all those effects of your potion, I think is appropriate to bring my own understanding of these issues, in order to further show that reason alone is enough to get you to those conclusions. I will talk about the first effect. I also believe that I am God. And the reason is as follow: even though 2 consciousnesses might experience a different shade of red, both of them experience the same "I am". And this is true for all the consciousnesses in the world. Even an animal experiences the same "I am". Therefore, all the consciousnesses in the world are manifestations of the same "I am", which can be taken to be God. Therefore, I really am God. Of course, to not confuse here the Self with the ego. The Self is "I am", the ego is "I am John", so the ego is merely just another experience that the Self has. Next, one further property of the Self is that it is eternal. And this again can be understood by reason alone. And the reason is simple: the sentence "I exist"/"I am" is always true. If you don't believe me, try make it false if you can. So by reason we also conclude that the Self is eternal. I talk about this in details in my paper "I Exist" and even more profoundly in "The Self-Referential Aspect of Consciousness".

Given the fact that these conclusions can be reached by reason, then I think that the fact that another way reveals them as well (by taking psychedelics), this might be an indication that psychedelics are not merely creating a hallucination that I am God, but there must be more to them than that. So if we reject the hallucination hypothesis, then how else can we explain the fact that psychedelics reveal that I am God ? I think even the alternative explanation to hallucination is trivial. As I said in a previous post, what I believe psychedelics to do is to dissociate consciousness. And when you strip consciousness of its various higher level qualia, you will eventually be left with the primordial "I am". This one you cannot strip it any further because it is eternal. So getting to the pure "I am", it will probably feel godly or something. And by its very way of feeling it will communicate its properties, like eternity, love, lack of time etc. So, as we can see, psychedelics experience can be explained rationally. Again, no bid deal. And if you ask why feel like love, this is again explainable rationally: if you get rid of all the higher level qualia, then what else are you gonna feel but love ? You have no worries left, not even time (time itself being just a quale), so you're not worring about what future might bring, etc. So with all this baggage gone, what will be left will be love. Explanation given again by reason alone.

If any of the psychedelics users don't agree with me, I invite them once again to point to me exactly what I am being wrong about. Nevertheless, even if I will take psychedelics in 5 years time, I will remember to come back to these topics and to confess my mistakes in case my current interpretations were wrong. But until then, I'm waiting for you to tell me if I am wrong or not, and precisely where I am wrong.

[Adamq8]

@Cosmin_Visan I agree with you on the points, tho im not so sure about the dissociate state of conciousness,  it might be, like returning to ur primordial state and you might see how Mind works and how creation can arise, and what conciousness is, god is the best word to use, but people do get this insights without psychedelics aswell, just that on psychedelics ur rigid mind gets lubricated and you see the potential conciousness holds within it.

But like people who experience such radical experiences and goes through really profound stuff, there is people who have experienced other forms of conciousness on psychedelics and so forth, but somehow I feel that IAM is the first thing in existence or is existence itself and then conciousness somehow uses energy to create patterns that ur mind takes in and makes the world more consistent and rigid, but when mind changes the world changes as well, and conciousness can recognize its own true nature.

You can wake up and recognize ur true nature without a psychedelics,  tho I feel that psychedelics can show you very different states of conciousness then waking dreaming and sleeping.

[Breakingthewall]

@Cosmin_Visan interesting approach from the rational. one question: what do you think about the mystique? is it an experience created by the mind, or is it, say, supramental? I would recommend the book "wild mystique" by hulin, totally rational and empirical approach. Let's say that mysticism is real, or at least it is a recurring human experience, with great points in common, independent of the cultural framework and that escapes the rational. psychedelics, especially the 5 meo dmt induce a typical mystical experience. it is evident that they do not add anything, but subtract. they lower the activity of the frontal lobe, responsible for the self, until they soften the ego sufficiently so that the mystical experience penetrates the consciousness of the one who has consumed it. It is also recurrent in psychedelic users to say that the experience cannot be translated into words. the same is true of the natural mystical experience. the timelessness and the absolute are perceived but the logic forgets them, you can make an approximate outline of what you have perceived, but the more you try to capture the essence of the experience, the more it slips, until there is a shadow of the original. That's why the philosophers or the extra rational minds are have more difficulty to get that kind of experiences than more simple spirits

[Cosmin_Visan]

On 11/20/2020 at 2:53 PM, Breakingthewall said:

@Cosmin_Visan interesting approach from the rational. one question: what do you think about the mystique?

What is the mystique ?

[Breakingthewall]

6 hours ago, Cosmin_Visan said:

What is the mystique ?

All that exist is mistic, but as we are talking since a "scientific" perspective, I meant the experience that is beyond the "I", the perceptions who comes when the ego, or the thought stops

[TripleFly]

Because consciousness is reality, it's real.

Philosophy is literal. It's mental, it's vocabulary. It's words.

But how can words ever do justice to how real it gets? What's it? It is the mystical, what came before words. 'It', is the the idea or creative power that comes before the idea is even brought down into words. 'It' is the connection that is felt between two lovers before they even properly shared a conversation, it's elusive and escapes your mind, because your mind can only understand in words and pictures and that's the 3D world we believe we live in. But there's more, you know there is more. It's also the deep longing that we all have, the stomach that is also munchy for more food, the mind that is never quite satisfied and the heart that is ever yearning...

 

 We are mental beings, inside a physical reality, that is yearning for the transcended.

 

Most of these philosopher's and mystics and poets are talking about it! But for us, the crowd, we are only touched on the level of feeling, as in we know that there is more to it, so we love, but we can't quite get our hands on it like the writer does. 

[Nahm]

On 11/17/2020 at 4:48 AM, Cosmin_Visan said:

I see people interested in spirituality only repeating a handful of ideas, like: consciousness is all there is, world is an illusion, time doesn't exist, we are God, etc. And that's pretty much all they say and they seem satisfied with these few ideas.

Why do they stop there ?

Nobody stopped nowhere.Your ideas of consciousness(es) are actually ideas, and that idea that an idea is other than an idea, is the illusion. Nonduality points to ‘not two’, you and consciousness, or consciousnesses. 

Quote

There are millions of philosophy pages written by thousands of philosophers that really do deep work into such problems.

Precisely because there is only consciousness (not two) there is no such thing as a problem. If you say there is, you create that experience, as you are the creator of the reality you’re studying. When one finger of self-indulgence points, there are three pointing back, yet noticed. 

Quote

Why nobody read those philosophers and instead become self-satisfied with just a handful of flower-power sounding ideas ?

You haven’t yet recognized the distinction between your finite ideas and infinity, or, consciousness. This is like thinking about what hot chocolate tastes like, and in believing the thoughts, believing something is known about hot chocolate, when the thoughts are known, and the hot chocolate is not experienced. This is not the direct experience, or taste of, hot chocolate. A million pages on the hot chocolateses never amount to even a wiff of the actuality. Quantum mechanics, general & special relativity have always been unified btw. Only ignore-ance appears to separate. 

[Cosmin_Visan]

2 hours ago, Nahm said:

Nobody stopped nowhere.

Then I'm waiting for you to show us how you deduce physics from consciousness. Until then, I will ignore your flower-power post.

[Cosmin_Visan]

3 hours ago, TripleFly said:

Because consciousness is reality, it's real.

Philosophy is literal. It's mental, it's vocabulary. It's words.

So based on your post, animals are more evolved than philosophers, since they don't use words.

[Nahm]

44 minutes ago, Cosmin_Visan said:

Then I'm waiting for you to show us how you deduce physics from consciousness. Until then, I will ignore your flower-power post.

There’s no “ I “, sans a thought that there is. Same for physics. It’s that it’s simplistic / self-evident...infinite can not know finite. Without deflection, projection, & ignore-ance, which you’re free to employ, it starts becoming rather obvious. 

[73809]

@Adamq8 it’s all belief. All knowledge is belief, faith. The only truth is the present moment, the now. And you veil it in delusions!

See that you believe in nonduality, you “know” it just like you used to “know” your fictitious self.

 All I’ve said here is belief. Can you not see that? There could be a separate reality. It’s possible nonduality is nothing but mental masturbation! 

[Adamq8]

2 minutes ago, 73809 said:

@Adamq8 it’s all belief. All knowledge is belief, faith. The only truth is the present moment, the now. And you veil it in delusions!

See that you believe in nonduality, you “know” it just like you used to “know” your fictitious self.

 All I’ve said here is belief. Can you not see that? There could be a separate reality. It’s possible nonduality is nothing but mental masturbation! 

You are throwing around words and sceptisism for what? Investigate ur own experience and wake up to the fact that conciousness is all that there is.

This is as direct as it can ever be.

God conciousness is a real thing. 

I dont believe in anything but my own experiences and not some fancy story about anything. 

 

Awareness is all that there is.

Do the work that people have outlined for you and see if its true. 

[Byun Sean]

@Cosmin_Visan

 A lot of people need to awaken to consciousness first and then they will be so fulfilled and happy with

their lives that they will be motivated to study all the other perspectives and philosophies to help bring more value to the table to help awaken others.

 

The cool thing about consciousness is you don't have to solve it in your head. You are conscious right now. But you might not be conscious

of what consciousness is. 

We can use certain philosophies and theories to help build maps and ideas in our head to help guide us, but the map is never the territory.

Even so there are so many degrees and levels of consciousness and awakening its utterly mindblowing. 

 

So yeah, by all means, study hundreds of perspectives. There is great use in that.

But what use is the philosophy if it just stays an idea and you

don't test it out for yourself in real life?

And you can also realize that you are consciousness now and save yourself a lifetime of waffling through different philosophies and worldviews in search of 

Truth, Love, and Happiness.

 

[73809]

26 minutes ago, Adamq8 said:

I dont believe in anything but my own experiences and not some fancy story about anything. 

Do you now ? Truth is in the present moment only and once it’s gone it’s only memory. You tell a story about direct experience and then say you aren’t believing in it !

Edited November 24, 2020 by 73809

[73809]

On 11/17/2020 at 4:48 AM, Cosmin_Visan said:

. And that's pretty much all they say and they seem satisfied with these few ideas. Why do they stop there ? There are millions of philosophy pages written by thousands of philosophers that really do deep work into such problems. Why nobody read those philosophers and instead become self-satisfied with just a handful of flower-power sounding ideas ?

What kind of philosophical teachings are you talking about? 

[73809]

On 11/18/2020 at 3:55 AM, Cosmin_Visan said:

It doesn't work to say "individuality is just an illusion". Yeah, ok, but you still need to explain that illusion. And even the word "illusion" is unfit, since from each individual consciousness point of view, she is an independent entity, she's real, so is not even an illusion.

An illusion is something that appears to present reality a certain way, but in the end it is appearance.

Hopefully I posted the image correctly. It is two triangles over top of each other, but actually that is only illusion. There is lines that outline what would be the triangles, but there is no real triangle, no three sides complete.

 

 The illusion is what appears to be there but is not really there. that is how illusion works. 
 

 

sorry if I’m telling you something you already get

Edited November 24, 2020 by 73809