Professor Claims Mystical Experiences are Delusions

[SQAAD]

@Jodistrict

4 minutes ago, Jodistrict said:

Look at how many years it took to convince Western science that meditation is real.   The pundit pretends to have knowledge of something he doesn't understand.   

That's a good point. We have a long way to go. 

[SQAAD]

@Carl-Richard

14 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

 Awakening is a mystical experience.

Everything is a mystical experience. But people are still pretending lol. 

[Carl-Richard]

10 minutes ago, Jodistrict said:

Look at how many years it took to convince Western science that meditation is real.   The pundit pretends to have knowledge of something he doesn't understand.   

Bro, almost all your posts are about poo-pooing "Western science". It's not all hyper-materialistic, logic boner stuff. Like I mentioned earlier, W. James and A. Maslow pretty much hit the bullseye ~100 years ago  

[Jodistrict]

26 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Bro, almost all your posts are about poo-pooing "Western science". It's not all hyper-materialistic, logic boner stuff. Like I mentioned earlier, W. James and A. Maslow pretty much hit the bullseye ~100 years ago  

26 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Bro, almost all your posts are about poo-pooing "Western science". It's not all hyper-materialistic, logic boner stuff. Like I mentioned earlier, W. James and A. Maslow pretty much hit the bullseye ~100 years ago  

100 years ago Freud was experimenting with cocaine while indigenous tribes were using powerful psychedelics. 

[Carl-Richard]

Just now, Jodistrict said:

while indigenous tribes were using powerful psychedelics. 

and depending on the tribe, sacrificing humans in the process  

[SQAAD]

@Carl-Richard

2 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

This is called the constructivist view of mysticism, and it's completely inconsistent imo. For one thing, it doesn't explain spontaneous awakenings like Eckhart Tolle.

I don't know if this can hold true for Eckhart.

I've read his biography few months ago. One of the first books he was given at the age of 14-15 as a present, was a mysticism book by Meister Eckhart I believe. 

And this is where his name came from as a tribute to Meister Eckhart. 

Edited April 2, 2022 by SQAAD

[Carl-Richard]

31 minutes ago, SQAAD said:

@Carl-Richard

I don't know if this can hold true for Eckhart.

I've read his biography few months ago. One of the first books he was given at the age of 14-15 as a present, was a mystical book by Meister Eckhart I believe. 

And this is where his name came from. 

There is this woman who's name escapes me but which Rick from BATGAP often mentions in many of his interviews. She awoke at a bus stop with zero preconceived notions of what was happening to her, and she spent years trying to figure it out.

Of course a mild constructivism (that thought has some effect) is always the case, because things like self-inquiry or mantra meditation work that way, but to say that thought itself is the primary factor for causing the experience is completely inconsistent. To accept the constructivist view, you cannot have had a mystical experience yourself, because then you would know without a doubt that experience comes prior to thought. I mean, the god damn state in itself is a thought-free state.

Besides, even if we fully grant the constructivist view, this doesn't detract anything from the positive aspects of the experience. It's well-known in the literature that having a mystical experience will generally lead to increased functionality (relative to a society's standard of reality), which conflicts with calling it a delusion (a pathology).

[Gesundheit2]

I've experienced awakenings both before and after learning about enlightenment conceptually. In both cases, I didn't have any clue when it was happening. I didn't know it was God or no-self or anything like that, it was all just me. I was mostly lost in the experience and really only knew it was the same thing that people fuss about after someone told me that it is. Now I'm even remembering religious experiences when I was practicing hardcore Islam at 15 years old or something that I didn't notice until very recently that it was awakening. Words cannot really describe the experience, not because it's extraordinary per se, but mostly because the reference is not there to begin with, the context is just missing despite the pointers. So in my experience, experience is prior to thoughts, even though thoughts can hijack, color, and/or shape experience sometimes. An interesting thing happens after building a spiritual ego is that the experiences become, I don't know, but let's say polluted with ego. It's really not the same when you're trying to give labels to whatever you're experiencing, as opposed to being completely immersed within the experience. It's just not as potent, let's say. But probably there are pros and cons to each. I think in my case, it's because the traditional practices shift/build awareness gradually over the course of weeks and months, so the clear/sudden contrast that psychedelics create is missing, so it becomes hard to distinguish an awakened state from the ordinary state.

Edited April 2, 2022 by Gesundheit2

[Girzo]

1 hour ago, SQAAD said:

Most scientists are very closed minded. They almost all subscribe to materialism. 

Maybe, but they are quite good at drawing the line between their personal beliefs and knowledge grounded in data.

The scientists that actually tackle problems of consciousness and metaphysics in their work are not that heavily skewed towards materialism as the rest. It's the decade 2020, the scientists are not the same as they were 10 years ago. Academia evolves quickly like the rest of society.

[Girzo]

45 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

There is this woman whose name escapes me but which Rick from BATGAP often mentions in many of his interviews. She awoke at a bus stop with zero preconceived notions of what was happening to her, and she spent years trying to figure it out.

She did a lot of Transcendental Meditation (TM) in a rather hardcore manner like 6 hours a day for prolonged periods of time.

 

Source: "Collision with the infinite", Suzanne Segal is her name.

[SQAAD]

@Carl-Richard

57 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

There is this woman who's name escapes me but which Rick from BATGAP often mentions in many of his interviews. She awoke at a bus stop with zero preconceived notions of what was happening to her, and she spent years trying to figure it out.

Of course a mild constructivism (that thought has some effect) is always the case, because things like self-inquiry or mantra meditation work that way, but to say that thought itself is the primary factor for causing the experience is completely inconsistent. To accept the constructivist view, you cannot have had a mystical experience yourself, because then you would know without a doubt that experience comes prior to thought. I mean, the god damn state in itself is a thought-free state.

Besides, even if we fully grant the constructivist view, this doesn't detract anything from the positive aspects of the experience. It's well-known in the literature that having a mystical experience will generally lead to increased functionality (relative to a society's standard of reality), which conflicts with calling it a delusion (a pathology).

I am not buying this contructive notion. 

When you take a psychedelic and everything becomes non dual that has nothing to do with constructiveness. 

If I give my mother a good dose of psychedelics she will lose all sense of self and she has no idea about these things. This constructive view is just a lazy materalist's way of understanding the mystical. 

Freud was not a man enough or open minded enough to accept that he had no clue what mysticism is about. Instead he chose to explain away the mystical like its a childlike regression. This is laughable. That's why I respect Carl Jung much more. He was more humble and more intelligent about mysticism. 

Also I would like to add that this constructive view applies perfectly to materialism. People have literally been brainwashed to believe in an external independent physical world. It applies more to materialism that mysticism. 

Many scientists hold more beliefs that warp their perception than a serious spiritual practitioner who is grounded in direct experience. That is the irony. 

 

Edited April 2, 2022 by SQAAD

[SQAAD]

@Girzo

28 minutes ago, Girzo said:

Maybe, but they are quite good at drawing the line between their personal beliefs and knowledge grounded in data.

The scientists that actually tackle problems of consciousness and metaphysics in their work are not that heavily skewed towards materialism as the rest. It's the decade 2020, the scientists are not the same as they were 10 years ago. Academia evolves quickly like the rest of society.

Still materialism is running the show. Consciousness is considered as a product of the brain. That's the consensus so far. 

Most scientists are pretty closed minded relative to my standards. Certainly they are more open minded than an ISIS terrorist. 

Generally peoples metaphysics don't change much. How frequently do you see hardcore scientists becoming mystics? Almost never lol. 

Also one way scientific people are closed minded is that they hold tightly to their notions of evidence. If you tell the average scientist that everything is one, he will demand evidence. 

If you tell him about your experiences he will laugh at you. He will ridicule you..How open minded is that? He won't even attempt to take you seriously lol.

Until more scientists begin having awakening experiences, this situation won't change much. 

Edited April 2, 2022 by SQAAD

[Loving Radiance]

3 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

There is this woman who's name escapes me but which Rick from BATGAP often mentions in many of his interviews. She awoke at a bus stop with zero preconceived notions of what was happening to her, and she spent years trying to figure it out.

Was it the woman who did transcendental meditation, then stopped and then awoke a few years later? I think the moral of the story was that it's always good to ground the practice in theory (which also includes enlightenment).

@Girzo Oh, I didn't know that she was this hard core.

Edited April 2, 2022 by Loving Radiance

[Epikur]

One should respect his opinion because he is God

[BuddhistLover]

Yeah the ideas of toxic people and idiots will lodge in your mind and cause problems down the road. Need to cut them out for your own health.

[Brivido]

17 hours ago, SQAAD said:

"Similar to the narcissist's shared fantasy, mystical experiences and religions founded on these experiences are delusional regressions to an infantile phase prior to separation-individuation from god/cosmos/nature and merger/fusion/oceanic feeling/enmeshment/engulfment (no self-object or object representations)."

Textbook example of the pre/trans fallacy.

 

[Carl-Richard]

56 minutes ago, Brivido said:

Textbook example of the pre/trans fallacy.

Why do you think that?

[Brivido]

9 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Why do you think that?

Because the quote of this professor is reducing mystical experiences, which are post-rational, to pre-rational l states of consciousness aka the pre/trans fallacy, a common fallacy committed by people that are at the rational state of development.

If you believe that rationality is the highest point of human development, you fall in the trap of believing that everything that is non-rational must be pre-rational, which obviously it's not the case.

It's explained it the video that I have attached by Wilber. 

Edited April 3, 2022 by Brivido
Misspelling

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, Brivido said:

Because the quote of this professor is reducing mystical experiences, which are post-rational, to pre-rational l states of consciousness aka the pre/trans fallacy, a common fallacy committed by people that are at the rational state of development.

Mystical experiences are neither inherently pre- nor post-rational. Pre- and post-rationality are different value systems or levels of cognition, and mystics throughout history have had different values, but the core of the pre-perceptual mystical experience (the non-dual experience) has stayed the same.

[RMQualtrough]

It's funny because you know, and you think there's another conscious being you are imbuing with that knowledge/trying to show them why they're wrong. But you know and there's only you, so you don't have anybody to convince lmao.