Collective Imagination

[BartekD]

Help me understand if what I experienced is true or atleast without any distortions and projections. 

I meditated for about 20 minutes to center myself, then took some shrooms and started to inquire. After exploring my mind for what seemed to be eternity and learning what it means to use the directing mind, I thought the shrooms were wearing off and my ego started to kick back in. I started to think about work and about how one my co-workers that I work with might not be cool with me because I don't talk to him as much or what not (just a thought). It then hit me, that this is just a thought, imagination. Its just imagination, and then it really hit me, oh FUCK its just imagination. The whole thing is imagination, none of this actually exists, I was watching every moment of reality "birthing" the next, it was like having constant orgasms but just watching reality unfold on itself, it was being imagined in real time and the whole time I was screaming OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD, there was nothing else that could come to mind it was unbelievable, and it just kept going. Again this felt like eternity and for eternity I was literally screaming OH MY GOD and having reality orgasms, every moment was totally unique in and of itself. The room I was in, it was empty, not "physically" but below it there was nothing, the foundation that its all built on is nothing, Literally. When I went from one room to the other, the first room I was in did not exist anymore. It was being imagined as I entered it. I literally kept going from the first room to the second watching how it was all being constructed or "birthed". This kept going deeper though, and here is where im starting to trip up and need to do more reflection, perhaps I did not go as deep as some of you but eventually I realized that we were all collectively imagining reality, in the same way that I did as an individual the collective is doing the same thing. 

Whats weird is the leap that was made from regular self-reflection and inquiring about life to the realization of how we are collectively imagining reality. Its like with each inquiry I was going +1 deeper, and then +1 more with the next inquiry and then with the realization that what im thinking about is just imagination I literally went from 0-100. 

[Osaid]

I think this is basically correct. It's important to keep yourself grounded in your direct experience of reality, especially after such trips. The ego often likes to project certain ideas, theories, or projections on top of the trip. Those can be a bit tricky to see. Be careful mixing in relative dualities with absolute truth.

3 hours ago, BartekD said:

perhaps I did not go as deep as some of you

I think you went pretty deep haha. This is a really good realization, multiple other realizations can stem from it.

3 hours ago, BartekD said:

The whole thing is imagination, none of this actually exists

Maybe you can ask yourself, what does it mean for something to exist? Is imagination less real than the rest of existence? Just some stuff to contemplate.

[BartekD]

49 minutes ago, Osaid said:

Be careful mixing in relative dualities with absolute truth.

This was the issue actually, and it appears like that's what popped me out of the trip, seems like shrooms x10 your inquiry. But if you inquire "incorrectly" or with your ego involved that itself will be x10 and pop you out. I think thats why initially I didnt feel much until I really started to actively contemplate. 

49 minutes ago, Osaid said:

Maybe you can ask yourself, what does it mean for something to exist?

I will continue to contemplate this, thank you. 

 

49 minutes ago, Osaid said:

Is imagination less real than the rest of existence?

Right now - and im sure ill change my opinion on this as I continue to contemplate the question but it seems like theyre both as "real" as it gets. I think what happened was that I was watching the process of imagination do its thing. Observing it create "reality" in order to create a static image, strangely it was terrifying yet universally orgasmic at the same time.

But yeah, it certainly felt as though none of it exists, but below it was nothing. The foundation was literally nothing. So is existance really nothing? Yet nothing has to be part of something because it itself is a thing 

Edited April 10, 2022 by BartekD

[Osaid]

20 minutes ago, BartekD said:

I will continue to contemplate this, thank you. 

Here's some questions that might make it easier to contemplate the first question: How do you know whether something exists or not? What's the difference between something that exists and something that doesn't exist? What's the criteria?

25 minutes ago, BartekD said:

This was the issue actually, and it appears like that's what popped me out of the trip, seems like shrooms x10 your inquiry. But if you inquire "incorrectly" or with your ego involved that itself will be x10 and pop you out. I think thats why initially I didnt feel much until I really started to actively contemplate. 

That's pretty interesting. So it basically multiplies how powerful your contemplations are, but that power can also be misused for egoic thoughts.

26 minutes ago, BartekD said:

But yeah, it certainly felt as though none of it exists, but below it was nothing. The foundation was literally nothing. So is existance really nothing? Yet nothing has to be part of something because it itself is a thing 

Well, it would be quite limiting if reality had some sort of substance behind itself. If it's made of nothing, then there's nothing to limit it. Not to mention, anything "below it" could only ever exist as imagination.

And no, nothingness isn't really a part of anything. Nothingness is infinite, not finite, so it actually doesn't fit within your finite criteria. Nothingness is part of nothing, and it exists. It's a paradox. You're trying to put something infinite into a finite criteria, so you're met with a paradox. You also can't imagine nothingness, because you can only imagine things in finitudes, and nothingness is infinite. 

Then there's also the problem of infinite transgression. If the big bang created everything, then what created the big bang, and what created the thing that made the big bang, and so on.

[BartekD]

2 hours ago, Osaid said:

That's pretty interesting. So it basically multiplies how powerful your contemplations are, but that power can also be misused for egoic thoughts.

Perhaps, it could be a number of things. The strain I took, my personality + biases etc. I  have only done shrooms about a dozen times so perhaps ill change my mind in the future (I probably sound like a broken record by now). But from observing my own mind it appears that you you can go very deep with the use of psychedelics but they in and of themselves will not guarantee that anything in particular will happen, probing reality still needs to actively happen and it might not happen on its own (although it could if that is naturally where you are at in life). For me - if there is a sense of my identity, if "I" exist then so do my biases and the conditioning that I have grown up with. And because the shrooms will x10 what im inquiring into, even if its a bias it will appear very deep and profound since the shrooms let me zoom in so much but really its just mental masturbation. And it might be true too, in a way that pushes you to improve yourself but still, there are distortions when trying to figure out what is true if the "I" exists. Whereas when I was at the state where I was imagining reality "I" didn't exist, so there was less distortion. But once I came back down, I fear I might have somewhat distorted what I saw/experienced afterwards.

 

2 hours ago, Osaid said:

And no, nothingness isn't really a part of anything. Nothingness is infinite, not finite, so it actually doesn't fit within your finite criteria. Nothingness is part of nothing, and it exists. It's a paradox. You're trying to put something infinite into a finite criteria, so you're met with a paradox. You also can't imagine nothingness, because you can only imagine things in finitudes, and nothingness is infinite. 

Then there's also the problem of infinite transgression. If the big bang created everything, then what created the big bang, and what created the thing that made the big bang, and so on.

Wow this is really good stuff, I appreciate you pointing this out. But help me understand this, if nothingness is part of nothing then nothing is itself something (but only in the relative) and that thing is infinite, which cant be imagined or categorized from a relative perspective (which is finite) then I agree it does create a paradox. So then what can you do to know what is true ? If we are finite in the relative space, and can only imagine finite do you then have to be nothing, or infinity/god to grasp what actually is true?  

Edited April 10, 2022 by BartekD

[Osaid]

19 minutes ago, BartekD said:

So then what can you do to know what is true ? If we are finite in the relative space, and can only imagine finite do you then have to be nothing, or infinity/god to grasp what actually is true?  

The good thing is that your direct experience isn't finite, unlike your imagination. You can experience things that aren't finite, which is actually happening right now, even if you're imagining that you aren't. Experiencing nothingness is not really a problem. You can experience it to know what is true. You know it's true cause you experienced it. You basically have two ways of understanding things: direct experience and imagination. If you want to really understand nothingness, experience is your best option. Then afterwards, maybe you can imagine certain words or ideas that point to the experience of nothingness, but aren't actually the experience itself. Using words and concepts isn't entirely bad, it might help someone reach the experience, or map it out for practical relative use. But of course, words and ideas are just pointers, not the actual experience itself. 

I can actually tap into the fact that I am experiencing nothingness right now, to a certain degree. And that as a result, I am also infinite. I'm able to very easily recontextualize my current experience, because of my previous experience of nothingness. It made the implications of nothingness and how it interacts with life very clear to me. I just have to look at my current experience and convert it to imagination/words.

41 minutes ago, BartekD said:

If we are finite in the relative space, and can only imagine finite do you then have to be nothing, or infinity/god to grasp what actually is true?  

In a sense, yeah. In order to be nothing you have to be conscious that you are nothing. If you're not conscious of it, then it basically doesn't exist. You are nothingness, to a certain degree, right now. And also as a result of that, you're also infinite, right now. The question is whether you're conscious of it or not, similar to how you became conscious of how everything is being imagined, when previously you weren't conscious of it at all even though it was already the case.

[michaelcycle00]

How does “fuck it’s just imagination” help your case though? Isn’t your co-worker still there disliking you? Like it still actually exists it’s just that the whole thing is sustained and made out of nothingness I guess primarily you could say. 

[BartekD]

12 minutes ago, michaelcycle00 said:

How does “fuck it’s just imagination” help your case though? Isn’t your co-worker still there disliking you? Like it still actually exists it’s just that the whole thing is sustained and made out of nothingness I guess primarily you could say. 

That was just a thought, it isn't necessarily true. If you observe your mind you will see that alot of BS just pops up randomly and then you let it go. Weather my co worker likes me or not doesn't actually matter. When I realized it was imagination, in that moment  I went from the relative to the absolute. I don't know why but there was a leap of consciousness I went from 0-1. I became conscious how reality was being imagined. This is why it was so fucking weird. 

In my previous experience with psychedelics things usually ramp up and there is a peak period and then you drop off (a somewhat linear fashion) This time stuff was happening but it was mild and then out of the inquiry of that thought I went balls to the wall

Edited April 11, 2022 by BartekD