Leo's Blog: Infinite Insights — Page 115

I see many rationalist, pragmatic, skeptic, and scientifically-minded people misunderstanding the origin of the phenomena of worship. They tend to see it as a hoax or a con perpetrated by shysters and demagogues on small-minded folk who haven't learned enough critical thinking skills. But that's not true worship.

Yes, there is that silly form of worship, such as maybe worshiping the Pope. People worship the Pope without even knowing what the guy did or why he's Pope. He could be an elitist asshole and people would still bow to him. This is false worship. Needless to say it's neurotic, dangerous, and small-minded. This kind of worship is easy to denounce for scientifically-minded people.

But if you're really curious about reality, you gotta wonder, "Where did the idea for worshiping the Pope come from? Is it just a complete fabrication? Or could it be an imitation? And if so, an imitation of what? Why would any commonsense person worship another? Is it really just because they are simple-minded?"

Turns out there is such a thing as TRUE worship — it just gets conveniently ignored because it requires a certain rare kind of experience in order to appreciate. True worship happens when you are in the presence of a truly masterful human being, and you have the requisite awareness and knowledge base to actually fathom the depth of his mastery. So advanced is his mastery that from your point of view, it is inhuman. It is incredible. It is impossible. So advanced is his mastery, it strikes you with awe like a sledgehammer. It's a physical experience of awe. This is real worship, and you can experience it if you go deep enough in this work.

The deepest field of human mastery — by a long shot — is not business, or military, or art, or science, or sports. It's self-mastery and consciousness-mastery. How can I make such a bold claim? Because mastery of the self is the most emotionally laborious and trickiest endeavor possible for a human being. Just try it! Everything else is easy by comparison. A human being who has thoroughly mastered himself cannot help but evoke awe (or anger) in those who come in contact with him. Because he's like a totally different class of human being (while at the same time not really above anyone). Here is a guy who has accomplished something that you never imagined possible. Here is a guy who has accomplished something that you personally KNOW is amazing, because deep down inside you know how little control you have over yourself.

And that's the true origin of religious worship. Mystics — the guys who were the seeds of every serious religion — were such people. They mastered themselves so thoroughly that even 3000 years ago, before books, newspapers, radio, TV, advertising, and social media, they were able to amass huge followings — not through false promises and gimmickry as "skeptics" like to believe — but by evoking genuine awe. An awe which was deserved.

Mystics were the original Purple Cows!

This is a phenomena that you can still experience for yourself today. There are people alive right now whose self-mastery is so deep that should you meet them face-to-face, you will be genuinely awed and humbled.

Sound far-fetched? I dare you to put your own skepticism to the test!

But be warned, a true worship experience will not reveal itself to "skeptics", cynics, dabblers, and smart-asses. This isn't college philosophy or debate class. You must first put some skin in the game. Only after years of your own pitiful meditation or self-help efforts will you be in a position to fully appreciate the achievements of a master. You don't even have enough experience yet to realize just how deep this deepest field of human mastery goes. It would make you dizzy and ill to your stomach to find out all at once. Which is why it's so easy for people to play the skeptic.

Only when the student is serious, will the master be revealed.

The song that I originally wanted to use for the Gallery of Absolute Infinity, but couldn't due to copyright:

People sometimes comment, "But Leo! What more is there beyond enlightenment?"

E-fucking-cology!

Ecology is a big theme I will push in the future. You cannot keep living as though you are the only consciousness on this planet. There is a much bigger game to be played. Every decent human being will be required to think and act ecologically in the future. Ego is inversely proportional to ecology.

If you cannot be ecological, there is no kensho.

I love thinking about the science vs religion debate, because it's so absurd. As it turns out, No-God is the exact same thing as God! But good luck convincing a dogmatic atheist or theist of that.

Atheists like to think they are epistemicly superior to theists, but this is just ignorance. Atheism is just another flavor of theism.

I drew a little diagram of how atheism and theism go full-circle. Here's how the whole game works:

Imagine you as a point located somewhere on the perimeter of this circle, free to move around clockwise or counter-clockwise.

Think of the atheist position (No God) as one pole of a circle whose other pole is the theist position (God).

Of course, both poles think they're right, both poles think they're fundamentally distinct, and both poles think they know what they're talking about. But in reality neither one does. Atheists don't understand nothingness or God, and neither do theists. So what they do is move upward into ego, which leads to firm position-taking and ultimately a clash. This is the lazy default position of the mind. This is what happens when one doesn't understand epistemology or psychology. Both sides are equally wrong because both sides aren't aware of the game they're playing. They actually believe they've got it right!!! But as they engage in this behavior, they move ever further away from the truth that God is Nothingness.

Now, if the mind happens to turn inward, that's where we get real progress. As ego is shed, the gap between No God and God becomes ever smaller, until finally God becomes Nothingness. Nothingness IS God! Quite literally. And once you grasp that, the entire dynamic is suddenly revealed for the illusory ego-game that it was.

This is what every great mystic and enlightenment being has discovered.

Do you have the wisdom to turn inward? Or will you continue being a child, insisting that peanut butter is better than jelly?

Note: it's would be a big mistake to interpret what I'm saying as mere relativism, or splitting-the-difference, or averaging the two perspectives out of political correctness or desire for common ground. NO! I'm talking about ACTUALLY discovering that God is Nothingness!

Truly!

Seriously!

Honestly!

Like... For REAL!

The best way to hide a thing, is in plain sight.

I love examples of how something can be hidden in plain sight. A sleight of hand so obvious, you smile when you see it. Nowhere does this apply more than with spirituality.

When people first start to learn about spirituality they tend to fall into one of two traps:

• Spirituality is just a bunch of fairy tale wishful thinking
• Spirituality is some exotic set of otherworldly experiences

In both cases, nothing could be further from the case. Spirituality is about becoming conscious of reality exactly as it is, but at a deeper dimension. In Zen, they like to say: Nothing is hidden.

What rationalists and "skeptics" who poo-poo spirituality don't understand is just how significant a simple shift in perspective can be. Nothing has to change about the facts on the ground, so to speak. All that needs to change is your perspective and your entire world flips upside down. But this is the pity of materialistic thinking. It's mesmerized by the gross, superficial dimension of reality. People who are used to thinking in materialistic ways expect spirituality to be a gross, materialistic sort of thing. As though if the facts on the ground don't change, it doesn't matter. That's the huge oversight! Spirituality is SUBTLE! It's seamlessly interleaved into the gross. Like a beautiful chameleon in the rainforest, lost on the tourist.

To illustrate this point, take a look at these stereograms. Cross your eyes as you stare at them to spot the hidden object inside.

Did you see it?

Notice that none of the facts changed, but the shift in perspective you experienced was very significant and real. It's like you discovered a new dimension to reality. And it was right there the whole time! Hidden, but not really hidden.

What if — right now — there was something equally obvious about your perception of reality that's been hidden in plain sight your whole life? What if people have been pointing to it for 2,000 years, but you've kept saying, "You must be crazy! There's nothing there to see."

Enlightenment is like that. It's a shift in perspective, not a change in personality or behavior, as people often confuse. The lesson here is never to underestimate just how significant a "mere" shift in perspective can be. Perspective is everything.

Distillation of alcohol wasn't invented until the 12th century, in southern Italy.

Without distillation, there's no high-proof alcohol. No vodka, no rum, no whiskey, no scotch, no tequila, nor gin. The most you can get through basic fermentation techniques is 15% alcohol content. Not strong stuff.

But the ancient Greeks and Romans tell stories of how their wine was so strong it could drive a grown man to madness, or even death from over-consumption.

But how is this possible? Especially given that the ancient Greeks and Romans diluted their wine heavily with water?

Maybe those were just tall-tales?

Maybe not!

Turns out that the Greco-Roman notion of "wine" was a lot more than just fermented grape juice. Their wine was infused with various exotic psychoactive herbs, including things like mandrake, henbane, datura, belladona, and psilocybin mushrooms! Alcohol was probably far from the main active ingredient. Ancient wine was more like liquid mushrooms! No wonder it could drive people to madness.

Just goes to show, A) how pussified modern culture is, B) how careful we have to be about defining our terms, and C) how careful we have to be about seeing the world through our limited cultural norms.

Wine ain't what it used to be. What the ancients lacked in technology, they made up for in spirit.

Credit: Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann, Carla Ruck — The Road to Eleusis

I want to suggest that you shoot yourself in the foot WAY MORE than you think.

I've spoken of this concept of "backfiring mechanisms" before in my previous videos. It's a really important feature of complex systems — like societies, or human beings.

But I want to bring this point home, because it can feel too abstract.

To help you become more aware of this, watch the following funny videos. But as you do, instead of just laughing away and calling those people dumbasses — like every other viewer does — I want you to reflect it back on yourself. Think of this as a metaphor for EXACTLY how your life functions! Bring to mind all the ways in which you experience psychological backfiring. Notice that the way your life functions isn't much different than what you see in the videos below.

But remember to stay aware as you watch!

It ain't as funny when it's your life.

To further clarify, the most important backfiring mechanisms are not material, physical, or external. Rather, they have to do with the inner workings of your mind:

Your modes of thinking, your emotional reactions, your fears, your motivations and values, your habitual patterns, your beliefs and justifications, your paradigms of reality, etc.

As a simple example, how might valuing sex or money or security backfire? As a more advanced example, how might valuing spirituality or enlightenment backfire?

As a general rule of thumb, once a system reaches sufficient complexity, the greatest danger to its survival becomes a backfiring of itself. A sort of collapsing under its own weight. Which is why to reach the greatest heights requires shedding egoic material, or purification to the point of nothingness or spirit. The word "spirit" connotes lightness of mechanism, and this is a good pointer of what you should be working towards. To be conscious, is to be able to see how a mechanism truly works, and its backfire potential.

Imagine you were designing a conscious robot. Notice that in the beginning, from the robot's "point of view", none of following exists:

• A sense of self
• A sense of other
• A sense of world
• A sense of space being 3-dimensional
• A sense of time
• A sense that there exists an "external" world out there, beyond the robot
• A sense of clearly delimited objects or "things"
• A sense of death
• A sense of meaning of any kind. No judgments of good, bad, healthy, unhealthy, right, wrong, pretty, ugly, etc.
• A sense of big vs small, up vs down, thin vs thick, etc.
• A sense of logic or rationality
• A sense of personal story or life narrative
• A sense of life at all
• A sense of vision
• A sense of feeling
• A sense of hearing
• A sense of location
• A point of view

The robot would have zero sense of any of this! Meaning... the most self-evident aspects of reality which we consider "essential" to how we understand reality, would be utterly absent.

There doesn't even exist a point of view!

In other words, all of these "essential" aspects are NOT as essential as we like to believe.

All of these things which we take as a given as humans, have to be constructed! They are not givens or fundamental aspects of reality AT ALL! They must be created. As for HOW are they created? Well... that's another matter. One that humanity isn't evolved enough yet to answer. It's reasonable to suspect that there are probably many different ways to create them, be it via a human body/mind organism, or a robot/cpu machine, or something entirely alien to our imagination. But the important point is to see that they were created. This means we cannot take them as absolutes, or indubitable or self-evident truths.

What would be it like if you regressed to the point of view of this robot, before anything about reality was a given?

Or, imagine how else the robot's basic map of reality might work. What if there are an infinite number of ways to "see" reality?

Imagine that 10,000 years from now humans create a robot who can see in 4-dimensions, has 3 totally new forms of perception currently unknown to us, and doesn't have a sense of location, or rationality, or clearly delimited "objects". Imagine what it would be like to be that robot! What kind of consciousness would it have? And what would that say about your notions of what reality is?

Best psychedelic substances worth exploring:

• 5-MeO-DMT
• Mushrooms
• LSD
• N,N-DMT
• MDMA
• Mescaline HCL
• 4-ACO-DMT
• DPT
• 2C-B
• 2C-E
• 4-HO-DPT
• 4-ACO-DPT
• AL-LAD
• ETH-LAD
• 4-HO-MiPT
• 5-MeO-MiPT
• 4-HO-DMT (Psilocin)
• 4-HO-MET
• Bufotinine (5-HO-DMT)
• Salvia

Questionable ones (due to addiction potential, overdose potential, or health risks):

• DXM, MXE
• Ketamine
• Nitrous Oxide
• Amanita Muscaria
• Datura (stay away!)
• Iboga (clinical use only)

Note: This doesn't mean I've tried all these and suggest you take them! No, this is merely a wishlist based on my research.

I briefly talked about this concept of a "meta-source" my latest video, but then I started to wonder: Isn't every source a meta-source? Isn't every source/teacher influenced by many sources itself?

This seems to be the case. But then what do I mean by meta-source?

While it's true that every source has been influenced by many sources itself, there is an important difference. Some sources actively pull from much more diverse sources than others. Some teachers have clearly gone out of their way to study and integrate 100s of very diverse, high quality meta sources, while others have not. Some teachers take on the attitude of seeking out diverse sources to broaden their base of knowledge and experience, whereas other teachers are more insular, sticking to a narrower range of material. And this makes a big difference. You can usually FEEL when a teacher is REALLY going out of his way to collect new sources, vs a teacher who is perfectly comfortable following whatever he already knows.

So what I mean by meta-source, is a source who values big-picture understanding and who recognizes the importance of seeking out 100s of very diverse sources, especially meta-sources. So in effect, when you learn from this kind of teacher, you're getting a synthesis of many meta-sources, because this guy has done what you're doing: he's synthesized many sources who have themselves synthesized many sources. So you're getting a meta-meta-source.

Now, does this make the meta-source error-proof? Certainly not. Treat the meta-source just like how you'd treat a regular source. Don't put too much blind faith in him. He is, after all, synthesizing all this information through his own cognitive filters. Those filters might greatly distort or dilute the original sources.

There is also a danger if you ONLY pull from meta-sources. Some teachings a very deep and technical. If you get a meta-source glossing it over for you, you'll miss the core of the teaching. So the ideal is to that you rely both on meta-sources, which will tend to be more generalist, and plain old sources, which will tend to be more specialist.

And of course, verify it all yourself through direct experience and filtering it through your intuition.

The key question for ideologues and rationalist arguers is this:

What are you doing to avoid the trap which everyone falls into, which is this: "I'm right, you're wrong"?

What are you doing epistemicly to avoid this trap?

Has it become obvious to you yet that everyone thinks they're right while thinking the other side is wrong?

Don't you see that this whole thing — from the meta-perspective — is just a game?

You're stuck playing the "I'm right! You're wrong!" game and you don't even realize it.

Wouldn't it be wiser to buck this trend and stop playing of the game altogether? Then you'd REALLY be different!

Can't you see that everyone who plays the game loses? Even when you "win" the game, you lose!

The most cliche thing every human being does is think he is right. If you can permanently disrupt this deep-seated habit of the mind, you will have succeeded in something remarkable. This is the only true way in epistemology. And the paradox is, in order to communicate it to you, I have to frame it as, "I'm right, you're wrong." But don't let that paradox throw you off. It actually proves the point. The heart of epistemology must always remain uncommunicated. Words can point the way, but you have to make that final leap to comprehension.

This one is tricky. Can you see what is being pointed it?