Leo's Blog: Infinite Insights — Page 3
Drum-roll.......................
There are lots of places online to find quotes. But many of them are shallow, not comprehensive, glutted with quotes from airhead celebrities, and require tons of clicking. WikiQuote categorizes quotes by person & topic, and contains in-depth, non-mainstream quotes in long, easy-to-browse lists. It's a remarkable resource.
For example:
- Albert Einstein
- Terence McKenna
- Benjamin Frankin
- Pablo Picasso
- Richard Feynman
- Lao Tzu
- Leonardo Da Vinci
- Baruch Spinoza
- Michelangelo
- Topic: Infinity
- Topic: Consciousness
- Topic: Art
- Topic: Reason
- Topic: Success
- Topic: Science
The aspiring sage or writer can find lots of amazing stuff on WikiQuote.
The reason you're trying to get more money, more sex, more knowledge, more love, more power, more fame, more pleasure, etc, and you can't seem to get enough, no matter how much you get, is because deep down what you really want is to be infinite. You want an infinite expansion. It's as though deep down your consciousness realizes that infinity is the goal. But you're trying to accomplish the infinite through the finite, which will never work. You are like a fly trapped in a windowpane.
Your entire life has been one stifled infinite expansion.
Tripped balls for 8 hrs; fathomed unspeakable secrets of Universal Mind that would make Einstein's brain explode.
What did you accomplish today?
Money?
Oh, yeah, I did that too :P
I feel like a fisherman returning home with a drag net that trawled the bottom of the cosmos. I come bearing gifts ;)
Here's your chance of a lifetime!
World-famous Dr. Octavio Rettig is doing a Toad Medicine tour in Europe this August (2017).
Smoke some 5-Meo-DMT & Bufotinine straight from the toad.
If you're in Europe, don't miss this chance to trip balls and experience Absolute Infinity for yourself.
(Serious spiritual seekers only. This ain't for kids. Prepare to die.)
Who arbitrates what is weird and what is "normal"?
Does this cuttlefish think to itself, "Geeee... I'm so weird"?
Remember this lesson next time you think reality can't possibly be some way because "that would just be too weird". Too weird? For who? For you? And why should reality be limited to some hairless chimp's notions of weirdness? Maybe reality's just so damn vast you haven't encountered even 0.0000000001% of it yet.
Notice that "normal" simply means: those experiences which you've had so many of that now you're bored of them.
Everything about reality is weird. It's just a question of how much you take it for granted.
If, one day, you're lucky enough to cognize Absolute Infinity, it will feel a bit like this:
Its sheer magnitude will annihilate you.
Absolutely groundless...
A hint for self-inquirers:
Imagine for a moment that you are watching your sensory field just like the fractal in that video. And now try to shift your focus away from the "fractal" to its background, or the "space" in which its occurring. Try to gently shift your focus to the ground of your current sensory experience.
What is the ground of the "fractal"? In the video we might say it's 2D space. But what is the analogue of that when you consider your sensory experience right now? Where is your entire sensory field occurring? Notice, it's NOT in 3D space or in the brain! That's circular! 3D space and the brain are NOT the ground, they are more content. When you self-inquire, it's as though you're trying to grasp "underneath" 3D space, "underneath" all content. You're trying to grasp the groundless ground. What does it take to shift focus from the pretty fractal to its ground? Try doing that in your inquiry.
Watch the video again, focusing your mind on the fact that the fractal is groundless. Then look up from your screen, look around your room, and try to see that your visual field is equally groundless. Don't think about it, but do it! That is enlightenment.
It's really helpful to destroy your belief in an "external, objective, physical reality", which supposedly sits behind your sensory experiences. Because as long as you believe in such a thing, how are you gonna grasp the obvious fact that everything is groundless?
Just wanted to remind ya'll that Martin Ball is starting to upload talks from the 2017 Exploring Psychedelics Conference to the web. So you can easily listen at home. These are highly worthwhile talks about the cutting-edge of consciousness, psychedelics, humanity, anthropology, botany, clinical psychology, medicine, shamanism, etc.
Here's a good example: Tom & Sheri Eckert's Talk about making consciousness work more mainstream through legalizing psychedelics, and transforming our culture. Great stuff!
Many more talks will be uploaded in the weeks to come on Martin's site. So check it periodically. These talks tend to be very mind-expanding, opening you up to possibilities you'd never hear about in mainstream media.
If you like the talk above, I even recommend you dig through his archives and listen to the 2016 conference talks. There are some really good ones in there. Download them all and listen on your drive to work, while cooking, etc.
Here's a very accurate description of real ego-death.
I love the look in his eyes as he recollects it. That's exactly how I experienced it on 2C-B, but without the agony. It's as serious as actual physical death. Make no mistakes about it. You will be gone, FOREVER! Complete enlightenment ain't no joke. You will be dead inside. Only the husk of your body will remain.
That man you see there, is dead inside. You see his body sitting there talking, but he does not exist to himself. He died years ago.
That is the real deal. Once you break through that fear-of-death threshold completely, you will realize death is an illusion. And you will laugh. But until then, you will take death deadly serious. And all your emotions will reflect that. You cannot believe your way out of this fear. You must actually die to conquer it.
There are two types of common mob:
- The Believers
- The Nonbelievers
Many people these days, especially in Western developed countries, are aware of the dangers of the Believers. Images of the Spanish Inquisition easily come to mind. But this is precisely what leaves us susceptible to falling into the other type of mob, the Nonbelievers.
The Nonbelievers believe that they are above the common mob, more reasonable, more educated, more grounded, more self-aware, more careful in their intellectual discrimination, more pragmatic. The Nonbelievers believe that most of the common mob are clueless, religious, fantasy-prone, gullible, irrational Believers. And that this is the greatest danger to the world.
In a delicious twist of irony, the Nonbelievers believe they are above belief! They reason: if only the Believers were more pragmatic, like us Nonbelievers, if only they stopped believing so damn much, most of the world's problems would be fixed!
But actually, most of the mob are Believers in name only. Their behaviors and actions are more like that of Nonbelievers. Meaning, these people are extremely pragmatic, materialistic, and selfish. They are Believers only in a pragmatic fashion that serves their materialistic needs. So actually, this means that Believers have a lot more in common with Nonbelievers than Nonbelievers would like to admit.
Take even a fundamentalist Christian, Muslim, or Hindu, and look at his everyday life and his everyday thinking, and you'll see a person driven almost exclusively by pragmatic concerns, even in his church activities. The superstitious, fantastical elements will only be paid lip-service to. Look at the Catholic church in the Vatican. Do they spend more time and effort counting money and running their bureaucracy, or realizing God? Do Hindu's spend more time and effort planning their weddings, or realizing God?
The Nonbelievers commit the great blunder of misreading the psychological drivers of the mob. The mob is not too superstitious and fantastical, the mob is exactly the opposite: it's totally wrapped up in the pragmatic, mundane, materialistic world. The mob is not concerned with spiritual matters at all. The mob is concerned with money, power, security, status, community, family, entertainment, and sex. All purely secular values. Another way to put it is, the mob is concerned with self-survival, or business. As in, busy-ness. The mob is too busy with the never-ending activity of life and conquering the material world to care about anything supernatural. Like a hive of ants mindlessly devouring carcass after carcass after carcass, always busy maintaining their hive. Their eyes are so busy glued to the ground, they don't have time to look up towards the sky.
Doesn't that perfectly describe the common human condition? Isn't that what has you personally stuck in your life? How about everyone you know? Isn't it not a problem of over-religiousness, but a problem of over-secularism? Check all your addictions, bad habits, and greatest time sinks. Aren't they all secular? Even the seemingly religious ones are actually, under their veneer, secular. The Believers and the Nonbelievers BOTH worship the same set of values, only the Nonbelievers are a little more honest about their materialism. But a little less honest about being part of the mob.
The Believers and Nonbelievers absolutely LOVE to fight with each other. It's their favorite pass-time. Come gather around the debate platform and bring the popcorn. "Our side is gonna show those fools just how foolish they've been all along! Ha ha! Check make! We knew our side was right!"
Nonbelievers believe that the mob is so superstitious that it will burn whoever disagrees with them at the stake. Nonbelievers believe that Believers are bad because they are responsible for all the witch burnings. "How barbaric of them! How illiberal!" But actually, the greater harm comes from Nonbelievers, who's favorite weapon of choice is not burning at the stake, but false skepticism and unchecked pragmatism. They will use their pragmatic, logical mind to dismiss everything outside their circular pragmatic paradigm. The issue is one of dismissal. Will you or won't you dismiss whatever lies outside your paradigm? It doesn't much matter what your favorite weapon of dismissal is: burning at the stake, or reasoning the other to death.
The real danger today is not superstition, the real danger is pragmatism. And this has always been the case, even 2000 years ago. When people become too pragmatic, they lose sign of the big picture of life and they cannot soak themselves in the tempering and pacifying effects of true spirituality. Because true spirituality is utterly unpragmatic. It has no value, no meaning, no goal. It cannot help your ego advance itself in any way.
If the world comes to an end, it will not be because of Believers, but Nonbelievers, as they slowly boil everyone of us alive in their pragmatic juices. Over-pragmatism has been at the root of most of humanity's problems for over 5000 years.
So watch out! When you think you've escaped the mob, check that you're not right in the eye of the storm.