Jg17

1) At 1:33:05 Leo talks about pushing a button and becoming Trump and therefore losing your current self and its idiosyncrasies, but if Infinite Consciousness is true then it must be possible to become Trump and retain myself, no? Also, he said I am not going to push the button, but surely Absolute Infinity necessitates that I will!? These questions are a bit frivolous but they do actually probe for details about the nature of Reality. 2) I’ve independently grasped subsections of Infinity. For example, my most memorable insight was into the sheer (yet relatively limited) quantity of positions my body could take: moving one hand one millimetre is a new position; just consider how many slightly different positions just one finger can take. But why is the particular position that my body does take - and all the other countless particular “choices” which are selected to manifest, like the colour of my eyes, my name, my date of birth, to name a few examples - the variation that is selected rather than another variation that apparently exists in potential?

@SoonHei Good chat

@SoonHei You're saying it's possible to believe and pretend but not to actually do it. So there are limits to Infinity?

@Carl-Richard I percieve a fundamental contradiction in all this: we begin with the recognition of Absolute Infinity, then we speak about how Infinity is limited. Limited to the possible. Limited by necessity. Limited to being Infinite and self-created. Limited to having no mechanism behind reality. "Only a perspective can be constrained" - this is a statement about the onesame reality that we're calling Absolutely Infinite, but you're saying it's limited.

@SoonHei If all is possible it should be possible to get somewhere and not to go in circles. Infinity must include getting somewhere. Unless we're saying reality isn't Infinite.

@Carl-Richard Is it truly self-created if it is constrained by necessity? Infinity includes necessity. If it is absolutely self-determined then it determines necessity. Why couldn't it create it differently?

@Carl-Richard So there's infinite perspectives. In one particular perspective, trees are green; in another, trees are red. Why am I seeing the one where they're green and not the one where they're red?

@SoonHei In your first reply you said that "all is possible and there are no limits", so why can't I know why!?

@Carl-Richard But why this particular way and not a different particular way?

@SoonHei The answer to 'Why is my body in the postition that it is in and not another position?' is... "yes"? And don't you dare reply "yes"!!

@NoSelfSelf I’m pretty sure all stages care about results in their own way

Phenomena like this are cool and common, keep going for actuality

Pursue the truth and you’ll find a magic miracle.

Obviously it’s not a literal quantification, it just indicates the enormous potential for development. Development is not along a single axis either but, in my opinion, higher development = greater understanding and abilities. Consider the difference in understanding and ability between you at one year old and you at your current age. Consider all the new things that (probably) came online for you as you aged: language, friends, sex, art, math, music, science, the internet, books, meditation, religion, other cultures, death, politics, etc. Imagine you could create an equivalent, or greater, amount of new development on top of what you’ve already got.

+1, but aside from insights; I’m wondering about bizarre visuals or delusions or whatever and describe your worst trip

have you ever fell for a conspiracy theory in the past? what's the worst epistemological error you've ever made?

What’s the most evil thing you’ve done?

It isn’t the subject of this thread but I’d also like to know Leo’s thoughts on Frank Yang

But zero is infinity ?

@Consilience so I’m replying months later. Oops. But so you’re basically saying my experience is my universe and your experience is your universe and if you have a mahasamadhi then your universe will end and my universe/direct experience will continue as if nothing happened? If so, the same problem exists that I pointed out initially: according to the given definition of mahasamadhi, you’re supposed to take me - my universe/experience - with you. Not just your experience of me from your POV - as if you wake up from dreaming about me, ending the dream version of me while the real me lives on unaffected - but my POV from my POV too, and everything else.

I don’t knowww Do you mean a human body cut in half lol? Well I was positing that consciousness is infinite, the substance of everything and omnipresent, and therefore not increased or decreased by any alterations/combinations of the structures which are constructed with it. It’s like when you take apart a Lego structure, there aren’t less bricks (although a higher-order construction has dematerialised, but it still exists in potential). So... one human has infinite, half a human has infinite. If you were meaning the difference in consciousness between a live and a dead human then I’m less confident. It’s like the comparison between the consciousness of a rock, a cat and a human. It’s common sense that a human is more conscious than a rock. We even say a rock has no consciousness. My POV was different in that consciousness is not an emergent property differentially possessed by these objects but that it’s what they both equally are made of, and that the obvious differences we see between them (that we normally think of as degrees of consciousness) - moving about, talking, sleeping - are in fact just differences of how the substance (consciousness) has been structured, like how I could put 100 Legos in a single-file vertical stack or I could make a 1:1 scale model of a car or something, and in both cases, despite differences in complexity (an emergent property), I’ve only ever used Lego blocks... but Leo has suggested otherwise and I’ll contemplate that Your point about balls sounds like atoms. But no, consciousness is infinite (not limited to any particular form) and equally sized balls/atoms are structures made of consciousness. They are one possibility within infinite consciousness. By “Legos” I was not meaning that reality is ultimately made up of many many many small irreducible blocks, although I can see obviously why you might think that. Hmm. Bad analogy perhaps. I was using it to mean that although the Lego constructions might be very different ( human vs ant) they are combinations of the one same essence. Again, I don’t know. I’m making this up as I go along.

@Leo Gura so... isn’t that to say that consciousness is relative? The idea that consciousness is a spectrum is tripping me up. If a human has more of it than a cat then it isn’t the absolute undifferentiated substance of reality. A human doesn’t have more existence/reality than an ant despite having a more complex bodymind. I thought of consciousness as the Lego blocks out of which all forms are made, whether relatively simple ones like ants or complex ones like humans, and not something differentially distributed to entities (in the way that mass is). I thought the differences between ants and humans are not the degree to which they are forms in consciousness - they are equally images on the screen of consciousness/reality. The differences are biological essentially, which is like the differences in how you doodle two different cartoon characters on paper. One can be almost a small black dot and the other can be a 3D-looking person but they’re both equally on the page. Obviously I get what you’re pointing to re the “consciousness” of an ant, cat and human, but is consciousness that simple? A child basically knows that difference between an ant, cat and person. I’d have said they’re differences of body/mind. Have I confused myself about what consciousness is? I’ve seen your video about ‘what is consciousness’. Has your understanding changed since then or have I not grasped the video?

What do you mean by limit of “consciousness” in this context? I don't think you mean it as the absolute because in my understanding consciousness as an absolute is basically Infinity and so is one with All, including the finite by definition. Consciousness as an absolute cannot increase/be limited (so as to determine love/morality in this context) except in so far as it does via relative forms. So I don’t think you mean the absolute. Limited/unlimited is a duality that must ultimately collapse but there’s still the problem because then all you’re saying is that a finite form increases and that this finite form is included in infinity (the category of All). That would be true by definition but it’s missing the key detail: the definition of the finite form that you’re talking about. For example, if the finite thing is the degree of inclusiveness of one’s sense of self - which I understand is the essence of the developmental models of morality you use - then it would be better to say so instead of “consciousness”? All things are consciousness but only your sense of self is your sense of self, as it’s a finite thing. It’s a kind of knowledge, a form that can come and go. So perhaps “understanding” or “knowledge” is actually a more accurate word than “consciousness” in this context. “Understanding of oneness” or something. I don’t know. I could be misunderstanding but to me it’s as if if I asked you what ingredient (finite thing, the object) to add to make a better cake (increased morality) and you said “consciousness” (the absolute). It’s true that whatever I am going to add will be part of infinity, but you haven’t defined the finite thing (ingredient) just by saying consciousness, and that’s what’s asked for.

@Consilience @Consilience What is a universe? And then what is a mahasamadhi? I don’t know what it is. I’m trying to understand what people are saying it is. I’ve read the Wikipedia page.

That is the point I’m getting at, that is the contradiction in the story. I quoted the story which said that “a guru in India later verified that the dude left his body and didn't simply die by suicide or overdose”. And so I ask how can there be a guru left to verify it if mahasamadhi brings the whole universe to an end? By definition, the story must be wrong unless, again, I’m misunderstanding. And if we agree that the story is wrong then we must extend this reasoning to all claims of mahasamadhi.