Osaid

All glimpses are simply just glimpses, not the actual thing. Don't hold on to them so much. They are distorted. When you have a glimpse of something, it is absolutely not the full picture, and you should let go of it. You can't truly have glimpses of such things because all glimpses are distorted and partial in some way, so they should not be given so much significance. They are speculation at best. Ego backlash is really not a result of anything. It's made out of nothing, or in other words, "glimpses." If you achieved Truth, you stay there forever. If you aren't there, then your ego is making some shit up. You can't make further progress after realizing something, because you already realized it. It is possible to progressively memorize math equations forever, but it is not possible to realize what you are and then think "but maybe there is more of me to realize, maybe what I realized is inaccurate." That means you never actually understood what you are. Your ego backlash is not a result of any experience or any kind of truth, but the ego's perception of that. Also, when you say parts of experience "become mine", that does not sound non-dual to me, it sounds like identity-shifting. Same goes for "I am imagining everything." Please be careful not to adopt pseudo-spiritual identities. All ideas and answers are truly useless in this work, all they can do is help guide you towards the work, but they wont do it for you.

If we wanna talk about Sadghuru specifically, what personally stood out to me was his emotional intelligence, which is kind of what you're alluding to as well I guess. After the scientist said his monologue at the beginning, the very first thing that Sadghuru did was not a response to defend his position, but rather, he directed himself to the audience and said "namaskaram" and hoped they were doing well. Subtle things like that stood out to me from him, and then of course what you highlighted would also be part of that emotional intelligence to a degree.

Sadghuru casually obliterating solipsism brain rot: "there is no 'my consciousness', there is your being and my being" Closest we'll get to his take, I guess.

Jake Chudnow really just has his own flavour IMO, his songs produce emotions I've never felt before. Highly recommend going through the rest of his stuff, they are as good if not better.

The materialist guy isn't necessarily wrong, all he really did was state his position, which was on point scientifically speaking. However, he does not address what Sadghuru is saying at all. It really felt like there was zero exchange between the two. He initially says that clairvoyance does not exist, Sadghuru corrects him to say that they are not necessarily talking about clairvoyance or such things, but then he continues to harp on the point of magical abilities, as if Sadghuru is claiming he can start flying through meditation or something. Once you start talking about consciousness and its potential perceptual capabilities which go beyond what is normally perceived, this guy just lumps it in with ESP and magical abilities. Overall, it seems the materialist came in with a very fixed mindset about meditation, and didn't really consider a more nuanced position at all. He probably believes that most of what Sadghuru is saying is just quackery and magical abilities unsupported by science, and so he felt a need to really stress that such things should not be relied on. He basically sees Sadghuru as a psychic peddling people off the street. All things considered, this is probably about as fruitful such a conversation would get anyways.

Of course, I did not mean to deny this. No, preferring things has nothing to do with self-image. It is not selfish to prefer vanilla over chocolate, for example. Or drinking water when you are thirsty. Those are just biological imperatives which do not require a self at all. The perception of thirst is not selfishness, and the perception of a pleasant flavour is not selfishness, the perception of those two things as being selfish is itself selfishness. It is a common misconception to perceive desires and preferences as something which involve a self, but that self only appears when you create beliefs about yourself in relation to those desires and preferences. For example, it is not selfish to want to reach first place in a race. It is selfish to say "I desire to win this race, because otherwise I will be unworthy." In the latter case, the only reason the race is desired is because it is genuinely believed it will solve a lack of self-worth. What is desired is not actually the race, but the absolution of the belief that you are unworthy. When you win the race, that is the moment that you start to change your self-image, because now your experience contradicts your previous identity, which was the identity of someone who has never won a race before and therefore is not worthy. Your emotions are perfectly in tune with what you think you are perceiving, which is an imagined self. If you live in a world that is threatened by imagination, then it is perfectly normal to seek a state of non-imagination, just as normal as it would be to run away from a bear. It is not wrong or morally inferior to live in the imaginary world, but what is being pointed to is that the imaginary self can be permanently uprooted, and it can simply be realized that it didn't exist in the first place. What is called "selfishness" are the actions you take to "defend" that imagined self from thoughts and beliefs. Ah ok, but it seems related, because at the end of the day, these thought-based emotional problems are to do with that "me" entity which lingers around. Perhaps if that is absolved you will stay there longer. That is fair, you can enjoy that silence if you want, but I see that you are creating thoughts about yourself from the experience. Experience silence if you want, but no point in thinking about how your current experience isn't that silence. You are building ideas around it, for example, "normal egoic consciousness." I am saying that believing in that label is ironically a belief system created from that very blissful experience of silence. You created a dichotomy which says: "This experience is bliss, this experience is normal egoic consciousness, and neither can ever converge." For sure, there are certainly very blissful states which are worth pursuing. But I saw ideas about ego being mixed up in there, which I saw as a conflation.

That would explain his talking bubble friend, I guess. Now that you point it out, it does look like a smiling toad.

I don't know if bubbles are conscious, they usually pop when I poke them though. Have you tried poking this bubble which is encasing your experience, maybe with a needle or something? Sounds like an unfortunate situation, my condolences.

The idea that you are in "normal egoic consciousness" is false and just perpetuates that very idea, and it is actually just an identity you have created for yourself. The idea that some state is to be changed, that this is non-dual and dual, etc. just perpetuates all those ideas. Drop ideas, everything you know about spirituality, everything. And just examine what you are. The truth is you don't know what you are. And calling yourself an "ego", or "dualistic", or "limited", does not get you closer to knowing, and you actually don't know if you are any of those things at all. And to think that you are any of those things, is just more thinking, and it is mistaking the map for the territory. I think you are playing tug of war by inducing certain mysterious states through energetic practices, and this frustrates you. It is like microdosing, and then getting frustrated when it wears off and then asking "why can't that be maintained permanently?" Firstly, it should be considered that maybe that state, even though it feels good and mysterious and blissful, is not "it." Secondly, it should be considered a very real possibility, that the baseline state is being judged very harshly, and that your actual true self can easily be realized from the baseline just by carefully watching it and examining what you call "me."

Caring was never about having reasons, or things mattering, though. It was always for its own sake. Why do you need a reason to care? Isn't that what it means to care, that it happens for its own sake? Otherwise you are being blackmailed by something, isn't it? Do you need a higher reason to speak nicely to the cashier? Do you need someone to hold you at gunpoint to care for an injured kitten on the road? Maybe it is the fact that nothing matters which pushes you to care for those who are plunged into the same world as you, where nothing matters. Maybe that itself can become the reason for caring. Is there a reason why vanilla ice cream is preferred over chocolate? Does there have to be a reason? Do you have to build a moral structure out of it? For me it is like looking at food and saying, there is only salty and sweet. Songs can create very unique emotions. Some emotions only exist in relation to certain songs, for me. Some emotions feel bittersweet, like nostalgia. Absolutely nothing wrong with saying it is dark or light though, those elements definitely exist and they are felt. But much more can be felt too, is what I am emphasizing. Some darkness can be beautiful. Some darkness can be pretty. Some darkness can have hope mixed in. Some darkness can have mystery mixed in. Many flavours. Very raunchy and deep, I can get into it. This is one of those songs where you have to focus on emotions not melody.

You're the one yinning and yanning, calling music dark and light. I am just speaking in your vernacular. Although admittedly, some music can feel very shallow like that, like it has one or two emotions. For me, music is bright, dim, dark, colorful and beyond. Good luck deciding whether this one is dark or light. You don't even have lyrics to go off of this time.

Haha, I only sent it because it was similar to what you sent. I forgot it even existed before your song reminded me of it, but it's the best of that genre IMO. From my perspective, looking at the lyrics, it seems to be an equal amount of "light and dark." I usually don't listen to that type of lyrical dnb music, but this is one of the few where I think it works really well.

Good for its genre. Reminds me of this:

lmao Is this how you react everytime someone has generic taste in music? Although yes, they are not to be trusted.

There are no boxes or dolls, but I can confirm that an absence of qualia is something that exists and is perceivable. There are states which have no qualia at all, if you can imagine. Actually, the fact that you can't see behind you right now is itself a perception which depends on the fact that you can see in front of you, but this is hard to notice if you haven't entered some state of "no sensory perception." But also, ultimately, it's not really important to notice. It's just a way of mentally recontextualizing experience, and it doesn't have much to do with realizing what you are. What I am trying to say is something like, seeing in front of you is as existential as not seeing behind you, they are both yin and yang, same sides of the coin so to speak. Your mind just has a bias to focus on the appearance of qualia rather than the non-appearance of qualia, because the former can be contextualized by the finite mind, whereas the latter is a paradox for the finite mind. Kind of how light doesn't exist without dark. The only reason you can see in front of you is because you can't see behind you. But anyways, what I'm saying up till here is really just conceptual, there is no duality between seeing and not seeing ultimately, or absence and non-absence of qualia. This is just a cool metaphysical recontextualization I got from experiencing a certain state of consciousness, and I wanted to share it because your trip reminded me of it. As for your actual inquiry, it is mostly corrupt. Your questions are assuming many different contexts, such as "borders" and "outside", the very thing you sought to question. I see a big fallacy on the forum where people just assume their questions make any sense, they think questions are innocent and that reality has to give some conclusive answer to it. And then they construct entire identities around the answer that they get to these questions. They further cement the identity by pointing to some experience they had on psychedelics which supposedly confirmed it, big trap. Overall, there are assumed concepts baked into the questions themselves. You are coming up with questions, but the questions themselves are being made up by you, they don't actually point to anything, but you assume they do. You assume that borders, contexts, and "outside" are existential, but they are just questions you made up. And any answer you get will be relative to a question, which is made up. And so of course, you got answers, but they are conceptual, because answers are always relative to questions, and questions are always conceptual. There's your catch-22. It's all made up. The entire thing is a context you made up. The realization that there is no context, happens from a place of assumed context. The fact that borders exist, is not a given. The fact that context exists, is not a given. The fact that inside and outside exist, is not a given. So when you look at "Being" and ask "Hey dude, where is your context and your border? I need answers!", don't be surprised if "Being" gives you a confused look. You are putting too much credit on your ability to imagine context and borders. It is not existential, it is just the human capacity for imagination. What is more fundamental is not questioning context or borders, but questioning how those things are perceived in the first place. Don't get lost in the content, look at the structure. These things can seem existential and metaphysical, but they are really just what a human believes to be those things. The human imaginative capacity can imagine many fantastical things, contexts, borders, outside, inside, but they are irrelevant to existential experience. The question itself is the error, not the answer or inability to find an answer.

Sounds like a bad trip.

I, as God, deliberately created an omelette to feed myself. And then I, as God, deliberately created a post on this forum. And then I, as God, deliberately tricked myself into tripping over a rock today, which I imagined into existence, as God.

Hahahahaha, so you went back to realizing you're just a human. Great. Much better place to be at actually. Or maybe God with an identity crisis, or I guess, a God that wants to be human? The ideological insanity that stems from psychedelics is really quite amazing.

Psychiatrists do a similar "shrugging-off" when it comes to the occurence of PSSD from SSRIs, which can basically remove sexual function indefinitely, among other anhedonic symptoms, and there is no known reliable cure.

From the point of view of someone who is trying to figure out what reality or existence is, or such existential questions. The context of your current experience, no other context is needed, because you exist, and you are trying to figure out what you exist as.

This is a valid sentiment. Realizing existential truth isn't anything like human or survival-based intelligence, really. It's more like a removal of all your beliefs that you created through your own intelligence. Humans tangle themselves up in their intelligence all the time, hyper-intelligent aliens wouldn't be any different, it would be harder for them to not get tangled. But, maybe they would have invented an instant enlightenment machine or something, lol.

The word "truth" in the average use of the word definitely points to "what exists." It is a definition that humans created. Someone asks: Is there a unicorn in your room? You say yes, they say you are not telling the truth. You say no, they say you are telling the truth. In order to verify whether you are telling the truth, the person has to check your room for the unicorn to see if it exists there. I would separate absolute truth from this human-invented notion of truth, because existence itself is meta to all notions and definitions you can come up with. The definitions happen inside of existence, so it does not capture existence since it is a subset of existence. Absolute truth points to what exists, but the realization of what exists is not a conclusion like "that thing exists therefore it is true", it is just realizing exactly what exists. You could say it is like realizing that nothing untrue can exist, therefore truth as a concept dissolves entirely in that realization.

You're not ever actually experiencing time, or time coming back. It is as experiential as thinking about a math equation. You are experiencing resistance to a believed thought form, and you label that resistance as "time." What time exists as is very simple, it is just a word or number, like "Thursday" or "9am." When you see either of those, your identity immediately starts operating, you imagine yourself as something that exists inside of some universe where the time is currently 9am, but actually that part where you imagine yourself is completely unnecessary and it is not time, it is just an imagined ego self. The thought form in question is essentially just a very genuine belief that there exists some experience elsewhere that you can escape to which isn't your current experience. You say that the mechanism of the psychedelic is placebo, which I contest is a misinterpretation. The idea that beliefs and thoughts are creating illusion, is just more beliefs and thoughts. And the idea that the psychedelic should have no power, and that it is just placebo, is also a belief and thought. The only way for you to access that conclusion is to imagine the idea that you took psychedelics in the first place. Realizing that your knowledge and beliefs about experience are not existential does not give you some kind of power over experience, that is a misinterpretation of that insight, and that misinterpretation is itself belief and knowledge. It is not that beliefs and knowledge are untrue, invalid, false, or illusion, it is that very interpretation itself which is all of those things. You are not going to override the entirety of existence by realizing that thoughts are imaginary. You can realize that in the baseline human state, and it does not transform you into something which is not human, it just recontextualizes the experience of being a human. Calling psychedelics placebo in this matter is as much placebo as saying "I am just imagining that food is going to fulfill my hunger" and then starving yourself to death. Imagination and belief is a human phenomenon, you are not breaking the limits of reality by seeing that thoughts are not existential, you are simply seeing that limits and non-limits were a human interpretation of reality and that they never had anything to do with reality at all. You are using imagination to say that "psychedelics don't have any affect on me because they are imaginary", so the very thing you are criticizing is what you are using to criticize in the first place. Psychedelics not existing in your experience doesn't mean it has no effect on you, it simply means that it does not exist. The former meaning is based on an interpretation which actually sneakily assumes that psychedelics do exist, and that some sort of effect is "removed" as a result. It is not a true recognizing of the fact that psychedelics are imaginary. You are imagining that psychedelics are having an effect on you, but you are also imagining that they don't have an effect on you. Neither is true, both are imaginary. These psychedelics can be very tricky in how they create narratives about reality, so be careful. If you don't have proper epistemology and grounding you will get twisted into adopting odd metaphysical ideas. Experientially, if I had to describe what is happening, it is simply the case that certain memories and thought forms start arising again, and these memories and thought forms "pull you in" and "trigger" you back into your ego identity. This is why it's easy to be peaceful while meditating, but less easy when you are working the register at your 9-5, the latter situation creates lots of thoughts that trigger your identity. The psychedelics remove certain capacities which allow for your ego to form, so that there is no stimuli which can "pull you in" while the drug is active. But, from a biochemical perspective, the exact point where the chemical wears off is where the identity can sneak itself in again, because now your mind is back to its normal capabilities, and your normal capabilities include a very vivid sense of imagination which you entangle yourself in.

I think it is likely a result of fearful thought-attachment. Psychological, as you say, but for me I see lots of overlap between psychology and spirituality, to the point where the distinction seems almost superfluous. Nightmares and odd dream states tend to resolve themselves when you fix your sleep and also your relation to thoughts in the waking state. What I notice happening a lot in dream-like states is that there is an initial thought form that appears, you react fearfully to that thought, and then that fearful emotion instantly manifests itself as some monster or something.