Tim R

Question above. I haven't yet found any proof for siddhis being real. I suppose they can be real though. I also think a yogi who has obtained any siddhis wouldn't brag around and levitate through the village all the time or whatever. Does anyone here know more about this?

@BipolarGrowth Could you elaborate?

Yeah and I always feel good after I've eaten something sugary or after I've taken drugs, doesn't mean that it's healthy or good for me. Becoming fat is only one way of your body telling you that something isn't going quite right. You don't have to become chubby for being unhealthy. You can be as scrawny as a stick and yet suffer from diabetes, or some organ problem. Don't be naive.

LOL?

Language is not something only humans use. All creatures communicate and all communication is based on "meaning"; language is a pointer. Even if it's something like chemical communication among plants, certain chemicals mean something. Humans have developed the most complex language among all creatures, as far as we know. Some say the communication between dolphins and whales are very complex, too. And concerning ego... Well, some animals can recognize their body in a mirror, while young humans can't (yet). You can literally talk to a bloody gorilla.

Humans are animals...

No, not quite We share a common ancestor with plants, but animals are not the descendants of plants themselves. As a matter of fact, we are closer related to fungi (mushrooms) than to plants.

We certainly don't experience the world in the same way as other beings. Apes probably experience something very similar, but as "lower" the life form, the more primitive its perception/experience becomes. Bacteria for example have incredibly primitive perception; they don't perceive anything visual, acoustical, haptic or gustatory. They can perceive "scent" thanks to chemo-receptors, which isn't real smelling but some other sort of chemical perception. The experiencer who underlies all experience is the same though. If an bacteria could describe its sense of "I", it would have to describe the same "I" which we describe; nothingness/pure, empty awareness.

@lmfao I know how you feel. During the winter months of 2018 I had to slow things way down, because I started to have panic attacks and to a certain extent derealization and depersonalisation, which both in turn perpetuated my anxiety. I experienced some shattering realizations within a very short frame of time and I had the exact same thoughts as you are having now; "maybe I'm neurotic/maybe I'm not ready/maybe it's just an excuse/ etc". You have to listen to yourself. Don't dismiss what's happening. It is a very valuable experience and a chance to grow. Pay attention to what is happening and don't let your mind go haywire. Slow things down, maybe stop for a while. Remember, you can come back later and pick everything up where you left it. Ground yourself, develop a routine, engage in "mundane" activities. Go to the gym. Don't forget to eat healthy foods, although you can make some exceptions of course. Listen to calming music. Calm yourself. It's alright, you don't always have to do spiritual work. You did it because you chose to and now you chose to rest for a while, you deserve it. Easy does it through here. You got this The time will come when you'll know, you'll feel that you are ready again to do spiritual work. But don't hurry anything, don't worry about the progress you're making, you're always good where you are at. Here's something I wish I knew before:

Your toenail is the absolute... Edit: where's the comment about the toenail? Without it, this comment seems just nuts... But true nonetheless!!

I'd say it's the result of both the Christian mythology of Jesus as Gods son and our association with the word "God" - both are part of this Christian mythology and we are its psychological inheritors, whether we like it or not. Don't read too much into it. I also don't think it's a delusion of grandeur, because you are clearly aware of the fact that you're not somehow better than Jesus.

I have to disagree... Yes, with Einstein! Many people understand certain things extremely well, and yet they are just horrible at explaining. @Red-White-Light If you don't understand something, at least don't blame it on others.

The decaying body is like a wave on the ocean which starts to lose its shape... It then doesn't "become" the ocean because it always was the ocean!

@Someone here Worms and bugs will feast on the empty husk that you... have always been

@Red-White-Light I won't try any further to convince you otherwise. I made my point and if you don't want to recognize what I mean, Amen. I was a firm believer in time, space, materialism, rationalism and all this other malarkey. Until I found out that it was malarkey.

Frankfurt, Germany

@Red-White-Light Yes, it denies time. It denies the past and the future (that's what time consists of) and for good reason. There is nothing but the present. There can't ever be anything apart from the present, because being is presence. It's even synonymous. "was" isn't. "will be" isn't. Only is.

@gswva Let me try to give you an in-depth answer. Time consists of past, present and future, right? At least the way it's seen conventionally. Past: Memories which you confuse to be actual, in other words: you think the past exists, somewhere, somehow. Memories exist (now). But they're not the same as "the past". It doesn't exist. How could it; everything which exists can only exist now, so it wouldn't be the past. Present: What is. Future: An illusion, created by misinterpretation of memory. If you interpret one memory in connection to either another memory or the present moment (which is the only thing you could ever remember) as a consecutive succession of events (because you confuse memory with actuality), you create the illusion of linear time. The mind's line of reasoning is: "the past exists (mistaken memory) and the present moment immediately becomes the past, followed by the "next" present (because you think there is a past which gives rise to the present). To my past-self, my present-self was the future-self". I underlined the "was" so you can see how the future is created by memory mistaken for the past. Just watch your mind very, very carefully, you can actually become aware of this. It is incredibly convincing, of course!!! The mind is the ultimate magician.

@gswva This "linear evolution emerging from the way consciousness seems to process itself " is your abstract conception of time!! As Rupert Spira put it so delightfully: "Time is thought superimposed upon eternity." That is exactly correct. There is only the eternal Now. Nothing linear, only the appearance of a succession of events.

@Red-White-Light At least you got that right. Happy to help?

There is no time outside from your thought. Time itself is a thought, an idea. It isn't "out there" as a property of the universe. To say "you can measure time " is exactly like saying "length is an actual property of the universe ". There is no length, neither are there height, depth, seconds, minutes, years, inches, miles, up, down, left, right, outside, inside, right, wrong, here, there, heavy, soft, light, hard, and so forth and so on, all these "properties" are concepts you've projected on the universe, which in and of itself has none of them. Including time and space, or as you'd call it the space-time-continuum. Watch a baby trying to grab the sun. Of course space and time are interconnected as a space-time-continuum, because time and space define each other. But only as concepts, not in reality. Gravity is just like that. Newton's law of universal gravitation is based on "separate objects", a "space between them" to which these objects relate, and empiricism, as you can see: F(G) = Gamma * ((M1*M2) / r^2) F(G) is the gravitation force, M1 and M2 stands for the mass of both objects and gamma is the empirical constant. Now you'd argue that "oh but what about Gamma? Gamma is the universal constant, Gamma is what is real, Gamma is actually out there in the universe!! Gamma is the proof that gravity is MORE than a mere concept!!" No it isn't. Gamma is empirically derived. Empiricism in turn is based on repetitive experience, which in turn is based on the past, that is to say, experience which stays the same over the course of time. Time however isn't real in the first place. The past doesn't exist, does it? No it doesn't, what exists is memory and memory obviously exists only now. The past is the content of memory mistaken for actuality. That is why empiricism is not able to deliver the truth. So yeah, a bowling ball could crush my head, but not because of gravity, but because it only seems to fall and crush my head

@Leo Gura How do you think people should deal with such a situation? Dismiss it, if more good than harm was done?

You don't wake up to the same world everyday. Time is a construction of the mind. How much time passes between going to sleep and waking up? No time at all. There is no difference between going to sleep and waking up, it's one and the same event. Everything happens at once, now. Not in the sense of "everything in the past, the present and the future is condensed into an infinitesimal point called "Now" ", but rather in the sense that all events only seem to happen, whereas they actually don't. The laws of physics are equally only a concept, like numbers or words. They don't really exist. I'm not saying that we should dismiss them altogether, they are a great tool, but do not confuse them with the real world. What you call "laws of physics" is a linguistic attempt to box seemingly appearing patterns, which have no substance to them whatsoever, that's all.

Žižek is great!! And his sniffing always gets me...

That is exactly correct. To the hypocrisy you mention there is a very closely correlating problem: excessive/hypocritical political correctness. Political correctness is a good and useful thing if it stems from genuine compassion for the downtrodden. If on the other hand I label myself as "oppressor" and then showcase compassion which is actually not genuine and hypocritical, I place myself into a "holier than thou"-situation. I am always (morally) superior, as long as I pretend to recognize myself as an oppressor; and than I just don't do anything about it (because the compassion wasn't genuine in the first place).