undeather

Created this account 5 yeras ago - was a medical student back then and fascinated by the brain. I am a licensed MD nowadays, I dont really care about what pictures there is below my name, so why not keep it

Exactly, there is your answer.

Judging from your attepts to quantify wisdom with a ridocolous onlinescore on nerdtest and then come here to ask random people on the internet how you can find out once and for all tells me a lot about how wise you are. You are not. And thats okay, I am not either. Grow up, gain experience, educate yourself, then ask yourself again.

Is he wrong saying that psychodelics may cause irreparable negative effects on a person? Its pretty easy to understand his concerns imo.

Stage orange skeptics are somestimes pretty helpful to uncover stage purple - blue trickery. Most people who claim to possess psychic abilities are either frauds or simply delusional. The ego loves to have "special powers" and control over stuff. Of course thats the case and you know that. It doesnt mean the skeptics are right in any absolute way, nor did I ever imply that.

The old guy is really interesting. Nothing that screams bullshit so far. I have looked up some skeptics "debunk" videos on him (which helps sometimes), but it was not persuasive at all.

I made a post earlier defending siddhis and psi phenomenon in general. https://www.actualized.org/forum/topic/70453-a-siddhi-is-when-a-fool-believes-a-liar/ This on the other hand seems a bit suspicious. Its an extremely low friction surface combined with super light, multiangular, sail-shaped objects. Notice how they need to make very frantic hand movements every time they want to move something. I have watched multiple of their videos now and the evidence is actually pretty poor imo. The dude said he can move boxes of cereal but doesnt want to show - well, thats what I want to see before being convinced. PS: We had a table in our highschool where we could move stuff just with the heat coming from our hands

Propably unappealing for most here beacuse of language barrier, but for my fellow german speaking folks: Recently came across this song from a german artist - was really surprised by the lyrics! Its 6 minutes of unpacking the fundamental questions followed by some description of god realization - I really, really enjoy it, maybe you do too

Ok, lets engange with this topic rationally. What kind of evidence is there for "Siddhis" or "Psi phenomena"? This topic is one of my favourites. To say it bluntly, there is a shitton of case reports about "weird" phenomena. Its overwhelming. Now, of course we have liars, carzy people, minds playing tricks on themselves etc. - But I personally know too many upright, no bullshit people who have experienced stuff like this. Most notably, precognition and telepathy. Personally I havent experienced any of that stuff, but there is this one case report of a very close friend which tells me a lot about the ontological nature in this case. He is a materialist scientist, a typical skeptic like Dawkins - couple of years ago he went on a hike with his girlfriend. They slept in a tent and in the middle of the night, they suddenly woke up at the same time because of a weird dream. Turned out both had the EXACT same dream of his girlfriends grandmother telling them not to worry. They were confused, baffled by the experience and decided to cancle the trip. Turned out that her by then healthy grandmother suffered a stroke that night. I talked with him a lot about this experience and it shattered his worldview in some sense. If you actually go and look for that stuff, its everywhere. I remember a couple of years ago, I was super skeptical about everything psi-related. I thought everyone who beleived in that stuff was an deluded idiot. But, to be honest - I was just ignorant. I had no idea what I was talking about. There is an enormous amount of historic evidence. -> Hans Berger, the inventor of the EEG, got interested in brain waves after having a telepathic experience with his sister ""The incident made such an impression on Berger that, years later in 1940, he wrote: "It was a case of spontaneous telepathy in which at a time of mortal danger, and as I contemplated certain death, I transmitted my thoughts, while my sister, who was particularly close to me, acted as the receiver."" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Berger) -> Joseph of coppertino - the flying monk, witnessed by thousands of people -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_of_Cupertino -> THE PK-Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Owens_(contactee) -> Pythagoras remembering past lives: https://hermesphilus.com/2018/03/29/pythagoras-got-the-ability-to-remember-past-lives-from-hermes/ -> D.D Home, who was even tested by sceptics at the time https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Dunglas_Home -> Yoganandas biography is full of accounts of siddhis and so on.... There is SO much! Now, lets be skeptical for a moment - could all this be BS? Yes, there is a chance that everyone I mentioned plus thousands more are either deluded, psychotic or simply lying. Thats a decision everyone has to make for himself. I dont want to be dogmatic, but in my opinion the evidence shows clearly in one direction. Ok, but is there science? There are countless of scientists who are studying this field. The first name which comes to my mind is Dean Radin and his Institute of noetic sciences (https://noetic.org/). There are hundreds of studies, that prove beyond any statistical doubt, that "something" like psi exists. Now, what do the critics say? Well, there is one major problem plagueing the field, and thats reproducibility. Most studies wont produce the same result again and thats one of the pillars of the scientific method. Now this doesnt mean that all that research is bullshit. In fact, it kinda makes sense. Sci-phenomena are not as easily studiable as for example a new pill against high blood pressure. The effects are often very flimsy and prone to interpretation. Nevertheless, there is something there. Life is not a Dragonball Z episode and the magnitude of the effects depends on a variety of variables, which we need to take into account. Here is a good interview with Radin. Why is there no video/photo evidence of siddhis? If there was, how would know it wasnt fake or staged? The truth is, there is: If it works why didnt the military get interested in this? Project stargate was a secret U.S. Army unit established in 1978 at Fort Meade, Maryland, by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and SRI International (a California contractor) to investigate the potential for psychic phenomena in military and domestic intelligence applications. The US military did its own research on this and concluded that "it kinda works, but its too inaccurate for military use" Here is a great video about this project: Why did noone claim Randys price? Well, to be honest I dont know. There are many arguments for and against Randy. As I already mentioned, most effects are very subtle and do not work with crude scientific measurements. Also, Randy had an obvious bias AGAINST these phenomeneon, which is also a problem. Thats why we double blind our experiments in medicine, because we know that our own mind will work against an unbiased look at the results. You can find many claims of people who allegedly did something Randy wasnt expecting - but instead of handing over the money he got mad and accused them of being frauds and charlatans. Personally I will remain agnostic towards those claims. And here we are at a core problem: Most people who claim to have such powers are of course charlatans. This takes the whole credibility out of everything psy related, even if there IS some kind of truth shrouded behind all that bullshit. Its a bit like the UFO stories. But PSI contradicts physics Thats a pretty dumb assumption - Physics is nowhere close to being a theory of everything. In fact, physics is in a big crisis because the very small and the very large dont seem to comprehend each other. Conciousness is, despite in some fringe projects, nowhere near the major institutional theories and that keeps the whole field stuck. With conciousness being the one thing that really exists - everything is possible. Non only that, it would make psi some kind of natural necessity.

Thats what Leo thinks about his scale

Wilbers work is profound and way ahead of its time. There definitely is some valid criticism held against him - but then again, the same goes for Ralston, Leo and basically every other public figure on this planet. If you would base your interest of someones ideas on the extent of criticism they experienced, you would miss out on the best teachings.

Eben Alexander had his profound NDE while suffering from a severe case of gram-negative meningoencephalitis - thats basically the definition of rotting the brain. Thanks to a lot of research in the last years its pretty much a fact that lessening of brain activity/metabolism is causally linked to altered states of conciousness. Thats how psychodelics do it, thats how deep medidation works. Tumors dont tend to do such a thing, which doesnt mean they cant do it at all!

The end stage of syphilis is called neurosyphillis and is defintiely correlated with hallucinations and possible altered states. Didnt know about that brain tumor thing though, pretty intersting!

Jay Alvarrez (6.6 Million Followers) shared it on his Instagram - thats easy 100k+ views just from people klicking on the link

There is an argument to be made, that Nietzsche became enlightened in his later years - The mainstream story is that he suffered from Syphillis which eventually drove him mad - but he was a seeker! This video was an interesting turning point for me:

By asking questions like what is death, you will inevitably get some deductive statement of what it "must be like" based on experiential data and the usual vedantic epistemics underlying such assumption. I will let you in on something: Noone here knows exactly. If you study the great mystics and their "take" on death, none of it adds up. I mean just look at it: Krishnamurti takes the vedantic view, says there is no rebirth. Sri Aurobindo, Yogananda, Sadghguru and many more claim to remember past lives - there is also a subtle body/"soul" that "looks" for a new body after death. There are even very accurate descriptions of how that work exactly. Thomas Campbell has his own weird "theory" And so on...as long as it doesnt contradict non-dualism, its worth considering! Let the mystery stay the mystery. Consciousness is way more complex and mysterious than we are capeable of processing. You can get a gnostic sense of what it will be in peak states (i.e psychodelic states), but its impossible to take with you into this highly constrained meatsuit of ours.

Bald guy once tellin me he is god and shit, wanting me to buy his book list and life purpose course - complete nuthead lol. So now that the obvious joke is out of the way, here is my scammer moment: In late 2014 there was this company called VEMMA which sold some sort of "healthy energy drink" and just got big in my city. You know back then, terms like "Ponzi scheme" or "multi level marketing" wasnt known to the greater public, including me. I remember one night, my best friend was calling me to announce our future financial independence. He didnt tell me a lot, just to come to certain house adress the next day at 5 PM. So because I was curious what this stuff was all about I followed through. When I arrived at that adress the next day, there was freaking Lamborghini parked in front of the house, which added to the WTF factor. I entered the building and found myself with around 10 other people in this living-roomesque place - my friend and some other old acquintances included. Suddenly this very good looking, well deressed, bambi-eyed guy entered the room - he one of those faces you just trust from the first moment you see him. He greeted everyone in a very salesmanesque way, then started his presentation. To this day, I am still baffled with what this guy did to us. I am not from the naive side,.I had a father who really tried to instil in me some common sense when it comes to that stuff. But hell, there was just something abot that person and his way of conveying the message - that flipped some deep rooted switches in our cognitive-emotional apperatus. He basically told us we will all get rich, we can all get a nice car, passive income, health, jet set lifestyle and a hot girl or boyfriend . When I think about the pure transcript, it sounds like something you could base a parody on - literally unbelieveable that anyone with some working intelligence could every fall for it - but he didnt make IT FEEL that way. It all felt incredibly real and just one signature away. Your dream life, everything you ever wanted - right there and within ones reach. Now, what signature you might ask? Well, to get "into" this whole thing - you had to buy the starter package - which was like 750€. It included several boxes of this "healthy energy" drink plus some DVD's with selling strategies. Our job then was to recruit new people and so on. 9/10 people signed the deal. BAM. Only after the whole thing was over and we got back home, this reality distortion field was slowly getting weaker. We started to get back to the real world - making some calculations, doing some online research about this company etc. Finally realizing the fraudulent nature of that whole project. Long story short: It was a pyramid-scheme. I have had some friends who tried to make it work - but of course, no one made any real money with it. As for me, after realizing that I just threw this money out of the window - I wanted to get refund. It wasnt possible. They used some sort of legal grey zone to not make refunds possible. Well, I was angry. But nowadays I am still amazed by this guys charisma. He could have been using that for doing good as well.

Hi, medical doctor here. Dont worry, get the vaccine. There are no known interactions between Retinol and vaccine function. Also, you are talking about topical retinol creme - which is less of a problem than the systemic (oral) form. The reason why you shouldnt take it while pregnant is because Vitamin A in extremely high doses is known to be teratogenic. Thats why you shouldnt eat liver or take unregulated vitamins while pregnant. Take care

Been practicing medidation for around 7 years now. Started with simple mindfulness-techniques and then some transcendental approaches I started experimenting with "weirder" techniques around 2 years ago - for me, its just way more fun that way. That includes: - Chanting - Pranayamas - Dharanas - Chakra Sadhanas

Your post is a symptom of your life lacking sovereignty. Do you see that? This is the NUMBER ONE REASON why people are stuck in their life, because they are literally unable to step out of their own conditioning. This is an infantile state of mind and to make any real progress at all, I would advise you to take a deeper look at this. You will always encounter contaradicting views on a variety of topics, including of course: Covid and the vaccines. The first thing you have to understand: A certain amount of uncertainty is going to be a lifelong companion. You will never have all the variables necessary to make sense of something in a complete and absolute certain way. Now, lets look at at some of the shit you just wrote - I will not give you answers because I want you to train your thinking. What set of data are the positive effects based on? (keyword: studies) What set of data are those negtaive "ideas and theories" based on? If you worry about the potential side effects, where exactly is the hypothesis derived from? Are those claims already debunked? Can you steelman those claims? What makes a source more trustable than others? All the shit David Icke has been talking about in the last 2 years - how much of it actually came out to be true? Whats his track record of making true predictions? For example: Icke said, at the very beginning of the pandemic, that Covid is not a virus, but cellular exosomes (cell-debris basically) that are the direct aftermath of 5G radiation damaging our tissue. This is obvious bullcrap, because Covid spread over many countries or regions that dont even have normal cellphone signal. There are many studies correlating the sars-CoV2 infection (NOT the vaccine) with Semen impairment Here is one: https://academic.oup.com/humrep/article/36/6/1520/6125160 Here is one that looks at the vaccines and semen quality: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2781360 Now, could this studies be "fake" or part of some evil plan of some secret kabal? Yes, there is a chance. How likely is this? Do you really think all those doctors and PHD's would take the vaccine if they had such doubts? The reason why shit like that gets so much attention is because people lack sensemaking capabilites in a world that is getting overflowed with unsorted information. There is definitely nuance when it comes to vaccines, not everything is great about them - there is certainly valid arguments against mass vaccination, especially involving kids. Yet most claims made by those "free thinkers" are batshit crazy and just plain wrong.

True, my bad! Its from Daniel Schmachtenberger

If you want to follow the weirdness, there was a book written about this guy by a gentlemen called Kosta Danaos. The book is called "The magus of Java", you can find it on Amazon. Danaos travelled to find this Qi-master after watching the same report you just shared in the 90's. He found and trained with him for years. Personally, I remain agnostic towards his claims. The book sometimes reads like a Dragonball Z episode - but I remain open to the possibilities that this might exist. To me, it sounds like Siddhis on steroids if it were true. Around a year ago I also came across this podcast with the author and I have to admit, he seems like reasonable guy and my bullshit detector couldnt find anything suspicious. Make yourself a picture:

The following are questions I find commonly useful in helping people gain greater insight into their unique life path and dharma. Inquiring into all these questions still won’t tell you what to do. And insofar as what you most want does get clearer, you may still not know how to get there. But at least you will have deepened your relationship with yourself, which will lead to more awareness and integrity, that will inform where your next choices come from. Increased awareness, clarity, and love…moves one’s path in unpredictable but profound ways. That lead to continued opportunity for greater awareness, clarity, and love…and with that, a life of deepening meaningfulness. *Note: I am not claiming this is the “true” meaning of the word Dharma in Sanskrit, or how any particular Hindu or Buddhist person or group is using it. From my life of experience and study in various of these traditions and texts…this is how I understand it. Capacities If my financial needs were already met for the rest of my life, what would I do? If I had the wealth of Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, what would I do with my life and resources? If I was going to go back to school, what would I study? If I could download skills matrix style, what would the top few most desired be? If I was a lot more confident/ less fearful, what would I do and how would I be differently? If I was meaningfully smarter than I currently am? If I had much better discipline? If I was better with people (more understanding, charismatic, empathetic, patient, etc.)? If I had better emotional regulation? If my main character deficits were resolved? If I had the right team and people supporting me? If my life started over with a clean slate (no previous commitments, baggage, etc.)? Then ask “why” to your answers to each of these questions, until coming to something that feels fundamental. Values Who are you most inspired by (that you personally know or figures from history)? What about them inspires you? Who do you respect the most? What about them? What virtues would you most want to increase in yourself? Why those ones? What types of behavior and people bother you the most? What issues in the world upset you the most? What do you see as most deeply wrong with or off in the world? What do you find the most beauty in? What are you most moved by? Who would you be the most proud to have been looking back at your life? What news stories about the world would you be most positively moved to see? What would you spend your time working on if you could succeed but no one would ever know that you did it? What few qualities would you most want to increase in everyone if you could? What would you sacrifice personal benefit for? What is more important to you than your own life? What is sacred to you? What does sacred mean? What are you devoted to? What does devotion mean? What is the basis of meaningfulness? What are you loyal to? What does loyalty mean? What would be an adequate reason to violate a loyalty? What do you feel shame or guilt about? If all your personal desires were already met, what would you then desire or care about? Then ask “why” to your answers to each of these questions, until coming to something that feels fundamental. Propensities What am I naturally good at? What seems to come easy to me? (Looking at strengths and aptitudes more than specific skills.) What types of activities do I feel replenished by? What am I willing to do even if it taxes me? What do I enjoy doing for its own sake, independent of producing results or getting acknowledgement? What is my attention repeatedly called to? What can I not not pay attention to? What am I intrinsically fascinated by? Passionate about? Where have I felt the most pride/satisfaction related to something I did? When have I felt most fully alive? What have been the greatest difficulties/pains in my life? ______________________________________________________ Dharma, the way I hold it*, roughly means: the path of right action; the path of greatest integrity; the path (of choices) that don’t create suffering and optimally helps heal it; the path that leads towards increasing wholeness, consciousness, health, and quality of life for all. This relates to the concepts/words in english of mission, purpose, ethics, virtue, character, integrity, vocation, the good life, self-actualization and transcendence…but is not fully contained in any of them separately. (The fact that there is no word or phrase for this in the English language is telling.) There are principles of dharma that are universally true. And there is unique dharma – what is right action for me specifically in this situation, factoring my unique orientation, capacities, commitments – my unique life path. This concept is not deterministic – there is no algorithm that can compute what right choice is for you. This concept of dharma does not seek to reduce choice (to rules, ie causation), but to help inform and empower the reality and meaningfulness of choice – the internal considerations that inform your own sovereign choice making, aligned with your own deepest values, understanding, and sense of meaningfulness. Dharma involves your being, your doing, and your becoming. Who and how are you being, moment to moment? How connected are you to your own being, to your love, to the clarity of your principles and values…and how is that informing how you perceive and express in each situation? What are you doing and where is that doing coming from, and in service to what? How are you growing and developing, in both your being and your capacity to do? As such, our dharma is a continuous unfolding. It has at least as much to do with how we relate to uncertainty as it does to what we feel certain of. Unlike the way we often think of vocation, dharma includes how you show up to all the little things, not just what you choose as your primary focuses. And it can change at different times in your life: while raising kids and once they are grown…when you are called to focus on study, then on the application of what was learned, etc. This is an ongoing and unending inquiry. (If it wasn’t, you would be an automata.) The questions above can help provide insight into one’s unique path. The first set of questions explore increasing one’s sense of capacity and possibility in various ways and seeing what new ideas arise when not burdened by various limitations. The first question is about having your own freedom of time. The second is about having more choice making capacity in the form of money. How then would I choose? The third and fourth explore where one feels limited by skills. And which skills seem most meaningfully enabling? And so on. Increasing one’s sense of agency can clarify what our agency wants to be in service to. (Noticing which of the questions gives the greatest insights or sense of empowerment will give insight into where one feels most limited currently.) The second set of questions explore what one cares about, values, respects, loves, and finds meaningful. Who one most deeply wants to be, and what one wants their life to be in service of. This is the center of this inquiry. The third set of questions explore one’s native propensities, intrinsic motivations, and what their life experiences have conditioned in them. Our unique life experiences have developed in us certain sensitivities, insights, capacities, orientations…that are a part of our path of right action. Living dharmicly means living in greater alignment with one’s own values and desires, which means being more self aware and self authoring. Which naturally means our actions are less influenced by extrinsic motive and more from intrinsic motive. It is worth contemplating how our personal issues and our gifts relate to each other. How our traumas relate to our dharma. Often traumas lead to destructive patterns that limit the fullest expression of our dharma. Simultaneously, they often sensitize us to certain things and develop in us certain insights or capacities that become central to what is ours to give. Notice both what gifts your traumas have given you…and where the remnants of trauma still limit the fullest expression of your gifts. Deepening our dharma and healing our karma co-inform each other. It also helps to inquire into what is not dharma. The following questions can be helpful: Where am I being reactive rather than creative? Where are my goals the result of compensations to old wounds? (Proving that I’m enough, proving something to parents or a parental archetype projected on the world, seeking validation externally, proving we aren’t like our parents, etc.) Where am I still running the programs of my childhood (early models of success, of who I am, of what I’m capable of, of what’s meaningful…) What of the things I did last month will I remember and feel good about on my deathbed? Which will I wish I had done differently? How do I factor that into planning my next month? Where is fear influencing my choices? Where are there incongruences in my self, between my values and my actions…between some desires and other desires…between my habits and the expression of my highest vision…? Where is my sense of limited capacity constraining what I focus on? Where am I acting out of reaction, habit, or unconsciousness? Where do I feel trapped by past choices (loyalties, commitments, debts, investments, etc.)? Where are lack of self worth or self trust keeping me from showing up in greater service to what I care about? Where is credit seeking or image management influencing how I’m choosing? What do I do that I wouldn’t want to be fully honest about? What parts of my life would not engender the respect of those whom I respect the most? Where is my success occurring at the expense of others? Where does my life feel imbalanced? What do I do because I’m good at it but don’t really like it or care about it deeply?

Conveying spiritual insights on an internet forum or through any media at all is limited by the nature of our language and mediated through very crude human cognitive processing capabilities. It doesnt matter what you say - people are going to misinterpret it. Thats why direct experiencene is king. Now I have been here on this forum since late February 2016 and I have had my fair deal of issues with Leo. I remember many moments where he was obviously wrong about a given topic, but couldnt bring himself to change his point of view. There is a lot of pride and ego in his teachings, and even though he might deny this, it totally comes across that way. That said, the reason why I still watch his videos is because they are usually very profound and ....true. Its rarely the case that I disagree with what he says and thats the point: He did his work - he didnt pull that shit out of his ass. Now just from watching some videos from that adeptus guy, he is just nowhere close that level. He has a very basic understanding of things and this directly mirrored in his criticism.

"If you awaken from this illusion and you understand that black implies white, self implies other, life implies death (or shall I say death implies life?), you can feel yourself – not as a stranger in the world, not as something here on probation, not as something that has arrived here by fluke - but you can begin to feel your own existence as absolutely fundamental. I am not trying to sell you on this idea in the sense of converting you to it, I want you to play with it. I want you to think of its possibilities, I am not trying to prove it. I am just putting it forward as a possibility of life to think about. So then, let’s suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream you wanted to dream, and that you could, for example, have the power within one night to dream 75 years of time, or any length of time you wanted to have. And you would, naturally, as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfill all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure you could conceive. And after several nights of 75 years of total pleasure each you would say “Well that was pretty great. But now let’s have a surprise, let’s have a dream which isn’t under control, where something is gonna happen to me that I don’t know what it's gonna be." And you would dig that and would come out of that and you would say “Wow that was a close shave, wasn’t it?”. Then you would get more and more adventurous and you would make further- and further-out gambles what you would dream. And finally, you would dream where you are now. You would dream the dream of living the life that you are actually living today. That would be within the infinite multiplicity of choices you would have. Of playing that you weren't God, because the whole nature of the godhead, according to this idea, is to play that he is not. So in this idea then, everybody is fundamentally the ultimate reality, not God in a politically kingly sense, but god in the sense of being the self, the deep-down basic whatever there is. And you are all that, only you are pretending you are not." - Some wise guy with an alcohol problem