Something Funny

Inspired by the Leo's video, I've made two posts on reddit. One on a Christian subreddit and another one on atheist subreddit. I've asked christians why do they assume that scriptures are true and atheists whether they are willing to admit that they don't actually know if God exists and that they belief that God doesn't exist is not so different from theists believing that God exists. And I've actually god some interesting responses on the christian subreddit, with some people admitting that yes, this is an assumption and that we don't really know. Some people saying that they've been questioning their faith and christian dogma. Some referring to direct experiences. Also, notably everyone was nice and polite. From atheists I just got a bunch of ridicule and straw-man responses like "Why don't I start questioning whether spider man is real", immediately conflating my position with defending religion, and banning my post for proselytizing, lol. Even though I did my best to not make any statements about whether God exists or not, just questioned the automatic assumption that he doesn't and posed a purely philosophical question. I find this really interesting because I expected to get the opposite reaction. I guess this could be due to the fact that many christians on reddit are actually closer to stage green christians than to maga conservative christians. And atheists are mostly stage orange materialists, who don't even care about existential questions of philosophy much.

This is a quote from a christian who claims to have had a direct experience of God and give it as a reason as to why he is Christian. Is this him just mixing his pre-existing ideas of christianity with mystical experience and deluding himself or can you have an actual "Christianity themed" awakening? If it is possible, do you take it for what it is because direct experience is king or do you tell yourself that your mind is playing tricks on you because you know (lets say from watching Leo's videos) that awakening should be something more than you just meeting a spirit of Yeshua? If this were you, how would you know if your experience was real and you are not deluding yourself? Direct experience is the only way to know if God exists and to understand God, but everyone's experience is different so how can you be sure if yours is the true one?

@Paradoxed so during the trip you don't remember that you took the drugs and are not able to have an awareness of "okay, I am high now, I might be seeing crazy shit"?

@Leo Gura i see. Yeah, they sound sketchy, and not just in terms of being bad for your health but also because you might do something crazy and get into serious trouble that way.

Because you think they are too dangerous / sketchy or because you don't think there will be much value in it? Or both?

Most posts are just "religion is bad", "look how dumb those christians are", etc.

@Leo Gura Lol

@Leo Gura thank you

Ok Yes, I agree.

@Leo Gura but you don't have to permanently install it anywhere which is really the only option if you are renting an apartment. Not just because you might not be allowed to but also in case you need to move in the future.

@r0ckyreed I want to buy myself this one when I get the money: https://aquatruwater.com/product/carafe-countertop-reverse-osmosis-water-purifier-variation/ It's reverse osmosis filter and I like that the water is stored in the glass container vs plastic. You can also find them used on ebay for much cheaper, which shouldn't techincally be an issue since you need to buy new filter sets every ones in a while anyway. But I have never bought anything on ebay so idk how safe it is.

Yes, that's possible. But I like to give a person a benefit of the doubt in such cases since this argument can be used against anyone claiming to have a direct experience of God.

@Leo Gura ok, I see.

Exactly, lol. But that means you can't trust your direct experience either and you need to run it through the filter of your indirect knowledge of reality, which is kind of a catch 22, isn't it?

Yeah, I thought of this when asking the question, but my conclusion was that those would be different apples. Now I am not sure why it has to be oe way or the other. Since its your imagination, you could imagine it either way, right?

@Leo Gura yes, ok Thank you <3

I see. Yeah, I guess that's true. Ok. I assume you don't want me to bug you with any more questions about this so I will stop, haha.

What makes you think that language is that fundamental to feeling safe? ... Probably not the same, but I actually slept outside in a park once, in a foreign city. It wasn't a deep sleep cause I was trying to be cautious but it was a cool experience.

I see. Are mystics / mysticism different from things like working on becoming awake or are you using them as synonym for everything we talk about here? I meant that I can clearly see psychological source of many of my dreams and can relate them to things I was thinking / worrying about during the day/ That's understandable. They are very pretty though. I was hoping it's not silk. I wonder if you can make them as vibrant and beautiful with other natural materials, not silk or synthetics.

I classify those as regular dreams. Just scary, lol.

@Hojo if you mean lucid dreaming and that kind of stuff then I never had those, unfortunately. My sister claimed that she had astral projections a few times but I don't know how much of it is real vs her just thinking that it was real.

In my experience, regular dreams are just stuff that you are thinking about in your waking life, not some mystical experiences.

So it's not like in the teleportation / transferring human consciousness to another body thought experiments where the idea is that the thing that's being transferred might be just a copy paste of you, not really you. Yeah... It sounds very interesting though. I see. I think that it would also be interesting to be able to explore this looser reality with a functioning brain to be able to really observe and appreciate it vs going nuts along with it. I see. ... Also, would you mind sharing where you get your scarves from? Are they made from silk or is it some other fabric?

@Leo Gura thank you Doesn't this imply some kind of object permanence though? Otherwise, wouldn't such lapse in consciousness mean me completely disappearing out of the existence and God restarting to imagine me, but it would now be a different version of me? Do you think insanity is worth exploring for its own sake (as in actively trying to experience states of insanity) or do you treat it as a side effect of trying to expand your consciousness with psychedelics and other stuff? So when a schizophrenic is seeing demons, it's not them creating/imagining those demons with their brain, which is ultimately being imagined by God, it's God actively dreaming your whole life up in a certain way? To clarify, I am essentially asking if it's possible to somehow affect your reality from this 1 level of separation: God Mind -> Your own mind -> things imagined by your own mind. You are saying that human mind/self is too weak for that. Do you believe this is a hard rule, like totally not possible or there might be people capable of this? In this example, could insane people be able to do this to some degree because their minds are more unhinged?

How is this different from "regular" psychedelics?