axiom

New podcast from Sam Harris. Whether or not you agree with his views, it should be an interesting listen. https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/286-the-paradox-of-psychedelics

He is selling the idea that all of the material things that you egoistically desire will become manifest in time, provided you carry out certain actions. It reminds me of 'The Secret'. Whether or not this works, it is not enlightenment. It is the opposite direction.

@Nilsi That was great, thank you

Thought experiment: Most people tend to feel like their centre of existence lies somewhere behind their eyes. This is because the visual field is the most hypnotic and information-rich of our senses. So, if you were born without eyes, where would you locate yourself? Maybe in the ears? What if you were born blind and deaf? Where would you locate yourself then? Maybe in the hands? What if you were also unable to feel anything in your hands? Where would you locate yourself then? Maybe in the mouth? What if you had no physical senses at all? Where would you locate yourself? In deep states of meditation you can progress from feeling like your centre is behind your eyes, to feeling like the centre is wherever you happen to place your attention. Ultimately, this need not be anywhere on the body.

Keeping them all for yourself huh?

If words are failing there's always the hammer, right?

Who knows.

@Nilsi Some would say that this is the very foundation of awakening. To what does experience appear if not to an 'I' ... admittedly the very idea seems totally incoherent at first glance. But the reason it might seem so inextricable is because the 'I' always finds a way to weasel its way into experience. In the same way, the feeling of existing behind the eyes seems utterly unshakeable... and yet it can be shaken. Semantics can cause confusion as usual, of course.

@VeganAwake I agree. @Nilsi Conventionally we assume that it’s not a realisation that it is possible to have in real time since an ‘I’ must surely have it. Nevertheless it does appear to be true. Within the materialist paradigm, the ‘I’ is a trick of the brain which is appended to experiences, but is not a prerequisite for them. It can be switched off under certain circumstances (stroke, psychedelics, meditation etc). Thus the ‘I’ can realise it is imaginary, but only after the fact (when the Default Mode Network comes back online) It is possible to train the mind such that the DMN is permanently quiet. Turns out the ‘I’ is not really needed for the body to go about its business. Anecdotally, it seems to be possible for there to be a realisation that the I is not real and to hold this as a direct experience that is happening to noone. Experience and ‘I’ seem to be separate functions within the brain.

@Someone here I agree with you. One’s immutable sense of self does not seem to depend on anything that appears. Form rises up and passes away, like all thoughts. Thought is the very thing that creates the distance between subject (you) and object (other). Thought is the duality. You exist beyond thought and thus beyond form.

As Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj once pointed out, the first step is to realise “I am not that” - and the next is to realise “I am that”.

Don’t outsource your beliefs to others! Be your own scientist. Don’t get carried away with ideas that you haven’t directly validated for yourself through experience. Any conclusions you make will then sit on a much stronger foundation.

@MrTouchdown Because nothing would change, and you'd very quickly realise how pointless it was.

Knowledge is an illusion caused by the ability of imagination to extend its complexity infinitely in any direction you look.

Some of the philosophers who opposed Galileo’s discoveries refused even to look through his telescope. Materialism is a religion based on inference and faith. Idealism is empirical.

In what appears to be a physical world, it can be said that thoughts arise as a result of neurons reaching a charge sufficient to meet their threshold potential. This opens voltage-gated sodium channels in the cell membrane which cause a sudden depolarisation (a spike, called an action potential). This in turn transmits charge across the length of the neuronal axon and causes neurotransmitters to pass through the synaptic bouton and across the synaptic cleft to the dendrites of another neuron. Each such synaptic firing event can be said to be a little bit like binary data: it either fires or does not fire. En masse the trillions of neurons that comprise the cortical columns of different brain regions build up a complex picture from this binary data, and scientific materialists would suggest that this is more or less what thoughts are made of. Regardless of whether the materialists are right, it is worth pondering at exactly which juncture in this process you are involved. Do you control or decide any of the above neurochemical processes? ... and this rabbit hole can eventually lead to the realisation that there is no you at all.

Doesn't matter. You can switch it up. Just go with whatever feels good.

Had my first holotropic breathwork session today. I was pretty sceptical at first, but it ended up being much more powerful than I expected. It's pretty damn impressive what can be achieved purely through intense breathing. Three hours in total. The first solid hour involved non-stop, very deep breathing. For the first 45 minutes or so I thought it may end up being a waste of time. But then things started to happen. Overall I felt It was quite comparable to a 3g mushroom trip, and I definitely think it could have been even stronger if I had let go more. Due to past experience, I still have some dread and reticence when it comes to ultra-profound states. As things picked up, I began to feel as if I had left the body. Definite consciousness expansion. Single point awareness. I could also feel God's love and compassion. It felt more like I was at the gates of heaven though as opposed to in the VIP section It's something I'll definitely be exploring again. I think the rediscovery of holotropic breathwork could be one of the next "big things" in spiritual work, since it's so accessible.

< That video looks like it's five years old. A human is a thought put in motion by God. Like all thoughts, it rises up and passes away. It has no autonomy of its own.

Could be real-time phenomenal representation of error correction. Pretty cool. The brain expects movement but doesn’t get it, so is tweaks its modelling, leaving visual artefacts. Another possibility is that it is the eye’s version of moire - which you can see in the recordings from lower resolution video cameras. This happens when the image detail is smaller and finer than the interval between each image sensor.

I went to a practitioner. But it’s clear that wasn’t needed. Probably very similar to shamanic breathing. I haven’t seen Leo’s video on that though.

The technique is very straightforward. Basically - lie down on your back first of all, and make yourself comfortable with cushions. You won’t want to be in any sort of seated position for this. Breathe in a deep, full breath. The in-breath should take 2.5 to 3 seconds or so. Same with the outbreath. The in-breath should be the most powerful. Don’t blow very hard on the out-breath. I’d recommend putting on a playlist. Something the like the ICL Psilocybin playlist should work well. It’s very good to have some music going as it gives you something to hold on to. It also acts as a clue to your expanded state (as with a psychedelic, the music will feel much more immersive when you go deep) Keep up the breathing consciously for the first hour. After the first 20 minutes or so it will get much easier. Allow yourself to drift in to expanded states occasionally when you aren’t breathing so hard, but after some time return to the breathing. For the last hour, maybe longer, you won’t need to breath so hard at all as you’ll be in a blissed-out, expansive psychedelic type of state. Like I said, my experience was comparable to a 3G mushroom trip, and I’m pretty confident if you follow the above instructions you’ll go deep as well. It also felt like it would be possible to go much deeper. Report back - would be interested to hear how it goes.

I apologise for any confusion.

Well, yes - it seems to. I haven’t made an argument to the contrary.

I thought this was an interesting scientific tidbit insofar as it relates to mysticism... clues within a dream. It is now the current mainstream scientific view that the brain receives almost NO inputs relative to the information that it self-generates. The brain's predictive modelling processes work from the top down. This means that in any given situation, it predicts what inputs it is most likely to receive from the environment and this self-concocted "best guess" is what you experience as the world. In effect, the only time the brain uses environmental data is when something about its model triggers an error message, i.e. when its model appears to be flawed. Error messages are known to form a tiny, tiny fraction of the brain's model-building processes. So, when mystics say that the world is imaginary, mainstream science is actually today more than 99.9% in agreement.