axiom

I am not experiencing anything. The body seems to want to survive. I am not the body. That is not a fact. The dream falls away with the self. The self is the dream. You are already dead. You never lived. Life goes on, apparently. You are not alive. The body seems to be alive. You are not the body.

Nothing can be experienced. Nothing can be known. That is the dream of a life lived.

Enlightenment is the great unknowing. It is beyond knowledge. It does nothing to help you navigate life.

Yes All experiences / states are dream states - all are on a level playing field. None is "higher" or "more advanced" than another. Enlightenment is beyond experience. Certainly it is beyond mind. And is not a state of consciousness. Good stuff.

I consider that psychedelics show how deep and nuanced and crazy and profound the dream can be. They show the dream in hitherto unimaginable depth and glory. It is truly something to behold. I've had my share of trips, but I do not consider that any peak states from psychedelics - no matter how extraordinary - have anything to do with enlightenment really. They're a bit of a red herring at best, and kinda dangerous at worst.

If other molecularly similar psychedelics are anything to go by, there seems to be an increase in the baseline activity of the default mode network (ego / self). It is suppressed during the trip but elevated thereafter. The person - having been dissolved entirely during the trip - comes back online and, as always, wants to claim ownership. This time though, it wants to claim ownership of something so novel and profound that the notion “I am God” can often solidify as a personal belief.

I don’t know, but it seems like they are still seeking meaning and seeking peak experiences. Strictly speaking there are no others, just as there is no you. There is just whatever is appearing.

@Keanu That’s correct - depth is an illusion. There is nothing you can do after enlightenment. It’s a once and done deal. There are no answers or directions.

The left wing bias on this board is quite weird.

@Mormegil Enlightenment is when the “person” (really just a process of seeking and attaching) is no more. It is liberation from apparent personhood. Taking things “personally” (really just the appearance of anxiety) seems to happen less or maybe not at all, but there is no hard and fast rule, and there is no choice in it. Whatever seems to appear is just appearing, including all behaviours and apparent activities of people. There is nothing an “enlightened person” could do differently one way or the other. No one left to take things “personally” or not.

The Pneumatic Institution in Bristol, England, was the world's first psychedelic salon - and the birthplace of psychedelic research over 220 years ago: (Humphry Davy) For further info : https://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history-science-technology-medicine/humphry-davy-laughing-gas-and-the-era-self-experimentation

@inFlow Right, exactly People ask "is enlightenment this or that?", or "how do I reach this level or that level?" etc, without realising they are it already (or rather "it" is "it" already). Enlightenment is just being. Just whatever is appearing. End of story. No meaning can encompass it or make it more than it is. No meaning will take anyone anywhere, but rather the yearning for - and attachment to - apparent meaning veils it and extracts its immediacy. That is the very illusion of separation.

@inFlow You've just described spirituality. It is eventually seen that all of spirituality is just seeking activity which seems to maintain the sense of separateness. Seeking = the sense of separateness. The "me" wants to find something to validate itself. Maybe that's because deep down, it knows it isn't real.

A character can seem to keep taking things personally or not, whether or not enlightenment has "happened". There is no rule. The weather appears just as the behaviour of a character appears.

@Phil777 That sounds right. Love is the lack of value and purpose. It is total and utter freedom without any finite conceptual restrictions. It has no judgement as there is no-one to judge. In the end, it cannot be validated by yourself, since "you" is just a collection of randomly appearing thoughts, none of which you have any control over. In the same way, the forest does not validate the mountain. Seeking evidence is the activity of selfing and seeking. Seeking imposes a veil of apparent fiinitude. It is exactly this which stands in the way of enlightenment. Love is validated by being, not knowing. Knowing is always second order. It can only ever be a facsimile of being, and one where the printer ran out of ink.

@Jenkins Print out some pictures of people you really admire and stick them on your walls around your apartment / house. Realise that whatever they achieved was the result of delayed gratification. All real human achievement comes from delayed gratification. The modern world with all its distractions trains you to need instant gratification. It is in very real terms an endogenous drug addiction. Train yourself to love delayed gratification. For example, commit to memory all the capital cities of every country in the world. This should take you about a week. After that, memorise all the chemical elements. And so on. The extent to which you find this boring = the extent of your problem. It will get much easier over time, until eventually you will be able to make very gratifying connections between seemingly disparate areas of thought. When a news story is on TV you'll understand more about the history, psychology and social implications than anyone else, and with ease. Just by trying something like the above, you'll be ahead of 99.9% of other people in your generation as their dopamine addictions and concentration spans spiral into oblivion. Start today. Good luck!

@inFlow At the highest levels what you thought you were ceases to exist completely. Or rather, it is exposed that it never existed and was always a misapprehension. For example, all of these thoughts that you are identifying with right now - none of these are yours.

@Phil777 Reality (aka God) doesn't love anything. Reality is love. Reality can be brutal.

I could once have certainly related to the confusion, the anxiety, the hunger and the neuroticism. This is what seems to propel one on the seeking path in the first place. It's a double-edged sword though, because it is also precisely what keeps one dissatisfied and seeking (maybe forever). There are all sorts of things that can be said beyond that, but nothing of much value.

I think a relatively small number of people might think he's trolling. I don't think he's trolling - I think he's just excited to be on a date.

Care to explain rather that leaving such vague posts. Sure. If I discounted the guy in the footage as just someone who is joking or trolling, then it's likely that I would be suffering cognitive dissonance. In the face of evidence to the contrary, I would be retreating to a default position that makes me feel safer and provokes less anxiety. Because the evidence does not match my world view, I would be more inclined to question its veracity or to talk it down in some other way. But on a less playful note ... the footage does not suggest that Pfizer is seriously engaged with gain of function research or similar right now. It sounds more like it was just raised at a meeting. It's hard to say how seriously they would consider it.

Cognitive dissonance.

Yes, most likely a joke… fingers crossed.

Words on a page are on the shallow end, yes.

If you want an enlightenment "experience" without drugs, you could try holotropic breathing for three hours straight. You would be disappointed with enlightenment itself. It's not what you think it is.