AtmanIsBrahman

Honesty is a very deep principle. It connects to treating truth as the highest value. I've been seeing interesting results just adopting the honesty principle-- it really does improve your life, counterintuitively. Obviously, consciousness can't be reduced down to principles or rules, but Ralston's principles seem like the new, actually effective version of the 10 commandments.

The answer is that there is no evil.

It’s like we’re in a video game, and there’s a rule in the code that whenever the brain gets affected, consciousness gets affected. So the brain is something generated by consciousness (which is existence) that affects consciousness, which isn’t so mysterious. Another thing worth contemplating is that you probably have no proof that the brain has anything to do with consciousness. The only way you would know is if you had a brain injury and could track the loss in cognition. Otherwise it’s just a belief. Another point is that the idea consciousness can end is unfalsifiable. It’s actually not known, just assumed. There is no proof that consciousness will end when you die. And that might be because it doesn’t actually end, it just changes form.

Spiritual swindler- Someone who spams spiritual cliches in the forum and won’t use logic or engage seriously with topics. Example: ”How do I find my life purpose?” Spiritual swindler: “Who is the one who has a life purpose? There’s only consciousness.”

Redmaxxing When you use integrating lower spiral stages as an excuse for selfish behavior Example: ”Why did you start dealing drugs?” ”I’m just redmaxxing, bro. It’s part of my spiritual path.”

No, I read Whereof One Cannot Speak and I have The Book of Not Knowing. But I’m interested in the practical principles he suggests too from a personal development perspective. Such as honor, honesty, integrity, jointing, etc. I will get to all the books eventually, but I’m curious in the meantime if anyone has lived according to these principles or has a deep understanding of them.

+1

@Davino what do you consider intelligence to be? Is it like aligning yourself with divine wisdom? Here's how I understand it. There are 2 aspects of intelligence: power and direction. Power is how quickly your mind works for doing mental calculations or processing things. Direction is where you direct your mind--choosing where the computing power goes. I think spirituality helps with the direction, but power may be largely genetic.

Yep, that's exactly right--religious indoctrination is only possible to escape from if you're genetically predisposed in that way. It's like malnourishing your child and saying if they have good height genetics they might still end up tall. That's why it's abuse.

These beliefs go together—religion is wrapped up with western culture. The idea that telling someone a couple lies is good just because it ends up being true in the long run (in a way they don’t yet understand) is completely wrong. Also, you seem to have some weird anti-mainstream views… maybe look into that.

Bringing a child to church from a young age is baptizing them in a swamp of epistemic rot. They will likely never get out of it. Even if they stop believing in the religion as adults (and most of them stick with it), they’ve still been conditioned to believe rather than seek truth. So yes, it is definitely child abuse.

Why not? It would make for a more conscious business than what most people are doing.

@Leo Gura How advanced do you consider Peter Ralston to be? If you realized everything he’s realized, how conscious would you be? The reason I ask is because I’m trying to find other teachers, and Ralston seems like one of the good ones. But I know you think he is wrong about some things (like Love) and I don’t want to get caught in his limitations.

I noticed this too when I read the book. Either Ralston has totally different terminology than @Leo Gura, or there's a big difference in how they understand consciousness.

I'm not sure. If we understand intelligence as an absolute, it becomes unclear what associations or relationships even are, because all these things break down at the absolute level.

I guess it's a "separate the wheat from the chaff" situation, like with all teachers. In general, I think we should be skeptical of gurus. The whole guru model is very corrupt and epistemically irresponsible. It's almost impossible to do the guru thing correctly. What would you consider the line between belief and direct consciousness? I agree beliefs are a problem, but it seems like you're operating based on a clear distinction between the two, which I'm not sure I agree with.

Liking the food of the culture you come from

Alcohol. Celebrations where you’re expected to drink alcohol. Denial of the unhealthiness of alcohol, and the fact it stunts your social skills.

The way I understand it is that intelligence is the fundamental substrate of the universe. Without intelligence, nothing would exist or function at all. Intelligence is what creates a human being. Then, the human being can have better or worse outlooks on how to live, what is important, etc. —and we call that wisdom. Intelligence is needed first, then wisdom can exist. So intelligence is more fundamental.

I’m not especially familiar with Adi Da, but I’m curious what you think about this: “Adi Da stated that while some "yogis, saints, and sages" had occasionally indicated some awareness of a "seventh stage", only he as a unique avatar had ever been born fully invested with the capability to embody it fully; furthermore, as the first "Seventh Stage Adept" only he would ever need to (or be capable of) doing so” -Wikipedia Seems like beliefs to me…

This is a perfect example of mankind’s hypocrisy. The guy lacks coherence. He can’t give a straight answer to a question or defend his positions properly. I’m seeing what Leo means by the connection between Truth and Good. He lacks in truth, so he lacks in Good too. The immoral behavior comes from not caring about truth.

I don’t know if anyone else has noticed this, but I notice that when I get sick my consciousness paradoxically increases. I’m talking about a common cold by the way, not serious sickness. This is interesting because you would expect consciousness to go down, but what I find is that you get closer to the “bare existence” experience when you’re sick. Since you can’t do the things you normally would do, it’s like a small reset button for your life, and you get a chance to really reflect. Also, you get closer to a samadhi “nothingness” experience (which I suspect is what death is like). Bernardo Kastrup actually argues for something similar to this point. He says that mystical experiences were more common in the past because it was harder to survive, so it was more common to have sickness or injury as a part of normal life. Just like how psychedelics correspond to low brain activity, mystical experiences could correspond to low brain activity as a result of sickness or, in the extreme, near death experiences. I’m not sure Kastrup is completely correct about people in the past having more mystical experiences, but he’s definitely onto something. Have you noticed the same trend of more sickness, more consciousness? If not, try tracking when you get sick over the next year and find out what the trend is. I’m interested to hear your opinions!

That’s not what I’m doing. I’m reporting what I noticed multiple times consistently, like a scientific experiment.

Then why did you remove the solipsism video?

Ok, I’m just saying if a normal person comes across that reel they will automatically dismiss you as crazy. By the way, were you in genuine God consciousness there or acting?