Pav

You are still very much attached to requiring a purpose. True meaninglessness is beautiful. It's like when children play, they do so without any purpose. Or like music, you don't listen just to get to the end of the piece. This is like your life, one big musical score sung for no other reason other than itself. You may chose to assign meanings if you like, or set a life purpose, but realise that this is ultimately all play.

-

Enlightenment is the disillusionment of the self as a separate entity. It is not a belief but rather a sort of revaluation common sense; one moment it is obvious to you that you’re an entity imposing it’s will upon the mind-body and the next moment it is obvious to you that no such entity exists. Disillusioning the ego involves a few things: 1) Realising that the self concept (thoughts/images/narratives) is not who you are and disidentifying with it. Detaching is from the self concept is enough if your aim is to reach peace, although you may do away with the self concept altogether since it serves no purpose and can only get in the way. 2) Realising that there was never any entity in control, that there is no real distinction between voluntary and involuntary. The actions and thoughts of the mind-body have been ‘happening’ all long just as the wind happens to blow. After coming to this realisation there becomes nothing left to do but sit back and enjoy the show. The approach changes from one of resistance, neurosis, and constant grasping for control to one of complete acceptance. Bliss/peace/happiness is an not emotional state (although elevated emotional state may be a side effect). It is rather the underlying peace present when in complete acceptance of all that is, including your emotions (being mindful, rather than attaching). Neurosis is the superimposed resistance. It is possible to be at peace while experiencing a depressive emotion; likewise you may also be neurotic while in an ecstatic state. The emotion only becomes ‘negative’ once you have labelled it as such. Acceptance does not mean that you sit idly, taking no action (although that is a valid option). Preferences, values, authentic desires, empathy, love and enjoyment still exist. Only now you are no longer attached to needing any specific outcomes; you are able to play whichever game you wish and engage with it to the fullest, without being hampered or set in a perpetual state of anxiety by the ego. Rigid moral principles will only get in the way of genuine love and compassion and ego will only get in the way of your authentic desires; since the ego is namely concerned with survival, comfort, security and social status, while moral principles are too stringent to allow for the nuance of real situations and give the ego a basis for moral righteousness and the demonization of others. Once you get out of your own way you find that you function effortlessly, the egotistical neurotic whose always trying to call the shots is no longer present, and your actions become much more aligned with your fundamental values. 3) Self realisation; which involves getting a sense of what it is that you are through firsthand experience. It may be interpreted as ‘nothingness’. Nothingness does not mean that ‘something’ does not exist; rather nothingness is more like vacuum of empty space in that it contains the whole universe. In this sense, perception arises out of the void. Nothingness cannot be experienced directly, but you can get a sense that it’s there; similar to the eye’s blind spot, you cannot see it directly but if you hold your finger in the right position you can tell that it’s there. Enlightenment and self realisation are near instantaneous, permanent realisations. They do not require ten years of meditation, nor do they need to be constantly maintained. Once they have been seen, they cannot be unseen. Meditation, yoga, presence, ect. are practices which may be helpful in reaching a state of Being-perception. Being-perception is a temporary state which does require years of practice to attain and can be present to varying degrees, unlike the on/off switch of enlightenment. Although, it is possible to attain B-perception instantaneously under certain circumstances, for instance psychedelic drugs may force you into this state of perception. In ordinary consciousness, the mind is constantly dissecting, labelling, categorising the world; while a great deal of our sensory information is filtered out from awareness altogether. This rubrisisation of our perceptual input causes the world be become familiarised. Being-perception is the disintegration of these abstractions; you experience the raw, unadulterated perception before it is touched by the conceptualising mind (prefrontal processes). The world is viewed in all its 'suchness'. It becomes defamiliarised and the ‘valve of perception’ becomes more open to you. B-perception is magical; it is as if experiencing for the first time. The sky may be perceived as an unimaginably brilliant blue, you may see an infinite complexity in the patterns formed by a wave or in the sound of the rustlings leaves, all the while leaving your experience completely undissected. To experience raw, unfiltered perception is quite possibly the most beautiful things you could experience. B-perception necessarily puts you in an egoless state, although it is not enlightenment. Every human being has experienced moments of egolessness only to return back to the egoic state still attached to their ego. Having an egoless experience does not necessarily trigger the realisations I spoke of earlier. Other transcendent experiences include: - The realisation of the inherent perfection of the world - Unconditional love - Unconditional gratitude I know of no techniques or meditations to attain the three experiences/realisations listed above (perhaps high levels of B-perception will get you there?). They happen to you seemly at random; suddenly overwhelming you as you are taken in by surprise. It is as if the brains 'gratitude/love valve' have opened to the fullest, producing the maximum amount of gratitude or love that the brain can physically produce. You will feel total gratitude for the mere fact of existence itself. People who you previously disliked during egoic state of consciousness will now be approached with nothing but love. You may look towards a rock on the ground and feel overwhelming love for the rock, while seeing its inherent perfection. The experience of just one of these is enough to change your outlook on life, to validate you life and see that it was fundamentally worth living. While I don’t believe enlightenment alone will trigger these experiences, it does seem that they are fundamentally incompatible with the ego; as such enlightenment may be a good place to start. ------- What are your thoughts on these descriptions? Do they match up to your own experiences?

I'd like to add another little analogy. The ego is like a self regulating system caught in overdrive. The system has fooled itself into believing that it has control when in actuality, there is none. The second aspect of enlightenment that I mentioned above, is where this realisation is triggered into the system. Once this realisation occurs, the system ceases to fight with itself, and finally allows itself to simply function.

Can't say that I see this to be the case.My yoga classes seems to be overwhelmingly populated by women. It seems like women are much more interested in spirituality when I look around in real life.

Academic psychology will not help you toward enlightenment. There are some interesting things to learn from it, and some studies are very well done. But on the whole this approach to learning about the psyche is very limited. The problem with academic psychology is that they want so badly to be labeled a 'scientist'. They attempt to isolate variables and reduce it all to numbers, which makes the studies completely unrelatable to any real situation. Our current computing capabilities are not even close to powerful enough to compute all the variables in something as complex as an interaction between two individuals. As such the variables that they reduce the situation to are so incredibly ambiguous that they are nearly entirely useless. For some reason there is a tradition of attempting to take samples of an average of the population (which in actuality ends up being the average of middle to upper class, educated, white, western college students). Of course, if you take an average measurement of the population, you will obtain average results (neurosis). They are not studying psychologically healthy or higher conscious people, and you will not learn how to reach psychological health from these sorts of results. The only psychologist I can name who studied psychologically healthy people and transcendent experiences is Abraham Maslow, who seems to now how been disowned from academia. Academic psychologists, in general, deny that transcended states of consciousness even exist.

Really, you cannot possible tell if someone is enlightened or not. All these people claiming to know whose enlightened are kidding themselves. Ultimately, it is only yourself who gives your guru their authority. All you have available is it test it in your own direct experience and see what happens.

Old mate Alan Watts is amazing! There's literally hundreds of his lectures on Youtube. Another mystic I really like who hasn't been mentioned here yet is Aldous Huxley. He is definitely the most intelligent human being I've ever heard of.

One thing which may be helpful when determining whether your desire is authentic or egoic is to observe the way in which the desire is motivated. Egoic desires will be much more motivated by what Maslow called 'deficiency motivation', while authentic desires are motivated by 'Being motivation'. Deficiency motivation is driven primarily by lack; it is only concerned with the end goal, the process or journey are not valued in their own right and will likely not be enjoyed at all. If you're motivation resembles a carrot and stick model it is probably egoically driven. Being motivation is driven much more from love, enjoyment, and fascination which arises simply because the activity is inherently valued for no other reason greater than itself. The activity is enjoyed intrinsically for its own sake, as an end in itself, not merely as a means to some other end. Being motivation is different from deficiency motivation in that there are no climaxes or stray moments of triumph, rather the desire cannot be satiated and is a steady upward growth; "the more one gets, the more one wants". An example of Being motivation is the desire learn more about the universe, of people, or of yourself, not for the purpose of obtaining a degree or being better able to influence people for money or sex, but rather simple because you find those topics intrinsically fascinating. Another is the development of a creative skill in whichever field, simply because of the joy and beauty inherent in developing that creativity.

Ehrlich will test for LSD. One important thing to remember is that LSD is completely tasteless. If it has a bitter taste, or even any taste at all, I'd spit it out immediately. A bitter taste mean it is either an NBOME or DOx substance which are very dangerous. Mushrooms you have to learn to identify the correct species, which will differ depending on your location. https://www.shroomery.org/ has a lot of information on mushroom identification. I think Psilocybe Semilanceata (Liberty Caps) are usually what dealers will sell, although I'm not too sure on that.

Yes it is too. So just look with your own awareness without any conceptualising.

I think the 'I' label is arbitrary, you may assign 'I' to whatever you choose. It is just a thought.

Why must there be a perceiver? I find the concept of 'yourself', and the dichotomy between the perceiver vs the perceived to be mere fiction. The quote by Alan Watts explains it well.

I don't identify with anything. I think any form of identification would just be a thought. Everything is just 'happening'.

Honestly, modern western society is a very toxic environment. Not conducive to mental health at all. Primitive people are no less intelligent than civilised people, less educated, less socialised but not less intelligent. You will find some very intelligent people among primitive culture. Boredom is caused by your familiarisation with the world, due to all the minds rubrisising. Once the abstracting mind ceases and allows you to experience raw, unadulterated perception, the world will seem magical to you. We certainly live in interesting times. It will be interesting to see how the singularity plays out.

I've never found a perceiver and I don't see any reason why there would have to be a perciever. The perception is just 'there'. It fills nothingness, just as matter fills empty space. You cannot experience the nothingness directly, but you can get a sense of it. Look down at your body and trace it all the way up to where your head should be, what is there? Nothing. I think the confusion comes when we try to put it in words.

From what I can see, there is only perception, other than that; nothingness.

@Emerald Wilkins But why create the masculine-feminine dichotomy in the first place? Even the conceptions of being vs doing, non-rational vs rational are to be transcended. Are we not being while we do? Is it not possible to use rational thought without being taken in by it? There are no dichotomies in the real world, they are all products of the conceptualising mind.

We are not the captains of our own souls, just the loudest crew member.

@khalifa Nothing neurotic about being interested in the world, it's an inherently fascinating place! There's a lot of value in abstract knowledge, so long as you recognise it as the map and not the territory itself. I'll upload them somewhere and message it to you when I get home.

@khalifa It's some very fascinating stuff. Each one of Leo's questions goes very deep. I have found that it can taking years of study before being able to comprehend how vast a question is. If this is a topic that interests you I could send you a couple of lectures on neuroscience and reason?

@khalifa How does reasoning function? What are its foundations? What must happen in the brain to achieve rationality? ie. how can our brains take perceptions of "two-ness" and abstract that to give concepts of infinity, imaginary numbers, calculus? How is this related to mathematics? What are the foundations of mathematics? How can the brain take these abstractions and apply them to other cognitive processes, such as time (ie counting)? Is abstraction a way for separate areas of the brain to share information with one another (ie taking the visual perception of "two-ness" and relating that to our perception of time)? How is language related to reasoning and abstraction? In what way can rationality be related to computation? In what ways are brains similar to computers, in what ways are the different? Are our brains mere data handlers like computers, or is something different going on? What is happening at a first hand experiential level when you reason? How involved is feeling/emotion? What are the factors that influence your reasoning? How can two people arrive at different conclusions with the same evidence? Is reason applied before or after making your judgement? What is the process that allows you to begin from a few assumptions to arrive at a conclusion? Are there different types of logical systems? Is it possible for it to be proven decisively that rationality has its limitation? ie what does logic have to say about its own limitations?

@khalifa All of those answers are complete cop outs. You have not even begun to investigate them. As an example; here you have provided an essentially meaningless statement. You have not explained what rationality is at all, nor explored it's validity, or its limits. This is a question I have been interested in recently, just to begin to gain some understanding has require extensive experiential observation, and the study of neuroscience, logic, mathematics, linguistics, symbols, epistemology, psychology, and computation/algorithms. Explore much deeper. Really examine those questions intensively. They are all much more fascinating and much profounder than you can currently comprehend.

Melatonin will certainly help you lucid dream. It is the neurotransmitter involved in regulating your circadian rhythms, and it is able to cross the blood-brain barrier. Taking melatonin will make your dreams much more vivid.

Because this isn't the case. The ego causes a great deal of suffering and distorts your perception of reality. The egoic individual is incapable of reaching the higher states of consciousness; gratitude, absolute acceptance, unconditional love, ect.