UnbornTao

I appreciate this response: How many times does it have to be said that everyone and their mother has taken the drugs - and in high doses - for it to sink in? Not only that, but people with actual enlightenments have, too - saying it isn't it. Their stance is based on consciousness rather than an experience. -- What some of you essentially presume is that the substances or a brain condition could have changed, altered, touched, or influenced what someone like Nisargadatta was directly conscious of. Look closely at your presumptions regarding consciousness - what you're really referring to is most likely awareness and experience, which is all that can be cognized. There may not be a reference point for us to truly comprehend what "direct consciousness" is about, except as a notion - one that's perhaps closer to the firsthand experiencing of something, which isn't the same thing. It's, once again, like thinking that such realization is lost (or gained) when one is drunk, depressed, feeling one with the universe, or having a stroke. It's independent of that world.

Time is relative!

@Leo Gura There's no way to 'direct' - that's the fucking point! It seems genetics is often used as a pretext to feel better about oneself and justify one's current position. The truth about this is that we don't know. To claim it's the only reason is ridiculous. It's a plausible explanation one might come up with after the fact. Even then, nothing has to change in the relative world since the absolute is true now. About your second post - effective for what, exactly? I keep asking for a reason. It's comforting to believe in the hopeful path that there's such a thing as a pill for this business. The main assertion that's being overlooked or going over your heads is that a process can only be relative. You assume it is a relational, cause-and-effect ocurrence.

Alter your state.

@Optimized Life 👍 💪

Where are the baristas?

Again, analogy: The "real-you" ain't something within the dream, nor found within it. It may wake up your "dream character." Good old dream-caffeine.

But that's the point - and that's what’s being questioned. It's still an experience. You ingest a chemical. You go through things: perceive, feel, think, have a shift in mind state. You come down. You might retain a memory of what you think you went through, and may even interpret the contents of your mind to fit your preconceptions, beliefs, and preferences. I've had 5-MeO breakthroughs - they blew my mind and were blissful. At first, I even held the notion that they were "enlightenments." But making a sober assessment now, I see that as more wishful thinking on my part than anything real or accurate. It can be depressing to admit that, from within the dream, nothing can produce the experience of waking up from it - but it's true. How could it? It's not a process! It's not even subject to logic or empiricism, since those belong to the dream's content - and absolute isn't empirical. Yet, paradoxically, having a direct consciousness is possible now - regardless of condition, environment, brain makeup, personality, or anything else that is dream-content. It just seems to have no attribution, explanation, or cause - hence the mysterious part. Its occurrence - even though it does not really 'occur’ - will probably remain a mystery. Because, again, it doesn't happen as something relative, and the relative is all we can cognize. Even "more direct" misses the mark and is still relative. There's no "more direct" than direct. Everything is absolutely indirect - except "direct."

It's nonsensical if you assume it is the result of a process. That's why I hinted that it's a paradoxical possibility that's inherently mysterious. You just do - you "take the leap through consciousness." And it is sudden and now. Relative conditions are irrelevant. In the analogy, how do you explain the waking up from the dream? What do you attribute it to? Do you think it is attributable to some cause or action, or an outcome, or an activity? Like A + B + C = awakening? How could the content of the dream possibly produce the experience of awakening from it? It is not possible to put together some content of the dream to produce a realization of its nature. Everywhere you look and everything you do is the dream - including your body. This is what "direct" is all about.

Self-inquiry doesn't do it either. And I wanted a cappuccino god damn it.

Sure. Never-mind.

You think that, in order to wake up from the dream, you can do so by drinking coffee within it. How many times have I used this analogy?

Where did you get the idea that truth is subject to the brain? Whatever is ultimately true about reality is already true - even before you had a brain, and after you lose it.

The history of coffee and curious facts about this bean and beverage, by GPT:

How do you write your books? How do you approach communicating an insight or a direct consciousness? What do you pay attention to so that it gets across - that it's conveyed in a way you find satisfying? I suppose, in one form or another, this might boil down to: What is the art of facilitation really about? What makes a facilitator or author masterful? A bit too generic, perhaps.

Very Zen. 🧘🧘🏼‍♂️

How do you see sentience?

I thought Morgan Freeman was. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Mr8blRexXGQ

I'll have some awareness with the wine.

Besides the advice shared here, you might want to ask that question specifically to your ophthalmologist.

But I love lasagna!

Looks cool - I see it as a more technologically-advanced form of collective survival.

@Breakingthewall @BlueOak @Raze Thanks guys, it was mostly an attempt to lighten up the conversation. Keep fighting.

How much of the conversation is AI-generated? GPT vs GPT.