Carl-Richard

Yesterday, I switched the magnesium back to the oxide/citrate form and dropped the vitamin E supplement, felt better, and today I added back the vitamin E, and I think it might be the vitamin E dear god. It's understandable as I'm taking around 300% of RDI, but why they make the supplements so strong 😩?

How much glycine do you get from one serving?

Is there anybody you think is enlightened? Do you think enlightenment is possible at all?

Lol, up until now you seemed to present each part of that statement separately as if it was ad hoc, but I guess now it's more clear. You're looking for very specific proof, of people giving testimonies that they were "enlightened" using Sadhguru's techniques. This is hard because people are of course discouraged to call themselves enlightened (it can be seen as pompous) and I simply wouldn't expect an enlightened person to frame their enlightenment as mainly a product of a course and make a video giving a testimony of the course and suggesting that the course works (and you must buy it too!), it's just weird and odd as it's a much more personal journey than that. I simply rely on gradual proof: his techniques are similar to other techniques that work, and you have scientific studies showing effects in the right direction where the ultimate outcome is consistent with enlightenment, and of course, "I read energy". That he wants to put some of that behind a paywall is again reasonable. If you want to put extra skepticism because you lack this very specific kind of proof that most probably doesn't exist, that's your prerogative.

I think it's that you're changing the goalpost and throwing spaghetti at the wall because you initially also had a problem with his environmentalism, but anyway: I think Sadhguru's free teachings go just as deep as Spira's teachings. I'm curious why you think that is not the case. And ok, so deepest teachings behind a paywall makes you a conman. Is Leo Gura a conman?: Again, keeping some teachings hidden and some public might be for some other reason than simply draining people's wallets.

He sells retreats and events just like Isha does with the Inner Engineering retreats, he sells guided meditations and books, yes, and he also sells tickets to online webinars and livestreams, he has a subscription for a video archive for £16/month or £160/year and individual buying options (£7.20 per audio, £10.80 per video), but selling online courses is suddenly what pushes you into "conman" territory? Why? There is so much free content out there of Sadhguru giving talks, interviews, Satsangs, group meditations, free events like Mahashivrati, but him providing some paid online courses (given you're not living in the slums), that's stepping over the line, that's him paywalling his enlightenment sauce. Mhm.

@zurew I guess that gives a particular case of quality vs quantity. But what determines finding the right frame? Maybe my wording was not precise enough: what things cause you to find the right frame or cause you to have high quality thoughts?

..wha?

Lmao sure. I haven't watched those videos, you can go find them yourself if you're genuinely curious and not simply trying to "hah I won the argument because he didn't use the YouTube search bar for me". Rupert Spira sells enlightenment. He does events. But this is still just weak "making money on enlightenment means conman". Inb4 Leo drops the newest course on Alien Awakening or whatever. I don't know what that means. Everybody is skeptical about Tolle, he is like the scapegoat for guru skeptics.

My guy, he has already created Inner Engineering. It's not like it needs to be constantly re-invented or updated like some computer software. It's the same software from 30 000 years ago. And doing massive environmental movements, arguably the most massive ones in history, is amazing for garnering recognition. Again, the two-variable lens. Besides, how many more Dhyanalingas or Shiva statues do you need to create? The common theme here is casting a wide net and trying out different solutions. His environmental movement is helping his project of enlightening people. You can disagree with his methods but to call him a conman is flat out ridiculous in my not-so-humble energy-reading New-Age-but-not-New-Age opinion.

That's where you look at testimonies because I doubt there are many studies looking at e.g. DMN activity and The Hood Mysticism Scale in advanced practicioners in Isha (feel free to find them). But I have zero doubt that Sadhguru's methods work, because they're fundamentally the same as other methods that do work. And I personally claim to be able to read energy, call me crazy. If you want to be a knitpicker, go dig up testimonies, there are probably millions out there. Mkay, so Buddha is fake, Ramana Maharshi is fake, Jesus, Rupert Spira, Eckhart Tolle, it's all conmen the entire way down? You believe you can have spiritual experiences but that there is no growth, no integration, no plateaus, only unstable, random flux?

"False dilemma fallacy". You can only enlighten so many people at one time and people need food and some need food in order to become enlightened. It's like you're trying to fit the whole of reality into a two-variable equation.

Thank you ChatGPT for teaching us how science works and that virtually all of behavioral science has mixed results and that even in biomedical science, up to 80% of studies in some cases fail to be replicated. If you want to make a good scientific basis for Inner Engineering, you need more studies and more high-quality studies such as the one I linked, and ironically then you also need more money. How do you think you become enlightened? And as Leo himself alluded to, there are different levels of the Inner Engineering program or the Isha system in general. Sadhguru has explicitly said there are things he is holding back and saving only for those that are ready because they are that destabilizing and transformative. That's what is missing in the individualistic New Age spirituality embraced on this forum — institutional boundaries and safety mechanisms. That's what old religions have, because they realized over the thousands of years that spirituality is no joke. Today, you only realize it for yourself when it's maybe too late. You think you can take a loaded gun of spiritual technology and play around with it willy-nilly? And you think this should be open source and that anybody who wants to maybe keep people from hurting themselves maybe irreversibly must be conmen? Go read about spiritual emergencies, go read about kundalini crises, go read about people who hospitalize themselves with psychedelics. Sadhguru and all spiritual "high priests" in history are doing you a massive favor. Places like Actualized.org, that's the real experiment.

I've one time seen what looked like a cat making a deliberate conscious decision between two options on how to hide as I was walking towards it on a road, and it chose the option which I did not predict but which in hindsight could've been way smarter: Instead of jumping into the grass on the side of the road it was on and increasing its distance from me, it chose to run across the road in my direction, decreasing its distance from me almost so I could attack it, and then under a car to hide. Before that, it was checking the grass (which seemed a bit short, and it only stretched a few meters before it hit an unassailable wall, so it maybe didn't seem safe enough), then it saw the car, and I believe it might have looked at the grass again and then the car again and then chose the car. And I was already pretty close to it when it ran towards the car (probably 4-5 meters) and it must have more than halved its distance from me before it got under the car. What struck me was how "planned" it seemed, because again, I did not predict it running towards me and then under the car, rather than just running into the grass and increasing its distance from me. It must have somehow calculated that the grass option was less safe than the car option and that it could make the run under the car before I could attack it even though they were decreasing their distance from me. That's a pretty impressive level of cognition, even though it's probably more embodied than "abstract".

Because it throws variation into your thoughts, and then you can select which ones to pursue if they're really good. It's like selection and variation in biological evolution, only abstracted into the realm of thoughts. In biological evolution, variation comes through for example mutation or genetic recombination through viral infections or sexual reproduction. Selection comes through passing your genes on simply because you were stronger than somebody else or simply because you didn't die. In the realm of thoughts, variation is simply your mind reviewing, processing and "recombining" thoughts and past experiences in a more free way than usual, and those thoughts are often related to the self, and often about the past and projections into the future. And they are that of course because that has been good for your biological evolutionary fitness. Biology and mind are of course intricately tied to each other. And when you do this more free kind of thinking, you might start seeing connections that you didn't see before, and you can have new insights (new "phenotypes"). And then selection happens when you decide to act on or explore those thoughts in a more focused way, "passing on their genes" so to speak, or simply committing them to memory ("genetic information" is after all a form of memory; here, it's mental memory).

You know what a bodhisattva is so we don't have to go there.

Inner Engineering Practices and Advanced 4-day Isha Yoga Retreat Are Associated with Cannabimimetic Effects with Increased Endocannabinoids and Short-Term and Sustained Improvement in Mental Health: A Prospective Observational Study of Meditators: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32595741/ More than 70% increase in endocannabinoids and BDNF. I don't know about you, but that sounds pretty insane (no pun intended). And that's one study out of many. Now, I would expect you could get similar results with a simple DIY meditation, but that doesn't subtract from the fact that his program has an effect (and it could be helpful for especially beginners in certain ways). Research requires funding and prior recognition. If there is no environment, if there is no soil, there is no food, no mental health (unless you're Babaji chilling in an ethereal realm). Sadhguru is not just a holistic thinker but a holistic executer, which is extremely valueable, and it would be a ridiculous undertaking if not impossible in principle without money being spent (and time is money anyways, so you're just wasting time AND money that way).

What specifically do you mean? Like performing a scientific study? "Making money" = materialist con-man, insinuating that you cannot use money for legitimate means.

There is no dilemma being suggested. Making money is an obviously smart way of getting your message spread to the most possible, not that it's an impossibility otherwise. If you simply assert so, it must be true. Yeah ok. How would you personally try to reach the most people possible?

He is sharing it for free for people who need it in the slums. But if you want to reach people, you need power and influence, and that's what money can give. This idea that you want your spiritual teacher to be poor is a weird irrational stereotypical "mental illness" in itself. There is no other scenario where you would want somebody you care about or a project you want to see grow to be poor.

Yup. If your mind and heart is open, you'll receive grace. If they're not, they must be worked on and massaged.

Da hell

It's the closest thing I've come to a sedative-anti-psychotic like Rivotril (Klonopin, clonazepam), just even more depressive and soul-draining. Your brain is literally stopped dead in its tracks. Glycine is a weird substance. It has its own receptor in the brain and is mostly inhibitory. People who take 10-20g of this shit must end up in a K-hole (if they hadn't built up tolerance to it).

One of the most effective ways of overcoming an addiction is to have a really bad experience with the said addiction that makes you associate it with that bad thing. Your brain literally rewires from "this thing I like, I must pursue it" to "this thing is horrible, I must stay away from it". I forgot to mention to @Someone here but I didn't quit for good after those things I told you about (the social pressure, the personal desires and goals, the cult beliefs): About a year later, New Years Eve, I did smoke some tiny amounts with my friends, and then I decided to take some with me home for the next day. That turned out to be a horrible mistake, because I was meditating a lot at that point and had regular closed-eye non-dual experiences, I was months into nofap (super dopaminergic state), I was hungover (downregulated GABA and upregulated NMDA; hyper-excitation of neuronal activity) and I had eaten shit food the day before, I of course hadn't smoked properly in a year or more, and on top of that, I decided to smoke while low blood sugar, and a lot (certainly for being one year off). That intense combination of factors threw me straight into the most intense and unexpected ego death experience I've ever had. I tried to find food but my eyes literally couldn't register what was in the drawer. I opened the fridge and my field of vision was completely flat and my hand flew inside the fridge like it had no weight or control behind it. I grabbed a bottle of liquor from the fridge and some dry uncooked taco shells from the drawer and started gulping that shit down while I was existing in an infinite timeless void and a hologram of a living room begging to God to be taken back to normal consensus reality. It took what felt like many hours and desperate jerking off before I could sort of relax, and I was really not myself for a week or more afterwards. Anyways, the outcome of that whole story is that after that, I've never tried weed again (in any capacity that you would call intentionally and substantively "getting high"; I've of course been exposed to weed in many situations after that).

Well I do 😛 But again, it's just the "ugh, the social convention, muh feels". To know what the person is going to say next, that's being quick. I've personally dealt with a slightly different problem that I kinda always know what the larger arch of the conversation will be, and I have had to teach myself not to find it simply boring but enjoy digging in the dirt.