Carl-Richard

The way we advertise it is starts like this (roughly translated from Norwegian): "do you have a smartphone and often think negative thoughts? We are looking for participants for a study that tests whether new smartphone-based methods can help reduce negative thinking". It lasts for one month and they use an app to collect data while out and about in their daily lives. And that's pretty much what the study is about as far as what the new participants get to know. In reality, we are comparing a "music with mindfulness intervention" with an active control group (some Cognitive Behavioral Therapy video course) and a passive control group (no intervention, just collect data with the data collection app). We are in principle looking for people with a high tendency towards negative thinking (or more specifically "rumination"), but in terms of recruiting efforts, we are targetting everybody we can (no specific target group), because it's assumed that the people who are interested in the study will self-select based on high negative thinking. They also have to be over 18 years old, have no history of psychiatric illnesses, and have to be available to meet physically in my city for one meeting (or two, when we finally get the ethical approval for the brain measurement part of the study 😴). I should maybe have mentioned this in the beginning, but anyways, we are currently not advertising it as a brain study, only a behavioral study (because that is what it is so far). Nothing, nada. We only mention that the participants in the passive control group who do not get to use any of the methods during the study itself, are offered access to the methods after the study is over.

If you keep going, you can expect big transformations to happen. But it's not a joke, which you might already have realized. You either keep going or you stop when you get to that point or stop entirely.

Omg true. Any advice on hanging up posters and how to approach people during flyer distribution (or other recruitment ideas)?

Immediately refer him to suicide helplines: https://www.unitad.un.org/content/suicide-prevention#:~:text=If you are struggling with,or Text TALK to 741741.

You use your sense. Imagine what an emotionally mature person is and try to embody that. For Red specifically, some useful concepts are proactive vs reactive aggression. Are you able to say "no" when somebody is violating your personal autonomy, e.g. violating your personal space or want you to act against your values? That's reactive aggression. Some of that is needed to survive. But remember to always couch it in nuance. Generally, don't make aggression your go-to solution. Mostly, it should to be a last resort. Rationality should lead. Are you able to do things that might cause discomfort to somebody else but which might be right in the bigger picture? Are you able to step in and say "no" to somebody who you see is violating somebody else's personal autonomy? Are you able to assert yourself and claim situations, things; to reach out and take? That's proactive aggression. In my personal experience, this one is more tricky to calibrate in a way that does not discount some other values you hold. I would therefore also suggest additional caution when dealing with it, as it can have some definite consequences if done indiscriminately. The trick for many people who feel they lack aggression is that they habitually repress the feeling or aim it inwards towards themselves (internalization). So a part of the job for those people is to learn to identify when the aggression arises and then intentionally express it outwards at the intended target (externalization). This might require some experimentation and testing to calibrate, but over time as you unwind the habitual repression and/or internalization, you can focus more on applying it in the right situations.

I will reveal my little trick: I asked a relative question, and you gave an absolute answer. Here is another relative question: if you close your eyes, do you stop seeing the flower vase in front of you or not? What answer will you give here? Will it be absolute or relative? I would bet it will be relative. So why were you unable to answer my original relative question with a relative answer? I think it's because it's a tricky one and it goes right at the heart of the issue of the thread: people conflate the relative with the absolute when it comes to solipsism. They think concepts, ideas and assumptions that point toward solipsism are absolute when they are in fact relative. But wait, in the very next sentence, you actually gave a relative answer! Because what is "current"? Is current absolute or relative? Can "current" exist by itself without "not current"? The answer is: no. It's relative. So let's recap: in the first sentence, you gave an absolute answer, but in the very next sentence, you gave a relative answer — without warning, without clarification, as if you were still talking about the absolute. It's almost as if you conflated the relative with the absolute. Is that what happened or are we missing something? Will you tell us or will you not answer the question? So in summary, when you pull in concepts like sense perceptions (colors, sounds, smells, etc.) or time ("current" vs. some other time) while purporting to speak about the absolute, you are conflating the relative with the absolute.

It was really just a way to explain the ubiquity of solipsism, but sure, I like community and nature. What if I say "yes and I'll take both"? It's an interesting phenomenon, and I think I've commented on it before in my "relativity of meta-lenses" thread from back in the day. It was back when I started to undermine the perceived infallibility of Spiral Dynamics (Sacred-cow Dynamics; excuse me for including that forced joke):

Ok, Donald Trump. Yes. Now answer the question. I will re-phrase it and make it more specific: Is it possible that the colors, sounds and smells you currently are perceiving (perceptions), are not the only perceptions that could be perceived, and that some perceptions could be currently hidden to you?

I can see that, but those are surface level things (forms). It's the Shakti, the pure energy underneath all that. And like Jan talks about, it requires not just openness but love and devotion to really open yourself to it. When I talk about the times I managed to tune into his state, I treated it like an intensely focused and love-filled meditation. You really have to sit there and try to merge with what you're looking at. And you have to not listen to the words and focus fully on the sensual aspects and the energetic response you feel in your body. I like that approach and commend your impassioned speech. But here again, I would propose the Rumination-Reflection Questionnaire (and others like the Ruminative Response Scale), brain measurements of Default Mode Network activity at rest, maybe even endocannabinoid levels. These are relevant "actions" or behaviors of the relative person who is after my book (and Jan's and others) enlightened. Maybe you are more interested in what Jan calls "sainthood", i.e. where the personality structure has been significantly molded (from repeated mystical experience or other factors) to represent these more virtuous actions (actions proper). But that takes time and is rare if it's indeed authentic and not just a facade of spiritual ego or repression. It's in a sense easy to play the saint if you really try hard at it. But you'll just feel horrible and after while you will crumble in some way and lash out or have a breakdown. That's the story of many cults. Definitely, sainthood is better than simply being calm or blissed out when in the company of your own mind or silence. But also definitely, the former is a big step towards the latter. The speed with which you become a saint while in a blissed/calm state is arguably uncomparable to any other thing, outside superb grace.

I think solipsism could largely be a product of modern society and specifically large-scale cities and urban environments. Take the experience of walking through a city. Due to individualization, people already don't care about you. And in the city, large masses of people walk anonymously without interacting or talking to you or even seeing you, and seemingly on autopilot, like drones or zombies being directed by some outside force like the 9-to-5 job. It creates a feeling of disconnection from other people and as if other people are not real people, as if they are merely props, with no personal drive or agency, no personal warmth; hollow appearances of humans. On the other hand, if you had lived in say a pre-modern tribal society, you would've known everybody personally, everybody would've greeted you and looked you in the eyes, shook your hand and patted you on the back, shared their thoughts, feelings and experiences with you. You would've felt deeply connected to them and felt them to be similar beings to yourself. As for urban environments, especially in the US or other places where the underlying terrain is very flat, you rarely see more than a few hundred meters infront of you. The sense of your everyday world is very local and boxed in, claustrophobic even. Meanwhile, if you walk on top of a mountain range and look across the vast landscape, or look up at the clear nightsky unsullied by the light pollution of the city, and if you really get out of your constantly distracted and wandering mind (also fed by city life), you will get the sensation that you are essentially nothing in this grand cosmos. You will get the sensation that your experience of life is just a tiny speck out of a much larger reality way beyond your local experience of everyday life and your personal theatre. To then think that your puny little mind is all that exists becomes exceedingly unthinkable.

I asked Gemini about psychological tricks to use when recruiting participants for my study. Safe to say, asking LLMs about psychological tricks is like asking a janitor about mathematical hypergeometry. I think that may extend to some other forms of psychology as well, especially subtle theories like SD. In general, be skeptical of going to AI for an accurate presentation of facts or an in-depth theoretical understanding. It's very easy to use words like "system" and "integration" and feign an understanding of the topic ("downward assimilation"), and that is certainly the case for AI. The more abstract something is, the easier it is to bullshit about it. Maybe try to really pin it down on what it thinks Yellow is. Make it provide a large sample of concrete examples across different contexts and see if it computes. But maybe my cynicism with AI is too hastened and I just have to become more clever with my prompts.

@Razard86 You really like avoiding answering questions. Solipsists became real quiet when this one dropped.

What are you doing on a day to day basis?

@Razard86 Is it possible that there exist sense perceptions that you are not currently aware of?

Do you consider it crazy that this happens every day? Empathy is the transfer of consciousness from one person to the next one. Just looking at a person can radically change your state. Just a warm touch from a loving person can radically change your state. A smile, a hug, a kiss. These are viewed as normal states, but there is principally no reason why more elevated states cannot be transfered as well. Try trip sitting a bunch of people on LSD or mushrooms and see what happens (this is a known phenomena; "contact high"). As for why Shaktipat doesn't seem to work well for some people but is very effective for others, it can have to do with how open and allowing you are, similarly to how for empathy, you have to be open and allowing to tune into another person's state. If you are skeptical (which you seemed to be), you will be more closed, and the energy will be less able to get in. So if you manage to put down your barriers and completely buy into the process, that is maybe when you will see more drastic effects. As a self-proclaimed empathetic person, when I try my fullest to tune into Jan's state in some of his videos (e.g. this one, it's crazy), and the times I have been rather successful at that, I have sensed that he is in a extremely different state than most people are in. It's actually unbelievable how he is able to even talk in that state. It's like he is constantly shooting heroin into his veins. So to me, it would actually be quite odd that him touching you for a prolonged period would not cause at least some effect on you, even if you are closed empathetically in that particular situation. I personally don't find him "depressing", but maybe a bit low on interpersonal warmth at times. Interestingly, people tend to have similar mixed feelings about Sadhguru. As we discussed briefly earlier, the personality of enlightened people can be highly variable, especially in aspects such as interpersonal warmth, lifestyle choices and general thinking style. What is more standardized is a lack of worry, overthinking and rumination. Look up e.g. "Rumination-Reflection Questionnaire" (RRQ) for examples. My prediction is if you give that questionnaire to enlightened people, they will regularly score 0 or close to 0. But indeed, they can definitely still have weird personalities. And this is understandable, especially in cases like Jan where there was an almost pure obsession about enlightenment since a young age. Ramana had a similar approach. He neglected his body so much that he needed other people to care for him at points so he didn't die. Similarly, if you pursue enlightenment obsessively and happen to eat too much food and drink Pepsi and you finally get enlightened, probably not much will change. Even if you ask less interpersonally controversial people like Mooji, Eckhart Tolle or Rupert Spira, I would bet they still probably go to the same store, buy the roughly same foods, and eat with the same knife and fork as they used to before they became enlightened. There is still a person there with distinct behavioral patterns that logically follow from their past actions and that have to live themselves out (prarabdha karma). "Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop food, carry water".

What's time?

Sounds like exactly what @UnbornTao is looking for 😂 Cool that you met Jan. I met him in a dream once and he gave me some advice about spirituality which I can't remember.

@Sugarcoat I mentioned Jan Esmann earlier. He has a very sober explanation of Enlightenment ("Self-realization") and its various stages ("God-consciousness", etc.) in this interview: He also explains the curious phenomena of Shaktipat, which is a focused type of transmission of the enlightened state (which otherwise happens passively by just being with them and empathically tuning in to their state). I would love to study that scientifically one day. And of course, the story about meeting the Blue Being

What's funny is if everybody on the forum had experienced cessation, nobody would be talking about solipsism. You would see that your own body and mind, and not just other people's bodies and minds, are secondary.

You just haven't heard the good production metal yet 😌 Early 90s metal is quite dry sonically. Try something like "Reverie/Harlequin forest" by Opeth. Or if you want to get really eased into it, "Language I: Intuition" by The Contortionist.

Are you really deconstructing or are you filling your head with ideas? If it's the latter and it causes anxiety, you could try to deconstruct those. Try to return to a more practical way of making sense of reality. What do you need to merely function day to day? Use that as your starting point.

You being eternal and God is actual, not potential. It doesn't just have the potential to happen. It is happening right now.

True, and solipsism arises as a concept only after you differentiate the soup. It's not what the soup is as a whole. And it's not equal to the concept of the soup either. Solipsism is quite specifically something else, in the same league as materialism.

Ironically, those are the airy fairy concepts that I'm trying to bring down, into more concrete terms. It's useful to talk about things more concretely, even if there is generalization going on that might not capture edge cases well. But so it is for all topics, not just enlightenment. Language is limited, and there are trade-offs between different levels of analysis. And I'm not discounting the higher level either. I'm saying "why not both?". Because when things are concrete, you can understand things, predict things, and give concrete advice. If you're stuck at "realizing your true nature", you're not very useful. It might be safer, it might be less prone to inaccuracies, but it's a bit like only wanting to use a hammer and refusing to sow a shirt because you would have to use a needle.