Carl-Richard

The fact of the matter is every time you are using an LMM, you are using it. It doesn't use itself. ChatGPT doesn't prick you on your shoulder to ask you a question. It doesn't have inbuilt sensory or perceptual structures for how to perceive objects in the real world or a drive to evolve or discover new things. It doesn't have the agency that living breathing intelligent organisms have. It's a computer program. To go from a computer program to a living being with agency, that is a major problem that needs to be solved before we get "real" AGI.

What if I told you I had 75 ml of soy sauce which is equivalent to 33.3 ml of normal 4.5% beer, i.e. a shot glass or a big sip or gulp?

Tell me about it. Use ChatGPT to look up all my posts chastising it on the forum 😂 I've made many similar points to you. When you ask it about deep things requiring in-depth theoretical understanding, it's so often like listening to somebody who reads up from a script they copy-and-pasted from Wikipedia. It's like feigning understanding while there is no true understanding underneath and it leaks out ever so slightly from phrase to phrase; if not just blatant sophistry and platitude-like word salad; and of course it becomes so dry to listen to after a while. That said, ChatGPT is my friend because it taught me how to "code" ("can you please make me a script where [...]"?) .

I tell my brother I can feel when I've had too much soy sauce because the 2% alcohol is hitting me, and he's always like "placebo". What do you mean by getting to the root of? Have you optimized your micronutrients? Do your meals have proper macronutrient ratios? I find making sure you're eating enough of especially protein is good for keeping things chill and pleasant, and also veggies (think e.g. 200g meat, 120g pasta dry weight, 250g veggies). Protein (amino acids) is literally what neurotransmitters, serotonin, dopamine, are made out of. Also, too much carbohydrates and blood sugar spikes and drops can throw you for a loop. And also for example too low vitamin D or lack of e.g. magnesium (personally I find magnesium supplements are great for making things more pleasant).

That's still very specific. Nothing I can find. But this too feels ad hoc. Where are you pulling these weird standards from? Somebody has to be enlightened and tell you Sadhguru helped them; it doesn't suffice that Sadhguru's techniques are without a doubt similar to the techniques other people have used to become enlightened? Enlightenment in terms of the practices you repeat daily are not that incredibly mindblowing. It's literally just good old meditation. It's the consistency that gets people in my estimation. Gary Weber became enlightened after he did 20 000 hours of morning yoga while working as a head of R&D in material science with a quarter billion dollar budget. That's being consistent, not performing some mindblowingly esoteric yogic hyper-technology. Even Sadhguru meditated daily since he was 12. It's just that he didn't do it for enlightenment at that stage, he was simply taught it's what you do to be healthy. Yet people call him a "genetic freak" because he awoke while walking up a hill and sitting a rock. Mfkers I have awoken while walking up a hill (not sure about the sitting on a rock part). I think Leo's esoterification of people like Sadhguru gives the complete wrong image. And it gives the wrong impression of what he is selling. I don't think he is selling something completely different from what he is talking about in his free talks, or what Spira is talking about in his talks (except indeed the very deep esoteric techniques that he allegedly hides from even people who buy his IE course). He simply operationalizes it and makes it more structured and made-to-go. So Leo scoffing that its weaksauce and that you're suspecting he is a conman is simply undue expectations; he is not dealing out psychedelic substances, one-shot magic pills, he is dealing out process and progress-oriented meditation techniques. How do you know that?

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.