Carl-Richard

I think it's weird that you think people who dedicate their life to spreading enlightenment don't claim to be able to enlighten people. "But I mean claim as in a literal quote". Yeah, even if you manage to pedantically Houdini yourself out of every quote I throw at you, ultimately, I don't think it matters much (but feel free to make a blistering case for that); it's just honestly very weird that you have to be this literal: If a sailor offers sailing trips but he has never said literally "I'm able to take you over shore", that doesn't remove your obvious belief that you think they are able to do that (and that they themselves think they are able to do that). Again, that's honestly very weird. And then indeed, that you have to boil it down to extremely select word choices, "it's my blessing" ✔️ , vs "I've tried my best" ❌, is just laughable in my opinion. This is the epitome of pedantry. And by the way, last time I checked, Leo is not Enlightened (he is awake), and from what I have seen from Brendan, he doesn't seem Enlightened either. But maybe I would have to look into it more. Let's explore the claim that Sadhguru hides his deepest teachings behind a paywall. Where did you get this idea from, and what specifically does it refer to? And how is it categorically different from what Rupert Spira puts behind his various paywalls? And I'm just saying, I can feel when I'm having a substantive discussion where the points are crystal clear and there is a logical progression to the discussion; where the interlocutor actually has a firm position they've thought out in advance and that they're not constructing as they go and where they don't engage in insane levels of pedantry to navigate away from unforeseen contradictions to their position. In all honesty, this ain't it.

It might sound rebellious but I think video gaming could actually improve your vision in certain ways, and when you withdrew from it, you could have experienced a dip due to that. Certainly if you do something like open-eyed staring meditation, trying to stare at smaller and smaller details of a grainy surface or object, that does lead to transient increases in visual acuity. Video gaming (maybe specifically action games) is essentially a dynamic version of that.

So let me get this straight: you used this weird standard (finding an enlightened person saying that the teacher helped them) to claim Sadhguru is a conman (because you couldn't find it). When pressed on it, not being able to find it for any teacher, you claim all teachers are conmen. Ok. So it's a wish + "claim" + paywall for "strongest teachings" now? And the paywall has to be larger than a book now? Ok, Mr. Ad Hoc. First show me where Sadhguru "claims" to enlighten people, don't give me a quote where he says he "wishes" to enlighten people. Until then, here is another quote from Spira: He wishes you to become enlightened, and he also doesn't deny being able to take you all the way. First off, where did you get $3500 from? Secondly, what's worse: taking 4000$ for a retreat where you allegedly give the same teachings as your free teachings or taking 3500$ for stronger teachings? Both Rupert Spira and Sadhguru offer hardship scholarships for reduced price, and Sadhguru also does rural outreach programs (in third world countries) where everything offered is free. Not true, that's just two of your ad hoc arguments. You will find more. As far as I'm aware, the "esoteric version" I've been talking about, the one that is potentially destabilizing and dangerous, is not even behind a paywall. It's behind a wall of Sadhguru personally deciding to give it to you.

Spira and all the other enlightened people you know probably have millions of followers combined. Certainly you should be able to find just one, right? https://rupertspira.com/watch-listen/archive/love-is-the-reality-of-everything/the-rupert-spira-foundation-information/ https://www.watkinsmagazine.com/you-are-the-happiness-you-seek-an-interview-with-rupert-spira Spira certainly wishes ("claims") to enlighten people just as much as Sadhguru.

Seems intractable computationally after long enough runs and you would need basically infinite memory unless you build in pruning mechanisms (and how would they work?). The problem of relevance realization for AI is not solved.

It's without a doubt that people who have became enlightened meditated beforehand, and Sadhguru is offering meditations. There is nothing difficult about this. Try to find that for Rupert Spira or any other teachers you believe are enlightened, a person who is enlightened and said those teachers helped them. Yes, it's a weird standard to have. He will enlighten people, yes. Meditations is one way, transmissions from being in his presence (Grace) is one way, saving the soil so that you can be alive and focus on enlightenment is one way. Do you think he will wave a magic wand or something? *poof* "Yoo are now Enlitened — Namaste".

But how do you make them autonomously seek out and parse out new information and consistently integrate it into themselves? And how do you make them perceive objects and interact with the physical world in any efficient capacity (the current robots are not very impressive)? I think those two are interrelated, and also, the latter problem is not trivial. You can't claim to be most generally intelligent if you're outsmarted by an ant perceptually.

Some think for agency to occur, you need something resembling the drive for self-preservation, you need complex sense organs, you need complex perceptual structures, essentially you need something that mimics if not is virtually identical to biology. Abstract thought, the thing we do and experience, is most fundamentally abstracted sensory and perceptual mechanisms. If there is nothing that resembles the concrete sensory-perceptual structures underneath, it's unlikely that there is such a thing as thought, let alone creative thought. And if creativity of thought relies on or correlates with the spontaneous variation and intelligence that arises from our biology, to reproduce that in machines, you would here too need to make something resembling biology.

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.