anaj

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Posts posted by anaj

  2. Posted · Edited by anaj

    It’s gotta be 10 important things that you don’t know you want. 

    https://youtu.be/iwE4NhPv8aQ

    No other video, here or elsewhere, manages to so concretely map out the fundamental values. Don’t know what to contemplate? That list should act as the starting point. Draw out those ten things and then start making arrows and sub items and begin to work towards a complete hierarchical map, laying out the groundwork for how to reach those 10 goals. 

  3. Posted · Edited by anaj

    Let’s think about this from a technical perspective. The only way we’re going to have a runaway intelligence effect is if the AI has the capability to improve itself. But these large language models will not be able to improve themselves, since they are limited by the aggregate of human knowledge - and they have to go in and tweak the weights of the neural net if they are to improve.

    But that can’t be done, because first of all, since they’re trained on a data set of human output, so they’re bound by human knowledge, so they can’t be made to predict outcomes from adjustments  of the composition of a large complex neural net - and secondly, even if you would randomly start to adjust the weights, you’d have to run that new version of the LLM in some kind of simulation sandbox (otherwise you’d just saw off the branch you’re sitting on ) and evaluate against some fitness criteria. But the only fitness criteria for intelligence is survival in an given environment, and thus you’d have to simulate the real world in the simulation sandbox so that the mutated instances of the language models would have a comparable environment to survive in.

    The environment in the sandbox would necessarily have to emulate ours because otherwise the “improvements” to the weights could never constitute anything we would consider intelligence, or could make impactful changes in our world. And here’s why i’m not worried about AI, at least not yet: Constructing a sandbox environment that simulates our physical world is as difficult as constructing the intelligence by hand. The degree to which we can simulate our real world inside a sandbox is the degree to which you can in principle have an intelligence rapidly evolve in it. But we’re rate limited in building a physical simulation. That’s not something we can let the computers do for us. You would have to hand build it. That’s why we can’t have a runaway intelligence effect.

  4. Posted

    The key to using obsidian effectively is to always make sure that you have at least one link to your note from another note. This way you can always find your note by browsing around similar notes that touches the same topics or themes.

    In practice this means that you write your insight into a new note, and then you link to that note from another note. If you don't have another note to link from, you create a new note whose only purpose is to link to notes that share a topic or a theme. So, if you have an insight about some aspect of consciousness you write that in a new note and then you create another not that's called 
    "Consciousness - Map of contents". And in this map of contents note you put a link to your insight note. At the top of the Map of contents note you put a link to your "Home" note, which is like the master note that contains links to all your "map of contents"-notes. This "Home" note is your starting point to just browse around. From this note all the other notes in your entire repository is reachable through clicking links.

    I learned about these "Map of contents"-notes from a guy on youtube, search for "Linking your thinking"

    Good luck! 
     
     

  5. Posted

    On 5/1/2021 at 8:05 AM, Leo Gura said:

    The entire self-help section is filled with books by others helping themselves by helping you by teaching you how you can help yourself by helping others help themselves to help others help themselves by helping others. :D

    Maybe that's a clue to how Love works 9_9

    This is such a good quote from you. You should put it on the front page of your web site. 

  6. Posted

    While it might be true that you’re smarter and cooler than everybody else, it's not true that you are to be credited for that. Your intelligence and your skills are gifts that you have received with the job of making the most out of them.

    Being humble is about realizing that you didn’t do shit to deserve what you’ve got, and if you did, then that drive that made you do it too was a gift.

    With great power comes great responsibility.

     

  7. Posted

    My conception of time comes from me projecting my internal “temporal ordering” of “events” onto reality, making it seem as one thing happens after another. Certain mnemonic images in my mind arises in a “temporal” order, forming a internal “timeline” (which also necessarily involves a spatial component, another illusory concept). This whole thing is entirely constructed in my mind, and its seeming temporal character is merely a mode of thinking. My mind then project this construct outwards. 

    Having had breakfast this morning is not something that “happened”. The word “happened” involves this projection again. The temporal juxtaposition of events before my inner eye is not a testament to the order in which events happened. That “events” seem to happen in an order at all is just more mind construction. There are no events. Just mnemonic images in my mind.

    What is reality trule “like” then? It’s not “like” anything – this habit of conceiving reality as being in one way or another, is itself another mode of thinking. I’m then situating reality in an objective context – but objectivity as such is just another mode of thinking, another mode of conceiving.

  8. Posted

    I have four kids. Of course it’s exhausting and takes up a lot of time. But here’s the thing. All of this work that we’re doing is about increasing our capacity for Love. But having capacity is not enough. Unless that Love is somehow put into manifest form the capacity is just unactualized potential. Of course, we could put the love out in the world through our life purpose - and that could reach a lot of people and the ripple effect from that could be profound, but there’s another way in which we can manifest Love in the world. And that is by building little Love spreading machines. Programmed correctly, they would put much Love into the world but they would also upon reaching maturity hopefully replicate themselves, thereby generating exponential love growth. So, unless you’ve already got your life purpose at hand there’s a ready made one and that’s to start a family and instantiate the Love in the world through them.

  10. Posted

    You could only say that life lacks inherent meaning if you affirm the existence of an objective reality. 

    With no objective reality from which meaning is absent, any meaning you derive from life is necessarily veridical. 

    It's like the color blue. You could only say that blue isn't inherently existing if you think of objective reality as the real reality. If you instead recognize experience as the real reality (and objective reality as the imaginary one)  blue's metaphysical status thereby becomes real and "inherent". So it is with meaning. 

  11. Posted · Edited by anaj

    On 2020-10-08 at 5:35 PM, Chris365 said:

    how do you perceive other people, when you see/hear them? How is the collapse of subject object duality working in this instance.

    Are they also aspects of you?

    Yes, people appear as part of the nondual manifold, just like inanimate objects, such as bowls of fruit. 

    You'd think the interaction with people now becomes strange when their form and expression is recognized to be an intimate part of yourself, but it really doesn't. Things move along as they always have and the story line continues to unfold, although the energetic involvement now infuses the entire field rather than directed at a particular character in the center of it.

    For example, I have 4 young kids. When I am with them--whether we're fighting about bed time, or playing around, or whatnot--ultimately, at the feeling/sensing level, I feel that I animate the entire interaction. Not in that I dictate what is happening, but that I'm the animating principle behind it all. But it's not in a narcissistic way, it's rather that the boundary between self and not-self is not there anymore so you're nothing in particular, or rather there's no you to be nothing or something -- but that amounts to the exact same thing as everything in total.  No boundary to fragment the whole into parts amounts to the parts being nothing but the whole.

  13. Posted · Edited by anaj

    On 9/21/2020 at 10:48 PM, billiesimon said:

    From what I've read, some people attain enlightenment by sudden shock, or sudden realization. People like Eckhart Tolle for example, or some monks from the zen tradition.

    Others, which are the majority, attain it by constant and persistent use of the techniques and everyday presence in the moment.
    Can you confirm this second statement?

    I'd say that the actual moment of enlightenment always arrives as a sudden realization. I can't see how you would slowly slide into it. But even though the moment consists of a sudden shift, in general you'd have to build up to it, by investigating your direct experience, and your underlying conceptual framework with which you interpret it.

  14. Posted · Edited by anaj

    4 hours ago, Mikael89 said:

    Since you are everything, you should also be everything which appears in my consciousness?

    Think about what is implied within your question: that there's separate pockets of experience, one mine and one yours. That kind of thinking; namely that in terms of objectivity; is dismantled in the book I wrote (which I'm happy you like :)

    In other words, it's possible to realize that there's no particular objective way in which reality is, because objectivity as such isn't real, but merely a way of thinking; and thinking is to reality what sheet music is to the actual sounds that make up the music. That is, in no way do the symbols on the paper even begin to resemble the actual notes in the song as they appear in audible form. 

    Of course, in the case of sheet music there's a kind of mapping, but in the case of reality and thinking there isn't even a mapping between concepts and objective reality as such, because there is no objective reality to which the concepts could refer. Unless concepts reference something in direct experience, they are ultimately empty and meaningless. Like in your example of "my experience" and "your experience". If you think about it, "mine" and "yours" isn't something that's given in experience, but is a reference to a kind of spatial situation within a larger objective frame of reference. This is true whether one is a non-materialist and thinks in terms of free floating separate streams of experience, or if one thinks of different located subjects in physical space, each having their own respective inner movie being played out in their own separate consciousness.

    In other words, using concepts such as "mine" and "yours" must necessarily invoke thinking in terms of objectivity and can thereby be demonstrated to be non-viable, logically speaking, as I do in the book.

  15. Posted

    45 minutes ago, Ranger said:

    Is this what buddhist (especially Zen) texts refer to as 'emptiness' - that objects/things lack inherent existence?

    As I understand it, the word emptiness is used differently across different schools of thought. In https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madhyamaka, it's used more like a tool of deconstruction, where things are realized to be empty of inherent existence because they exist dependently; and the analysis of things existing dependently goes "all the way" down, eventually deconstructing everything, leaving nothing at all in the end. In other words, supposedly, you begin at your current assumptions of reality and bit by bit you deconstruct things by realizing their dependent nature until you realize that there's nothing there. I actually never found these teachings very  compelling, because I think that they play into materialism (even though they claim that in the end materialism itself is done away with). 

    In zen, as I understand it, the word emptiness usually refers to the fact that one's true nature lacks any definable characteristics. 

    47 minutes ago, Ranger said:

    Namkhai Norbu describes the objects/aspects of the world/you wonderfully as the world being 'ornaments' of your true nature. I like your description 'indentation' too.

    Yes, and another good word that I remember rupert spira once used was "modulation". I like that.

     

    58 minutes ago, Ranger said:

    So really, my hands have no inherent existence beyond this field of experience manifesting as a pink blobs and tingly feeling. There is nothing 'behind' me/the fabric?

    Exactly.

     

    48 minutes ago, Ranger said:

    This must be what the Heart Sutra means 'form is emptiness, emptiness is form' or 'Samsara is Nirvana'.

    As I interpret it, "Emptiness is form" refers to the fact that form and substance is really inseparable. Form and substance is really just a subtle duality; the form cannot exist apart from the substance and the substance cannot exist apart from the form. The notes cannot exist apart from the music and the music cannot exist apart from the notes. But both music and notes are really just nonexisting as independent things, as they are defined in terms of each other. It's just an artificial conceptual boundary that creates them in the first place.

    59 minutes ago, Ranger said:

    So I'm basically staring what I'm seeking right in the face. I just dont know/feel it directly?

    Yes.

     

    52 minutes ago, Ranger said:

    Objects look as though they are behind one another in 'space' but in reality this is an inference.

    No, because the depthly aspect is given directly in experience. It's the difference between looking with one eye or two eyes. One way of looking gives a flat report, the other a depthly one. The "depthly" sense is not inferred, but given.

    55 minutes ago, Ranger said:

    I see. May I ask whether this shift is sudden or gradual? In Zen, sudden awakening, or 'Kensho' is a hot topic of debate between their 'sudden awakening/gradual cultivation' (and visa versa) schools. I've read your article Awakening: My Story at it seems as though you went into a seeking frenzy prior to your awakening. Looking back, do you think that there was a moment when it flipped? If so, do you think the 'frenzy' was necessary?

    The perceptual shift was sudden. But the recontextualizing of my experience began long before the shift, and continued afterwards. But there was definitely a single moment where the shift occurred. And yes, I think the frenzy was necessary. I can't see how I ever could end up where I am without the seeking, but of course, I've read accounts where it happened spontaneously ( Like eckhart tolle )

    1 hour ago, Ranger said:

    Would I be correct in saying that this is the moment you shifted? When you pierced the veil of conceptualization and broke through into reality?

    Yes.

    1 hour ago, Ranger said:

    That this sudden experience of 'seeing' obliterates your previous notion of self and not-self, and that all that is required to abide in non-dual awareness is to keep trying to invoke this mode of perception until it becomes permenant?

    Yes, that's how I did it.

  17. Posted · Edited by anaj

    5 hours ago, Vittorio said:

    but even if I understand everything on a conceptual basis, I still cannot pierce through the ego mind and obtain enlightenment. 

    Why is that? What can I do about that? 

    Integrating insights can take quite a while, in my experience. For instance, way back, many years ago I had the realization that we, as human beings, did not possess free will; that the whole notion was, when you actually unpack it and trace down all its meanings, really inconceivable.

    And a natural and logical consequence was that it didn't really make sense, psychologically, to blame people for stupid stuff they did. Yet, I found it quite difficult to align my emotional reactions with this new way of viewing the world, despite the fact that I had really grokked the insight about free will.

    But over the years the old ways kind of wore off, and nowadays I mostly am fine with people acting the way they do. I might respond adequately, but deep down I don't blame people for acting like people. So it takes time for insight to seep through. It's the same with all this reality stuff. You don't just have an insight and then everything falls into place. It takes many years, before the understanding has permeated your way of being to the point where it feels aligned.

  19. Posted · Edited by anaj

    13 hours ago, Ranger said:

    Would I be correct in saying that this kind of thinking gets thrown out entirely when the shift occurs? If so, where does this fabric you now identify with exist? ...I suppose that would imply space exists?

    Yes, after awakening a kind of reversal took place. Before, I viewed consciousness as merely a perspective upon reality, situated at a specific location within a larger frame of reference called absolute space. Even if I could philosophically conclude otherwise, I couldn't help but see things this way. Afterwards, space was seen, not to be a larger frame within which manifestation takes place, but rather the way in which the manifestation is extended as it's being rendered apparent, namely in terms of width, breadth and height. And therefore, the manifestation itself is located nowhere at all. An interesting side note is that before the shift, as I was walking/moving forward, the sense was that I was a camera/perspective moving within a static world, whereas afterwards, the sense was that it was the world that was moving 'towards' the. now, non-center, if that makes sense.

  20. Posted · Edited by anaj

    12 hours ago, Ranger said:

    So, if I have this correct your localised sense of 'I' expanded to encompass the totality of experience? Sort of like a global awareness with no center?

    Yes.

     

    12 hours ago, Ranger said:

    Please help me try to understand this. Let’s say that I'm looking at my hands outstretched in front of me. I am aware that they appear as clear images in my central field of vision, but as I move them out an around to my sides they enter peripheral vision, becoming blurry until eventually they disappear (behind me). Now let’s say that I suddenly shifted into the enlightened mode of perception – how would this experience differ?

     

    Before the shift, the sense is that you as a subject is like a _camera_, having a point of view, or a perspective, upon an already pre-existing set of objects, whether these are your hands or some 'external' object such as a bowl of fruit, and that those have independent existence apart from you, such that they would be there whether you see them or not. 

    But after the shift, there's no longer any sense of perceiving seperate 'objects', already pre-existing - it's rather that the only thing there is, is your own being, and what were once 'objects' is now recognized to be mere impressions of oneself. Like if you have a blanket and it looks like there's something under it making an impression that you can see, but when you lift the blanket there's nothing there. 

    12 hours ago, Ranger said:

    Or another example, lets say that I have nothing to do and I'm aimlessly looking at a bowl of fruit on my kitchen table, when the shift occurs. Would the sense of 'I' literally expand to become the bowl of fruit, the kitchen table, and the surrounding kitchen and kitchenware, simply knowing itself? 

    Yes, the sense of I expands, or rather, infuses the entire field of experience. Because at that point you'd no longer see it as a room, within which you are situated, but the room and the kitchen table and the bowl would just be seen as the way in which you're knowing your self - You're literally seeing kitchen tably, fruitbowly and roomly.

     

    12 hours ago, Ranger said:

    Would I exist as a piece of fruit? 

    So no, you're not a piece of fruit then, rather, the bowl of fruit ceases to be a bowl and becomes an aspect of yourself. 

    12 hours ago, Ranger said:

    Also, how does this shift affect your functioning in ‘the world’? From your description it sounds as if it would be rather disorientating - perhaps even frightening to suddenly vanish as a space/time entity. For example, where do my hands (in the above thought experiment) go when they leave the field of vision? Do the orientations of up/down, inside/outside, front/back, in front of/behind no longer make sense?

    No, it's not disorienting. I'd say that my functioning in the world on the level of moving around is largely the same, but for the falling away of intentions, as I describe here, but otherwise, simply moving around in the world is mostly the same, it's just that the 'world' is seen differently:

    Where do my hands go? It's a little like asking, where does the notes in the song go once they've subsided. That would only make sense if the notes are seen as separate things that could be either in or out of the song. But of course, the notes ARE the song, and have no existance apart from it.

    12 hours ago, Ranger said:

    Is three-dimensionality now a ridiculous concept, similar to how you believe you are seeing three dimensions when engrossed in a movie, but in truth you’re watching a flat image?

    No, three-dimensionally is the way in which I manifest. It's not an 'illusion', as an 'illusion' implies a situation where subjective experience misrepresents objective reality. But there's no objective reality, so there's nothing to misrepresent. The appearance is the reality.

     

    12 hours ago, Ranger said:

    When you’re brushing your teeth and you glance up, do you no longer identify with the man in the mirror who is staring back?

    Actually, there's still some identification with the character, although a lot has fallen away over the years ( 8 years since my shift ). Yes, when you shift, your identity shifts as you see clearly that you're _not_ the character; that the character is simply a custome; and you recognize your true nature as the field in which it appears. But, there's still some kind of energetic, emotional involvement in the dreamstate, that I sometimes completely check out of. And that's how I know that there's still involvment in the character, because sometimes I will disconnect from the dreamstate, completely severing that emotional attachment and just look at how the whole thing runs by itself. But then the connection is re-established and my energetic involvement resumes. I can feel though, that over the years this involvement gradually subsides, and I kind of see that the non-involvment is where the whole thing is heading, although I can't know for sure. It's a little scary because I like the involvement. 

    So, at least in my case, the ego didn't magically vanish just because I had an awakening. 

    12 hours ago, Ranger said:

    Finally, is there some kind of special knowledge of ‘the Truth’ that is gained when this shift happens? I’ve always wondered when ‘awakened’ people speak of topics such as emptiness, infinity, eternity, the void, and so on, whether they’re speaking from an intellectual understanding, or some kind of transcendent wisdom that's gained in the moment of awakening.

    I know they talk about this, that they had 'downloads' from the universe and stuff like that. I don't know about them, But I did not have anything like that. All my 'knowledge' about these things have been derived from purely philosophical reasoning. I did not gain any intellectual insight from my shift; it was just a new mode of perceiving, moment to moment. I gained insight into my true nature, yes, because I now perceive my true being moment to moment, so that's a kind of insight I suppose. But there was not any download of knowledge like some people claim.

  21. Posted · Edited by anaj

    Hello,

    If anyone is wondering, Andrew pm:ed me and asked beforehand if he could ask me questions, and I agreed, so that's how this whole thing got set up.

    7 hours ago, Ranger said:

    So, how can you – or any other enlightened person for that matter – be sure that your mind isn’t playing tricks on you? That perhaps you’ve convinced yourself of your enlightenment through reading books?  Or that you’ve simply entered into an altered state of consciousness? How is it that one knows - beyond a shadow of a doubt - that they’re Enlightened? How obvious is it? What is it that is self-evident? Please speak from personal experience, perhaps referring to ‘pre’ and ‘post’ enlightenment modes of perception.

    Well, what is certain is that a shift in perception has occurred. The question is whether that shift is the same that the masters reference when they talk about enlightenment. Of course, you can never fully know, all you can do is compare the facets of this new way of taking things in with what they describe in the literature, and decide whether it matches. In my case, I think it does, but I can't know 100%, of course.

    But on the other hand, it doesn't matter. What's important isn't that your experience matches up to some standard, but that you're liberated from identification; meaning that you no longer perceive yourself as a self, but you drop identification altogether. And that can only happen when you perceive yourself as nothing in particular, which is exactly the sense you get from the shift; that you're everything in total, which amounts to the same thing as being nothing in particular. 

    How obvious it is? Well, the obvious thing is that I no longer perceive through a 'witness'/subject. After the shift, the field of experiencing is taking itself in without a perceiver perceiving it.

    When the subject of experience, which is what I, prior to the shift, had identified as, collapsed, the sense of me shifted to encompass the entire field (this is what one refers to when one says that you become one with everything).

    Now, when I say the field is taking itself in, that doesn't say very much. But what is obvious is that everything is tangibly made out of perceiving as such. Is that you look around you and it's not that the objects are made out of consciousness, but more like that there are no objects, only indentations and ripples in the fabric of myself. And I don't mean myself as as a perceiver of perception (because that is the very subject/witness that vanished in the moment of the shift) but 'myself' as the substance out of which every perception is formed. 

  23. Posted

    @Johnny5 You're mistaken. There's no consciousness apart from phenomena. There's no mirror. It's only when phenomena is regarded and contextualized as such that this idea of a witness/source/cause/mirror is born. When phenomena is clearly seen as nothing but non-dual experienc-ing, consciousness is more seen as the substance, while apperances are its form. This is another subtle duality than can be further deconstructed, in the end leaving nothing but "brahman". But brahman isn't something apart from atman, it's just what remains when atman is broken down and seen clearly.

  24. Posted

    "Imaginary" just means that those perceptions that seem to represent something objectively real aren't really representing anything external at all, since objective reality is merely fictional. Love however, is subjective to begin with; it doesn't appear to reference something external to us in the first place, so the notion of "imaginary" doesn't really apply. 

  25. Posted

    This question of death hinges on the nature of reality. If reality is material/chemical/biological in nature, then death is obviously plausible. If, on the other hand, reality is just perception, then death would merely amount to dream content. When there's no material substrate that can disintegrate, there's really no death to talk about. Of course one could speculate what would unfold within the perceptual substrate after the death event, but death as it's usually thought of, that is, the shutdown of the material perceptual apparatus is a non starter in a reality with no physical substance.