Search the Community

Reincarnation happens probably. Because before you were born, you were in the same state as you are after you're dead. And from that state you were born, and if it could happen once, why not again? And time doesn't pass for the dead, so you could be unconscios for an eternity and not feel any time having passed at all.

I'm open to anything that helps but I can't lie it's a bit disheartening that one has to do something like this just to experience what comes naturally to other men. I feel like these type of things help men who have some sort of romantic success/experience in the past, so they know it's possible. However if you have had literally nothing only rejection, maybe the subconscious and self image is so damaged to the point it can't be healed and maybe it's even doing more damage to give yourself false hope. If there was a pill that could switch off romantic and sexual desire permanently I would take it. The only reason I don't take my own life is because I believe in reincarnation and if I take that option I will have to do this life of rejection and suffering again.

That's why the question "is reincarnation real" doesn't make any sense to me. I mean, look around... reality is dying and being reborn in and out of nowhere every single moment of existence. It's called life, and it is THIS! That's the beauty of existence... getting lost is just as perfect and divine as getting un-lost. It's all just part of the game, and as long as you don't take it too serious... where's the problem? Even having a problem is not a problem, unless you choose to make it one.

You don't have to believe and subscribe to any one concepts, especially religious ones. People will get mad though if you question the things they believe in. But it is as you say, reincarnation as a religious concept is arbitrary. Reincarnation might have merit in one way or another, but who knows. I believe personally the concept of "sin" has some merit but differently to how religious people treat the idea. It is not a dogma.

When you reflect that this world is filled with death, and that your body, too, has to be relinquished, God’s plan seems very cruel. You can’t imagine that He is merciful. But when you look at the process of death with they eye of wisdom, you see that after all it is merely a thought of God passing through a nightmare of change into blissful freedom in Him again. Saint and sinner alike are given freedom at death, to a greater or lesser degree according to merit. In the Lord’s dream astral world- the land to which souls go at death- they enjoy a freedom such as they never knew during their earthly life. So don’t pity the person who is passing through the delusion of death, for in a little while he will be free. Once he gets out of that delusion, he sees that death was not so bad at all. He realises his mortality was only a dream and rejoices that now no fire can burn him, no water can drown him; he is free and safe. But such is the delusion of desire for material things that, after a time of freedom from the body, he wants to come back to earth. Even though the soul knows that the body is subject to disease and troubles, these delusive desires for earthly experience veil that knowledge and deceive his consciousness. So after a karmically predetermined time in the astral world, he is reborn on earth. When death comes, he goes forth once more from the gross dream of this earth experience to the finer dream of the astral plane, only to be drawn back to this world. And again and again he returns, until he is no longer desirous of an earthly life. Birth and death are doors through which you pass from one dream to another. All you are doing is going back and forth between this gross dream world and the finer astral dream world; between these two chambers of dream nightmares and dream pleasures. Thus reincarnation is a series of dreams within a dream; man’s individual dreams within the greater dream of God. Someone is born on earth in France as a powerful king, rules for a time, then dies. He may be reborn in India, and travel in a bullock cart into the forest to meditate. He may next find rebirth in America as a successful businessman; and when he dreams death again, reincarnate perhaps in Tibet, as a devotee of Buddha and spend his life in a lamasery. Therefore hate none and be attached to no nationality, for sometimes you are a Hindu, sometimes a Frenchman, sometimes an Englishman, or an American, or a Tibetan. What is the difference? Each existence is a dream within a dream, is it not? Will you continue helplessly to go through all these delusions and the difficulties they create? Each nation thinks its ways are justified, its customs the best. Are you going to go on with this delusion? I am not. For unless wisdom is supreme, reincarnation is a very troublesome experience. One should avoid forced reincarnation because it is a painful continuation of this dream delusion. For how long will you pass through these changes called life and death? Until you realise fully the dream nature of creation, and awaken in God from its nightmares. Extract from the book “Divine Romance” by Sri Sri Paramahansa Yogananda.

I haven't recalled past lives in this lifetime so I don't claim to know the Truth of reincarnation, my acceptance of it has been shaped however by the influence of Paramahansa Yogananda, saints of similar aptitude claiming its reality, the countless NDE experiences expressed on YouTube, and The Big Book of Reincarnation.

Yup , nothing makes sense. The more conscious you become the more you see how the world acts around you doesnt make sense. You enjoy the structure so you try to give it sense so it stays structured. Everything is part of your mind and your dream, you're always safe. The reason you give your authority away is because otherwise you wouldnt enjoy life and life would be just an empty shell. The only thing we can do is pray and imagine in the future that we will have a smooth transition to oneness so we can construct and choose the next reincarnation. But i don't even know if it works like that and the only option might be imagining our own death to loose the ego body and make everything restart. When i was 4 years old i had the same dream like 10x @Princess Arabia . In the dream i saw that i jumped down from a high roof building, while flying down i felt the same cold as from lsd when transitioning to high consciousness and when i almost touched the ground the screen went black and i alwayse woke up. So i transitioned from one dream to another dream by getting rid of my ego. I believe since you're nothingness it is essentially almost not possible to get rid of your ego since it is all you remember since you're nothingness, and you're constructing evrything on the go and i have seen it with my own eyes how i construct evrrything on the go in the present

The enlightened people use the term enlightenment like knowing what you are, eliminate all mental labels and stay with the essence, with what it is. then you realize that reality is immutable in a sense: it is. that being is reality. Well, you have already settled into the being and then the mind is silent because it has nothing to say about this, there is nothing to say. but then the enlightened guys start saying things like: reality is imaginary, you're dreaming it. I bet they say it because they have read or heard it, tradition. You can be enlightened, that is, outside the logical mind, completely in being, and at the same time be very superficial. I would say Peter Ralston, for me from what I have read, Adyashanty, and many more. You can also know the Buddhist tradition and be suggested by it and begin to create concepts such as reincarnation, etc., without really perceiving anything of it. In short, enlightenment and depth are two different things. I would say that Jesus Christ was enlightened and profound for example, but of the current spiritual writers, are extremely superficial, (well, at least since I know) and they copy from tradition and other writers. enlightened plus psychedelics, that's the combo. Let's see what happens, it there appears people who really go deep

@StarStruck This is the whole fun of it. It is a Zen koan. It is the ineffable. It is like Neo in The Matrix. The machines can account for everything but there is always one tiny variable which they allow to manifest as Neo in every reincarnation of The Matrix. The universe wants to build a mirror to see itself. The hand trying to grasp itself. The word trying to speak itself and describe itself. It is all a paradox. I think Terrance McKenna and Noam Chomsky have each hypothesized that the base reality is language or math or information. It is "the word." It is all mind or consciousness. The first word or thought disrupts the silence.

I have to concur. I have also intuited all this on shrooms and LSD. I got the cosmic joke. God (me) is alone. God has gone insane from his loneliness. God has spent eons looking for a friend or even a speck of dust which is not him. I felt all the reincarnations and eons and madness. An inescapable hell. A prison of mind. Euphoria and bliss become boring after eons. And god has killed himself infinite times. There is no solution. And there is a feeling I was begging to see the truth. And then I saw the truth and wished I could go back to living inside the dream. Ignorance in bliss. And there is a feeling of inevitable dominoes falling now that I learned this truth. Like Macbeth eventually killing his dad and sleeping with his mom. And I get the feeling I messed up this lifetime and mess it up every lifetime in every reincarnation. The purpose is to stay in the dream and not to wake up. But in a yin yang kinda way, the other side of the coin is god is happy and infinitely creative. And this life is beautiful. What is the link to this reddit post? Thanks. Be well. Be safe.

THIS, of course. Reincarnation is simply change of form. So, look around. Does form change? Yes or no?

I think we need concepts to communicate. So we use these words to express truth as best we can. Words like heaven, hell, god, reincarnation, etc are just shortcuts and short hand of language. I feel it is progress toward truth. Christians start out with god, heaven, and hell and then move on to reincarnation and eventually god realization. The dominoes must fall in sequence in their head to get to the ultimate truth.

Besides endless amounts of NDEs, OBEs and past life memories... See the books of Christopher Bache for example, Jürgen Ziewe, Stanislav Grof. And countless reports all over the ages, derived from altered states (psychedelic, meditation, OBE, psychics,...). If you can keep the Absolute Perspective all the time in this life in fulltime awakened nondual states 24/7 and no longer suffer&resist, and expect that to hold in the next cycles, your reasoning is partly correct. If that is not the case, the attitude there is no next reincarnation & who cares about Karma will kick back big time in the next existence. Like it already does right now. Basically, its confusing Absolute Truth with Relative Truth. Do you think Infinite Reality is stupid enough to not to be able to store a bunch of tendencies of your relative self going from life to life (called Karma, mainly consisting out of wisdom/transcendence and compassion/love, and a lot of other imprints/tendencies/Karma) in an information bundle called "soul" on a higher dimension in Indras Net, as pretty much all above mentioned sources report? That is what reincarnates. On the relative/illusion-level, not on the absolute level. But I guess for most is the relative/illusion-level still quite "real" and "serious", like in suffering/resisting... All of that is relative appearance, part of the illusion/manifestation. Are you free of anything that reality can throw at you on the appearance level, like totally liberated 24/7? Then you can stop caring about these matters pretty much. But even for Enlightenments-gone-sour (lets make a nice cult to satisfy the remaining needs of a halfway-up-the-moutain not really stabilized Enlightenments that expresses itself not in all dimensions of the enlightened being in an integrated and loving way) that attitude of not caring will be kick-back, this life or the next. Mostly already this life. Anyway, this here is in the opinion of yours truly a quite smart idea: Although my view is higher than the sky, My respect for the cause and effect of actions is as fine as grains of flour. - Padmasambhava But I agree the show-factor (for the spectators) of spiritual bypassing and/or not taking relative truth ("Karma/Reincarnation") serious is way higher.

Because what exactly the thing that reincarnates? The body? The soul? The self? The Self? The awareness? The ego? All? Some? What??? Because as a matter of observable fact the body decays into dust and rot alright?.. Once your physical body dies it just dissolves into it's essential elements and just evaporates in nature.. Gets diffused into the soil etc. So that's that. What is it exactly that reincarnates then because obviously it's not the body? The self? There is no self "inside "the body lol !. The body is inside the" Self". There is no ghost inside the machine. What you really have is a machine inside the ghost lol. The self (ego) is a negative hole that appears as a consequence (byproduct) of entanglement of thoughts.. perceptions.. feelings etc. It's a misidentification really. It's a negative.. not an existing entity onto itself. So there is no self to reincarnate. IMO reincarnation is no different from Abrahamic religion's notions of hell and heaven.. Both have ZERO evidence!. As for karma as an evidence that supports reincarnation.. Well it's simply that for each up there is a down and for each action there is a reaction. You throw up a ball in the sky.. It falls down in the opposite direction taking the exact time that it took to reach the highest peak to fall from it into the ground. That's karma. The universe is already at perfect balance. There is no need for reincarnation to achieve balance as if balance could be lost to begin with. Balance is already the case. It's inconceivable that something unbalanced could even exist! And if you look at it from a pantheistic worldview.. You are already living inside every creature in this planet.. So at the moment that you are beheading a chicken you are the chicken that's being beheaded and the human who is beheading it simultaneously. Karma is instant.

Let's say that your energetic configuration, your level of openness, fear, anger, hatred, shame, form a pattern, something real and solid, stable. This energetic configuration becomes denser or more open depending on the individual's way of being. Very dense configurations tend towards behaviors of separation, lying and selfishness. These behaviors create a denser and more closed pattern. This does not mean that a misfortune is going to happen to you, but it does mean that your vital flow is going to be narrow, twisted, sickly. This can attract that kind of reality to you. It is not something measurable with external standards, maybe you will become a millionaire, but your flow in life is going to be unpleasant shit and there is a greater chance that you will attract bad things. In addition, many mystics have spoken of reincarnation. It is a possibility, that pattern is restarted with some inherited master lines. You can see that reality is evolutionary, everything copies itself with some evolutionary adjustments. perhaps at deep levels it is also like this, and the energy patterns have continuity

@StarStruck A few ways to look at other's suffering is maybe from some eternal angle they actually chose this reincarnation. Or maybe their experience is the most sought after. Maybe we should be jealous of those who experience the worst suffering. Or maybe it is their dharma and karma. I read "Man's Search for Meaning" by Victor Frankl. A pretty good book about Jews in concentration camps. You must find meaning in spite of suffering. You can survive any "how" if you have a good "why."

@Princess Arabia I died in one of my dreams, I dreamed I was in a room and felt week, I seemed to be very old and my breaths got shallow, I knew I was about to die, I saw a woman and children run towards me, I intuitively knew they were my daughter and grandchildren, I slowly lowered myself onto the floor and I felt a sense of calmness, I knew I was about to die but it felt very peaceful and I didn't experience any pain, my breathing slowed down as I faded from that realm into another, one of darkness, but I was still conscious and I saw a person appear, I don't remember much from after that, it was years ago and I woke up right after. @Razard86 I'm consistently trying to expand my perspective but when I try to understand the way I am in hindsight, it appears as if I discover ever greater meta-patterns that run through my entire life. And it's like: The way I am now is highly influenced by the way I act and the situation I'm in, but that one only arose from the experiences of past years, but it seems that I could have potentially had so many, or have focused on so many of their aspects, but specific ones got highlighted, which have grown me into a specific direction, and when I wonder why, I return into whole areas of 8 years ago, and they were a reflection and antithesis to the way I lived two years before that, and that experience was the most profound experience in my life, from beginning to end, but it was only so because of the way I was when I entered it, and that was caused by the person I was due to the experiences I gathered, and those were in turn caused my on overarching pattern of positive and negative experiences that shaped my personality, and those link to my childhood, and the reason I was the way I was then appears because I had natural inclinations to begin with, but did I? Core experiences from my early years led me to that, but it seems that potential was always within me and I always had a specific focus, preferences and an inclination to filter experiences along specific lines, and that was the reason I behaved as I did. Furthermore it seems that filtering of perception and meaning is something I was born with. And the reason I was is something I try to understand in hindsight and the way I relate to other people and past personas seems to correlate well with reincarnation/karma and psychic continuity models, irregardless of their nature since continuity along psychic lines is as valid dimension as any other when it comes to the continuous morphing of the experienced universe and its properties and that which we most notable are, states and configurations of conscious experience filled with specific tendencies. In a way, I changed quite a bit, in another way, I'm constantly gaining ever greater clarity and appreciation for who I am, in another way, it seems I never changed one bit at all, I'm like a tree, I grew branches but the stem is the same. Sometimes I feel it more strongly than other times, but as I try to expand my sense of self, I intuit that every person inside this world, if I went through the exact circumstances they did and felt the same way they do, had all the exact experiences and was shaped by the same forces, I'd be them and act identically. And when I run through that thought while talking to someone, it feels very profound and almost like I'm switching into their perspective in real time. Yet they don't have my experience and I don't have theirs, I do not know in conscious detail what they feel inside. The sense of continuity is fascinating really, the background knowing awareness, irregardless of specific details or if you can remember anything at all, but just the knowing that you're you and that you are.

Sure, that's our normal perception, then is structured by the mind to make a map of what existence is in the level that we can see. But the thing is that is possible to see deeper, open the doors of our perception. It's not just realizing that we are the unlimited, but realizing how the unlimited organized and synchronized itself. Many mystics of all times ve talked about reincarnation, their sight is long but sure still limited. Real mysticism is possible, deep perception too. I'm not talking about the....I don't know how to call, of watching some videos and then repit that im god imagining the reality, but about real opening. At least I will try to go to the deeper that is possible. The key is to understand how to start, breaking our limitations. I know that it's impossible to see infinitely, just to realize that the cosmos is infinite, but deeper you see, better, more beauty inside you

My consciousness is the only absolute I can know right now at my current state of un/awareness. Leo talks as if there's just one observer and maybe he refers to absolute God, but it seems he says that the currently conscious avatar is the only one in existence and all of reality only exists as a bubble around it simulated in a minimalist fashion only as far as it is psychically convincing. And that nothing exists until the godhead consciously wills it into being in the present, as time is only an idea projection of current awareness. And that others are like a mirage, a reflection of present awareness interpretation of self-projected form. But I wonder, doesn't God have to know and simulate the exact life of everyone else in order to make this a convincing simulation, in which case, is God not simultaneously consciously everyone to the full extent that it's not just the avatar's field being rendered but all entities and "non entities" as well, every blade of grass, every overlap of perception between all observers all equally consciously created by god, in which case, how am I the only conscious entity? Aren't all entities, projected or not equally conscious as experienced by god in order to simulate around the avatar, in which case everything is experienced, in which case every other is as real as me and an equally conscious entity, that is a subset of the god being that creates the whole experience? And then there are other Godheads, as featured in the "Infinity of Gods" video. And Leo says that he might have his godhead and I might have mine and that his godhead made contact with other godheads like mine and those fused into a meta-godhead, while remembering the individuality of sub-godheads, which are sovereign on their own, though somehow the distinction becomes imaginary. And then the godheads are supposed to help each other out if the collective dream turns into hell, as experienced by their avatars which is themselves in finite form. But that gives godheads a unique identity, doesn't it? So then, if Godheads are by themselves sovereign and they can share a collective dream, then how do I know what another godhead's avatar is compared to just an illusion, if there is even such a thing as an illusion as it all seems equally real. Godheads are infinite and unbound, they only bind themselves if they wish and are infinite, and know all that is knowable, I imagine them as reality bubbles. But then, how many Godheads are there, could a blade of grass be the avatar of a godhead, or a squirrel, a human, a DMT entity, could it be that the entire universe is conscious not only because a local godhead has to simulate it for its avatar but also because it is inside a collective dream of which each godhead embodies a different aspect of reality as a conscious entity and each godhead can link other godheads through their avatars, while their local conscious focus maximizes the experience of reality and balance of the meta-structure of the universe. So then when I interact with another human, Leo would say they only exist as a perspective relative to me, but if they're another Godhead's avatar, am I not equally a perspective to them and then are they not just as real as me, or even if it is just a reflection of me, outside of my bubble of awareness (my godhead), might they not exist irregardless as a conscious experience simultaneously only currently unexperienced. And really, aren't all possibilities the case irregardless of whether they're materialized or not, like the Mandelbrot set in mathematics. And then, even if Godheads know everything, isn't there room for more infinity, since they might know every number on the infinite scale, but beyond that there's infinite space to create a psyche that filters patterns around selective lines. So then, maybe my current perspective is a fractal mirror of a localized materialized godhead avatar, but am I not equally arbitrary and doesn't imagining others make them real and can they not exist outside of imagination, in the unknown or unexperienced, as one can invent infinite experiences, along infinite patterns and then infinitive those infinitely. Wouldn't each consciousness, exist equally conscious as it all can exist so it must exist and is all simulated only relative to each other WHICH MEANS THAT EACH EXPERIENCE IS FULLY CONSCIOUSLY EMBODIED BY GOD, irregardless of the current avatar's sovereign consciousness? So then, an avatar could be its own Godhead, as if there's room for more godheads, then as above, so below, so maybe there is a cycle of reincarnation or maybe the NDE experiences are real or maybe there exists a formless psychic universe full of sovereign entities that interact with each other as I interpret from "Seth Speaks". That each consciousness, equally real and valid chooses to materialize itself in a type of play and develops itself more fully in-between lives being a vast multi-personality energy gestalt, of which each individual is a part, and yet conscious in itself simultaneously. It's really fascinating. Anyway, that's the end of my conceptual proliferation for today, tell me what you think and don't give me the Buddhist "stop thinking and become nothing" attitude.

Thanks! So since death is real and imaginary, I still think it is helpful to live as if I will die and only have one life. That way I savor it and enjoy it to the fullest. I honestly go back and forth and see both sides to YOLO and Reincarnation. I personally lean more on the side of YOLO when I find myself being complacent and shy to talk to girls. But I see Reincarnation being true when I am thinking about where existence is going.

I have been practicing memento mori - remember, you are mortal, from the Stoics. Reflecting on my mortality and death has allowed me to be more adventurous and courageous in my life because I know this is the only one I get. The teachings of reincarnation and death being imaginary seem like dangerous teachings to me because they dismiss the value of this life and assume that this isn't the only life we live. If I think I am going to live forever, it seems to make me think I have all the time in the world. But the truth is the everyday I grow closer to death. Some people will object saying that "death is imaginary because you are literally imagining that you will die but the only thing you have is this present moment and death is something you are imagining in the future." I don't really agree with this argument because I may be imagining that I am mortal and that death will come, but the reality is that it will. To state this argument is foolish because that's like saying that Sylvester Stallone being dead is imaginary. It is like saying that the tree falling down is imaginary. But the reality is that Sylvester Stallone will die just like Carl Weathers and everyone else before him. The tree will fall down someday. And more babies and more trees will come to existence. Death and mortality might not exist in the immediate present moment and may be something I am thinking about right now, but they are still realities present in the human condition. We can see just how fragile a human being is. To say "death is imaginary" is like saying that "covid and being sick is imaginary" since I am healthy right now. But the reality is that change does exist and is not imaginary. The present moment exists right now and is not imaginary. Everything that you imagine takes place in the present moment of course, but that does not mean that it isn't a reality. Imagination is part of reality. So, therefore, anything I imagine is part of reality. Death is part of reality whether I am imagining it or not. This is what objectivity means. My main criticisms of Actualized Teachings is that they dismiss the concept of "objectivity" and focus on Absolutism and Relativism, but hardly any discussion is on the concept of Objectivity. Objectivity is things that exist whether I am imagining them or not such as gravity, death, and immortality. When I am talking about imagination, I am using that synonomously with thinking. At a higher level, the Universe is creating reality, but at my human level, my human imagination is not creating reality in the same way the Universe is. For instance, I cannot imagine myself being immortal and it becoming true. I cannot change the laws of Consciousness/Physics/Gravity because these things are being "Imagined" by the Universe, which the Universe's power exceeds my egoic power. So, objectivity does exist. People can be wrong about reality. Why would we argue if people couldn't be wrong? Ever thought about that? If it was all just opinion and subjective, then there would be no point in arguing because to say your opinion is more true than someone else's would be a subjective statement, and, hence, you would be contradicting yourself. Saying that death is imaginary is like saying that being blind is imaginary. Sure, I am imagining blindness and I am not blind right now, but if I stick a knife in my eye, I will become blind. I don't need to actually stick a knife in my eye to prove that this will happen. That is just foolish. Me knowing that blindness will happen without directly experiencing it is an example of implicit/intuitive understanding. All I am trying to express is that we should balance the teachings of death being an illusion with the teachings of death being a reality. Death of Consciousness may be an illusion at a higher level, but the death of this human experience is a reality waiting to happen just like how a seed is bound to grow into a tree, and then the tree is bound to fall over. That is its fate. Our human fate is to turn to bones. I find it helpful to reflect on my mortality rather than my immortality so that I can be ambitious in life. I may reincarnate after this lifetime, but I am not going to attach myself to that belief system. I am going to live like this is the only life I get, and I am going to put all of my effort, ambition, discipline, and love into creating the best ego I can create. What are your thoughts?

So, you believe in reincarnation? How do you know something is happening? I would say if I experience anything, I am the creator and infinite is just my imagination, which I created and experienced. (But, if only there is an experience)

That's what people spend eternity doing until they are ready to stop having reincarnation loops.

One more thing… I keep reading in certain places that in the mind, thinking and experiences makes like pathways. The more and more these thoughts are repeated, or by strong experiences, these paths are made deeper, and the mind wants to go down these created paths, like grooves. I think that repeated use of psyches can also make paths and they may become harder to remove the deeper these paths are, especially from very intense, or difficult experiences. Its like easier for the mind to think along these paths that are created, and its more difficult for the mind’s thoughts go down rough, untraveled grounds so to speak. So if you are having flashbacks, etc. These are paths that were created from the psyches and may take a while of not using these paths, and eventually the paths disappear over time from non use. Not sure if that’s explained clearly or not. Certain Eastern philosophy talks about Samskaras that are paths the mind creates, however they say these paths, the deep ones continue into next lifetimes. Maybe you don’t believe in reincarnation, I’m just explaining what they say. This is probably different from what I mean above, except that paths are definitely created by experiences and thinking and they take time to disappear. I mentioned a book “Thinking and Destiny” in another post… Guy who wrote it suggests basically the same thing. That book is very difficult to grasp, but definitely some stuff about this, and pathways in the mind from thoughts and experiences. All of this probably relates to why people can get stuck for some time after difficult experiences, like PTSD. They don’t call thoughts “impressions” without reason. I think of it like this… A new brain of a baby is like a field after a night of fresh snow from a snow storm, clean, no tracks. Go out and walk on it, (baby grows and has experiences) and there are trails created in the snow. The more you walk along the same trails, they get deeper. Eventually after some time it snows more and the lesser used trails eventually disappear. Strong or difficult experiences are like a bulldozer making those trails, and take a long time to disappear, some may not ever disappear completely.

I find myself between both perspectives. On the one hand, I do get Daves dismissive nature considering the broad abuse of science in virtually all fields of human endeavour. I mean, if we just take the medical field for example: the amount of charaltans, heterodox sensemakers and health gurus poisoning the well and deluding the public is simply outrageous. Sophists are great at using scientific termonology and cherrypicked "data" to prove a certain point, which in the context of the broader scientific literature is just fallaciously wrong and harmful. Covid-19 was a prime example of this dynamic. Most individuals have no clue what they are talking about - and they usually are not aware that what they actually posess is spoonfed superficial knowledge masquerading as legit scientific inquiry. This whole schtick of "doing your own reserach" is a symptom of this disease. People have no idea what it actually means to do research in order to get to what's true - it's a painstaking, time consuming & above all mentally challenging process. Watching some youtube videos or reading a pop-science book is not doing research - that's gathering information and taking what someone else thinks to be true as truth. People are run by their cognitive biases which lead them down a pre-baked heuristic and a good amount of rationalization after the fact. The problem is that Dave throws the baby out with the bathwater. He doesn't see that hypothesis generation in science generally underlies a certain degree of epistemological conditoning. The scientist and the science done stand in a reciprocal relationship with each other. How scientific data is getting interpreted underlies the cognitive architecture of the person doing it. It's clear to see that for a person like Dave, certain topics are basically off limit - for ontological reaseons. He of course would never agree with that statement (he would say:"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"), but it's a cognitive bias nontheless. It's a fact that there are incredibly well designed and highly statistically significant results int he field of parapsychology, which are getting ignored by the greater public. Mostly materialistic-fundamental reasons. The same goes for the reincarnation literature. Or the healing literature. Or the NDE-literature. Or the UFO-phenomenon. etc... - what I am trying to say, there is a there "there" which can not be explained by the usual suspects like bad experimental design or flawed statistical analysis. But we live a world where even discussing those sorts of things leads you towards mockery and malice by peers and people like Dave. He is what being narrow minded archetypically looks like - and behaving like a derogatory asshole surely doesn't help solving this issues either. I mean, just take a look at his videos about religion - it's literally the most mundane, Dawkin-esque nonsense you can listen to. He would not get very far with this kind of reasoning against a philosopher who has thought about it for a while. I think we need to find a place between the two extremes - where fringe topics can be explored without this baggage - but with a rigorous scientific framework to get to what's actually true. We also need to recognize where science ultimately fails truth-acquisition - like in the study of consciousness (propably) and GOD. That said, science works really works in most areas of life - especially the hard sciences like physics & chemistry! The way forward includes broader education in science and also philsophy. Topics like climate change and collective actions against it are only malleable through the workings of an adquate scientific understanding. Becoming a wiser species entails a greater understanding of both, the relative (what science teaches us about) and absolute (spiritualty) domain of reality. Ciriticism of science should be precise and logically consistent. Thats it!