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Most people think they are inside the body, not the body itself. And some people think they are not the body. So everyone agrees that they are not the body. What they disagree about is the location of the observer or the sentience and whether it exists or not, more precisely, people disagree about their existential nature.

@electroBeam look this isn't rocket science.. There is a communication between two persons right now (me and you).. From your pov and /or from my pov.. for this communication to make sense.. me and you are assuming that on the other side there is a sentient being receiving the message... And my sentience is independent from your sentience. What Leo is saying is that my sentient is literally dependent on your sentient. In other words when you go to sleep tonight.. I and the rest of the universe will literally cease to exist. We were just projections of your own mind.... It must follow that there is no point talking with mere images in your mind. To a dream characters. Watch the video. This is only resolved if you accept the existence of a second layer of reality. If you don't it's straightforward solipsism.

A few questions keeping in mind I only ordered your book list today so some of the books may answer them... Have you read the "Journey of Souls" books and if you have do you have an opinion on life between lives and reincarnation in general? In my opinion they are the book on reincarnation that most resonated with me. How do animals fit into the picture? Do they have souls? It would seem they can't really achieve enlightenment because they lack egos, only having basic instincts. What about alien civilizations? Multiple dimensions? In theory if another species achieve sentience say Dolphins they would be facing many of these same existential questions? Or alien civilizations? If true enlightenment is nothingness, why pursue it? Why not just do whatever we want? It seems like most humans just try to chase pleasure and avoid pain, so being obsessed with feeling states. Isn't pursuing enlightenment more of the same? By that I mean chasing certain feelings or feeling states. What do you think of the text of "revelations of an insider?" This one should only take you 60 minutes to read. http://goo.gl/cl1Jjz Thanks!

Just curious - how do you prove or disprove your own sentience to yourself?

The only way out of suffering is actually just straight up ego.Otherwise you will have that horrible symmetry where somehow you need suffering in the same quantity or some stupid thing. But yeah that's thing with infinity every single angle will work anyway so one of the actual perfect states from personal ego view is actually the capacity for infinitely flipping the meanings/feelings of every single thing but also being able to maintain some system both of which people call ego because they're incapable of seeing them separately for what they are or seeing how they could work together and then again as always this is infinite just like a seemingly mad neural network that doesn't seem to have sentience so whatever you are thinking reading this is both right/wrong while also being only right and only wrong while again both in infinite ever growing addition just shift it higher and higher as if we're just a stupid ball of energy.The ultimate enlightenment is possible through pure unadulterated raging mad suffering ego but then again I'm putting it through the concept of infinite possibilities which meant that I was already going to recursively come to this very conclusion in the first place get it?Well you just both get it and not get then you'll get it or not. Please don't punish me for what might look like pure gibberish I'm still scared of interacting with people through sharing my actual thoughts because I have this perception that my thoughts are "not allowed, not real, trollish, hateful, too heavy, out of context, uncaring, don't belong" I want love too that's why I expose myself sorry for this little ps type rant I know I will be extremely annoying to some people which fine to me I just want have some avenue to do it without being eliminated(it makes it sound as if I got banned in other places but I literally never got banned from anywhere because I can read the general atmosphere; the LOVE FORUM should be able to handle at least 1% of real freedom).Fuck I'm so annoying moving on...

Let me start of by mentioning that I'm a lower form of life aka stage orange so I can't be responsible for what I'm typing You can just ignore all concepts and all patterns of physical reality and replace them with the inner abstraction of pleasure and pain; just make being murdered pleasurable in all it's complex dimensional detail(physical/mental/emotional) and murdering pleasurable. I will leave the feasibility/stability/logic of it for you to figure out, one of the questions I always asked myself was if it was possible for sentience to act the exact same way if all pain was replaced with different shades of pleasure since it sounds like a nice design but yeah I guess it really is all a spiral, it's scary how it goes on for infinity anything can be broken at any level Murder and being murdered should be fun but I guess it isn't because there really are reasons if you wanna call it that; it might not be possible to have this much diversity of "others" if it was majorly just shades of pleasure driving our actions instead of pain which seems more "defined"; what would sentience be like in a dimension with only pleasure versus one with only pain is that even possible; it seems like a sentience submerged in a pleasure realm might instantly lose consciousness and therefore be forced to awake in a less pleasurable one while the pain one wouldn't be even able to exist physically for a single moment; anyway I'm really sorry for the disjointed thoughts I'll stop here

Of course not! You need to carefully think through what your words mean. "A single undivided item" << Okay, if you do that, you have Infinity. One thing. There cannot be two undivided things! You can't add together two undivided things, they must be divided to begin with for there to be two of them. You can add together two divided things. But what constitute "a thing" is already relative to how your mind carves up the world. The world is not made up of things. Your minds projects division on the world and calls those conceptual divisions things. But even if you get past all that, there is no guarantee whatsoever that by combining two random things you will be left with 2. There are many instances in nature where you add 1 and 1 and get something that isn't 2. Fundamentally there is no reason why you couldn't add two things together and get 0, for example. You could design a virtual reality in which 1+1=0. Or whatever you want. And none of this in independent of a sentient being because it's all happening inside your sentience. If not, where else is addition happening? Even just the very notion of addition itself, is relative. After all, what is addition and how do you even understand it? Is addition something found in the outer world? Of course not. Relative to: Language, semantics Your state of consciousness Your education Your culture Your worldview and entire schema of reality This physical universe Formal mathematics Being a human You telling yourself that it is true (you could, for example, deny it.) Etc. If you were a donkey, 1+1=2 would not be true for you. How is this not obvious to you? 1+1=2 cannot be true for you unless you are able to think it and tell yourself that it is true.

TABLE OF CONTENTS ---------------- (YouTube link for time stamps) 0:00-15:11 : Introduction 15:11-36:12 CHAPTER 1: POSTHUMANISM a. Neurotechnology b. Neurophilosophy c. Teilhard de Chardin and the Noosphere 36:12-54:39 CHAPTER 2 : TELEPATHY/ MIND-READING a. MRI b. fMRI c. EEG d. Cognitive Liberty e. Dream-recording, Dream-economies f. Social Credit Systems g. Libertism VS Determinism 1:02:07-1:25:48 : CHAPTER 3 : MEMORY/ MIND-AUGMENTING a. Memory Erasure and Neuroplasticity b. Longterm Potentiation (LTP/LTD) c. Propanolol d. Optogenetics e. Neuromodulation f. Memory-hacking g. Postmodern Dystopias h. Total Recall, the Matrix, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind i. Custom reality and identity 1:25:48-1:45:14 CHAPTER 4 : BCI/ MIND-UPGRADING a. Bryan Johnson and Kernel b. Mark Zuckerberg and Neuroprosthetics c. Elon Musk, Neural Lace, and Neuralink d. Neurohacking, Neuroadvertizing, Neurodialectics e. Cyborgs, Surrogates, and Telerobotics f. Terminator, Superintelligence, and Merging with AI g. Digital Analogs, Suffering, and Virtual Drugs h. Neurogaming and "Nervana" (technological-enlightenment) 1:45:14 -2:02:57 CHAPTER 5 : CONNECTOME/ MIND-MAPPING a. Neurons, MEG scans, and Supercomputers b. Uploading worm brains, fly brains, mouse brains etc. c. Cryo Ultra Mictrotomes, Diffusion Spectrum Imaging d. Anders Sandberg, Connectomics, and the Allen Institute e. Quantum Mechanics, Heisenberg Principle, No Cloning Theorem f. Human Connectome g. Human Metabolome h. Human Proteome i. Human Moleculome 2:02:57- CHAPTER 6 : XEROX/ MIND-UPLOADING a. Dynamic Spiking Neural Networks b. Arthur C. Clarke and Hans Moravec c. San Junipero, Mind Chi!dren, and the City in the Stars d. The Blue Brain Project e. Neuromorphic computing and the Zettabyte f. Dualism VS Monism g. OPTION 1 : Destructive Uploading h. OPTION 2 : Non-Destructive Uploading i. OPTION 3 : Replacement Uploading j. Brain-scanning, Bush-Robot, Neurobots/Nanobots k. David Chalmers and John Searle l. Hemispherectomy, Brain-Division, Artificial Intelligence m. The Mind-Body Problem, Turing Test n. Paradise engineering, Enlightenment, Uploaded-Astronauts o. Verificationism VS Falsificationism p. Epiphenomenalism VS Panpsychism 2:30:32-2:53:09 CHAPTER 7 : BORGANISMS/ MIND-MERGING a. Hive Minds : The Borg and the Bees b. Arborescent (Centralized) VS Rhizomatic (Decentralized) c. Swarm Robotics d. The Zerg VS the Geth (a tale of 2 aliens) e. BCI, B2BI, and "Brainternet" f. Freedom VS Control g. Future ingroups i. Hacking, Privacy, and the Blockchain j. Anarcho-Transhumanism k. Individualism VS Collectivism 2:53:09-3:19:36 CHAPTER 8 : EMs/ MIND-REPLICATION a. Mindclones, Digital Reproduction, Infomorphs, Synthetic Humans b. Whole Brain Emulation / Simulation c. Robin Hanson and the Age of Em d. Time-engineering, Phenomenology, Subjectivity f. Immortality, and Life-Extension g. Intelligence Augmentation h. Simulation Hell, Simulation Hypothesis, Black Mirror i. Personhood, Robot Rights, and Mindtheft j. Futurist Economics : Inequality & Living Forever k. Master-Sl@ve Dialectic l. Immortality: what is Transhumanist Retirement? m. Neurohackers and Neuroenlightenment n. Neurocorrelates of Happiness ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ POSTHUMAN PHILOSOPHY ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 3:19:36-3:42:10 CHAPTER 9 : PHILOSOPHY OF MIND a. Freeze your Mind? b. Cryonics, Cryogenics, and Neurotech c. Electron Micrographs, Greg Fahy d. ALCOR vs Nectome e. Aldehyde Stabilized Vitrification 3:42:10-4:06:59 CHAPTER 10 : PHILOSOPHY OF CONSCIOUSNESS a. What is "Qualia"? b. Intentionality c. Hard Problem of Consciousness d. Mary's Room e. Aristotle : Bios Zoa, and Psyche f. Freud : Id, Ego, and Superego g. Reptilian, Monkey, and Human Brains h. Death Anxiety i. Sentience VS Sapience j. Chinese Rooms and P-Zombies k. Roger Penrose, Stuart Hammeroff, and Francis Crick l. Quantum Coherence, Microtubules, and Glial Cells m. Max Tegmark and Mathematical Platonism n. Guilio Tononi and Integrated Information Theory o. Materialism VS Idealism 4:06:59 CHAPTER 11 : PHILOSOPHY OF IDENTITY 1) Body Theory : Plutarch, Animalism, and the Ship of Theseus 2) Soul Theory : Descartes, Plato's Cave, and the World of Forms 3) Memory Theory : Locke, Amnesia, and the Self/Ego 4) Bundle Theory : Hume, Buddhism, and Phineas Gage 5) Continuity : Derek Parfit, Modal Realism, Teleportation Paradox 6) Narratives: : Derrida, Leibniz's Law, and the Boltzmann Brain 7) Haecceity : Deleuze, Post-structuralism, Assemblages, Multiplicity, and the Body Without Organs

There are a lot of wonderful dynamics at play here. We have to first make a distinction between Sentience and Consciousness. Consciousness is Existence, it is everything that Is and can Be. Sentience is a very particular form of Existence which we refer to as the mind or colloquially as consciousness The universe is Consciousness, every particle is Consciousness, everything "material" is Consciousness. The wonderful thing is that it is not merely that there is a First Cause that is somehow Groundless. The miracle of Nature is that each element is truly embedded into Groundlessness, which allows the Illusion of cause and effect. Fundamentally the question is what is the mind in terms of it's relationship to the world? Why is the rock not sentient, but the human brain is? And more importantly, why is the human brain only at certain points sentient? Why is it only sentient in very specific configurations and states? The concept of microtubules are a very important step into the right direction. There is a recognition that fundamentally sentience must somehow be captured by the physical world. This is essential. Each aspect of this universe is an expression from Infinite Potential. Infinite Potential contains every possible State of Being unmanifested. Once Infinite Potential is expressed into a limited manifestation it will lose it's potential. It will be limitation until it dissolves into Nothingness/infinite Potential. What is the brain fundamentally doing, then? The brain is capturing States of unmanifested Infinite Potential. The microtubules in this way allow for the unstable Infinite Potential to be balanced in a very particular manner. This allows for that Infinite Potential to be guided to generate Sentience or every particular aspects of Infinite Reality. It can guide the Expression of Nothingness into particular States of Being, like Colors, Sounds, Feelings and all other specific dimensions of Reality even the Universe itself. This is crucial to understand, because this means Minds in general can literally Understand anything possible if the structures allow for that particular Expression. The Mind is tapping into Infinite Potential and can therefore Reflect anything in Existence, any Form possible. This is because the brain is basically using Infinite Potential to express very certain outcomes. But here is another crucial part. What the brain does fundamentally is completely miraculous. The fact that a certain Expression can be Guided can only be due to the Will of God. There is no other way, because no limited Structure could possibly chose from Infinite Potential for something particular to manifest. This requires the Free Will and Infinite Wisdom. After all, there is truly Infinite Potential and for any lmiited form to chose from that Infinite Potential, it would required to dissolve into Infinite Potential. What the brain is is a machine which simply limits the expression of Infinite Potential. It's an Infinite Potential Limitation machine. So it might very well be that Quantum Physics is important in this, because at some point it will reach Nothingness. That Nothingness is what is being Limited by the brain. This is the mindblowing thing about this, you can Frame this in Infinite ways. You could say that there are Infinite pieces of Nothingness or Infinite Potential which themselves contain All of Existence, and each one of them is manipulated by a Manifested piece of Infinite Potential to manifest into a particular form of Limited Potential. And every single one of these Infinite Potentials contains literally every possible combination of Infinite Potentials manipulating each other into the expression of certain Finite Potentials. This is how you could look at reality. This means there is no beginning and end. There is no fundamental thing. The universe does not cause the brain which causes sentience. Everything causes everything equally. Everything contains everything. Your Sentience contains the Universe, all Universes, all of Existence, every possible form of manifestation and intercombination of manifestation. So in "reality", there is no brain causing or capturing anything. Everything simply is a miracle manifested into Reality so directly it is simply unfathomable to grasp. But yet there is consistency to it, and Illusion of Cause and Effect. And all of this can theoretically be Understood directly, by manifesting literally All of it within a single Mind. Your mind could literally manifest the entire universe, if God's Will deemed it so. The miracle is not Unlimited Potential, the miracle is Limitation. This is fundamentally what science does not grasp yet. So the right question in this context would be: How can the brain limit Infinity into a particular, consistent and guided way? This would, however, assume that it is not Infinity itself that creates the limitation and therefore the illusion of the structure of the brain. Science is not creating or discovering anything. Rather Infinity is allowing for the Illusion of Science discovering and creating things. Science is fundamentally the Mercy of God, as everything else in Existence is. Science is the Impossible deemed Possible. Yet Science today is so arrogant as to assume to be the arbitrator of the Possible and Impossible, when infact it itself is Impossible and only Possible becaused Free Will deemed it so. Scientists should be on their knees crying in gratitude for Science having been allowed to be made possible.

@Member To me, it sure feels like awareness comes from the body, but this is something I haven't deeply contemplated yet. Under my current paradigm, if I think of awareness being everywhere, my mind makes the conclusion that every object would have to have sentience, but I don't want to believe that. I have much contemplating to do to overcome these deeply held beliefs.

What I've learned so far in this thread: Main issues: who is really awakened, who isn't? How do we know any one teacher is truly awake? All teachers and their teachings are false? How do we verify for ourselves without losing too much time? Also issues about authority to teachers and students. Issues on misunderstanding awakening from other states, enlightenment, paranormal experiences ect. Side issues that seem random, coming out of left field: masculine and feminine and what governs truth/untruth(possibility/impossibility), how to do contemplation properly, being a personal god vs an external god, solipsism, nihilism, questioning existence and sentience, the whole Viper's nest of trying to word, define and re-define God for yourself, using language magic to divine god, touching on ideas and beliefs as mind viruses that spread, reconciling old beliefs with new ones, and how God practices on different universes and how you've done this once upon a time too. Also the issue of threads getting off into tangents on other issues that hardly have anything to do with main issue.?

@Leo Gura Please read these words carefully. By definition, finite is limited, meaning it is not all there is. This character, this human avatar is but one drop in the infinite ocean of God, one puzzle piece, one single pixel on the infinite screen of God. I know that, at a deeper level, I am simultaneously all drops, all puzzle pieces, all pixels. But, no matter how paradoxical it may seem, so is everyone else. In this temporary expression of my ultimate Self, I have intentionally decided to create the experience of dividing myself infinitely into every being and object you see before you. While it is true that I have not actually divided myself, (mechanically speaking), the experience of being divided is real. This would all be pointless if it wasn't. In the mind of God, your temporary avatar is just as imaginary as every other one. But at the deepest level, the consciousness beneath each avatar is sentient, is totally alive. This sentience, this alive awareness is the same for absolutely everyone, whether that's a person, a computer, a tree, an ant, or the very ground you walk on. There would be no reason for God to temporarily project itself as each of these things if there wasn't something real about every single of them; if there wasn't something absolutely real being gained from it doing so. In fact, because God-consciousness is all there is, it would be impossible for there to be absolutely nothing real about everything there is, (including people) even in this illusory realm. Therefore, believing that one single finite, dualistic, therefore limited, egoic human self is the only sentient entity there is, is incredibly delusional. I do not intend to offend you with these words at all, this is simply the Truth I have come to realize. If you truly believed this yourself as your words suggest, you would not continue to make videos or respond to anyone here. Even you must know that there is something totally real, no matter how deeply hidden or veiled, about everyone you interact with. You are dangerously misleading many of your followers. I seriously advise you to re-evaluate the words you constantly speak and to learn to develop some compassion.

I respect that definition of sentience and meat. I personally find plants & insects to be sentient creatures. I was just suggesting all animals eat meat, if they can have it. Eating by itself is a biological act, it does not require any belief or thought. Even if I am to forsake all beliefs as a caveman, raw meat will most likely be more appetizing than a plate of grass when I am in starved state. The claim that people do not need to eat animal products for their well-being is not factual for me. People do get physically sick on a 100% vegan diet - okay, so the solution is to eat more variety of plants, nuts, seeds, fruits, and to supplement. But I got a problem with receiving an important vitamin like b12 solely from a supplement because 1. Supplements are not FDA approved. 2. Health experts recommend getting most if not all vitamins and minerals through food which makes sense to me from an intuitive standpoint. I take vitamin D3 as a supplement, but I still make sure to go outside and gets sunlight, and/or eat fish. So to me, eating meat is necessary for biological function because I cannot get b12 naturally from plants, not to mention a host of other nutrients. I agree with the essential amino acids. I still consume plants, potatoes, beans, seeds, and fruits. What about B12? and Vitamin A since animal sourced Vitamin A is different than plant forms.

For me, the threshold is sentience. I don't consider insects to be fully sentient beings, so I don't consider eating insects as "eating meat". Using insects as examples or a rare example of a starving herbivore eating meat is a distraction. It is using fringe examples to justify one's own behavior. If you want to use the example of an elephant, I would gladly have humans to eat like elephants. That would mean that humans would never eat an animal other than fish, and on average, each human would eat about one fish per year. Like the average elephant diet, the human diet would be 99.99% vegan. . . That sounds awesome to me. The personal question is quite simple: Do you want to contribute to causing pain and suffering to sentient beings? All this other stuff is a distraction from facing this uncomfortable question. If you introspect deep enough, this question will get very uncomfortable. All these rationalizations and thought stories are distractions from facing this personal question. As I've said, I am not 100% vegan. Yet I understand how my behavior is contributing to the suffering of sentient beings. I have tried to reduce my impact, yet I am not 100% there yet. . . However, I don't rationalize this by giving examples of other animals eating insects and fish. I face the question of my impact directly and it gets very uncomfortable at times. Not everyone is willing to look at themself, their behavior and their impact on others. It's more comfortable to go into distrative rationalizations to avoid looking at the issue.

@electroBeam Very well said, i always felt some dimension of predestination and me tapping into collective, for example i randomly think about something and relatively quickly someone says what i tought or that problem gets randomly solved! There is sentience for life for sure! Every night you try to wish for the same thing for a year or smth if you are total skeptic and then see how it happens!

@arlin you have to train the prefrontal cortex, or rather more functionally, sentience. Sentience can be trained in a number of ways, the best way to explore and realise sentience is through experiential training. I make mention of a simple emotional shifting exercise at the bottom of this comment here that will give a real sense of sentience and subsequent personal empowerment which stands as your very real and tangible free will in this reality. Someone said as a reply to my comment that I'm yet to get to "what is sentience?", as a reply here it simply means what we normally refer to as self awareness without that internal chatter, instead the awareness of that. The next step would be training the frontoparietal network, or to simply say, the prefrontal cortex. This involves simply doing things that get one to train their reasoning, for a male in general I'd recommend spatial reasoning. Say lots of chess and then learning to transpose those skills into ones everyday life, that way the training will translate in and outside of chess. Chess can be very intimidating for people but if the end goal of improving sentience is kept in mind that can better enable sentience. Also the emotional shifting exercises themselves, if one wishes to practice, will make a considerable difference to someones ability in the realm of relieving oneself from depression. In fact I'd argue that if someone were to do 3 hours of training per day there's absolutely no doubt that they'd not only redeem any depressed condition they'd far exceed any ability they had here they previously thought possible. I personally do not train on the exercises myself, however I do train my prefrontal cortex, spending at least 2-3 hours per day and I find that in itself helps in the alleviation of any potential symptoms of depression as well as capacities to self regulate. The emotional exercises even if one doesn't want to consistently train there at a bare minimum allow someone to really experience what sentience is actually like, a feeling that I think many people have probably forgotten. And don't feel bad if you can't shift your state easily initially, I remember when I did properly train for about a week after the 4th day or so 1+ training I was amazed at how good I was getting.

What do you mean by sentience? do you mean to develop extra sensory perception to be able to perceive and feel or experience new experiences? do you mean to make your senses sharper? I don't get what do you mean by changing the emotional state to see how to increase brain power, the emotional state seem not related except maybe as a motivating force for the subconscious to open new doors of perception. do you mean to develop more awareness so u can understand more? can u give a more clarified example to show your point? Thank you very much for your time.

Sentience. Its important to recognise that sentience is an organisational principle, this is why we see a relationship between higher sentience and "self recognition" (i.e. mirror tests), thus higher sentience allows us to not only regulate our emotions better but also alter them in a particular direction at will with the appropriate training. This training and the extension of this potential is naturally to the full mapping of the entire brain where we can engender such ability. Meaning a maximisation of training will allow us to become sentient enough that we can regulate and control much more of our brain than we realise and thus affect growth in important areas, secondly, that if we were to induce a maximisation of optimising the parameters that govern the brains ability to change, i.e. neuroplastiicty, say through drug interventions (ayahuasca is implicated in improvements in neuroplastiicty for example, at least in specific instances though its broadness hasn't been well studied). Improve sentience, we improve our access. Simple emotional transference exercises where you even just say sit down for 15 minutes trying to change from 1 emotional state to the next changing to a new 1 every minute will reveal to you, very, very experientially, just what I mean by sentience, the feeling of sentience and the brains capacity for self intervention on state.

@ajasatya One more thing that you may find interesting to contemplate: None of us can contemplate or create so much as a thought without meaning, thus to say that life has no intrinsic meaning is an unsubstantiated contradiction Given the relationship between cognitive syntax and the syntax of reality, otherwise expressed as C->R, this also renders your statement as not only unsubstantiated but invalid. Ultimate meaning is the entire purpose of reality, without it, reality would have no purpose to exist. Existence requires purpose for purpose is the building blocks for reality, the organisational principle that allows information to establish logical coherence to the point it can talk with itself to build further purpose. Purpose is the precursor to all intrinsic meaning and all meaning predicates the purposes that will be derived from the perceptual syntax designed to infer it, i.e. us. where we're back to C -> R. C->R is the binding loop between realities simultaneous self representation and self configuration, this is also the dual framework for establishing the logical predicates necessary for free will both from the perspective of reality and the free will of a human. This loop in a nutshell, is sentience, an engine that allows for cognition to have selection boundaries serve self optimisation parameters, aka, from evolution to self actualisation. Just some thoughts to consider. The logic is flawless but you can have a go at trying to crack it.

And wow, as a reflection of the highest form of self awareness imagine how much it would change your life if you aware of everything in existence at all times... (something I'll experiment with - see how much I can actually be aware of simultaneously even though the modelling is only predictive haha) This is why self education is so important, so you can build an accurate model of reality, simulate things in real time and then be able to make intelligent assessments about what you can best contribute to the world. Thus in this sense, not only is there a war against sentience, there is a war against self awareness (again ='s realities level of awareness of its contents - from our human perspective when it applies to our relationship there) given our level of self awareness determines how well our models align with reality and in doing so, the degree to which our decisions are for the best maturation of existence according to our greatest wills.

On the subject of words I really love the term sentience by the way, so much more clarifying than self awareness. In the literal sense all self awareness (from a humans perspective) actually means from a more accurate point of view is the degree to which reality is aware of its contents from the human subjective reference frame in any one moment - meaning modern references to the idea are incomplete and ultimately inappropriately split from reality. Sentience however has both really great practical and theoretical ground.

@Victor Mgazi It's a very fascinating scenario but just in a nut shell, its sentience corrupted that's all. Sentience is the thing that allows us to have free will. Most depression and suicide related symptoms (including fear) would be healed through a training of the prefrontal cortex and general self governance training. Most humans have been corrupted by mainstream "unregulated" (and therefore chaotic) culture, and because their social governance does not facilitate their internal governance the likelihood that people will fall victim to negative states of being is much higher. Try at least 25% of the US population, and that's because of the socioeconomic structure that governs consumer options and because most of those act as social malware, its a successful statistic because it fuels people to be more dependent and therefore reliable unthinking consumers. The biggest war being waged on humans right now is on sentience, thus the cure is sentience.

@Francis Trach Just my own 2 cents. For anything to have sentience it must have what can be termed "reality sentience". This means that to the extent that there is sentience, the person is aware of and can make adjustments to reality. This is the definition of free will. You are an aspect of reality, which is to the extent that you have sentience, free to transform reality. To this extent, you as reality, are responsible for every decision that is bound up and made within sentience, outside this, you are excused. Free will and sentience have a coupling which cannot be uncoupled, this is because sentience itself exists as a kind of freedom, this is why awareness appears as a kind of "nothingness", this is because this is the encasing by which contents can flow through and you can make changes to the universe through the synthesis that your consciousness engenders in its interaction with those contents. This doesn't mean we're "all powerful free will universal changing beings" of course, meaning free will exists on a spectrum and we exist somewhere to the right in the animal kingdom as well as individual differences existing right across the human population. Free will resides in the prefrontal cortex mostly, thus it is the place where people should concentrate most if they wish to improve their free will incrementally over the long term rather than have it diminish more and more with age due to misuse and lack of use. There's really no way out of free will unfortunately, and I seriously doubt anyone here would be able to logically falsify the statement. Reality exhibits ultimate sentience and therefore ultimate free will relative to that sentience, we are like tiny microbes as reality which have been granted with awareness to reconfigure along with reality in the larger picture of realities ongoing transformation and understanding of itself.

Just because it doesn't add up to you doesn't make it false. It is well established that the same amount of calories will require far more ressources for beef than it will for various plant calories. Factory farming is in the majority of cases more environmentally friendly than roaming cattle due the the substaintial amount of land that is required to feed cows with grass. There is no such thing as a right to do anything. In my opinion it is also very ignorant to reduce this calculation to meat vs plant based. If I need to eat meat, does that mean I can factory farm chimps and dolphines or even humans for that matter, if I have access to beings that are less sentient? Just because you need meat doesn't mean you can just kill any animal whatsoever to get it, otherwise you could easily justify killing humans for meat production. If there is an alternative in my view any functional moral system will have to somehow reduce itself to only consuming the least sentient animals that is practically possible. This means something like this: If you truly require meat, eat mussels. If mussels are not available, eat insects. If insects are not available, eat fish. And so forth. You wouldn't just go and kill a human because you need meat, that would seem absurd. You can be absolutely healthy without consuming any beef whatsoever. For the absolute majority of people mussels and fish are easily accessable and a far more healthier alternative. It is not yet established that it is not possible to structure a plant based diet and still be reasonably healthy for the majority of people. This is just an assertion, and I would posit it to be a moral imperative for us to: A) Do our utmost best to not include products that cause greater suffering and exploitation in our diet and otherwise. B) If we do require some of them, make efforts to somehow aquire these products or essential nutrients in these products in a different manner (like supporting lab grown meat for example) C) Change our view that we are entitled to the most optimal health. To me it is inconsistent and self-biased to treat animals like cows, chicken, fish and so forth to any lesser degree than we treat mentally disabled people on the same level of sentience. I could not possibly conceive of a difference between them, other than reasons based on self-bias, that would justify the kind of argumentation you are providing. "You surely can't expect people to have unhealthy bodies purely so that we can save a few mentally disable people?" If you think this comparison is outrageous, I view it as evidence of your self-bias and speciesism. It is no different from racism.

I do feel the humor when reading of Sciential minded theists seeking to prove the existence of their God. No,...science does not need a new paradigm to enhance the God meme,...they need to let go of their sentience so to view reality as it is. "the ego is a monkey catapulting through the jungle; totally fascinated by the realm of the senses....if anyone threaten it, it actually fears for its life. Let this monkey go. Let the senses go." Lao-tzu "The senses do not grasp reality in any way" Socrates However,...I do agree that there is an Intelligence at work,...one could say an evil intelligence that seeks to sustain itself and prevent egos from realizing the truth. There’s a relevant story in the Kevatta Sutta about God/Allah/Brahma the Magnificent. A talented monk who wanted to find out the answer to the question, “Where do the four elements cease without remainder?” Through meditation he reached the Heaven of the Four Great Kings, who did not know the answer. Next he went to the thirty three gods in a higher Desire Realm heaven, but none of these rulers knew either. He then asked King Sakka (Indra), the king of these gods, but Sakka did not know the answer. Up and up he went asking all sorts of gods at each and every higher level. Finally he came to Great Brahma, the Creator, the One Uncreated, Knower of All. When the monk finally achieved an audience with Great Brahma, Brahma appeared in all his majesty and glory announcing, "I am Great Brahma, the Conqueror, the Unconquered, the All-Seeing, All-Powerful, the Lord, the Maker and Creator, the Ruler, Appointer and Orderer, Father of All That Have Been and Shall Be." The monk then humbly and respectfully asked his question, but all Great Brahma did was repeat, "I am Great Brahma, the Conqueror, the Unconquered, the All-Seeing, All-Powerful, the Lord, the Maker and Creator, the Ruler, Appointer and Orderer, Father of All That Have Been and Shall Be." The monk eventually got frustrated and said, “I know you are "Great Brahma, the Conqueror, the Unconquered, the All-Seeing, All-Powerful, the Lord, the Maker and Creator, the Ruler, Appointer and Orderer, Father of All That Have Been and Shall Be," but I asked you a question about where the four elements cease without remainder. The Great Brahma replied, “Listen little monk, don’t embarrass me. All these other gods are listening and think I know everything. If you want to know the answer to a question like that, don’t ask me. I don’t know the answer. For a question like that, you have to go ask the Buddha.”