Leo's Blog Discussion Mega-Thread

[Leo Gura]

@Nemra Good. You are on the right track. Keep exploring that.

[Nemra]

It seems that the more I deconstruct my ordinary experience the more I would grasp the degree of its hallucinatory or dream-like nature, not only just that it's a hallucination or dream.

Years back I would have never imagined this being a dream. The directness of it is like looking directly at the sun and being totally alone.

Understanding it changes the quality of my experience. E.g., I look at my body and recognize that it is being dreamt.

I'm more open towards my death because who else is going to experience stuff other than me?

Edited 17 hours ago by Nemra

[Leo Gura]

@Nemra Great! You're right on target. Keep going.

[Rafael Thundercat]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Yes, that's basically right.

Hallucination is what dreams are. The Mind can dream whatever it desires. You experience this in your sleep.

Your life is a stable kind of dream.

Once I had a dream that I was waking up checking the time in my phone and getting out of the bed to pee. It took me 5 rounds to actually get up because every time I thought it was a real getting up ot was only me dreaming that I was getting up. Was a lop, and the last time I needed to take some minutes to really understand that that time was a real getting up. I needed to hit to punch the wall to be certain I was really wake up. That was a hell of a glitch. 

[MuadDib]

Gods intelligence is crystallizing your couch. Look at your couch right now. Isnt it magnificent? There might be a little bit of dust underneath. Gods mind is rendering every fine grain and hairline texture of it. Every hand that crafted it, and every life those hands will live. All philosophy is going to do is wear it out and fuck it up permanently. Show some respect.

[LastThursday]

9 hours ago, eos_nyxia said:

Nice! Any particular sub-topics of interest for you? 

I mostly veer into his alchemy and sorcery/magic/witchcraft stuff, but I'm omnivorous. You?

[integration journey]

Actually reading through the gospel of Thomas is a refreshing experience and makes you wonder about ancient Christianity. 

[Nemra]

9 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Great! You're right on target. Keep going.

Thanks for the support.

When I was a child, it dawned on me—through a lot of suffering—that understanding is much more fundamental than what people were doing; it is an interaction with the world through observation that reveals the intelligence of reality. Gaining understanding on my own for the sake of understanding is a greater joy for me than just knowing, or especially just believing, something.

Without you, I would not have known how important truth is and would have remained in a state of stagnancy. But I don't claim that I have become someone who is conscious of a lot of truth or a master of truth.

Edited 8 hours ago by Nemra

[Thought Art]

11 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

@Thought Art You are treating the issue too shallowly.

How would you know walking off a bridge is wrong if suffering did not exist?

It’s clear to me this is true in my experience. I just imagine a way which that wouldn’t be required. But, I admit clearly that isn’t the case. I see that suffering keeps us alive. I’ll keep contemplating this thank you. 
 

There is also a bias or demonization of suffering I’ve noticed that Atheists  do as an argument against God. I can see how that isn’t a solid argument because how suffering keeps us alive. And, God doesn’t moralize. Atheists want God to moralize. 
 

Treating suffering as evil, is a bias a human has, which God doesn’t. That if God exists atheists will say God is evil. But, they ignore the good that exists in that argument and how suffering can often lead to growth. 

Edited 10 hours ago by Thought Art

[eos_nyxia]

6 hours ago, LastThursday said:

I mostly veer into his alchemy and sorcery/magic/witchcraft stuff, but I'm omnivorous. You?

Me too. Though lately I've been watching more of his videos on Hermeticism which I view as occult-adjacent itself, but the subject is also important if you want to understand how modern science came about. I've also have been watching his videos on Gnosticism. 

Before that I was mostly watching his many videos on Jewish mysticism and occultism, though honestly I don't find it as interesting. (He has a ton of content about it though! I think it might be his main sub-specialization (or one of them).)

[r0ckyreed]

In my shroom trip, I realized that my normal state of consciousness right now, my dreams, and my consciousness on shrooms are all ONE. There is no separation between this state, a psychedelic state, or a dream. It’s all just Consciousness. However, as soon as I am out of my shroom trip, my consciousness cannot deconstruct the external world. It just really seems like this state is different from a dream but when I’m in the shroom trip or deep in meditation, I see no separation. There is no death. I am God hallucinating r0ckyreed. But what I still haven’t figured out yet is if r0ckyreed is all that exists or if I God is just firewalled in r0ckyreed’s hallucination. It seems like God is hallucinating r0ckyreed but not Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise is a hallucination within r0ckyreed’s hallucination. I’ll need to contemplate it more. But I am directly conscious that I am God experiencing r0ckyreed. I think God is hiding stuff from itself. The moon is still orbiting and the earth is still rotating even though I’m not experiencing it right now. R0ckyreed doesn’t have access to that perception but God could be in the scene and behind the scenes?

[gengar]

@Leo Gura If suffering is purely for survival reasons (and survival is purely an instrument to keep on dreaming) why have people had Salvia trips (that are just as real as sober waking consciousness) of pure unadulterated suffering without any survival concerns involved? 

These people were locked into various contraptions in their salvia trip. There was no way to kill themselves in the realm they were in. 
So how does your claim hold up that suffering is dreamed up purely for survival reasons, to keep you from killing yourself, if situations like that exist? 

Edited 2 hours ago by gengar

[Leo Gura]

17 minutes ago, gengar said:

@Leo Gura If suffering is purely for survival reasons (and survival is purely an instrument to keep on dreaming) why have people had Salvia trips (that are just as real as sober waking consciousness) of pure unadulterated suffering without any survival concerns involved? 

That's just like a nightmare.

Consciousness can dream anything horrific it wants to. Consciousness is freaky.

It is like you are asking, Why do people suffer if they jump out of an airplane? Then don't jump out of an airplane.

Salvia is scary shit.

Salvia is a survival concern because it deconstructs human sanity, which you need to survive. Survival is not just physical, it's emotional and mental too.

Salvia definitely threatens human survival.

Edited 2 hours ago by Leo Gura

[gengar]

18 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

That's just like a nightmare.

Consciousness can dream anything horrific it wants to. Consciousness is freaky.

It is like you are asking, Why do people suffer if they jump out of an airplane? Then don't jump out of an airplane.

Salvia is scary shit.

Salvia is a survival concern because it deconstructs human sanity, which you need to survive. Survival is not just physical, it's emotional and mental too.

Salvia definitely threatens human survival.

How does that hold up when in certain salvia states, people literally forget the past and that they were human? There is no "threat to human survival" because human existence has already ended somewhere during the state.

To hold up your Tom Cruise analogy, during the salvia state, they are literally not human anymore, since they are imagining something else, and the past never existed unless you imagine it in the current state.

Plus, many people have reported that the suffering of not being able to die in the salvia state is the awful part, so that directly contradicts your position that suffering is ONLY to keep you in survival.

Isn't the absolute position on the reason for sufferings existence solely that God just dreams up whatever, and suffering is just part of the infinite set, not that suffering has a particular utilitarian reason to keep dreaming a life of a finite being?

Edited 2 hours ago by gengar

[Leo Gura]

4 minutes ago, gengar said:

people literally forget the past and that they were human?

Bro.

That IS the highest threat to survival.

[Leo Gura]

Salvia is like throwing a child into a haunted house by herself. Of course there will be suffering.

The human mind is tuned to function in only a narrow band of Consciousness. Outside that band it fails and things become chaotic and scary.

[Natasha Tori Maru]

I've done salvia - never again.

I didn't experience pain. Suffering, yes (more like horror). I think it is an important distinction.

There is a large portion of suffering that is self generated.

Edited 1 hour ago by Natasha Tori Maru

[gengar]

41 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Bro.

That IS the highest threat to survival.

You can't speak of a threat when the forgetting is already complete - the horrors of the salvia state take place after complete forgetting, and thus death, has already taken place, Consciousness has already completely forgotten the human state and is thus already no longer human.

Just like there is no threat of hitting the floor after falling from a cliff when i'm already splattered on the ground.

I feel like you're avoiding my criticism here. I made a point about your claim that suffering SOLELY exists to keep you in survival, which I feel I refuted.

A exists because A is part of Infinity, and for no other reason. Isn't that the simple truth of any relative things existence? What "purpose" of existence does anything have? that contradicts everything you've ever said before.

 

 

10 minutes ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

I've done salvia - never again.

I didn't experience pain. Suffering, yes (more like horror). I think it is an important distinction.

There is a large portion of suffering that is self generated.

What kind of horror did you experience?

Edited 1 hour ago by gengar

[Rishabh R]

15 minutes ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

There is a large portion of suffering that is self generated.

Can't agree more with this.

[Natasha Tori Maru]

@gengar my body receded into a snail shell - like I devolved into an embryonic state but was being reformulated into the shell against my will. Like, recycled.

Imagine Kane from the first Alien film (directors cut, not sure if you have seen it) being remade into an egg. It was like I was being reorganised into the snail totally against my will. 

I turned to the table next to me trying to get away and the wood grain on the table infected me, turning me into a static tree version of Tash. I genuinely thought I was fucked. Like this is it. I am stuck this way. Forever. I knew it as truth in that moment. 

It was really, really bad. I will never do it again. It was more fucked up than mushrooms by far. 

It felt like an eternity at the time, but the trip was over really fast according to my handler.

Edited 1 hour ago by Natasha Tori Maru