Why you are a materialist in disguise (crypto-materialist)

[Oppositionless]

On 8/4/2025 at 4:43 PM, Sincerity said:

@Carl-Richard Sorry for the late response. I knew this would take me long to write.

What physical mechanism there? Do you mean mechanism for "coming back to life"?

The mechanism is the body "coming back". That's the mechanism. Being a result of some energetic happening.

While we're at this, I want to mention that I think that a LOT, much more than conventionally thought, is possible in the "physical world" - as long as there is alignment with the "energetic world". If given and acted upon an especially high/godly/miraculous energy, I believe miracles are possible.

The physical world is NOT restricted by physical rules per se. The mental/energetic reality and the physical reality are completely intertwined - THAT is the rule. This is why I agreed with your 2nd point where you said that "interactions are solely bound by physical mechanisms". To change the wording to align with my point more, but still reflect yours: interactions require acting energetically upon, which results in change in physical (and energetic) reality. Interactions aren't bound by physical mechanisms per se, but bound with.

Do you mean OBEs where you can explore the plane and hypothetically learn things about the world that you didn't know before? For example, a friend of mine puts a note on his fridge with a 4-digit number, and I can fly there and get to know the number?

I'm agnostic whether that is possible. I dunno.

In general though, I'd raise this view of mine: what "physical reality" is, changes. While dreaming, I would consider "physical reality" to be that dream. In an OBE, being in some higher dimension or some shit, that's the reality.

It's important to note that physical reality is not a thing that is always there even when I'm "unconscious" of it. For me, what's "physical" is what IS. NOW.

Perhaps the word "physical reality" loses meaning. Or it's me who should drop the word. Guess I got caught up.

 

I think there is a strong argument that can be made that "Consciousness" or perhaps more specifically Mind is not restricted to what we know as experiential awareness. Like how do you explain the order and complexity of the whole universe in terms of just awareness? A kind of "physical universe" or pattern intrinsic to Mind may exist . I guess the difference from your view as I understand it is, is I'm unsure physics is able to study the "real structure" of mind because it would also be nonphysical.

Edited August 7 by Oppositionless

[Carl-Richard]

34 minutes ago, Oppositionless said:

I guess the difference from your view as I understand it is, is I'm unsure physics is able to study the "real structure" of mind because it would also be nonphysical.

The way to study the non-physical is to propose principles, models and theories that describe and predict patterns (archetypes) of the non-physical. Rupert Sheldrake's theory of Morphic Resonance is one such a theory. But there is actually nothing special about such theories. They're on the same level as the Theory of Evolution: generalized principles about how the patterns of nature unfold. There are no particle accelerators or detectors involved in the Theory of Evolution, only observations about the regularities of nature. The only "new" thing with studying the non-physical is that you have to drop the assumption that reality works like a game of billiards where all interactions boil down to local collisions of particles.

Edited August 7 by Carl-Richard

[Oppositionless]

58 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

The way to study the non-physical is to propose principles, models and theories that describe and predict patterns (archetypes) of the non-physical. Rupert Sheldrake's theory of Morphic Resonance is one such a theory. But there is actually nothing special about such theories. They're on the same level as the Theory of Evolution: generalized principles about how the patterns of nature unfold. There are no particle accelerators or detectors involved in the Theory of Evolution, only observations about the regularities of nature. The only "new" thing with studying the non-physical is that you have to drop the assumption that reality works like a game of billiards where all interactions boil down to local collisions of particles.

When I'm tripping I can sometimes feel the physical world being generated from my chest, it's very strange. And if I'm with someone else I can also feel them creating the physical world , a kind of radiation emanating from their chest . It feels like we're each independently creating our own physical world but because some kind of deeper principles they more or less line up (unless it really is just pure fucking solipsism wtf do I know)

 

Edited August 7 by Oppositionless

[Sincerity]

12 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

I want you guys who use the "My Content" functions on the forum, particularly on your phone, to notice the times you open one of them and you can feel that nobody has responded to one of your posts even before you have scrolled down all the way to the last newest post. This is a form of precognition that I experience regularly.

Not my experience.

I can never precognize when someone will respond to me. Very often I open the forum after some time, thinking I'll get a notification, but I don't. Or, I get a notification unexpectedly.

[Carl-Richard]

5 hours ago, Sincerity said:

Not my experience.

I can never precognize when someone will respond to me. Very often I open the forum after some time, thinking I'll get a notification, but I don't. Or, I get a notification unexpectedly.

I was specifically talking about opening e.g. the "Content I Posted In" page, and on top of the page, before scrolling, seeing that all the posts are new but that nobody has responded yet, and then having a feeling that indeed nobody has responded yet, and then scrolling down and confirming that feeling.

Edited August 7 by Carl-Richard

[Carl-Richard]

On 4.8.2025 at 11:43 PM, Sincerity said:

@Carl-Richard Sorry for the late response. I knew this would take me long to write.

What physical mechanism there? Do you mean mechanism for "coming back to life"?

Somehow, a person is experiencing things very vividly independent of a functioning brain, independent of a physical mechanism that "explains" the experience (which is already a huge concession, to say that brain states explain experience, but I digress). The usual physicalist (materialist) assumption is that brain states (and related sensory faculties, sensory impressions, memories) cause mental experience. That is what I mean by physical mechanism in this case (and in this case, there doesn't seem to be a physical mechanism that explains the phenomena).

 

On 4.8.2025 at 11:43 PM, Sincerity said:

The mechanism is the body "coming back". That's the mechanism. Being a result of some energetic happening.

While we're at this, I want to mention that I think that a LOT, much more than conventionally thought, is possible in the "physical world" - as long as there is alignment with the "energetic world". If given and acted upon an especially high/godly/miraculous energy, I believe miracles are possible.

The physical world is NOT restricted by physical rules per se. The mental/energetic reality and the physical reality are completely intertwined - THAT is the rule. This is why I agreed with your 2nd point where you said that "interactions are solely bound by physical mechanisms". To change the wording to align with my point more, but still reflect yours: interactions require acting energetically upon, which results in change in physical (and energetic) reality. Interactions aren't bound by physical mechanisms per se, but bound with.

We can make the distinction between saying that the world seems to follow certain rules or patterns and that the world seems to follow the rules of a billiard game (particles bumping into each other). If you think miracles can happen in the sense that it no longer follows the rules of a billiard game (e.g. non-local mind interactions), then you're not qualifying for the second criteria.

 

On 4.8.2025 at 11:43 PM, Sincerity said:

Do you mean OBEs where you can explore the plane and hypothetically learn things about the world that you didn't know before?

Well, that too, but not even that: the mere fact that your holistic mental experience becomes decoupled from your physical senses (the localized limitations of your literal eyes and ears) and somehow you keep experiencing "sense content", as if you're a separate observer looking from elsewhere. I have had mild OBEs where I observe myself from just above myself, in a way that wouldn't be possible (or hard to explain) if I was only perceiving the world through my literal physiological eyeballs.

 

On 4.8.2025 at 11:43 PM, Sincerity said:

For example, a friend of mine puts a note on his fridge with a 4-digit number, and I can fly there and get to know the number?

I'm agnostic whether that is possible. I dunno.

There are too many stories about this with indeed cardiac arrest NDEs.

 

On 4.8.2025 at 11:43 PM, Sincerity said:

In general though, I'd raise this view of mine: what "physical reality" is, changes. While dreaming, I would consider "physical reality" to be that dream. In an OBE, being in some higher dimension or some shit, that's the reality.

It's important to note that physical reality is not a thing that is always there even when I'm "unconscious" of it. For me, what's "physical" is what IS. NOW.

Perhaps the word "physical reality" loses meaning. Or it's me who should drop the word. Guess I got caught up.

Of course, idealists don't think there is a "literal" physical world, hence crypto-materialism. And also hence that you seem to substitute "physical" with essentially the sensory world; patterns and forms implemented in things you can smell and touch.

The "literal physical world" is quite simple: atoms or sub-atomic particles (or the modern physics equivalent), that exist out there, that create the rules of the game.

But the weird thing is that even the people who believe in all the weirdness of modern physics (non-locality, field interactions), when it comes to explaining everyday life (e.g. how we think, how we interact as humans), they suddenly become very Newtonian (billiard ball-like). Suddenly, they start to believe in these outdated rules. And they are outdated: modern physics has non-local interactions, it has fields rather than particles.

We're seemingly just complacent with applying this outdated view to our everyday life because that is how unskilled we are in non-local/psychic aspects of life; we're generally not sensitive to things that are non-Newtonian. And if you are, you gaslight yourself to fit the paradigm; anomalies are just that — anomalies, and you have 100 years of Western psychology and cognitive science to help you: "you're just engaging in these 12 cognitive biases", etc.

 

On 4.8.2025 at 11:43 PM, Sincerity said:

On second thought, I can agree that in some cases experience/receiving of psychic phenomena is possible.

I feel like I'm reading the narrative arch of a hero's journey with these transformations I'm seeing, but hey, that's my goal.

 

On 4.8.2025 at 11:43 PM, Sincerity said:

However, I still think there must be energetic (and thus "physical") action to "send" things out there. For example, even in the experiment from Sheldrake you mentioned, the action of calling the phone must still be performed in order for the receiver to have any intuition that someone is calling them.

So yes, patterns happening in the sensory world.

 

On 4.8.2025 at 11:43 PM, Sincerity said:

Thanks for sharing. Interesting.

I read it, not sure I believe it, but then again 🤷‍♂️ maybe.

Hmm. You don't believe the science? So the expectation was 25% correct if purely due to chance, but it turned out to be 40% (15% more than expected). It was 571 trials. 

Let's toss a coin 571 times. We should expect roughly 50% tails. In 571 coin tosses, do you know how unlikely it is if we end up with 65% tails? 1 in 10 trillion according to ChatGPT.

Do you think the scientists are making it up and fabricating their results? These results have been replicated independently by others. A 2025 meta-analysis that combined 26 datasets reported a hit-rate of ≈ 8.6 % above chance, p ≈ 10⁻⁷: https://journals.lub.lu.se/jaex/article/download/25934/24357/74647. Is everybody making it up?

Edited August 11 by Carl-Richard

[Sincerity]

@Carl-Richard Sorry, I don’t wanna spend another hour replying to this. Like you mentioned, I probably don’t qualify for the second criteria anyway, so I’m no true „crypto-materialist”.

Regarding Sheldrake: no I didn’t say anything about chance being the factor, I work in data science man, I understand. No I didn’t say they are necessarily fabricating results. When I read that paper you linked a week ago, I tried to think of some potential objections to the experiment or some explanations, but ultimately came short. I don’t care enough to dig into this („the SCIENCE”) extensively, really, and the criticisms.

It might be true. There can be serious evidence of aliens, OBEs, telepathy with phonecalls and others, but frankly I don’t concern myself with that. I understand you care about that, perhaps for the purposes of your own scientific endeavours, and that’s cool, worthy of respect imo.

[Carl-Richard]

On 8.8.2025 at 8:57 PM, Sincerity said:

@Carl-Richard Sorry, I don’t wanna spend another hour replying to this. Like you mentioned, I probably don’t qualify for the second criteria anyway, so I’m no true „crypto-materialist”.

You don't have to respond to anything 😆 I recommend anybody to not respond to things they don't want to respond to.

 

On 8.8.2025 at 8:57 PM, Sincerity said:

Regarding Sheldrake: no I didn’t say anything about chance being the factor, I work in data science man, I understand. No I didn’t say they are necessarily fabricating results.

You didn't say anything except "not sure if I believe it", which is why I asked questions 😉

 

On 8.8.2025 at 8:57 PM, Sincerity said:

It might be true. There can be serious evidence of aliens, OBEs, telepathy with phonecalls and others, but frankly I don’t concern myself with that. I understand you care about that, perhaps for the purposes of your own scientific endeavours, and that’s cool, worthy of respect imo.

I just want somebody to validate my personal experiences 🥹

Edited August 11 by Carl-Richard

[Jodistrict]

I believe that Aboriginals and pre-modern people can perceive subtle energies.  This perception has been, perhaps permanently, destroyed in modern man by cultural conditioning.  The analysis obsessed man can’t perceive much outside his conceptual imagination, so can’t detect these energies and thus declares they don’t exist.  They may even be undetectable by any instrumentation. 

The Aboriginals when they put this into language may refer to the energies as spirit entities, which modern man immediately concludes as superstition, even though what they are referring to is totally real.  It’s a limitation of language.   Angeles, holy spirit, etc. could also be an attempt to describe energy in language.   I also believe that the chakra energies are real even though what you read in books is the same conceptual bullshit and there are few people alive today that can actually perceive these energies directly.

[Carl-Richard]

8 minutes ago, Jodistrict said:

I also believe that the chakra energies are real even though what you read in books is the same conceptual bullshit and there are few people alive today that can actually perceive these energies directly.

Anybody who has experienced severe heartbreak has felt the heart chakra. Anybody who has experienced severe repression of saying or doing what you want has felt the throat chakra.

[Jodistrict]

11 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Anybody who has experienced severe heartbreak has felt the heart chakra. Anybody who has experienced severe repression of saying or doing what you want has felt the throat chakra.

Carl Jung gave a psychological interpretation to the seven chakra system which is used in many of the standard books, but I have read other accounts that according to the Tantric tradition they are energy centers that can be perceived.  

[Oppositionless]

1 hour ago, Jodistrict said:

I believe that Aboriginals and pre-modern people can perceive subtle energies.  This perception has been, perhaps permanently, destroyed in modern man by cultural conditioning.  The analysis obsessed man can’t perceive much outside his conceptual imagination, so can’t detect these energies and thus declares they don’t exist.  They may even be undetectable by any instrumentation. 

 

I think it's more than cultural gaslighting. I think it's structural , that is, for consciousness to evolve to the point of doing rationality, it had to abandon some of these abilities. You could check out the work of Jean Gebser, or the YouTuber Formscapes' videos on his theory.

And really, is creating a smartphone any less miraculous than perceiving subtle energies? Ultimately it just comes down to bias to say one is a miracle and one isn't. Consciousness is evolving, and concessions are made.

Edited August 8 by Oppositionless

[ExploringReality]

On 7/27/2025 at 10:37 AM, Inliytened1 said:

Sure.  You have to first study physics.  The laws of the dream.  But think of like this.  Is light a wave or a particle. Well it depends.  The double slit experiment reveals that it can be either depending on how the experiment is conducted.  You are the one collapsing the wave.  Just like Schrodinger's cat.  Is it in the box before you open it? No.  So do the laws exist before you experience them or see them? No.  Reality unfolds just like a video game.  Frame by frame. The current frame IS all of it wrapped up in one.

Spot on. You gave me a flashback when I was 15 years old I was talking with a friend about his recent research into quantum physics about how reality is constructed by the senses and he was explaining to me what reality is from a materialistic / quantum physics point of view and there was some deep conversations about Consciousness and what's really opened my mind as to studying and discovering for myself what Consciousness is and being really fascinated about understanding reality and understanding my consciousness. I say this because eventually during high School I stumbled upon the holographic universe book by Michael Talbot and then that led to the book the structures of scientific revolution, I forgot who wrote that one. That did lead to my interest in channeling, but I always stayed skeptical and kept an open mind at the same time. There was value in there but I eventually moved on to psychedelics and then that's when I stumbled upon Leo's work was during a psychedelic trip because during the come up while my eyes were dilated and my Consciousness was going up, I quickly went on YouTube and searched for people who could explain the phenomenology behind these experiences and found Leo's episode on his experiences on magic mushrooms. That's when I knew this was the real deal, because all my path taking psychedelics and having these crazy mystical experiences and God realizations, I'm grateful to find Leo because he really adds and gives structure it keeps me grounded because of the life purpose course and also he has a lot of very very practical and invaluable material for free and he talked very well about the dangers and traps that come with this work which is very useful because it's easy to get sidetracked and lost.

Sorry for the ramble 

[Carl-Richard]

I swear to God, I thought earlier today "is ChatGPT going to launch a new model soon?", and now I open ChatGPT, and they released ChatGPT-5 

"And what I'd like to suggest, is that the fields of our minds stretch out far beyond our bodies; they stretch out invisibly, and our consciousness is related to and based on these fields" - Rupert Sheldrake, The 2023 Holberg Debate.

Edited August 9 by Carl-Richard

[Carl-Richard]

16 hours ago, Jodistrict said:

Carl Jung gave a psychological interpretation to the seven chakra system which is used in many of the standard books, but I have read other accounts that according to the Tantric tradition they are energy centers that can be perceived.  

I think both could be true. Some feel it only in intense states, others are more finely attuned to it.

Edited August 9 by Carl-Richard

[Identity]

To be transparent; I read the original post and looked at some others, yet did not read the entire thread.

Yet the topic does interest me as well. Understanding more about how form operates.

I agree that there is more to it than simply saying ‘consciousness is fundamental, yet for the rest let’s stick to the laws of materialism’.

From my own experience, there is clearly a more personal, intelligent, way that god operates through form. Especially in more expanded states of consciousness, things like synchronisities are definitely a thing. The chakra system clearly has some connection to phenomenon that can be directly experienced.

And, at the same time, it’s a slippery slope as well to veer off to much from ‘common sense materialism’. I’s definitely also not the case that reality is so contextual and moldable (at ordinairy states or consciousness) that any thought or belief goes.

There seems to be a connection there between degree of consciousness and fluidity to form.

Yet how this all works exactly is quite a mystery to me. Especially also because it’s easy to fall into self-deception…

 

 

[Carl-Richard]

24 minutes ago, Identity said:

Yet how this all works exactly is quite a mystery to me. Especially also because it’s easy to fall into self-deception…

When you challenge the self-deception of the collective, it's easy to fall to the self-deception of the individual. But self-deception is really not more sinister in the non-physical realm. To the contrary: what you take as solid, that is arguably what hides the most sinister forms of self-deception. Thinking you're on the right side of a world conflict, that's one of the biggest examples of solid self-deceptions. But yet you have an opinion, you have a sense, you have a moral compass, so you give it life. You have an experience, and you will argue for it. And you should do that, with anything, be it non-physical or physical. The only antidote to self-deception is ultimately self-awareness, not denying what you think or holding your mouth.

Edited August 9 by Carl-Richard

[Oppositionless]

I don't think "consciousness is all" means "experience is all." Mind can imagine anything, including unconscious matter. But as quantumn mechanics shows us, this matter is not bouncing billiard balls, but a field of potentiality generated "on the fly" by contact with an observer (although it's unclear what "observer" exactly means, and whether it needs to be conscious, I lean towards no).

"Awareness is the first ignorance."

Nisargadatta

"Only that which exists in deep, dreamless sleep is real."

Ramana

Edited August 9 by Oppositionless

[Carl-Richard]

I was abroad in the summer, and two times, we were sitting waiting for someone at a gate at the airport, lots of people, and I would randomly look up and directly catch the people we were waiting for when they were 10-20 meters away.

[Carl-Richard]

On 9.8.2025 at 4:20 AM, Carl-Richard said:

I swear to God, I thought earlier today "is ChatGPT going to launch a new model soon?", and now I open ChatGPT, and they released ChatGPT-5 

"And what I'd like to suggest, is that the fields of our minds stretch out far beyond our bodies; they stretch out invisibly, and our consciousness is related to and based on these fields" - Rupert Sheldrake, The 2023 Holberg Debate.

Some years ago, I listened to Cynic's "Traced In Air" album, and I had a thought "it would be nice if they could've released the album without the screams", because they seemed a bit out of place and a bit cliché for the genre. Then I believe only a few days later (or less, I can't remember), Cynic released a remixed version of the album, without the screams. I almost couldn't believe what had happened. It's one of the least believable things that has ever happened to me. It felt like I had manifested something or literally communicated with the band.

Edited August 12 by Carl-Richard