Deconstructing Rationality - Part 3 - New Video

[Leo Gura]

2 minutes ago, AtmanIsBrahman said:

What do you mean by rationality?

Thinking has a kind of logic to it. It coheres, it makes sense. Mystical insight also has logic to it, it is just more three dimensional and weird than normal reasoning.

Edited March 30 by Leo Gura

[AtmanIsBrahman]

3 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Thinking has a kind of logic to it. It coheres, it makes sense. Mystical insight also has logic to it, it is just more three dimensional and weird than normal reasoning.

Okay, that's kind of what I thought. 

Speaking of which, you mentioned that combining rationality with mysticism is especially powerful. Do you consider them most powerful for building a worldview (if you can call it that) or for contemplating while in a high state of consciousness? Because most mystics would say that thinking is irrelevant and you have to just experience.
And how does post-rationality/high stages of ego development/jailbreaking the mind play into this?

[Nemra]

7 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

It's very tricky. At that level of consciousness you are the only thing that exists, but you are also all things.

It feels very solipsistic in a terrifying way. That's the best way I can convey it, by how it feels.

It's like mirrors facing each other.

Infinite mirrors. Infinite reflection.

[Uddi]

@Leo Gura logic, reasoning, and rationality are processors but not sensors. They cannot sense truth as they cannot prove the system they are being used from to be valid. If academia took Godel seriously, they would be mystics by now. There are 3 different levels of knowing: Intellectual, Visceral, and Existential.

Intellectual Knowing - Functions like a virtual machine (VM). It cannot verify if its own foundations and axioms are correct. Useful for science and engineering but is the ultimate barrier to god realization. The intellect is hard locked from direct experience, visceral feelings, and existential realizations as it relies on axioms to function.

 

Visceral Knowing - Consists of mystical experience typical religious people report but are also gut feelings. It is usually more accurate than the intellect because it is directly perceiving something even if limited whereas the intellect is a simulator but doesn't feel anything. However this type of knowing can be affected by belief systems, trauma, cultural systems, the social matrix, and more.

 

Existential Knowing - This kind of knowing can be the result of extreme meditations, strong trips, kundalini awakenings, near death experiences and more. This type of knowing is epistemically irreversible as it has fundamentally changed your entire hardware whereas the 2 lower levels are mainly software although visceral knowing can sometimes be in between. This is what direct consciousness is. It is when you know god at the existential level and have directly realized him.

 

What do you think? Also extra request: Please add dark mode to the forums and add an option that uses device appearance.

[LoneWonderer]

Hi Leo, thank you for your series. I am about half way through this last episode. This series has helped me realized something very important about my psychology which is as follows:

I'm in the pre-rational stage of development because I don't question deeply perspectives and just go with gut feeling. Also I just don't contemplate deeply anything I learn really.

At the same time thanks to putting myself through world class education my entire life, in and outside of academic setting I have a good "gut feeling" when a perspective is correct and where it falls apart. Also I have a very solid epistemic foundation, but this is different from rationality put in practice.

I believe I am advanced in my understanding in some ways and areas and completely not in others.

Can such a thing be possible? Your series has made me realise I have to "stop, and think it through" with any content I consume and not just go with my gut feeling only.

*It's funny because I can understand everything that was said in this series and in a way be operating from this level by default but have skipped the previous developmental stage which is rationality entirely! There is a big difference beetween understanding and knowing all these advanced concepts and ideas of Actualized.org and using your mind properly. They are two different things.

As an example let's take Bryan Johnson. According to the latest science everything or most of what Bryan does is correct for longevity. I have spent years researching longevity and what Bryan does in his life is just what the experts say and in line with what I've spent years learning in this space. So before I would've just left it at that, ok, thank you sir you're doing a great job and helping lots of people. Now you got me thinking when looking at Bryan: 

What is science? Is science even real? Is taking a gene therapy safe? How do I know? Have I done the experiment? On and on and on...I mean yeah the gist of it is yes, he's probably doing the right stuff for the most part, but it's not a question of blindly believing Bryan or the science behind it, but of questioning the things he does independently for myself. Something along those lines anyways....

Edited March 31 by LoneWonderer

[Cireeric]

I must admit it felt like a bit of work to watch through all those and sometimes it felt like a lot of repeating - especially after all the years following the work. But overall this grand synthesis and deconstruction of rationality is really groundbreaking and at the same time the insights so painfully lacking everywhere in culture. I encountered exactly these rationalist cognitive-biases presented so many times in conversations - especially in academia. Im sure I will have stronger arguments next time Really outstanding work!

[Davino]

Reflection on the Lecture Series: Deconstructing Rationality

 

Overall, the lecture series on deconstructing rationality was fantastic—deeply insightful, thought-provoking, and highly valuable. What follows is not so much a critique as it is a set of perspectives that emerged through my own contemplation. These are not necessarily blind spots in the material, but rather dimensions that I would have appreciated seeing more strongly emphasized and spotlighted.

 

The first point concerns the very foundation of rationality as an interface for understanding reality. Rationality inherently assumes the presence of a thinking human mind; it operates within states of consciousness in which thought is active. In this sense, rationality is inseparable from human cognition—it depends on the activity of thinking.

 

However, this immediately reveals a limitation. If rationality requires thought, then it only applies to those domains of experience where thought is present. This means it represents just one bubble of reality among many. There are other modes of experiencing and engaging with reality that exist outside of this framework.

 

A clear example is the meditative state. When one is fully present, without engaging in thought, what role does rationality play? In such states of consciousness, there is direct awareness and interaction with reality that does not rely on conceptual processing. Understanding, in this context, is immediate and unmediated by thought. This leads to a foundational insight: rationality assumes thought, but thought does not encompass the totality of reality. Therefore, rationality is inherently limited to the domain of the thinking mind.

 

The second point expands on this limitation by examining the domain of emotions. Rationality, while powerful in analyzing and structuring understanding, cannot fully penetrate or resolve certain aspects of reality like love or strong emotional experiences.

 

Take fear as an example. Even highly rational individuals often experience fears that they themselves recognize as irrational. One can apply rigorous logical analysis, examine the fear from every angle, and arrive at the clear conclusion that it is unfounded or highly contextual. Yet, despite this clarity, the fear itself often persists. Rational understanding does not dissolve the emotional response.

 

The same applies to emotions such as anger, resentment, or lingering psychological trauma. A person may fully understand, from a rational perspective, that holding onto anger is unnecessary or unjustified. They may be able to contextualize the situation, see multiple perspectives, and reach a logically sound conclusion. Still, the emotional residue remains present within the psyche.

 

This highlights a crucial limitation: while rationality can clarify and contextualize emotions, it cannot fully resolve or dissolve them. As established in the first point, rationality operates within the scope of the thinking mind, which is itself limited. Although there is some overlap where rational insight can influence emotional states, there exists a significant dimension of emotional reality that lies beyond the full reach of rational processes. This represents a profound deconstruction of rationality and brings into focus one of its clearest limitations.

 

The third and final point addresses the relationship between rationality and intelligence. Developmental models, such as those proposed by Ken Wilber, describe a progression from pre-rational to rational to post-rational stages of cognition. Even when one fully matures along this developmental path—engaging in rigorous reasoning, recognizing its limitations, integrating creativity, and drawing from both analytical and creative/intuitive dimensions of the mind—this trajectory does not culminate in the highest form of intelligence.

 

The reason is that all of these stages remain within the human cognitive framework. Even post-rationality/meta-rationality by David Chapman, with its openness and integration, still operates within the paradigms of the human mind—within structures shaped by concepts of logic, skepticism, sanity and philosophical reasoning. These may be expanded and refined frameworks, but they are still frameworks.

 

Reaching the highest levels of intelligence, requires something more radical: the transcendence of the human frame itself. This includes transcending not only rationality, but also the broader paradigms that define human understanding. It involves embodying and going beyond the structures of thought, beyond the assumptions embedded in logic, mathematics, science and skepticism, and beyond the very frameworks through which we define and confine knowledge and sense-making.

 

From this perspective, what could be called infinite, mystical, or metaphysical intelligence cannot be fully accessed through any purely human system of reasoning or philosophy, because being human is only one dream out of infinity, and truth is Infinity. No matter how advanced or refined, such systems remain inherently limited, like trying to bottle the ocean. To reach oceanic level realizations—to truly jailbreak the mind—requires moving beyond all human-bound states.

 

This insight carries particular weight when considering the motivations of rationalists themselves. Many are driven by a genuine desire for intelligence, insights, and understanding. Yet if intelligence extends beyond rationality, then a true commitment to understanding Reality ultimately requires questioning—and transcending—rationality itself.

 

In that sense, this final point becomes especially significant: rationality, even at its peak, it's a local maximum stage and not the endpoint of intelligence. 

 

Closing Reflection

Rationality is not infinite—it is a useful tool the human thinking mind uses to navigate a small slice of reality. It cannot touch the silence of pure awake presence and experience, it cannot dissolve the weight of lived emotion, and it cannot reach beyond the boundaries of the human framework that generates it.

You can refine it, expand it, and even transcend into post-rational cognition—but as long as you remain within the architecture of the human thought states of consciousness, you remain within the limits of what the human can access.

If intelligence is truly the pursuit of reality in its totality, then it cannot end in rationality. It must go beyond it, at that point, rationality is no longer the guide.

It is just one tool in the tool box. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, that's the realisation that breaks you free from rationality.

Edited 13 hours ago by Davino

[Rafael Thundercat]

6 hours ago, Davino said:

From this perspective, what could be called infinite, mystical, or metaphysical intelligence cannot be fully accessed through any purely human system of reasoning or philosophy, because being human is only one dream out of infinity, and truth is Infinity. No matter how advanced or refined, such systems remain inherently limited, like trying to bottle the ocean. To reach oceanic level realizations—to truly jailbreak the mind—requires moving beyond all human-bound states.

When Leo will release the Alien Consciousness Course by the way closing this gap of one being bounded to human limited rationality?