I'm Location 5+ of Persistent No Symbolic Expierience and let me tell you something

[Enlightenment]

If you don't know who Jeffery Martin and PNSE is:
study - http://nonsymbolic.org/PNSE-Article.pdf

  I've never been a spiritual person but about 1,5 years ago I was watching Sam Harris on Youtube, and in one video he said that he does not expierience a free will and had spent 2 years on silent retreats, I've gotten curious about it. Shortly after I did some self inquiry in a form of asking with my eyes closed 'where am I?', at the time it felt kind of like I'm somwhere in my skull but nothing has happened, then after watching lecture about TM I tried meditating by repeating a mantra, just non stop thinking up meainingless word, and that suprisingly was perfect method for my brain to move me on PNSE continuum. In a matter of 10 days of 2h daily meditation I was in 'Location 4', lost all sense of agency, almost all self-referential thoughts and this feeling of being a self located somewhere in my head - this feeling appears distinctly diffrent in each one of the first 3
1  is dual and your sense of self feels expanded beyond your body.
2  is non dual but it feels like you are what you see and hear there is no distance between you and expierience.
3  feels slightly dual again and it feels like your sense of self is as big as space you're currently in
4+ is non dual again but it's impossible to find any self anywhere at that point

 We know for sure that reality outside is different from what we perceive it, even if it's a small difference. Those expieriences are possible because we are not humans living in the world directly, but self-models living in our model of the world, good explanatory video:

 The closest to explaining how it is to be me now I would put this way - have you ever had a deep "flow" experience when You do something challenging but interesting and get so immerse in the moment that it feels effortless, almost as if the distance between you and experience collapses, no longeer feels like you are experiencer in addition to experience? Recollect your deepest flow multiply it characteristics by 100 and imagine that you have it literally all the time. In this state depression, attachment, rumination is impossible and everything is seen as an unfolding prosses. I do have significantly weakend episodic memory it's a "problem" paradoxically because being in the moment is great and exacly what I wanted but too much of it and eventually you start trading functionality for happiness, and that is the reason why I don't just went all in to go as far as I possibly can with PNSE.

 Enlightenment is definitely a continuum, not 0-1 switch like a lot of people still believe, actually a very long continuum, and given my experience I doubt someone on a very far end of it would be able to function normally in society, with damaged episodic memory for instance. Also it's not literally permanent because you can go back by using strong intention, or perhaps extreme stress, but even then once you know  what to do, it would come back very fast. This seem to decrease posterior cingurate cortex activity at rest same as psylocibin

 

 The most effective way for getting there, is not philosophizing about non-duality nor taking psychedelics but FINDING YOUR METHOD/MEDITATION FIT that works for you, there seems to be huge variance in terms of how responsive people are to certain awakening methods, ex. put 15 people on a 20 min daily self inquiry program - for 13 nothing would ever happen, 1 would awaken after 10 years, 1 would after first 20 min. What I mean is if something really works for you it should produce significant change in how it is to be you quite fast so don't waste too much time doing the same awakening practise, don't do them all at once either because once something will produce results you want to know exactly which one it was. Some methods are generally better that other, a few good ones that I heard of: vipassana, actualism, TM mantra style meditation, self inquiry, buddhist noting, headless way, aware of awareness 
You may even need to mix them up to find your fit. They currently work on finding correlates of EEG/brain measuring devices to be able to tell fast which one will work.

 Imo we are never going to see highly enlightened society because the very traits that humanity need to survive, replicate and move fovard this process are diminishing I mean what if people would be incapable of feeling attached, lonely? So much of our motivations/goal setting in life are caused by this subtle anxiety and incoherence within us. There for sure has been carefree, satisfied, fine with what is, not worring about the future people but guess what - their genes weren't good to replicate themselves.

 It took me much longer to develop no dull, effortless, laser like concentration and for what I can recommend you a book "The Mind Illuminated' - it also have very reasonable model for the nature of mind and consciousness.

[Enlightenment]

8 hours ago, Outer said:

Are you in Mensa? How did you find that video by Frank Heile?

Interesting topic. Will you continue to post here on this forum?

No, just randomly browsing Youtube

 

2 hours ago, brovakhiin said:

10 days of TM took you to Location 4? Seriously?

Yes, I know it may sound absurd given the amount of time it usually takes but I was very lucky.

[Enlightenment]

On 5.06.2018 at 8:55 PM, brovakhiin said:

So the ego just gave up, like that. You lost all sense of agency, doership, attachment, within 10 days. Sounds like quite the dramatic life change.

It was by far the most dramatic shift in my life. I will soon write a guide based on my experience with mantra meditation, and how to do it.

[Nahm]

@Enlightenment Great stuff. Thanks!

[who chit]

TM is solid. I've done several different meditation methods over the years, but TM made the most impact. I learned it combined with Kriya as a practice,a few years ago and continue to use it. These two together are a powerful mix.

Good post. Thanks for sharing.

Edited June 7, 2018 by who chit

[perlita]

@Enlightenment Do you feel like you are being guided?  

[who chit]

2 hours ago, brovakhiin said:

@who chit what was your mantra. does the mantra matter?

Yeah,the mantra has a tone vibration effect on the brain and nervous system when repeated in the mind. The sanskrit language is a language of vibration. Meaning the language isn't just for speaking it also has an effect on the body.

I started out with iem, which sounds like ai'am. It has a 2 tone vibration effect in the mind. Then I moved on to ai'am nah'mah, after several months. Having a 4 tone vibration.With increasing number of tones,the stronger the vibration effect on the mind & nervous system,bringing it to deeper and deeper states of samadhi.
It really is good technique.

Edited June 7, 2018 by who chit

[who chit]

Yeah they're short. It's the technique of the meditation that makes it work. I'm not really sure why it has a more powerful effect,but it made a huge difference compared to everything I had done before. And super simple. I started it at the same time when I began doing Kriya, so that probably has a lot to do with it.


Do you do the mantra outloud or in the mind? That's a hella long mantra. Doing it in the mind repetitively as a meditation would put me in a coma,lol.

Edited June 7, 2018 by who chit

[who chit]

On ‎6‎/‎9‎/‎2018 at 5:04 AM, brovakhiin said:

@who chitIs it like "eye-um" or more like "eyy-ehm" as in "hey" 

"eye' yam, like the letter "I".
The "yam" is prounounced like y'ehm,  like a short eh . So it would sound like  "Iyehm."

How to do the technique has been "exposed" in the past few years, by former TM members, so there's no need to pay money to learn it. Here's the rundown.

1. Close your eyes, wait a few seconds, and then start thinking the mantra. It is thought repeatedly only in the beginning of meditation.
2. After a while you should “let it go” and “allow the mantra to change in any way it wants”. Whether it gets louder or softer, faster or slower down, clearer or fainter, we just take it as it comes. Its is more of a “hearing” of the mantra than repeating it, and that is why TM movement calls the technique “effortless”.
3. Allow thoughts to come and go along with the mantra. There is no attempt to push thoughts out of our mind or use the mantra to override them.
4. When the mantra disappears and the mind goes off on thoughts we quietly come back to it. This means that all we have to do is become (aware) that we are no longer hearing the mantra and the awareness of that will be quite sufficient to bring the mantra back to us.
5. At the end of meditation stop thinking the mantra and wait about 2 minutes before opening the eyes.
   
   I've been doing the technique/meditation for almost 3 years. When I first learned it,what I found happening after doing the mantra for about a month is, you will start the mantra as usual, then it will take on it's own,repeating/vibrating in awareness, while you remain in the "being", non-doing,state. No longer having to "think" or use effort to repeat the mantra. This brings one deeper and deeper into Samadhi, and eventually to the breathless state.
   
   Doing the Kriya prior to this, sets the stage for obtaining the breathless state. This is why I stated that the combination of Kriya and the TM technique is a powerful mix.

Edited June 24, 2018 by who chit