I never believed they were anything other than hallucinations, but they were still some of the most positive and meaningful events in my life. I hope one day we'll know enough about consciousness to understand why DMT causes the formation of these seemingly other selves.
Shinzen Young's description on the nuts and bolts of Shingon Buddhist deity yoga practice is simply fascinating.
https://alvinalexander.com/personal/shinzen-young-shingon-sh... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_VizlDWcTA
I'm pretty sure in a situation of conflict, it's beneficial to kick the ego in higher gear. Sure, when things calm down, relax that thing. I feel pretty strongly that's the evolutionary reason for having an ego to begin with.
Now it doesn't, and our emotional evolution hasn't caught up to our society or our intellectual sophistication. You don't have to respond to conflict at all, in 99% of cases. There is no benefit to winning. If someone cuts you off in traffic, getting mad and honking causes more pain for you AND for the other person. The most beneficial thing is to not even react other than to prevent a crash.
I think the point is that you will do less to reinforce positive behaviour in others, than you will to amplify your own negative response conditioning.
Though I would add that if you sent your message across in a state of absolute zen then perhaps the reaction would be beneficial all round.
> A case in point is the teaching on not-self. Many students interpret this as the Buddha's answer to two of the most frequently-asked questions in the history of serious thought: "Who am I?" and "Do I have a true self?" In the light of these questions, the teaching seems to be a no-self teaching, saying either an unqualified No: There is no self; or a qualified No: no separate self. But the one time the Buddha was asked point-blank if there is a self, he refused to answer, on the grounds that either a Yes or a No to the question would lead to extreme forms of wrong view that block the path to awakening. A Yes or a qualified No would lead to attachment: you'd keep clinging to a sense of self however you defined it. An unqualified No would lead to bewilderment and alienation, for you'd feel that your innermost sense of intrinsic worth had been denied.
> As for the question, "Who am I?" the Buddha included it in a list of dead-end questions that lead to "a thicket of views, a wilderness of views, a contortion, a writhing, a fetter of views. Bound by a fetter of views, [you] don't gain freedom from birth, aging, and death, from sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, or despair." In other words, any attempt to answer either of these questions is unskillful karma, blocking the path to true freedom.
> So if the not-self teaching isn't meant to answer these questions, what question does it answer? A basic one: "What is skillful?" In fact, all of the Buddha's teachings are direct or indirect answers to this question. His great insight was that all our knowledge and ignorance, all our pleasure and pain, come from our actions, our karma, so the quest for true knowledge and true happiness comes down to a question of skill. In this case, the precise question is: "Is self-identification skillful?" And the answer is: "Only up to a point." In the areas where you need a healthy sense of self to act skillfully, it's wise to maintain that sense of self. But eventually, as skillful behavior becomes second nature and you develop more sensitivity, you see that self-identification, even of the most refined sort, is harmful and stressful. You have to let it go.
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/quest...
I invite you to directly experience it for yourself; come and see.
For full perspective: I've practiced various meditation techniques my whole life - Orthodox Christian, various flavor of yoga (mostly Raja and Kundalini related stuff), even some Buddhist techniques (mostly Zen). I'm fairly familiar with the Buddhist doctrine, and Christian, and the Hindu Dharma. I've had my share of experiences, including some that looked quite ego-free - and yeah, it's awesome.
I'm just saying, we shouldn't draw absolute lines here, or anywhere. The danger of narrow dogmatism is always present. And there's room for, and value in, the inner fire, the energy that builds things up and pushes things forward. That, too, is what we are.
You live in a wonderful, immense house; don't confine yourself to a couple rooms only.
Sorry to keep shilling for Shinzen Young, but he is one of the few authors who has legitimacy in traditional Buddhist lineages, but seems interested in exploring and systematizing alternate traditions.
You might find his thoughts on shamanism interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33u14OjeHpE
You're confusing the relative world with awakening and then making it out for wisdom. All of man's great achievements can be summarized in a few passages from "Ozymandias": gone tomorrow.
'Even if a whole mountain were made of gold, not double that would be enough to satisfy one person. Know this and live accordingly'
We should absolutely make out for wisdom what is wise and point out unskillful pursuits where we see them. Buddhist teachings aren't a postmodernist mash-up of whatever you like. It can sound rude, even condescending but it's not what you make it out to be. The suttas are there to offer wisdom, Right Understanding.
Practicing various meditation techniques your whole life sounds like you haven't made up your mind yet or haven't seen one through to the end. I know exactly how that feels and I'd trade the decade I spent sampling for depth in any one.
That is a point of view completely detached from reality. Have a nice day.
"Who said that?"
--Popeye
But it seems that ambitious people usually have strong attachment to the ego and that what drives them.
And that's useful in a highly competitive society, where apartments are expensive, for example.
And once you out that into a larger perspective, some of that drive gets lost.
If you want to trot out the doctrinal stuff, Dharmadhātu probably what you're looking for - it's the label given to purified mind in its natural state, free of obscurations. It is the essence-quality or nature of mind,
Somehow I'm not surprised that the tulpa in question is a batpony. There seems to be an interesting intersection between Tulpamancing and My Little Pony.
Perhaps something about escapism.
Sure, but I wonder how useful that is. After all, you're replacing one ego with another. Before, the controller was this group of processes running on this slice of the CPU, now it's a different (but similar) group of processes running on a somewhat shifted slice of the CPU.
Maybe if the new processes are better in some ways then it would be worth it? Less anxious, more confident, something like that.
It’s why some but not all young children with imaginary friends can be considered fine. More strangely some adults have similar imaginary friends which they realize are mental constructs but they still enjoy interacting with them.
And then one night Kekule dreamed up the benzene ring, and the rest is history.
> [...] it’s a technique James claims to be responsible for 80% of the tracks of Selected Ambient Works Volume II. In a 1994 interview he explained, “I go to sleep, dream I’m in my studio with imaginary bits of gear and do a track. Then I wake myself up and recreate it. I can do this in about 20 minutes.”
https://www.factmag.com/2017/04/14/funny-little-man-the-fact...
The trick is you have to stop trying to solve the problem and just let your brain work on it in the background.
On one trip I caught a glimpse of this and within the trip I moved towards it, curious what it was, and I was pushing closer towards it trying to discover what it was, and then it "shattered" and revealed itself as my own subconscious - that force within me that protects me and guides me and loves me, it was my own self at its purest essence, stripped of all the layers that we construct to deal with the rest of the world. It was a rapturous epiphany, I literally turned into a million smiles and my own subconscious welcomed me "home".
I know it probably sounds strange to some, but I do consider it a breakthrough. I haven't really needed to do any DMT since then. "Once you get the message, hang up the phone" - Alan Watts. I got the message. Oh wow, I got that message.
I never believed the "aliens" in DMT trips were anything like "aliens", because after all, everything that occurs during a DMT trip is happening within your own brain. These aren't "beings", they are you, yourself, or at least the inner workings of "the self".
A conspiracy theory fan, a priest, a therapist, or a hardcore fan of David Lynch movies will probably see their inner selves manifest differently when the subconscious pushes through to show itself to ego in a way were it can be seen with our "eyes" and heard with out "ears".
(The old: left hemisphere math, right art or vice versa has been debunked if I remember correctly)
I don't think it necessarily shows that. The "two halves" may just be a phenomenon that arises when the brain splits, not something that's normally there. And I believe there have been recent studies that even brought the original split brain conclusions into question, i.e., there might still be communication happening between the two halves.
As usual with biology, it's a bit more complicated than the '60s explanation ever revealed to the public. https://youtu.be/dFs9WO2B8uI
Which is not necessarily to discount it. I'm intrigued by his research and willingness to apply the scientific method to things other scientists would dismiss out-of-hand.
Think I should open it or read a digital copy now?
Half the book is in Middle German. So..there is that...I just admire the calligraphy.
Basically, that we are a collection of inner-selves, not a single self. IFS provides a framework for working with our inner selves.
https://philosophynow.org/issues/97/The_Illusion_of_the_Self
There are multiple selves, and each one of them is not as set in stone as we think.
Is there a non-reddit reference to this "Internal Family Systems" thing? I'd be interested in looking into it more.
To then argue against that: Trippy aliens would not need to confront our simplest kinds of scarcity, like for land or food, in order to need to economize. Any world that offers choices offers tradeoffs by definition. Rational agents facing tradeoffs arrive at math.
Unless somehow emotional intelligence is more useful to them than economic rationality.
> I never believed they were anything other than hallucinations
I mean, dogs can't do math either, yet they are real.
I'm not necessarily arguing for the independent reality of the entities, I'm just saying that's not a super-conclusive test.
But yeah, still not conclusive either way (but the most likely answer is still that they're constructions of your own mind).
I wonder if math problems, or even simple logic statements, are the most appropriate criteria for interactions.
One way this could work however would be if the same entity revealed itself to two participants. Then it would be quite straightforward to see if information/music/other shared by between one participant and the entity could be accessed by the other when participant when communicating with the entity.
R1 - Is the entity a projection of the participant or manifestation of a separate entity?
R2 - If the entity is a manifestation, can it process information that is not presented by the participant?
R3 - Can that information be presented to another participant with the entity acting as an intermediary? This would expand on your idea of "if the same entity revealed itself to two participants", then perhaps having Person 1 receive musical input, describe the entity's reaction, Person 2 does not receive the musical input and describes the entity's behavior. If there is are common reaction behaviors between the entities, it wouldn't prove they are separate from the host, but could lead to additional types of studies.
This is hilarious :) Especially when you think of the entities he's arguing with as different aspects of his own consciousness.
There's parts of all of us that want to pursue knowledge of the world around us and those parts that want to pursue our emotions and knowing ourselves.
But this? This is pure genius. Thank you for the link! So many laugh out loud moments. I particularly enjoyed '“I demand a better answer than that,” I demanded.'
“I’m not going to make a deathbed conversion,” Tom said diagnostically.
The sentence indicates that Tom is dying and not currently religious, and the word "diagnostically" sounds like a mixture between "die" and "agnostic". They aren't quite funny when explained but when you spend 3 minutes trying to figure one out before it slaps you in the face it's a very good time
[0]: https://slatestarcodex.com/tag/tom-swifties/
More examples:
“I went rock-climbing with my girlfriend,” Tom updated.
“The defibrillator worked!” Tom said, repulsed.
“My karate instructor died,” Tom said, desensitized.