Psychonetics: A nerd's toolset to work with mind and perception
deconcentration-of-attention.com
deconcentration-of-attention.com
> This experience can be perceived as the "normal" mind turning off and another mind awakening. This "other mind" does not think serially with words. Instead, it thinks dimensionally, with mental sensations of pure meanings.
An important note is that it is, imo, not the case that the "conscious mind" shuts off and an "unconscious mind" begins operating; rather, the unconscious mind is always the one doing the work, and the conscious overlay is more akin to a debugger pausing, stepping and querying its operation.
A good exercise for verbal thinkers that I've found, is to try and think a thought out loud, then interrupt yourself before actually mentally verbalizing it, but still keep the thought at the forefront of your mind. This allows you to examine the "pre-verbal form" of the thought.
edit: I've also found that a good way to get rid of intrusive visual thoughts is to do the opposite of their planar deconcentration exercise, basically embedding my observing perspective completely in my vision, leaving no "space" for imagination.
edit: POSSIBLY IMPORTANT INSIGHT that I've just had. Why is there a sense of "I exist/I have control" to begin with? Well, with our imagination, we can move our center of perception somewhere or sometime else. When we do that, the center of our perception diverges from our actual current body. In this state, consciousness cannot command actions at the point of perception, so there has to be a sense of "I do not exist here/I cannot perform actions here", in order to differentiate the state of imagining a fictional center of attention from living in the moment. That sense is precisely the quale of existence.
The unconscious is unconscious because it's machinations are not directly recorded into memory and so we cannot self reflect upon them. But of course in the moment that part of our mind is conscious just as we are, it's just that that consciousness cannot be recalled.
So this article is calling for the shutting down of the fore mind so that we can better listen to and interpret the output of the subconscious. And further to start to think in terms of the same non verbal architecture that the subconscious moves with.
It is also apparent to me that this matches with the MBTI personality classification system. Sensing types rely upon machinations within the fore mind, logic, verbal translations of inner thought - whereas the intuitives listen directly to the unconscious. I'm an intuitive and when solving a problem I will often simply wait for the answer to arrive.
You do not exist in the same frame of reference as the objects you perceive. You are fixed while the objects perceived are subject to spacetime.
The sense of existence is all that you are. Free will and control over external environment are only apparent. We claim to be the owner of actions and deeds. Claims do not make it so. The senses and intellect are easily fooled, i.e. Dreaming or VR.
I suggest the Upanishads for anyone looking for more. Eknath Easwaran’s version is an excellent read.
My consciousness isn't the (only) thing that thinks or makes decisions, but I am more than my consciousness. My consciousness is just a part of the system that I view as my self.
This feels a little semantic. In buddhism this is partly due to sunyata being translated as "emptiness," which implies "not real" or "doesn't exist." I think most people are on the same page on this instinctively but struggle to find the words because it's not something that can easily be put in words, but in the words of Leonard Cohen "everybody knows"
What is free will? Is there a non-free will?
I think people instinctively feel that more extensive concepts of selfhood "aren't real" more because they don't have the conceptual tools to recognize and describe their presence in their minds. Most people behave as if self and control are real, at least.
For context, I believe that the universe fundamentally consists in a kind of mathematical structure; I don't think there is a reason to postulate a difference between "matter" and "the laws of physics" as a plain mathematical abstraction. As an extension of that, it seems to me that "models" of reality, such as self and the subjective perception of the universe, are embedded, compressed mathematical structures that can be viewed as a simplified abstraction plus an error term. We hold these models precisely because they predict and enable control of the larger system; this is occasionally useful. :) As such, I think they are fundamentally constructed, but not arbitrary - I think that's my major disagreement with the buddhist view.
When I was a child I thought "This is the way the world is, always has been and always will be", then as an adult I think "This system is what governs change, always have and always will,".
If reality is goverened by a mathematical structure, then there are a set of rules where it is no longer a simplified abstraction and there is no error term. Either A) there is a mathematical structure and we will iterate until we find it (or it is fundamentally unknowable, thanks Godel!) or B) our brains are evolved pattern recognizers, and we deem what is repeatable as "useful" and ignore the parts that don't repeat, building a world view based on logic that certainly exists locally but isn't the fundamental fabric of reality. Something like "free will" could only fit into scenario B.
One attempted solution I've heard is the idea that we are all co-creating reality, and what really happens is the mathematically constrained union of all consciousness wills. But if the world was truly a mathematical system, then results can't teeter between alternatives like a ball on the top of a triangle roof. Any idea of free will implies there is SOMETHING that is indeterministic, and as we understand the world at a smaller and smaller level, our definitions of free will just push that indeterminism smaller and smaller. But it remains.
I don't think Buddhism denies the local existence of constraints, just as it doesn't deny the local existence of an orange or banana. But are those constraints truly fundamental or just as impermanent as decaying fruit (but on the scale of aeons instead of days)? "Emptiness" in the Buddhist sense doesn't mean things don't exist, or that things are arbitrary, or there is or isn't free will. To say things are arbitrary implies the existence of meaning. I like to translate the Buddhist "Mu" as "N/A". Disclaimer: there are so many types of Buddhism and my a la carte version of it suffers from the no true scotsman fallacy.
Sorry for saying the same thing in multiple ways. Personally I don't think any of this matters when it comes to doing the right thing day by day, but it's an interesting game to play. Someone reading this is thinking I'm one of the folks ruining Hacker News.
I think that agentic, practical free will is entirely compatible with "A", and in fact relies on determinism for its operation. I think the common mistake that people make is that they think that the fact that only one outcome exists in the physical layer means that only one reality can exist in their decisionmaking. But the future worlds you evaluate as part of the process of making a decision are fundamentally a different kind of thing from the physically real world your decision actually plays out in - not in the sense that they're spiritual, or metaphysical, but in the sense that they're fictional constructs.
There is a philosophical difficulty here in that, when you evaluate possible worlds, it must be the case that, because you will only actually make one choice, the yous in all but one of the choices seem like they are being logically inconsistent.¹ That is, all but one of those futures are not just not real, but internally incoherent, in that the you in them made a choice that, as you will soon discover, they did not actually make. To resolve this, it is again important to firmly keep in mind that these worlds are not real, and the you in them is not real, and you can just say "in this imagined world, I made this decision because it is imaginary, and I (on the real level) am using this world to evaluate the outcomes of a choice." So there is no contradiction after all.
In summary: assuming that in reality only one outcome exists, your ability to simulate fictional outcomes to process the consequences of your decisions is unimpeded. That is what deciding is. That's all it ever was.
¹ A surprisingly hard-to-fix failure mode for decision theories goes like this: "Consider the possibility that I decide to do A. Looking at that future world, we can know that the output of my decision theory was A, thus proving that A is the best choice. Therefore, I should do A." Imo the correct fix is making the agent aware that this is a fictional world being evaluated by means of assuming A. So the conclusion that A is the best choice does not follow.
If you believe this capacity to imagine before acting is an emergent property of the brain, then even the imagined options are subject to the same mathematical laws. If you imagine a few different outcomes, then you were always going to imagine those outcomes and you were already going to pick the physical action. In this scenario "Free Will" is a non sequitur, things just unfold the way they were always going to unfold - the end is contained within the beginning (if there is such a thing as beginning or end anyway!)
If you believe that the capacity to imagine before acting derives from something outside of the physical world, IE maybe part of it happens in the brain but another happens out of it. Perhaps it's a soul - Gurdjieff said that we're born without souls and spirituality is about developing a soul, and without one we are machines - literally used that word. There are tons of examples of people trying to explain this problem, that one just came to mind. The point is that you can't explain free will in a consistent system without implicitly introducing a foreign element that exists outside that system. If God created us, then who created God?
I have yet to see a logical explanation that really addresses the problem of consciousness. Your description, while it is very interesting, I feel just squeezes the problem into an abstract realm that exists outside the system. But I don't believe in a split between physical world and the mental abstract world, they both must arise from the same place. And if anything indicates that reality is far far weirder than we can know, it's that both the physical and mental/abstract world exist, emerging from the same reality.
FWIW I believe that there are some rules underpinning the world, however I suspect the physical laws that we've been able to piece together are emergent properties of something more primal, in other words there are probably systems determining systems - we see the world since the big bang but it's just a snapshot, the "systems" that we see as "natural laws" are most likely shifting slowly as well - slowly as in far slower than we can ever imagine, googleplexes of years. The underlying systems may not even be systems or rules in the logical sense, they could be, to borrow Godel, far beyond our ability to describe, or contain things that are impossible to prove. Can we even describe a system from within a system?
Because I believe that, I don't believe in free will or even non-free will - things just unfold the way they always would have.
EDIT: I also find it deeply weird that anything exists at all. Why isn't there just nothing? It's a seriously spooky thought if you think it through.
And someone other thinks you are adding juice to it. To me sufficiently rational, open-minded and easy-worded (the combination hard to find elsewhere) discussions of how does the human mind/body/world/whatever work and how to possibly hack that seem way more interesting than how does yet another web service or JavaScript library does.
It would make sense that it would look like machine learning, as we find machine learning useful because it categories inputs in a similar way to the way we do. In other words, our unconscious model may be a very complex and subtle set of categorizations, we understand the world by dividing and grouping sense inputs.
But I still haven't cracked how the feeling of consciousness arises from this, your comments are pretty interesting and in line with all that.
*edit - I understand that this way of describing it is deeply informed by me being a programmer of many years, I imagine a life long woodworker would describe it in terms of their trade!
At that point even if you don’t turn it into words, you know the thought anyway.
My 2 favorites are:
The Control of Will Choose a simple action to perform each day at a time you select. It should be something you do not ordinarily do; it can even be a little odd. Then make it a duty to perform this action at that time each day.
Rudolf Steiner gives the example of watering a flower each day at a certain time. As you progress, additional tasks can be added at other times.
This exercise is as hard as it is simple and takes a very strong intention to complete. To start you might think of it as you think of a dentist's appointment - you do not want to be late. It can be helpful to mark your success or failure on the calendar each day. If you completely forget at the time, but remember later, do it then and try to do better the next day.
My other favorite isn't on this list, but is a related practice:
Draw the same plant or tree every day for 5 minutes. This offers incredible insight into the observation of small changes taking place as part of the change in seasons.
https://leadtogether.org/six-basic-exercises-esoteric-develo...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Steiner%27s_exercises...
Psychonetics originated from academic research[1] and appears to employ scientific criteria and methodology (such as [27, 28]) in many aspects.
So it originated (but may not have continued) from academic (but not necessarily peer reviewed) research, and appears (but may not actually) employ scientific criteria and methodology in many (but not all) aspects.
I hope it's just unfortunate writing, but I can't help but take it as a pseudoscience red flag.
>> However, that team of researchers was seeking solutions to their tasks rather than explanations concerning the observed phenomena. The researchers' approach could be called "technological".
>> A technological approach differs from a scientific approach in the sense that the former does not claim to develop explanations as long as there are reproducible steps that can be followed to reach a predictable result.
It is also curious to mention Oleg Bakhtiyarov specifically discusses the technological and a bunch of other approaches in the beginning of his "active consciousness" book referenced in the article and considers "organismic approach" the next step after it. I hope somebody is going to translate the book into English once.
Can a person get or train themselves to resolve ambiguous stimuli (like a Necker cube) in multiple ways? Sure. Can one dissociate one's attention from the center of one's gaze? Undoubtedly. But is there a reason to call this "perceptual weightlifting"? Maybe this works for some people; but I find myself turned off by this language, especially because it seems to promise "superpowers."
One of the points made here is that though most people think that the important aspect of attention is what people focus on, it is also possible to change how one focuses, in a low level sense. Which is a) true, b) potentially worth exploring, and c) very likely not going to live up to the self-hype.
I think being aware of what one is sensing and perceiving to be important; the same is true with other types of self-awareness.
Don't quote me on that, I never read their texts except tangentially while reading other history books.
With the right leader this could make a great cult!
https://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=CONLANG;a5...
And the New Yorker article he references (which is citation 34 in the OP article here):
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/12/24/utopian-for-beg...
> Using such techniques to correct a [body] that's already out of balance isn't something I've got a problem with, but altering a healthy/typical [body] is to be avoided.
Of course there exists dangerous excess in both cases. You can exercise yourself to death, or ruin your health with horse testosterone. But that overindulgence can do harm doesn't automatically indict a daily hour of cardio, or even HIIT and a bit of protein powder or whatever.
edit: Granted, some of the stuff in this "psychonetics" book seems a bit nonsense. But some of it certainly isn't.
For example: What it systematizes apparently for the sake of systematism as "(VM.PDA) Planar Deconcentration of Attention (PDA)" is just a very highflown and rather silly description of something I learned from a great-uncle as one of a hunter's techniques for easily noticing movement. The way he put it was not to look at anything, but just look, and eventually I got the hang of it.
I don't hunt, or at least not with a rifle, but I do regularly use the technique in wildlife photography, and it's extremely helpful and not at all as complicated or esoteric as Kusakov would seem to prefer. Too, Uncle Bram seemed perfectly sane when I knew him as a child, and I'm likewise not aware of any particular harm the use of this mental technique has inflicted on me.
I wouldn't make the same assertion for everything in here, or even claim that anything in here is useful other than by coincidence, but there is at least one thing in here I can vouch for, albeit again preferably without all the nonsense with which Kusakov hedges it around. So if nothing else he's no worse off than a broken clock, I suppose.
Your intuition from what experience exactly? What makes you think your mind is stable naturally? What makes you think that even if you're sure your mind is stable, that it's not left in it's local minima of abilities?
I don't think anybody needs to justify to anyone else why they don't want to tamper with their mind. This is by definition a subjective topic. If this person's intuition is that tampering with their mind will destabilize it, that's legitimate. Nobody is in a place to question someone's intuitions about their own mind. Other minds are alien experiences -- unknowable. Not everyone can, wants to, or needs to push their consciousness to the theoretical idea maximum of its capacity as defined by another fully isolated subject. It's deeply irresponsible for anyone to suggest, or aggressively advocate, otherwise.
Your assessment of site's content is just that -- an assessment by a random person on the internet about a subject they can't concretely demonstrate expertise in. A subject that, if misapplied, can ruin people's lives. If someone says "no I'm fine", that's enough.
Like I said before, I don't think anybody needs to justify to anyone else why they don't want to tamper with their mind. It's baffling to me why this isn't sufficient.
I think you’re missing the main point of my message that if you accept minds are alien to each other then you can’t possibly give any suggestions on whether it’s good or bad to affect one’s mind.
Your “deeply irresponsible” is equally invalid in your point of view as my point. But frankly I deeply disagree with it. If our minds were that different our education system would never work for example, or sports coaches would never be able to train other people. People are variant, but their variation is finite.
My point should be taken as "nobody needs to explain to you why they don't want to try your 'psychotechnology', you're not visibly an expert in this, nor is this author". This is more a case of someone on the street offering you a powered substance, as opposed to case, a pharmacist handing you tablets from Pfizer.
Also their mention about "pure mind" reminds me of an event 10 years ago. Got to job further than usual, 10km along a path on the forest, never been that far, it was a new environment. Sparse forest, calm, but disturbingly so. Sparsity allowed to see far away, but the perspective made trees difficult to differentiate from someone standing still. My mind turned into a hawk-like state. It wasn't fear like fight-or-flight, with accelerated heart beat, sweat, anxiety.. no it was more like a slight hunger and extreme calm focus (also I'm a thin, non combat/chaos trained person, being ready to survive was not a natural thing). My brain also operated faster.
If done for science and the discovery of truth, this practice could be a great way to bring old-school spirituality into modernity.
If, however, this is practiced for the acquisition of power, I can see how it can lead to psychosis.
If you happen to feel uneasy try this:
Look around and take a mental inventory of things around you: "This is a lamp. This is a table. This is a room..."
[1] https://copingskillsforkids.com/blog/2016/4/27/coping-skill-...
Not to belittle the seriousness of the dangers or their practical consequences: It does seem in life that too much of a good thing, isn't "good."
Each time I was inclined to be encouraged by something like "distractions are welcomed", I'd be worried again soon after at mentions of controlling things. It's OK to go against thousands of years of tradition if you want, but it seems worrisome if you do it without mentioning the prior art and explaining what's wrong with it.
Tradition, in my opinion, is people being one-sided towards the right side of the brain - focusing only on experience and not logic. To the point where mysticism is the only way to explain anything. Both sides need to be integrated.
This is diametrically opposite to how Buddhist/Hindu texts sounds and feel. And I think the way those aforementioned religions approach the subject of personal practice is healthier for both the individual and the world
The worst part is that the Buddha even specifically spoke out against many of the points secularists rely on, for example he spoke out extensively against the idea that death is the end. People who believed that were called annihilationists. However people approaching Buddhism in a secular way choose to ignore this, because they think their secular worldview is basic, immutable, and "obvious". Not accepting that the whole Buddhist project contradicts that, they try and suppress Asian voices and spaces, and instead support spaces that already agree with their preconceptions. It is just another form of colonialism, and I really don't like it.
Once again, the idea that Buddhism would somehow be less dogmatic than other religions is a Western projection onto Buddhism. As far as religions go, Buddhism is pretty dogmatic and prescribes a very specific worldview. The difference is that it actually gives you the tools to verify those things if you wish, at least if you feel up for it.
> inclined to lay down principles as undeniably true.
dogma:
> a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true.
Buddhism:
> a widespread Asian religion or philosophy, founded by Siddartha Gautama in north-eastern India in the 5th century BC.
These are the definitions I'm using
Have you studied Buddhism?
Which texts have you read?
Which Buddhist concepts have you learnt about?
Many people who profess to know what Buddhism really is truthfully answer: no, none, none.
The best way is to just show someone a morally disagreeable teaching to progressives, like for example how the Buddha said that poor people are poor because in a previous life they stole, or that abortion will send you to hell, or that by letting women join the sangha the lifespan of the Dhamma is reduced from 1000 years to 500 years. Or just show them just how much rebirth and karma is in basically almost every sutta. That usually shocks them out of their absolute stupidity and ignorance.
https://www.reddit.com/r/GoldenSwastika/wiki/misconceptions
I will not stop until we've erased secular voices from Buddhist spaces
Maybe I'm missing some pressures that you're not expressing.
No idea, I don't know anything about Judaism.
> If people simply prefer that approach, but traditional Asian Buddhism is embraced in your spaces, isn't "erasing secular voices from Buddhist spaces" in general more oppressive, not less?
No, because the Asian spaces are also being influenced by the enroaching of Western secular ideas. For example, Zen in the US is highly secularised, even though it is a traditional form of Buddhism. Thich Nhat Hanh teaches secular ideas to westerners but in vietnamese he is totally traditional and spiritual.
Spaces where Asian or traditional Buddhists can practise are shrinking because of this. Many traditional sanghas and temples are shutting down, and many secular institutions are popping up. The secular ideas influence the Asian Americans, causing the decline and defacing of traditional Buddhism.
This is why we have so many threads a day on /r/Buddhism calling out secular Buddhists, and it's honestly probably the biggest "battle" in Buddhism online today.
For me personally: my Zen teacher was quite unhappy with me for holding traditional Buddhist ideas, to the point where it felt like he didn't want me to be his student at all.
The Buddha speaks with immense authority, being the first person to achieve enlightenment and provide instruction in such a codified and disciplined way, that is simultaneously accessible to householders and monks alike. Its deviation from Vedic thought was in how it penetrated through much of the sectarianism of Hinduism, in both caste and cult.
But regardless of how clear-minded the Buddha was, or how concise his teachings, due to the first-person nature of enlightenment it will always be necessary to maintain traditions that produce skilled practitioners that also achieve enlightenment, then pass those same skills generation after generation in a highly replicable way. As there are many experiences which can be confused with enlightenment, this need for strict transmission becomes more necessary.
Your mistake is assuming that "Jewish Buddhism" or whatever is Buddhism. It deviates sufficiently enough from Buddhism in thought and lineage that to conflate the two is simply confused.
As far as this goes, it's difficult to get inside another person's religious reasoning.
Compassion for it sure, but at the intellectual level tolerance for mistruths is a kind of relativism that I don't think the Buddha would abide.
It is not "oppressive" to state this.
"Why should you not do this? Such talk, monks, is not related to the goal, it is not fundamental to the holy life, does not conduce to disenchantment, dispassion, cessation, tranquillity, higher knowledge, enlightenment or to Nibbana. When you have discussions, monks, you should discuss Suffering, the Arising of Suffering, its Cessation, and the Path that leads to its Cessation. Why is that? Because such talk is related to the goal... it conduces to disenchantment... to Nibbana. This is the task you must accomplish."
-- Viggahika Sutta, SN 56.9
My feelings come from a place of hate and malice, but also compassion for the Asian Buddhists who tell me every single day how they feel their religion is being defaced.
Take for example the Zen koan: "Why did Bodhidharma come to China?" "The cypress in the courtyard." (referring to the tree growing in the center of their monastery.) Zen is a very Japanese version of Chen Buddhism, which was in turn a very Taoist free wheeling version of Buddhism from India, which used existing Indian mythology. Zen Buddhists is very formal and ritual focused, and their koans mostly being about a Chen Buddhist monk who spent his little money on alcohol in the nearby town rather than food.
The Tibetan monk Chögyam Trungpa famously said Buddhism would come to the West as psychology. Who cares who's right and who's wrong, as long as it helps you see the cypress in the courtyard?
Also, your idea of what Chan is like is very ahistorical and orientalist. It has always been steeped in tradition, why do you think so many massive monasteries were built in the mountains? Not only that but each monastery was even themed around a specific sutra. If you think it is “free wheeling” you should read the reports in the Platform sutra. It’s clearly just as formalised and rigid as other Buddhist traditions.
Chögyam Trungpa was literally a sexual abuser and an alcoholic by the way.
"Free wheeling" was me trying to be light-hearted. Many of the Zen stories of Chan involve a lot of confrontation which wouldn't be allowed in a Zen temple, less about what Chan is than the way Zen stories viewed them. To be honest I don't know much about Chan Buddhism except via Zen. I lived in China for 7 years and almost everyone I knew who was lay Buddhist was more into the iconography and didn't practice (I never visited any Buddhist temple). This attitude is pretty universal, most lay Christians I've met also don't practice compassion. I'd rather people practiced and didn't care about the iconography, if I had a choice. It's hard to unravel what about the core teachings was talking to the audience and which are tools for transmission. I expect you and I draw the line at different places.
One thing I really agree with you on is stripping away the role of death in modern western buddhism. I've come to see Buddhism as preparation for death. Though honestly it's better to not to be preoccupied with it to be ready for it, and it will be far different than any story.
I think modern western Buddhists seem to reject anything that they don’t perceive right at this moment. Really they should at least be agnostic. Regardless the Buddha did teach too extensively about such things for it to make sense to ignore them. People try and say he was talking metaphorically, or that it was his shallower teaching for stupid people (even Thich Nhat Hanh says this! Imo to appeal to the western ego, because he does not say similar things in his Vietnamese teachings). I just think people need to step back for a minute and really think about why they want to identify as a Buddhist and what their relationship to the Buddhas teachings is
The problem here is that by removing the spiritual side, you get the all the tools but none of the restraint required to wield them gracefully.
I'm not a Buddhist, but in its atheist forms (which aren't only Western) it seems like it's close enough to reality.
If my choice is between abandoning religion entirely (because I'm a pedant who spends all my time with computers that won't accept anything unless it's technically correct), or having a think about it because you abandoned the literal truth of your literal texts in favour of some useful metaphors, then maybe I'll think about it?
This is my counter-offer to Pascal's wager.
If it were true that such flexibility in doctrine were necessary for liberation, the Buddha would have taught it.
I'm not interested in convincing you to take up Buddhism at all. You can if you want, it would be good for you, but I fundamentally don't care. The thing I do care about, is if you're gonna do it, don't go out and start pretending that Buddhism is something that it really isn't, especially if you have not done much research into it.
Personally, I would prefer you don't get involved in Buddhism at all rather than try and draw some narrow metaphors out of Buddhist texts for use in your secular life.
I wish you well, and I hope that your ambitions to defend traditional buddhist culture will help people.
I hope you will take some solace that I hope to reduce others' suffering, even though I have no faith, and believe faith to be wishful thinking.
Even if you decided to become a Buddhist now, it is really unlikely you would be able to achieve significant progress, because we are in the Dharma ending age and only extremely high capacity individuals have the chance to liberation...
If you are interested in Buddhism, your best chance at liberation is to put your faith in Amitabha's vow and hope for a rebirth in his Pure Land, which is basically the ultimate Buddhist training camp.
Namo Amitabha Buddha!