davebryand

That this is needed in one’s life is a sign that you are probably wasting your life.

Thanks Tom! Your profile quote pretty much sums it up:

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate” ― Carl Jung

This is exactly the type of thing we can explore that pays dividends in ways that has a halo effect over everything in our life, not just our startup performance. Thanks for mentioning!

So much of the advice I see from YC (PG in this case, I know he isn't YC, but it's all cut from the same cloth) is about how to change your outer circumstances to accommodate inner impediments, such as Fear. They'll offer hacks or "mind games" to trick yourself into moving past the fear, as PG talks about here:

"But it's a bit strange that you have to play mind games with yourself to avoid being discouraged by lame-looking early efforts."

Unfortunately, I don't see anyone over there talking about conquering fear permanently, such that these issues fall away and what is left is boundless creativity.

One tool offered here is to "switch polarity", which means to take the other side of the argument. Fine, but real wisdom comes from transcending polarity.

Another tool offered is to tap into the motivation of curiosity. That's great as "early work" on the inner game, but there are much more robust ways to conquer fear when one looks at cutting edge work on consciousness evolution, such as Integral Dynamics, or studies Eastern traditions like Vajrayana or Zen.

I look forward to the day where YC elevates this discussion toward awakening themselves and their network to more transcendental tools.

If Egoless Programming is powerful, imagine what we could do with Egoless Living!

It's interesting that in the study they described, performed on blindfolded people, that their descriptions have similarities to the DMT experience:

>>> One subject, a 29-year-old woman, saw a green face with big eyes when she was standing in front of where she knew there was a mirror—though she couldn’t see it. Another 24-year-old man, by the end of the second day, was having difficulty walking because of all the hallucinations that appeared to be in his way. He reported seeing "mounds of pebbles, or small stones...and between them was running a small stream of water." By the end of the study, he reported seeing "ornate buildings of white-green marble" and "cartoon-like figures."

"Thus the discovery of these new properties of the atmosphere not only opened up the possibility of transmitting, without wires, energy in large amounts, but, what was still more significant, it afforded the certitude that energy could be transmitted in this manner economically. In this new system it matters little--in fact, almost nothing – whether the transmission is effected at a distance of a few miles or of a few thousand miles."

Tesla was truly a wizard!

I had a similar experience. I was a burnt out YC startup founder in SF with a wife and kids whose life I was missing, and everything felt off track. I started working with a life coach, left my startup in the capable hands of my co-founders and moved to Raleigh. I soon thereafter had my first psylocibin experience. There were a bunch things shifting in me, but this experience blew my mind open and I haven't been the same since. (Much for the better, of course!)

During that first trip, in a few hours I went from seeing the universe as a mechanistic, "matter is all there is", reality, to directly experiencing that there is so much more. Since then I've gone much deeper down that path and I'm so very thankful for this beautiful medicine for opening my eyes and heart!

Yes—Mahasamādhi has been practiced by yogis for millennia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahasam%C4%81dhi

I just ran `brew install awakening`--much easier.

Jobs did speak up about his LSD use at some points, but I think he probably transcended that and followed the practices outlined in one of his favorite books: "Autobiography of a Yogi", which I'd highly recommend to anyone interested in consciousness.

“Taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life. LSD shows you that there’s another side to the coin, and you can’t remember it when it wears off, but you know it. It reinforced my sense of what was important—creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could.” Steve Jobs

It’s all true but though it’s easy to experience, it’s impossible to fully describe because it transcends rationality.

I’d love to understand how much of a role psychedelics in the creation of Apple’s story arc. Does anyone have information about where this has been discussed? Thanks!

Nailed it. It surprises me how few in this crowd has had first-hand experience.

I thought the same thing until I had my first experience. Now it's hard to maintain a materialist point of view...

Sounds like you are moving through spiritual awakening. Congrats!

The experience is easy to try but impossible to describe. You're often left with the impression that the dimension you enter (or however you describe what happens during a visit to the "DMT Realms") is more real than this life. You feel distinctly like this awake state IS the hallucination.

This experience can be very challenging or disillusioning for many people. Integration of these experiences is a super important part of the process of using psychedelics to systematically level up your consciousness. That said, once you've used them to a level where you have moved past shadow work and into more realization work, these substances seem almost miraculous.

My favorite quote on this is by Terence McKenna: "People say, 'is there risk, to DMT? It sounds so intense. Is it dangerous?' The answer is yes, it's tremendously dangerous. The danger is the possibility of death by astonishment."

The laws of physics can't be violated. The human definition of "the laws of physics" is what has been violated, and this will continue for as long as human's exist and evolve our understanding of reality.

An enlightened yogi, Hindi, or Buddhist would say that the physical chair is also an illusion.

From Elon’s perspective, we live in a simulation, so it’s not faith, it’s understanding how the simulation works.

“Nature is more complex than we previously thought.“

The human ego is a hell of a thing...

Apologies, my mistake!

Scientific rigor is not just about gathering people as lab subjects, experimenting on them and publishing your findings in peer reviewed journals. In my experience, the strongest science, where the deepest knowledge arises, is by systematically performing experiments on yourself. This isn't possible for all things, but it's 100% available for fasting.

Thanks for the conversation, best to you.

Ok, don't try it. :)

Wive's tales and home remedies still circulate because they often work. Of course, you're not going to read that on Hacker News because it's biased by people wearing modern American blinders that don't have the humility, courage, awareness or something else, to just try for themselves. I was that way until I tried psychedelics, meditation, pranayama breathing, lucid dreaming and many other alternative modalities just two years ago.

All love--good luck on your journey!

When you try it for yourself, you realize that it's not.

Only for Americans in labs, though. It's totally fine for the rest of the world and our ancestors. I'm an American not in a lab and I do it all the time with life-changing results.

As someone coming off a three-day water fast (five days was my max), all I can recommend is that you try it for yourself. The lightness, clarity, and self-assuredness that it builds is lovely.

What stronger proof is there than direct experience?

Edit: I would never want anyone to "believe" me, nor would I recommend anyone "believe" anything. There is only direct experience which brings knowledge, this is the standard for consciousness work.

Exactly!

The fact there is a boundary between what is reliably and repeatedly observed in reality, and what science can explain means we need more people doing experiments on themselves to give scientists more data. If everyone tried enough Remote Viewing to have success (not that much work) the materialist paradigm would crumble.

Me, personally, or as a discipline? As a discipline, remote viewing allows the practitioner to gather details about a remote subject (anything in the universe of which you can become aware) which is unavailable to the five senses due to distance, time, or obfuscation. For example, the CIA would use it to gather details about remote bases that they observe on satellite images and such.

Personally, I've been able to identify basic blind targets (from a target pool such as https://intuitivespecialists.com/target-pool/) and started training in earnest, but soon abandoned it as an egoic pursuit in order to focus my attention on raising my consciousness through traditional spiritual practices (meditation, psychadelics, self-inquiry, lucid dreaming, etc).

There is a lot of fun that can happen when you've silenced your mind, sit still, and close your eyes for a few hours. :)