2,445 karma · joined August 23, 2009
The experience happens outside of the meat puppet.
It is your belief in the reality of your body and your mind that prevents you from realizing the full potential of those “spiritual” experiences.
Those experiences will have little impact if the belief in them is lacking.
It is not that those experiences are more real, it is that they are no less real than what you call reality.
They will remain closed to the possibility of true spirituality because ultimately they believe only in material things and they take themselves to be the real thing, and the Spirit to be more or less a dream.
Sure they may have some interesting experiences but often they turn away from these experiences and dismiss them as no more real than dreams.
If the belief in the heart is absent so to will It be absent. It is a game of hide and seek but you must have the belief in that which is being sought. Otherwise the whole thing falls apart.
Intellect alone is not enough.
If you see the experience as nothing more than a dream then that’s what it will become.
If you see it as something at least as real as this waking reality then the experience has impact.
Without belief in it, your experiences are meaningless. You will learn very little from them.
They are invitations that you have outwardly rejected in labeling yourself an atheist.
Atheists would take a research paper as truth over their own direct experience. They hold Science as most dear and most important and they label faith and beliefs and spiritual experiences as make believe or pretend fantasy.
Yes but it is a path equally of the mind and the heart.
You seem to believe that it is only a path of the mind. This is a misconception about Advaita.
The mind cannot reach the goal by itself. The goal is beyond mind.
You will never reach it without the heart. Advaita is very clear on this.
One’s lack of belief in it will pretty much guarantee they never get that invite.
We all suffer. To be born is to suffer.
Just how many people who call themselves Christian are actually practicing and living the message of Christ?
If they truly had faith in a higher power they would realize how selfish depression is. Of course we all become depressed from time to time.
To have real faith is that powerful. It is a cure.
If you want to discuss there is no need to hide behind a device like sarcasm. I am open to all engagement. I realize I am on a site which is mostly composed of atheists.
You are the one who thinks that you own the ‘I’ all to yourself. You see yourself as a separate individual. That is clear.
Spiritualism is spiritual of Spirit. You call yourself an atheist. Do I then say that Atheists believe in God or some form of it? Ridiculous. Come off of it.
We can change the words to make it easier on people and stop wasting time with petty semantics.
Lets call it people who believe in nothing and then there are people who believe in something, a higher intelligence or a soul or spirit.
Enough of the semantics.
But what you have just stated here is that you are not an atheist at all. In fact quite the opposite. You are that.
Buddha was not an atheist.
The belief is the other half of this thing. Your benefits of practice will be very limited if there is no belief in it.
It will be mechanical Buddhism which isnt really Buddhism. It’s just someone making the motions.
There is deep meaning there and I have a feeling that you in particular are closer to it than you think.
Call God an alien if you want. I think many simply take issue with the names and symbols. The word God itself evokes controversy in many.
Hinduism believes in God. Many gods in fact and the concept of a cosmic intelligence.
Have you not heard of Bhakti or devotional yoga?
“Spirit”ual. You cannot be Spiritual without belief in Spirit. It is in the word itself.
You can be a good Atheist however that is mostly in line with good spiritual practices.
Atheists seem to want it both ways. To believe in nothing but also define themselves as “Spiritual”
The body gets used to it over time. I am not strict with it but most days I find it easy to do.
Lots of water throughout the day helps with the empty stomach and not feeling dehydrated.
I skip breakfast and lunch. But can eat heavily within my time window.
The science is off here from my experience.
The metric to watch is time between meals. If you can go 16-20 hours before your next meal, sleep can be included, then you will find your gains staggering.
My eating window is around 4-8pm most days the last 6 months. Usually just one meal of literally anything I want and Im still finding I have to eat more to stop losing weight.
Depression comes from the same place as your judgement of others.
All experience is subjective. That is my point.
You however limit your experience to the world view of your senses and what science and your cultural background have told you are true. It is as simple as that.
That is valid. But it wont cure Depression. The analytical mind has no clue. That is why. That is my belief. Take what you want or take nothing at all.
Just for the sake of clarity I am referring to a level 5 trip.
Two trips in row with different outcomes? This is not a question that would be posed by someone who has experienced a level 5 trip. Why? It becomes self evident. But it is not something I can 'prove' to you. You have to see for yourself.
Regarding outcomes - One has either broken through or not. One will know when they have had an ego death and OBE. It is a very distinct experience. Some will still deny this even but much much fewer can deny an experience that powerful.
I have had many trips that were below a level 5 but only one that I would classify as a level 5 trip - complete loss of ego or ego death.
I was an atheist before that Big trip.
The Psychedelic experience has many common threads. I've read hundreds of big trip reports maybe thousands. The common threads become very obvious after a while. As obvious as the sunrise.
Yes this is my interpretation and the interpretation of some very old religions like Hinduism and its offshoot Buddhism.
They are not dogmatic in that you can believe whatever you want next to them while still considering them as truth.
From One there are many. Surely this does not even escape a mathematician. You cannot deny your own existence yet Science has very little to say about the nature of consciousness. In fact Science really has no clue when it comes to the mystery of consciousness. Its view is that we are meat puppets and the sum of our parts. Nothing more than we can see with our eyes. Why is this accepted as dogma but other belief systems are not?
Science itself is a kind of dogmatic religion. It is one that many take for granted as absolute truth. Older thought systems such as Buddhism have been around for much much longer. To assume they are somehow inferior to Science because of their age is a mistake.
All beliefs are valid. One can worship or believe as they wish to find happiness. It is only that they accept Science's answer as Absolute Truth and not their own direct experience after they have had a big trip. That is the waste. The lack of conviction in their experience as being real.
It is surprising that after such an experience one can walk away without conviction! They would have to try hard to forget and make themselves believe that everything is just as it was and it was all just a dream. That is the difficult part. Believing should be the easy part but the world pulls us back in. Our old concepts rush back in.
We put our belief back in the old way of doing things and back to the world we knew before that Big trip. The world of the 24 hour news cycle and Reddit. The world of our addictions, apps, and waking life. Because we feel comfortable there. It is challenging for us to change our outlook so drastically but that is what a Big trip challenges us to do.
If a big trip doesnt manage to completely change your belief system it has mostly failed in its effect.
It is the change in beliefs that lead to a lasting result.
If one leaves the experience denying the new experience and calling it false or calling it just a dream then it will surely fade and results will not last.
This is self evident over time. Effects should not fade but in fact should grow stronger without the further use of psychedelics. Proper integration and meditation do this.
If one takes the experience as truth, a Big trip then has the power to cure. Depression will never return.
Conviction in the experience must be there for it to really work its magic.
To have an experience like this and then to come back calling it just a dream is a tragedy. What a waste. For someone like this they have missed the point. They go back to their lives as normal. Everything is as it is. They simply feel a little better or feel relief for some time, but because they did not accept the new reality they are then forced back down into their old routines and habits. They are put right back in the reality they left and felt relief from after their Big trip. Depression sets in again. Everything goes back to the way it was, the trip becoming a distant memory.
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.
It means if you take us apart and put us back together again the ghost will have left. It will be a huge disappointment for cryogenics.
If people want longer lives the body will have to be kept alive in an induced coma state and heart rate slowed. Or use some novel regenerative therapy.
Otherwise that machine (body) is never coming back to life once its ghost has left.
It means an entirely different type of neuroscience that most scientists are uncomfortable with. Having to do with Consciousness
We are no longer strangers. Social-ness has been engaged ;)
Thus it ticks up the social-ness score a bit for sites like HN as opposed to some old forums like one would find on Yahoo or used to find on Compuserv.
Karma and the wisdom of crowds gives way to herd mentality and vanity. It is what drives the form of discussion on these sites.
The assumption is that all memory is stored in the brain and body, for where else could it be stored?
The materialists do not believe in a ghost in the machine. /anecdata
It will hurt their sales. It will hurt Apple.
They will have to walk this back or face devaluation.
They’ve already done a ton of damage to their brand. It’s really hard to believe they would sacrifice their brand like this. This is Apple.
They made their reputation on privacy.
You are 100% right. You cannot square the two.
Our collective heart is in the right place. I have my own plans to do something about it but I am not in the same position as say Elon Musk for example. Not yet anyway ;)
I am in tech however. And I believe passionately that tech can solve this problem. Even if it is just a symptom of global climate change.
I think we must start solving these problems fast and with novel approaches. The same old tired routine isn't working. We've kicked the can enough down the road with government and fire prevention. New ideas and methods are needed and needed fast.
The solution is one that would scale up to big fires but handle the small ones first.
If I had a solution to put out a 20 acre brush fire near my house in under an hour I would not be waiting for the fire trucks to arrive
If SpaceX had this line of thinking a decade ago then Space tech would not be where it is today.
If you actually had a solution in hand for even small scale fires that was effective and could scale you easily make this profitable. I'd be the first customer. I live in a fire prone area.
Fear sells.
Then Yes.
Kind of like what happened with Space. It needed to be disrupted.