True (maybe), but now you’re explaining it as: superposition → wave-like pattern → frequency/fluctuation.
Before you were saying that it was the fluctuation which causes superposition: frequency/fluctuation → wave-like pattern → superposition.
Maybe, but that doesn’t mean it’s just a rephrasing of the existent stuff.
Might a better analogy be a shooting star? The tail represents the past which is still felt by consciousness, the thin layer of flame around the front represents the future which is being felt by consciousness, and the rocky core at the middle the “now” which is the center point of consciousness.
Time, subjectively speaking, is the projection of three key experiences: motion, memory, and anticipation. The perception of motion gives rise to a sense of time going by in the present, memory a sense of time in the past, and anticipation based on conditioning, a sense of things looming in the near future.
It’s interesting that you target emotional activity in the brain as key to measuring the subjective rate of time.
I agree.
So what do you think is? Why do you think so many describe the state of egolessness as blissful?
Well, there’s a lot of things I take as a given (for granted) and that remain implicit in my explanations. There are even things I don’t understand that well, or at all, but that doesn’t negate the basic explanation typically given for why water turns to ice below 0 degrees C.
What threw me off was the way you phrased your statement:
I think high/low energy is a real cause, but I’ll certainly agree with you if you mean to say that there’s a lot more to the picture than just that.
Well, I am pretty sure about what I am saying. The traffic is always one way, form choas to harmony, not the other way around. Choas is an extraordinary event, not natural, thus requires some effort. But, things will move to harmony if left alone. No outside input is required. And, that applies to the both of physical and metaphysical entities.
That is precisely what Buddhism suggests via the notions like emptiness or detachment.
Secondly, there is nothing rare about humans. It is merely a stage of evolution and as ordinary or special like millions of other species.
Nothing special indeed. My signature says “humans are basic” yet you feel the need to teach me it again. I’m done here.
Also you have zero scientific evidence that there will be any harmony in the future only blind faith. We all want harmony, but how can you guarantee it’s permanence? second harmony is not the same is Pleasure and im only interested in that.
there is no sequence of events. its just is. when a molecule is frozen it is ice. we dont say there is a sequence of events, we dont ask did the vibration cause the ice or did the ice cause the vibration.
Because either they are blissful, or they don’t know no better. And they probably only care to share the times where they are blissful, and omit the negative times from statistical relevance cause they dont wish to be slapped on the buttcheeks for being a negative nancy. you see what it is they have been listening to the narrative so much that they associate thoughts with energy itself, and when the negative thoughts stop, they believe they are positive when they might be still negative.
you make it sound as if it is the fluctuation which is at least the basis for the appearance of superposition.
This description almost sounds like you’re saying that the “fluctuation” of the particle consists in the particle alternating between the various positions that collectively take the shape and move as a wave. I can tell you that is not the orthodox rendition of quantum theory that I’m familiar with. The fluctuation of a wave (otherwise known as a frequency) has nothing to do with particles alternating between positions, but with how frequently each wave passes by a certain point.
I like your style Trixie. This is a very down-to-Earth answer. One really ought to take all the world’s religions with a grain of salt. Even the calm tranquil mind that Buddhism promises comes to us in the form of a religious myth. Doesn’t mean it’s not true, but it should be taken with a grain of salt nonetheless. The calm bliss that is said to be experienced during the state of mind of deep and well practised meditation could just be a placebo effect (but as placebo effects go, I’d still like to be there). It could be exactly the same psychological effect of liberating joy that fundamentalist Christians claim to have when they surrender themselves and open their hearts to Christ. Who knows.
But you didn’t answer my question: what more than egolessness is required for pleasure?
a man meditated for 40 years so that he could become egoless and free. he says he has no ego and he is like a zombie that does thing. he works at a business and says he is the top employee, he has lots of creative ideas and has never been happier.
but is his happiness from being egoless or the 40 years spent rewiring his system trhough meditation? his ego system has been rewired, that part of his brain is shutdown, he has no seperation between him and outside events, but perhaps other parts of his brain are different as well. some say the pleasure center of the brain is in the limbic system, but what about it makes it so pleasurable? some say dopamine, but i say love. love is gravity, and we all know pain is whatever you reject and repulse. but i say this is even on the atomic level, that your very neuronal branches, when they are moving the opposite way of a stimuli (like a magnet repulsed) it is pain. why is this well id say it splits your consciousness.
the thing about light it is a quantum thing. light is in 3 different places at the same time, but not 3 different times at the same place, only 2 different times at the same place.
See, that I find hard to believe. I think even Sanjay once told me, in a discussion, that man can reach a state of egolessness through meditation, but it’s never a permanent thing. One comes out of it and returns to one’s ego-governed life (though not as bogged down by the attachments and the tricks of the ego). True (and permanent) ego loss is something only the fully enlightened achieve, and that is said to occur to one person in maybe 100 years. Even to say “I have no ego” requires reference to an “I”. I think your friend is suffering from a typical case of placebo effect (though I wouldn’t pull him out of it–he’s probably better off where he is).
Let me see if I can paraphrase–the reason your friend says he’s so happy is because he’s split his ego off from his consciousness and all the pain that goes with it. Is he really miserable unconsciously?
his name is chris weber and im not his friend. second if he still has sentience he can still feel pain of course he denies this in the video, he says having no ego makes him invulnerable to all kinds of pain, which i find ridiculous. numb but only so numb as his level of sentience. second i dont see what egoloss has to do with enlightenment, enlightenment is simply a kind of awareness. total egoloss seems like radical consciousness alteration in the hopes to avoid either pain or the cycle of rebirth. the arhants require 8 things for total salvation, radical brain alteration not being one of them, but many believe that radical brain alteration and loss of duality will remove all pain from your life (though i dont understand how, seeing as how the outside world is suffering, how would becoming one with the outside world reduce suffering.)
he associates the DMN network with suffering, which is also the ego network, thought network. However if one has no thoughts, no ego, how can one really understand suffering? Demonizing the DMN offers no real insight over the nature of suffering, and the test space is too limited to make any conclusions. (How do we know his suffering was alleviated by ego loss and DMN shutdown, and not his comfortable lifestyle, and or his years of meditation?) How do we know he is truly in bliss? How do we know shutting down the DMN network will work for everyone?
I watched the video. I now have a different impression of your friend. The way he describes his “awakening” (if we can call it that) is as though he had a stroke. He says he no longer thinks–that all this speaking and gesturing and behaving in a social and predictable manner are all taken care of by themselves, as though put on auto-pilot–and that this is a result of two key brain centers shutting down. If this is the case, and if it happened to him suddenly and forevermore after that, then it sounds to me like a stroke or something similar (makes me wonder if the changes in the brain brought on by deep meditation can, on rare occasions, have a similar effect).
This is plausible to me. The picture you painting for me before was that of a man who meditated for 40 years and thereby gradually came to a place of no-thought and no-ego… more or less permanently. That to me sounds like someone saying: I’ve train for 40 years to sprint, and now I can make the 100 meter dash in 5 seconds. I don’t care how much you’ve trained, there are certain upper limits to how fast you can run. But if the story that’s told is that the person took steroids or that he was born with some genetic aberration that gave his leg muscles ultra super strength, then it becomes a bit more plausible.
I’m no Chris Weber, but my approach to pain and suffering has always been to try to accept them as a part of life. The hope is to thereby rise above my pain and suffering and appreciate them for what they are, even see beauty in them. The goal is not to get rid of them (that would defeat the purpose of appreciating and finding beauty in them). I agree that the first principle of Buddhism–that life is suffering–cannot be embraced without embracing suffering itself.
We don’t–doesn’t mean anything.
One of the key differences between Western types of religion and Eastern types is that Western types deny man the ability or the access to the spiritual or mystical realm (except perhaps in the afterlife), whereas Eastern types of religion promise that it is within man’s reach, that it can be attained within this lifetime. It makes the whole prospect of striving for it, or being open to it and wanting to explore it, worth taking more seriously.
I agree in the sense that the inability to feel pain or pleasure (anhedonia) is worse than being normal ( suffering most of the time for a little bit of pleasure. )
We must ask ourself is Weber truly blissful or just anhedonic?
We must ask ourself why does the universe create life which mostly craves rare conditions, and it’s success conditions are hard to come by (for example, universe makes life forms that are only happy with a narrow body temperature range, even though the majority of the universe is hostile to that range.)
why does the universe natural selection streamline suffering, why not make a lifeform that’s happy when it is starving, happy when it is cold?
(my opinion is that too much happiness is suffering)
That gentleman must be either unable to comprehend what he experienced and feels or a con artist. There is no third possibility. Tough, i would bet on second option.
Even after all these years I can’t wrap my head around why evolutionary reward mechanisms actually correspond to the feeling of satisfaction, reward. Why do we actually feel happy when we prolong our lives? i think it has something to do with the sensation of “free will”.
Imagine a moment if you will that the opposite is true. Imagine that we feel happy when we are starving, that we feel happy when our bodies are sick. What would happen to our free will? Surely all of our decisions would seem “opposite”. We would will ourselves to starvation, we would will ourselves to suffering and fire, suicide, but our bodies would do the opposite of what we want. We would seem to have no “free will” to do anything. I have experienced similar phenomena, sometimes I would fantasize about mutiliating my body, but when I go to do it, my body puts up a resistance. Same with suicide.
So the conclusion is that happiness can be found in doing the opposite of our evolutionary mechanisms…but still many questions remain…
I’ve often wondered if people get payed to sell their religion. Are those people who claim to see Heaven and Hell being honest or just getting paid off?
Or maybe he’s just insane. Maybe he only thinks he doesn’t think, but in reality, he thinks all the time–some kind of delusion of grandeur.
Or maybe he just woke up one morning and realized Eliminative Materialism is correct–there are no such things as thoughts–and so now he walks around claiming to have no thoughts.
Or maybe he’s constantly high on drugs. He did say, in the video that Trixie posted, that the psychedelic drug users are right up there with mystics like him (although I’m not sure we can say “mysticism” = “Enlightenment”… then again, the psychedelics, as he calls them, scored 150–10 short of 160, the top of the scale). If that’s the case, of course he walks around all enlightened and stuff.
I think our feeling of free will stems from our connections with the universe. The universe, in its totality, is free. Only the parts of the universe, as distinguished from other parts, are unfree–simply because they are always affected by those other parts. But the universe itself is all there is–there is nothing outside it. So it is free.
As participants in the universe, as parts of it, we share in that freedom, but as individuals distinct from other individuals in the same universe, we can only “feel” that freedom, but not quite have it.
As for your question about why we feel evolutionary reward mechanisms as pleasurable (or satisfactory, as you put it), that’s a bit more complicated. You seem to believe, with the analogy you provided, that the experience of feeling pleasure or feeling pain can be split off from what the actual biological mechanisms in our brains and bodies make us do–wanting the pleasure from starvation but not being able to have it because our bodies do everything in their power to eat and gain nutrients.
My answer to this question is kinda complex, but in a nutshell it is: the mind will experience whatever the body does. So if the body acts as though starvation is horribly painful, the mind will experience it thus. This is not to say I believe schisms between mind and body like in the scenario you described can’t arise, but I believe evolution weeds these cases out of existence.
I’ve attempted both myself–and I know what you mean. I tried jumping off a building once, but my body just wouldn’t let me. I’d run to the edge, but just feet before I reached the edge, my legs put on the breaks. I tried several times, but I just couldn’t do it.
Cutting myself, however, is a different story. In the few times I tried it in my life, I never experienced resistance from my body, though the cuts weren’t anything severe–the pain was quite tolerable.
Yes, this is true–but I don’t think it’s the norm.
Knowing human nature, there’s probably equal numbers of both, and everything in between.
No, he is not insane. On the contrary, he is quite smart. My guess is that he is doing all this for name and fame.
That is quite possible, if he is not playing con.
Gib, the fact of the matter is that the mind is a perpetual entity. It cannot be stopped even for a fraction of a second, right from birth till death. It cannot be zeroed down ever. That is beyond our capacity. Yes, one cam minimize its activity to some extent through control and practice.
This delusion of grandeur happens a lot to the majority of such people, who experience some extraordinary phenomenon, intentionally or unintentionally. Then, they tend to consider it a Eureka Moment, and think they got it all. But, what they do not understand is that this is just a tip of iceberg. In many cases, it is not their fault either because they are not aware how far it goes. Most of the modern spiritual preachers fall in this category, including Krishnamurti, Deepak Chopra and so on. They do not know what and how much they know exactly. That is why a worthy Guru/guide is essential during this journey.
I felt the same when that events unfolded to me for the first time about 25 years ago. I became very exited and thought that now i have it all. But, over the time, i realized that it was just a beginning and there is very long journey ahead. I was fortunate to have a friend at that time, who made me realized the real picture, and where i exactly stood in the terms of spirituality.
That reality check forced me look further in the issue and then i started reading the literature regarding meditation and all that (irrespective of what religion they belong), along with pushing myself to that path in person. And, the process is still ongoing. That is how i am able to grasp some gist of the issue. Still, the job is half done. I do not have any precise benchmark to check where i stand actually, but my guess is that i have been crossed half way mark. I do not know how much i will be able to cover further.
Gib,[b] knowing something is certainly good but it is also necessary to know how much one knows. Telling your knowledge to others is also good but one should have the honesty to say how much one knows. This is precisely where most of the spiritual preachers commit a mistake. They hesitate in accepting truth publicly, either because of ignorance or greed/ego. Then, they start projecting mere some initial steps as a complete ontology and it does not serve the purpose.
Had they said that only this much they know, instead of claiming that what they know is complete, others would have been benefited far more than now. But, in that case, those preachers would have not been got the status, which they got otherwise. And, that is the real issue.[/b]
By “mind”, I understand more than just thought–emotion and perception are also mind in my opinion. In fact, any state of feeling or subjectivity is mind. In that case, I would agree with you that mind cannot be stopped. But you know as well as I do that thought can be stopped, at least temporarily.
Sanjay, if you watch the video, you get the impression that what happened to Chris Weber is somewhat different. He describes his transformation as sudden and without his intending it. As I said to Trixie, it sounds like a stroke. That doesn’t mean what you said is wrong, but we should be aware that Weber seems to have gotten there by a much different route than the usual one most travel.
I agree with this. For my own part, I rarely claim to know anything. There is very little that, by my standards, truly counts as “knowledge,” very little about which I feel absolutely certain and have reason to believe that certainty is perfectly justified.
I didn’t see anything to indicate that Weber was a con. I understand what it is that he is talking about and he seems merely to be trying to construct a way to teach an understanding of it. Such is very common (all too common) amongst spiritualists and psychologists. They don’t have a firm ontology with which to theorize like the hard sciences do, so their explanation get pretty inventive at times. Then they want to sell a book or a lecture tour.
When he say that he is not thinking, he means that he no longer waists mind-time on trying to think about this or that ow worrying about things. When that happens, his mind is very much more free to attend to surroundings and make better choices. The sense of joy stems from a perception that one is accomplishing whatever one is desiring. By making better mental choices, he will gain a sense of accomplishing what he chose to attempt and thus feel a sense of joy or bliss.
He speaks of it all being a surprise because one cannot watch oneself during such a process else the mind-time is being wasted again. It all must occur while you are not watching yourself do it. It is being UN-conscious of ones inner self so that one can be more conscious of one’s situation and truer needs. If you are aware that you are doing it, you are not doing it.
It is analogous to a manager standing over an employee in the attempt to guide everything the employee is doing. Such is done out of the fear of something going wrong or not being done right. It expresses a lack of confidence or lack of trust in ones inner self or the employee. When the manager trusts the employee to do his job and goes away, the employee can then do his job much better and the manager can then go make sure that the right kind of jobs are being queued up (better choices for what to pursue). Everything works better when the manager (your consciousness of your own performance) goes away and does his job rather than trying to do the lower level jobs.
In another video he goes through a typical regressive deconstruction therapy to alter the mind’s perceptions and presumptions of itself (“Who Am I ?”). Such practices do work to instill a new perspective that can lead toward less self-consciousness.
The opposite extreme is performance anxiety and/or ADHD.
That’s when I came up with a third option: a con-artist.
Then after thinking about it some more, I came up with three more options, as I said to Sanjay:
This is all notwithstanding my interpretation of his having a stroke.
There’s also the possibility that when he says he doesn’t think, he doesn’t mean to say there is a bland nothingness going on through his mind, but that his thoughts have become something wholly different–call it thought’ (thought prime)–such that it functions in his mind in a similar way to thought, performing similar mental tasks, but the subjective experience is different enough from thought that one really couldn’t call it that if one were to experience it.
i think i can relate to him (weber) actually. 6 years ago back when i had a semblance of sanity i remember walking down the street one mile. i didnt have any thoughts, just bliss. well actually i had some minor thoughts, like “i love” “oh oh oh” and “so nice, so nice.” i just remember seeing a flow of 3d sidewalk and scenery moving in me, at me. no ego at the time, no thinking about myself. now could i have sustained this state for infinity, probably not, my neural net would have depleted and i would have turned into a nut for sure.
now is this state of mind condusive to a civilized society? probably not. my state of mind was like a female woman, hypersenstive.
but why do we need a civilized society? other than plumbing? i mean all it does is chop down the rainforest everyday.
therefore i believe native americans are the ultimate lifeforms.