Taking Mystical Experiences Seriously

[Windwalker]

But what is the relevancy of perceiving something as the real reality in the first place? Let me explain: If our normal waking experience of perceiving a certain reality as the real reality is not to be trusted, why would the same sense of perceiving a certain reality as the real reality be considered trustworthy when we are not in our normal waking state?

I don't think it has to do with not being trusted exactly. Our ideas of reality serve us functionally well enough to survive and get along. But there are degrees of which we can experience and understand that reality. Think of it as a wider, more interconnect, more alive, more loving, more unified reality. It has to do with the quality of one's own being in the world.

Buddhists speak of our world as a world of suffering, and that is really true. The Christian mythology speaks of the fall, of paradise lost, and so forth. I like how the neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus put it, "Mankind is poised midway between the gods and the beasts." We're awake enough to know there is more, but not awake enough to truly be free. Enlightenment is that freedom. It is that liberation. It's living life in the "Garden" as it were.

But why would it necessarily be wrong to label it as an hallucination?

Because it's not. I've had induced hallucinations, and this ain't that. Not even comparable. Ever have one of those "ah hah!" moments, where a sudden realization changes everything? It's very much like that. "Ah hah!', and you see Reality with the curtains pulled back. It's having your eyes opened, not tripping out. It's seeing for the first time and realizing that reality is not what we assumed, not what or how we limited it into our boxes of cognitive thoughts and idea and language. There is meaning to the word "ineffable", and hallucination is not that meaning.

It seems you are discarding this hypothesis simply because the experience was impactful. But who said no hallucinations can be impactful?

Ask anyone who has had both and can compare them. They'll all say the same thing. But, this is not to say however that those who have used DMT or shrooms, have not have genuine higher states of consciousness. But "seeing things" is not at all what this is about. For one thing, this can be a permanent condition. Many have it like this, and frankly that is where I see this at some point for me. More and more I connect into that, and there are zero drugs involved.

 

[Koldo]

I don't think it has to do with not being trusted exactly. Our ideas of reality serve us functionally well enough to survive and get along. But there are degrees of which we can experience and understand that reality. Think of it as a wider, more interconnect, more alive, more loving, more unified reality. It has to do with the quality of one's own being in the world.

Buddhists speak of our world as a world of suffering, and that is really true. The Christian mythology speaks of the fall, of paradise lost, and so forth. I like how the neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus put it, "Mankind is poised midway between the gods and the beasts." We're awake enough to know there is more, but not awake enough to truly be free. Enlightenment is that freedom. It is that liberation. It's living life in the "Garden" as it were.

But how does having that perception in particular entails perceiving the real reality? Why would the fact that I am feeling part of a more alive, more loving and more interconnected reality entail that I am experiencing a more real reality?

Because it's not. I've had induced hallucinations, and this ain't that. Not even comparable. Ever have one of those "ah hah!" moments, where a sudden realization changes everything? It's very much like that. "Ah hah!', and you see Reality with the curtains pulled back. It's having your eyes opened, not tripping out. It's seeing for the first time and realizing that reality is not what we assumed, not what or how we limited it into our boxes of cognitive thoughts and idea and language. There is meaning to the word "ineffable", and hallucination is not that meaning.

Ask anyone who has had both and can compare them. They'll all say the same thing. But, this is not to say however that those who have used DMT or shrooms, have not have genuine higher states of consciousness. But "seeing things" is not at all what this is about. For one thing, this can be a permanent condition. Many have it like this, and frankly that is where I see this at some point for me. More and more I connect into that, and there are zero drugs involved.

But why can't an hallucination bring about a permanent change in how one perceives the world? Why can't an hallucination bring about a misguided sense of realization? Why must hallucination be as superficial as you claim them to be? Actually, the moment you refuse to label any given hallucination as an hallucination, but rather treat it as a real experience, it is to be expected it will change you permanently.

 

[Windwalker]

But how does having that perception in particular entails perceiving the real reality? Why would the fact that I am feeling part of a more alive, more loving and more interconnected reality entail that I am experiencing a more real reality?

Have you ever been really sick, and then you are healthy again? How do you know that what you felt while you were sick wasn't health, and what you are calling healthy is actually not sickness? The point is, when you are healthy, when your body is alive and vital and everything is firing at its optimal best, you are able to recognize that state as really real, and not an hallucination, or a delusion of the mind.

In other words, you know it's really real with "every fiber of your being", not just things being processed by your thinking cognitive mind attempting to deduce what is fact from fiction. It's the difference between a living experience, and a thinking experience.

I honestly believe so much of our difficulty in understanding things like this is this massively disappropriate overreliance on the thinking mind, as opposed to being in touch with our somatic, and intuitive senses. Grant it, I do I understand the fear of being "gullible" to every whim of emotion, and rightly so!

But there is a point where one can become so rationalistic, that it's actually irrationality itself. There needs to be a balance, but when our intuitive senses are neglected and starved, then the rational mind takes over, like having a gigantic right arm, with a toothpick of a left arm, like a half finished Popeye cartoon. That's imbalance. That's a distortion. That's "unreality".

So to answer, you know with "every fiber of your being", in the way you know the difference between being healthy versus sick without needing to first reason it out through logic, research, and peer reviewed studies. You really don't need to be told if you're feeling healthy, do you?

But why can't an hallucination bring about a permanent change in how one perceives the world? Why can't an hallucination bring about a misguided sense of realization? Why must hallucination be as superficial as you claim them to be?

I'm questioning if maybe my understanding of what an hallucination means is not as inclusive of something else that you may be thinking, and I'm unaware of. My understanding of an hallucination is as found in these definitions:

A sight, sound, smell, taste, or touch that a person believes to be real but is not real. Hallucinations can be caused by nervous system disease, certain drugs, or mental disorders.
.....

You may have hallucinations if you: hear sounds or voices that nobody else hears. see things that are not there like objects, shapes, people or lights. feel touch or movement in your body that is not real like bugs are crawling on your skin or your internal organs are moving around.

.....

Hallucinations are false perceptions of sensory experiences. Some hallucinations are normal, such as those caused by falling asleep or waking up. But others may be a sign of a more serious condition like schizophrenia or dementia.​

And so forth. In common to all of these as that you seeing something that no one else sees; seeing something that is not real, that is not really there, and is caused by some sort of dysfunction of the brain, or some drug-induced experience. They are delusional in nature.

Do you have some understanding that's less narrow than that which can be viewed in a more legitimate sense of sense perception?

So to briefly address why I do not believe that Enlightenment experiences are hallucinations as defined above, for one thing, you're not seeing something that isn't there. You are seeing what is really there, that everyone else is looking at too. Everyone is seeing that tree. Everyone is seeing those clouds. Everyone is seeing that grass. But not everyone is experiencing it in the way you are!!

That's not an hallucination. That's expanded awareness to "really see" what is otherwise normally clouded by our minds, fuzzing it over, hazing it out, etc. It's really seeing that grass, those trees, those clouds, without "squashing" it down into the unreality of our conceptual realities, those limiting filters that we reduce reality down into, making it an "unreality", which is it when you think about it even with logic alone.

Brief example. When I was young and having an existential crisis in life, I came to the place where I could see no beauty at all in the world. I told my mother this, asking what is it that people are happy about, it all seems fake to me.

She directed me to look outside the window and said, "Well, look at how beautiful it is outside today. The sky is blue, the snow is melting. You can smell the fresh air, and hear the birds singing right now." I responded with a certain existential despair, "I see nothing," even though I was looking at the same objects of reality that she was. Was she hallucinating seeing beauty, and I was not?

Enlightenment is just like that. It's seeing what others cannot see, looking at the exact same thing. That's not hallucinating. That's Awareness.

BTW, it was a week after that, that I had my Awakening experience that forever changed my life.

Actually, the moment you refuse to label any given hallucination as an hallucination, but rather treat it as a real experience, it is to be expected it will change you permanently.

I wouldn't know about that. Typically those who have hallucinations suffer from other disorders in their life, fraught with many personal difficulties and sufferings.

That's not what you typically find with the saints and sages and mystics of the world, those who have become Enlightened. They live more than fully functional lives. They live joyous and happy lives. They live fully Awakened, and fully Self-Realized, Self-Actualized lives. They have Peace, not turmoil. They are the very peak of human emotional, mental, and spiritual and well-being.

 

[Koldo]

Have you ever been really sick, and then you are healthy again? How do you know that what you felt while you were sick wasn't health, and what you are calling healthy is actually not sickness? The point is, when you are healthy, when your body is alive and vital and everything is firing at its optimal best, you are able to recognize that state as really real, and not an hallucination, or a delusion of the mind.

Curiously, this is actually not true. You may actually be certain you are doing fine, feel healthy, but be at death's door.

In other words, you know it's really real with "every fiber of your being", not just things being processed by your thinking cognitive mind attempting to deduce what is fact from fiction. It's the difference between a living experience, and a thinking experience.

I once got tricked by a con man despite "knowing" he wasn't tricking me with every fiber of my being.

I honestly believe so much of our difficulty in understanding things like this is this massively disappropriate overreliance on the thinking mind, as opposed to being in touch with our somatic, and intuitive senses. Grant it, I do I understand the fear of being "gullible" to every whim of emotion, and rightly so!

But there is a point where one can become so rationalistic, that it's actually irrationality itself. There needs to be a balance, but when our intuitive senses are neglected and starved, then the rational mind takes over, like having a gigantic right arm, with a toothpick of a left arm, like a half finished Popeye cartoon. That's imbalance. That's a distortion. That's "unreality".

So to answer, you know with "every fiber of your being", in the way you know the difference between being healthy versus sick without needing to first reason it out through logic, research, and peer reviewed studies. You really don't need to be told if you're feeling healthy, do you?

But this is not about how we are feeling, right?
I am most certainly not saying that people don't experience the feelings they claim to have experienced. Who am I to question that?

Now whether that feeling actually represents a reality beyond... That's another thing entirely.

I'm questioning if maybe my understanding of what an hallucination means is not as inclusive of something else that you may be thinking, and I'm unaware of. My understanding of an hallucination is as found in these definitions:

A sight, sound, smell, taste, or touch that a person believes to be real but is not real. Hallucinations can be caused by nervous system disease, certain drugs, or mental disorders.
.....

You may have hallucinations if you: hear sounds or voices that nobody else hears. see things that are not there like objects, shapes, people or lights. feel touch or movement in your body that is not real like bugs are crawling on your skin or your internal organs are moving around.

.....

Hallucinations are false perceptions of sensory experiences. Some hallucinations are normal, such as those caused by falling asleep or waking up. But others may be a sign of a more serious condition like schizophrenia or dementia.​

And so forth. In common to all of these as that you seeing something that no one else sees; seeing something that is not real, that is not really there, and is caused by some sort of dysfunction of the brain, or some drug-induced experience. They are delusional in nature.

Do you have some understanding that's less narrow than that which can be viewed in a more legitimate sense of sense perception?

So to briefly address why I do not believe that Enlightenment experiences are hallucinations as defined above, for one thing, you're not seeing something that isn't there. You are seeing what is really there, that everyone else is looking at too. Everyone is seeing that tree. Everyone is seeing those clouds. Everyone is seeing that grass. But not everyone is experiencing it in the way you are!!

That's not an hallucination. That's expanded awareness to "really see" what is otherwise normally clouded by our minds, fuzzing it over, hazing it out, etc. It's really seeing that grass, those trees, those clouds, without "squashing" it down into the unreality of our conceptual realities, those limiting filters that we reduce reality down into, making it an "unreality", which is it when you think about it even with logic alone.

Brief example. When I was young and having an existential crisis in life, I came to the place where I could see no beauty at all in the world. I told my mother this, asking what is it that people are happy about, it all seems fake to me.

She directed me to look outside the window and said, "Well, look at how beautiful it is outside today. The sky is blue, the snow is melting. You can smell the fresh air, and hear the birds singing right now." I responded with a certain existential despair, "I see nothing," even though I was looking at the same objects of reality that she was. Was she hallucinating seeing beauty, and I was not?

Enlightenment is just like that. It's seeing what others cannot see, looking at the exact same thing. That's not hallucinating. That's Awareness.

BTW, it was a week after that, that I had my Awakening experience that forever changed my life.

I am not using the word hallucination strictly like that. I am using to englobe any kind of false perception concerning reality, meaning I am including delusions such as persecutory delusions under this term. We can use the term delusion if you prefer since we are not talking about perceiving different discrete objects.

I wouldn't know about that. Typically those who have hallucinations suffer from other disorders in their life, fraught with many personal difficulties and sufferings.

That's not what you typically find with the saints and sages and mystics of the world, those who have become Enlightened. They live more than fully functional lives. They live joyous and happy lives. They live fully Awakened, and fully Self-Realized, Self-Actualized lives. They have Peace, not turmoil. They are the very peak of human emotional, mental, and spiritual and well-being.

Why must an hallucination cause distress and be unable to generate peace? If not every dream must be a nightmare, why must every hallucination trigger bad feelings?

 

[Ella S.]

You see your body as separate from the universe? You're not made of the universe? Are you from another universe then?

I don't see the body as synonymous with the universe.

There are unconsciousness results that follow the intentional practices. You aren't consciously talking to your immune system with you cognitive thoughts! But thinking positively, has a factual trickle down effect to the body.

Again, this is not in dispute. What is in dispute is whether particular meditative practices are more reliably effective for treating mental health than placebo.

"Supernatural causes". You are the only one introducing supernaturalism into this thread. I'm not. The OP wasn't. You are projecting your fears into the conversation that no one is actually suggesting here. Why is this? Why are you continually doing this?

That's an outright fabrication. The OP heavily implied supernatural explanations for the efficacy of meditation.

Can we actually have a discussion about the thread, or is every single reply you make to me going to be the most uncharitable warping of my words you can manage as you shift the goalposts?

 

[Ella S.]

So...I am going to directly refute this. Meditation (and a quite wide variety of them) literally changes the mind and its not about individual beliefs or contextualisation. It changes the mind hardware and the structures that get activated in the brain when the mind operates.

In all of us, regardless of our distinct life histories...the mind structures that get activated in our wakeful brain is quite similar. It's called the default mode network. Our understanding of ourselves, our models of the world etc etc all are constrained by this network.
Default Mode Network
Meditation specifically changes the mind by partially decreasing the activity of the default mode network and expanding the ordinary brain activity patterns into other regions. Thus when a mediator says that his praxis makes him more connected, more concentrated, less driven by I based ruminations and fears...it can be shown that this is precisely how his brain has been reconfigured through meditation.
Here is a PNAS paper that demonstrates this

Google Scholar

Many philosophical and contemplative traditions teach that “living in the moment” increases happiness. However, the default mode of humans appears to be that of mind-wandering, which correlates with unhappiness, and with activation in a network of brain areas associated with self-referential processing. We investigated brain activity in experienced meditators and matched meditation-naive controls as they performed several different meditations (Concentration, Loving-Kindness, Choiceless Awareness). We found that the main nodes of the default-mode network (medial prefrontal and posterior cingulate cortices) were relatively deactivated in experienced meditators across all meditation types. Furthermore, functional connectivity analysis revealed stronger coupling in experienced meditators between the posterior cingulate, dorsal anterior cingulate, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortices (regions previously implicated in self-monitoring and cognitive control), both at baseline and during meditation. Our findings demonstrate differences in the default-mode network that are consistent with decreased mind-wandering. As such, these provide a unique understanding of possible neural mechanisms of meditation.


I see this as yet another example that subjective reports from meditation experiences are objectively trustworthy.

You don't need to provide studies demonstrating that disciplining our attention can benefit our mental health. This is already something that most therapies include in their treatments. This is not something that I see as in dispute, really. I think it's sort of besides the point.

 

[Ella S.]

As noted in my previous replies to you...the strong and beneficial impacts of meditative practices like mindfulness, dhyana, yoga etc has been shown by scientific publications in the most reputed journals (nature, PNAS etc). While neuro science today is still quite primitive, they have at least uncovered the fact that they do really impact the activated mind networks in very distinct and beneficial ways. If you still consider this to be pseudoscientific....then you are departing from reason.

You are overstating the findings.

Second you have claimed that it was never the point of these practice to improve the health of the body-mind but rather to gain liberation/enlightenment which is entirely different thing. So to use their currently discovered benefits in no way justifies these ancient traditions.
This points to a fundamental misunderstanding of what people considered liberation and bondage to be. Buddha said it most succinctly. He said:-
A person who is subject to suffering is bound and person in whom suffering has ceased to exist is liberated.

Where do you think suffering is located? In this body mind complex only. So all goal of all these practices has always been towards ending the various gross and subtle forms of suffering that a body-mind is subject to.

Here is the definition of yoga from the second line of patanjali's yogasutra.

"Yoga is restraining the mind-stuff(Chitta) from taking various forms/deformations(Vrittis)."

https://patanjaliyogasutra.in/samadhipada1-2/

A very simple claim of what yoga is for and this is precisely what current science is showing to be true.

I was trying to be as charitable as I could. The way you're describing meditation here makes it an alternative medicine for psychological health based in religion. It does not bode well for meditation when you paint it as faith healing.

 

[Windwalker]

I don't see the body as synonymous with the universe.

I don't see it as separate from the universe though. I see us very much an expression of the universe though. A fun thing I like to say, that is absolutely true, "I am 13.5 billion years of evolution walking on two feet and wondering about the universe." So, if we have self-healing in the body, that is because that is what the universe designed in us. That is the universe doing that, in us. Do you disagree with this?

Again, this is not in dispute. What is in dispute is whether particular meditative practices are more reliably effective for treating mental health than placebo.

I'm confused here. A placebo effect is the mind healing the body, unaided by pharmaceutical agents. That is what meditation is doing. But you raise the question of mental health now. I don't recall that being in discussion before.

When it comes to mental health issues, there are some cases where meditation may not be recommended, unless supervised. You can enter into altered states of consciousness that could cause distress for someone whose mind isn't stable enough to handle it. They may misinterpret things in delusional ways, for instance.

That's an outright fabrication. The OP heavily implied supernatural explanations for the efficacy of meditation.

I'm sorry. I honestly don't see that in there. I've re-read it about 5 times now, and still even just now, I don't see supernaturalism in it. The only reference I could see you might read that way is the term "mystical experiences". Is that what you are referring to?

The rest of it is just saying in essence, that these heightened states of consciousness (what are termed mystical experiences), have a measurable effect on the body and the mind. That's not supernatural. It's something accessible to all human beings in those states of consciousness. That's what the various practices, such as yoga and mediation are designed to help cultivate and facilitated in human experience.

Is there something else I'm not seeing that you are? Or is this what you meant as supernatural?

Can we actually have a discussion about the thread, or is every single reply you make to me going to be the most uncharitable warping of my words you can manage as you shift the goalposts?

I honestly was not trying to do that. I need you to help me understand what you are seeing that I am not.

 

[rational experiences]

Laws. Balances.

If I don't eat I die. I rely on other bodies we named as food. I taught food is a spirit that keeps you alive. It's the purpose to nourish your life spirit and repurpose it. Brings it back from dying.

As was water.

So I taught the nature's garden is life's first law. Mutual dependency is universal law.

Everything is equally mutual supportive so never change the slightest of things.

Hence as I lose my presence I take only what's needed as replenish. Yet if nature didn't replace the food I ate I knew the balances of laws were no longer met.

We lived simply basic spiritual once.

Most of you ignore what terms actually support of life is to even pretend you are being spiritual.

 

[sayak83]

You are overstating the findings.



I was trying to be as charitable as I could. The way you're describing meditation here makes it an alternative medicine for psychological health based in religion. It does not bode well for meditation when you paint it as faith healing.

You have not addressed any of the evidence provided by me in this thread. You have claimed instead, without evidence, that it's observed and scientifically demonstrated effects on the body-mind are somehow less than real by using the tags like "faith" healing and "alternative" medicine.
I do not require any charitable understanding. Please justify your claims with evidence. That would be sufficient.
You somehow think that because something comes from insights written in ancient sources and traditions, thereby it must be suspected regardless of how much evidence there exists for its efficacy?
You do know I hope that the decimal number system was first discussed in a Hindu-Buddhist religious text? Perhaps we should ditch it as well?

 

[sayak83]

You don't need to provide studies demonstrating that disciplining our attention can benefit our mental health. This is already something that most therapies include in their treatments. This is not something that I see as in dispute, really. I think it's sort of besides the point.

I remain confused as to what is the point?

 

[sayak83]

I don't see the body as synonymous with the universe.



Again, this is not in dispute. What is in dispute is whether particular meditative practices are more reliably effective for treating mental health than placebo.



That's an outright fabrication. The OP heavily implied supernatural explanations for the efficacy of meditation.

Can we actually have a discussion about the thread, or is every single reply you make to me going to be the most uncharitable warping of my words you can manage as you shift the goalposts?

To clear any confusion
The OP did not imply any supernatural explanation for the efficacy of meditation. I do not see the supernatural as a coherent concept. Of course you may believe that any idea that does not subscribe to physicalism (that all things that exist supervene on physical entities) is by definition supernatural....then it is a different matter.

 

[Windwalker]

Curiously, this is actually not true. You may actually be certain you are doing fine, feel healthy, but be at death's door.

I thought to myself when I used that analogy, I think he'll understand what I mean without finding that one extreme loophole and making a deal out of it.

Let's put it this way, 99.9999% of the time when we recognize we are in good health, that is a reliable indicator all systems are go. We don't question it. We don't doubt it. This is how we live out our lives on a daily basis, and maybe just maybe one out of billion times, we may have some medical issue we are unaware of while we still feel perfectly healthy. But the real point of the analogy, and no analogy is a perfect analogy, is we don't need to ask someone if we feel fine. We know if we feel healthy.

Same thing with being awake versus asleep. Do you ask for a peer reviewed study to know objectively if you are awake or not? Or are you able to simply, intuitively, experientially come to that conclusion reliably through your own subjective understanding? (I don't see much of a loophole in that analogy, but I'm sure that 0.001% exception might be there somewhere too).

I once got tricked by a con man despite "knowing" he wasn't tricking me with every fiber of my being.

Let me be empathetic here with this concern you express. I understand more than you may realize how when someone has been burned by putting their trust in something that turned out to be a bad fit for them, that they don't trust themselves anymore. Countess times in discussions I've had with both fundamentalist Christians (of which I used to be one myself), and ex-fundamentalist Christians now self-declared atheists (of which I used to be one myself), this whole distrust of their own intuitive senses.

For active Christian fundamentalists, countless times I've encounter them saying, you can't trust your own heart, you must rely on God's Word to tell you the truth. If you have doubts, that's the devil trying to get you to doubt the Bible, and steal your faith from you so you end up in hell. Their favorite go to verse of course is to read this to mean don't ever trust your own intuition, "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?" Sound familiar?

Of course, this is a misapplication of the meaning of that verse in order to justify turning all their trust over to outside agents. Once bitten, twice shy, sort of response. Or they were taught to doubt and distrust their own inner sensibilities as a matter of trying to control them, and subsequently they never learned to develop that "muscle" in themselves.

Everything became externalized to some authority outside themselves. It becomes frankly "safer" that way, or at least appears to be safer, because it excuses themselves, it takes the responsibility of choices off themselves. "God said it. I believe it. That settles it for me.". No it actually doesn't. They are still responsible for listening to their own hearts when it tells them something is off in what is being taught to them.

Then they may face a moment where their belief system crumbles (as did mine), and now that message of 'don't trust the heart' becomes reinforced and carried forwards into simply trying to find better, more reliable external agents to tell them the truth, because "I've been deceived before. The heart cannot be trusted". So instead of God's Word as the authoritative source of reliable trustworthy truth, the Bible is replaced with Science!, since science does have a far better track record in dealing with questions about the natural world than turning to scripture to tell us how it all really happened.

It's the same thing carried forward. It's to put it bluntly, an underdeveloped, anemic, and frightened intuitive sense that has been marginalized and distrusted and starved. Another example comes to mind of someone who gets divorced, "I'll never marry a woman again!". It was all the fault of the other, and blaming themselves deep inside for trusting the other so they wouldn't get hurt. I understand all that as well.

All that is a factor in one's trepidation about being burned by daring to entertain the possibility of something that might actually be a major positive in one's life. But what I was talking about is knowing that the experience itself, were that to happen spontaneously of its own without being sought out (as was the case with me), it is of such an overwhelming magnitude, that there is no doubt whatsoever.

All my whole life, losing faith in religion, being burned in trusting others, being gullible with this or with that through naivety (which is what happened with my adopting an external religion), I have never once doubted that what happened to me was absolutely real. It has remained the Summit of human experience for me.

It may help to clarify something I've tried to say many times in discussions. It is Truth, with a capital T, as to distinguish it from a lower case t truth, which are propositional truths. It is Light itself, not some object that becomes illuminated. It is Truth itself, which itself is beyond any conceptualizing. It cannot be contained in propositional, conceptual, reasoning, rational cognizing thoughts. It is beyond thoughts themselves. It is what is left when all else is stripped away. And it is Infinite.

So, in the end, knowing that is and can only be something known beyond the mind. "With every fiber of my being", is not a weakened metaphor to express, "with all my hopes and desires, I trusted what I was told to believe". That's not knowing with every fiber of your being in the highest meaning of that metaphor.

For me quite literally, ever single cell of my body radiated with that ineffable Light that all things, living or inanimate, radiated with. My body itself was and is, that Light itself, that Truth itself, beyond the mind's conceptualizations and propositional truths it tries to contain and hold in its boxes and calls reality.

Last imperfect analogy here. It's the difference between reading about the ocean, and swimming in the ocean. Was that really water?, is no longer a question. Every fiber of your being experienced it. Experience is the key to understanding the difference here.

Now whether that feeling actually represents a reality beyond... That's another thing entirely.

As I've tried to say, it's not another reality. It is this reality, experienced more fully. It is primarily a shift in consciousness, not emotions or feelings. It's way beyond that. It's a perceptual shift, like having the blinders lifted off the eyes and suddenly seeing everything that was previously obscured to your vision.

Another crude analogy I came up with I like. Think of it like you've been driving your car for the whole season without ever washing it. Gradually dust and grime and bugs, and other debris builds up on the windshield you've been looking through, and you no longer see it or think about it. It's just your experience of driving the car. It's what driving reality is like for you. It's normal.

Then you take it through the carwash, and abruptly the world appears to you like the roof had been taken off your car. You're now seeing the world as it "really is". This is something that is commonly experienced in everyday life. That's what it's like. It's lifting the veil, drawing back the curtains, and seeing the world through an unobstructed mind.

It's not supernatural, though you are seeing the miraculous as it is through unobstructed eyes. You might be inclined to see all of reality as miraculous, and that is a good thing. as it truly is. It's not some other reality. It's this reality, unobstructed.

I am not using the word hallucination strictly like that. I am using to englobe any kind of false perception concerning reality, meaning I am including delusions such as persecutory delusions under this term.

Good. Then we are on the same page. It's not a false perception. It's a higher perception. If it were false, if it were a hallucination, then no one else but that one person and their malfunctioning brain would experience it, and it would lead to problems for that person functioning in the world.

Enlightenment however is a common experience, even though statistically rare, it is still a verifiable, attainable state anyone is capable of realizing for themselves. And the result is a higher, more alive, more functional lived reality, not a dystunfcunitional suffering.

Do you doubt there are such things as higher and lower states of consciousness? There is plenty of research available that maps out these different states you can look at if you are unfamiliar with them.

We can use the term delusion if you prefer since we are not talking about perceiving different discrete objects.

Ok, that's easy to address. Then I'll ask this question. When I told the story about how my mother saw Beauty in the same scene of the Spring day that I was looking at, and I saw nothing that she did looking at the same thing, was she delusional? Was I delusional? Or was it not a matter of delusion at all, but simple different existential responses to the exact same reality?

Why must an hallucination cause distress and be unable to generate peace? If not every dream must be a nightmare, why must every hallucination trigger bad feelings?

I'm setting aside those who choose to take a hallucinogenic drug as part of a spiritual ritual practice (which I am in no way whatsoever promoting or suggesting be done by anyone here, as I've never personally done so myself), those are reportedly not always negative experiences for some, as you can find spoken about in the scientific and academic research available elsewhere to be found on the Internet.

But what we are talking about is not an induced, shamic practice, but just someone who spontaneously, naturally experiences a higher state of consciousness. To have a hallucination without taking any sort of pharmaceutical agent, is generally a malfunction of the brain.

Enlightenment experiences are hardly considered to be a malfunction. Certainly not by any serious researcher. Certainly not by anyone who has every experienced it themselves. We can doubt everything else in life, but that alone remains certain. That has been my experience, and the experience of others. If it were a malfunction, than would that everyone had that malfunction!!

 

[Koldo]

I thought to myself when I used that analogy, I think he'll understand what I mean without finding that one extreme loophole and making a deal out of it.

Let's put it this way, 99.9999% of the time when we recognize we are in good health, that is a reliable indicator all systems are go. We don't question it. We don't doubt it. This is how we live out our lives on a daily basis, and maybe just maybe one out of billion times, we may have some medical issue we are unaware of while we still feel perfectly healthy. But the real point of the analogy, and no analogy is a perfect analogy, is we don't need to ask someone if we feel fine. We know if we feel healthy.

Same thing with being awake versus asleep. Do you ask for a peer reviewed study to know objectively if you are awake or not? Or are you able to simply, intuitively, experientially come to that conclusion reliably through your own subjective understanding? (I don't see much of a loophole in that analogy, but I'm sure that 0.001% exception might be there somewhere too).

But that's the thing: Whether we feel fine doesn't entail we are fine. And even more importantly: If there is another deeper reality, it means the way we feel about what is real is not to be trusted since we genuinely feel that we are already experiencing the deeper reality.

Let me be empathetic here with this concern you express. I understand more than you may realize how when someone has been burned by putting their trust in something that turned out to be a bad fit for them, that they don't trust themselves anymore. Countess times in discussions I've had with both fundamentalist Christians (of which I used to be one myself), and ex-fundamentalist Christians now self-declared atheists (of which I used to be one myself), this whole distrust of their own intuitive senses.

For active Christian fundamentalists, countless times I've encounter them saying, you can't trust your own heart, you must rely on God's Word to tell you the truth. If you have doubts, that's the devil trying to get you to doubt the Bible, and steal your faith from you so you end up in hell. Their favorite go to verse of course is to read this to mean don't ever trust your own intuition, "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?" Sound familiar?

Of course, this is a misapplication of the meaning of that verse in order to justify turning all their trust over to outside agents. Once bitten, twice shy, sort of response. Or they were taught to doubt and distrust their own inner sensibilities as a matter of trying to control them, and subsequently they never learned to develop that "muscle" in themselves.

Everything became externalized to some authority outside themselves. It becomes frankly "safer" that way, or at least appears to be safer, because it excuses themselves, it takes the responsibility of choices off themselves. "God said it. I believe it. That settles it for me.". No it actually doesn't. They are still responsible for listening to their own hearts when it tells them something is off in what is being taught to them.

Then they may face a moment where their belief system crumbles (as did mine), and now that message of 'don't trust the heart' becomes reinforced and carried forwards into simply trying to find better, more reliable external agents to tell them the truth, because "I've been deceived before. The heart cannot be trusted". So instead of God's Word as the authoritative source of reliable trustworthy truth, the Bible is replaced with Science!, since science does have a far better track record in dealing with questions about the natural world than turning to scripture to tell us how it all really happened.

It's the same thing carried forward. It's to put it bluntly, an underdeveloped, anemic, and frightened intuitive sense that has been marginalized and distrusted and starved. Another example comes to mind of someone who gets divorced, "I'll never marry a woman again!". It was all the fault of the other, and blaming themselves deep inside for trusting the other so they wouldn't get hurt. I understand all that as well.

All that is a factor in one's trepidation about being burned by daring to entertain the possibility of something that might actually be a major positive in one's life. But what I was talking about is knowing that the experience itself, were that to happen spontaneously of its own without being sought out (as was the case with me), it is of such an overwhelming magnitude, that there is no doubt whatsoever.

All my whole life, losing faith in religion, being burned in trusting others, being gullible with this or with that through naivety (which is what happened with my adopting an external religion), I have never once doubted that what happened to me was absolutely real. It has remained the Summit of human experience for me.

It may help to clarify something I've tried to say many times in discussions. It is Truth, with a capital T, as to distinguish it from a lower case t truth, which are propositional truths. It is Light itself, not some object that becomes illuminated. It is Truth itself, which itself is beyond any conceptualizing. It cannot be contained in propositional, conceptual, reasoning, rational cognizing thoughts. It is beyond thoughts themselves. It is what is left when all else is stripped away. And it is Infinite.

So, in the end, knowing that is and can only be something known beyond the mind. "With every fiber of my being", is not a weakened metaphor to express, "with all my hopes and desires, I trusted what I was told to believe". That's not knowing with every fiber of your being in the highest meaning of that metaphor.

For me quite literally, ever single cell of my body radiated with that ineffable Light that all things, living or inanimate, radiated with. My body itself was and is, that Light itself, that Truth itself, beyond the mind's conceptualizations and propositional truths it tries to contain and hold in its boxes and calls reality.

Last imperfect analogy here. It's the difference between reading about the ocean, and swimming in the ocean. Was that really water?, is no longer a question. Every fiber of your being experienced it. Experience is the key to understanding the difference here.

You are pretty much saying that I didn't actually feel something to be real with every fiber of my being, because if I did it would have real. But you have no way of knowing what I experienced. You are just labeling my experience in a way that fits your boxes.

As I've tried to say, it's not another reality. It is this reality, experienced more fully. It is primarily a shift in consciousness, not emotions or feelings. It's way beyond that. It's a perceptual shift, like having the blinders lifted off the eyes and suddenly seeing everything that was previously obscured to your vision.

Another crude analogy I came up with I like. Think of it like you've been driving your car for the whole season without ever washing it. Gradually dust and grime and bugs, and other debris builds up on the windshield you've been looking through, and you no longer see it or think about it. It's just your experience of driving the car. It's what driving reality is like for you. It's normal.

Then you take it through the carwash, and abruptly the world appears to you like the roof had been taken off your car. You're now seeing the world as it "really is". This is something that is commonly experienced in everyday life. That's what it's like. It's lifting the veil, drawing back the curtains, and seeing the world through an unobstructed mind.

It's not supernatural, though you are seeing the miraculous as it is through unobstructed eyes. You might be inclined to see all of reality as miraculous, and that is a good thing. as it truly is. It's not some other reality. It's this reality, unobstructed.

But once again, how do you figure it really is unobstructed reality? At this point you have only said you label it that way because of how you perceive it.

Good. Then we are on the same page. It's not a false perception. It's a higher perception. If it were false, if it were a hallucination, then no one else but that one person and their malfunctioning brain would experience it, and it would lead to problems for that person functioning in the world.

Enlightenment however is a common experience, even though statistically rare, it is still a verifiable, attainable state anyone is capable of realizing for themselves. And the result is a higher, more alive, more functional lived reality, not a dystunfcunitional suffering.

Do you doubt there are such things as higher and lower states of consciousness? There is plenty of research available that maps out these different states you can look at if you are unfamiliar with them.

Why can't an hallucination be experienced by multiple people? Why would an hallucination have to lead to malfunctioning in the world? Why does it have to lead to suffering?

I disagree with all of those premises. A false perception in itself is just a false perception. It doesn't have to be bring about any negative effects either.

Ok, that's easy to address. Then I'll ask this question. When I told the story about how my mother saw Beauty in the same scene of the Spring day that I was looking at, and I saw nothing that she did looking at the same thing, was she delusional? Was I delusional? Or was it not a matter of delusion at all, but simple different existential responses to the exact same reality?

Neither of you were wrong, and neither of you were right. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I'm setting aside those who choose to take a hallucinogenic drug as part of a spiritual ritual practice (which I am in no way whatsoever promoting or suggesting be done by anyone here, as I've never personally done so myself), those are reportedly not always negative experiences for some, as you can find spoken about in the scientific and academic research available elsewhere to be found on the Internet.

But what we are talking about is not an induced, shamic practice, but just someone who spontaneously, naturally experiences a higher state of consciousness. To have a hallucination without taking any sort of pharmaceutical agent, is generally a malfunction of the brain.

Enlightenment experiences are hardly considered to be a malfunction. Certainly not by any serious researcher. Certainly not by anyone who has every experienced it themselves. We can doubt everything else in life, but that alone remains certain. That has been my experience, and the experience of others. If it were a malfunction, than would that everyone had that malfunction!!

Does the fact the enlightment experiences are generally not considered to be a malfunction entail they are not a malfunction? Why?

 

[SalixIncendium]

A good translation keeps in mind the cultural context of the phrases and words being translated. Yours completely butchered that. Karma is heavily loaded with supernatural implications in dharmic religion..

Please expand on "supernatural implications." What do you find supernatural about causality?

 

[Windwalker]

But that's the thing: Whether we feel fine doesn't entail we are fine. And even more importantly: If there is another deeper reality, it means the way we feel about what is real is not to be trusted since we genuinely feel that we are already experiencing the deeper reality.

So you are saying that we should not trust that we are feeling joy, peace, and connection with the world? We should distrust that and set all that aside in favor of fear of being wrong? Is this what you are saying? If I say I am feeling Love, that doesn't mean I actually am, and so I should not trust that and instead not enjoy that experience? Correct?

You are pretty much saying that I didn't actually feel something to be real with every fiber of my being, because if I did it would have real. But you have no way of knowing what I experienced. You are just labeling my experience in a way that fits your boxes.

No, I did not say that at all. I'm not saying if you "really believed" it would have been real. Not at all. What I did say however was that when people use this phrase of believing with 'every fiber of their being', more than not what they are talking about is hopes and expectations, or feeling inspired to fully commit themselves to something. Isn't that just exactly what you described in what you said about, "I once got tricked by a con man despite "knowing" he wasn't tricking me with every fiber of my being."

I am contrasting that with an experience of Joy. It's like finding that special one in your life and you feel absolute Love. Every fiber of your being knows it is love. That has nothing whatsoever to do with failed expectations of your trust in another's promises to you. It has to do with your own experience of your own feelings.

"Oh, but this might not really be Love I feel, so I'm not going to trust myself and allow myself to believe my own feelings." That of course is going to have the result of suppressing and repressing your own interior landscapes and make them a big scary demon you should avoid, because you got hurt by taking a good feeling and making a naive and gullible choice to hand your soul over to another person's control over you.

That was the problem, not that you had a good feeling. And we've all made that mistake. I did too. But becoming cynical is not the path to Peace and safety either.

But once again, how do you figure it really is unobstructed reality? At this point you have only said you label it that way because of how you perceive it.

Yep. That's what I said. It is how we perceive it. It is how we experience it, compared to how we experienced it previously. "I was blind but now I see", is an apt metaphor to describe the difference of experience through the radical shift of perception that happens. That is exactly it. That is what I have been saying. But it is a radical, universal shift of everything we've ever thought about the reality of reality, and how it is experienced by us as a human being.

Of course the other common metaphor is waking up from the world of illusion. Waking up from being asleep, dreaming we were awake when we were really not. And so forth. These are all perceptual shifts, just like waking up from a dream into the waking world is.

Why can't an hallucination be experienced by multiple people? Why would an hallucination have to lead to malfunctioning in the world? Why does it have to lead to suffering?

I shared with you multiple quotes from psychologists and the like what hallucinations are, and you agreed with those. They all said the same thing that they were private, not shared, that they were due to some form of dysfunction, and they are typically a sign of some form of mental illness. Dysfunctions are the opposite of healthy function. So yes, that leads to suffering.

Are you familiar with Ram Dass? He told this story how he visited someone who was in a mental institution, and he asked him why he was there. The person told him, that he was the Christ. Ram Dass said, well, we are all part of the Christ Consciousness, so we are all are the Christ. The person looked confused at him and answered, "No, you don't understand. You can't be because I am the Christ.". Ram Dass then said, "And you see, that is why you are in here and I am not".

I disagree with all of those premises. A false perception in itself is just a false perception. It doesn't have to be bring about any negative effects either.

Who are you to say it is a false perception? Was my mother having a false perception saying the world was beautiful, and I was saying it was not? Which was the "true perception"? And even more to the point, is there even such a thing as a singular, one and only, right and true, correct perception? Does that even exist? Is that even a reality at all?

Here's my understanding. All reality is perception. Your experience of reality, is the result of your perception of reality. Your perception of reality IS reality to you. It is what the world is. How you conceive, constitutes your experience of it, and is truth to you.

This is true for every human being. All I am saying is this. Enlightenment experiences, which is brought about by a radical perceptual shift in consciousness itself in the human mind, creates a lived experience of life that is abundantly beyond other, so-called "normal" states of consciousness, which limit reality as it is filtered down into the perceptual lenses of that state of consciousness.

I know this is a difficult thing for people to accept, because all reality is seen through that set of eyes. And it is not typical for the eyes that do the seeing, to see themselves as part of the equation in what makes up reality. It is generally assumed we have a direct, unmeditated, unflited hardwire to reality. But that is not factually true. That is an illusion of the mind. And that is a hard pill for the mind to try to swallow about itself. But it is true.

Neither of you were wrong, and neither of you were right. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Now you are getting much closer to the truth of what I am saying.

Does the fact the enlightment experiences are generally not considered to be a malfunction entail they are not a malfunction? Why?

Easy. Because we become more functional, healthier, happier, more well adjusted, more loving, more compassionate, more joyful. As I said before, if that is a malfunction, that let's get the whole world to break so we can have Peace on Earth!

 

[Koldo]

So you are saying that we should not trust that we are feeling joy, peace, and connection with the world? We should distrust that and set all that aside in favor of fear of being wrong? Is this what you are saying? If I say I am feeling Love, that doesn't mean I actually am, and so I should not trust that and instead not enjoy that experience? Correct?

No. I am not saying that. I have no idea why you are mixing those things up.

No, I did not say that at all. I'm not saying if you "really believed" it would have been real. Not at all. What I did say however was that when people use this phrase of believing with 'every fiber of their being', more than not what they are talking about is hopes and expectations, or feeling inspired to fully commit themselves to something. Isn't that just exactly what you described in what you said about, "I once got tricked by a con man despite "knowing" he wasn't tricking me with every fiber of my being."

I am contrasting that with an experience of Joy. It's like finding that special one in your life and you feel absolute Love. Every fiber of your being knows it is love. That has nothing whatsoever to do with failed expectations of your trust in another's promises to you. It has to do with your own experience of your own feelings.

"Oh, but this might not really be Love I feel, so I'm not going to trust myself and allow myself to believe my own feelings." That of course is going to have the result of suppressing and repressing your own interior landscapes and make them a big scary demon you should avoid, because you got hurt by taking a good feeling and making a naive and gullible choice to hand your soul over to another person's control over you.

That was the problem, not that you had a good feeling. And we've all made that mistake. I did too. But becoming cynical is not the path to Peace and safety either.

I have absolutely no idea why you are mixing those things up. It is one thing to say you know you love someone and yet another to say you know someone else loves you. Your feelings and sensations in themselves are not under dispute.

Yep. That's what I said. It is how we perceive it. It is how we experience it, compared to how we experienced it previously. "I was blind but now I see", is an apt metaphor to describe the difference of experience through the radical shift of perception that happens. That is exactly it. That is what I have been saying. But it is a radical, universal shift of everything we've ever thought about the reality of reality, and how it is experienced by us as a human being.

Of course the other common metaphor is waking up from the world of illusion. Waking up from being asleep, dreaming we were awake when we were really not. And so forth. These are all perceptual shifts, just like waking up from a dream into the waking world is.

But once again, that's all you offer and nothing else. You are essentially saying I should not trust my sense that I am experiencing reality, as real as it can be, but that my sense that I am experiencing reality when under this enlightment state should be trusted. Why? Either my sense is reliable or it is not.

I shared with you multiple quotes from psychologists and the like what hallucinations are, and you agreed with those. They all said the same thing that they were private, not shared, that they were due to some form of dysfunction, and they are typically a sign of some form of mental illness. Dysfunctions are the opposite of healthy function. So yes, that leads to suffering.

I completely disagree with this.

Are you familiar with Ram Dass? He told this story how he visited someone who was in a mental institution, and he asked him why he was there. The person told him, that he was the Christ. Ram Dass said, well, we are all part of the Christ Consciousness, so we are all are the Christ. The person looked confused at him and answered, "No, you don't understand. You can't be because I am the Christ.". Ram Dass then said, "And you see, that is why you are in here and I am not".

Social standards. Claiming that we are all Christ could have made him be locked up in a mental institution at a different age, or even worse.

Who are you to say it is a false perception? Was my mother having a false perception saying the world was beautiful, and I was saying it was not? Which was the "true perception"? And even more to the point, is there even such a thing as a singular, one and only, right and true, correct perception? Does that even exist? Is that even a reality at all?

Here's my understanding. All reality is perception. Your experience of reality, is the result of your perception of reality. Your perception of reality IS reality to you. It is what the world is. How you conceive, constitutes your experience of it, and is truth to you.

This is true for every human being. All I am saying is this. Enlightenment experiences, which is brought about by a radical perceptual shift in consciousness itself in the human mind, creates a lived experience of life that is abundantly beyond other, so-called "normal" states of consciousness, which limit reality as it is filtered down into the perceptual lenses of that state of consciousness.

I know this is a difficult thing for people to accept, because all reality is seen through that set of eyes. And it is not typical for the eyes that do the seeing, to see themselves as part of the equation in what makes up reality. It is generally assumed we have a direct, unmeditated, unflited hardwire to reality. But that is not factually true. That is an illusion of the mind. And that is a hard pill for the mind to try to swallow about itself. But it is true.


Now you are getting much closer to the truth of what I am saying.

Let's simplify this discussion:

I absolutely agree that we perceive reality through filtered lens. Let me share one experience I have had. Once upon a time I was about to sleep, but I had to brush my teeth. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I had just noticed a new wrinkle in my face and felt very sad. I went to sleep. I woke up about two hours later. Nature was calling. But this time when I looked at my new found wrinkle I felt... Nothing. That was really weird though, because a process that would generally take place over a much longer time period happened in about 10 minutes in my perspective (since I was sleeping during those two hours).

We generally take for granted that the way we associate certain facts or events with the feelings they trigger in us, as if the casual relation had to necessarily happen in a given specific way. Quite in fact the relation between them is not of necessity, but rather of contigency (as in modal logic).

However, when there is a claim about the existence of a deeper reality we are talking about a different beast.

Easy. Because we become more functional, healthier, happier, more well adjusted, more loving, more compassionate, more joyful. As I said before, if that is a malfunction, that let's get the whole world to break so we can have Peace on Earth!

But what is the relation between truth and happiness? Why would the one that knows all truth have to be happier?