I enjoy reading movie reviews. The people who write them are called critics.
When they criticize a movie, or streaming show, that I was considering watching, often I'll decide to see something else instead. So critics can be wonderful.
However, there's also a critic who is uncomfortably close to me. In fact, it is me.
Or at least, a part of me who isn't shy about pointing out my screw-ups, mistakes, and such -- often in a caustic manner that leaves me feeling bad about myself.
I don't mind getting feedback about things I could have done better, whether from myself or anybody else.
But that inner critic often goes overboard, constantly reminding me of mistakes from long ago that I'm already well aware of and which can't be undone because they're in the distant past.
So I perked up when I came to a section in Robert Wright's book, "Why Buddhism is True," that talks about how Wright was able to deal with his own inner critic through mindfulness meditation.
Here's what Wright said about this.
I've always been good at convincing myself I've made a mistake, at chastising myself for it, and sometimes at pretty literally hating myself for it. For decades people have told me I shouldn't be like this.
They've said things like, "Don't beat yourself up about it."
This has always annoyed me. My feeling has been that you should beat yourself up about things you do wrong. Otherwise you may keep doing them!
And let's be honest, isn't one of the big problems with the world how many people do bad things and then don't feel any need for self-chastisement?
...The experience I had that night wasn't a full-fledged hallucination. As I entered that weird visual space, I didn't lose contact with the real world. I was aware that I was sitting in a meditation hall and that intense concentration had put my mind in a place it had never been.
But where was this place? Only after looking around a bit did I realize that the place my mind had entered was my mind -- or, at least, my mind's representation of my mind.
The tipoff was that I "saw" -- and, I guess, "heard" -- a particular thought I've had many times after doing something arguably stupid or inept or wrong.
The thought was "You screwed up."
Actually, "screwed up" is a sanitized version of the phrase I tend to use and of the phrase that constituted the thought I observed that night. Anyway, the main thing is this: I now saw this thought assume a form I had never seen it assume before.
Come to think of it, I had never seen this thought assume any form at all. But it now looked as if -- literally looked as if -- one part of my mind was speaking the thought to another part.
There was even a kind of line tracing the path of the message, like an arrow on a diagram indicating the direction of communication.
I watched this intracranial conversation, watched the message travel from sender to recipient, as a kind of outside observer, even though I thought of the recipient as in some sense being me.
It's almost impossible to convey in words the power of this experience and its aura of significance.
...And what was the truth I was seeing? What struck me at the time was that, for the first time ever, this standard thought of mine -- "You screwed up" -- didn't seem to be coming from me.
It was just some guy in my head doing the talking. And it wasn't clear that he was worth paying attention to. Who the hell was he, anyway?
Now, more than a decade later, having thought about this stuff more and written this book, I might answer, "He was a module in my mind."
But at the time I was thinking less academically, and the lesson seemed to be that in the future I could treat my inner critic with some critical distance, if not outright disdain.
As much as I had resisted efforts to quit beating myself up, as much as I had minimized the toll it took on me, the prospect of living without this self-torture now seemed powerfully appealing. I'm not much of a crier, but I started crying. I tried to do it quietly, but I did it fully.
...And then I lived happily ever after.
Actually, no. Another line in that Foreigner song, right after "feels like the very first time" is "like it never will again." And, indeed, I haven't had a meditative experience that joltingly powerful since then.
My belief that I would be able to access this plane again and again and use it to orchestrate my own personal spiritual renaissance was naive.
So was my belief that I would quit beating up on myself, though the frequency and severity of the beatings seems to have fallen off a bit.
OK, Wright's meditation experience wasn't truly mind changing. Still, it benefitted him. Here's another excerpt from his book that's an overview of his attitude toward meditation.
In case all this sounds too abstractly philosophical, let me try to put it in more practical form, as the answer to this oft-asked question: Will meditation make me happier? And, if so, how much happier?
Well, in my case -- as you will recall, I'm a particularly hard case -- the answer is yes, it's made me a little happier. That's good, because I'm in favor of happiness, especially my own.
At the same time, the argument I'd make to people about why they should meditate is less about the quantity of happiness than about the quality of the happiness.
The happiness I now have involves, on balance, a truer view of the world that the happiness I had before.
And a boost in happiness that rests on truth, I would argue, is better than a boost in happiness that doesn't -- not just because things that rest on truth have a more secure footing than things that don't, but because, as it happens, acting in accordance with this truth means behaving better toward your fellow beings.
So that's why I'd say that increments of happiness that insight meditation may add to your life are especially worth working for: because these are increments of valid happiness.
This is a happiness that is based on a multifaceted clarity -- on a truer view of the world, a truer view of other people, a truer view of yourself, and, I believe, a closer approximation to moral truth.
Brian, quoting Robert Wright:
" ... The experience I had that night wasn't a full-fledged hallucination ..."
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Why not? What makes RW so sure that that wasn't "full-fledged hallucination"?
This takes me back to my earlier question, asked a few days ago.
This ...vision, of RW's, it is one of two things. Either it points at a faculty that we have to uncover truths about ourselves via meditation. Or else it is, indeed, "full-fledged hallucination".
Which it is, is a fascinating question. Should it turn out that this sort of thing is indeed something we can all do, or at least, some/many of us can do via meditation, then that's a potentially far-reaching idea, with manifold potential applications.
But, until we've got evidence that this is, indeed, some kind of intuitive understanding of things as they are, that this is some kind of perception of actual reality arrived at via meditation, I think the reasonable thing to do -- which RW does NOT do -- is to actually treat this as, yes, full-fledged hallucination.
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(I say this as a meditator myself, who would dearly love for RW to be right about this, but who is not willing to give in to easy leaps of faith just because it comes cloaked in apparently sciency context and words.)
Posted by: Appreciative Reader | March 30, 2021 at 11:28 AM
Mindfullness meditation makes one more happy.
Because it is exactely how ´IT IS´.
Here and now PLUS everything that one can feel not only physical.
There is more under the sun..
Not only in the THEN..but in NOW..
I like your post about this Brian!
Posted by: s* | April 02, 2021 at 12:31 AM
Hi Appreciative Reader,
You of course ask age old questions that obviously have no easy answer, as they're still being debated today.
For, ultimately, what is much of this blog and Brian's arguments other than representing one of the prisoners in Plato's cave? Is not much of the discussion here basically that of people locked within physical, intellectual, semantic, logical and rational human thought unable to imagine a reality outside of those shackles, and ridiculing those who claim to have freed themselves from their limiting intellect and turned from the shadows on the wall to the blazing reality of the sun outside the cave of the human mind?
I read a quote the other day from an NDEr who said something like trying to describe the reality of that state of consciousness with words is like giving somebody a box of crayons and asking them to draw a smell with them.
I think we humans tend to overestimate the reach of the human intellect and language. People who have never experienced anything outside of these limiting constraints cannot imagine such a thing is even possible, and without examining their limited experience instead filter unconsciously and uncritically all information through their limited intellectual and conceptual purview of reality.
So, instead of asking for "evidence" of what is reality and what is "hallucination", I would first ask what is your definition of what reality and hallucination actually are, precisely, and within which conceptual paradigm your definition makes sense? Scientifically speaking, none of us humans are engaging with "reality", we are engaging, mostly (though obviously not always, but that is another discussion entirely) with electrical signals passed from our senses to our brains, which (magically, I might add, because as of yet science has absolutely no clue how or why :) CONSTRUCTS an inner model of "reality" that is then somehow (again, even more magically) perceived by a self-aware consciousness.....ie, even our so-called perception of "physical reality" is ALSO a "hallucination" by any scientific definition.
I think your question points to more to the bias that nearly all humans, if not actually all, are familiar with the shared "hallucination" of the human mind and intellect, of perceiving physical reality in a pretty much shared and consensual way (although global politics over the past decade have severely tested even that shared reality), so that whilst we may not all be having identical human hallucinations, there are enough semantic similarities for the illusion of an objective "reality" we are actually perceiving rather than hallucinating/filtering/limiting through our human body-mind apparatus to seem pretty convincing....:)
For me, none of this is a discussion about "reality" or "hallucination", it is ALL a discussion about consciousness. The CONTENTS of consciousness. That is all. Intellect creates labels for this or that, and the intellect is more often than not limited in what it knows, so it defines as "junk" (or hallucination) that which it cannot understand (what's the wager "junk dna" won't be considered to be "junk" in 100 years time? :)
Humans are adorable; they get perplexed when their highly sophisticated scientists and philosophers cannot resolve once and for all questions of free will and determinism, self or no-self, matter or spirit etc despite thousands of years of debates and advances. They think they can get ultra-objective and observe reality as it is by use of their "physics"....and it all went swimmingly well for the 2 centuries of human history where it seemed physics would answer all of life's questions......until that darn quantum weirdness popped up and threw all our lofty ideas and aspirations in deep doubt......our language and physics cannot even tell us if matter is a wave or a particle, and what is all this weirdness about "consciousness" altering reality?! This is more astonishing than all those who received outdated educations (all of us) who still think we live in an ordered Newtonian universe that makes any kind of rational sense at all.
All the best my friend.....
Posted by: manjit | April 02, 2021 at 06:48 AM
A classic manjit post! Absolute pleasure, old friend!
I’m going to enjoy sinking my teeth into this post of yours, and—hopefully—reading your subsequent response.
(Warning: Long post coming up!)
Looks like those html things have been turned off here, incidentally, the formatting that makes long posts (somewhat!) readable, since the time I was here last. That makes quoting kind of awkward, but we’ll make do I guess.
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“… For, ultimately, what is much of this blog and Brian's arguments other than representing one of the prisoners in Plato's cave?”
How could it be any different, in any sane world and in any sane discussion, manjit?
Here’s where I’m coming from. I’ve heard of and read of others’ “experiences”—and greatly enjoyed engaging with yours as well, in comments past. But in the absence of first-hand experiences of this type, one cannot do other than file those away as something that might be true (with whatever likelihood one chooses to append to that “might”).
But, even more fundamentally: Even when you do have “experiences”, yourself, how do you decide if this is hallucination, or “reality”? The only …sane, test, at least that I can think of, is objective evidence.
In this blog post of Brian’s, for instance, RW has visions of one portion of his brain sending thoughts at another portion of his brain. So, is this “real”? Fascinating question, like I’d said. And easily—or, depending, not so easily, in practice, but nevertheless easily enough in concept—put to the test: ascertain something “within”, or do something “within”, that can be clearly evidenced in the world outside as well, and that is without doubt seen or done only from “within”. To my knowledge that kind of thing hasn’t been done so far.
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“Is not much of the discussion here basically that of people locked within physical, intellectual, semantic, logical and rational human thought”
Given that that is our reality, how could it be otherwise? One remains open, though, to experiences of the beyond, absolutely. That is one of the reasons one meditates. (The other reason is simple mundane mental “well-being”).
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“unable to imagine a reality outside of those shackles”
Imagine? Sure, one can imagine it. One can imagine all sorts of things. And not just wild imaginings, one also tunes in to others’ “experiences”, and all that it might represent.
But one accepts as reality only what one has evidence for. I don’t see any other sane way to forming one’s worldview, even when it comes to things “mystical”.
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“ and ridiculing those who claim to have freed themselves from their limiting intellect and turned from the shadows on the wall to the blazing reality of the sun outside the cave of the human mind?”
Ridicule? Speaking for myself, never. Not in the normal course. Not unless other indications clearly point towards charlatanry.
Speaking for myself, I’m entirely open to …supra-normal realities. Open, that is, to considering them. To exploring them. But buying into them? That I’ll do when I’ve got solid evidence, not before. (And that includes incontrovertible first-hand subjective experience, even though I recognize that that may not convince anyone else.)
But I agree, we have seen, out here, enough instances of this “ridiculing” that you speak of. And I agree, it seems silly, and not very nice, to keep seeking out something if one’s only intent is to laugh at it. (Not that laughter’s unhealthy, but you know what I mean.)
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“I read a quote the other day from an NDEr who said something like trying to describe the reality of that state of consciousness with words is like giving somebody a box of crayons and asking them to draw a smell with them.”
Sure, but how do we know that those NDEs representing anything other than the brain malfunctioning?
Let the NDE crowd come back with solid evidence of things seen and heard, that could not possibly have been seen or heard in the absence of genuine out-of-body “trips”, and that would be evidence. Until then, it seems reasonable to think of such visions, no matter how vivid, as simply hallucinations.
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“I think we humans tend to overestimate the reach of the human intellect and language. People who have never experienced anything outside of these limiting constraints cannot imagine such a thing is even possible, and without examining their limited experience instead filter unconsciously and uncritically all information through their limited intellectual and conceptual purview of reality.
So, instead of asking for "evidence" of what is reality and what is "hallucination", I would first ask what is your definition of what reality and hallucination actually are, precisely, and within which conceptual paradigm your definition makes sense?”
Speaking for myself: “Reality” would be veridical, verifiable.
Subjective reality is a thing too, absolutely, I’m not saying that doesn’t exist. My dreams, for instance, do have subjective reality. But I’d clearly demarcate, clearly differentiate, objective reality from subjective reality.
Hallucinations? I’d say these would be subjective experiences that do not correspond with reality, as defined.
(My off-the-cuff definitions, by the way. My rough-and-ready thoughts, is all. No doubt holes aplenty in these “definitions”, but I wanted to convey clearly, or as clearly as I can, what these terms mean to me.)
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“Scientifically speaking, none of us humans are engaging with "reality", we are engaging, mostly (though obviously not always, but that is another discussion entirely) with electrical signals passed from our senses to our brains, which (magically, I might add, because as of yet science has absolutely no clue how or why :) CONSTRUCTS an inner model of "reality" that is then somehow (again, even more magically) perceived by a self-aware consciousness.....ie, even our so-called perception of "physical reality" is ALSO a "hallucination" by any scientific definition.”
Agreed with all of what you’ve said here, except for the last bit, the conclusion you draw.
Where there is near-total inter-subjective agreement, as far as actual observations, I guess that is what reality is!
Philip K Dick’s definition of reality in that book of his (I’ve got it in my bookcase, although the name escapes me, the one about the guy who does those puzzles in the newspaper)—and, incidentally, something Brian quotes often enough over here—would seem relevant here: Reality is that which does not go away when you stop believing in it (or words to that effect).
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I think your question points to more to the bias that nearly all humans, if not actually all, are familiar with the shared "hallucination" of the human mind and intellect, of perceiving physical reality in a pretty much shared and consensual way (although global politics over the past decade have severely tested even that shared reality), so that whilst we may not all be having identical human hallucinations, there are enough semantic similarities for the illusion of an objective "reality" we are actually perceiving rather than hallucinating/filtering/limiting through our human body-mind apparatus to seem pretty convincing....:)”
I agree, except I don’t see how this can be thought of as “bias”.
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“For me, none of this is a discussion about "reality" or "hallucination", it is ALL a discussion about consciousness. The CONTENTS of consciousness.”
Having read of your experiences in comments past, I’d say that POV is fair.
But, even despite your own experiences, you too do differentiate between hallucination and reality, don’t you? When you’re drunk, for instance, or dreaming: you do grant that what you “see” in a dream (vanilla dream, not mystic vision) or when in a drunken stupor, is different than what you see when awake, right?
Incidentally, that does raise an interesting question, about visions. How would someone who does have bona fide visions—you, for instance—differentiate between those visions and, say, everyday dreams? What kind of corroboration do you seek out, to conclude which is which?
(Genuine question, btw, without a hint of “ridicule” anywhere. You’d know that, I guess, going by our past exchanges. Still, given your comments about “ridicule”, I thought it best to clarify.)
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“ That is all. Intellect creates labels for this or that, and the intellect is more often than not limited in what it knows, so it defines as "junk" (or hallucination) that which it cannot understand (what's the wager "junk dna" won't be considered to be "junk" in 100 years time? :)”
Sure, what the scientific method tells us today, might well be corrected tomorrow. That’s part and parcel of what science is. I don’t see any shortcoming there. Exactly the opposite.
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“Humans are adorable; they get perplexed when their highly sophisticated scientists and philosophers cannot resolve once and for all questions of free will and determinism, self or no-self, matter or spirit etc despite thousands of years of debates and advances.”
To be fair, the scientific method is only a few centuries old. And the dramatic advances made since the scientific method was devised, and employed, have been …well, dramatic, compared to the stasis of the centuries and millennia past, wouldn’t you say?
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“ They think they can get ultra-objective and observe reality as it is by use of their "physics"....and it all went swimmingly well for the 2 centuries of human history where it seemed physics would answer all of life's questions......until that darn quantum weirdness popped up and threw all our lofty ideas and aspirations in deep doubt......our language and physics cannot even tell us if matter is a wave or a particle, and what is all this weirdness about "consciousness" altering reality?! This is more astonishing than all those who received outdated educations (all of us) who still think we live in an ordered Newtonian universe that makes any kind of rational sense at all.”
I’m no expert, exactly the opposite, but I think it’s all “fields” now, and vibrations within those fields. Yep, all entirely weird and counter-intuitive.
I agree, QM is one area where weirdness abounds, absolutely. One area which is empirically borne out, and yet which is …well, weird.
But here’s the thing: Because there’s this one thing, one area, that does confound our understanding, at least thus far, surely that doesn’t mean that anything goes?
It seems reasonable to acknowledge things we know, and also acknowledge things we don’t know, and, yes, acknowledge things we know that don’t make a great deal of sense so far, and that might, hopefully, become clearer as we know more about it.
I don’t see why having the latter two categories would take away from the first.
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manjit, those vivid visions and experiences of yours, that we’ve discussed in the past, I’m sure you “accept” them, and incorporate them into your actual worldview, only after some kind of inner corroboration, right? I mean, I’m sure you don’t simply accept every passing fancy and every passing imagination as reality, right?
It would be interesting, if you could spell out your method. (It could be you do it intuitively, but if you could formulate what form this takes, that could be instructive.)
I suspect we don’t really disagree, really, not fundamentally. It’s just that you’ve been blest with a deeper store of first-hand observations, experiences, to draw from. By definition such subjective reality cannot be shared. Not unless it does happen to be shared. And, God willing, perhaps it might be, some day.
Posted by: Appreciative Reader | April 02, 2021 at 11:33 AM
>>I think we humans tend to overestimate the reach of the human intellect and language. <<
There countless books on cooking, describing how to prepare a dish ... apple pie .... there are no books on how these dishes ... the apple pie ... tastes.
There are no trees that have legs, no animals that can recreate their habitat on the moon. Language is like the branches on a tree, the wings on a bird, an tool of human being.
All natural tools are concentrate around and focused on the survival of the individual and its species.
Language is a survival tool, and the way it is used by theologians etc etc, is an Misuse like restaurants were people eat for pleasure, instead of staying alive.
We eat to live,
we don't live to eat
That idea holds truth for many other things, also language.
Most mystics and mystic traditions have stressed these misuses.
The first things Lao Zi says are about the use of language.
Wittgenstein at the end of one of his essays does the same.
And in between many others have addressed that issue of language.
Language is an tool, like an arm, hand or an leg things to gather food and to move from one tree to another ... they are not made for dancing ...please do not get angry
Posted by: um | April 02, 2021 at 03:03 PM
@ A.R.
We all have to deal with what is put before us:
the world
the culture
the social circumstances
the body
the mind
the thoughts
the feelings
the dreams
the sleep
None of these things are in your hands ... they are all presented to you without your knowledge or consent.
You have to accept the body you have, the mental make up etc etc
Some of us have also to deal with
NDE's
Lucid dreaming
Hallucinations
Out of the body experiences
Alyered drug experiences
Etc.
What sense does it make to discuss the rise of the sun at the beach with one who is born blind and to argue with him about the reality thereof?
When somebody who tells me about so called inner experiences, he cannot share those experiences with me, .... but ... i definitely enjoy listening and seeing the happiness on his face .... like one ... that comes home from having had a good vacation abroad and relates his stay there. Not for a moment I am interested if he realy was there ... hahaha.
Posted by: um | April 02, 2021 at 04:19 PM
The impressions on our mind become our thoughts.
The basic function of repetition in meditation is to rub something pleasant against those thoughts, and gradually wear away their impressions. It's a natural way to clean up those emotional impressions that, clearly, hold us back from feeling good and doing good.
Inner experience is in some ways irrelevant. But definitely peace, relaxation and temporary freedom from our own impressions are the inner experiences that attend practiced meditation, and in particular, inner repetition on something ideal. That ideal is in us, also. Let's bring it forth.
Posted by: Spence Tepper | April 03, 2021 at 08:53 AM
Hello, um.
I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood the point of my comment. Or so it appears to me.
I’m not for a moment doubting manjit’s experiences. (You are free to do that if you wish, of course. That’s your prerogative, absolutely. We must all come to our conclusions, and make our own judgments, about what and whom to believe and what and whom not.) Nor would I dream of patronizing manjit with that kind of “acceptance”, as if one were merely “accepting” someone’s dreams or fantasies, not for a moment bothering about whether they might be true, but happy for them as long as those dreams and fantasies made them happy. This sort of thing is something that does happen to interest me, very much. (Although again, you are free not to, it’s a matter of your own predilections.)
Thing is, manjit has, in past exchanges with me, discussed, at my request, and in great and fascinating detail, some of his own exquisite experiences, as well as his own conceptual framework built up to explain those experiences. And I’ve found that, quite apart from his experiences per se, the amount of reading he’s put in on matters spiritual, on matters mystical, is truly phenomenal. His views, coming as they do from that base of rich experiences, as well as deep reading, are something I respect.
To clarify, here’s where I was coming from. I’d originally said what I’d said basis Brian’s posts about RW, but we might as well discuss this, as example, in terms of RSSB-type experiences. And now I’m not speaking of RSSB per se, but only using their framework as example.
RSSB teachings describe celestial lights and sounds and visions that you apparently “see” “within”, when meditating. At one level, then, when you’ve not had those experiences yourself, and provided you’re actually interested in all of this, then what you do is carry on with the prescribed “experiments”. If nothing comes of it, you either dismiss the hypothesis at that point; or else you persevere, and in the meantime reserve judgment. (I’m assuming you’re not the superstitious kind that leaps to believing every tall tale that is told to them, despite the lack even of subjective first-hand validation. That I’m taking for granted.)
Now, say you’ve had your experiences. You’ve heard the inner symphony, and seen the inner lights, and traversed the inner planes. What now? Is this hallucination, or is this bona fide experience? How do you decide? THAT is the question I was trying to answer, and asking manjit how he himself answers it.
One guide might be others’ experiences. If many others have experienced what you’ve experienced, that is one point in favor of this not being hallucination. Not decisive, not by a long shot, because mass hallucinations are a thing, absolutely; but still.
But again, how do you fashion a larger worldview out of that, out of those barebones experiences?
…You see what I’m driving at, right? Given manjit’s rich experiences, as well as his deep reading on things mystical, I was asking him to describe, for my/our benefit, what kind of framework he uses to accept as reality, or to reject as mere hallucination, what he has experienced, and how he incorporates that into building up his larger worldview.
A dismissive “I’m happy that you’re happy, let’s not worry about whether your tall tales are true” kind of condescension isn’t where I’m coming from, at all. And, as for “Not for a moment I am interested if he realy was there ... hahaha”: well, you are entitled to your approach, absolutely, and nor would I criticize you if you choose to take that line. But I am not just interested, but very interested, extremely interested, in these experiences, and whether I might eventually access them myself, and what—if any—their larger import might be.
Posted by: Appreciative Reader | April 03, 2021 at 09:54 AM
@ A.D.
What I wrote was just an personal re-action, opinion ... it had nothing to do with how you handle what Manjit wrote.
Let me ad a personal incident.
In a gathering all of a sudden I saw the eyes of certain people bigger and different as human eyes normaly appear and in the same time I saw their normal size etc. When I put it before an advanced spiritual friend to find out what was what ... the answer was "did you like what you saw" ... and ... on answering in the affirmative, the friend answered ... Than???!!!??. Since then I just tend to take things that appear before me in that way.
Against this incident please do read the former answer.
Posted by: um | April 03, 2021 at 11:20 AM
"@ A.D.
What I wrote was just an personal re-action, opinion ... it had nothing to do with how you handle what Manjit wrote."
Fair enough, um. It was I who misunderstood your intent, in that case, and not the other way around!
.
"Let me ad a personal incident.
In a gathering all of a sudden I saw the eyes of certain people bigger and different as human eyes normaly appear and in the same time I saw their normal size etc. When I put it before an advanced spiritual friend to find out what was what ... the answer was "did you like what you saw" ... and ... on answering in the affirmative, the friend answered ... Than???!!!??. Since then I just tend to take things that appear before me in that way.
Against this incident please do read the former answer."
You mean you simply accept things as they are, without necessarily building a narrative within which to fit your "observations"? Sure, that's one way to go, I guess. There are some negatives to such an approach, but absolutely, such an approach would have quite a few positives as well, I see that. Absolutely, not beating oneself up to whip up some narrative, some larger framework, that's cool, if it works for you.
Incidentally -- and I realize you brought out the eyes thing only as illustration, to bring out your larger point -- but what on earth was that about? How and why on earth would people's eyes appear larger than normal, et cetera? And in any case, what's to like about huge outsize eyes? I'm not sure I understand that part.
Posted by: Appreciative Reader | April 03, 2021 at 12:00 PM
@A.R.
>>You mean you simply accept things as they are, without necessarily building a narrative within which to fit your "observations"? <<
Yes that is more or less the case. Over time I came to realize that many things are first to be accepted as an belief, like one has first to accept an hypothesis in science before an theory can be proved.
What remains are the personal mental, the intellectual and emotional, appreciation to go by taking an decision.
In older days, many guru was discussed and questioned. I always refrained from taking part in those discussions and when I was asked why I lend my ears to one and not to a another, I always answered that I felt attraction to one and not the other.
I do realize that my positive feelings and understanding do not make another an perfect master, nor do my negative feelings prove he is not an advanced soul.
And ... how can I explain or describe the things I see???!!
Please rub the web between the indexfinger and your thumb with your other thumb and ask yourself if you can describe what you feel.
Many things appear in a persons life, that stand out and because of that suggest to have meaning, but not always are these omens to be understood. The pharaoh had dreams but he needed the explanation of Moses to understand its meaning. I am not a pharaoh and lack an moses .... hahahaha
Posted by: um | April 03, 2021 at 02:03 PM
@The basic function of repetition in meditation is to rub something pleasant against those thoughts, and gradually wear away their impressions. It's a natural way to clean up those emotional impressions that, clearly, hold us back from feeling good and doing good.
@That ideal is in us, also. Let's bring it forth.
@Spence, you have again been exposed as an agent of RSSB, working with that entity inside you to catch people into the trap. You are knowingly bringing people to become enlightened only to Lucifer - the prince of lies. Why does RSSB ask you to repeat the names of kaal??? First red flag. Why do u surrender your free will to your so called master (GSD , the demon king), as you say he does your meditation. This is the 2nd red flag as you are in reality being possessed by an entity. All for that bit of bliss inside inside.
What have you sacrificed for this inside power trip? So you really think you get something for nothing with these entities. Also repetition is nothing but putting yourself in a transe state, an easy suggestive state, so that you become a puppet to your master who will totally devour and control you in this condition - this is nothing but sickness and abuse at the highest level. Yet you do it for an adrenaline hit/ power trip. They are not god, they are selling you a beautiful lie. Don't keep falling for these tricks and deceptions.
Posted by: Uchit | April 03, 2021 at 03:37 PM
@ Now, say you’ve had your experiences. You’ve heard the inner symphony, and seen the inner lights, and
@ traversed the inner planes. What now? Is this hallucination, or is this bona fide experience?
I agree with Um. What kind of touchstone would prove its validity? You're
caught in a cognitive trap trying to make sense of transcendent experience.
The proof can't be shoehorned into some kind of intellectually compelling
answer no matter how elaborate or rigorous the lab setting. Its study under
controlled scientific rigor is a wonderful thing nonetheless. But 'proof' of
validity will demand a different lens and a mystic's discipline.
"Did you like what you saw" captures it. Was there the clarity or heightened
awareness that come with mindfulness? Is it good for your BP or result in
other health benefits? Was the experience repeatable? If so, who cares if
it was hallucinatory... Mystics say everything apprehended by the senses
is illusion anyway; only the observer is real.
Posted by: Dungeness | April 03, 2021 at 04:36 PM
@ Dungeness
>>I agree with Um. What kind of touchstone would prove its validity? <<
The touchstone for taking can be found inside and outside.
Outside it can found in books, people, experts, scientific proof, common sense, the senses. It is the world of sharing the same mental content related to the senses. It is about the denomative, objective content of consepts. The relative world
Inside, the touchstone is the subjective world of preferences, both intellectual and emotional. These do not need prove, it is a matter of taste, believe, faith.
So eating in a restaurant can be based on the reputation of the the staff running the restaurant. That reputation is based on proof, Michelin stars, years of training all over the world, discussions in the media by watchers of the art etc etc.
It also can be based on one's taste only. What does it matter if the food on the table is prepared by a renowned chef is not according ones liking?? Does that knowledge help to make the food more tasty?? And ... is there something wrong with a person that doesn't like the taste of the food as prepared by such an chef??
And what is wrong if a person likes food that others do not like, or that is too simple to be talked about??
Those who base their decisions on their own, stand alone and are not bound to others, they are free to move around wherever they want.
Many years ago I participated in an so called "black Hat Ceremony" by the the then living 16th Gyalwa Karmapa. Part of the people in the audience had "spiritual" experiences and the rest not. Those who had experiences were split up in two groups. One group reported saw lights and the other spoke of dark demonic things.
Now, one can delve in discussions whether the karma pa was a saintly or demonic person etc and find proof for the view in the experience ... or ... one can take it as it is, and decide upon the subjective impression what steps next to take.
The tendency for demanding proof before taking any action in life and bearing the consequences of that decision, can become a great hinderance... it can become an excuse to hide ones fears, ego demands, lack of heart and faith.
Nothing special ... this are just two different ways to deal with life.
Posted by: um | April 04, 2021 at 02:44 AM
Hello, Dungeness. Long time!
I’m afraid I’m hogging the comments section of this thread. But I’m going to permit myself one more longish comment, because I disagree in the strongest possible terms with your POV, and I would like to articulate my disagreement clearly, and invite you to see if you wouldn’t, in light of what I’m going to say, like to revise your view.
-------
Now at one level, obviously, I agree with um, and with you as well, as I’ve already said earlier on. If personally you don’t care to engage with narratives as far as some particular field, or even more generally, then that is, at one level, merely a question of your personal predilections, and as such your business and no one else’s. No question of “disagreement” with an essentially personal choice of that nature.
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But the part where you generalize that kind of approach, when it comes to mysticism? The part where you seem to see narratives and cognitive structures as “traps”? I’m sorry, that’s something I find entirely nonsensical. Here’s why.
The beauty of the scientific method is this, that it helps us navigate through, and discover more and more about, and make use of, reality as we find it. Irrespective of the nature of that reality.
What you’re resorting to is basically magical thinking. Faced with any and every thing, the closed-minded God-believer will say, “…because God!”, without thinking through what that means. What you are doing the exact equivalent of that, except instead of “…because God!”, you’re using the more sophisticated but essentially similar “…because mysticism!”.
And you know what, even in a world of actual magic, that kind of magical thinking is …I’m sorry, nonsensical. What is Rowling’s Hogwarts after all? It’s a system of understanding, and cataloging, and analyzing, and then channelizing the magical forces in a (fictional) magical world. No real magician (as in, real magician in a hypothetical or fictional world where magic reigns) would simply put up his hands and say “…because magic!” and leave it at that. The real magician will find out how exactly the magic operates, essentially use the scientific method and empiricism on that magical world, much as we apply the scientific method to QM for instance. Unless he is able to do that, he can never even become a magician.
So, I’d say your view, that narrative-building as far as mysticism—even granted, for the sake of argument, that mysticism is a thing (which after all in a larger context is by no means a given)—as something that is essentially beyond cognitive understanding, is …well, blinkered, not clearly thought through.
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Of course, in a mystical world, or in a magical world, or in our everyday mundane world, whether you personally engage with some particular narrative, or any narrative, that like I said is a whole different matter. That is your business and yours alone. I can choose to live in this world without having formulated any detailed narrative, any detailed personal worldview, about the nature of QM, or for that matter even gravity, or the universe, and still manage to live a full enough life, as long as those aspects are not important to my everyday functioning.
But to see all narratives as “traps”, and to see mysticism, should mysticism be a thing (or for that magic, should magic exist) as something essentially beyond cognitive understanding, that kind of POV simply does not hold up to examination.
-------
I’m reminded here of the fable, parable, whatever, of someone-or-other finding a piece of truth on the way. And the Devil looks on at what’s happening, smiling. The Devil’s minions are super worried, and grovel their miserable way up to their horned scarlet master, asking him in wheedling tones why he’s not worried, because that piece of truth can take that man forever out of the Devil’s reach. And the Devil smiles knowingly, and says, This has happened before, and this will happen again, and all that poor fool will do is go cataloging that piece of truth, and never actually leave my dominion.
I guess the message within that fable, parable, whatever, is what you’re channeling here, right? Well, okay, at a personal level that message does make some kind of sense. If I wish to live in this world, using things like computers and GPS and computers and whatnot, then, if I get caught up in compulsively understanding the mechanism of each and every thing I see and would use, then that bottomless rabbit hole would end up being what my entire life will devolve into. I’ll never actually use those things, I’ll never find the time to live my life. Which is clearly dysfunctional, unless that kind of inquisitiveness is, A, somehow limited and focused, and B, somehow channelized, into a profession perhaps, such that I draw some kind of personal benefit from it.
To that extent, and also to the extent that it is, like I’d said earlier, a matter of one’s own predilections, this kind of attitude, of not wanting to get into cognitive structures and narratives, might work, at a personal level, as long as one doesn’t get too deep into whatever-it-is, and as long as one is …well, lucky enough to get by despite one’s ignorance. The channelizing of one’s energies away from cognitive understanding might then even be beneficial, at a personal level.
But to generalize that argument, as you are doing, and to think of cognitive structures and narratives as “traps” is, …I’m sorry, that makes no sense at all.
Posted by: Appreciative Reader | April 04, 2021 at 05:33 AM
@ A.R.
>>But to generalize that argument, as you are doing, and to think of cognitive structures and narratives as “traps” is, …I’m sorry, that makes no sense at all<<
Having insights and thinking them through and expressing the in language are all different thinks.
What is the natural man?
What is the cultural man?
What is culture and how is it related to nature?
The advise was given to me:
To live a natural life in a natural way
and ...
A simple life in a simple way.
Intriguing advise and use of concepts and language.
Obvious from the way it is said, a natural life can be lived in another way than natural. It is also clear, as the advise is giving in this time of life, that it has nothing to do with a return to a romantic pastoral life.
The question than arises how would a natural life look like in a cultural world.
Sitting down with a cup of tea and thinking it through, is not my cup of tea. It needs a talent , i call it the chess mind, and that i miss. And even if there, it would mean and need a gifted rhetoric capabilities.
Having said that, over time, after waking up in the midst of the movie of life, the idea of life as an collection of narratives made its advent.
Almost everything if not all that is abstract and not related to the senses and not related to the instincts of keeping living structure s a life, are or seem to be narratives.
If a person is killed or kills for the sake of democracy, freedom, etc etc is he not trapped in an narrative? Having asked that question another question arises whether it is possible to organise human activity without the use of such narratives. If not how can something be at the same time be a trap and not a trap.
Probably the answer lies in that narrative of the man that lost his key in his own house and went on the streets searching for those keys, as there was more light.
All content of the mind is related to the world and to participation in the world, it is the light of the world, so to say .... so ... if there is an answer it must be found in the darkness, inside and if found by necessity it cannor be expressed
My god ... I do need coffee now
Posted by: um | April 04, 2021 at 08:57 AM
Hi Uchit
Repetition is what your mind is doing all the time.
But what is it repeating?
You are the slave of that.
Posted by: Spence Tepper | April 04, 2021 at 10:29 AM
um, I really must stop now, after this comment, or else I'll keep posting endlessly here! :--)
----- "Sitting down with a cup of tea and thinking it through, is not my cup of tea. It needs a talent , i call it the chess mind, and that i miss. And even if there, it would mean and need a gifted rhetoric capabilities."
Tea, bleh. I'd recommend coffee, any day.
As for chess, I just finished a game, not ten minutes ago! With a sweet young lady of seven, whose killer checkmate move is to throw all the pieces around in fury when it's clear to her she's about to lose, so that the only prudent gameplan is to let her win.
The moral of that little tale is that there's more ways to win at chess, than the shrewdest grandmaster might think up!
---- "If a person is killed or kills for the sake of democracy, freedom, etc etc is he not trapped in an narrative? "
Yes and no. Yes, he's trapped, if he's doing that unawares. And no, he isn't "trapped", if that is a clearly thought out and 'aware' decision. For better or for worse, anything done or not done, as long as it flows through awareness, isn't a "trap". IMV, at any rate.
I'd say it's like, to use an example you yourself use in your comment (albeit in a different context): narratives are like houses. They can be thought of as representing the difference between what it is to be a man and what it is to be an animal.
That said, yes, it is certainly possible to get "trapped" in a house, either by someone locking you in, or by a landslide burying you inside, or for that matter by some form of extreme agoraphobia that makes it difficult for the patient to leave their house at all. And the kind of agoraphobia that "traps" us within our pet narratives is, unfortunately, almost ubiquitous.
But -- and this is where I disagreed with Dungeness -- the solution is not to think of houses as prisons, or of narratives as traps. That's like tossing out the baby, wailing and screaming, along with the bath water. The solution is simply cultivating awareness.
Narratives are what make life as we know it, human life, civilized life, possible. Without it we are no more than animals, quite literally.
---- "My god ... I do need coffee now"
Cheers!
Posted by: Appreciative Reader | April 04, 2021 at 10:45 AM
@ A.R.
Your comment brought a smile on the face .... agoraphobic use of concepts ... hahaha.
It is the use of bright color on the canvas.
Of course you are right in what you write about the use and necessity of narratives.
Without its proper use culture can not flourish.
But if one wakes up in a narrative ... there is no going back to the previous being lost in it and one has to deal with the situation in ways that culture doesn't is of any help.
Posted by: um | April 04, 2021 at 11:59 AM
@ But to generalize that argument, as you are doing, and to think of cognitive structures and narratives
@ as “traps” is, …I’m sorry, that makes no sense at all.
Wow, that's quite an indictment AR. I was responding to your targeted question
of whether a transcendent inner experience was a "hallucination or bona fide". I
only asserted that the cognitive trap was trying to make sense of a transcendent
experience in an attempt to validate it as "hallucination or bona fide". Language and
logic as we know them fall short in that Solomon-esque endeavor to validate an
transcendent experience. I only suggested a different lens and a mystic's discipline
were needed. Perhaps in lieu of "needed", "helpful" would be a more acceptably
non-denominational term.
I never "generalized" this to "cognitive structures and narratives". That's overreach.
By the way, I explicitly lauded scientific rigor and never suggested we abandon it
either. At a practical level, the clarity, heightened awareness, and health benefits
of a mindfulness discipline only enhance science and its path of discovery.
@ Faced with any and every thing, the closed-minded God-believer will say, “…because God!”, without
@ thinking through what that means. What you are doing the exact equivalent of that, except instead of
@ “…because God!”, you’re using the more sophisticated but essentially similar “…because mysticism!”.
To equate mysticism with magical thinking and close-mindedness is dismissive and
misses the mark also. Ironically, mysticism, in contrast to the blind faith of religion,
insists that you confirm premises experientially within via a disciplined practice of
mindfulness. Mysticism acts collaboratively and complementarily with science.
There's no place for magical thinking.
"We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive
where we started And know the place for the first time." --T.S. Eliot
Posted by: Dungeness | April 04, 2021 at 05:16 PM
Quote Dungeness:
"Wow, that's quite an indictment AR. I was responding to your targeted question
of whether a transcendent inner experience was a "hallucination or bona fide". I
only asserted that the cognitive trap was trying to make sense of a transcendent
experience in an attempt to validate it as "hallucination or bona fide". Language and
logic as we know them fall short in that Solomon-esque endeavor to validate an
transcendent experience. I only suggested a different lens and a mystic's discipline
were needed. Perhaps in lieu of "needed", "helpful" would be a more acceptably
non-denominational term.
I never "generalized" this to "cognitive structures and narratives". That's overreach.
By the way, I explicitly lauded scientific rigor and never suggested we abandon it
either. At a practical level, the clarity, heightened awareness, and health benefits
of a mindfulness discipline only enhance science and its path of discovery."
-------
Hello, Dungeness.
First of all, let's follow um's example and start, and end, and intersperse our discussion with occasional "hahahaha"s. Keep it light, as he does. :--)
As far as indictment, that's kind of a strong description, but when you get down to it, yes, I am criticizing the idea you expressed in your comment. With the clear understanding that we're examining each other's ideas, you mine and I yours, and I at any rate am entirely open to changing my mind should our discussion so warrant. That's kind of (much of) the point of my commenting here.
With that understood, here we go:
No, you weren't dismissing all narratives and all cognitive structures, but you most certainly did say, and are still saying, that cognitive structures are somehow intrinsically unable to capture mystical realities (should such exist).
Here's what you'd said previously : "What kind of touchstone would prove its validity? You're caught in a cognitive trap trying to make sense of transcendent experience. The proof can't be shoehorned into some kind of intellectually compelling answer no matter how elaborate or rigorous the lab setting."
And here's what you say now: "I only asserted that the cognitive trap was trying to make sense of a transcendent experience in an attempt to validate it as "hallucination or bona fide". Language and logic as we know them fall short in that Solomon-esque endeavor to validate an transcendent experience. I only suggested a different lens and a mystic's discipline were needed."
You're essentially saying that the scientific method is fine for "this" world. But for an allegedly transcendent reality, it is of no use.
My point is, should a "transcendent" reality exist -- and I'm by no means dismissing that possibility out of hand, as you know I'm a meditator myself, albeit I steer clear of the hocus pocus and mumbo jumbo that invariably get mixed up with the meditative core of all traditions -- there is no reason at all why that higher reality should be beyond the reach of the scientific method and clear understanding. At least in theory, even if, in practice, and like QM, clarity of understanding eludes us at this point. (Always assuming, for the sake of argument, that mystical realities are a thing.)
In fact, I object to the term "supernatural" or "transcendent". Say you can actually hear celestial music and see higher planes and whatnot. Well, all of that, then, is what reality would be. It might transcendent, as far as this world -- again, assuming for the sake of argument that such do exist -- but it wouldn't be transcendent of understanding. Nothing, nothing at all, if at all it exists, can possibly be that, not in principle.
That is what I was taking issue with, your idea that mystical realities are beyond the reach of cognitive understanding. I know you weren't dismissing all cognitive structures; but you were saying and do say that mysticism is beyond the reach of cognitive understanding, and that is what I was disagreeing with.
-------
"To equate mysticism with magical thinking and close-mindedness is dismissive and misses the mark also."
Hang on, hang on, you misunderstand me. That isn't what I was saying. I wasn't saying mysticism is like magic. Here's what I was actually saying:
Saying that something is beyond understanding, even in principle, is what I was referring to as "magical thinking". People do that with God. You were doing that, and are still doing that, with mysticism.
Well, what I was saying is that this kind of magical thinking is fallacious.
I was using "magic" merely as an example, to show how magical thinking is wanting. Even in a literally magical world, of the kind we see in J K Rowling, people don't simple say "Uh no, magic, can't use cognitive structures". If magic were a part of our world, then the scientific method, and cognitive structures and narratives, would apply to that as well. Likewise, if mystic realities are bona fide part of our actual reality, then there is no reason why, in principle, they should elude investigation via the scientific method.
So that, I don't see why we shouldn't devise and follow rules to differentiate vanilla hallucinations from genuine mystical visions (assuming, for the sake of argument, that the latter do exist). If I'm a mystic that sees stuff inside, that doesn't mean I should believe every random dream I might have. So, how do I differentiate the wheat from the chaff? That seems like a valid question to me, and a very important one for a genuine mystic. I was asking manjit what his own de facto rule/guideline/heuristic is, for ascertaining which of his visions and experiences are bona fide mystical, and which not.
Posted by: Appreciative Reader | April 05, 2021 at 12:19 AM