10.5.12
Understandings, Arguments, and Have Some Respect (for your own brain)
I think there are many similarities between astral projection and lucid dreaming. For one, what you practice and build on is very similar - the ability to remember and recall your experience in dreaming or in OBE’s. I’m still in training for astral projection, so I wouldn’t be a very good judge about this, but as of now I feel as though OBE’s could be a subtype of lucid dreaming, considering that you can basically do whatever you want in lucid dreams.
It’s still frustrating to see how many people react negatively with ridicule towards things like astral projection, or more general things like ESP, but not so much, let’s say, empathy or dreaming. I have a problem when people openly criticize things blindly thinking that they know what they’re talking about when they really have no clue. I have no problem if people choose not to believe in something, choose not to pursue something, but I cannot stand when people do not respect something only because they do not understand.
Yes, it is very dangerous to mention things like ESP in “academia” because you risk seeming like a fool while people condemn you with the “that’s not scientific” are you kidding, in your face. This is very sad. First of all, I already mentioned the whole theoretical models view of the universe from a limited perspective from consciousness, which classifies science as a model, just like religion or any other “model” of the universe (i.e. objective truth is an absurd thing). Secondly, sure I get it you’re a scientist (or whatever), I am too, but can you at least make your argument in such a way that shows your through understanding of the subject, and then make a good argument based on scientific views?
In some ways it is unfortunate that ESP has gained popularity through pop culture views of it, associating it with a number of things that it really has nothing to do with. One thing that people argue it the irrational in people who believe that they have “special powers”. Where on earth does it say that ESP is “special” powers? If you talked to anyone who has developed their abilities in any way at all, no one is going to tell you that these are rare gifts that only they have that no one else does. It’s really more like we all have the ability, it’s part of the way we are. But how much of that ability we can use is dependent on practice. Kind of like drawing - anyone can do it and improve with practice, some people may have a natural flair, but that doesn’t make it “supernatural” (in an eerie way as commonly perceived, that it).
And just saying, I would love to have a debate with you about the validity of psychic abilities, but please, please make sure you actually know what you’re talking about, okay? I’m sure if someone tried to argue against science without knowing what they’re talking about, you’d feel reasonably frustrated as well - especially when they’re talking to you like they know it all and you’re the lunatic. Give your mind another chance, will you? Why is it so hard for people to not take things at face value?
***And finally, closing words that may or may not seem obnoxious: I speak of your need to “understand” things, to try and perceive things differently outside of your own ways of perception in order to see more, but at the same time I have no understanding of what it’s like to “not” understand, do I? So I’m just as blind as you are when I’m frustrated that you don’t understand, and perhaps I shouldn’t judge you so much by virtue of my own argument. Like I said, incomprehension is incomprehensible once you comprehend - just like anything else in the universe, isn’t it? Funny.
1.5.12
Reality, the Strange Loop
Today I was thinking about the possibilities of demons again, but Sandy reminded me that I shouldn’t start believing in demons if I haven’t already been believing in them. This is very true, and although this has always been my take on reality - that what you believe in is what reality becomes, and that there is no objective “truth” - it is nonetheless still difficult to appreciate at times after being conditioned (somehow? by what?) to believe certain things about reality for so long.
Well, for some reason I have been conditioned to have faith in the idea that people who I observe outside of my consciousness also have consciousness despite the complete lack of direct evidence. Why is this so? Why was I not conditioned to believe from the very beginning that no one else had a consciousness, and that my mind was the only thing that has ever existed - in which case, the former would seem extremely absurd (in contrast to the absurdity currently perceived in the latter).
Well, for one thing, I have constantly been approaching these thoughts in a “trying to figure out” kind of way, which is ironic because the act of “figuring out” pre-supposes that there is an objective truth without the necessity of one. I haven’t really stopped to suppose that the universe and reality may be a “morphing” thing, that is, it changes instantaneously with whatever I happen to come to believe at the moment.
I’ve run into this thought before, at which point, terrified to be “God”, I stopped, but it seems to make a lot of sense as I think about it now, even though it may not be the most “ideal” and/or “comforting” possibility, but those things are arbitrarily emotional anyways, so I should disregard. But that thought I have is this: For every instant that I believe or have ever believed that people outside of my mind actually exist (i.e., they have their own conscious minds), then they do. But as soon as I go back to supposing that they don’t exist, then they don’t. And the universe is basically only this weird ever changing thing that morphs into whatever I believe at the moment, because beliefs are not consistent all the time, and neither is reality. That is what is implied by the belief that “reality becomes whatever I come to believe” - it is a time dependent belief in the sense that my beliefs change with time.
And as you see, this belief clearly only seems to make sense in a very circular way, because that belief cannot always be true, otherwise it would constitute as an “objective truth” which violates its own statement. So that belief must not always be true, but only when the perceiver perceives that belief to be “true” but again true in a time dependent sense, or rather, a belief/consciousness dependent sense - that truths, just like realities, universes, and consciousnesses are amorphous and self-dependent in a circular way. This does not exclude the possibility of other realities, universes, and consciousnesses existing independently with different principles outside of any given reality, universe, or consciousness, but it also doesn’t prove it.
Hmm… I think this bemused euphoric sensation that I derive from running into more and more questions and questions and answerless questions about reality is what “people” would generally call “trippy”. Why does it have to be a drug-related sensation (not that there is anything wrong with drugs)? Shouldn’t this be a pretty regularly experienced normal feeling that people get on a day-to-day basis if they’re at all capable of thought? I don’t understand how people could just ignore these things and “live”, but I guess that’s an irrelevant question because at the moment I don’t believe that any of them really exist.
Mind and Matter by Erwin Schrödinger
I like it when theoretical physicists start realizing things about reality and consciousness beyond what is immediately materialistically apparent. (Well, philosophical realization in physics? It’s inevitable, obviously, unless you’re just like, dumb or something.) I don’t like it when physicists become obsessed with the “power and beauty” of science so much so that they think science is the best thing that ever existed - those, the tard kind.
Mind and Matter by Erwin Schrödinger