Saturday, April 30, 2011

About telepathy

I always thought that telepathy is a way where you can hear the other person's thoughts the same way you hear your own verbal dialogue. But then later I thought, why is the mental talk even necessary. If I just heard his mental talk, then it is as good as him speaking it out for me. That is not as consequential as the meaning itself. Can meaning itself be transmitted?

But then I started to wonder what is 'meaning' really? I consider my thoughts to be a verbal dialogue inside my head. But where does this verbal dialogue spout from.

There are lot of perplexing questions here:
When I hear my own mental talk inside my head, who is listening?
I think state of mind/mood determines what verbal dialogues is created inside my head. What does 'mood/state of mind' mean? The electrochemical balance in the brain?
What controls the electrochemical balance? The mind?
If the mind controls it then it would depend upon perception, beliefs, notions, impressions and ideas I have?
Thought also manipulates these right. Like autosuggestion. What is thought then?

It seems to be cyclical. But there is someone creating/watching and maintaining this cycle. How do I isolate this entity?

Even if I do isolate, how can another person's meaning be transferred telepathically without me losing my own egoic point of view. Would I see it like a dream? But we cannot control dreams right, so how can I control this process? Is it possible to really see another person's feelings without losing your egoic consciousness?

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Ways to stop conscious thought

Here are some of the situations I would imagine can stop your thinking:

 External:
1. Very loud over powering music for more than 10mins would put you in a trance. Maybe this is the principle of clubs.
2. You hear someone speak about something that you really yearn to know. e.g.: Something deeply emotional
3. A moment of Awe or deep wonderment on an external object. e.g.: Seeing a pyramid for the first time(assuming you've never read about it or seen a picture of it)

Internal:
1. Consuming drugs like ecstasy that amplify your senses high enough that your thinking cannot function anymore
2. Orgasm - All conscious thought is suspended at the climax moments

Society is a VIRTUAL reality

Each person inhabits a fundamentally different reality from the one your in. They have different definitions and imaginations about all the possible emotions and feelings you can think of. Yet for the purpose of simplification, our society tends to think, "everyone wants the same things and everyone is fairly similar". This is an extremely reductionist approach and disregards the real complexity and beauty of the individual himself. An entire belief system is created by society and this conditioning is passed on to every human that is born within society at a very early age. This is simply a VIRTUAL REALITY. You are conditioned at a young age with practically everything ranging from what you want, don't want, afraid of etc and its very easy to believe in them because they are validated by 99.5% of the people you meet. Its a conundrum very similar to the MATRIX. Its is so hard to even prove this intellectually to a person. It takes a substantial amount of reflection, thought, exploration and an intense desire to know the truth even to reach a level where you actually start asking existential questions and seek answers with intensity.

The essence of all religions

I believe the founders of all the religions such as Jesus, Buddha etc. would have perceived the real truth in an altered state of consciousness. But however, as these religions stand today, I guess they have severely distorted the messages from these people. Besides, its extremely difficult to explain these things in our languages.

Even I have a really tough time, explaining some complex existential concepts to people. It took me a lot of work over many years to really be comfortable with questioning certain beliefs even. I am misunderstood MOST of the time. I cant even imagine how difficult it would be for an enlightened person to pass on the knowledge.

Its best to trust your direct experiences the most.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

People's judgments..

I've noticed a peculiar funny thing in society, even among all of my friends. Their judgments of you are always based on societal expectations in one way or the other. For e.g.: As a person, you can tremendously evolve when you do activities like questioning your core beliefs, understanding your thought patterns through reflection or pursue forms of contemplation. You may come to the realization that most people are trapped in a large number of beliefs and they are far from even aware of this fact. But this evolution is simply disregarded in society. They simply judge you using their societal filter.

This filter is something like:
  • Are you really good (ideals defined from society) at some sport?
  • Are you very good at academics?
  • Do you have lots of money?
  • Have a large sphere of public influence?
  • Are you good looking as per standards defined by media?
  • Are your efforts towards improving your chances in some commercial endeavor?
Any activity that I pursue which is beyond this sphere is considered a pastime, irrelevant, insignificant and unimportant. So if I do not do those typically acceptable activities for a long time and spend more time with other things that interest me, then I'm judged as a person who is wasting his life away. I've noticed this even among my parents and close friends. Its astonishing.

I strongly believe, 'society is not your friend' (Terence Mckenna), all its activities are related to itself and not to help you evolve. Society doesn't care whether you discover your true self or not. All it cares about is that, you fit its conventions and defined acceptable paths.

Problem solving: Where you perceive from vs how you perceive




Bird's eye view vs Fork road view:
Motivational speakers and people generally keep saying what you perceive as a problem is related to the way you look at things. I've tried reorienting myself a few times but this change never really gets ingrained in me. Its usually just temporary and if you stop paying attention, you revert to your original behavior. For example: positive thinking techniques etc. You could create a strong pattern by repetition and habit but this would not stem from real understanding so in essence it is still vulnerable to thought manipulations by other people.

Nowadays, I started looking at solving this in a different way. I think "A real change in perception would be more from WHERE you perceive the problem from rather than how you perceive it". Its like understanding truth at a higher level and comprehending how things fit into the larger picture help in literally eliminating some problems or drastically reduce their emotional effects.

There are some profound truths like: 

  • "All meaning is self created, in essence an illusion"
  • "The body is something that is within the field of awareness and we are the awareness itself. The awareness is everywhere, universal, shapeless and formless"
Just imagine the impact of actually understanding and internalizing these truths. Thousands of problems would simply disappear in the light of this new knowledge. But these truths may also destroy illusions which mean you may lose the positive highs too from false meaning. That is why its not something that's really straightforward to change. I guess there are different levels of awareness and moving to the next layer can fundamentally change you perception in many ways. That is why its important to maintain fluidity with respect to your beliefs. The entire physical reality is perceived by our beliefs, which is essentially what we call reality.

Monday, April 25, 2011

Definition of being truly naked

Normally we associate being naked with just removing all our clothes. That is just being naked in the physical sense. But the complete concept of naked is to truly strip yourself of everything. Even when we remove our clothes, we still carry our expectations, assumptions, judgments, interpretations, impressions, opinions, beliefs about everything in reality. Only when we drop all of the above too are we truly naked, original and pure. This concept also leads to perception of real truth about oneself, peace and freedom.

Core-beliefs are invisible to most of us. It takes quite a but of hunting, awareness and reflection to really pin them down and analyze the truth behind them. Most of the reality we perceive is based on core beliefs.

Here are some sample articles that helps to analyze core beliefs:
http://www.pathwaytohappiness.com/writings_core_beliefs.htm
http://www.growingaware.com.au/Negative_beliefs_examples.htm

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Dreams may be far more revelatory than we think

People who have smoked DMT report crazy experiences and encounter with strange entities. We dismiss all that calling them hallucinations. But what is a hallucination really? What if its a parallel dimension coexisting with our reality? And what if we are accessing that by switching our frequency channel? What if this dimension is the super set/mother-ship of what we call reality in day to day terms?Maybe you are getting to experience something far beyond even our imaginations and thoughts about what reality could be?

We dream every night and most people dismiss that as random electrical activity in the brain of no consequence. But what is the inherent meaning of a dream? Maybe our waking world is a dream and every night we revisit the higher dimension and acquire energy and understanding? It can't be ruled out, can it? Maybe we need much greater awareness to see its significance?

Technically, if consciousness is animating the electrical networks in your brain causing you to have experiences then isn't the consciousness itself switching to a different channel during REM sleep? The brain receives twice the blood flow during REM. How can this random activity or subconscious processing of information (as called by psychologists) provide energy? What happens when we go to deep sleep? Where do we get our energy from? The answer cannot be just food and water, and an endless process of a form of recycling, can it? We spend almost a third of our lives sleeping and we still pay no attention to it?

If a person talks in this manner, you would dismiss him as crazy and there would be a consensus that he should go to a mental hospital or rehabilitation center. But is consensus good enough to believe he is really crazy? What if we are the deluded ones and he is at-least questioning? Culture is just a boundary defining engine, a virtual reality where your forced to think within specified limits.

Rational thought is just a small part in the spectrum of thought, yet most people think that scientific and rational thought provides context and answers to everything. I too had this belief throughout childhood but I always felt a strong desire to explore philosophy and other ways of knowing. The blessing of broadband then came and opened my mind.

Friday, April 22, 2011

Fear of removing fear

Once fear is removed, we start moving towards immediate pleasures and fantasies. This is why there is fear even about even removing fear. We are afraid that we might endanger ourselves in the long term. But this too is one of the important intermediate stages before reaching an elevated state. After we get reasonably saturated with our immediate pleasures and desires then we move on towards things that we are expected by society. Now, the fear is drastically lower compared to how it was before the fear removal process.

Ways to remove fear: Insights through knowledge from associative thinking chains and direct experience through exploration:
Now that we have the entire internet at our fingertips, we can start off with just about any existential or religious question that you have and look it up on Google. Now, you would have access to other people's views on the topic and you also find some related terms to your basic question. Start exploring all of them. The interest is maintained since, you still have the impetus of your original question and the other things that you encounter build upon it, so it stays aligned and you continually gain energy for your exploration.

What is the common reason for people to get tired at work? Its because they are doing something which they don't really want to do right?. However, when you explore something because of true interest in it, you only gain energy from it.

So now to give an analogy, you start building this expanding sphere which started as a point. Its an entire associative network that you start building from your single question. This network is what we call knowledge right! in common language. You start seeing how different fields overlap and start exploring many more questions in a similar manner. So you have this continuous burgeoning of expanding bubbles of knowledge. You will find that they overlap a lot too. The overlap is important because that is the connection. The more the connections, the deeper the knowledge and wisdom.

Along with intellectual knowledge, it is very important to gain direct experience as much as you can because direct experience is far closer to the truth than stuff that you read. Check out 'Terence Mckenna' if you want a shocker.

This is the method I use to acquire knowledge through exploration. It is inspired from nature in a lot of ways. For e.g.: It is surprisingly similar to the universe expansion which continually expands in all directions like a balloon being inflated. It also resembles evolution where simple forms evolve to become more and more complex and this happens simultaneously because knowledge is surprisingly interrelated. Once you reach a threshold, you;ll start to look at the world a lot more metaphorically. The ultimate metaphor is enlightenment after all :), where all knowledge is connected and you are one.

Very similar to the Socratic approach:
I find a topic then continually explore all related terms then look for contradictions in my view. Each contradiction provokes further interest, and means more exploration - reading, watching videos, introspection.
This continually expands outwards. Sometimes one view can challenge 100's of my previous beliefs. In that case it requires mass rewiring to accommodate this. I guess my experiences after reading about Buddhism and meditation have been the greatest rewiring effort i've ever done in my life. It has been an exciting journey and very fulfilling.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

New ongoing experience - something I had never thought of even

 A somewhat strange/novel thing has happened to me recently. I have been intensely questioning and seeing various mind bending kind of youtube videos for the past 1.5months. It had almost reached the peak of its intensity around a week back. Three days back in the afternoon, I tried a guided meditation for around 25 mins and reached a hynogogia state which was the deepest in a while. After coming out of it, I could feel the boiling water like flashes in front of my eyes, similar to the way we see when just woken up from a dream. Then, that day night I decided to sleep early at 12:30am. This was unusual since I usually slept at 3:30am. When I got up in the morning, I was surprised to find that I was surprisingly awake and not groggy. This awake feeling has a different feel to it. It was like there is something beyond my body and brain that is awake. It lasted throughout the day. In the night, I was feeling elated for no specific reason and I couldn't pinpoint it. It was like my experience baseline was uplifted and my conscious mind was blanker than usual. It was really quiet. Even if I put effort into thinking a thought, the thought did not affect my emotional state. This was highly unusual. Usually even if I was in a good mood, I would get affected by bad thoughts but this state seemed to be the same unaffected by thoughts. I looked up this on the net and found out that it was called "Affective ego". Meditation affects the affective ego. In my experience it seemed to have reduced it by around 50%. So I felt pleasurable feelings and painful ones with only 50% deviation and the basic baseline was elevated. I feel a sense of freshness, brightness and clarity which is difficult to put in words. Also I do not feel sleepy for the entire day till 12:30am in the night.

The best analogy I can give is that, imagine an AC filter that keeps getting clogged often. You take it out, clean it a bit and again it gets clogged after a while. Imagine if the filter itself is punctured. Then the cool blast of air would come out from the hole in full force and the filter wouldn't affect it. If I compare, the filter is probably my false self. Maybe it has suddenly loosened up releasing the real self energy which is the cool blast of air.

This seems to be a hockey stick graph kind of development since I've been trying meditating for 2 yrs almost but nothing has created such a strong impact till date. The odd part about this experience is that, your wellbeing level is so high that your afraid you may lose your sensitivity for pleasure. If you cannot feel pain at all, how can you enjoy the pleasure. Similarly, since the connection between automatic thoughts and emotions has been broken to an extent it creates a very different experience. My emotional memory seems to have suddenly faded. I cannot recreate any powerful feelings by using thought. The positive feelings and negative feelings created by thoughts are numbed and I can feel an elevated baseline. As of now, its a mixed bag, but I'm learning to enjoy and appreciate this new state.

PS: The experience lasted for around 3 days total. After that, I got back to my old self.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Amazingly insightful stuff

Top of the list - Youtube vids:
Shinzen young
Eckhart tolle
Adyashanti
Bashar
18th april -  Terence Mckenna
Ken Wilber
Sadhguru

Blogs:
Steve Pavlina blog
Imaging the 11th dimension blog
High Existence
http://goodshare.org/wp/the-experiential-reality-beneath-the-language-game-illusion/

Cool websites:
http://www.pathwaytohappiness.com/
http://www.berzinarchives.com/ - use site map
http://www.eruptingmind.com/
http://www.abundancetapestry.com/
http://fundamental-shift.com/
http://www.messagefrommasters.com/
http://www.psitek.net/
http://shambhalasun.com/

http://www.calmdownmind.com/

Best general insightful website:
Ted Talks

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Subjectivity and Art

I think art forms exist only because of subjectivity. Is everything was objective there would be no art. Each of us sees different patterns in this matrix of reality. Artists are able to extract, articulate and communicate these patterns to us, rich in emotional value. Art is a form of communication. It can communicate subjective experiences in ways that verbal, math or logic cannot.

The most classic example of subjectivity is revealed in dreams. Each persons' dreams are completely unique. As an experiment, try to write down what you saw and experienced in your dream today morning. It is incredibly difficult to express it in words. You would have to use all kinds of analogies which are again based on your previous experiences. You may even need to diagram out some stuff, but it would still just represent its skeleton.

Friday, April 8, 2011

Is the mind just a creation of the brain?

My roommate stuck to the idea that everything including the mind originates inside the physical brain and there is nothing non physical. Though I felt my gut totally opposing this thought, it was difficult to really justify the existence of a non physical distinct mind overlapping the physical brain and body. I looked it up on the internet and it was interesting to find that very exact question in: Philosophy - Epistemology - Dualism vs Monism. It does seem like a perplexing question without an easy way to answer. I think the only way to really answer this is to maintain awareness even in deep sleep since in this state the brain activity slows down to 1hz - almost dead.

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Everything is equally significant

After intense probing on different questions, it sometimes appears to me that, if you strongly look for a particular pattern in reality, you end up finding it. And this applies to almost anything. That is why it is probably said, for psychic powers to function, belief that it is possible and that you can achieve it, is the foundation. Almost anything I examine, for example greatness, light, brightness, sound intensity, intensity of emotion or feelings, state of mind etc. all of them derive meaning from their opposite which means opposites such as evil, death, darkness, silence etc are equally significant. Every event's meaning is equally intertwined it its opposite. So you can find significance in almost everything. In absolute terms, every event is equally significant. It is just society that has created this game or dream.

Even in quantum mechanics, a lot of phenomena are related to the observer observing them. The whole physical world itself is an illusion and it is said that even our bodies are actually a condensation of our thoughts, emotions, spiritual condition. The movie "Peaceful Warrior" is an awesome movie for the purpose of insight. No moment is insignificant or every moment is a manifestation of divine intelligence.

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Ramblings - 2apr

A strange thing is happening. The more awareness and equanimity im bringing in from moment to moment, the more im feeling I do not know anything. My thought process itself is continually warped by my moods, diet, situation and environment. I seem to be more objective at times and subjective at the others. Even in those sporadic objective moments, I can see that I have a lot of beliefs that are still holding me back and that there is room for even more of it. I feel the wall of my ego in the forehead and middle chest that is protecting me in some way. It seems to serve a deep purpose, something which I cannot fathom yet. My chest feels like a huge pit that wants to be filled. Whenever I long for things, the pit gets even deeper and begs me to do actions that fill it.

What do I trust now? I cannot trust my senses, feelings, thoughts, beliefs. All I can do is be open, vulnerable, helpless - maintaining equanimity and observe. The only thing that seems to be constant is me observing. Not the pleasant/unpleasant moods, feelings, sensations etc. Everything else seems to be highly dynamic and fast. Too fast for me to hold on to, process in my working memory and understand. Its like a flowing river on which we impose this illusion of control. I used to believe that insight would make permanent changes. In a way they do, but these changes are usually subtle just like when you just hit the gym, your muscles pump up and then come back to their original size. So insight itself might be a state of mind which I cannot hold on for too long in this flowing river.

There is this illusion of significance in society and standards for defining yourself. If you do not conform you stand to lose A LOT w/o identification. Without people to relate to, the energy level drops by a huge amount and you just start feeling lifeless and purposeless. Why cant every moment, action be equally significant if that is the truth? The irony is that you simply cannot make people think that way since it is just too ingrained. I'm fortunate to have explored this aspect and unfortunate because I cannot amplify and grow those feelings with society. Society is like a bonfire and I'm like a single candle. I need much much more energy. I need to create and need to be heard. I want to identify and amplify. This is lonely and low, I don't feel alive or important. My behavior and feelings are manipulated by the my perception of the people around me. I don't seem to have much control. Its like the feelings work at a more fundamental level which I wish to tap or control. I think the problem is something at the belief level. I believe that other people are somehow right no matter how many intellectual games I play with myself. It seems like I derive my formula for survival from other people. At some level, I'm simply overwhelmed by the expectations of society and I want to rise above it. I find ways to escape and to preserve my sanity by exploring topics that are extremely broad in the clouds. I live in the clouds for a while and then I'm dragged back down to the ground where I get disoriented among all the other settlers. I need to master survival at ground level and then only i can move up to the clouds w/o worry.

Something feels like these problems which I faced in childhood are simply not going away. The exact same problems are festering me in different problems. I was under the impression that they would go away as I grow up but they seem persistent. I need to really observe harder and extract the blueprint that is causing these problems. With awareness I can clearly see, patterns repeating themselves. The completely different situations just masquerade the same underlying problems. Along with identifying them, I need to simultaneously work on them because I could spend a whole lifetime just understanding. Deep understanding itself would eliminate almost all the problems but maybe I could work on the ones that impact me the most first and then actualize it.

I want to be heard, understood, respected, revered, loved. I want to inspire, motivate, energize people. I want to belong at least somewhere. I want to be instrumental in helping myself and others reach their true potential in the purest sense. I want to understand things truly and pass it on. I want to help others and be part of win-win situations and get out of this scarcity mentality.

Qualities of a diamond mapped to experience

The ideal +ve experience is where the mind is like an infinitely large diamond that is clear, does not hold anything but yet, reflects/refr...