"Chatelle, no it makes perfect sense actually. Thing is, did it really show you what happens after "real" death, or was it your brain creating the images? You don't have doubts that it was the former, but... I do. I don't wish to discredit your experience at all, I just can't help but take a skeptic side on this. However, it is a really interesting experience and who knows, maybe it is true after all?"
Maybe it was my brain creating these images, I don't know for sure when it comes to you, I just know it a 100% for my own sake. There's so much in the world you can't prove. Like your thoughts. You can't prove your thoughts to another person. And I understand you're skeptical. I would be too. That's why I'm trying to tell you to go and find out for yourself, in a safe environment, of course. Maybe I'm just crazy. But I do believe we have this higher gnostic self for the very purpose to understand ourselves. I mean, if you decided to believe in nothing, you'd still believe that you believe in nothing. That's the beauty of it.
You were pointing out anesthesia earlier on. I was under a surgery and noticed the same thing, that it all just went dark. Logically this should have been some sort of evidence against my previous soul searching experience, but it wasn't. And I don't have a good explanation for that other than one might have experienced something that you have no memory of because you are connected to your brain. Good experiences for your soul happen outside your regular consciousness. It's very much like psychology, your inner processing happens regardless if you're aware of it or not.
You were also pointing out dreams. I know this may be an odd suggestion, but view your body as a computer. A computer can't possibly be powered on forever, it needs to reboot a couple of times with updates.. that's how I view our bodies at least.
I think everything in the world shares similar properties. What this means in practice is that if you start tugging at one end, you will soon discover that everything is conn... actually you know what that sounds like such hippie shit. I know you wanna hear what you can actually do about your inquiries. I think the best tip is what I've already told you.. to try and test it out somehow. Science is married to mysticism after all.
Fear of death
Re: Fear of death
No you're not crazy at all. It's not like I want to be a skeptic - well ok I do, but not in a "deny everything spiritual, because no scientific proof" way. I just think that it's very easy to cross the line and start believing in every little thing simply by deceiving yourself, which results in either becoming completely deluded or going mad. So I'm just careful, that's all.
I will try to experience and find out for myself as you say, but I want to train my mind more (through meditation, self-hypnosis etc.) before I get into anything such as astral projection. Have some work to do in that aspect still.
I will try to experience and find out for myself as you say, but I want to train my mind more (through meditation, self-hypnosis etc.) before I get into anything such as astral projection. Have some work to do in that aspect still.
Re: Fear of death
That "astral space" is almost like internet, full of viruses, worms, trolls and paedophiles and where every Nigerian (no offence to Nigerians) is a prince who needs you to hold his millions for a short while..
Well not all of it, not exactly, but pretty damn close. I just don't quite understand why people keep recommend it to everybody so lightly for any and every occasion.
..And most of the "content" there just videos of cute cats..
Well not all of it, not exactly, but pretty damn close. I just don't quite understand why people keep recommend it to everybody so lightly for any and every occasion.
..And most of the "content" there just videos of cute cats..
The Omnissiah directs our footsteps along the path of knowledge.
Re: Fear of death
Red Sun Of course, you do what you have to in order to prepare. I'm confident that you'll find your way through this by listening in to what you need.
Cerber Hehe. I get what you mean. And the reason that I still recommend it is because one should be able to navigate through these things as easily as we navigate the internet when we are old and wise enough to know that we shouldn't give our money to the Nigerian prince or to the pretty girl asking for a flight ticket. But, I might be biased. I haven't had a bad experience since I learned how to shield. Worst case scenario is a mental hangover from too much interaction, and that's a pretty low price in my opinion. Either that, or it's just the fact that a predator doesn't scare another predator. I can also see a second option that I pulled out from a theory in psychology. You can view terrible things and still not be drawn into them. Much like thoughts. You can have terrible thoughts about something, but you don't need to attach emotions to the experience. You can calmly collect the neccessary data. "Okay, this is how I feel, now these are the available options". A third and also likely option is that I'm working with chaos on a daily basis. If you're more inclined to an orderly fashion of things, then the approach to the astral or gnostic experience must be different.
Cerber Hehe. I get what you mean. And the reason that I still recommend it is because one should be able to navigate through these things as easily as we navigate the internet when we are old and wise enough to know that we shouldn't give our money to the Nigerian prince or to the pretty girl asking for a flight ticket. But, I might be biased. I haven't had a bad experience since I learned how to shield. Worst case scenario is a mental hangover from too much interaction, and that's a pretty low price in my opinion. Either that, or it's just the fact that a predator doesn't scare another predator. I can also see a second option that I pulled out from a theory in psychology. You can view terrible things and still not be drawn into them. Much like thoughts. You can have terrible thoughts about something, but you don't need to attach emotions to the experience. You can calmly collect the neccessary data. "Okay, this is how I feel, now these are the available options". A third and also likely option is that I'm working with chaos on a daily basis. If you're more inclined to an orderly fashion of things, then the approach to the astral or gnostic experience must be different.
Alea iacta est
Re: Fear of death
I think I'm more concern about the "information" that inexperience person (or even experienced one) might pick up there thinking it's gold bar just because it's yellow and shiny and bring it over and spread it around. After all, a computer virus (and other malware) is nothing more but a piece of information, and often it's even packaged extremely tasty and very appealing.Chatelle wrote:Red Sun Of course, you do what you have to in order to prepare. I'm confident that you'll find your way through this by listening in to what you need.
Cerber Hehe. I get what you mean. And the reason that I still recommend it is because one should be able to navigate through these things as easily as we navigate the internet when we are old and wise enough to know that we shouldn't give our money to the Nigerian prince or to the pretty girl asking for a flight ticket. But, I might be biased. I haven't had a bad experience since I learned how to shield. Worst case scenario is a mental hangover from too much interaction, and that's a pretty low price in my opinion. Either that, or it's just the fact that a predator doesn't scare another predator. I can also see a second option that I pulled out from a theory in psychology. You can view terrible things and still not be drawn into them. Much like thoughts. You can have terrible thoughts about something, but you don't need to attach emotions to the experience. You can calmly collect the neccessary data. "Okay, this is how I feel, now these are the available options". A third and also likely option is that I'm working with chaos on a daily basis. If you're more inclined to an orderly fashion of things, then the approach to the astral or gnostic experience must be different.
There is so much "non-terrestrial" horseshit floating around these days, I can only guess that at least good deal of it originated outside of these dimensions.
The Omnissiah directs our footsteps along the path of knowledge.
Re: Fear of death
Red Sun,
I don't have the answers to my questions either. I like to throw around hard problems though to incite out of the box thinking. Reality trumps logic. I like to think of logic as a tool set that only works within the environment it was born from. You wouldn't try to win Tetris by using the rules of Chess now would you? Logic requires a "why". I agree that practical activities are best. Although it's almost impossible to make any headway on this subject, practically speaking, without having an at least theoretical idea of what you are doing.
Practice without thinking is a good way to drive yourself insane. I hate how people always stress practice over knowledge. If you have no idea what you are doing, you have no business practicing. Maybe we should all do the ritual of the kicked box and see if it works? Then go jump off a cliff and see if that works? My point is, you need to have some sort of scientific method, something that produces tangible results, or else you are by definition insane; you are doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. And if you do succeed by some chance? Then without some rudimentary paradigm you have no chance of understanding how you got your results, and of making more progress; you just got lucky.
It's difficult to even know if the information you get from astral projections, evocations, etc., are valid. It's all hearsay. You pretty much have to build your own framework and then modify it as needed using your own intelligence. Otherwise you're just mindlessly following what things tell you to do.
1. Anesthesia
Perhaps we have different definitions of consciousness. I should probably start using the term "awareness" rather than "consciousness". By consciousness, I am referring to a thing's ability to perceive qualities such as sight, sound, touch, etc. I am talking about what makes the problem of consciousness "hard", not about being able to think, know that you exist, etc.
I don't think it's quite correct to say I believe in a soul. "Soul" implies some sort of entity that exists beyond death as an object, but that is not what I mean by it. I mean that awareness persists beyond death, but not that thinking, etc., happen outside of the body. I think that oblivion cannot exist because it cannot be defined. Things that cannot be quantified / described cannot exist. If you take a well lit room and remove the light, colors move from white to black. Things just transform. No matter how much you try to erase something from a piece of paper, there is always going to be a material underneath what you are trying to remove. Reality is a canvas, like a big chunk of RAM that constantly overwrites itself; the memory registers are always on or off; but both are still qualities. You cannot have a not-quality.
Regarding your lack of memory, you didn't have any because memory is a function of the brain, and your brain was unable to create memories because it was sedated. People dream all the time but do not remember their dreams, but does that mean that they were unaware? I see the brain as a restrictive device of sorts. Basically, it forces a certain perspective. If you were aware while the brain was off, then your access to your unwritten memories will be cut off when it becomes active. Just because you don't remember something doesn't mean it didn't happen.
Likewise, just because you do remember something doesn't mean that it DID happen. Go play any kind of RPG which has a lot of a backstory. Did the backstory have to actually happen, or did the game designers just put it there? The world didn't even have to exist before you were born. This could be a VR game where your environment just spontaneously loaded. Because the present cannot prove the past, it's pretty much invalid to even think in terms of it. For all you know, when you were given anesthesia, reality could have loaded the future environment and just skipped through time, with everything in the environment accounted for of course. If you play a game that has fast travel, you know that you started at point A, and ended at point B; nothing else. You didn't actually travel. The game state machine just loaded a new state; it's YOU that thinks that you traveled.
2. Amnesia
The soul is not separate. There is no soul. There is reality; a state machine. Reality is described in terms of qualities, and without something to observe qualities, they cannot exist. So, suppose the existence of an observer. This observer is not an entity so much as it's a canvas that is drawn to. A way for qualities to express themselves. You think that you're your body because your brain has developed an understanding of its own existence, but really, you're just observing. Everything that happens is like watching a film, and the idea that you are actually doing anything at all is an illusion.
Memory can be defined as a collection of qualities that happened at a time other than the present. In order to bring qualities not in the present into it, the present has to be capable of recreating the idea using limited information. It would be impossible to store the entire event into the brain, so the brain must store an "address", something with just enough information that the brain can use its processing power to dereference the "address" in order to get to the actual memory. Sort of like using a mailbox address to find the contents of it at a post office. With amnesia, if the pointer is broken, then no amount of processing can get to the memory. If the processing is broken, then no amount of pointers will be dereferenceable.
The idea of self is illusory. You are a machine. Your body is like a PC, and your awareness is like a monitor. When the PC breaks, who knows what will connect to it. I find it odd though that the brain can generate highly detailed dreams, but only while it is slowed down greatly. Because of this, I like to think that awareness is by default aware of "everything", and then the brain forces awareness to take a certain perspective. When the brain dies, perhaps awareness expands. Of course though, I seems wrong to assume that the brain is the only thing attached to awareness. There could be an infinite number of "astral bodies" that are simply overpowered by the brain's own ability to force a perspective. Maybe you just reincarnate?
3. Dreaming
You do not know by default that you are dreaming because you do not have a physical vessel while dreaming, and because without being forced to act a certain why by your brain, you are easily influenced by your dream environment. I think the brain acts as an amplifier. When it's off, the qualities that it was sending to your awareness must be replaced so you end up with a bunch of incoherent garbage. Also, you do know that you are dreaming when you are dreaming. I cannot count the number of times I have caught myself doing reality checks during dreams, saying "this is a dream", etc., but completely forget 95% of what I did when I woke up.
If you do things that you would never do in your waking life, perhaps you should take this as evidence that dreams could be external to your brain. It should be impossible for your brain to generate new experiences. Machines work by input and output.
4. Dead men tell no tales
This a lie. You cannot prove a negative. For all you know, tons of people could have come back from the dead and not said anything about it. Considering how most people feel about the topic of magick, it wouldn't surprise me at all if people would keep quiet about resurrection. I do not believe in impossibilities. It's only a matter of finding a method. (I am non religious for the record.)
I do understand what you are saying though. You really can't know until you are dead; reality trumps logic. It is illogical however to provide reasoning against death and then have disbelief. That sounds like an emotional thing. If you have logical evidence that life after death exists, then you should require logical evidence that it does not exist before you acquire a doubtful state of mind. This point sounds like fear mongering. Besides, if anyone did say that came back from the dead, you wouldn't believe them, would you?
5. God
The easiest solution to the problem of having a finite universe is that it is not objective. There is no "earth", there is only "what I am perceiving right now". It's all data. How do you explain the existence of a game world to the main character? God? Sure, God could have made it, the flying spaghetti monster could have made it. Logically, it must have been made from something. But there are an infinite number of ways to reach a single point. One reality could have been made any number of ways, and that reality does not have to point back to its creator. For your game character, the reality was loaded spontaneously. For other characters in the game, perhaps they remember a different story.
Another simple solution is that the universe never "happened"; it just was; you just don't remember. If god can be infinite then the universe can be infinite. If you need evidence for the universe being infinite, then you need just as much evidence for god being infinite; except there's not the slightest bit of evidence for a god to begin with.
You can't even prove that anything other than yourself has awareness. You can't prove objectivity in the slightest. As far as you know, reality is a hyper stable dream that you just can't seem to escape from.
I do believe that other things are aware though. I decided that the only thing I know to be true is that I can perceive. On top of this, if I assume that awareness cannot die, and it cannot be made or destroyed, then it must have always existed. Therefore, behind me is an infinite past, and before me is an infinite future. In the past I could have theoretically lived out the lives of every single person on this earth, time being non-linear, therefore because I know I am conscious, others must be conscious (because they are me, just from a different perspective).
6. This is probably a lot of circle jerk anyway
We're talking a lot about things that cause things. We seem to be trapped in the idea of causation. Thing is, there's no logical reason for causal reactions to occur how they do, so the logic of causation is itself illogical. There is no reason why the sun burns, why ice is cold, etc. You could argue "why" forever, but all you really know is "how". Chemical reactions cause more reactions, which cause the sun to burn... Except if you ask "why" enough times, all you get is "just because" as an answer. The laws of nature are arbitrary. What we're really after isn't an explanation of why magick works, but a theory that might help us create a practical method of doing it.
Still though, if you invalidate enough ideas, it's impossible to not get to new ones, and new ideas are always a new chance at making a functional method.
7. I probably got super off topic at tons of points
But I don't actually care because random topics keep the conversation going, and mean more insight for everyone. Please do you best to deconstruct my ideas so that I can make them stronger.
I don't have the answers to my questions either. I like to throw around hard problems though to incite out of the box thinking. Reality trumps logic. I like to think of logic as a tool set that only works within the environment it was born from. You wouldn't try to win Tetris by using the rules of Chess now would you? Logic requires a "why". I agree that practical activities are best. Although it's almost impossible to make any headway on this subject, practically speaking, without having an at least theoretical idea of what you are doing.
Practice without thinking is a good way to drive yourself insane. I hate how people always stress practice over knowledge. If you have no idea what you are doing, you have no business practicing. Maybe we should all do the ritual of the kicked box and see if it works? Then go jump off a cliff and see if that works? My point is, you need to have some sort of scientific method, something that produces tangible results, or else you are by definition insane; you are doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. And if you do succeed by some chance? Then without some rudimentary paradigm you have no chance of understanding how you got your results, and of making more progress; you just got lucky.
It's difficult to even know if the information you get from astral projections, evocations, etc., are valid. It's all hearsay. You pretty much have to build your own framework and then modify it as needed using your own intelligence. Otherwise you're just mindlessly following what things tell you to do.
1. Anesthesia
Perhaps we have different definitions of consciousness. I should probably start using the term "awareness" rather than "consciousness". By consciousness, I am referring to a thing's ability to perceive qualities such as sight, sound, touch, etc. I am talking about what makes the problem of consciousness "hard", not about being able to think, know that you exist, etc.
I don't think it's quite correct to say I believe in a soul. "Soul" implies some sort of entity that exists beyond death as an object, but that is not what I mean by it. I mean that awareness persists beyond death, but not that thinking, etc., happen outside of the body. I think that oblivion cannot exist because it cannot be defined. Things that cannot be quantified / described cannot exist. If you take a well lit room and remove the light, colors move from white to black. Things just transform. No matter how much you try to erase something from a piece of paper, there is always going to be a material underneath what you are trying to remove. Reality is a canvas, like a big chunk of RAM that constantly overwrites itself; the memory registers are always on or off; but both are still qualities. You cannot have a not-quality.
Regarding your lack of memory, you didn't have any because memory is a function of the brain, and your brain was unable to create memories because it was sedated. People dream all the time but do not remember their dreams, but does that mean that they were unaware? I see the brain as a restrictive device of sorts. Basically, it forces a certain perspective. If you were aware while the brain was off, then your access to your unwritten memories will be cut off when it becomes active. Just because you don't remember something doesn't mean it didn't happen.
Likewise, just because you do remember something doesn't mean that it DID happen. Go play any kind of RPG which has a lot of a backstory. Did the backstory have to actually happen, or did the game designers just put it there? The world didn't even have to exist before you were born. This could be a VR game where your environment just spontaneously loaded. Because the present cannot prove the past, it's pretty much invalid to even think in terms of it. For all you know, when you were given anesthesia, reality could have loaded the future environment and just skipped through time, with everything in the environment accounted for of course. If you play a game that has fast travel, you know that you started at point A, and ended at point B; nothing else. You didn't actually travel. The game state machine just loaded a new state; it's YOU that thinks that you traveled.
2. Amnesia
The soul is not separate. There is no soul. There is reality; a state machine. Reality is described in terms of qualities, and without something to observe qualities, they cannot exist. So, suppose the existence of an observer. This observer is not an entity so much as it's a canvas that is drawn to. A way for qualities to express themselves. You think that you're your body because your brain has developed an understanding of its own existence, but really, you're just observing. Everything that happens is like watching a film, and the idea that you are actually doing anything at all is an illusion.
Memory can be defined as a collection of qualities that happened at a time other than the present. In order to bring qualities not in the present into it, the present has to be capable of recreating the idea using limited information. It would be impossible to store the entire event into the brain, so the brain must store an "address", something with just enough information that the brain can use its processing power to dereference the "address" in order to get to the actual memory. Sort of like using a mailbox address to find the contents of it at a post office. With amnesia, if the pointer is broken, then no amount of processing can get to the memory. If the processing is broken, then no amount of pointers will be dereferenceable.
The idea of self is illusory. You are a machine. Your body is like a PC, and your awareness is like a monitor. When the PC breaks, who knows what will connect to it. I find it odd though that the brain can generate highly detailed dreams, but only while it is slowed down greatly. Because of this, I like to think that awareness is by default aware of "everything", and then the brain forces awareness to take a certain perspective. When the brain dies, perhaps awareness expands. Of course though, I seems wrong to assume that the brain is the only thing attached to awareness. There could be an infinite number of "astral bodies" that are simply overpowered by the brain's own ability to force a perspective. Maybe you just reincarnate?
3. Dreaming
You do not know by default that you are dreaming because you do not have a physical vessel while dreaming, and because without being forced to act a certain why by your brain, you are easily influenced by your dream environment. I think the brain acts as an amplifier. When it's off, the qualities that it was sending to your awareness must be replaced so you end up with a bunch of incoherent garbage. Also, you do know that you are dreaming when you are dreaming. I cannot count the number of times I have caught myself doing reality checks during dreams, saying "this is a dream", etc., but completely forget 95% of what I did when I woke up.
If you do things that you would never do in your waking life, perhaps you should take this as evidence that dreams could be external to your brain. It should be impossible for your brain to generate new experiences. Machines work by input and output.
4. Dead men tell no tales
This a lie. You cannot prove a negative. For all you know, tons of people could have come back from the dead and not said anything about it. Considering how most people feel about the topic of magick, it wouldn't surprise me at all if people would keep quiet about resurrection. I do not believe in impossibilities. It's only a matter of finding a method. (I am non religious for the record.)
I do understand what you are saying though. You really can't know until you are dead; reality trumps logic. It is illogical however to provide reasoning against death and then have disbelief. That sounds like an emotional thing. If you have logical evidence that life after death exists, then you should require logical evidence that it does not exist before you acquire a doubtful state of mind. This point sounds like fear mongering. Besides, if anyone did say that came back from the dead, you wouldn't believe them, would you?
5. God
The easiest solution to the problem of having a finite universe is that it is not objective. There is no "earth", there is only "what I am perceiving right now". It's all data. How do you explain the existence of a game world to the main character? God? Sure, God could have made it, the flying spaghetti monster could have made it. Logically, it must have been made from something. But there are an infinite number of ways to reach a single point. One reality could have been made any number of ways, and that reality does not have to point back to its creator. For your game character, the reality was loaded spontaneously. For other characters in the game, perhaps they remember a different story.
Another simple solution is that the universe never "happened"; it just was; you just don't remember. If god can be infinite then the universe can be infinite. If you need evidence for the universe being infinite, then you need just as much evidence for god being infinite; except there's not the slightest bit of evidence for a god to begin with.
You can't even prove that anything other than yourself has awareness. You can't prove objectivity in the slightest. As far as you know, reality is a hyper stable dream that you just can't seem to escape from.
I do believe that other things are aware though. I decided that the only thing I know to be true is that I can perceive. On top of this, if I assume that awareness cannot die, and it cannot be made or destroyed, then it must have always existed. Therefore, behind me is an infinite past, and before me is an infinite future. In the past I could have theoretically lived out the lives of every single person on this earth, time being non-linear, therefore because I know I am conscious, others must be conscious (because they are me, just from a different perspective).
6. This is probably a lot of circle jerk anyway
We're talking a lot about things that cause things. We seem to be trapped in the idea of causation. Thing is, there's no logical reason for causal reactions to occur how they do, so the logic of causation is itself illogical. There is no reason why the sun burns, why ice is cold, etc. You could argue "why" forever, but all you really know is "how". Chemical reactions cause more reactions, which cause the sun to burn... Except if you ask "why" enough times, all you get is "just because" as an answer. The laws of nature are arbitrary. What we're really after isn't an explanation of why magick works, but a theory that might help us create a practical method of doing it.
Still though, if you invalidate enough ideas, it's impossible to not get to new ones, and new ideas are always a new chance at making a functional method.
7. I probably got super off topic at tons of points
But I don't actually care because random topics keep the conversation going, and mean more insight for everyone. Please do you best to deconstruct my ideas so that I can make them stronger.
When everything makes too much sense, that's when you know you've got none. It's this confidence in reality that makes me uneasy.