---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <s3raphita@...> wrote :
Re "But what would an experience of "ultimate reality" actually involve?": It would be an "experience" of pure consciousness - pure subjectivity. I put "experience" in scare quotes because in this case there is no division between an experiencer and the experience, as is usually the case. And the tasting of a pure state of consciousness would indeed be an experience of ultimate reality because literally everything else is simply a modification of consciousness. Yup, that's what I said. Everything is what is going on in our brains - neural noise - and "higher" states are part of our normal repertoire of emotions, just experienced in a different or original way. Can one not be too - way, way too - humble about this whole issue? If experiencing ultimate reality isn't the most blindingly obvious, undeniable event it can't have been ultimate reality one experienced! Isn't that logically irrefutable? Ah, if you'd asked me this twenty years ago when I first had the experience I'd be saying it was the most awesome thing I'd ever known. But after repeated exposure it becomes familiar in the way a favourite song does. It loses it's novelty and sooner or later it's just a bit more Meh... They say that enlightenment is when this awesome profoundness becomes integrated into everyday awareness and maybe they are right but you don't keep the opinion or experience of walking around in an infinite sea of bliss and awareness, not at all. You wouldn't get anything done if you did, which doesn't mean there aren't nice aspects to it but if you bought the line that Marshy was walking around in a state of high union with god and that you could too, I'm afraid you brought a baited hook. Unless I'm doing it all wrong, but it all seems so natural I doubt that I am. What interests me more now is how to get an explanation of "higher" states that stems from an evolutionary understanding of consciousness. To have this latent talent is an interesting poser yes? And being able to do by closing my eyes and thinking a sanskrit word made me turn away from a pure a Darwinian perspective and delve into the religious cosmology of the reesh. but not for long I'm happy to say. Still time for a conversion though, I just need a bit of evidence that something irreducible is happening and I'll eat my yoga mat. The "neural noise" you refer to must be noticed by an awareness to be noise so must itself be an object. It's the awareness that is ultimate and it is completely and totally empty and boundless (what could enclose it?). Has to be, if there was no awareness you'd be unconscious. I'm not going to use the word ultimate because - as with terms like "higher" and god consciousness - it comes too laden with expectation or a pre-decided value that it may turn out not to have. The boundlessness is an illusion in that you aren't experiencing anything infinite but rather that the normal way your brain constructs it's vision of the world is changed by having its Cartesian sense of objects placed within a space altered by removing the objects. What we see is the machinery we have to see but without anything there. It sounds like the same thing as the mystics but I'm saying we shouldn't spin it with this idea that consciousness is infinite or some sort of "other" thing whether it's our normal day to day minds or "expanded" and "higher" states. It makes it all sound rather mundane but it's great fun, and knowing how it works won't stop the experiences, at least it hasn't for me because - like everything - it's just neural stuff and will work whatever explanation or designation I come up with for it. That's a telling thing about consciousness, you can't switch it on or off, it's part of what happens when we are awake, that's what is cool about it. It can be altered with drugs and meditation or reduced by lack of sleep but it's not a thing, it's an action. It's what our brains do. There is no unified field for it to be a part of, no screen of ultimate reality that will be revealed to us. There is no such thing as consciousness. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote : I think I did this survey before or something very similar. I was a TB at the time and revelled in the depth of my god head experiences. This time I can't stop quibbling about the terms like "God" or "Ultimate reality", god is nonsense ( or at least the idea that we can experience it using the stuff in out heads, confuse it with some sort of god perhaps but it's all kiddology I think) But what would an experience of "ultimate reality" actually involve? Everything I see is a virtual reality programme running in my head and spiritual experiences are part of that illusion but why we think we need to invoke such aggrandising terms is a mystery to me now. It wasn't then though, maybe because the highs were fresh and exciting back in the day. So why would meditating feel profound? If I read a book full of new and deeper explanations about physics it can seem profound because I feel like I know something better than I did before I formed the constructs of better understanding of something. So the machinery for making me feel like something is profound is already there in my brain, so is the feeling a reward for trying to pursue knowledge? What makes a meditative experience, which is non-intellectual, a profound one when usually I have to put on my mental climbing gear and scale someone else's abstract thoughts? Is it simply because I think I see more and therefore know more? We can't see ultimate reality but rather something that seems like what lies beyond, or underpins our conscious experience but is more neural noise I'll wager, some part of the brain that usually works in concert with the rest to create the ego trick of experience suddenly has less to work with and expands to fill the awareness and amazes with it's novelty so we ascribe qualities to it that it doesn't have. Or something like that. They also dismiss drug induced experiences from the study but they are rather similar and should be compared and collated I think, it's all chemicals in both types of experience after all. And are people who have taken drugs more likely to have good meditative experiences. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <arlingtonlife@...> wrote : Dear Friend of the TM Community, I am writing to ask for your assistance. My colleagues and I at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine are conducting a fascinating anonymous, internet-based survey study to characterize experiences that some people have of Higher States of Consciousness — something that someone from a different spiritual tradition might all a personal encounter with The Divine. The study will permit a better understanding about the phenomenology, interpretation, and enduring effects of such encounters. Our hope is that, ultimately, we will receive thousands of responses to the survey so that we can better understand such experiences and how they may differ across faith traditions and occasioning events (e.g. prayer, meditation, spontaneously-occurring, nature experiences, drug-occasioned etc.). Although the survey takes 30+ minutes to complete (depending on the time taken on optional open-ended questions), we have received many spontaneous positive comments from survey respondents who have said that answering the survey questions prompted them to deepen their appreciation for these uplifting and meaningful experiences. REASONS TO TAKE THE SURVEY: 1. The survey is an opportunity to revisit an uplifting and personally meaningful experience. 2. Because the survey questions prompt deep reflection on a seminal transcendent experience, completing the survey may provide a fascinating topic of discussion among people interested in meditation, spirituality or religion. 3. By telling their story, individuals will be making an important contribution to science. We would sincerely appreciate it if you would consider taking the survey and letting others know about it. The survey link is here: Survey -- Higher States of Consciousness http://www.encounteringthedivine.org/ Roland Griffiths, Ph.D., Principal Investigator Contact information: rgriff@... mailto:rgriff@... Professor, Departments of Psychiatry and Neuroscience Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine IRB approved application NA_00054696
