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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Feb 20, 2015 - 03:34pm PT
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machine = i. any implied duality is due to verbal clumsiness.
nonverbal connection is a big part of my life right now. Uncharacteristically perhaps, I dont examine it much - I just enjoy it.
How do two minds and bodies resonate? i dont know, but im all for it. One form of living your dreams, I reckon. Or, more accurately, creating a reality that 's richer than your dreams.
Werner's part of the scenery here - i dont glean any wisdom there - having been raised in N Ca my eyes tend to glaze over when the spiritual marsala starts to spill forth, but if it gets him through the day thas coo. projection, assumption, and certainty are what hairless monkeys do and Werner rocks all 3 pretty hard. My palz are weirdos so nothing unusual there. They dont fly on the astral plane but they certainly have other quirks to make up for it.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Feb 20, 2015 - 04:27pm PT
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Really? how nice for him [Newton]. Were you aware that he thought his greatest achievement in life was his life long celibacy? (Paul)
A genius has license to be a bit eccentric. Haven't you noticed?
But a nice (though ridiculously inept) jab at science types.
You paint nice pictures.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Feb 20, 2015 - 04:41pm PT
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There is no instance in Nature where complexity has sourced any phenomenon remotely like sentience.
You can't be serious - that's a ludicrous statement. There's a relatively linear growth in the sophistication of behavior (sentience) as you go follow the taxonomy of species from quorum sensing in bacteria straight on up to human consciousness. And, enter the wacky and wonderful world of parasitology you find lots of instances of 'lower' organisms altering the behavior of more 'advanced' species to serve their own reproductive needs - quite a trick if behavior (sentience) isn't firmly rooted in brains.
The other option is to approach awareness as though it were a thing in and of itself, as opposed to bio blow back or some epiphenomenon that emerges from lower level objective functioning. But the challenge here is that you need to objectify awareness in and of itself, then, as you do with other mechanical functions per digital processing, separate out awareness from other discrete bits and parts and aspects of the "digital substrate," and no one has a clue per how to do this.
Bravo, almost went there with a line of reasoning; why stop short? Not having a clue how to accomplish something isn't the same as not having a clue about the nature of it. And so what? We're curious, we explore, we learn - it's what we do. The idea that anything we don't currently have a pat answer for is either magic, out of the aether or indescribable is just plain stupid. Take gravity; no one is denying its existence despite the fact we don't have "a clue per how to do this", but that doesn't stop folks from working on it. Like I said, bravo, you actually laid out two lucid scenarios for consciousness. Unfortunately you dismiss the first outright and the second by throwing up your hands. Got a third? Maybe stretch that second one out? Something other than shrugging it all off into an inscrutable philosophical haze because you can't track the logic past the hole in the wall.
As Werner keeps saying - we're all speculators - go on, go for it, not like you're going to break a leg if it doesn't pan out in a way that satisfies you.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Feb 20, 2015 - 04:44pm PT
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But a nice (though ridiculously inept) jab at science types.
Really wasn't jabbing at science types. Inept? I thought it was pretty funny though much seems funny here in the doldrums of work. Honestly, I always considered myself a science type, atheist sometime antitheist.
I just don't care for a kind of assumptive arrogance that is sometimes communicated on both sides. Always felt the mystery demands some modicum of respect. Thanks for the compliment.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Feb 20, 2015 - 05:24pm PT
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awareness is not a thing
It is not an argument but an observation.
You need a better observation.
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WBraun
climber
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Feb 20, 2015 - 06:09pm PT
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feralfae asked me again -- "How you know You have or do not have free will?"
OK
I have limited independent free will.
I use that free will to terrorize the supertopo denizens :-) heh heh
I don't have complete free will as I'm a materially condition soul with no good brain.
If I had complete free will I could control death.
Only a Nitya Siddha can control death.
Most of what I post in this thread on non material plane consciousness I also simultaneously post to my own self to grok.
The medium is/becomes transparent.
The mental speculators and projectionists assume I'm preaching.
All while I remain the idiot to learn also ......
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Feb 20, 2015 - 06:14pm PT
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quite a trick if behavior (sentience) isn't firmly rooted in brains.
Behavior and sentience are not the same things. Otherwise we could not observe our behavior, which we can do. So no, there is not biological objective functioning that, qualitatively, is remotely like self-awareness. All you can contrast with are objective functions, not experiential phenomenon known to the subject in real time.
Tvash stumbled over himself in saying that "we" live in a bio machine. This stumble is not owing to language or dualities but to the no-thing nature of "self' and awareness. Insisting that awareness is rooted in biology is fine, so long as you keep reducing and admit that all biological functions are ultimately rooted in non-stuff that has no physical extent. What's more, insisting that the more we get into AI the more "we" will see (as if the "we' was some thing put there observing) we are in facts machines. This of course has it bass-akwards. There is no aware machine "looking" or gazing at no-thing, something dear Dingus warns against. We (AND the biomachine) ARE no- thing. The fundamental nature of all things is no-thing (no physical extent in science speak).
The difference between humans (with some training) and all other animals is our ability to detach from our evolved programing into pure being and pure presence, even as instinctual functions roll on and evolved impulses continue to impune our awareness.
That much said, the conjoined nature of mind and body is without question.
JL
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Feb 20, 2015 - 06:42pm PT
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Bill Nye on Bill Maher tonight!
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"Honestly, I always considered myself a science type, atheist sometime antitheist."
Good to hear!
"Assumptive arrogance?"
Why can't it just be an evidence-based, confident difference pushing the envelope?
At least among the "science types."
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"A genius has license to be a bit eccentric. Haven't you noticed?" -jgill
I hope you had a chance to see The Imitation Game (2014).
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Is shame necessary?
http://www.isshamenecessary.com/
The home page interactive reminds me of the folks here!
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WBraun
climber
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Feb 20, 2015 - 06:47pm PT
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Evidence based science?
So laughable as
You consistently deny your own self .....
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Feb 20, 2015 - 07:13pm PT
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The fundamental nature of all things is no-thing (no physical extent in science speak).
Not only is the whole greater than the sum of the parts, it is made of different stuff, too.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Feb 20, 2015 - 08:03pm PT
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Healyje: No aspect of science is a ‘project’.
First of all, quotations go outside of a punctuation mark.
Second, I don’t think you all are thinking of the idea of a project—as the term project has been used historically, socially, or even organizationally. Sure, mundane organized endeavors of all sorts found in societies are called projects, and we have oodles of project managers and program managers who can say what their experiences are about them and how they work.
The kind of projects I’m referring to are more along the lines of an ideology that is viewed as inherently beneficial or good in some way and supported with scarce resources. When people devote resources to some broad effort or another, they are saying they believe in it, and they want it to grow larger or more pervasively. Democracy has often been referred to as a project historically, and many similar efforts (also, communism). Usually the notion of a project used in this way refers to an effort that is broad-based, very long-term, and most often philosophically based. Science advocates claim that science is inherently good and socially beneficial; science is ideological (provides THE way to view reality); and it sure as heck gets institutionalized support to further its impacts and viewpoints. Different forms of education—let’s say MOOCs scaled to serve everyone in the world (see http://www.scu.edu/engineering/eweek/Ng.cfm)—are also projects when they become broadly supported and seen as intrinsically good. My point is that such projects are not intrinsically good. They come with sets of shortcomings, and if applied blindly, they blind adherents to the shortcomings.
You guys are so far into the trees that you can’t see the forest. Science has become dogma for you.
BB’s quote from Wiki: Individuals with certain variants of the trait may survive and reproduce more than individuals with other, less successful, variants. Therefore the population evolves.
Please note that “evolution” used here simply means change. It doesn’t necessarily mean better or even more complex. However, that is how most people think of the word “evolution.” It’s only a theory.
MH2: [to the comment: “awareness is not a thing]. True. It is many things.
I think you’re confusing *an experience* with pristine awareness . . . aka, raw experience without content or context. Pristine awareness and awareness of a thing are conjoined and entangled. Sort of like watching a show on the TV: it’s quite difficult to see the TV screen simply as a screen without getting involved in the show. Here, our “show” is the Lila.
Jgill: You need to define "value." When I read your statement I am tempted to think you must feel that the creativity and intellectual content of an area of investigation is somehow used up in the early stages, and that what follows is humdrum stuff for the technicians: measurements, calculations, etc. Are projects that dismal?
That’s a close understanding, John. We have a saying that comes from a long line of research in organizational behavior: “Extrinsic rewards drive out intrinsic rewards.” When you pay someone to do something, the inherent joy of behavior diminishes. Activities in roles become “jobs,” and when they do, then people become instrumental with the earth and people. They begin to treat them as “things” that can be manipulated willy nilly for personal and community self-aggrandizement. Instrumentalists seek achievement, success, objectives. (Being becomes seen as strictly doing.) Measurements and calculations aren’t to be faulted, per se, nearly so much as to note indicators of how people are looking at experience. But it’s not one or the other: it’s not a binary or bimodal set of outcomes. They appear to be continuums.
To see the acorn is to see the future oak tree. Seeing reality as a bunch of “things” is the manifestations of an infinitely creative energy form called “you” or “me” that doesn’t have much to do. We’re all bored, anxious, antsy, looking to make sense of experience and to fill what we think is time on our hands. We’re like coddled children in so many ways. Trying to be clever, interesting, important.
Feralfae: But awareness allows us to override much of our cultural/ethical conditioning.
If we were fully rational—without emotion, instinct, or narratives to paint a world into existence—then that might be descriptive. But we cannot be rational without any of those other means of understanding arising beforehand. It seems to be a question of first developing an autonomous individualized ego, and then embracing what is not self. It is exactly those other forms of understanding that have given rise *evolutionarily* to an embrace of rationality (now perhaps exclusively). The “evolution of reason” might be the force of anti-evolution, biologically speaking.
Furthermore, look around. I don’t find much evidence of awareness overriding cultural conditioning in the world around me.
Base: Let's define "Sentience" just to see what you are getting at. Wiki is getting to be an excellent reference, so let's see how they define it.
You’re modeling a concept based upon someone’s definition. That’s poor science. Quit speculating. Show the data. Sit still and be quiet. Observe.
Jgill: A genius has license to be a bit eccentric. Haven't you noticed?
Lots of qualitative research to suggest that those gifted few who have connected with the creativity of the unconscious can’t handle it. They wig-out in one way or another. Nuts, bonkers, manic depressive, hearing voices, talking to folks that aren’t there, completely anti-social, schizophrenic, and on and on.
Talking to an anesthesiologist today before a procedure this morning, and we had some time to kill. I asked him what were hot or controversial topics. Among only a few, he said that they can’t explain why some people come out of anesthesia remembering the experience. They just don’t really know, he said, how all the gases and drugs REALLY affect the human body—they just do. Viola! Prediction, without understanding. Useful, beneficial, and well-studied, no doubt, but what is really what at the bottom of things???
I told him that in my business (of business), things are going wrong all the time.
We both shook our heads at the end of the other’s story and had a good laugh.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Feb 20, 2015 - 08:16pm PT
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The fundamental nature of all things is no-thing (no physical extent in science speak) (JL)
I hold out hope you will eventually mature and leave this peculiar obsession in your past, as you did with Hilbert spaces. It might help if you stayed away from those hyperactive kids at Caltech.
Behavior and sentience are not the same things (JL)
I completely agree.
I'm a vegan 4 years now (HFCS)
Hmmm . . . this might explain a few things.
;>)
First of all, quotations go outside of a punctuation mark (MikeL)
And I have always thought that is just wrong!
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Feb 20, 2015 - 08:37pm PT
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I can make a painting.
and they can cooperate socially to make something beautiful, too...
some of them sacrifice themselves to construct the structure on which others release spores into the wind...
I've never seen one of your paintings...
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Feb 20, 2015 - 09:09pm PT
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I've never seen one of your paintings...
???
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feralfae
Boulder climber
in the midst of a metaphysical mystery
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Feb 20, 2015 - 09:27pm PT
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In British English, the usual style is to use single quotation marks,
while any associated punctuation is placed outside the closing quotation mark:
Their new single is called 'Curtain Falls'.
I knew there was a debate going on between Oxford and the NYTimes. No reason anyone here should know that. But, as you can see from the above quote, pulled from here, it is an interesting consideration as we move toward one grammar.
feralfae
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feralfae
Boulder climber
in the midst of a metaphysical mystery
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Feb 20, 2015 - 09:51pm PT
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MikeL: The “evolution of reason” might be the force of anti-evolution, biologically speaking.
I am not sure I am making the proper association between the last sentence and the paragraph attached. Would you expand on that last statement a bit, please?
MikeL: Furthermore, look around. I don’t find much evidence of awareness overriding cultural conditioning in the world around me.
Oh. My. Goodness. I see cultural cross-pollination in mores, ethics, values, individual relations, commerce, educational goals, place in society, religion, so many areas. I see human awareness, albeit awareness imperfect and perhaps skewed, overriding cultural conditioning at a precipitous rate of change.
The human urge to survive and thrive in a world plugged into cell phones and the internet has caused human awareness to shift its means of communication, its expectations of life, and its understanding of material goods in some of the most radical ways seen in perhaps thousands of years. This reformation is being ushered in by paradigm shifts that are remarkable in their global scope. Cultural conditioning is shifting at its very ground of being in many cultures; whole orders of social structure are being abandoned, revised, introduced, and/or implemented. There are some grand experiments going on, and some not so grand.
feralfae
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Feb 20, 2015 - 10:00pm PT
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Interesting article with kokyo henkel: Touching on buddhism, psychodelics, intent etc. Kokyo is in santa cruz,ca
February 18, 2015
Tripping with the Buddha
A Zen priest and a psychologist discuss the potential benefits and perils of a Buddhist practice that incorporates psychedelics.
Allan Badiner
Buddhist Teachings
enlightenment
LSD
psychedelics
Zig Zag Zen
Health
Kokyo Henkel: My name is Kokyo. I've been a Zen Buddhist priest for 18 years in the tradition of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi and San Francisco Zen Center, mostly living in monasteries or similar environments over the course of that time. Around the same time as I was beginning Zen practice, some psychedelic experiences were really formative for me. I think it was a significant condition for giving my whole life over to Buddhist practice.
James (Jim) Fadiman: I'm Jim and in 1961, I started working with psychedelics with Richard Alpert, now Ram Dass, and then with the International Foundation for Advanced Study in Menlo Park while I was earning a PhD in Psychology from Stanford. Until I first experienced the effects of psychedelics, I had no interest in Buddhist practice. However, explorers in the psychedelic realm, doing formal or informal research, became aware early on that there were experiences that apparently overlapped the core mystical experiences of many spiritual traditions. That is more true today. I recognized that my central concern is helping establish the proper place of altered states of consciousness in contemporary society.
Kokyo: Let me set the stage for the Buddhist perspective with one of the major issues that people have in Buddhism around this topic, which is what we call the ethical precepts that go all the way back to early Buddhism. They include not killing living beings, not taking what's not given, not misusing sexuality, and not lying or speaking falsely. The fifth one, as originally worded in the Pali and the Sanskrit, is "not to consume alcoholic beverages that lead to heedlessness or carelessness." I think it is interesting that the first four precepts are not explained. It's obvious why these actions are harmful to others, so in the original language they are very short. But the fifth precept is longer since it includes the reason for it. We often interpret the fifth precept as not intoxicating body and mind, or not taking intoxicants, which at the time meant alcohol. The main issue here is: Does psychedelic use lead to harming others? Does it lead to carelessness and heedlessness? Do we start disrespecting others through having altered our mind in this way? So if we do use psychedelics, this would be the bottom line: Is it harmful to others or harmful to ourselves?
I think that's a good context to look at the use of different substances. Do we think that it would be beneficial to our self and—from a bodhisattva perspective, being beneficial to our self is not the foremost thing—is it beneficial to our deeper unfolding of realization so that we can help others more fully?
Jim: The serious question seems to be: Does having psychedelic experiences improve or degrade my practice? This isn't yet looking at the inner framework, or the life situation of the person. This question, "What does it do to my practice?" is still internal. I'd like to share some stories that have helped my understanding.
Near the end of his life Alan Watts was asked by a young man, "Is it worthwhile to take LSD?" After pondering a bit, Alan replied, "That's like asking me if life is worthwhile."
Next is a quote from the website DMT-Nexus: "I can says this after a lifetime of meditating and only two trips on psychedelics, that they are not just a trip. The lasting effects are huge. The changes in me have been profound and seem substantially permanent. I agree; it is best to work on yourself using all available methods." And finally this from a professor, speaking of a high dose experience: "After the collective purification ended, I was spun into the radiance of what, using Buddhist vocabulary, I perceived to be the domain of diamond luminosity. I've known light many times before, but this was an exceptionally pure light. Its clarity was so overwhelming, its energy so pure, that returning to it quickly became my deepest agenda for future sessions. After my first initiation into this reality, it took five sessions of intense purification and surrender before the doors were opened again and I was returned to the diamond light, now experience at a slightly deeper and even purer form."
For me, these reports bring up very practical questions: Are psychedelics beneficial in the sense of moving you towards living a life more life a bodhisattva? Are they good for you right now?
Kokyo: One place we can go is to talk about what qualities of psychedelic experience could be in accord with Buddhism—because there are lots of things that happen in a psychedelic experience that have nothing to do with Buddhism.
A basic Buddhist teaching is that the root of all our problems is the belief that things are separate, outside us, and things substantially exist in and of themselves. So the profound insight that those are actually illusions can release one from all kinds of suffering, if it's deeply realized and integrated into one's life. But going beyond this, in Mahayana Buddhism the purpose of that very insight is not even for our own liberation from suffering; it's so that we can really help others, and really meet others with complete openness and a sense of non-separation. That's the bodhisattva path. So, there can be realization of nonduality, of non-separation, that people aren't who we think they are. And to realize that people aren't who we think they are is very beneficial to those people who we meet.
There may be—lastly, and maybe most importantly—persisting positive changes in attitude and behavior after a psychedelic experience is over: Changes in attitude towards oneself, toward others, towards life and towards spiritual experiences. Deep meditation practice and psychedelics can both bring up unconscious problems or issues, karmic patterns, and enable us to really look at them in a caring and therapeutic way. More sensitivity, tolerance, openness, and love of others, with lasting change, can occur through a psychedelic experience. Vocational commitment and appreciation of all life can be strengthened.
Audience: Either with psychedelics or practice, how do we get past the problem that, once we've seen something, we want to get back there, and we're grasping, and we're looking for it, and it's hard to get there because it's a state of innocence?
Kokyo: That's a great question. We have a wonderful experience that we feel is really beneficial, and then we wonder how do we get back there? It's a state of innocence, so any movement or wish to get back to that state of innocence is already not innocent. This is a major issue in Buddhist practice, maybe not talked about so much in psychedelic practice but I think should be. That's what we call grasping or attachment, saying, "I gotta get that again." That is the definition of discontent in Buddhism.
Jim: It's not talked about in psychedelics enough. It is that wonderful paradox of, "I just did this and then this incredible wonderful thing happened. And, I want it again." The question all too often is: "What drug should I take, and do you have any?" instead of the questions we are asking.
In an early chapter of my book, The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide, I say that after you have a major experience, if within the first six weeks after it you feel you have the need to get back there, what you are doing is avoiding working with something in yourself that has come up. [sigh from the audience] The advice is wait another six weeks.
We know from the meditative traditions, if you get out of the way, the universe brightens. Here is what interests me: if "I," Jim Fadiman, want that experience, and the "I" that wants it is going to be diminished, then if I get it, "I" can't get it. The me that needs to get out of the way can never get it. But maybe, of course, if I had the right psychedelic [laughter] or the new ones maybe [laughter], it would be different. You see the problem.
Kokyo: A quote comes to mind from Dogen Zenji, "Buddha-Dharma cannot be realized by a person . . . Only a Buddha can realize Buddha-Dharma."
Jim: Let me ask a question: Whatever that highest and most amazing experience is, let's call it unity, where there is no division between you and the universe, and that you understand that there's no distinctions of time and space, and that while your personality and body are mortal, you're not. How many people have actually experienced that? [looking around, many raised hands] So, here we are, everybody came back. Many of the people I have guided have this question when they come back. "Why did I come back into this body, with all of its neurotic problems? When I was out there, it was clear that I was not necessarily attached to it."
Kokyo: In ultimate truth there is no division, just complete unity; there's no self and no other. Emptiness. The conventional truth is where there is the appearance of self and other; those two truths are not separate: the conventional and the ultimate truth. Of course, most of us live in the conventional truth, the conventional world, almost all the time. We need to realize the ultimate truth, but as Nagarjuna, one of the great Indian ancestors, says, "in order to realize the ultimate truth you must be completely grounded in the conventional truth," which means the precepts of ethical conduct, and so on. If we neglect how we are taking care of ourselves and other people, then it is actually impossible to realize the ultimate truth, at least in the Buddhist view. Now, in the psychedelic world, some of us might say, "Let's bypass the conventional and go straight to the ultimate." This can be a problem.
Audience: I wanted to ask about the practice. In your experience and the experience of people in the room, how can psychedelics be used as a practice, as an ongoing process of spiritual maturation?
Kokyo: Maybe part of that question is implying that there are two different types of psychedelic use, especially in relation to Buddhism. I think we could look at a psychedelic experience as an initial opening, like you have an insight into non-separation for example, and then you pick up a meditation practice or some other method to sustain and develop that insight. Another use would be to use psychedelics as an ongoing path of practice. One problem with an initial experience is that you "see" a certain realm of reality—you "see" it; just that very language implies there may be a subtle duality there, that you're seeing "something." It might be very, very subtle, but the emphasis is on seeing a realm. In my tradition of Soto Zen, Dogen Zenji criticized the term kensho, which means seeing the nature of reality, seeing nature, seeing buddhanature. This is usually said to be the goal in Rinzai Zen, seeing your nature. Dogen, with his emphasis on nonduality, was critical of that term because it's putting something out there. Dogen is always talking about manifestation or becoming. So you might say that it is not a matter of seeing your true nature. It's about becoming that, manifesting your true nature, which you might not even realize is happening as some objective thing. It's easy to make the enlightenment into something and try to get it.
Jim: You mean it's not a thing? It's not a destination? It's not a realization that colors the rest of your life? It's not a sense of awareness that pervades more and more of your life? We're asking what's the purpose of psychedelic experience? When is it appropriate? When is the correct time in one's life to do such and such? Those questions must occur in Buddhism. There is something about timing, what the Sufis call, "a sense of occasion" and what therapists call, "a teachable moment." Kokyo, you have devoted your life not to just work on yourself, but to working on yourself in the service of others. Most people who talk psychedelics don't say that. They do say that they are working on themselves, and want to make the world a better place. But there is still a lot of self that is primary, and that may be a difference.
Kokyo: Myron Stolaroff in his essay, "Are Psychedelics Useful in Buddhism?" said that another thing they both do is dissolve mindsets. Any kind of fixed mind set, cultural and societal assumptions—a lot of things we just take for granted—one can see through, with both of these technologies. And that's part of the reason, some people have theorized, why most of these substances are illegal, because they threaten the very fabric of society as we know it.
Jim: Kathy Speeth, a gifted teacher, had a wonderful saying: "Enlightenment is always a crime." What she was saying is that every culture wants to remain stable and wants its institutions to be supported and believed in. Enlightenment, from any tradition, cuts through that. What she was pointing out was that it is culturally correct to define enlightenment as a crime.
Kokyo: To add to the discussion about ritual settings for psychedelics, and to bring Buddhism and psychedelics together, you might be surprised that there's an experiment scheduled to begin this year by a friend of mine. Vanja Palmers is the senior dharma heir of Kobun Chino Otagawa Roshi, who taught at Santa Cruz Zen Center many years ago. Vanja is a longtime, very serious Zen practitioner and priest. He lives in Switzerland most of the time, and he got permission from the Swiss government to do an experiment during a sesshin. Sesshin means to collect the mind, to gather the mind. It's the Zen name for an intensive meditation retreat. In a five-day sesshin, you're meditating basically all day, completely in silence; from 4 or 5 a.m. until 9 p.m. there is sitting meditation, interspersed with walking meditation. The experiment will be that on the fourth day of sesshin, twenty people will take a medium does of psilocybin, and twenty won't, in a double-blind experiment, and basically see what happens—particularly around mystical experience. Vanja is hand selecting the people, inviting particular longtime experienced meditators, who ideally also have some experience with psychedelics. He's doing interviews with them beforehand and following up afterwards for at least six months, and maybe longer. In the "Good Friday Experiment" in the Christian tradition that I mentioned earlier, they followed up with the subjects six months later, to see how many of the changes had lasted. And they admitted that six months is not very long. So in this case they may check after six months, maybe longer, to interview people regarding the lasting effects of the experience.
This may be the furthest that this kind of experiment has gone, integrating serious intensive Buddhist meditation with psychedelics. Part of this particular experiment is a medium dose. People often have mystical nondual experiences with a high dose but without meditation. So part of the proposal of the experiment is to see if after four days of all-day meditation, can a similar thing happen with a smaller dose?
Audience: I have a question about Buddhism. Could you compare something like the jhana states with the psychedelic experience?
Kokyo: The jhanas are different levels of concentration, or states of absorption, particularly emphasized in Theravada Buddhism. They are deepening levels of withdrawal from the external world, or more simply, becoming more and more absorbed in nondual concentration. These jhanic states were taught by the Buddha, not as enlightenment itself, not as insight, but actually as concentration practices to develop a stable body and mind in order for insight to arrive. The jhanas are not the main point. They are part of the path, and many traditions don't practice them methodically. The practice of withdrawal from the external sensory world is one way to develop these jhanas.
That's often the case with psychedelics as well. Part of the setting, with psychedelics, is whether the eyes are opened or closed. With eyes closed, there can be an internal unity experience, a whole internal world going on, where one is not really relating to objects. With eyes open, one is still visually relating to the apparently external world. Then there's the unity of self and sensory objects, an experience that happens in a so-called mystical experience. Jhana is maybe more related to the inner unity as opposed to the external unity.
Audience: Can you talk about the role of satsang [spiritual community] in Buddhism and how community can be used in the integration process in the psychedelic experience?
Kokyo: In Buddhism, sangha is the spiritual community and it's very important, one of the refuges to rely on. We rely on the spiritual community to help sustain our practice and encourage us. So practice is not just an individual thing; we do it together. Especially in the Zen tradition, meditation practice and retreats are very much a group thing. We're in silence, but in very close quarters, sitting right together, and it's very interactive, with lots of rituals. We serve food to each other in very particular ways in the silence.
The spiritual community in Buddhism is very important, because part of what we're realizing through practice is non-separation and intimacy. The realization is that we're all completely intimate beyond our imagination. Psychedelic work tends to be more individual, even if people are tripping together. On the other hand, I have had experiences with psychedelics that were excruciatingly intimate; for example, at a Grateful Dead Concert. [laughter] We are one being! [laughter] That is one example of a communal ritual that has been commonly used in the tradition.
Jim: There are communities that help their members with integration. The one that is most developed is the Burner community. Burning Man is one of the closest replacements we have to Grateful Dead concerts, and it lasts for a week, not an evening. If you look at this stage of development, and compare it to Buddhism in the first 50 years after Buddha's death, which is where we are with psychedelics in this country, we may be doing all right. Buddhists have had a lot more time to work out some of the problems.
Kokyo: May we all stay connected and realize our intimacy. As we often do at the end of dharma events, let's dedicate the merit, any positive energy that was generated by this discussion, to the benefit of all beings, to the awakening and freedom of all beings.
I'd like to finish with a classic quote from Dogen Zenji, the Japanese founder of Soto Zen:
To study the Buddha Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind, as well as the body and minds of others, drop away. No trace of realization remains, and this no trace continues endlessly.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Feb 21, 2015 - 12:34am PT
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Again, science is not a 'project' of any kind and certainly not what you describe. You are kind of always trying to project some pretty strange attributes onto science. In this case it's just an obfuscated version of painting science as religion. Odd at best.
Re: sentience and behavior - I would entirely and strenuously disagree. Sentience is behavior and a behavior which scales directly with the abilities / facilities of any given organism for all forms of life. The 'conventional' (VAAS) definition of 'sentience' borders on nonsense from my perspective. Hell, slime molds are self-aware and also can solve the traveling salesman problem, how many humans can look in a mirror and say the same?
[Click to View YouTube Video]
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Feb 21, 2015 - 08:01am PT
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I am going to use this the next time I am accused of poor grammar or wrong punctuation:
When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind, as well as the body and minds of others, drop away. No trace of realization remains, and this no trace continues endlessly.
Dogen Zenji, the Japanese founder of Soto Zen
it’s quite difficult to see the TV screen simply as a screen without getting involved in the show.
My Mom and Dad seemed to have no trouble doing that when I was trying to watch cartoons.
Maybe if JL had been telling us about Banach spaces?
Overall, this thread and those which preceded it have provided plenty examples of how we get things wrong, so I feel little compunction in distrusting comments here on the fundamental nature of all things.
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rbord
Boulder climber
atlanta
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Feb 21, 2015 - 08:06am PT
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I just saw a report that said that we just discovered a defect in Microsoft windows that's been there for 15 years and would allow a hacker to break into any corporate network. It's a piece of software that we created with our brains with a specific intention and understanding of its purpose and functionality, and yet we went 15 years without realizing that we had created something that would allows others to completely subvert our conscious intentions.
What comparable defects exist in our own operating system - our belief creation processes and systems - and how does Jesus (for lack of a better word, and also because I love the humanness of the word and the idea that we can define it for ourselves without relying on Christian interpretation) exploit those human defects for her own intentions? What are we evolving towards? I'm not convinced that our consciousness is really the driver, and not convinced that our defects are not actually features that help us gain the advantage of believing that our beliefs are true.
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