I’ve grown particularly interested in developing the psychic senses (the “remote” senses) as a middle-term/long-term spiritual goal recently. Not in the sense of communicating with spirits directly or symbolically via those clair-senses, but in the sense of generally attaining experiences and knowledge from the illusory world in ways not seemingly tied to the illusory physicalist/body-centric mentality.
Now, you might say ‘why would you want to develop this if ultimately there is no world out there and it’s all an illusion?’ Well, even if it’s an illusion, you’re somewhat going to be playing as if it is not, as long as you are maintaining any sense of “senses”/“experiences” of the world that do not consciously feel like explicit actions/intentions on your part - i.e. if you want any form of othering.
So, with othering there will be a feeling of some experiences/knowledge/information coming from ‘somewhere else’ (even if you think of it as your own subconscious). The catch is that in a physicalist mindset, we limit the sorts of incoming information to strictly physically tied modes (senses tied to material sense organs that only give information/experience when in a certain spatial relationship to other material objects - and then all more abstract knowledge of the world must be derived from that materially rooted information). So, I think a materially tied conception of consciousness is a major aspect of rebirth (i.e. body dies -> mind dies/has major forgetfulness). Thus, I think one of the keys to moving toward liberation from rebirth/attaining immortality/self-deification is at least loosening up if not eliminating the fixation of physical senses from material body-organs (so at minimum having “remote senses” as an options if not always active) as well as loosening our ability to learn abstract knowledge about the world only by conclusions from sensory/experiential data (so, it should be possible to gain abstract information about the world without drawing conclusions from experience a la psychometry or claircognizance or whatever.
Of course, these alternative senses are all as adjustable as the ordinary senses. So you might remote-vision that there is a couch in the other room. If you are practiced well enough, you can make that couch dissolve, just like you could make the couch you seemingly see with you eyes dissolve before you. That leads me to an important point. Your ordinary senses are forms of psychic senses. You are just shaping them exclusively in ways that we would consider bodily/physical/sense-organ-oriented. A lot of this is related to some ideas in my post ‘The Construction of the Senses’.
So, in conclusion, I’m going to be exploring how to start taking the baby steps to develop these sorts of abilities in my future, just like I am doing with magick/manifestation/attraction/whatever you want to call it.
I feel like there’s probably some parallels between the two. With magick, a big part of it is first learning any degree of conscious focus/concentration/will even in ordinary life. Then you can apply it to things you believe are possible/probable and the idea is to progressive increase the difficulty/unlikelihood of the transformations you attempt. So, with remote senses, how to start and develop the requisite skills and powers? It’s something I’m going to be thinking about and commenting about as time goes on. I think that healing is one good beginners skill with magick. And I think that psychic-body awareness is a good correspondent psychic sense skill to develop for beginners. I realize now that in many ways I’ve already developed this skill as I’ve practiced healing, I just didn’t know it or have a conception consciously of what I was doing or what it meant in the bigger picture. But there are many many fun and interesting ways to practice. (I wonder what is the closest psychic-sense correspondent, if there is one, to the form of abstract magick that is probability/spell-casting style magick? Hmm)
I’m quite interested in hearing your thoughts on this, folks.
In contrast, your theory about waking, long-stitched, narratives having something fundamentally stressful about them would suggest that these people who turn their dreams into long-stitched narratives would themselves be super stressed out, right?
Originally commented by u/AesirAnatman on 2017-10-21 07:47:56 (donkej0)
Right, and as far as I know that doesn’t happen. It doesn’t mean the theory is completely wrong though. There is a lot of non-trivial stuff going on in the psyche and much of it is below the level of conscious awareness. And it’s also true that one or both of these theories may be wrong.
I’ve read from some people who swear that lucid dreaming makes them tired the next day. But any time I’ve lucid dreamed I woke up fresh as a cucumber. So make of this what you will.
Also I was thinking about what you were saying with regard to developing new abilities, and in my experience a new ability is actually not hard in and of itself. The hardest part is to relax the aspect of prior mental activity that gets in the way of it. So in other words, unlearning that which we now take for granted is probably where most of the effort needs to be. That’s how it’s been for me so far.
Going back to lucid dreaming, I think about learning how to fly and what was hard about it. The hardest part was to overcome a prior expectation that flying is nonsense and is impossible. Then once I learned to fly even just a little, the next hardest part was to overcome the idea that the body has mass and has inertia. In this second phase of learning I had trouble accelerating, decelerating and making turns. Finally when I greatly relaxed my expectations about mass and inertia I could then fly in relatively arbitrary ways.
But as for the actual flying? I just will it. I just intend to fly and I do. So if nothing in my mind is blocking what I want, intending it is as easy as “wanting it for real” basically. It’s only because there is this massive countervailing volition in the form of habit and some tacit commitments that makes any of it so monstrously hard.
I think most instruction for psychic development that I see misses the boat here. They all tell you “just sit down and focus” and so on. They’re telling you the easy part, basically. What they don’t tell you is how to understand yourself to such a deep level that you can learn to relax around old habits and old beliefs that no longer work for you, and the stumbling blocks and fears that one has to deal with in this regard. For example, insanity and fear of it is rarely mentioned. (It does get mentioned in some sources… so nothing I say is absolute, it’s only a tendency I’ve observed.)
Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2017-10-21 09:29:44 (donpdrr)
I can’t speak for myself, as regardless of how much sleep I get I don’t much get tired anymore, but I have a friend who’s weird and who you’d probably like - she gets bouts of weeks or months where every night she has very long, elaborate dreams with several story arcs woven together. And every time this happens, she’s stressed and tired the whole time. That’s just one anecdotal case, but it makes sense to me.
Still, what would they say? What would a guide on understanding yourself look like? I’ve never felt like there’s much that I could say to anyone else that would help them. They either put in the self-reflection, the mindfulness, the critical contemplation of fear and desire and suffering, or they don’t. I don’t know how much this can really be taught with words.
Originally commented by u/Utthana on 2017-10-22 22:35:32 (dopuw8m)
For one thing, why not mention that there is such a “thing” as countervailing volition? Othering? Sutta Pitaka is pretty close to such a guide, because although it doesn’t mention othering by name, it sets up conditions for a person to discover that on their own. I’m willing to acknowledge the matter is difficult because the specifics are all different from person to person, so the exact guidance probably could not be given. Only general principles could be disclosed along with maybe a few starter methods.
I’ve always felt anything I did to help people would create a heavy price in the long term, because the more helpful I acted, the less self-reliance would result, which would create a heavy karmic baggage later on. But not to help at all is also bad even for myself. That’s because if I say some things I create an impression in my own mind that some things like this can be heard in a social context, because by saying them I am also hearing them myself. This ensures that I retain my grasp on the precious way. That’s not to say I have to talk to grasp my way, but rather, I feel more confident that if I share I will strengthen my resolve and hold on the way.
Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2017-10-23 08:18:09 (doqlu8l)
I can appreciate both of those answers. :)
Originally commented by u/Utthana on 2017-10-23 08:28:50 (doqmf7c)