Talk more casually about SI here without having to make a formal post.
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“Discussion Thread”
Originally posted by u/AesirAnatman on 2018-07-26 08:42:37 (91wnig).
Many of the habitual impulses that governs the manifestation’s dynamics of my world seems to be based upon the belief that struggle/high effort consecrates the results with special value.
Originally commented by u/Alshimur on 2018-12-20 11:22:14 (ec5cquy)
Ah, another discussion thread. :) Cool, time to ramble.
I’ve been really really enjoying the recent times. I got access to some legal cannabis again, and I’ve been exploring what is possible with it a second time. So I am leaning toward a conclusion that it’s basically like a psychological microscope. That’s not a novel idea by any means. I’ve seen this idea mentioned on r-psychonaut. I notice it also very much follows intent. So if I am absorbed in some activity on a relatively low dose, it’s like I am not even high. Nothing interesting happens. On the other hand, with that same dose, as soon as I focus my mind a certain way I am high again. And another thing is that this “highness” seems pretty arbitrary. The more I focus, the crazier it gets.
So I’ve had some sessions where I’ve focused pretty intensely and I experienced unusual for me degrees of concentration and a very clear ability to think at the same time, so I could see exactly what was going on. I got into some absurdly deep places in my psyche and I have touched upon what some of my very hidden fears were. I mean, the kind of life I really want to live eventually, a life of manifestational power, it’s no joke. There is sooooo much psychological baggage in my mind that gets in the way, and concentration + cannabis make it so obvious when I focus properly.
The biggest thing I have found is that I still live outside myself. I still think in a way that often requires me to resolve all my stories to some seemingly external standard. On the other hand, I also got a much clearer sense about what it would mean to completely shift the center of spiritual gravity inside myself and it was awe-inducing (I was going to say “awesome” but that word has come to primarily mean “really good”). I definitely want it. But it’s easy to see how this might take a bit of further adjusting for me to get used to further shifts in my own mentality.
There was one moment when I concentrated so well, I could feel my entire experience becoming like malleable jelly. I started hearing strange super-wide echos from sounds that I “knew” should conventionally not have such echos. I started to be aware of a “place” inside me where if I adjust myself, I could make the experience flow in a radically different way, but then this is what also was so awe-inducing. I could feel what it would feel like to start treating all of manifestation as a joke and as a play thing.
I played with a bunch of concepts, because concepts are so magickal and powerful. Currently a really fascinating concept I like is the one of taking a VR (virtual reality) headset off. I’ve had this idea for a long while and later this idea was reinforced for me when I listened to Tom Campbell as well. And the idea goes like this, in two steps:
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First I get myself to feel like everything I am experiencing is a result of a special “headset” that I am wearing. I get myself to feel like I am looking into a gameworld, basically, of a really really advanced game that is able to render smells, tactile sensations and so forth. I first try to get this sense of my experience being virtual stabilized a bit before getting to the second point.
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Then I focus on what it is like in my “real room” so to speak, in the place where I am “sitting” when I am playing this virtual reality game here. That “room” is obviously completely outside this entire world. It’s a very interesting experience.
Also, I mean this mostly metaphorically, because I am not visualizing a literal headset, for example. The idea is to get a feel for what it might be like to live in a space that is outside this world while at the same time subjecting myself to an experience of this world with its own separate space. It’s a pretty wild feeling.
I though that if I trained myself to “take the VR headset off” really well, it could become an astral projection technique. I’m just having fun playing around with this, so I am not committed to training this into an AP technique, at least so far. For now, I am more interested in figuring out what is happening on deeper levels of myself, the levels that I ignore or pretend aren’t “there”. Once I get a much better idea about the inner content that I tend to keep overlooking, I think I will naturally know what kind of further techniques will be suitable for me, if any.
Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2018-07-30 07:16:48 (e398bsm)
And another thing is that this “highness” seems pretty arbitrary. The more I focus, the crazier it gets.
Absolutely, although in my experience it’s easier to make very small amounts - even zero - into larger effects than it is to make large amounts - especially very large amounts - into smaller effects. For this reason I find very small amounts of cannabis as, if not more, useful than large amounts.
There is sooooo much psychological baggage in my mind that gets in the way, and concentration + cannabis make it so obvious when I focus properly.
I’ve had many similar experiences.
I started to be aware of a “place” inside me where if I adjust myself, I could make the experience flow in a radically different way, but then this is what also was so awe-inducing. I could feel what it would feel like to start treating all of manifestation as a joke and as a play thing.
This effect, I believe, is where the greatest potential of cannabis lies and has been a common result for me from large doses, or intentionally amplified small doses, ever since my experience with psylocibin. It’s an extremely powerful and very useful mindset to take on, but also a profoundly disorientating and intensely stressful one if it appears abruptly or involuntarily, which, for me at least, has long been a real possibility and has happened many times. I’ve since learned to induce it when I want, and avoid it when I don’t.
Then I focus on what it is like in my “real room” so to speak, in the place where I am “sitting” when I am playing this virtual reality game here. That “room” is obviously completely outside this entire world. It’s a very interesting experience.
This reminds me of the eyes-closed-are-actually-eyes-open post I made a while back. I like it.
Originally commented by u/Utthana on 2018-08-12 17:34:44 (e41t6da)
Oh yea, that was an amazing post. :) I just realized it’s basically the same (or very similar) concept, yea.
It’s funny how the stuff we’ve said or thought about long time ago is not really gone, isn’t it? It’s all with us. In relation to this I had an idea that when we meditate, it’s not just the current person that meditates, but all our past thoughts and deeds meditate when we meditate (and the same is true for contemplation too). I don’t want to say the past is the center of power here (which would make it sound like we’re trapped in our past or something, and I don’t mean that), but definitely my cognition of my own past, even if I am not consciously aware of it, is always participating in whatever I am doing.
The above is a comforting thought whenever I get worried about forgetting what I now know, especially when this body has to pass away at some point. As I consider this, I don’t worry about forgetting the good stuff as much.
Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2018-08-13 09:29:41 (e432cq6)
. So I am leaning toward a conclusion that it’s basically like a psychological microscope. That’s not a novel idea by any means. I’ve seen this idea mentioned on r-psychonaut. I notice it also very much follows intent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAlaRdrcQcY&feature=youtu.be&t=2624
I just wanted to drop this here since I found this highlight fascinating.
Originally commented by u/therewasguy on 2019-01-20 04:13:58 (eegabyv)
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I’ll never stop being inspired by the audacity of the men who dreamed a dream as big as SI. But it doesn’t fully satisfy me and here is why.
My main beefs with SI is 1) lack of merging with other Souls through the heart, 2) lack of merging with God through the violet ray / top of head / prayer and 3) predilection for self-involved magical endeavors.
I love the “Magic Lab” feeling of the thought experiments here, I love the tremendous respect given to the imagination. So much respect for the mind, it has impacted me deeply to read about it and think about its concepts.
I see SI as a practice for adepts who have achieved ‘the gateway’ - e.g. found the place in the skull which, when the mind is focused correctly, splits light into a very fine spray and parses out the secret information held within it. SI (or solipsism?) may be somewhat misguided from my perspective because without a practice anchored in points 1 and 2 above, you have a tendency to end at 3 - which is somewhat masturbatory magickal self-exploration which seeks to prove its central conceit through perceptual shifts.
There is a gravity well here which many have warned about. The alienation from others which can result from the ongoing embodiment of the magical personality, is counter to most people’s true metaphysical purposes - which is to regain the consciousness of unity. Don’t become God, instead realize that you and all your brothers and sisters are God. If the latter perception is lacking, be cautious encouraging the former.
However, from what I’ve been informed, anyone who has attained the gateway is free to do as they like. They are Gods. Therefore I cannot fault you even though my aesthetic and spiritual inclinations are not fully satisfied with this. Its a beautiful thing you have done, honoring the power of the mind so much.
Originally commented by u/fortunatefields on 2018-10-25 17:57:02 (e8evgx5)
My main beefs with SI is 1) lack of merging with other Souls through the heart, 2) lack of merging with God through the violet ray / top of head / prayer and 3) predilection for self-involved magical endeavors.
SI doesn’t lack (or force) any possibility. In fact, that’s one of its unique characteristics as a framework of thought and manifestation.
Originally commented by u/VLSIHeaven on 2018-10-28 10:37:39 (e8koq2u)
I like to imagine supersized objects sometimes. So for example, if for whatever reason you wanted to imagine a pencil, you can imagine a pencil that is larger than the sky. If you’re imagining a foot, it can also be larger than the sky and so forth.
The reason for this is because even though we might consider imagination fanciful, but if I pay attention to my own imagination, I have what could be called “imagination habits.” So if these habits also align with convention, then I think this reinforces the convention. So for example, conventionally pencils are just a bit longer than one’s body’s hand, then if I also imagine it like that, I am implicitly giving some weight to convention even in my “fanciful” imagination, which in retrospect might not be all that fanciful.
This is just an idea. I don’t literally imagine pencils. I’m just using “pencil” to get a basic idea across. Also “super-large” is also a basic idea.
The main point is to notice any kind of patterns in my imagination and either build new patterns, or simply disrupt the old ones.
Imagination is important and I think imagination is very much related to manifestation. It’s possible that one’s manifestation might be too rigid also because one’s imagination is too small (I don’t mean a literal size here). That’s how it seems to me right now.
Also, instead of visualizing things inside this experience you can visualize things outside. So what I mean is, instead of me sitting at the table and inside this experience of sitting at the table I am visualizing say an apple, I can visualize that my experience of my sitting at the table is really happening inside a giant apple. In other words, the apple is the context, a platform, a space for other things, rather than an object inside “this” “normal” space. So it’s like putting another space outside and over this space and then by visualizing things outside this space we can change the meaning inside this space. That’s the idea.
One thing the above kind of visualization does is that it takes away the feeling of immensity from the conventional appearances. So you might think the sky and the earth are so huge, but if you then imagine the whole experience is happening inside a tiny pearl that is held by a child’s hand somewhere else, then suddenly even the vast sky seems incredibly tiny. Then after one gets a sense of its smallness, how can it still create the same overwhelming feeling? In the same vein although I think it’s better not to associate one’s identity with the body, but for those who still have a strong tie to the body, they can imagine their body to be larger than the solar system. At first this might seem silly, but if you do this repeatedly a few times, it can create an after-effect that lasts even when you’re not imagining this anymore. That effect would be to feel much less overwhelmed by whatever appears, even if it’s the sky, which would be conventionally used as an example of a vast and overarching expanse.
So I like once in a while fooling around with my imagination like that.
Also, Zhuang Zi talks about this when he asks something like “is your arm really small and the universe large?” “Is someone dying an infant” really having a short lifetime? And is someone who lives for 300 years really having a long lifetime? A lot of people would accept this as a fanciful thought experiment that at best needs to be done once and forgotten, without any practical use. But what happens if one trains like this?
Training occupies a gray area between serious and unserious. So if I am training to do a tennis serve, I am not doing an actual serve, it’s not for real. But it’s not entirely unreal either. Training is liminal activity. Imagination would normally be held as clearly and unambiguously fanciful. But if one trains using one’s imagination instead of being purely fanciful it would become liminal. That’s because by training one takes whatever one trains a bit more seriously. But because it’s considered “training” it’s still not 100% serious. So for example, am I training to be a human or am I a human? By convention and I think most people would say, “no, I am actually a human, and I am not training to be a human, I really am and this is it.” So training is still less than 100% real, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad or useless.
Training can be used in reverse too. For example, we take something like “being a human” and we would ordinarily feel like of course yea, I am a human and there is no need to train to be one. But if you live your days as though you’re training to be a human, you reduce the weight of humanity in your own mind but you’re also doing it in a way that doesn’t make humanity 100% fanciful either. So something that was fanciful can be made liminal, and then relatively real. But something that is relatively real can be made liminal and then fanciful.
Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2018-08-18 11:04:49 (e4dxnx9)
In the other thread Utthana had asked: “Am I a puny spiritual weakling who cannot resist the temptation to become a mindless drone for more than a year at a time? Do these experiences happen on a different time scale for you?” But I’m answering here because I would like that my writing to be taken in a more general context:
I give high priority to the goal of maintaining a mind state of lucidity. I’m more prone to snap out it when I let the intensity of afflictive passions grows out hand, more commonly, craving, anger and vanity.
Lucidity: State of mind in which Mind as subjective awareness recognize Itself as transcendent (I’m not my experience) and immanent (I’m the creator and player of my experience) in relation to its dream. In this state the “world” is not a reality outhere but a creation of my imagination, which exist only in my subjective awareness and is patterned by my will in accord to my commitments.
Craving : Obsession with the desire to experience a specific scenario that is not easily accessible, in detriment of the possibility of employ/enjoy skillfully what is easily available in the present.
Anger/aversion: Obsession with the removal of a particular pattern, when non-confrontational solutions are easily available, the very presence of anger in relation to the pattern makes it persist.
Vanity : Obsession with the idea of “how I’m appearing” instead of give priority to “how good I’m dreaming”.
Someone would like to try to give better definitions to the terms?
Originally commented by u/Alshimur on 2018-08-06 04:38:09 (e3nq5sg)
Lucidity: State of mind in which Mind as subjective awareness recognize Itself as transcendent (I’m not my experience) and immanent (I’m the creator and player of my experience) in relation to its dream. In this state the “world” is not a reality outhere but a creation of my imagination, which exist only in my subjective awareness and is patterned by my will in accord to my commitments.
I like this definition of lucidity.
Craving : Obsession with the desire to experience a specific scenario that is not easily accessible, in detriment of the possibility of employ/enjoy skillfully what is easily available in the present.
Stretch goals are not problems. If I didn’t have far out desires and just wanted to “rest in the now” I wouldn’t be a subjective idealist. I’d be a materialist instead and go on shopping sprees which are “Available now, while supplies last, hurry the fuck up and buy buy buy.”
Anger/aversion: Obsession with the removal of a particular pattern, when non-confrontational solutions are easily available, the very presence of anger in relation to the pattern makes it persist.
I don’t agree with this either. Some ways of manifesting/handling anger are constructive, and some aren’t. Anger is not inherently bad, but it’s in what you do with it. Are you skillful with it or not? If skillful, anger is OK. Also, wanting to remove a pattern can be a stretch goal and isn’t a bad thing all by itself.
Vanity : Obsession with the idea of “how I’m appearing” instead of give priority to “how good I’m dreaming”.
I like this one a lot too. Vanity, if it’s defined in this way, takes you outside your own perspective and forces you to imagine other perspectives that are then judging you. It’s worth noting that by convention considering other perspectives instead of training and deepening your own is often held to be a good thing. That’s basically empathy. However, if one wants to tanscend and make fairly big changes, one should realize that these “other” and “judging” imaginary perspectives that one often imagines to be judging oneself are able to “typecast” (if you don’t already know what “typecast” means, it’s worth a lookup) oneself and stop one from making any big changes to one’s goals or personality or abilities or anything else.
Of the 4 definitions you gave 2 are positive (lucidity and vanity) and 2 are self-critical in a way that, if you try to address the criticisms, will incline you toward convention as I see it.
Lucidity immediately takes you out of convention. Being mindful of your definition of “vanity” will keep you independent as well. However, you bring yourself right back with the other two because to address those criticisms you have to stop wanting to play with your so-called “givens.”
Or said another way, playing with the givens makes you into a bad guy according to your definitions of craving and aversion. And playing includes not just immediate modifications but having unconventional plans, the kinds of plans you’re not “supposed” to have, such as say “I want to reduce the influence of gravity in the future.” Gravity is a good example of what would normally be considered an untouchable given and thinking often about how to reduce it, I guess you’d classify that as an “obsession” even if you’re having a good and easy time and think skillfully the entire way.
I think there is some overlap between Buddhism and subjective idealism, however, Buddhism is focused on the reduction of suffering, whereas subjective idealism is a much more general manifestation framework.
It’s worth noting that Buddhism has its own multi-lifetime goals and encourages people to hold indefinite and longer-than-one-lifetime vows as well. This is where the Buddhism of the primary sources (suttas, sutras, and tantras, from our own perspective, because the primary source(s) is otherwise inaccessible) and the presently popular and decidedly non-magickal distillation of Buddhism come into conflict.
The relationship between reducing suffering and the ability to manifest is at least this: you have to be able to change something about your situation to reduce suffering. Even if you’re just changing how you interpret things and nothing more, that’s still a change that requires “permission.” (maybe one of your old and suffering-maximizing definitions was conventionally “right” for example and conventionally you may feel like you don’t have a permission to change it)
Subjective idealism gives maximum possible permission to make all kinds of changes, some of which may be skillful, and some may not be. It’s more comparable to say a theory of combustion in that way. Buddhism is more like “how to keep yourself comfortably warm.” SI is more like “here’s how combustion works.” But Buddhism has its own wild side which is often overlooked in our society. Buddhism, for example, teaches people manifestation skills like this:
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an06/an06.041.than.html
Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2018-08-06 08:57:58 (e3o5xpu)
Thank you Mindseal, I’m glad that you took time for answering.
Stretch goals are not problems.
If I didn’t have far out desires and just wanted to “rest in the now” I wouldn’t be a subjective idealist. I’d be a materialist instead and go on shopping sprees which are "Available now, while supplies last, hurry the fuck up and buy buy buy.
You are right, the way it is worded, it gave the impression of advocating a compromise in long-term goals in favor of enjoying the status-quo, in a way similar to the discourse of “mainstream” meditation culture: “Everything is already perfect, just be mindful and rest in the now.”. I don’t hold this view at all, I’m not against the pursuit of long-terms goals that seem fantastic from a conventional POV.
Therefore I will redefine craving as: Attraction to a scenario that you are consciously evaluating as not worth to pursuit. A recurrent irrational attraction, interfering with your concentration, diminishing your capacity to dedicate yourself to goals evaluated as more wholesome.
Ps: I will keep addressing the others points of your answer as the time goes by.
Originally commented by u/Alshimur on 2018-08-08 23:50:17 (e3toh0e)
Therefore I will redefine craving as: Attraction to a scenario that you are consciously evaluating as not worth to pursuit.
Ahh, this is interesting. With this definition I see craving as something worth investigating. From your own perspective, maybe your conscious evaluation is what needs changed, or maybe it’s just right and one should then consider attenuating the draw so that one’s attractions fall in line with one’s conscious evaluation(s). I see craving, with this definition, as at least potentially problematic and in practical terms I think I can say craving thus defined is probably a problem, and one should consider attenuation strategies to lower the level of attraction.
This is a tricky issue, because one’s ability to make holistic conscious evaluation is also something one has to train, imo.
In an esoteric sense, deep down at the core of your own perspective, I claim that you’re already secretly omniscient, so this training is kind of half-real and half-illusionary, more like a return back to your original omniscience than true training in a conventional sense, so it’s more like re-training then maybe.
This is where one needs to value and develop wisdom at all times, because what is skillful and what isn’t depends on one’s perspective. I am not saying anything goes here. But what works and what doesn’t is something each perspective has to deeply know intimately on their own terms. This is why while it’s great to talk like this, and I hope we can keep talking, there is no replacement for contemplation in solitude.
Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2018-08-10 09:21:01 (e3x218m)
Does anyone here have experience with the creation of new senses (like sight/smell etc.)?
Originally commented by u/VLSIHeaven on 2018-08-02 07:47:20 (e3ft73w)
I have not done this, and hadn’t ever really considered doing it. Just thinking about it for a few moments, I’m not really sure where I’d even begin. Have you thought about this much? Do you have any particular ‘thing’ you want to sense in a way that you currently cannot?
Originally commented by u/Utthana on 2018-08-12 17:37:01 (e41t90k)
I have given it some thought, but not as much as I think it deserves. For me it poses a huge challenge to the imagination.
One problem is that the “five senses” of convention are all linked to various body parts (eyes/nose etc.), which are used to get a signal into one’s brain. Since the basic layout of the human body is well-known, creating a new body part to go along with the new sense would require a violation of conventional biology on a scale that I may not be quite ready for.
However, other implementations are conceivable. Maybe one could develop an ability to perceive a new “dimension” that goes beyond but is consistent with ordinary reality. For example, a resident of Flatland (which has two space dimensions) could suddenly become aware of a third dimension which contains Flatland. The rules of Flatland are still valid, but they are now seen to be just a small slice of a larger reality.
Similarly, I could try to create a larger “reality” that encloses conventional reality in a consistent way, along with a way of perceiving this reality that is integrated with my conventional senses. [As an analogy, I imagine what it would be like to be deaf one’s whole life, and suddenly gain an ability to hear. The sounds you’d hear would be consistent with your other senses - e.g., the sound of scraping various surfaces with a coin would be correlated to how the surface feels when you touch it.]
Do you have any particular ‘thing’ you want to sense in a way that you currently cannot?
This is hard to answer, since the way I conceive of most “things” is so intertwined with my usual senses. I suppose I want to sense all of the ordinary things in a new way.
But I have another response too. I’m interested in perceiving non-human intelligent life forms. Everyone thinks they’d be found far away in outer space, but i’m partial to the idea that they’re already “here” and waiting for us to learn to perceive them.
Originally commented by u/VLSIHeaven on 2018-08-13 03:05:24 (e42fd9a)
I think in order to restructure your own relative reality (as opposed to the ultimate reality, which is constant) to such a deep degree, you need some extremely serious psychic/mental/inner motive force. It cannot be a mere curiosity. There has to be like a major gap in your being that isn’t being filled and that must be filled with these “new senses.” You can’t fake this sort of thing. Either you have such a craving or you don’t. Unless you have a very deep meta-craving where you crave to manipulate your cravings, you cannot create new cravings arbitrarily. (I don’t mean you personally, I mean anyone)
Personally I have so many desires that should be fulfilled using the normal senses that I don’t really think about the idea of fundamentally new senses. I think a fundamentally new sense is like a 5th wheel on a carriage. It’s useless. At least at this point, it is. Maybe once I am so adept at satisfying myself with the 5 (or 6, if you think mind is also a sense, like in Buddhism) senses I will grow bored and at that time a genuine need and craving will develop for some novel sense. At that time I will meet the basic prerequisite for creating a fundamentally new sense and I can think about it more seriously.
But some of what you say makes sense to me without the extra senses. For example here:
Maybe one could develop an ability to perceive a new “dimension” that goes beyond but is consistent with ordinary reality. For example, a resident of Flatland (which has two space dimensions) could suddenly become aware of a third dimension which contains Flatland. The rules of Flatland are still valid, but they are now seen to be just a small slice of a larger reality.
Similarly, I could try to create a larger “reality” that encloses conventional reality in a consistent way, along with a way of perceiving this reality that is integrated with my conventional senses.
Tom Campbell, who is not a subjective idealist (that I know of, anyway), talks about his experience and it mirrors a lot of what you’re saying. He perceives a wider reality that integrates the conventional reality into it in a coherent manner. However, this wider reality doesn’t involve anything other than the normal senses, from what I understand. It’s still sight, hearing, smell, touch/kinesthetic, and taste, but they’re sampled from the areas of I would say his own will that are adjacent to the area in his will that a common convention occupies. Unfortunately I don’t have a link handy to link you to a direct episode where he talks about that.
Although Campbell is not a subjective idealist, I like a lot of his metaphors and the way he explains things has some bearing to subjective idealism as well. The metaphor of looking at different computer screens as you’re playing two kinds of games is a very good one. These two games can be unrelated, or you could be playing a multiplayer game on one screen and have a chat session open on another screen where you talk to the same players that are in-game. So let’s say the game doesn’t offer a convenient chat function, or let’s say the game restricts the chatting for some reason. Then you have a different parallel application running that lets you chat on a side-channel, but it’s still related to the game because it’s the same players as those in your game. Meanwhile you can also talk on this side-channel about things outside the game. So this is a metaphor for a broader than the main game reality. But this metaphor doesn’t need any new senses. It simply uses the senses we already have in new ways.
I encourage people to do their own thing, so if you’re interested in these new senses, I will cheer you on from the sidelines and will be looking forward to your reports, if any. As for me, I have way too much on my plate right now to really worry about new senses and many other topics that might become interesting to me later on.
If you like the idea of multidimensionality, one way to approach this is to first take up an axiomatic commitment for yourself that you’re already a multidimensional being. In other words, you can hold yourself, right now, as you are right now, as a participant in multiple dimensions. Then you start paying attention to your daydreams and other mental activity with an expectation that some of that content will represent a coherent and self-consistent dimension. So some portion of your mental activity will eventually conform to your expectation and commitment, assuming your commitment to multidimensionality doesn’t violate (or clash with) any of your prior commitments and habits in a way that’s too severe. I mean a hypothetical “you” here.
I find this whole topic intelligible and somewhat interesting, but it isn’t my thing at this time. We all have to decide where to focus. For me, after I projected out of my body once, I also abandoned that as well (although I did learn to lucid dream). You could say there were many reasons why, but one of the reasons was that I had a clear sense that maybe this kind of thing will become important to me later, but for now I had more basic things I had to “tie up” for myself on a more conventional level first. Specifically, I used to be very “welded” to the conventional assumptions and appearances, and so the first order of business would be to contemplate why so, pay attention to and learn how this “being welded to convention” works in day to day mental life (learn about the mousetrap) and relax a bit (make the mousetrap less effective, or maybe learn to not be trapped by it anymore).
A lot of things which conceptually sound reasonable and easy for someone who understands subjective idealism at least halfway, are nonetheless subjectively challenging for all kinds of reasons. It’s pretty easy for us to conceive that since we have 5 or 6 senses, why not 10? That’s easy. And with subjective idealism, we don’t have the limitations of the bodily organs to worry about, because your body is a dreamed experience and isn’t a literal lump of hard matter like it would be under physicalism. So it’s very easy to think like that. But to actually live like that, it would be insanity of the highest order. The closest I can think of, is savants. If you’ve ever looked into the savants, they’re perhaps the closest ones to this, well, some of them. There are different kinds of savants and they don’t all have the same abilities. So for example, you may try reading “Born on a Blue Day” by Daniel Tammet. And Daniel is one of those savants that’s not that far from us in terms of his personal reality. There are savants that are just barely with us in our convention and they cannot communicate to us about any extra senses they might have. We could maybe infer that they might be experiencing such things, but we probably couldn’t prove it inside the presently known convention. It’s obvious that if any deviation from convention exists, there must be a spectrum of such deviations. So for Daniel, he has intuitions and perceptions related to numbers that normal people don’t have. This might be counted as an added sense, but if he created that added sense, it wouldn’t be in this life. And plus, if he created it consciously in this life, he should be able to explain to us how he did it. If he cannot explain the creation process, it means it was either not in this life, or it was done using methods/understanding/intuitions that themselves are outside convention. Daniel talks about his experience, but he doesn’t explain, that I know of, how can someone else become like him.
Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2018-10-06 03:22:16 (e7857os)
Either you have such a craving or you don’t. Unless you have a very deep meta-craving where you crave to manipulate your cravings, you cannot create new cravings arbitrarily. (I don’t mean you personally, I mean anyone)
Isn’t this just some version of othering: the othering of one’s cravings or desires? In subjective idealism, it is optional whether or not to play as though one has no control over one’s cravings.
If I create something new, then there arises the possibility of craving that thing – something I “couldn’t do” beforehand. Similarly, if I destroy something (say, in the sense of removing it from my consciousness completely and choosing to ignore the possibility of its existence) then I “lose” the ability to crave it. It is clear that all of this (and much more) is possible.
Originally commented by u/VLSIHeaven on 2018-10-28 10:14:12 (e8kncxo)
It’s possible, but something has to motivate you long and steady enough to go through, what in my opinion may be an arduous process. I might be wrong on this one, but I think that creating an entirely new sense (and not another version of, or a repackaging of, seeing/hearing/etc.) will be an arduous process, if for no other reason than a mental habit would need to be established for it. That’s assuming you can conceive and imagine such a sense, if you want to create it consciously, or you may create it somewhat unconsciously by directing your intent toward it without fully knowing what this new sense might feel like. So when you succeed, you’d have to make it lasting, integrated, etc…
It’s possible my currently limited mindset is just throwing up bogus difficulties, and the last thing I would want is to limit you with my own limitations. As I said before, if you can do it and you can describe what is happening with that new sense of yours, I’ll be cheering you on from the sidelines here.
Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2018-10-31 10:17:50 (e8r98p3)
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Originally commented by u/[deleted] on 2018-10-24 03:23:09 (e8ayx8y)
If I perceive something but then someone else perceives something then what makes the minds perceive the same things.
There are infinitely many possible answers to this question, and they are all as true or false as you believe them to be.
I’d like to question the question: what makes you so sure that there are other minds that perceive the same things you do?
Originally commented by u/VLSIHeaven on 2018-10-28 10:24:19 (e8kny2b)
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Originally commented by u/[deleted] on 2018-10-28 11:22:26 (e8kr82c)
I feel like the beauty in subjective idealism is that objective truth is somewhat merged into it when you ponder on the idea more deeply. For instance, when you try to think about the subjectivity of another mind, you can only think about their subjectivity through your own subjectivity, so it cancels the other and you are only ever perceiving from yourself. No matter how “outside” of yourself you think you are getting, you are still observing from the same place, regardless of what the observer is observing.
Originally commented by u/shaneith on 2018-11-01 02:58:57 (e8smacm)
But then wouldn’t that be objectivly true?
I don’t know what “objectively true” means. How can I assign meaning to this notion?
I assign meaning to the notion of “truth” in various ways, depending on the context. As an example, when I’m discussing the weather with another person, I have a way to confirm or disconfirm statements about the weather. It’s raining if water falls from the sky in small droplets. In our realm at present, this is a conventional way of dealing with truth: I “check” it using evidence from (my) sense perceptions. But it is no less subjective and volitional than any other ways of dealing with the notion of truth.
Originally commented by u/VLSIHeaven on 2018-10-29 07:13:28 (e8mee1b)