John I can’t thank you enough for all of these videos. I had a dark night of the soul experience that sent me down a spiraling path of meaninglessness. I slowly found the usual works of Nietzsche, Jung, Peterson etc for self help. However the one thing that transformed my emotional state during this time was meditation. And I wanted to understand why. Since starting my practice it’s been a life changing experience and I can’t thank you enough for all of this content. I feel as if I’m in school learning when I watch your “Awakening from the meaning crisis” series. Videos such as these are truly truly helping people during extremely difficult times and I hope you realize while you are an amazing teacher and mentor, to someone like myself, you’re also a life saver. Idk where I would be had I not found your work.
Really happy to hear that, man. Meditation has helped me trememdously in times where my thought patterns were spiralling out and high levels of anxiety would arise. Peace!
Lovely to see John as excited as this, esp. at the end of the conversation. Really enjoyed witnessing this engaged yet relaxed talk of two great minds with such rich experiences. Thanks John!
Great conversation, I like the point that Rick made about the drug experience being a plastic grape compared to the meditative experience. I also like how he pointed at the trauma of losing his community and that the importance of such things is under-rated if still unexplored. Practice is more important than 'knowing' it seems, all of this lovely insight from one talk, so glad that you'll be doing more!
Wonderful conversation John, your search to expand our horizons continues to find extraordinary people who have so much to offer, looking forward to the next chat, the time flew by, thank you Rick for your participation.
" when I'm in that place I just know. The skeptic in me is not there." -Rick That reminded me of Richard Schwartz psychological work on "parts". I have a skeptic in me too who arises in consciousness. Very inspiring talk. I appreciate you two. Thank you for your time and efforts.
This was a fascinating talk -- I hope there are more. The mutual modeling that seems to happen when one is engaged in philosophy and HSC is very interesting. I'd love to hear a deeper exploration of that, both in terms of Rick's experience and writing, but also John's potential insights in terms of what might be going on "behind the scenes" cognitively. I'd also be curious to know if Rick has ever had experiences where he embodies or otherwise encounters the participatory or imaginal mirror-image of philosophical concepts and relationships in his meditative practice. This is fertile ground, thanks to both of you for exploring it.
My meditations often are philosophically contentful but I’d be hard pressed to articulate how. Those that are, tend to arise spontaneously, such that a concept that I am working on just appears in my meditation and starts to unfold or open up like an onion or move around in any other number of ways, and sometimes it becomes a simulation of a dialogue, but because I have such a long-standing habit of identifying thoughts in meditation as phenomena to be observed or disassociated from, I often do not feed those processes, although sometimes I do, and I don’t have a rule about that decision. Many insights come to me about my philosophical work while I am in one form or another of a meditative state, with a sitting, or, even more commonly, walking or jogging in a flow state. When those ideas come, sometimes I deploy mnemonic devices, generating a mantra that functions as a mnemonic, and start chanting that mantra, which is like kneading dough, in the sense that it bakes the process, and more ideas come out of it, and the mantra grows in terms and thus in conceptual richness. That’s just one among many other creative examples of ways in which philosophy injects itself into my meditative practices, sort of by itself. I’m not sure if I’ve answered your question?
I'm going through the return to smoking and drinking stage, so glad you mentioned that. I was fully conscious that it was ahead of me and have fully embraced it. Cheers ...Will 🍻
Meditation in all of its forms is simply the act of shifting the focus of attention inward, away from thoughts and sensations It's the DEATH of thought. If one is not willing to completely let go of thought, the cycle of Samsara will continue It's incredibly simple. Mind IS complexity. If things are appearing complicated, you are pointing in the wrong direction
Fun to listen to people, that are still living, trying to describe, the indescribable. I think the common after taste of consciousness, is curiosity. Nothing, can kill the taste, or satisfy the thirst.
Thank you so much! I can relate so wholeheartedly. Stumbling into Vervaeke Land feels like I’ve finally found my “tribe”. Speaking to my Theravadan teacher the other day I said “I’ve taken the long road!” He replied “Yeah, but the long road is sometimes the fastest.” Shoulda/coulda/woulda type thinking is silly coz experiential knowing often trumps other styles of knowing.
I like to think my opinions are probabilistic in the realm of my mental model and the limited anecdotal evidence I currently have, so here's my thoughts. I see Rick's head-exiting into some form of out of body experience as likely always being a "kundalini awakening experience" (so head-exiting NDE's might be different but the kundalini awakening experience is likely part of them). I think a minority of these head-exiting experiences take one to the deepest inner light experiences/phosphenes, love-bliss, and realization/samadhi of "Brahman"-- and that the inner light aspect of Brahman is beyond inner light forms or phosphene forms, but is a literal unspeakable quiltwork of inner light that could be argued to be the mind perceiving the foundation of inner light or phosphenes, or maybe even forms of inner and outer light-- where this unspeakable quiltwork is perceived as inseparable from the light of all physical reality. John's experience of forms seem like meditative states that spontaneously manifest phosphenes or inner light, and seem to play some kind of catalyst role to me in the appearance and strengthening of meditative bliss or love-bliss, and possibly other possible emotions attributed to meditation-- possibly starting, or sometimes starting, with the seeing of one's body or body parts in the mind as they relate to these positive emotions. I believe that the reason for the perception of the self exiting out of the head has to do with the sudden onset of depersonalization disorder and derealization disorder, though it's theoretical that derealization might not happen in some cases since only depersonalization is needed to for a person to claim an out of body experience-- even though I also think one can be depersonalized and still feel that they are in their body. Derealization being where the world is like a hologram, depersonalization is like the body is a hologram, and when both of them are deep enough it can be pure consciousness and/or a horrifying sensation of disembodiment; this might be where the whole idea comes in with "enlightened masters" struggling to hold onto their bodies, but it also thankfully to me isn't an absolute phenomena with legitimate-seeming people claiming to be enlightened that they are all struggling with this. I think that you do not need to use kundalini techniques to get a kundalini awakening, I have done it through maintaining bliss while successively trying to desire as little as possible-- including the bliss, if there is non-desire for the bliss but it is maintained in consciousness I find it will gradually grow stronger and stronger until a powerful kundalini awakening happens (along with all the side effects including a near-death level of fear as a result of the positive emotions being too intense). Kundalini techniques may make it even more dangerous as far as the partially unknown potential effects of "kundalini syndrome"-- but while I don't think it's been well discovered even in wisdom traditions, I think kundalini holds the secret to the fastest path to "spiritual enlightenment"/effortless realization of Brahman/sahaja samadhi, but those secrets are hidden and it will most likely cause potentially dangerous and severe kundalini syndrome to whoever goes after them and fails, which is why I developed a permanent on and off tick disorder after 2011 as a solitary autodidact trying to streamline spiritual enlightenment by abusing a kundalini technique. I currently think "kundalini syndrome" symptomology might become more likely with the more of these head-exiting experiences there are, or more extreme they are, but that most of the known symptoms also seem reversible, and that most of the undesirable experiences would disappear if spiritual enlightnement/effortless realization of Brahman/sahaja samadhi was reached.
"Impregnated with intelligibility, " This is EXACTLY how I(and perhaps some people over here?) feel when reading 庄子 (Zhuang-zi), feeling a bit unscientific/unconvinced/irrational as a SCIENCE college student but never understanding why. Thanks so much for capturing that in such a phrase, John! Very curious about the experiment you've done that you mentioned in this video. Is there any way to see it, to read the paper?
Is there a specific contemplative technique you recommend to “experience”; or move toward the experience, of the non-conceptual realm of forms? My sense is that good guidance on Platonic contemplation specifically is hard to find.
My gnostic experience of that just came over me in a deep meditation, not as a result of something that I intended. When it happened, I had not yet read Plato. I only read Plato years later. But I will brainstorm some possible ways to approach and trigger such an experience. I would imagine that, in the same way that John talks about religious ritual as invoking the imaginal, and the way that Patanjali, in the yoga sutras, encourages practitioners to visualize their Ishta Devi (chosen deity), or Tibetan Buddhist imagine their future enlightened Buddha nature, aka the practice of divine pride, or the way John talks about the divine double, etc., in a kind of adult play or imaginal simulation, I imagine that the same methodology might work by visualizing a holographic model of the universe, in which each node is like a facet/plane on a diamond, each reflecting each other, sort of like the Buddhist image of Indra’s net, which might prime the meditative mind for then populating that model with the intelligibly interdependent web of meaning, the way that all concepts are related in a web of meaning interdependence, and simply meditating on that imagery might actually be a doorway, the way a symbol can be a doorway, through which the meditative mind enters in and apprehends the platonic realm of forms. Similarly, the stoic meditation on the infinity of time or space can function in yogic meditations to trigger oceanic states.
14:22 Voltaire Brahman Story Feels like it's to simple ! as in missing narratives. 1. The "internal chase" of the woman was not visible. suppose later she worries for 5 hours about something. 2. Yet it is clear that the Brahman is in a chase for needed knowledge that is difficult to find. So, hard to compare. The exitance of a chase doesn't point directly to the exclusion of happiness. sorry.
I love how these guys are so excited to talk to each other! ☺️
John I can’t thank you enough for all of these videos. I had a dark night of the soul experience that sent me down a spiraling path of meaninglessness. I slowly found the usual works of Nietzsche, Jung, Peterson etc for self help. However the one thing that transformed my emotional state during this time was meditation. And I wanted to understand why. Since starting my practice it’s been a life changing experience and I can’t thank you enough for all of this content. I feel as if I’m in school learning when I watch your “Awakening from the meaning crisis” series. Videos such as these are truly truly helping people during extremely difficult times and I hope you realize while you are an amazing teacher and mentor, to someone like myself, you’re also a life saver. Idk where I would be had I not found your work.
Really happy to hear that, man. Meditation has helped me trememdously in times where my thought patterns were spiralling out and high levels of anxiety would arise. Peace!
Lovely to see John as excited as this, esp. at the end of the conversation. Really enjoyed witnessing this engaged yet relaxed talk of two great minds with such rich experiences. Thanks John!
Great conversation, I like the point that Rick made about the drug experience being a plastic grape compared to the meditative experience. I also like how he pointed at the trauma of losing his community and that the importance of such things is under-rated if still unexplored. Practice is more important than 'knowing' it seems, all of this lovely insight from one talk, so glad that you'll be doing more!
Thanks Rick and John!
Thanks Lee
We need anther 1, 2, 3 of these. Thank you all, very much enjoyed and appreciated this conversation between you two
Exciting conversation! Can't wait to see what roads it leads us down.
I particularly loved this dialogue and very much look forward to more. Thank you both.
Wonderful conversation John, your search to expand our horizons continues to find extraordinary people who have so much to offer, looking forward to the next chat, the time flew by, thank you Rick for your participation.
Wonderful! Excited to hear the next. I'm 'whelmed' with a sense of community hearing conversations like this
Love how John let’s his guests speak rather than controlling the conversation to make himself look smart! *cough Jordan Peterson*
" when I'm in that place I just know. The skeptic in me is not there."
-Rick
That reminded me of Richard Schwartz psychological work on "parts". I have a skeptic in me too who arises in consciousness.
Very inspiring talk. I appreciate you two. Thank you for your time and efforts.
I missed it! But excited as hell to see this. Thank you!
I found the Barry character to be absolutely fascinating, and clearly the key to all.
Boo, Barry goes by the nickname Boo. Synchronicity?
I’d like to hear more in-depth talks on precognition. It’s happened to me and most of my family, and I hate how little explored the topic is
This was great.. Really hoping to hear more soon! Also gotta keep up w my practice
This was a fascinating talk -- I hope there are more. The mutual modeling that seems to happen when one is engaged in philosophy and HSC is very interesting. I'd love to hear a deeper exploration of that, both in terms of Rick's experience and writing, but also John's potential insights in terms of what might be going on "behind the scenes" cognitively. I'd also be curious to know if Rick has ever had experiences where he embodies or otherwise encounters the participatory or imaginal mirror-image of philosophical concepts and relationships in his meditative practice. This is fertile ground, thanks to both of you for exploring it.
My meditations often are philosophically contentful but I’d be hard pressed to articulate how. Those that are, tend to arise spontaneously, such that a concept that I am working on just appears in my meditation and starts to unfold or open up like an onion or move around in any other number of ways, and sometimes it becomes a simulation of a dialogue, but because I have such a long-standing habit of identifying thoughts in meditation as phenomena to be observed or disassociated from, I often do not feed those processes, although sometimes I do, and I don’t have a rule about that decision. Many insights come to me about my philosophical work while I am in one form or another of a meditative state, with a sitting, or, even more commonly, walking or jogging in a flow state. When those ideas come, sometimes I deploy mnemonic devices, generating a mantra that functions as a mnemonic, and start chanting that mantra, which is like kneading dough, in the sense that it bakes the process, and more ideas come out of it, and the mantra grows in terms and thus in conceptual richness. That’s just one among many other creative examples of ways in which philosophy injects itself into my meditative practices, sort of by itself. I’m not sure if I’ve answered your question?
I'm going through the return to smoking and drinking stage, so glad you mentioned that. I was fully conscious that it was ahead of me and have fully embraced it. Cheers ...Will 🍻
Meditation in all of its forms is simply the act of shifting the focus of attention inward, away from thoughts and sensations
It's the DEATH of thought. If one is not willing to completely let go of thought, the cycle of Samsara will continue
It's incredibly simple. Mind IS complexity. If things are appearing complicated, you are pointing in the wrong direction
Fun to listen to people, that are still living, trying to describe, the indescribable. I think the common after taste of consciousness, is curiosity. Nothing, can kill the taste, or satisfy the thirst.
Thank you so much!
I can relate so wholeheartedly. Stumbling into Vervaeke Land feels like I’ve finally found my “tribe”. Speaking to my Theravadan teacher the other day I said “I’ve taken the long road!” He replied “Yeah, but the long road is sometimes the fastest.” Shoulda/coulda/woulda type thinking is silly coz experiential knowing often trumps other styles of knowing.
I like to think my opinions are probabilistic in the realm of my mental model and the limited anecdotal evidence I currently have, so here's my thoughts. I see Rick's head-exiting into some form of out of body experience as likely always being a "kundalini awakening experience" (so head-exiting NDE's might be different but the kundalini awakening experience is likely part of them). I think a minority of these head-exiting experiences take one to the deepest inner light experiences/phosphenes, love-bliss, and realization/samadhi of "Brahman"-- and that the inner light aspect of Brahman is beyond inner light forms or phosphene forms, but is a literal unspeakable quiltwork of inner light that could be argued to be the mind perceiving the foundation of inner light or phosphenes, or maybe even forms of inner and outer light-- where this unspeakable quiltwork is perceived as inseparable from the light of all physical reality. John's experience of forms seem like meditative states that spontaneously manifest phosphenes or inner light, and seem to play some kind of catalyst role to me in the appearance and strengthening of meditative bliss or love-bliss, and possibly other possible emotions attributed to meditation-- possibly starting, or sometimes starting, with the seeing of one's body or body parts in the mind as they relate to these positive emotions.
I believe that the reason for the perception of the self exiting out of the head has to do with the sudden onset of depersonalization disorder and derealization disorder, though it's theoretical that derealization might not happen in some cases since only depersonalization is needed to for a person to claim an out of body experience-- even though I also think one can be depersonalized and still feel that they are in their body. Derealization being where the world is like a hologram, depersonalization is like the body is a hologram, and when both of them are deep enough it can be pure consciousness and/or a horrifying sensation of disembodiment; this might be where the whole idea comes in with "enlightened masters" struggling to hold onto their bodies, but it also thankfully to me isn't an absolute phenomena with legitimate-seeming people claiming to be enlightened that they are all struggling with this.
I think that you do not need to use kundalini techniques to get a kundalini awakening, I have done it through maintaining bliss while successively trying to desire as little as possible-- including the bliss, if there is non-desire for the bliss but it is maintained in consciousness I find it will gradually grow stronger and stronger until a powerful kundalini awakening happens (along with all the side effects including a near-death level of fear as a result of the positive emotions being too intense). Kundalini techniques may make it even more dangerous as far as the partially unknown potential effects of "kundalini syndrome"-- but while I don't think it's been well discovered even in wisdom traditions, I think kundalini holds the secret to the fastest path to "spiritual enlightenment"/effortless realization of Brahman/sahaja samadhi, but those secrets are hidden and it will most likely cause potentially dangerous and severe kundalini syndrome to whoever goes after them and fails, which is why I developed a permanent on and off tick disorder after 2011 as a solitary autodidact trying to streamline spiritual enlightenment by abusing a kundalini technique.
I currently think "kundalini syndrome" symptomology might become more likely with the more of these head-exiting experiences there are, or more extreme they are, but that most of the known symptoms also seem reversible, and that most of the undesirable experiences would disappear if spiritual enlightnement/effortless realization of Brahman/sahaja samadhi was reached.
"Impregnated with intelligibility, " This is EXACTLY how I(and perhaps some people over here?) feel when reading 庄子 (Zhuang-zi), feeling a bit unscientific/unconvinced/irrational as a SCIENCE college student but never understanding why. Thanks so much for capturing that in such a phrase, John! Very curious about the experiment you've done that you mentioned in this video. Is there any way to see it, to read the paper?
It has only been presented at conferences. Hopefully published soon.
Thanks guys. I look forward to future discussions. Possibly and unearthing of sorts in progress.
John, how do we deal with deep emotional wounds? How do you deal with trauma?
Could we all get that list of books on neo-platonism?
big yes
Is there a specific contemplative technique you recommend to “experience”; or move toward the experience, of the non-conceptual realm of forms? My sense is that good guidance on Platonic contemplation specifically is hard to find.
My gnostic experience of that just came over me in a deep meditation, not as a result of something that I intended. When it happened, I had not yet read Plato. I only read Plato years later. But I will brainstorm some possible ways to approach and trigger such an experience. I would imagine that, in the same way that John talks about religious ritual as invoking the imaginal, and the way that Patanjali, in the yoga sutras, encourages practitioners to visualize their Ishta Devi (chosen deity), or Tibetan Buddhist imagine their future enlightened Buddha nature, aka the practice of divine pride, or the way John talks about the divine double, etc., in a kind of adult play or imaginal simulation, I imagine that the same methodology might work by visualizing a holographic model of the universe, in which each node is like a facet/plane on a diamond, each reflecting each other, sort of like the Buddhist image of Indra’s net, which might prime the meditative mind for then populating that model with the intelligibly interdependent web of meaning, the way that all concepts are related in a web of meaning interdependence, and simply meditating on that imagery might actually be a doorway, the way a symbol can be a doorway, through which the meditative mind enters in and apprehends the platonic realm of forms. Similarly, the stoic meditation on the infinity of time or space can function in yogic meditations to trigger oceanic states.
grear, need another one. world needs it
14:22 Voltaire Brahman Story
Feels like it's to simple ! as in missing narratives.
1. The "internal chase" of the woman was not visible. suppose later she worries for 5 hours about something.
2. Yet it is clear that the Brahman is in a chase for needed knowledge that is difficult to find.
So, hard to compare.
The exitance of a chase doesn't point directly to the exclusion of happiness. sorry.
Wow John found an alter ego