Science, the psychic, and the spiritual.

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vitency

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I have just joined this forum in hope of striking up conversations with Japanese English speakers on some of my life interests. Foremost amongst them is the nature of the reality we inhabit. Is the Universe merely a gigantic machine, as the West insists? How sad! How boring! Or does it have psychic and spiritual aspects that offer astounding possibilities for personal development? This has always been my belief, and I'm hoping to find others here like-minded.

I've posted a first thread in the Serious Discussions section, but the link to my website in which I present detailed information has been removed. Pity. A forum that doesn't allow external links is obviously pretty crippled, but I'll persevere nonetheless.
 
Chill out, you just joined, People enjoy people who talk to you, not talk at you. Start a topic, instigate a discussion, then through your links at them. Spam is a real problem at all websites, so no, starting off by sharing personal links is not the way to start off on the right foot.

Reading your few posts here, I'm already off-put by your insistence on dichotomy "the West thinks the universe is merely a machine". Why not provoke an idea and have a discussion, then, if relevant, share your links?

Anyway, your statement that the site is crippled... right back at you. Not every site wants to be the cesspool that is Twitter, I try to spend my time only on sites with gatekeepers that maintain a standard.
 
Fair enough, reprimands accepted. I'm a geriatric and don't use social media (Twitter? Yech!) so have little patience with modern social "rules of engagement", which seem to require endless foreplay with ever getting down to the real thing.

So I'll try to prattle on about tittle-tattle for a bit if them's the rulz.
 
I don't get it. Really, I don't. I was polite in that other thread and made the point that possibly there was a standard here regarding links to other sites and if that strikes any human type as a funny way to conduct such affairs on a given site, then I just don't get it. I write "human type" because them Bill Gates Bots ain't human and they are all over the place in this society on the Net.

Anyway, as a human being, you came in with sweeping statements in your first post, but I politely ask about one of them and the response is a sort of everybody knows this or that. (Well, I thought I was polite. And I didn't take you to task for that style you used.)

Anyway, a regular member here then decides maybe a bit of a lecture on certain matters is in order and then we read some sort of business about "tittle-tattle" and so I just don't get it.

If you were to apply your same standards within the home of your loved one the first time she or he brought you to their home the papa-fella would flat throw you out! And I believe in societies all over this planet for hundreds of years them's been the rulz.

So you see, I just don't get it.
 
Nope, you really don't. You have my sympathy. But it's your problem, not mine.
 
vitency said:
Nope, you really don't. You have my sympathy. But it's your problem, not mine.
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You sure are an interesting human.

And thank you for your concerns about my well-being, if your sympathies are of the true kind.

Oh yes, it is a "problem" of education. There are just so many interesting humans on this planet that time is an issue.
 
You thinking learning from other humans is a waste of time, do you? You are much more interesting than I thought.
 
vitency said:
So I'll try to prattle on about tittle-tattle for a bit if them's the rulz.
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That's how you get people to interact with you? Mock the system they have chosen? A society is something you're born into, a website is something you choose to visit. I'm already done with you, let's see how others find your charm. I bet you just destroy parties when you step in the room, and then blame everyone else after for the terrible atmosphere.
 
"I joined this website yesterday, and with less than ten posts, members loathed me. It's them who are the problem, not me. I will learn nothing from this."
 
Before you concern yourself with the machinations of the universe, I would ask: are you certain that you exist?

As for the website, we certainly do allow external links, but in the interest of promoting discussion within the forum, we don't appreciate it so much when people use their first posts to try to redirect traffic to their own sites. We get a lot of people who sign up just for this purpose, and they rarely stick around or provide anything of value to the community here. I hope you do persevere and prove to be the exception to the rule.
 
> I hope you do persevere and prove to be the exception to the rule.

Thanks for the explanation. Yes, can understand the problem. I'm aware that the topics I've broached will be of limited interest. They're deep, complex, and it's always a problem knowing where and how to begin, especially with a very general audience. I won't reference the site again directly unless asked.

> Before you concern yourself with the machinations of the universe, I would ask: are you certain that you exist?

Most of the time, especially when I'm awake. Otherwise I'm dubious, and sometimes resort to extreme measures to test the hypothesis. Cogito ergo sum can work, but not always.
 
vitency said:
Most of the time, especially when I'm awake. Otherwise I'm dubious, and sometimes resort to extreme measures to test the hypothesis. Cogito ergo sum can work, but not always.
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In what ways do you think it doesn't work? And when you say "most of the time," is that to say that you don't always think that you exist, or that you aren't always cognizant of it?

You said you test the hypothesis... in what ways do you experiment?
 
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> In what ways do you think it doesn't work?

Generally speaking, I've long been of the opinion that Westerners are head-centred whereas Easterners are heart-centred, both because of years spent living in SE Asia, and because it explains so many cultural differences. We Westerners have a tendency to get lost in thinking, and one of the benefits of meditation is to "step outside your thoughts" and just watch the mind working. This raises the question, "If I'm sitting here watching my mind, then I'm NOT the mind." So what am I? For me, this has always been one way of proving that consciousness is independent of both body and mind. Which raises the further question, "So what is beyond body and mind?" Answer: emotions, feelings. If the flow of thought ceases and you're in deep meditation, you become filled with this deep, gentle flow of joy (or at least I do). Perhaps this is reality, just being, just joyfulness. Which is a thought, and therefore not real. Or is it.

> in what ways do you experiment?
Well, for example, by posting odd topics on foreign discussion forums., and insulting everyone who replies.
 
I have to use the vocabulary "experience" in the following sentence because it comes closer than "see" as in actually viewing.

If you could experience your mind's thought process from a kind of outside type of situation, it might just scare the heck out of you. Unfortunately, I have started having that experience more than once and it is a very difficult experience and I am not even sure how to explain it.

I might have logged the first time it happened and I know I have logged incidents since, but not all as it is just really difficult to even want to acknowledge it happened, let alone write about it.

As best as a number of us can figure out it may have started because of blood cancer, and it definitely has increased in frequency over about the past 12 months, especially this calendar year. But nobody is very clear as to what is going on and there are other matters that have a higher priority, like getting through the maintenance chemotherapy and some other trouble that came about partly because of the reaction to the steroids during the first and primary chemotherapy session.

As far as explaining what is happening when it happens; that is seriously tough. It comes in sets The last time was the longest "set" since all this started and that means about 4 days total and the very end was really nasty and in public and that had me going into another really bad trouble and we all are just not clear what is up with my brain. But I've gotten really good at hiding it if it happens in public and I usually can simply stay in the residential area when it starts and just sort of hide for however many days it might last. Used to be it only happened about 3 or 4 times in one year, but this year the frequency has gone up.

Funny, too; I think this is the first time I've gone public with this outside of actual family members or medical staff folks. But all agree we have to focus on some other matters first.

But having any sort of awareness of a brain function is just not an experience I would recommend anyone try. We used to have a lot of tricks taught to us when I was into Taekwondo for tournaments and teaching and the tricks were mental games to knock pain out of your brain, in a manner of speaking, and that caused some strange brain processes sometimes and maybe being much younger was helpful and even those tricks are not to be taken lightly. That was a very many years ago when the ROK government blocked all instructors of ROK citizenship from going overseas and so we had access to some of the finest instructors in the world. And I had access to Kim Dong Bae and he was an instructor of immense ability and he knew some really useful brain tricks for getting through pain.

But this business I have to go through sometime these days is seriously difficult sometimes. The brain is a very interesting piece of equipment.
 
vitency said:
> In what ways do you think it doesn't work?

Generally speaking, I've long been of the opinion that Westerners are head-centred whereas Easterners are heart-centred, both because of years spent living in SE Asia, and because it explains so many cultural differences. We Westerners have a tendency to get lost in thinking, and one of the benefits of meditation is to "step outside your thoughts" and just watch the mind working. This raises the question, "If I'm sitting here watching my mind, then I'm NOT the mind." So what am I? For me, this has always been one way of proving that consciousness is independent of both body and mind. Which raises the further question, "So what is beyond body and mind?" Answer: emotions, feelings.
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I see, you bring up some interesting notions. Overall, although there are many general differences between the east and west, both have numerous approaches to mindfulness practice, and all the paths may lead to the same sort of clarity, though they may be wrought with misinterpretation and interference from the ego. Given your own self reflection, I imagine you'd characterize your own approach as mainly cerebral, what Ouspensky and Gurjieff would call the intellectual man. Would you agree?

To what do you ascribe the consciousness you experience. Do you feel that it is uniquely yours?

If the flow of thought ceases and you're in deep meditation, you become filled with this deep, gentle flow of joy (or at least I do). Perhaps this is reality, just being, just joyfulness. Which is a thought, and therefore not real. Or is it.
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Could you explain what you mean by this a little more? You kind of vacillate towards the end.

> in what ways do you experiment?
Well, for example, by posting odd topics on foreign discussion forums., and insulting everyone who replies.
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Haha well I'm not sure if I consider that a terribly effective approach, either for your own understanding or for others :LOL:


@TGI-ECT, thank you for sharing your experiences, it sounds like it's been a rough go. I can imagine it's very disorienting. Would you characterize any of this as a sense of disassociation, or out-of-body experiences? Have you had any CT or MRI scans to see if your episodes are rooted in any physical malady?
 
To TGI-ECT.

Phew! You've presented a range of issues, all complex and leading to others. Fascinating, and thanks.

Problem is where to start ...

With the positives, obviously. Taekwondo. So you have Martial Arts training to use. Great. The better MA schools of old were always "shop-fronts" for spiritual development schools, and maybe some still are, at least in the East. If you're willing to adopt this approach, I could make some suggestions that may be useful.

A second suggestion moves me into perilous ground. I have no qualifications whatever, lest of all in medicine. Nor have I any interest in "helping people". My main life-interest has always been in spiritual development, and there's only one place you'll ever get the help you need for that: within your own consciousness. However, external inputs are not only valuable, but essential, especially in the initial phases. So if you're willing to engage in a bit of "verbal sparring", I'm happy to practise a few kata with you and see where it leads.

Thirdly, this is not the place for such a discussion. It's supposed to be my polite and formal introduction to other members of the forum, but I've botched it so badly that it's already a lost cause. What I'd suggest is that you start another thread in a different section with an appropriate heading. It's purpose would be to discuss the situation with which you're dealing from the "third person" perspective - from a distance - and this for two reasons. It will help you to develop a "distance" from your experiences, and thereby perhaps see them more clearly; and it will allow others having similar experiences to join in the conversation and perhaps gain somewhat of value themselves.

The fact is that what you're going through is very common, especially in MA schools devoted to spiritual development. I could say that you have inadvertently "triggered kundalini" and are suffering the inevitable consequences; or I could say that you have "sprung a leak" in your "astral shell" with similar results. Both are valid approaches; both require extended explanation; both can assist in resolving the situation; and, ultimately, both are parallel paths to the same end.

However, there's another approach that may be more useful. I don't know what diagnoses you've been offered. One would be that you're suffering from a "mental illness", the goal of which would be to arrive at something in accord with DSM-5 (q.v.), and thereby select a drug to treat it. Beware, IMHO! Instead, I'd recommend that you look for material about the shamanic approach to "mental illness", which is that, rather than being a disease, it's a prelude to a significant step forward in spiritual development.

I'll extend the undertaking I gave above to nice_gaijin by not including any URLs in my own posts, but I invite you to do so for the benefit of others. I may recommend certain sites - in this case the Pleiadian Library or BibliotecaPleyades (q.v.) as it's known - as a likely place to find the shamanic material.

And lastly may I thank you for the compliment you have paid me in presenting this material for my consideration. I'll certain respect and be mindful of that in whatever follows.
 
To nice gaijin:

> what Ouspensky and Gurjieff would call the intellectual man.

Gurdjieff was a major influence at one stage in my life. His "Meetings with remarkable men" is still one of my favourite books. However, I found his Beelzebub series too "over-the-top", and eventually realized that, as insightful as were his teachings, they were from a school different to my own. Learned a great deal, but had to move on. And yes, I certain started out on the intellectual path, and am still following it in part; but I found that, without corresponding developments of the emotions and intuition, ones psyche becomes lop-sided.

> Do you feel that it is uniquely yours?

I wish it were, but I'm not yet that far advanced. I came under severe psychic attack in my early twenties, something that is very common among those working with spiritual development, and it took until my thirties to regain control of my inner being. I've made a good deal of progress, but even in my seventies I'm still working with the remnants of it. It's asymptotic: you "fix half of it" and you've made progress; then you "fix half of what's left" and you're moving ahead; but there's always another half to fix until you move to the next level, which I'm now approaching.

> Could you explain what you mean by this a little more?

I could, but it would be very long-winded and technical. Instead, I'd suggest that if you'd like to have a discussion about Patanjali's "Yoga Sutras" I'd be delighted to respond. I took the "Bhagavad-Gita" as my guide to spiritual development in my twenties, and it's never let me down; but I've always turned to the Sutras for putting into practice what it taught me.

> I'm not sure if I consider that a terribly effective approach

Sure seems to convince THEM that I'm real - the more fool they - and I get a kick out of it. A rather perverse pleasure, perhaps, but we all have our dark side. Besides, some of them really do ASK to be skewered on the barbs of wit. And even when you're kind enough to give them what they want, they get offended, all in a huff, and go off complaining.

There's just no pleasing some people.
 
That shake we had in Kanagawa a bit after midnight had me doing an old trick that I sure was hoping had gone away --- I woke up a few seconds before it started. Then there was a second shake a few minutes later. But we haven't had any more shaking since the second one. Hope that's it for now.

Let's see ... There was a question about tests --- the CT and the MRI and there have been so many over the past couple of years. I've had a whole mess of tests and there are a fair number of questions from a couple of sources and so we take things one-by-one and as the brain trouble stuff is still something that I can maintain reasonable control of we are working on other matters first.

An old spinal injury from many years ago in the martial arts stuff seems to have finally become an issue that might require some sort of special surgery, but the fractures due to the steroid trouble has to be fixed first and it does seem we are making progress with that.

So far the very careful study of the brain stuff doesn't seem to be showing us any sort of reason why the brain trouble is happening. Oh yes, and vitency, it isn't just a mental sort of trouble. When the trouble happens there is included some sort of odd feeling stuff throughout the whole body, not just inside the brain.

For now, though, I am not too keen on any special thread devoted to only my medical situation until we get a few matters cleared up and we have a situation that has developed between two universities and I am not ready to bring that out into the public. And if we can get the whole mess figured out and properly looked into at the upper levels of both universities, I am likely not going to go too far into a public discussion of the whole mess.

Actually, there have been some mighty nasty errors made at one hospital (maybe two) and eventually that may have to be placed before the general public, but that is yet to be decided. But my case has also been more than a bit of some trouble for a number of medical professionals and so there can be some sympathy held out for a few folks.

It's just so amazing that I was into sports for so many years of my life --- well into my fifties I was still playing international league softball --- and softball for a Japanese team --- two kinds of softball, by the way --- but the point is I was in really fine physical condition well into my fifties and then BAM! it all started getting really weird. So there was the need for the mental adjustment first. It is so strange to go from so great condition to then starting to have to slow down and then can't do this and can't do that and --- well, just takes some serious readjustment of the way one looks at life.

But there is something else, folks. My active duty days were back when the draft still existed in the U. S. of A. and so you can guess that was a fair number of years ago and then there is the business of simply staying alive in certain situations and one's brain and thought processes might be exposed to certain ways of viewing the world that many others never have the chance to see. The thing is, that isn't really a good thing. In fact, some folks do not do so well when they have to face weirdness in life in that way. I suppose I was lucky and adjusted and got through it all well enough. I don't really want to go too far into this, but when one is in certain military-style situations one can learn a whole mess about how a brain works --- your own and that of others. And as with many others of my generation, it happened when I was a fair bit young and so the experiences have been there in my brain for a whole mess of years. It can be one very interesting education, if one goes about handling it in the proper way. And those that experienced such things with you or that you meet later in a VFW event are also educational in a way that possibly others won't be experiencing. I suppose what I am typing here is there are some things about my mind and that of some others that I already know that does not require I attend any special learning event to be able to understand such things. I'm a life member of the VFW and have held working positions in the VFW at both the post and the district levels so we can help others that didn't get through such troubles quite as well as some others and when one faces such things one learns a whole mess about humans and their brains and how that brain works.

And I am not so sure I understand why I am explaining all this to y'all. Something got me on this road, didn't it? But it was a much worse road some 40 years ago. Very rocky at the beginning. Smoother pavement as one studies the brain and how it works after that sort of trouble as so many of us experienced from our active duty days.

I better bring this weird thought process to a conclusion for now. Sorry for going on and on and on.
 
> throughout the whole body, not just inside the brain.

The physical body is a product of interactions between the psychic and spiritual bodies. Work successfully with the psychic (emotions and mind) and the physical can be controlled, partially at first, and eventually completely.

The mind is the psychic counterpart of the physical brain. The brain neither thinks nor remembers: it is a psychophysical interface between the two realms, and can be compared to computer hardware. Without software, the hardware is useless. Without the mind, the brain is merely a lump of meat. Write a new program and you can take complete control of computer hardware. Realign the mind and the brain will follow suit.

> I am likely not going to go too far into a public discussion of the whole mess.

Like I said, it's your problem, not mine, and completely off-topic in this thread, which is entitled "Science, the psychic, and the spiritual."
 
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