Philosophical Speculations

Re my previous post, when I said "But if I would pick a side, I would still pick the side of the liberal democracy (which is Ukraine and the Western alliance) in spite of being very sober about its own flaws.", I meant that it's my personal choice, and I did not mean that it's necessarily ...

Are you familiar with Robert Pirsig's four levels of morality (physical, biological, social, intellectual)? (It's covered in his book Lila .) Its thesis is that what may be good on one level may not be good on a higher level. Debating who is good or bad on a social level will differ from what is go...

I am a communist, my opinion is that communism can only function with idealism. Materialism and political ideology results in a moral catastrophe. Capitalism is a result of absolute materialism and greed, we always want more and more and more...Communism never functioned in our new society because ...

I have personally had the same experience and believe it to me somewhat remarkable but not supernatural. People from a common background and history engaged in a common activity are likely to think/say things that are similar. There is a difference between "similar" and "literal/exac...

Maybe you should take a look at Rupert Sheldrakes website and his article I personally know for a fact that telepathy is real: once in a while I get the knowledge of exactly and literally what my family members are going to say before they say it. It's like I can "hear" in my mind the phr...

I didn't have the time to read it all yet, but the first one made me think of how this feeling of "choice" is also pretty common. My own grandfather, after being under a life-or-death operation, told that while he dreamt that he was sitting on the roof of his childhood house, right on the...

There is a huge number of so called "NDE of Void" on the NDERF.org, many of those indeed involve the feelings of fear and isolation that you described, but many others are very peaceful and profound. I made a collection of quotations, very illuminating: "I hit a place where i didn't e...

How can the "I" be a mind-fabricated abstraction? I mean, of course, the CONCEPT of "I" is abstract, but the concept of "I" is merely a symbol for "first person subjectivity". Even for the Vedantin who the Buddha progressed over (according to Buddhism), the c...

Hedge90 wrote: ↑Sat Feb 26, 2022 10:45 pm Isn't this somewhat at odds with your signature?

No, because "consciousness" is not an entity, it's not a "thing", it has no "I". The "I" is just another mind-fabricated abstraction.

Note that I'm not arguing for that supremacy of the psychedelic (or any other) state over the waking state, I'm just saying that there's simply no absolute point of reference from which you can establish the measure of truth. I wouldn't have put much thought into this either before I actually had a...