What causes bad trips?

[Soul_of_Shu]

"Is it possible that existence is our exile and nothingness our home?"
― Emil Cioran

A rabbi, burdened by the importance of his work, went into
the synagogue to pray. Falling to his knees, he lamented, "O
Lord, I am nothing! I am nothing!"

Just then a Jewish judge passed by and overhearing the
prayer was moved to join the rabbi on his knees. Shortly, he
too, was crying aloud, "O Lord, I too am nothing! I am
nothing!"

The janitor of the temple, awed by the sight of the two men
praying joined them, crying, "O Lord, I also am nothing! I am
nothing!"

At this, the judge, rolling his eyes, nudged the rabbi and whispered, "Now look who
thinks he's nothing!"

[Ben Iscatus]

"Nothing proves we are more than nothing".
- Emil Cioran

(not even a good joke)

[Soul_of_Shu]

"Nothing proves we are more than nothing".
- Emil Cioran

Indeed, Nothing does prove we are more than nothing, by being Aware.

[Soul_of_Shu]

I love this take on Nothing ...

[Soul_of_Shu]

Shakespeare too got in on the act ...

Lear: What can you say to draw
A third more opulent than your sisters? Speak.

Cordelia: Nothing, my lord.

Lear: Nothing?

Cordelia: Nothing.

Lear: Nothing will come of nothing. Speak again.

[Eugene I]

God has two aspects, it is both and inseparably No-thing-ness and ideas/forms/things-creating Spiritual Activity, both transcendent and immanent. Denying, fearing or neglecting either one of these two aspects leads to problematic modes of existence and insufficiency. God itself, being No-thing-ness in essence, chose Life and created the world of forms. It was not a God's mistake, it was intentional. Being afraid and denying the spiritual life beyond the human body-mind is an ego-driven escapism. Likewise, a denial of the Divine formless aspect is a similar escapism motivated by the ego-driven fear of No-thing-ness/Emptiness (because No-thing-ness is death for the ego).

So, it is the experiential knowing and embracing of the fullness of both of these aspects that opens the way to the wholistic mode of existence for individual souls, because this is how we become God-like in both transcendent and immanent, No-thing-ness and Spiritual Activity aspects.

[Cleric K]

Cleric,

This is all quite fascinating stuff. It doesn't sound absurd to me. I can't respond to every point you are making, but I can offer a few comments:

You are absolutely right when you talk about the "fear of the spiritual world". I do feel that fear, very strongly. The "Spiritual World" you describe seems like Hell to me. Like Eternal Damnation. I'm not denying its existence. In the same way that I'm not denying the possibility of that "Higher Consciousness" you are talking about. But that Higher Consciousness looks to me like the ultimate Ignorance. From my perspective, it's the sort of Higher Consciousness the fallen deities the Gnostics talked about would have. It's based on a fundamental error.

This fundamental error is the rejection of the Absolute Nothingness as the source and nature of everything. This is why I see your Spiritual World as a kind of Hell. Because it amounts to an eternal rejection of the Nothingness which is our true nature. That's why I see it as eternal perdition. That's why I find it dreadful and fearful.

What you call "deep dreamless sleep" is not what I call the "absolute nothingness". There's nothing beyond the Third Door I'm talking about. Absolutely nothing. You can't traverse that nothingness, because there's nothing to traverse.

You can convince yourself that by attaining that Higher Consciousness you can go beyond the Third Door and still be conscious. But what you are actually doing is refusing to go through that door. You are refusing to do so because you are clinging to your consciousness.

This is the ultimate fear. Fear of losing our consciousness. We all have that fear, and that's the deepest layer behind the fear of Death. It's not related to our physical embodied existence, like you claim. All those "higher beings" or deities you talk about are the product of this fear. They don't want to lose their consciousness. That's why they still are striving.

Using religious language, I could say that the Absolute Nothingness is the true and only God. But because it's Nothing, it's so easy to ignore! Every soul experiences God or Nothingness in some way, but most choose to ignore it and call it "deep dreamless sleep" or something of the kind. This is a rejection of God. For most people this state of rejection and ignorance, born from fear, will end at the moment of physical death. But for those who follow the path of Spiritual Science and attain Higher Consciousness, the rejection and ignorance and fear will probably continue beyond physical death, maybe for all eternity. What a dreadful destiny!

Stepping through the Third Door is the end of the striving (any kind of striving, conscious or unconscious), but it's not the end of the journey. You go through the door, and you dissolve completely into the Nothingness, and then you come back. You don't traverse anything, because there's nothing beyond the door. But when you come back, you are free to continue your journey of exploration, truly free because there is no fear and no striving anymore. Like I said, there is no goal, no end of the path in the Diamond Approach. The spiritual universe is infinite, with infinite treasures and realizations to be revealed.

A crucial point is that realizing the Absolute Nothingness as our true nature doesn't eliminate our individual consciousness. What happens is that, from that point on, the individual consciousness becomes a manifestation, an expression of the Absolute. The Absolute gets to know itself as that particular individual. And so the journey continues. Because the Absolute loves to explore itself, endlessly.

So yes, all these different spiritual worlds do exist, and all these paths are real, and they lead to completely different spiritual universes. And we are free to choose the path we'll take, according to our spiritual longings. I guess my path will look as dreadful to you as yours looks to me...

This situation reminds me of William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, where devils and angels discuss their respective lots, and what to the angels seems like Heaven looks like Hell to the devils, and vice versa. Of course, the question remains: who is here the angel, and who the devil?

OK Adur. As I wrote in this post, as long as we desire to keep the self-enclosed intellect and the inexplicable nothingness irreconcilably separate, we can build whatever fantastic private group interests we want. I often ask - if you were really in the bosom of the eternal, the source of all, how come you saw nothing of the creation of the Cosmos? Why didn't you see the fallen gods of the Zodiac, immersed in fear of losing their consciousness? You should have - after all they exist between the Absolute Nothingness and your ordinary consciousness so you most certainly must have passed through them if you were in the Source itself.

Anyways. I don't expect answers to these questions. If one doesn't feel at least a little disturbed by the fact that this knock out into the void doesn't really reveal any details about the structure of the Cosmos and man, this only shows that the person doesn't care. And obviously this really doesn't bother many people here who embrace this flat view and rejoice because "everything happens for no reason at all!"

[Soul_of_Shu]

And obviously this really doesn't bother many people here who embrace this flat view and rejoice because "everything happens for no reason at all!"

You dissing the adorable Anna Brown Cleric? It does raise an good question for Adur. If indeed it all can be reduced to absolute nothing, nada, nil, zilch, then, by definition, that must mean there can be no reason at all to come into existence, for how to derive a reason out of absolute nothing. And yet Adur claims: "And so the journey continues. Because the Absolute loves to explore itself, endlessly".. Sure seems like a reason to this mind.

[Eugene I]

OK Adur. As I wrote in this post, as long as we desire to keep the self-enclosed intellect and the inexplicable nothingness irreconcilably separate, we can build whatever fantastic private group interests we want. I often ask - if you were really in the bosom of the eternal, the source of all, how come you saw nothing of the creation of the Cosmos? Why didn't you see the fallen gods of the Zodiac, immersed in fear of losing their consciousness? You should have - after all they exist between the Absolute Nothingness and your ordinary consciousness so you most certainly must have passed through them if you were in the Source itself.

No we should not, it's a wrong argument. Our individual conscious activity always has direct access to the transcendent formless No-thing-ness aspect of Consciousness, but that access does not open to us the access to the wholeness of the creation, they have nothing to do with each other. Each of us is a piece of Divine immanent conscious activity, as well a slice of the Divine transcendent nature of No-thing-ness. But a piece and a slice is never the whole, whether transcendent or immanent. Now you may argue: and why would not we integrate back to the wholeness and undifferentiated unity? We may, but there was a purpose why the Divine divided itself into the multitude of pieces of individual minds, it was not a mistake or a "fall", it was intentional, because the Divine chose Life, and the division was the only way for the Life to unfold. The Divine allows for freedom and would probably not mind for you to integrate and dissolve back into itself if you choose to do so, but you would be doing it against the Divine original intention.

But interestingly enough, I asked you a similar question many times: if you have an access to the higher-cognition levels and can see the structures responsible for the perceptions in our human form, how come you can not explain why these perceptions always precisely follow Schrodinger equation? Which Seraphim in the higher realms is responsible for making sure all quadrillions of our human perceptions always obey the Schrodinger equation, and how exactly he does that?

[Lou Gold]

OK Adur. As I wrote in this post, as long as we desire to keep the self-enclosed intellect and the inexplicable nothingness irreconcilably separate, we can build whatever fantastic private group interests we want. I often ask - if you were really in the bosom of the eternal, the source of all, how come you saw nothing of the creation of the Cosmos? Why didn't you see the fallen gods of the Zodiac, immersed in fear of losing their consciousness? You should have - after all they exist between the Absolute Nothingness and your ordinary consciousness so you most certainly must have passed through them if you were in the Source itself.

Might it simply be that the Source did not excite in Adur the same symbolic cosmology that was excited for you Cleric?