But we'll get there by dissolving the mysticism and applying real analytical methods to the entire subject. /f
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A few other things that I suspect at this point: . Consciousness is complicated, and has many different states . Those states can be altered and manipulated . One way is with drugs, but that's probably fairly crude and difficult to control +
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. Another way is with the mind itself . The mind can be affected by external and internal states . Through reflection, you can become aware of internal states . ... and thereby start to manipulate them . ... and thereby deliberately alter your own mind with just your mind +
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. There's lots of different things that this process "feels like" . ... which is normal, because your mind "feels like" lots of different things anyway . ... i.e. the various states of consciousness. . e.g. awake, sleeping, distracted, "in the zone" +
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. ... dissociated, hearing an internal narrative, having "fused" experiences, having a silent inner experience, loss of ego, etc. . These are all actually normal, just not necessarily familiar or routine to most people +
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. And most people don't have a lot of good tools for understanding, processing, or manipulating these mental states . Training in introspection - aka "meditating" - can provide these tools +
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. There's lots of ways to go about this training . ... and probably the traditional ways are not the best ways, by a long shot . ... but because we're dealing with leeches and alchemy, we haven't figured out anything better. . ... YET. +
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. And finally... . Some of the states that people get themselves into feel like ineffable, transcendent moments of oneness with the universal truth . ... but these are probably delusions, and of no consequence or importance. +
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. Your brain knows what "hot" feels like . It also knows what "funny" (humorous) feels like . It also has signifiers for things like "true" and "important" +
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. When someone has a mystical experience, whether through drugs or mental self-manipulation, it is probably nothing more than something poking at the part of the brain that holds the "true" and "important" patterns +
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this is something I think about a lot, and tend to agree with
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