Experiment at Truth Strike now concluded, after 9 days.
Here is the last post that I was banned before being able to post. The full thread is
here. All quotes below are by "ghostvirus."
Jasun, many people get free with just that instruction because they can work out that the most simplest instruction 'LOOK' is all they have to do and they try to find a way.
Since I’m not able to take your word for this, I would need to spend a lot of time reading the relevant threads to know if it’s true or not. If it is, then clearly they had what it took while I do not. If it’s not true, then I expect you’ll find that out eventually.
Yes but if you actually tried to do this task and accept responsibility for finding the truth yourself instead of clinging to metaphysical beliefs, then you might get somewhere. What you have to do is ask yourself “where am I going wrong?” Because repeating the same thing again and again, as you have done for 20 years, is insanity.
Mostly what I’ve heard at this thread is how dense, deluded, retarded, spineless, and dishonest I am. Your explanation for the constant barrage is that you are simply pointing out the truth and that, because I don’t like it and lack the courage to face it, I am projecting my own negativity onto you. My response is that you are letting yourself off too easy. You are putting all of the responsibility for misunderstanding onto me, when any reasonable person knows that a dialogue requires two parties to flow. I suspect this has to do with not wishing to lose face as The Great Liberator, but of course you can tell me that’s projection too.
The bottom line is that I came here to see if your methods could lead to some sort of lasting insight or shift in perception, and that has apparently not happened. (Actually I have had some insights I think will be lasting, but probably not the kind you intended.) So we can say with confidence that I have failed to follow your instructions properly, and/or your methods have failed to bring about the desired results, either because they are faulty methods or because of my own limitations.
Jasun when you find yourself presenting the impotent arguments that you have laid out on here, it should start alarm bells ringing for any sane person.
I presume by “sane” you mean any liberated person, because I don’t know anyone (besides your cohorts) who would agree with your position at this thread, or that all my arguments are moronic and deluded. Apparently I surround myself with people who are as insane as me.
So from here we have outward behaviour, inner thought and personality traits etc...
Now you are asserting there is a “you” that is in control of these operations.
This is where you are contradicting yourself. You claim here that you do the choosing but at the same time now you are claiming that the illusory self or false self as you have put it, is actually the outward behaviour and thought.
The false or illusory self is made up of reactive “tics” or preprogrammed responses, so I don’t see any contradiction. As long as the illusory self is in the driving seat, then our actions are automatic and predetermined.
It may have to do with the gulf between your liberated awareness and my non-liberated one (giving the benefit of the doubt), but there has been very little actual dialogue going on here. Your responses, even when not brow-beating admonitions and insults trying to pass for straight-talk, are form responses based on your assumptions about what I am saying. Your tendency to read what you want to read into my posts was suggested at the start, when you misattributed something your colleague said to me: it was as if you were already thinking of what to say to me based on your preconception of what I was saying, instead of really listening.
Now you have effectively established in your own mind, and probably those of your cohorts and disciples, that I am insane, so nothing I say needs to be taken seriously—especially anything that questions your methods, since you have established that this is the result of me getting on the defensive so I can worm out of facing the truth about how deluded I am. That’s a pretty air-tight system you have, ghost. Congrats.
I came in here wondering if I’d find myself inside a brainwashing program of some kind, and maybe it was a self-fulfilling suspicion and I have wasted a golden opportunity with my paranoia and got totally the wrong end of the stick, as you all believe. I am prepared to leave it open.
Yes but Jasun, you have already admitted that it was a dream and a hallucination, they cannot ever be real no matter how much you want them to be. Hallucinations and dreams are a figment of your imagination, they are not real. People who believe their hallucinations have real content are either schizophrenic or have psychosis. Check out google Jasun I think you are mentally ill.
I never used the term hallucination, you did. You are confident that you know the difference between reality and dream and therefore you are sane. I am willing to admit that I am not sure I know the difference and so I am insane (according to you). Yet real insanity is thinking we know the difference when we don’t. It seems like I am questioning certain assumptions that you aren’t willing to.
You said that reality is what can be verified through testing. Suppose I dream every night of visiting the same place and of performing certain tests each time and thereby verifying the “reality” of that dream space? Suppose I meet people in that dream space and then encounter them in “real life” and discover that the information exchanged in the dream space was accurate? Isn’t that a form of verification?
You were only asked to read 2 pages on wikipedia Jasun. No one asked you to read everything ever written, are you insane?
I read it.
Your arguments are illogical, hence the reason to easily pull them apart.
And when I fail to agree with you that they have been pulled apart, you counter that it is because I am too deluded to see the obvious. So who’s deluded?
There is individuation – My question is what is exactly individuation and how does it occur? What is the process?
Deconditioning. Identifying of reactive patterns of behavior and, through recognition, reducing those patterns' power to control one’s behavior. Something I am beginning to suspect you haven’t done, which begs the question, what is the advantage of cracking the lie of the self if you remain trapped by your conditioning? Is it possible you have discovered a method for dissolving the self that bypasses deprogramming and so, as has been suggested elsewhere, creates imbalanced sociopaths? This thread is pretty good evidence for exactly that.
To give one very obvious example: you have an unusually strong voice and you use it in a particularly aggressive, even abusive manner (on this thread anyway). In most people, myself included, this generates anxiety, confusion, and a desire to placate or please the perceived authority figure. Then when you throw a bone of agreement, or even a kind word, there is the corresponding feeling of gratitude and a further desire to curry favor by saying the right thing. It’s a very basic parent-child pattern (probably one you learned as a child), and it’s a very effective way of getting people to do what you want: in this case perform the necessary experiments and find out that their self is illusory. The degree to which this method of yours is “pushing” people into having the desired experience just to get some relief and approval from their “masters” ought to be factored into your supposed success rate, IMO.
The soul is the reason that there is a difference in honesty and courage – Well certain reptiles have more courage than others. Since they do not have a soul then how can there be this difference?.
Really? And are certain reptiles more honest than others too? This seems to me like an assumption that needs “proving” before it can be used as the basis for an argument.
We are not here to reach an agreement Jasun, we are here to get you to recognise that the self is an illusion by LOOKING.
Yeah I got that.
Can the true nature of reality by encapsulated and explained by reason?
Only a fool would try
Aren’t you doing just that by trying to disprove my possible experiences of a soul through logic? You say that direct experience of reality counts for more than logic, but then when I present dreams or altered states as experience, you use logic to “prove” that I am insane.
Its very simple. You can look for god or spend a few weeks questioning your reality and looking in to the illusory nature of the self and then your curiosity would be resolved. This is the part that you are still failing to grasp despite being told a hundred times already. You are simply not listening.
That’s my experience of you also. Ghost to ghost.
You have already admitted that you can't tell the difference and I am arguing against hallcinations and dreams being real since if you believe they are reall then that would indicate that you suffer from some kind of mental illness.
Since people presumably look to you as a voice of authority, that means you have a responsibility when it comes to telling people they are insane. If you are going to use medical terms, you ought to be a qualified physician first. If you are just trying to shock me into sanity by throwing out scary words, then that’s a risky endeavor and it will probably catch up with you before long. You have picked a good test subject with me however, because the worst you can throw at me has so far been water off a duck’s back.
Have you never discussed your dreams with anyone?
What if two people share the same dreams? What would that be? Wild coincidence, or shared insanity?
The difference is Jasun, that findings in objective reality can be replicated and tested.
Circular logic? Because findings can be tested, then the reality must be “objective.” Since this reality is objective, the findings can be tested. It’s consensus, but that’s all. Some people would say that the idea that objective reality exists is itself a subjective idea, a belief. I haven’t attained any certainty about it.
Jasun your position is becoming more and more untenable, you are actually dropping your old arguments and picking up new ones or else you would have stuck with the same arguments.
So an ability to improvise and shift gears is now cited as further proof of my dishonesty?
Anything that you read in to this is your own projection. I have been condescending at times but this is forcing you to defend and cling to positions until you have to flee. Now I am just worried about your sanity.
You have admitted elsewhere to not having got free of your conditioning before becoming "liberated." Are you so sure
you are not projecting?
It is designed to make you question your own non sensical arguments. Its pretty plain for anyone to see that you have made an abortion of your thread and you have tried to adopt ridiculous arguments instead of undertaking some LOOKING as you committed to doing.
I would seriously suggest you do a survey on that, and not just by asking your colleagues, clients, or “graduates,” but taking from a wider spectrum. The people I know (including ones who are following this thread) would not confirm your belief, I can more or less guarantee that.
Jasun when we say don't think LOOK, we are actually stipulating that you should not be using logic. You have shot yourself in the foot yet again. You are in survival mode and are desperately trying to cling on to anything to protect your delusion.
I was trying to determine if you saw logic as the exclusive tool for this process. Of course you have been talking about looking, but so far, besides some practical exercises, most of what I have gleaned from this thread relates to the appliance of logic.
Also you are using the assumption that directed awareness or attention can create a soul. This is problematic since that means that we could create souls at will with our awareness.
If there is some interface between energy and awareness, or even a continuum of the two, then it is not so far-fetched. As you know, most people can’t even focus their awareness on what’s right in front of them, however, so a multiple soul-trader doesn’t seem like a serious problem.
That aside we can focus on the main problem of your proposition. Since you claim that this consciousness can affect real life, you are now at pains to account for how something non physical can interact with the physical world.
See above. Matter is an arrangement of energy, and energy is made up of particles that carry information. Alter the spin or information of a particle and that affects the movement of energy, and hence “interacts with the physical world.”
This is problematic because if this special energy was manifested, it would show up in the physical world, which obviously has never been measured.
I am not sure how or why that is so obvious, except that it’s not in the text books and , like UFOs, hasn’t been approved by mainstream science. It hasn’t made it into consensus reality.
So neither the soul, or any effect of this physical energy has ever been detected.
We must read different books and have a different idea about what constitutes reliable information. A lot of what you discuss that you get from books can’t be verified experientially. Like you wrote about the Moon: we would have to go there to know for sure.
Let me make one thing clear before I proceed: I do not disagree with you that the concepts and theories which I have about a soul may be useless in and of themselves, since they are at present unverifiable and so remain only theories. But since you have assigned to me beliefs that I don’t actually hold, I want, for the record, to make clear that my concepts, however useless they may be, are not being represented accurately by your misconceptions. The fact I take the time to bother clearing this up is probably the most damning fact in all of this. The only answer I have is that I find it enjoyable, and therefore worth my time.
In order for your idea to work you are appealing to a soul that has never been shown to exist and some kind of energy trace that has never been observed either.
Not in a laboratory maybe (though even that is debatable). But there is a wealth of first-hand—and even scientifically tested—experience for something, even if it’s going out on a limb to call it “soul.”
Premise 1: I had a hallucination of a soul
Translation: I have had experiences that caused me to question the assumption that physical reality is everything it seems to be, and that suggested a mode of consciousness and perception well beyond the ordinary senses of the body or the thinking or imaginative capacities of the mind.
Premise 2: Hallucinations are real
Trans: Since the perceptions were experienced by me as every bit as real to consciousness as waking life—and even overlapped in some cases with “physical reality”—the assumption that it was “all a hallucination” was not viable. It would have been poor science, and a case of logic overriding itself in order to avoid something that it could not explain.
Sub-conclusion 1: Souls really exist
Trans: The question of a soul-existence remains open.
Premise 3: An energy exists that enables the soul to interact with the physical world
Correction: the soul is energy, and the physical world is energy. Therefore, there is a continuum of consciousness, matter, perception, body and “soul.”
Premise 4: Souls support consciousness
Sub-conclusion 2: Souls are conscious and can manipulate the physical world
Conclusion: The self must be a soul since it is conscious and can interact with the physical world
I already stated that I don’t claim that the soul, an energetic vehicle for consciousness, even if it were established, would prove the existence of a self. It would only prove the existence of a vehicle for consciousness outside of the physical body.
Now Jasun, this has got to be the most ridiculous argument I have ever come across. This is bonkers quite frankly, I am concerned that you are smoking crystal meth or something you are a total crackpot. If this is not sufficient grounds for you to question your assumptions then I am afraid you are hoplessly lost and there is nothing we can do to help you. I recommend you seek professional help immediately, this thread simply looks like it is crack cocaine for your psychosis.
Like I said, I enjoy the opportunity to test out my theories and stuff. You are a magnetic personality and I got drawn into your orbit for a spell.
This reads like moronic gibberish. You are already arguing about it Jasun.
We are now at least. I continue to take your bait, ghost, when you make an erroneous interpretation of things I say and cite it as proof that I am talking gibberish. You may be right that I am insane, not because I keep doing the same thing (discussing with you) expecting different results, but because I keep doing it knowing the result will be the same, and that you will call me a deluded moron. In comic books, that’s known as being a glutton for punishment.
you are not a mystical moron you are an incredulous moron and that is being kind.
Definition of INCREDULOUS: 1: unwilling to admit or accept what is offered as true : not credulous : skeptical
In summation, as my formal and even somewhat fond farewell to this very unusual space:
It has been illuminating and, from my point of view, educational. I would even say it has been liberating, since as a result of these exchanges I now have a stronger and clearer sense of self than I had before. Irony abounds!
In answer to ghost’s concerns, just in case they were sincere, which I doubt: I have no difficulty functioning in the real world and no one as far as I know besides you is concerned about my sanity. Whatever delusions I have are working delusions and, though they may be worse for the wear after this bout (which is what I came for), I am definitely the better for it. So thanks for all your time, you are a unique cat and if you ever want to talk, man to man, outside of this rather theatrical context, look me up on skype, I’d be glad to hear from you.
Otherwise, if and when I ever make it inside that box, and outside my mind, I’ll try to remember to look you up and share my insights.
One minor note to StepVhen: You might want to rephrase your “manifesto,” (it’s actually nothing of the kind, but anyway) here:
I'm not sure that your idea of friendship and respect jells with most other people’s!
But hey, just call me Mr. Sensitive.
Over & Out
The artist formerly known as ghost of elvis.
Afterword: Since I have been banned from the forum, despite ghostvirus’ invitation to make one last post, I'm afraid that only confirms my suspicions about the group as a whole. The indication is that I was a voice that had to be silenced, while the rationale given was that I should seek medical attention.
C’est la guerre.