> within

Within what, exactly? If there's a within, what and where is the barrier or boundary that separates it from without? How does one reconcile that separation with a cosmic/unity consciousness?

Within your own self. The first layer of "within" can be easily understood. In between 2 successive thoughts is a state of "no thoughts". Can we like a scientist hypothesize that we are more than the thoughts? To prove or disprove it we need to observe/experience this state of thoughtlessness, initially they are just few milliseconds long but with practice will be seconds and minutes in length.

And remember if we are always observing through the filter of our thoughts then we are changing the thing being observed - just like in quantum physics "act of observing affected what is observed".

> Within your own self.

I don't know what that is.

> The first layer of "within" can be easily understood. In between 2 successive thoughts is a state of "no thoughts".

That doesn't match my experience at all. There are times when I don't pay attention to my thoughts, or my thoughts aren't distinct enough to grasp, but that's not an absence of thought. For me, the concept of "between 2 successive thoughts" makes about as much sense as "between two drops of water in a river".

The only way I can relate your description to anything I understand is to suspect that what you're describing is shifting your attention away from your thoughts to interoceptive sensations, and then reifying your integration/synthesis of those sensations into a distinct entity rather than a representation of your body. But maybe I just haven't read enough Deepak Chopra to "get it".

Though you can do both. Funerals are a bit depressing even if the deceased was a meditator.

The deceased is not depressed. But mourners are mostly depressed because of

a) attachment (constant association of our attention to anything) to impermanence of life, b) regrets and guilt.

If the mourner itself was truly liberated while living then they wouldn't be depressed because they would know from experience that death is nothing but a switch to a different dimension for consciousness to operate in. That dimension is far less limiting than this physical dimension. And the way to that dimension (and higher ones) is only through Meditation and natural death, the latter comes as a shock to the unrealized one and then its too late for any preparedness.

Going for purely imaginary, completely devoid of any connection with material reality solution is not a cure for too optimistic predictions and lacks in our current knowledge.

It seems as though you've come here just to violate the guidelines, so we've banned the account. We're glad to unban accounts if you email us at [email protected] and we believe you'll start posting civilly and substantively.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It is one of the commonest of mistakes to consider that the limit of our power of perception is also the limit of all there is to perceive.

-- C. W. LEADBEATER, Man Visible and Invisible

History is full evidence that true scientists have many a times revised their initial assumptions in the quest of truth.

Yes, but true scientists usually apply the scientific method, not drug-induced psychosis, in their quest for truth.

Edit: for people who flagged the parent comment, this is an interesting read http://lesswrong.com/lw/mm/the_fallacy_of_gray/

Hidden in your reply is an assumption that a scientific and reproducible method cannot be applied to spiritual quest. Hypothesis, experimentation and inference are basic steps in a scientific investigation but proving a hypothesis correct/wrong also depends on the instrument used e.g. if one doesn't use microscope one cannot directly show presence of bacterial cells. Similarly to prove that a state of thoughtlessness and beyond exists one cannot use the tools of thoughts, one has to observe by pure attention (without distracting thoughts) the state between 2 successive thoughts as a starting point.

I don't think that article is going to take back your having been personally rude to another user, which is not what we do here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

"The way goes in." -- Rumi