Real life is a hallucination

Life being a hallucination is in fact one of the hallucinations that can be caused by meditation.

These are called derealization hallucinations and are reported in meditators.

Your're being to literal without being literal enough!

The "reality" that we experience is a predictive model of what we believe is about to happen. This is required because it takes a quite some time[1] for stimulus to be received and processed by our bodies! If we didn't have this predictive mechanism the universe would seem very strange indeed.

But but because we hallucinate our reality we get the illusion that what we experience is instantaneous in respect to the cause!

[1] depending on the circuit it can take >100 msec for a nerve signal to reach the brain, and that's not accounting for the subsequent processing

I am literally talking about the literature.

Kuijpers, Harold JH, et al. "Meditation-induced psychosis." Psychopathology 40.6 (2007): 461-464.

And I'm talking about Śūnyatā. Philosophical concept that emerged during times when western people were still stacking shit like rocks on top of each other.

You seem rather influenced by Indian right wing pseudohistory. It's similar to arguing Ayurveda isn't very harmful because it is ancient. An appeal to tradition.

> stacking shit like rocks on top of each other

They still do in India. Cow dung cakes are a rural fuel.

I am not doubting that India is likely the first to write about derealization. But it was mistaken to be the ultimate reality.

I am european influenced by the suttas

> Philosophical concept that emerged during times when western people were still stacking shit like rocks on top of each other

And which European historian furnished you this tidbit?

One probably needs a bit of religiousity to be able to meditate as much as senior meditators do.

Yeah, that makes sense to me (as a somewhat religious meditator).

I disagree that a focus on something other than logic is problematic, though. I'd actually argue that all-logic-all-the-time is a sickness.

Yeah, I agree. In fact, even as an atheist, I believe humans in general have an innate drive towards religious thinking. If we suppress classic ways to those things, people will find new ones. And those new ones won't have gone through the test of time.

I believe we are seeing the effects of this in many western countries.

I think this is a misconception. I do think there’s a greater likelihood that someone with religious tendencies will pursue a path like this, but the religiosity is not the key.

Sam Harris is the polar opposite of religious, but is arguably one of the leading meditators/teachers in western culture right now. I’m as allergic to religion as someone can probably be, but I’ve gotten serious about meditation and have made it a central habit in my life, because I’ve found that it works.

The ultimate goal is to bring the “here-ness” of the present moment first experienced in meditation into ordinary waking moments as much as possible. Sitting is just a focused form of training that helps condition the mind and improve focus. When I discovered how impactful sitting was for me, it formed the motivation for deepening the practice. No religiosity here.

The non-religious/non-sectarian meditators are a rapidly growing group, and this is encouraging because the religious part was never necessary, and the perception that it is kept people like me from exploring this sooner.

I suspect you just have a different definition of 'religious' than I do. Why are you so anti-religion?

That’s possible! But that’s also why I’m calling attention to it here. Religiosity is a negative signal for many folks, and I think it’s important to debunk the need for religious thinking to gain the benefits of meditation.

My stance comes from growing up in an extreme fundamentalist religious bubble. It set me up for a lifetime of unwinding unhealthy beliefs and patterns of thought, not the least of which was deep confusion about my self worth when hearing leaders of the church openly discuss stoning gay people as the truly appropriate consequence biblically. That kinda fucks with your head when you’re coming to terms with your own sexuality (I’m bisexual). I’ve seen first hand what these systems of belief do to families and communities, and while I’m not one to claim that all religion is awful, I do think it’s a bigger problem than help in the current social climate.

The ideas of most religions also set up a fundamental misconception about our relationship with the world/environment (that we’re separate from it) that is an existential threat to reaching some kind of environmental balance.

I’m curious what religious means to you.

Makes sense. Thanks for sharing!

I personally think human beings need some kind of central spiritual belief or identity to feel satisfied/happy/whole. I'm not sure, but in your case, it almost sounds like you might be getting that identity from REJECTING the shitty religious bubble you grew up in. Sounds like you feel like you're on a good track and moving somewhere with your life -- even if it's away from religion. So I guess in my book, you're religious.

>>I’ve seen first hand what these systems of belief do to families and communities, and while I’m not one to claim that all religion is awful, I do think it’s a bigger problem than help in the current social climate.

For me, this is really case-by-case, but my suspicion is that most religion is generally better for people than no religion -- so I suspect I disagree with you, but on limited data.

>>The ideas of most religions also set up a fundamental misconception about our relationship with the world/environment (that we’re separate from it) that is an existential threat to reaching some kind of environmental balance.

Hadn't heard this one before - huh. I think there are a lot of reasons we burn coal but IMO the fact that we're religious isn't one of the main ones. To me, religion is a great path toward loving others and the world such that we'd want to conserve them and it.

Thanks for the perspective here as well. I do agree that people behave “religiously” more broadly, but I tend to think of this more as an overarching phenomena of meaning-making, with capital r “Religion” making up one major category of thought, and non-religious paths are distinct in that they don’t bring the baggage of beliefs in deities/spirits/etc.

So while I understand the philosophical framing of religion in broader terms, In the context of meditation, I tend to avoid the religious connotation entirely because it’s overloaded and a lot of people immediately conflate the two.

To draw a crude comparison, people go to the gym religiously. But people aren’t likely to misinterpret that comment as meaning going to the gym is “Religious” in the sense that people understand religion in the cultural zeitgeist.

> Hadn't heard this one before - huh. I think there are a lot of reasons we burn coal but IMO the fact that we're religious isn't one of the main ones. To me, religion is a great path toward loving others and the world such that we'd want to conserve them and it.

Alan Watts explores this idea and I think it’s worth considering. Most people in the west - especially anyone raised around Judeo-Christian beliefs - are taught that they are born into this world, that they’re separate from it, that they’re here to have dominion over it, and that the real game is what comes after we die.

Even though I left the Christian belief system behind, I had deep unexamined beliefs that everything would be fine, because how could it not be? If all of this was created, and I was made, it implies that something bigger is in control. This is at the heart of climate denialism in all of the circles I grew up in.

The eastern framing is that we grow out of this world. We’re intrinsically part of it, an expression of it, and not separate. This brings a much different set of implications, and at least for me personally and based on what others have shared about their own experience, cultivating this view drastically altered my engagement with environmental issues, how I think about food, decisions I make about how I spend my time, etc.

The point isn’t that we burn coal because of religion, but that many popular religions instill a mindset that makes burning coal not a problem.

> To me, religion is a great path toward loving others and the world such that we'd want to conserve them and it.

I love that this is your view, and I wish that more people held it. Unfortunately I’ve been exposed to the toxic alternative almost exclusively, spread across about a dozen churches throughout my youth.

Moving beyond the message of love for a moment, I think religious organizations need to carefully examine the 2nd/3rd order effects of certain core beliefs.

“Don’t look up” seems like an example of the ultimate failure mode of instilling a sense of “God will take care of things” into the generation that has to contend with the fact that this is not true.

I should add that I say all of this while somewhat lamenting what has been lost in the breakdown of the church. A sense of community and belonging connected to a notion of something greater than oneself is sorely missing in modern society. I hope that better options emerge, or that major religious organizations can rehabilitate their image and mission effectively.

Thanks for sharing this. It reminds me about a documentary I saw about Sinead o'Connor's life.

It seems you have a fairly narrow view of what constitutes a religion. Christian fundamentalism is particularly dogmatic and is one negative manifestation of religion which happens to be present in the West.

From the book "God is Not One" by Stephen Prothero:

"Philosopher of religion Ninian Smart has referred to these [shared religious] tendencies as the seven “dimensions” of religion: the ritual, narrative, experiential, institutional, ethical, doctrinal, and material dimensions.

These family resemblances are just tendencies, however. Just as there are tall people in short families (none of the men in Michael Jordan’s family was over six feet tall), there are religions that deny the existence of God and religions that get along just fine without creeds. Something is a religion when it shares enough of this DNA to belong to the family of religions. What makes the members of this family different (and themselves) is how they mix and match these dimensions. Experience is central in Daoism and Buddhism. Hinduism and Judaism emphasize the narrative dimension. The ethical dimension is crucial in Confucianism. The Islamic and Yoruba traditions are to a great extent about ritual. And doctrine is particularly important to Christians.

The world’s religious rivals are clearly related, but they are more like second cousins than identical twins. They do not teach the same doctrines. They do not perform the same rituals. And they do not share the same goals."

> It seems you have a fairly narrow view of what constitutes a religion. Christian fundamentalism is particularly dogmatic and is one negative manifestation of religion which happens to be present in the West.

The Christian dogmatic variety and its offshoots also happens to be quite popular. I understand the broader religious context after investing significant time and effort into trying to understand the phenomena of religion more generally. “The Evolution of God” is another interesting text in this category.

The narrow view I’m representing here is the view that I spent most of my life holding, and the view that most people I know still hold. It’s also the view that kept me from exploring Buddhism and meditation for many years. Religion had been a very destructive force in my life, and I’m not alone in this experience.

My point in this thread is that associating meditation with religion is unnecessary, and can be a problem for people who hold this narrow view. My attempts to expand my own understanding seems pretty rare in my social circles, and when I added a meditation practice as something very central to my life, it was clear that people around me hold all sorts of assumptions and misconceptions about it (as I did), and those associations don’t need to exist.

Fair enough. Meditation and even prayer certainly don't need to be associated with religion. Funnily enough, meditation is explicitly mentioned in the Bible, so it's confusing why more Christians choose to solely focus on prayer. If meditation is about understanding yourself, and prayer is about causing effect in the world, meditation seems the best way to operationalize Jesus' words about removing the plank from your own eye before the speck in your neighbor's.

It seems to me that both prayer and meditation are related to the notion of a Higher Power. Whether that power ranges from rebalancing the autonomic nervous system to letting God take charge, meditation and prayer are fundamentally about a conscious connection to the Unseen.

Sam Harris is not religious, but he certainly has practiced meditation in a religious way. I'm not saying this as if it was a bad thing, or that it detracts from his scientificism or atheism, just an observation.

Harris practices meditation religiously in the same way that professional athletes train religiously.

The difference is that people don’t conclude that one must become a religious person to become an athlete.

Describing training as religious evokes a definition of the word that has nothing to do with:

> 1. Having or showing belief in and reverence for God or a deity.

> 2. Of, concerned with, or teaching religion.

Meditation is often (incorrectly) explicitly associated with religion and religiosity, which are orthogonal to a “religious” dedication to the practice, a practice that requires no adherence to religious ideas.

I’m only splitting hairs here because the idea that there’s a religious connection remains pretty prevalent, and is a major misconception.

Well articulated, thank you.

I think you just need to find something in it that makes it worthwhile. Being a productive member of society is a choice, but not the only way someone could choose to spend their time. I think in Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha the author says once someone makes real progress (reaching what he calls arising and passing away) people often feel drawn to meditate full time and may join a monastery. I probably would if I had sufficiently transformative insights that made society's goals seem pointless. I mean, you don't still play the same games or have the same goals as when you were 5. This is a process of realisation and maturity.

No, many of the meditation practices, such as Jhana and nirodha sammapati do not require any religious beliefs at all. Of course, the skeptic is unlikely to spend the vast amount of time needed to master such skills.

Perhaps I wasn't clear. I mean to suggest that one needs faith in order to meditate that much. Faith that it's a worthwhile thing to do.

> Supernatural claims made by meditators that are obviously not true are what keep me from experimenting with meditation. I don't want to mess up my brain. I value it.

A religious friend went on a road trip and hiked deep into the Rocky Mountains. They experienced the awe and wonder of the landscape, and to them, this was God revealing himself to them.

Supernatural claims by meditators are interpretations of the experience, much like God-in-the-mountains is an interpretation of experience.

I held the view you’re describing for many years until I spontaneously experienced what some meditators describe while I was practicing photography out in nature. It caught me off guard, and came with a dawning realization that “oh shit, so this is what people are talking about”.

Learning to be a better photographer by immersing myself in the environment I was in had inadvertently led me to states of presence that meditators train to achieve. This is what ultimately made me explore meditation further.

I’d be cautious about linking that openness with what you’re framing as gullability. In my own exploration, I’ve applied rigorous rational examination as I go, and while I understand why people who are predisposed to religiosity reach supernatural conclusions, that is more about each individual’s existing beliefs and the resulting framing of the experience.

Your account of an awe experience is quite common. Francis Collins had a similar experience. I am not unaware of these accounts.

I agree with much of what you said. But I also think it makes people a tad more open to irrationality after such experiences, even the knowledgeable ones.

> that is more about each individual’s existing beliefs and the resulting framing of the experience

Not disagreeing.

This revulsion only makes sense if you firmly believe that rationalism is the highest good, and that the only right way to engage with the world is through rationality, ie, dividing the world into "false" and "true" ideas.

There are good reasons that so many people realize for themselves that non-dual perspectives hold more value than dualistic ones.

The older I get, the more some paradoxes really tickle my brain in a way they never did when I was younger. It’s like they express some reality that transcends our understanding while still reaching out and grabbing us by our mind grapes to show us that something deeper is at hand.

It’s nearly impossible to describe this in English well.

Sometimes it makes more sense for me to think that I'm not a rational being, I'm an animal with a rational brain glued on top.

If you do a "5 Whys" type thing, there isn't really a reason to live. It's just an instinct. So I can say, I'm a hedonist, I live because life pays off eventually. No big deal.

I don't think rationality is opposed to anything like love or sentiment. I just like feeling good. Rationality is a tool I can use to feel more good, if I want.

My point about awe and wonder is that I don’t avoid the Rocky Mountains because they reinforce my friend’s beliefs about God. I should mention that it was a similar experience that he says convinced him of the existence of a god to begin with.

Do you have some specific examples of irrationality? I’m curious to know what you’re encountering, and I haven’t yet found this among the non-religious meditators that I know.

> I don’t avoid the Rocky Mountains because they reinforce my friend’s beliefs about God

I do avoid them (figuratively, not literally) because I value my critical thinking.

What I observe in meditators is a gradual loss of trust in logic, reason and science, even in those with decades of education. They fall for silly quackeries and psychic beliefs or that the meditation teacher mystically can know things and have insight beyond even experts.

If they produced some new knowledge through that, I would be all for it. But no, it just is a collapse of common sense.

> a gradual loss of trust in logic, reason and science, even in those with decades of education. They fall for silly quackeries and psychic beliefs or that the meditation teacher mystically can know things

This is again all very vague, so it’s difficult to understand your perspective. Silly quackeries like what?

It also doesn’t align with what I’ve experienced, or have observed in others: I’m still a staunch believer in logic, reason and science. Have never felt the need to take on psychic beliefs, etc.

I’m not saying you’re wrong about the people you’re referring to, I just don’t have a similar frame of reference.

Quite possible. We might also be talking about different kinds of meditation. Mindfulness meditators seem to have a healthy attitude. TM meditators start talking psychic things pretty quickly. The people around me are all TM types.

Yeah, TM is quite a different thing.

The scientific interest in meditation is primarily focused on the mindfulness variety, which is more about observing your state of mind without judgement, and learning to stop getting lost in discursive thought, vs. TM's focus on mantras.

While the mindfulness family of practices has been fairly well secularized, it does seem that TM brings a lot more baggage along with it.

I think this still boils down to the person practicing. While researching/evaluating meditation practices, TM was something that I decided to steer clear of, for many of the reasons you describe.

I see, so you can confidently discount someone else's experience as obviously not true, especially without any real attainment yourself? That just doesn't work on so many levels.

If you're a materialist, which sounds likely to be true given the available evidence, any claims to the supernatural are disqualified by, for example, the Sagan standard.

You're supposed to find the evidence for yourself. But if you never start, you never will. A closed mind is certain to lead to failure in meditation if it means you never try without expectation.

> You're supposed to find the evidence for yourself

This is the argument of quacks and charlatans (including the meditation charlatans aka "gurus").

A quack will always argue to ignore criticisms of his snake oil and just try it for yourself and find out.

Evidence is not personal, it's universal.

Denying universal facts and saying this is true for me is a position of a closed mind. You are being invited to prove facts, not just assert personal truths. It can't be more open minded than that.

An impossible position if consciousness is not materialistic, especially since you discount the 3000+ years of cross-cultural claims and documented methods for reaching such states for yourself. It's hard to imagine what else might class as a universal signal there's something to explore here.

Your attitude makes it inherently impossible to prove a non-materialistic position as you refuse to investigate for yourself. Far from strengthening your ability to find the truth you are simply closing your mind to other possibilities.

How is asking for evidence close-minded? Having 3000+ years of personal accounts is meaningless when compared to hard, physical evidence. Again, personal anecdotes is not evidence.

I know there are studies about the efficacy of meditation in certain scenarios, which is why I do it. But that falls short when you start claiming supernatural states of mind.

> Your attitude makes it inherently impossible to prove a non-materialistic position as you refuse to investigate for yourself

Personal attitude shouldn't be relevant when you're talking about evidence. One of the main attributes of evidence is precisely that it is objective and not personal.

Your requirement for physical evidence is biased and so discounts the possibility that non-physical evidence may be available.

It's like saying "I believe in X. I won't accept any evidence against X. Since Y is against X, Y doesn't exist"

This means you'd never realise X was wrong in the first place.

If it's around for 3000 years, show the plentiful "non-physical evidence". If you still need to talk about the "possibility", it's just flim flam BS.

If you think testimonies are evidence, and are making appeals to antiquity/tradition, you just aren't thinking in an educated way. None of that is "evidence".

Except that we've seen plenty of times that "non-physical" evidence doesn't exist and has never been relevant, and usually there's a better physical explanation. So by default, it's fair to assume that non-physical evidence doesn't exist, and if you use that in argument, the burden of proof is yours.

I'm open to accepting non-physical evidence if you can prove it exists. If you can, that would be very interesting, but it's likely that you can't. Again, anecdotes and tradition aren't evidence.

Irrationality and gullibility are underrated.

I've heard such explorations referred to as 'reality safari' which I love. Immersing yourself in an entirely different philosophy to really feel it from the inside, to understand it completely and intuitively.

The fear many have about attempting such things mirrors the fear of e.g. psychedelic experiences -- the fear of "never coming back". Ironically, only living through this fear is what causes the bad trip in the first place. Egos, man, egos suck.

> Ironically, only living through this fear is what causes the bad trip in the first place

Where is the evidence for this? None.

> the fear of "never coming back"

Psychedelics sound like fun, but I have seen quite a few broken people on the streets, all because of them. It's not just fear, it is a serious concern.

> Where is the evidence for this? None.

When did you first realize that you are an omniscient Oracle? (I could have played this snark on most any comment you've made in this thread, fwiw - your understanding of "reality" seems highly distorted by training and language).

I just read science, not the unsubstantiated metaphysical claims of meditation traditions.

Playing the fantasy of an "omniscient oracle" often seems to be the ego trip of popular meditation gurus today. They are all quite scientifically illiterate.

> Playing the fantasy of an "omniscient oracle" often seems to be the ego trip of popular meditation gurus today. They are all quite scientifically illiterate.

It is fascinating you are unable to see the irony in your comments, and also that you seem unable to be curious about whether you may have errors in your cognition.

You humans are going to end up destroying yourselves if you keep this up imho.

"You humans"? Have you been meditating so hard that you are now hallucinating yourself as beyond human? I can't say I am surprised.

I studied cognitive science. I know cognitive biases. I also know how meditators around me are basically drowning in them with ridiculous psychic beliefs, laughable arguments and no evidence.

I'll leave you to your imagined irony.

Yet another Perfectly Rational (yet omniscient) Human, the internet is crawling with them! Funny how they all deal primarily if not solely in rhetoric. Coincidence I guess!

I've witnessed quite a few bad trips and the failure mode corresponds well to my mental model of "ego struggles against ego death so hard the person is driven to psychosis".

Broken people on the streets are most often people with prior serious mental issues who were pushed over an edge. Typically by intense trauma (living on the street really fucking sucks for lots of reasons) but also to a lesser extent this can be drug-induced. However the drug class that usually performs this role is amphetamines ("meth psychosis"), not tryptamines or phenathylamines.

But you're clearly not willing to listen, so what use is there actually engaging here?

I see a lot of broken people on the streets here in Seattle, but as far as I know, most of them are because of meth or opioids, not psychedelics.

The human brain is far less rational than we tend to believe. Recent research indicates that we hallucinate our world: we guess what we are likely to see, based on prior experience. If wrong, our brain adjusts and reevaluates the sensory data. In some cases, we even ignore unusual experiences that do not fit into our internal model.

Senior meditators spend vast amounts of time examining their personal reality, and learn that it isn't as neat and clean as we thought. That said, some do believe in outlandish things.

Jhana and nirodha sammapati are not irrational, they have been studied by scientists during the last several years. What is irrational are the belief systems built on top of those experiences by some buddhist traditions.

Out of body experiences can be had by any person who spends enough time meditating. The teachers I work with understand that it is not a supernatural experience.

> The human brain is far less rational than we tend to believe. Recent research indicates that we hallucinate our world

All the more reason, to not take reason for granted.

> Senior meditators spend vast amounts of time examining their personal reality

They do, and my concern is they contribute no new insights, especially given the vast investments of time.

> Out of body experiences can be had by any person who spends enough time meditating

These are serious hallucinations and I am alarmed by how they are brushed aside. Most meditators think they are astral projecting. This is not examination or insight. This is delusional.

>These are serious hallucinations and I am alarmed by how they are brushed aside. Most meditators think they are astral projecting. This is not examination or insight. This is delusional.

Do you dream at night? That is a hallucination. People can learn to be aware during dream states, this is called lucid dreaming. There is nothing delusional or dangerous about that, although the experience can be terrifying for people unfamiliar with the experience.

Out of body experiences are simply a special form of lucid dream, in which your imaginal / energy body seems to be located away from your physical body. There can be a sense of the imaginary body moving. This is just dreaming involving the proprioception sense.

The term "energy" can spook skeptics like yourself. The best explanations I have read is that it is just a mentally constructed sense of the body. Your brain right now has constructed an imaginary model of your body; this can also happen in dream states.

Your body is real, your mental map of the body is not. It is yet another form of hallucination which we all experience on a daily basis. Meditators will experience various forms of "energy" as their practice deepens, and this is also totally normal and not usually harmful.

Many of the explanations and mystical claims about energy and out of body experiences are questionable of course.

The mind is way more freaky and amazing than you realize, and labeling unusual states of consciousness as "delusional" is very limiting. It's your life...

I don't disagree with most of that. I studied a fair amount of science, including psychology and cognitive science. I know you can cause unusual states with meditation and you have a right to.

Choosing to experience an out of the body experience or a lucid dream is fine. But believing that you are actually visiting or seeing a remote location is a delusion. Quite a few meditators think they are getting psychic powers with meditation, not just unusual states of consciousness. Look up siddhi.

A “didactic little story” about perception and the supernatural: [0]

There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer. And the atheist says: "Look, it's not like I don't have actual reasons for not believing in God. It's not like I haven't ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn't see a thing, and it was fifty below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out 'Oh, God, if there is a God, I'm lost in this blizzard, and I'm gonna die if you don't help me.'" And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. "Well then you must believe now," he says, "After all, here you are, alive." The atheist just rolls his eyes. "No, man, all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp."

0. https://web.ics.purdue.edu/~drkelly/DFWKenyonAddress2005.pdf

Bacon did it better centuries before with his idols: "And where are the testimonies from the sailors who prayed to the gods but did not return safely?"

Is your reference to New Atlantis? In reading the below article [0] I'm not certain if Wallace was going for a similar point as Bacon. But maybe you have a different interpretation.

Wallace develops his point after the story ". . . we also never end up talking about just where these individual templates and beliefs come from. Meaning, where they come from INSIDE the two guys. As if a person's most basic orientation toward the world, and the meaning of his experience were somehow just hard-wired, like height or shoe-size; or automatically absorbed from the culture, like language. As if how we construct meaning were not actually a matter of personal, intentional choice."

0. https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/francis-bacons-g...

I can recommend Shinzen Young as a senior meditation teacher with a high degree of rigor. He self-consciously will use mystical language, but is also upfront about the fact that he remains agnostic. The Science of Enlightenment is the best place to start with his work.

Maybe they're running the same core epistemic engine as you: what seems to be true is true!