So, I'm a Buddhist now.

[Agent]

[dexeron]

[Despanan]

[Rip]

Holy shit, stitching the two halves of that post together involves so much stretching I'm going to call you Dhalsim.

People's brains are chunks of meat. Of COURSE it occasionally happens that, after thinking about things in a certain way for a while, humans think about these things in all new ways because of the miracle of chaos that has resulted in meat that thinks.

The key thing here is that, when a realization is made through altered or unaltered states, that realization is a culmination of learning that has occurred within that human's lifetime and direct experience. Dex and all rational people say that there is no external consciousness or spiritual memory of a time when we were all One that any human is tapping into, they are merely reordering the information they have taken in through their meat brain and spitting out something else, which will either be correct or not. More often, not.

I don't really think Dhalsim wants to say that humans can share a collective memory. I really do think he is trying to agree with us, but is still insistent on using Buddhist language to do so despite everyone having proven their collective refusal to engage on that plane.

But then he said "I'm saying in a material sense people can be a helluvalot smarter and more rational than they seem to an outsider, even when they express themselves in something "irrational" like religious language.", which makes it sound AGAIN like he's trying to claim scientific cosmological knowledge for primitive buddhist morons, so I don't even fuckin know anymore I guess.

Hey desp! Straight up! Does realization come from personal experience, or spiritual collective memory? One of these is the right answer!

[Rip]

Also, I've done LSD multiple times, so I can confirm that, yes, doing so DOES indeed put you in direct communication with a vast river of spiritual consciousness that seems to flow both forwards and backwards through what you can no longer call "time" while in this state, and ideas both never born and yet to be can be plucked like ripe fruits from the very tree that Adam Qadmon guards with his flaming sword, but instead you just kinda stare at the ceiling for a while and think the fan makes pretty cool shadows.

Sometimes you almost shit yourself.

Highly recommended.

[Despanan]

Personal experience, duh.

I'm saying people sometimes describe personal experience in terms of spiritual collective memory because it's an unknown known and that's the best way they can express it.


Though I'm not going to entirely count out physical collective memory. I seem to recall a study that found the children of holocaust survivors were born with DNA that may have been altered by their parents experience.

[Agent]

[Despanan]

[Despanan]

[Rip]

So, you vindicate my sole point that you were never looking for philosophical discussion, and instead only ever wanted to preach, which was evidenced by the evangelical speech you have used throughout the thread.

It also seems that your beliefs never really changed, you just found a new, more insufferable way to talk about them.

All of this does nothing but cement my assertion that religion is vastly more harmful than helpful: moral rectitude is easily achievable in a secular society, and I've already demonstrated many times throughout this thread that maintaining an internal happiness and a sense of unity with the universe divorced of any dogma dreamed up by some ancient ignoramus is not only possible but vastly preferable, as cultural baggage is largely removed and you don't have to hate the gays.

Also, and this is key when discussing Buddhism now, without religion you can be altruistic and centered while NOT coming off as a righteous asshole. If one chooses, of course. ;)

So if the struggle against religion is not really a struggle against religion at all, it is a war by proxy: a battle against the culture and conditions that generates the religion, then it seems we need to simply continue to champion secular reason across the internet and the globe so we can finally move away from this bullshit about reincarnation and spiritual memory and blah blah blah and get back to figuring out why gravity has a more instantaneous effect than the speed of light in a vacuum.