TriumphantGeorge Compendium (Part 7)

POST: Should I really try this?

This is a theory, but basically, when you jump, you're actually switching places with another version of you who is aware of jumping. They may or may not be a lot more different than you. This you may seem a little off to your family at first, but they may get used to it. As an example.. If the you you switch with becomes employed and starts making great grades and what not. Your family would just think of it as you making your life better, etc.

No, you are not switching places as such. You are shifting your attention to a different possible experience, more like.

Haha. Sure, try it. Sit in front of a mirror with a candle and concentrate as much as possible. Everything that will happen is that you waste some time of your day. Sorry that you'll hear it from me but you will never change your dimension. You'll be stuck with your current state, your bad grades and nothing will ever change this. Only you can change it yourself by getting off your ass and do something against it on your own, like learning more to get better grades and try/work hard to find a decent job. Supernatural stuff doesn't exist on earth. I don't know if any of the Religions out there are true or false and if an afterlife in heaven or something like that exists but right here, right now, you and any human on earth including all the people here in Reddit will never experience supernatural stuff. You can't jump dimensions, you can't bend a spoon with your mind and you shouldn't believe stupid stuff other people tell you.

Have you tried it? Now, some people get carried away, for sure, but if you commit to it you are pretty much guaranteed to encounter some subsequent effects.

People get hung up on the "dimensions" imagery, but it's really part of a much older idea: consciousness as primary, the apparent world experience as illusory. Or in philosophy, that the world-as-it-is is an "infinite gloop", which is formatted into meaning by the mind which perceives it.

Shift your own patterning/filtering, shift your experience. Your milage may vary...

Well I got the first part of what you said and I know that a lot of people on earth believe in something like this but that's just because of their inexperience. Your last sentence on the other hand doesn't make any sense at all. Just a couple of fancy words mixed together to sound amazing while there's no meaning behind them whatsoever. Back on the first part. I'll tell you a nice story: There's a scientific theory which is called "Last Thursdayism" which was a response to the "Omphalos Hypothesis". I'll explain you the meaning behind these scientific theories and the solution to them. Technically you could invent any fictional stuff you want and nobody could prove you wrong. For example the "Last Thursdayism" is the logic, that the world might have been created last thursday. Technically, you couldn't prove someone wrong who said that. You couldn't travel back in time before the thursday to prove it wrong. How could you ever prove, that the world wasn't created last thursday? You could say that 2 years ago you married your wife or stuff like that. I could reply that this thought was just implemented in your mind when you were created last thursday. You could say "But I got photos of the marriage." and I would answer you that God also created these photos to make you believe that you already existed 2 years ago. The thing is that scientists and any human on earth is allowed to disprove these theses or theories by declaring them as unreliable. It works by measurring how much you have to invent to keep the theory alive. In the end in our actual universe everything makes sense, everything that exists supports other existing things and supports the logic behind them. In the "Last Thursdayism" you would need to support everything by inventing more and more stuff and so you can say that the Last Thursdayism, even though you could never prove it wrong, is surely not real and people shouldn't believe it. Now back what I want to make you understand by this: Your "much older idea: consciousness as primary, the apparent world experience as illusory" is nonsense. It's Idiocy. It's simply not real and you are stupid to believe it is. If you would still reply with "No, I believe in it, why shouldn't it be real, for me it very well is real." I would answer you, that I got a real dinosaur pet that is invisible and only I can see it and that my story is by far more likely to be actually true/real than yours and the fun thing is, that the last statement is a fact. It would really be more likely to be true than your nonesense even though it's complete bullshit itself.

I think you misunderstand this whole thing.

First, I would never suggest someone believe something without putting it to the test. This is easy done in this case. If it's just a bit of a laugh, that's fine too.

On "consciousness is primary", you probably haven't done enough reading to understand the way in which that is meant. It's got nothing to do with imagination and belief as you describe. In philosophy, you might check out panpsychism and idealism; in older traditions, Hinduism and Buddhism and even early Christianity. For a modern take, cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman's interface theory is worth a look.

I get your point put you have to differentiate between religion and superstition.

Well, religions now are largely a bastardisation of their original form. There's a lot we could go in here, but the Western religions are really a mutated, cut-down version of a more mystical approach to living. They have taken literally what was intended as metaphorical, and have lots the original message and replaced it with something far more dubious - I would say.

I don't want you or anyone else in this subreddit to change anything of their way of thinking.

That is absolutely not what this subreddit is about. It's very much about: "here's an experience, check it out".

They just need a single comment that tells them that the stuff here is not true to understand that there are two sides.

But that's not how to do it (in my opinion). They shouldn't be believing anyone who says "this is true" or "this is not true". I think you are working against your aim by doing this.

What you really mean to say is: people should think for themselves, right?

If there isn't a single comment anywhere about all this being a joke...

Well, it's not a joke. You do make a good point, and I'm going to take on this suggestion. That good point is: we might better emphasise in the sidebar that people should make up their own minds.

By the way, i'm not a native english speaker so sorry for any bad wording, inappropriate words or sentences that are difficult to understand.

No problem. I appreciate that you are coming from a "good place" on this. But I also think you have maybe come to this subreddit with preconceptions - perhaps due to that /r/nosleep post (which I think is quite unfortunate).

Religions really changed a lot and are a bastardization of their original form.

The original ideas were about empowerment of the people. It's really sad to see how it has been flipped around. Certainly in religions where there is an "entity god" to be feared and who passed down moral laws and punishments! "Non-religion" religions like Zen Buddhism seem to have retained more of the original concept - giving people ways to have a better life - but even they get mangled when they are translated into western ideas, often.

Neville Goddard (who I mention in a post here) interpreted the Christian Bible as describing different metaphors for approaching living. In effect, he is talking about using the mind to set goals, and so on. Quite a lot of the stories in the Bible are about the relationship between mind and body, imagination and perception, and between action and results (including moral action). There's a lot of metaphysics in the Bible. Unfortunately, those stories are now taken literally, as if the people were actual people, rather than symbols for certain relationships.

All that knowledge gets lost and becomes about being obedient rather than thinking for ourselves. Shame.

Yes, but I need to explain this a little closer again so that you exactly understand what I mean: I read in a thread about a confused person...

Your basic idea is absolutely right - in that as more subscribers appear, they don't maybe understand the context of this. That's why I've added a note to emphasise how one should approach this sort of thing. I would much rather just assume that people would think critically, make their own judgements, perform their own experiments - but it does no harm (and much good) to emphasise the position taken in this subreddit.

(In other subreddits, such as /r/Oneirosophy which is about studying perception from a subjective idealist point of view, there are explicit warnings and that is a valid idea.)

Well yeah, everyone has his personal preconceptions, I'm sure of this. I usually lean my preconceptions on experiences and facts and not on what a random person said.

The way I think of this: I never take my own thoughts too seriously. I never "believe" my own thinking. That way, I'm happy to change and see things differently according to new experiences I might have, or new information I might come across.

...nosleep is about horror stories, so I can assume that the story didn't have a nice ending.

The "new" story has the guy "jumping" into a dimension where he discovers he has just murdered his parents (bummer). The original story for the subreddit is actually about an experience someone had with mirrors (follow the sidebar link) which was kicked from /r/nosleep for not being believable (ironically).

Personally, I think having /r/nosleep stories now using the concept and linking to this subreddit is not a good thing. Not much we can do about it though.

But some things depend on the religion.

Very true. I think the 'insights' are about the same thing, however they are of course filtered through the culture of the time, and then filtered through history, idea, and power-struggles. Maybe that's why the information needs 'refreshed' periodically - insights are re-discovered and re-presented, to make them understandable again.

In general, most people think for themselves and make their own judgements but...

Yes, I do agree wholeheartedly with this, as a moderator for both subreddits. This one only recently kicked off; at first it was a pretty focused set of people and it wasn't very likely that anyone would happen across it uneducated. It's important to be informed in things where real effects are produced but explanations are lacking. Often people joke around with such things - and then they get a result, and it's not such a laugh anymore.

I thought nosleep is about fictional stories because the first post I ever saw was the Dimensional Jump one.

Yeah, /r/nosleep is indeed mostly fictional; don't read it myself. As with all those subreddits, there is some confusion, but that one is intended to be "fictional but play along" whereas /r/thetruthishere is about "true unexplained mysterious events" and /r/Glitch_in_the_Matrix is intended to be fairly dry reports about unusual experiences.

I don't deny that mysterious events can occur. But they are only mysterious events as long as we don't yet have a plausible scientific explanation for it.

Well, not all explanations are "scientific" because that only deals with a certain methodology - but I certainly agree. There is no such thing as supernatural, there are only experiences for which we do not have an account. For some experiences, perhaps we never will. But that doesn't mean they are "beyond reality".

Unusual experiences are great but if they really occured, then there just be an explanation for them.

We are not so far apart really.

If someone experiences something, they experienced it. Whatever the nature of that experience is, that's for discussion. In many cases we may never know - in others, we might gather enough anecdotes to come up with a theory.

Nothing can occur that is impossible with our laws of nature (aka what science has discovered so far).

Of course, the "laws" of nature don't say what is possible or impossible. They are not laws in that sense (they don't say "what is legal"). Rather, they are the simplest regularities we have observed, with the broadest applicability. They are "conclusions from the evidence so far".

If an observation is made which is contrary to one of these regularities, then we try to rework the theory to fit the observation. That's what science is all about.

Actually, Wikipedia for a change has a pretty good definition of a physical law [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_law#Laws_of_physics].

(One of my pet hates is that people confuse the notion of a fixed or "given" law with the idea of a "physical law". If we'd taken that viewpoint in previous centuries, we wouldn't have got anywhere.)

POST: I feel like there are fakes

[POST]

By that i mean i feel like there are a lot of people lying about jumping on here. I say this because if you jump dimensions, how could you come back on reddit in this dimension and share about it. You know, since there is no known way to return back to your original dimension

[END OF POST]

Guess what, 100% of the people here are fake. Jumping Dimensions is a joke. It's not real. It doesn't exist. I could make a fake account and share my experience of a fictional Jump and people would believe me. I could talk about all the coincidences and stuff that happened and ask questions if this or that happening is normal and people would answer me how that's completely normal and stuff like this can happen, even though I was lying the whole time and these fakers would perfectly play into my hands. =)

Hmm, so what exactly is the point of you participating here? You don't seem to understand the underlying concept vs the metaphor, and seem... opposed and defensive about the whole idea of (I guess) occult type projects or glitch type reports. Why bother posting?

Because there was a /r/nosleep reference to this subreddit and several thousands of poeple are currently checking this subreddit out for fun and are new here. Out of these thousands of people there are a few that are too young or not educated enough or haven't realized yet, that a lot on the internet is troll and fake. I don't want these very few young and/or uneducated people that came here to believe that the nonsense on this subreddit is real. I think I help them a lot by making them understand early that this subreddit is just a stupid joke so that they don't bother with it for too long and don't get sad afterwards when they sooner or later find out, that it's not real.

Admirable public service announcement. But warnings from ignorance or fearful discomfort don't help anyone. Are you really so worried that a few folk might look in a mirror?

I think we need to trust people to make up their own minds - take responsibility for informing themselves first. Which, ironically, you haven't!

There is no ignorance or fearful discomfort behind that. I wouldn't be here talking freely to you if I had a fearful discomfort about these things and it would only be ignorance if these things about dimensional jumping EVER had a piece of truth behind them to support them, which they don't have. It is as wrong and as much of a lie as an old woman looking into a crystal ball telling you your future. It's as wrong as some TV series where someone tells you your personality or future based on your asterisk or some cards he/she randomly pulled out of a deck to earn money through exploiting your human weakness of being concerned and worried about things and your future. You/the subreddit are not pushing anyone and not taking money from anybody so what you're doing here is not illegal and might be a nice hobby for some people. The "public announcement" how you like to call it is just there to not make people believe in these lies and fantasies other people tell them. Like I said, I dont want people to get sad after they realize that something, which sounds as nice as dimension jumping, is actually just fiction. They could put their hopes into this theory, hoping that it changes their lives which are currently in a bad state and in the end all their hopes get crushed. Or they drown from reality by never stopping to believe in such mystical bullshit aka superstition, which for obvious reasons has a bad reputation in reality and normal life.

I don't mean fearful quite like that. And perhaps I am misjudging you. I meant it more in the sense of someone fearful that the world isn't quite like they assume, and resistant to other people even looking at it for themselves.

I think you are showing little confidence in people to make judgements, from their own evidence!

Your comparisons don't work because this subreddit literally arose from people's "hey check this out" story. Much as /r/Glitch_in_the_Matrix did. A phenomenon was noted, there are several ways to try and replicate it for yourself. If you don't manage to replicate it, nothing lost.

We might compare this situation to lucid dreaming: its existence was denied for many years, older traditional accounts were dismissed as nonsense, many people were quite aggressive about opposing the possibility of it due to its implications for theories on dreaming/waking, eventually the sheer number of reports led to a study which led to greater acceptance. The same thing happened with hypnosis (still not understood).

EDIT: In both cases (even now) it's up to people to try it for themselves. It really doesn't matter whether anyone believes in these things or not, just as some philosophers believe theoretically that "consciousness is an illusion" but I'm still pretty much convinced I am conscious from personal experience...

Don't worry, I completely understood what you meant by fearful and since I know the world is like it is and not like people in this subreddit say and dimensional jumps dont exist, I'm very condifent and there's nothing that bothers me. I might show little confidence in other people's judements but that's based on facts and a good understanding of logic, physics, chemistry and therefore what is possible and what is not. And if someone is talking about something that you can scientifically prove to be impossible, then I show little mercy to somebody who's trying to convince me of believing it or to defend people who believe it. I want to repeat again that I dont want anyone here to stop believe in what he believes. I just want to make it clear that my point of view and the truth is, that what he/she is believing isn't true. You just have to accept that. It's based on the knowledge the humans have discovered so far. Any scientist can prove that dimensional jumps like this with a stupid mirror and a candle don't work and that everything you believe to happen is just fictional. That's why out of 7 billion people, not a single one of them would be able to do a dimensional jump because it simply doesn't exist. That's why I dont need to try and experience/replicate it myself. It's like somebody tells me I'll survive when I jump out of the 40th level of a building head first into the street. It's obviously proven to be deadly to a human body and if we take some unbelievable luck and coincidences aside, then 100% of the people doing that would die. So I don't need to try it out myself first to believe it, when I know the definite result beforehand. You can't compare Lucid Dreaming to dimensional jumps. Even if Lucid Dreaming at one point in time was considered to be nonsense, you could never completely disprove it since at that time and still today we don't know everything (but a lot) about dreams and dreaming yet. It never was something that you could disprove by facts since it was so badly explored yet. Unlike that, we have very well explored mirrors and candles and a person who's sitting on he floor trying very hard to concentrate. We can definitely prove that this won't change anything and that nothing will happen and therefore dimensional jumps are impossible and therefore you can't compare it in the slightest to Lucid Dreaming. Hypnosis is a difficult topic since, like you already said, it's not yet completely investigated. Unlike the dimensional jump thingy, you dont just have a candle and a mirror that won't do anything. The hypnosis is something that is done in different ways. I don't know enough about the topic but a person talking to you and giving you orders to concentrate on yourself, trying to focus on something specific, using special words and wordings and trying to manipulate you with what he's saying and wants you to believe or using the pulsating pattern of a pendulum, which could make you a little dizzy or whatever and many, many, many, many other things could eventually result in an effect in your brain, which is completely reasonable and physically/chemically reasonable. However, I think these effects are very minor and can't make any big change like you believing that you're a chicken. Maybe it could make you believe that you're arms feel really heavy even though they obviously aren't. Personally, I never believed in hypnosis and I am very very sure, that it doesn't work on me no matter which expert would try it on me. There's also the form of Hypnosis called "Trance", which can result in different conditions of yourself after a highly mental concentration but this minor effect (if it is even noticable) is also just completely reasonable on a chemical level and won't cause anything superhuman or supernatural.

Hey, thanks for engaging here, you've put a lot of thought into it and it's appreciated.

A few points:

  • I wouldn't get hung up on the candles-and-mirror thing; that's just a method of detaching from the current sensory experience.
  • Science cannot investigate subjective experience. That's not what it's for. Science is about identifying shared "observed regularities" and making connective stories about them. Science is not about "truth". It's about coming up with the best predictive model for a particular phenomenon. It describes observations, not how things are.
  • The problem with lucid dreaming and hypnosis is, like 'jumping', they are about subjective experience. Only personal experimentation can reveal the facts of the matter to you, one way or the other.
  • When we are dealing with these things, philosophy and metaphysics are the appropriate areas.

We should be clear and not appeal to vague hand-waving science when it comes to these things - there presently no physical-chemical descriptions which account for subjective experience. There is no explanation for consciousness, or even an idea about what form such an explanation would take. (Refer to Donald Hoffman and neuroscientist Krisoff Koch for interesting takes here.) Repeat: there are no good models which match the facts. We don't even know why we perceive objects, how perception works at all, how eyesight works. So we must conduct our own investigations. Where science ends, personal investigation and judgement must begin. Random good article: George Ellis [https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/cross-check/physicist-george-ellis-knocks-physicists-for-knocking-philosophy-falsification-free-will/].

Q: Well first off, I find it important that we differentiate between "phylosophy and metaphysics", "definite science" and "higher science"...
Definite science is the science that can definitely prove and disprove things, it's about daily life and things we have very well discovered already and facts we can definitely draw.
The higher science is the science of theories, models and other constructions that we aren't a 100% sure about, which could be the proven definite science of the future. I think definite science can very well investigate human experience. Subjective experience might be a bit tricky but we can draw general similarities between humans and statistically a human brain should work just the same way as another one.
That said, we've discovered a lot in chemistry. About messengers (biochemical prozess in your brain) and how it effects our perception and body in general.
We use electroencephylography (EEG) to measure the electric currents on your brain to understand why and how lucid dreams happen. It's definitely not the most accurate way to understand the human brain and just a little step forward but it can definitely show and prove different and particular things that happen in our brain in various occasions.
// So now where I have left over:
It's definitely not just vague hand-waving science. We can exactly tell how people perceive objects and how perception works and your eyesight. We've discovered long ago how all that stuff works and how your brain processes information. That said, through these knowledge we can determine whether something is possible to happen and what the changes could be and what a particular event could cause in your subjective perception and experience.
So science can very well prove, that for any individual, something like dimensional jumping doesn't work. You can do the process but nothing will happen at all. There's no chance, no scar that could ever disappear, nothing that wouldn't be like it was before that doesn't revert back. It's simply impossible and just superstition that makes you believe that something changed, but in fact, nothing ever changed. There's no chemical or biological or physical process, in which a dimensional jump could ever occur and in which reality could ever change.

[Hi, thanks for continuing! This has been an interesting exploration.]

Science, Definite, Indefinite

Definite science and higher science

Well, your distinction is arbitrary I'd say. A model which does not connect to observation is not a scientific model - it's just a conceptual framework. What you really mean is: proven theories vs unproven theories.

It is worth reading the George Ellis article in Nature on this very point. The article begins thus:

This year, debates in physics circles took a worrying turn. Faced with difficulties in applying fundamental theories to the observed Universe, some researchers called for a change in how theoretical physics is done. They began to argue — explicitly — that if a theory is sufficiently elegant and explanatory, it need not be tested experimentally, breaking with centuries of philosophical tradition of defining scientific knowledge as empirical. We disagree.
-- Scientific method: Defend the integrity of physics, George Ellis & Joe Silk

It's the difference between something corresponding to experiment versus it simply being self-consistent.

I think definite science can very well investigate human experience.

Science is the investigation of human experience, definitely. There is nothing else for us except human experience - and all human experience is subjective. It has a limitation though: That it can only deal with those experiences which can be shared symbolically and which can be accessed in simple, describable ways. This puts much of subjective experience out of reach.

It can definitely show and prove different and particular things that happen in our brain in various occasions.

Certainly. Observing brains even allows us to correlate certain 3rd-person imagery with certain 3rd-person reported experience. However, it does not allow us to observe and measure the experience. This cannot be done. That's not a problem really, it's just a recognition of what we are actually doing with science. It's all "inside us" and we can't get outside to measure it.

Intermission: An Exercise

Here's a worthwhile little exercise which emphasises the limitations we have:

  • Point to your real hand.
  • If you are pointing to any particular location - stop.
  • Even by the standard explanation, the hand that you are pointing to isn't your "real" hand - it's a construction of the brain, inferred by sensory inputs.
  • Try again...
  • So it becomes obvious that wherever the "real" hand is (assuming there is one), it is "outside of all this". And what you are experiencing right now is effectively a "perceptual dream".
  • Note: If you end up pointing to your head (where your "brain" is), then start again but this time ask: where is your "real" head?
  • Bonus point: Now, think about your real hand. Where does that thought appear? Does it not appear in the same "perceptual space" as your sensory experiences? You just can't get "outside" of this!

Vision, Perception, Neuroscience

We can exactly tell how people perceive objects and how perception works and your eyesight. We've discovered long ago how all that stuff works and how your brain processes information.

Unfortunately, we really haven't. Perception remains largely mysterious and unexplained. We can observe light going into the eyes, we can observe regions of the brain "lighting up" (terrible phrasing) but we do not have an explanation for perception. Cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman's interface theory talk is definitely worth your time. It specifically talks about visual perception from the beginning. I strongly recommend watching that talk. You can also read his related paper on Conscious Realism.

Meanwhile, retired neuroscientist Raymond Tallis has a reasonable article that's worth reading for another perspective. Now, I don't entirely agree with him, but it nicely outlines the various considerations.

Proving, Disproving, Experiences

So science can very well prove, that for any individual, something like dimensional jumping doesn't work.

This statement doesn't remotely follow from what you've just said, unfortunately.

It's simply impossible and just superstition that makes you believe that something changed, but in fact, nothing ever changed.

If you experience a change, and that change persist, then something did change - right? Although in a sense you are correct: in some philosophies, a change is a shift of perspective with reference to an unchanging structure, rather than an actual change in the world.

There's no chemical or biological or physical process, in which a dimensional jump could ever occur and in which reality could ever change.

Again, I must return you to a previous statement: Lack of an explanation does not mean lack of a phenomenon. If you experience something, it happens, regardless of whether you can account for it.

It would probably help to return to a question I asked in an earlier post: Can you prove that you are conscious? Can your prove that you have thoughts? Can you explain consciousness? Can you explain thoughts?

Does your lack of proof and explanation mean you have neither?

Note: A hand-waving "explanation" that these things "happen in the brain" or "emerge somehow" is not an explanation at all. If you can't say how it works, precisely then you have categorised it rather than explained it. The more closely you examine these things (for instance: vision) the more you realise we haven't explained them at all.

Outside, Inside, Nowhere

So I'm going to jump ahead here without having developed the full path for it, however all the essentials are there if you follow your experience, so...

We might summarise much of the above by saying that you are imagining an outside world, and you are thinking-about an world, that you have no evidence for other than the imagining of it. Earlier I said that:

  • Science = senses + imagination

By now you probably realise that the true situation is actually:

  • Science = imagination + imagination

On Perception

When we feel something, there's an electrical impulse sending information to our brain, which then it processes and it gives you the answer whether it's cold or hard, hard or soft, rough or smooth, etc.

That... isn't an explanation. Can't you see that? What do you even mean by "gives you an answer". Where and what is the "you" for starters! Keeping basic though, there are two ways in which this isn't an explanation:

  • It doesn't remotely describe how light entering the eye is transformed into a full perceived environment.
  • It doesn't remotely account for subjective experiencing.

You've basically said "the brain takes light and turns it into an image". That is not an explanation, you have described no processes whatsoever. You've said "magic", to link to an oft-used illustration.

Alt Tag

Perhaps it's good to get back to basics. Light enters the eye, hits the retina, as an inverted image (although from the eye's perspective, it's not an image, it's a series of activated rods and cones of course). That information enters the brain. From a subjective point of view, my actual experience, I see a complete and unwavering room with objects which are spatially-extended in an environment. How exactly is this produced?

We do not have an account. It's fine not to know, but to say we do know when we don't seems unwise. A full description of perception will, in my opinion, incorporate complex memory. We do not see directly, we see (loosely) the thoughts that are triggered by information that enters our brain - which is of course then also an imagining... ;-)

Proving, Disproving, Experiences

You can take a subject group and let them try the dimensional jump with whatever instruction it would be possible for them.

You are kind of missing the point here, because you are assuming we live in a "simply-shared world", which we do not. Dimensional jumping by its very nature cannot be studied scientifically (which means, "intersubjectively") because it "comes before" the basic formatting (check out our man Immanuel Kant - easy intro but slightly wrong; better into here). It is a matter of metaphysics really.

Science = imagination + imagination No. Not at all. That's complete bullshit. Any scientist who ever lived/lives on this world would scream with laughter about that equation. It's absolute nonsense.

It's exactly how it is. Our perceptual experience is an imaginary one, "inspired by" accumulated information, triggered by snippets. We then make up connective stories in our imagination. Amusingly, the stories we adopt then inform our subsequent experiences.

Your mind is a big happy fiction machine, feeding upon itself. Having been told this, you'll probably start to notice it in the coming weeks.

  • Experiences leave traces which in-form subsequent experience.
  • Thoughts are experiences too, which also act as in-form-ation for subsequent experience.
  • Your life is a big, looping metaphor machine and you didn't know it until right now.

On Consciousness

Man, you didn't even try with the consciousness thing. I'm really disappointed! ;-)

We simply have to answer this by saying that we have to accept that the universe exists and that we are real. So our thoughts and consciousness is too.

Okay, why not try this: The only thing you know for certain is that you are experiencing, therefore you are conscious and that you exist. Although you know that you are having experiences and thoughts, it is impossible for you to say what their nature is. You can think-about their nature, but that will just be another experience.

In effect we end up saying: All we know is that we are experiencing. And what we are experiencing is a real... experience. We cannot say that it is a "real" anything-else though.

There's no reality where dimensional jumps ever exist.

All that is required for dimensional jumps to exist, is for them to be experienced.

My post doesn't underlie any faith ... It underlies science and reality. Facts.

But it seems to me that you don't even know that science, reality, and facts actually are. Except (now) you might say that they are experiences. Beyond that, though?

I think if you read again what i've just written in my post, you should realize that dimensional jumps don't exist and that we can even prove that it is impossible and just a big hoax.

Unfortunately not. If anything, what you have done is further convince me that what I might have assumed was a solid world is in fact... a transient illusion, with no solidity at all, made up only of my experiencing of it.

In fact, I think you have convinced me that dimensional jumping - being a persistent experience - is perfectly possible and is not contrary to anything other than... previous habits.

POST: Just another skeptic..

[POST]

Hey guys! I really can't believe I'm posting this , but see , can't this phenomenon all be explained?
(This is kinda my first post , so sorry about the formatting)
My theory is kinda hard to explain , but I explain it easier to explain with an example. When we all were kids , we had that constant fear of a monster under our bed (assume you did) We took whatever sounds that occurred to be that monster! Our brains were searching for some evidence to show that our strong belief in something non-existant to be true (our brain is basically trying to screw us up!) So similarly , the process of dimension shifting , that sudden blurryness , all of it , its just some kinda evidence our brain is coming up to show that dimension jumping(what we believe in) is true! Even the changes! We search for the smallest changes to be true! It can be a coincidence , like that post where a redditor did a good dimension jump into a dimension where her fiancé complimented her on her looks! That person was looking for , or noticing the compliments she got about her looks!
Let's think of it as this way , If something happens when ur not expecting something , you wouldn't even be surprised. But if something happens (or changes) when your expecting something to happen/change (after a dimension jump) you'd automatically link it to the jump , wouldn't you?
So yeah , I think you kinda got my idea , I tried explaining it every way I could! Have a good day!

[END OF POST]

There's something to be said for seeing what you are looking for, definitely. However, it really doesn't explain some if the side effects - unless you view them as "memory mangling".

Side effects? As in?

Events that happened last week didn't actually happen, that sort of thing. The argument you had never occurred. That person never got sacked after all. Lots of "but I'm sure that..." things which are unrelated to your intention.

Maybe déjà vu can also be the reason for that c: But , we can never know if the person who claims that is lying or not.

Yeah. Or some other sort of memory mangling! How could we tell the difference? One of the 'problems' with this is that it is a subjective experience (of course). So by its very nature all evidence is going to be anecdotal. But that's why this subreddit isn't about proving anything to anyone. It amounts to: Some people have had an experience, here's how you can maybe produce that for yourself, you decide.

You could see it as a targeted or practical version of /r/Glitch_in_the_Matrix. People do have unusual experiences. Some of them would be useful if harnessed. Is this one way to harness these 'glitch' type effects?

In the end, all that's going to matter is that for you the world apparently changed in a useful way and didn't revert back.

POST: /u/Kazymir told me to stay off this sub...

Plot twist: Nobody was human anyway, they were just "having a human experience".

Although I won't hear a word said against The Intelligence. He's knows loads of interesting facts, always gets his round at the bar, a generally nice guy. It's best not to mention his "appendages" though...

I'm just on a mission here. There are actually people who newly came here and seriously think this stuff is real so I'll just answer them the truth about all this being a joke.

The idea here is that people can take it or leave it: do the experiments and see what happens, or not. There's no debate or opinion to be had. There's no worldview being pushed; except try stuff see if it works or not. If it's not for you, nothing is lost, except a bit of time, which was probably going to be spent in bed or in front of the TV anyway.

Think of it as a practical /r/Glitch_in_the_Matrix or /r/Occult centred around a particularly powerful active metaphor built on the philosophical concept of Idealism.

If it's just a kind of metaphor that's nice. People can use it to have fun and relax their mind. But people in here are actually talking about literally jumping dimensions. So this isn't a metaphor anymore. They're lying so much nonsense that it literally hurts my brain. I dont understand how people can be so stupid to believe in this bullshit.

It's a metaphor to trigger a genuine effect. The "dimensions" imagery does get confusing; it would be better to say something like "state jumping" or "format shifting". But then you have to talk about the structuring of mind and conscious experience.

Changes are experienced. The nature of those changes, that's something else. It is easier to do just by having a go. But note that nobody's pushing it here - "there's an interesting phenomenon, you might be able to leverage it, up to you".

They aren't real the people just think they are.

Hmm, how do you tell the difference? If something was one way but is now another way, if a prior event seems now not to have happened, is that not "actually real"?

Or do you mean like "in a real way beyond our sensory experience"?

Not sure what you mean by placebo and biases. What's the mechanism behind those?

The Placebo Effect is a scientific proven effect, that you believe to actually feel a change, even though there is none.

That is not what the placebo effect is. The placebo effect is a genuine change which occurs despite there being no mechanistic cause for it. Many good studies. This one is quite interesting. To repeat, the placebo effect means an "actual" result. That's why people are interested in studying it!

Biases is very general meant.

You are reaching for something like "confirmation bias" here, I suppose? That certainly occurs. Here though, we are talking about something a little different. Hmm. I think you have mixed some things up here: hypnosis, confirmation bias, placebo effect, sensory experience, the concept of "the real".

But it comes down to something quite simple: if you experience something, and your experience remains consistent with it afterwards and doesn't revert, in what way is that not "real"?

So like you said i mean the "in a real way beyond our sensory experience" - real.

There is no "real" beyond sensory experience. Our consistent, intersubjective sensory experience is exactly what we call real. Anything else is... imagination. Imagining that there is something else beyond what you are experiencing - a world we can never reach that is "how it really is". Now that is fantasy!

What is a headache except for the sensation of an ache in the head area? If that sensation goes away, then your headache has been solved.

This is very important generally:

  • Not having an explanation for something doesn't mean it isn't a real phenomenon.
  • Not understanding something does not mean it doesn't happen.

If we don't accept that, then science wouldn't get anywhere, because fresh observations usually don't have models to back them up. (In fact, the story of science has often been about resisting new discoveries because they can't yet be accounted for, but that is a different conversation.)

[EDIT: Please take this in the playful spirit in which it is intended! Upon re-reading, it might sound more aggressive than it was intended to be!]

Placebo Effect

That's what i meant that nothing changed. You NEVER got a medicine that helped, your mind just tricked you and by tricking yourself it surprisingly helped.

Perhaps this is a language issue! Something did change. Your body did change. We agree on this, right?

What you are trying to say is maybe: "expecting that something is going to happen gives the same result as doing something which is supposed to make it happen". Of course, perhaps all pills are placebo-based. Perhaps they don't really do much of anything anyway. Perhaps all medicine is "pretend" to some extent - whether because the doctor believes in it, or the patient believes in it.

Maybe we should update our sentence to say: "one person expecting that something is going to happen gives the same result as another person expecting something is going to happen"... ;-)

After all, it does seem as though the truth wears off over time [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/12/13/the-truth-wears-off].

Science and The Real

Anyone who says something changed and didn't revert afterwards is simply lying. That stuff never happened. I don't believe you because it's impossible and the possibility of it being impossible is 100% and scientists can prove that.

So you are saying:

  • That even if someone has an experience of something changing, they are lying?
  • And that scientists can prove something is impossible?
  • And that scientists have or could design and implement a study which could examine this effect?

I suggest that all these statements are dubious or incorrect.

There is a "real" beyond sensory experience. I know a lot define their sensory experience as real BUT you can't do that always. There are many sorts of real.

You are incorrect and you completely misunderstand what science is and what it can do. To repeat:

  • Science makes observations using the senses.
  • Science notices regularities in those observations.
  • It picks out those observations which can be easily repeated by different people.
  • It gathers accounts from those different people.
  • It then makes up stories - conceptual frameworks, models, metaphors - which connect the different observations, using the imagination of the scientist.
  • Science = senses + imagination.

And that's why it works so well. It takes the common, repeatable, simplified aspects of experience and, with imaginative stories, makes powerful tools from them.

Scientific Proof

Anyone can scientifically prove that dimensional jumping doesn't exist.
You can prove scientifically that it's impossible and definitely nonsense

Really? How... exactly?

Meanwhile, do you believe that you are conscious and that you have thoughts? Prove it. (It's a good exercise to go through.)

I suggest that what underlies your post is faith and is completely unscientific. Particularly since you are using phrases like "the mind tricked you and by tricking yourself it surprisingly helped", as if it were an explanation of some sort..

My Brain Is Lying

And the people who believe to see or feel a change that didn't revert afterwards are either lying or their brain makes them believe that it's real (with their sensory experience) even though in reality it is not.

How exactly does this work?

Are you not concerned that, right now, all the things you think are true are just "your brain tricking you and making you believe they are real"? That in fact, your experiences are just based on ideas you picked up and believed along the way, with no grounding in fact whatsoever? ;-)

Hey, will follow this up later, but we need to be clear on our definitions of the placebo effect.

The Placebo Effect

From the 2014 paper Outsmarting the Placebo Effect we have the following definition:

The placebo effect—real improvement brought on by the expectation of receiving treatment—can offer significant relief for patients.

To emphasise: The placebo effect is when actual persistent change occurs. The patient does not receive treatment but has the same outcome as if they did receive treatment. What you have described is... something else. You are describing someone "feeling better" but not really being better. The placebo effect is when people actually get better. Otherwise it wouldn't be an effect worth commenting on at all!

To emphasise again: The placebo effect is when something actually does change even though no active medicine was applied. It is not just about subjective experience. The mechanism is unknown, but a result is obtained without there being an apparent cause.

It is nothing to do with being "fooled". Unless it's the whole universe, reality itself, that is "fooled". Which would be good enough for most people, I'd say...

A1: get em george

Heheh. Well, I'm just pushing for clear-thinking all round...

The Placebo Effect - Continued - Untricking

Right, I think we're getting clearer now, and I see where we're disagreeing. Here's my broad definition:

The placebo effect is the phenomenon of someone's symptoms improving when they've only been given a dummy treatment, or even after they've just seen a doctor.
--Clinical trials and medical research, NHS UK

(Note, I don't endorse the site, just as I wouldn't endorse WebMD either, I just grabbed it because it was a good phrasing. The original article that got me exploring this was actually a New Yorker article back in 2011.)

Would you agree with this? The reason I'm pushing for this is that it's not just "feeling better". Does that make sense? In other words, if there is a mechanism it is not simply, say, pain suppression. That's why I push back against the idea that you are being "fooled by your brain". Which is no explanation at all.

If I were to offer an account of the placebo effect (the alleviation of symptoms by a non-active process) I would say it's to do with a "release" of some sort - an "allowing". I wouldn't say the brain is being tricked, so much as it is being un-tricked. Which is where a link comes in...

I'll try and dig this out, but there was a good study of back pain a while back. People would go to the doctor, complaining of pain, and they'd get scanned and there would be misshapen discs and so on. Operations would follow. However... people with the exact same apparent issues had no pain, no restriction. The deformations weren't actual causal to the pain; they were only being picked up because attention had been drawn to them.

In the same way, I suspect that many "issues" are non-issues in fact. That the "causes" detected are often unrelated to the experience of the patient, and only being discovered because of the investigation that results from the complain. In other words, "placebo" is a matter of there not being much of an illness in the first place. This is different to "healing" which is a whole other thing (it may be a matter of degree, however).

...just like I did on the whole dimensional jump-thing.

We've likely lost focus here, so let's bring it back around: how does this related to dimensional jumping, in your view?

The Placebo Effect - Continued - Double Tricking!

Let's perhaps summarise the placebo effect as you have discussed it so far (because we really want to focus this on dimensional jumping). I think I didn't properly communicate my idea on "untricking" so we'll put that aside. Let's also put aside the negative placebo effect, to help us stay focused.

Taking into account your whole comment, you are saying:

  • The placebo effect is when your brain "tricks you" into feeling better, when there is no apparent physical change. In this case we have (say) been experiencing pain, and after the placebo treatment that pain is no longer experienced. (I am putting aside that symptoms more generally are often alleviated, not just pain and the like. However, that's not important for our discussion.)
  • Dimensional jumping is when someone imagines that the world has changed, but in fact it has not. If they think there is a visual change, they are crazy or fuzzy-headed. (I am putting aside the possibility that people are lying about their accounts.)

In both cases you are saying that the only possible thing that can happen is that we might "feel a bit different". Anything beyond that, and we are "tricked and wrong", no matter what our experiences are. That...

No matter what seems to happen, we are tricked and wrong, or not clear-thinking enough, or mentally ill, or lying.

Is that really your position? You have offered no mechanisms for "biases" and "placebo", so really the only explanations you are offering are illness or lying.

It seems to me that you are starting from the position that all that can happen with regards to 'placebo' or to 'jumping' is that the brain can trick you into a feeling, or that you are wrong somehow. You are screaming "it can't be true! no matter what!". This is hardly an research-based approach...

If I could guarantee you an experience, an experience that was undeniably more than just "feeling" or "biases", an experience that was so obviously about the big world changing rather than just little you, the world coming at you with changes from the outside - would you take it?

Do you like owls?

Sorry man. I'm done talking to an uneducated guy who doesn't understand the basic knowledge that is taught at school and believes in Scientology and supernatual stuff that doesn't exist.

I read your other post. Not sure why you are talking about Scientology and the supernatural! Okay, quick summary response (I'm not talking about the subreddit topic here, this was all about science, perception and consciousness). Your problem is that your education in science, philosophy and metaphysics probably is stuck at high-school level. That's not a problem of course, but it does leave you in the position where you "do not know what you do not know".

Most of the problems with our discussion was because you haven't really thought about these things properly and in depth. Things that seem "obvious" to you are actually not so when you look deeper into the details. In physics we have tackled lots of things (although we still don't have a good description of quantum mechanics other than "it's maths and it works"), but when it comes to explaining the mind we are basically right at the start. We are not as far along as reading popular science articles would have you believe.

I'll leave you with one final thought to ponder: Do you genuinely feel, right now, that your experience is made up of neurons? If you don't, that means there is a gap we need to find an explanation for. (There are actually many gaps like this in our explanations.)

Oh, here's a nice article from Nature [dead link] that you might find an interesting read. It might help make my "imagination + imagination" concept a little clearer for you.

EDIT: You might want to adjust your tone a little in future, to a more respectful one. Sometimes when we think we are not understood or say that someone else is ignorant, it is actually our own lack of understanding and our own ignorance that is own show. This can later turn out to be an embarrassment for the commenter - especially on a public forum like this.

POST: I'm so confused.

If you make a change, not everything changes. One analogy is like changing a TV channel, but it's maybe more like watching a different version of the same story. Most of it is the same, some changes.

POST: [deleted by user]

You are changing aspects of your experience through intention; you are not deleting yourself!

POST: Do you keep all previous knowledge when you jump?

I you lost all of your knowledge, you'd not know about it. If you made a dramatic "jump" and had no memory of it or what came before, it would just be everyday life for you...

Generally thought, the idea is to make changes and retain the memory of the act and of the prior state.

==So you could technically lose your knowledge? But in the example I used, e.g. worse test scores, which people say has actually happened, loss of knowledge wouldn't be a problem?

Well, it really depends on the details so it's hard to tell. You end up with worse test scores - are the tests now different to that you remember (knowledge is the same), or are the tests are the same ( knowledge is correspondingly not available), or tests are the same but still can recall knowledge. All are possible really, right? You want to deliberately specify I suppose.

It's a neat thought experiment to think that we may lose our previous knowledge. We could be jumping all of the time but forgetting and we'd never know. Maybe we do jump all of the time and the key to dimensional jumping isn't to actually jump, but to take your memories with you.

We could be respawning a new world-pattern from scratch every morning, and we'd never know. Enjoy today, /u/Aeropro, because it's the only day you will have ever existed! ;-)

POST: I have a few questions

[POST]

Hello I have been a lurker of reddit for some time now and have finally decided to make an account. I will get straight to the point. I have been a sufferer of chronic halitosis for awhile now and it has affected my social life and who I've become. I want to know if it is possible for me to jump to a dimension where I don't suffer from halitosis. I have done everything possible to try and cure myself. I brush and Floss 3 days have tried countless of bad breath cure products, oil pulling and none that has worked. I don't remember the last time I have been genuinely happy.. I have ran out of ideas and feel like this could by my solution. Can I jump to a dimension where I don't suffer from this? If so how do I picture or say to myself what I want when I'm doing the mirror technique?

[END OF POST]

Hi, sorry to hear, that sounds a real pain. Stuff like that can really wear you down, I really sympathise. :-(

The answer is, yes, you can use these techniques for that sort of thing. You might want to begin by checking out a couple of things though. One problem is that if you are (understandably) focused on this and fighting it in certain ways, they can imply it and persist it. You can end up imagining the situation you are in, ever more deeply. In other words, you generally have to be careful to intend-imagine being in a good situation rather than not being in a bad situation.

Fancy doing a little experiment? Lie down on the floor, get quiet, and see if you can summon the what it would feel like to be a person with 'confident breath'? I don't mean any physical sensation of your body, but rather the "what would it feel like if this had been all sorted".

See what happens with that as a starting point.

Hello. Thanks for your kind words.. yes it is mentally painful I have psychologically scarred myself because of this.. Every time something rubs their nose or make a disgusted face.. I know they are doing that cos of me. There is nothing more in life that I want but to cure myself of this.. I have a job that I like and a wonderful family. It has affected me so much that I have thought about committing suicide. But I have long past that obstacle and learnt there is more to life. I've tried that experiment last night but I struggled to imagine what it would be like to have confident breath.. I kept getting images of me talking and people just rubbing their nose basically just negative thoughts. And what's even worse is there is this girl who likes me and I like her but I can't even take her out on a date because of my breath.. I don't know what to do.. do you have any tips?

That sounds so frustrating. I'm pleased you've realised it in context though (that's it's a nasty pin in an otherwise comfortable cushion).

First, I'm going to give you some practical advice: Get yourself some Neem toothpaste and mouthwash. It's magical stuff for keeping the mouth happy more generally, I've found, clearing up little flare-ups. Definitely worth a spin for you.

Okay, stage two of the experiment. You've got the idea now: we're going to work towards you being able to generate the feeling of what it will be like when you're sorted... This time, you're going to do the same thing, but deliberately imagine situations where people smile and respond as they will when this is all fixed.

The important thing here is that you imagine the situations as if looking through your own eyes, being there, having the experience. If the downer images you get are pretty much the same all the time, I want you to change those images into version where people are smiling, chatting, and you are responding, smiling chatting and relaxed. Again, we're looking for how it will feel when things are great. Okay?

Bonus paragraphs...

Bonus 1: When you've done that, you are going to be more specific. You are going to imagine, as if it were happening, a situation with that nice girl which meant that this had already been sorted. Totally immerse yourself in and enjoy that imagining. Right?

Bonus 2: There's something extra to be careful about here. When we have something we are unhappy or worried about, it's a fact that the world tends to confirm our fears. Not just confirmation bias, it tends to give us a little more than that. So I want you to be careful of looking out for signs that people are responding to your breath. Just decide to give up on that, and be okay with how you are now, for now - because it will change soon.

Bonus 3: Maybe once you've got "the feel", you should ask the girl out anyway? And you're gonna recall the "vibe" you've developed doing the exercise. Try some neem, load up on mints if you need a crutch, then "fuck it!" and enjoy some fun. You'll regret it later if you don't. And if its doesn't work out... oh well, next time!

I have a gut feeling that this [impacted wisdom teeth] is the culprit.

Trust that feeling. There's "something" about wisdom teeth. I had massive problems with my wisdom teeth (your whole body responds to them being there, not just your mouth). I had a very powerful "intuition" about them ("get them removed now, TG!") before they ever caused a problem...

So I think you're definitely on the right track (booking to get them removed and assigning responsibility to them).

POST: New here, with questions.

The "dimensions" are metaphorical. It's a way of saying you can shift your experience from this configuration to that configuration. You are deciding to make a change, detaching from your current experience and allowing it to shift. The whole "decisions create alternative universes" thing is a bit overblown. A better way to say it is that all possible experiences are available, but your "next-moment" is normally limited by your current situation and expectations. "Jumping" is a way of loosening those limitations, so you can jump to a farther position on the Infinite Grid of All Possible Moments. All patterns of experience are there already, it's a case of traveling to them.

(Fundamentally, the universe has no "dimensions" - that's a structure our mind imposes. It's more like an "infinite gloop" of dimensionless facts, perhaps.)

See links in sidebar for techniques and metaphors.

POST: If you think dimensional jumping isn't real...

[POST]

Go prove it then. Go prove that what this sub reddit is based on isn't true. Try jumping. Just know that the whole mirror technique is just one technique. There are other techniques. Don't forgot to be very observant. Do more research. Be a bit more open-minded.
Oh and sorry if this doesn't belong here.
Edit: Such great discussions. Well I haven't done DM yet because I am... Not quite ready. Maybe when trouble arises I will try it.

[END OF POST]

Fine words of encouragement! The challenge has been set! :-)

I was kind of worried that this wasn't suppose to be here. I do hope people notice this.

You've captured the right attitude totally. The sidebar got updated a couple of days ago with basically the same thing:

NOTE
There is no established theory of "jumping" or its mechanism, although there are numerous ways of viewing its nature.
It is for readers to decide for themselves through personal investigation and introspection whether jumping is appropriate for them or not.
An open mind combined with healthy caution is the correct mindset for all approaches targeted at the subjective experience.
Never believe something without personal evidence; never dismiss something without personal evidence.

If people aren't interested or don't care, that's totally fine. And nobody should believe something just because someone else says so (even if they like the idea). But this is a "personal experience" kinda thing so it can't be dismissed only because it sounds quirky.

...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophic_burden_of_proof

In this case, the assertion being made is: "if a person does this thing, then the person will have this experience". Nobody can supply proof of that to the person, he must examine the matter for himself.

A3: All scientists must have a hypothesis and begin their experiments before the burden of proof can be established. That's what we're doing here; experimenting. That's fine if you don't want to try something before it's proven, but you won't be the kind of person who discovers anything new or interesting, unless its by accident.

I understand that. I read the title/first sentence, "If you think dimensional jumping isn't real...go prove that what this sub reddit is based on isn't true", as basically the same thing as someone saying that I can't prove that they don't have an invisible pet unicorn. The burden of proof lies in the person making the extraordinary claim (and I would classify jumping dimensions as extraordinary). If someone comes up with proof that dimensional jumping is real, then I will stop viewing this subreddit as simply a cool place to come to read neat stories.

A3: Being from the other side of the fence, I got a different meaning from those same words.
AFAIK there can be no proof for this phenomenon, by definition, outside your own experience. Knowing this, I read his statement not as an attempt to have you prove a negative (impossible, I know) and then present it to us all. I took it more as a challenge to suspend your disbelief and try it for yourself because at this point its all we can do.

Like /u/Aeropro, I read it the other way also. That this subreddit is based on a subjective experience, so you have to seek out the subjective experience in order to prove to yourself that there is no basis for the subreddit. It's fine to leave it open or to just not care, of course, but denying there is an effect just because we have no explanatory framework for it is meaningless.

The notion of "dimensional jumping" is the driver for and a way to explain changes. Like any other "cause and effect" type story, it's a way of joining two experiences together to make it easier to "understand" (read: to repeat and leverage an apparent connection).

Since we can't get behind the scenes, as it were, of this sort of phenomenon, you can't experience a mechanism behind the effect. (We never can, really, even in science, but at least there we are in the realm of shared observations, and so we can share a narrative fiction to go along with them.) So we make up one, subject to revision.

A1: I agree that the burden of proof is on those who claim it is real.
But I also think it is a purely subjective experience. No one can experience your jump except for you, and you can't prove you have had that experience with anyone else.
I have no interest in proving DM is real to anyone. I don't care if someone else believes or not. It doesn't affect me.
If you are curious, then explore it. If you are not, then go away.

Q: I agree that the burden of proof is on those who claim it is real.
No, it is not. You can not prove a negative assertion.
While I will attempt to say this with as much civility as possible, I have also noticed that pseudoskeptics regard their social acceptance of anyone who disagrees with them, as some sort of prize to be won, when it is not. Your acceptance of me is not required, and neither, for that matter, is your approval of my state of mental health. You are entirely welcome to consider me as being completely insane if you wish to do so; because compared with pseudoskepticism and scientism, I quite seriously consider insanity to be genuinely preferable.

I think the commenter was generally in favour though: as it's a subjective experience you can only prove it to yourself.

You are very right about social acceptance though. I think it's part of a more general problem: that subjective experience is dismissed in general. Which is ironic, since that's all we have really, and "objective" experiences are merely subjective experiences which are simple enough to communicate by language (the are words for it), and regular enough that enough people will have experienced them in order to understand the content of what is being said.

A1: I think it's part of a more general problem: that subjective experience is dismissed in general.
A big part of the problem with pseudoskeptics, is that when they say they require proof, they usually aren't even explicit in their own minds about the type of proof they want. What they really want is physical proof that has been mechanically derived, because they don't believe in anything other than physical reality, and they have also been taught by psychiatry to believe that empiricism that is not mechanically mediated is inherently untrustworthy. This again, is a logical travesty however, since as you yourself point out, ultimately our direct physical senses are all we have, even when a machine gives us a readout about something.
If a pseudoskeptic claims that something does not or can not exist, then the burden of proof is with them, for the reason that disproving a negative assertion is not possible; which in turn automatically means that their argument is invalid. If they say they require proof, then they need to be able to explicitly specify the type of proof they need. Again, I am still under no obligation to provide them with any. My only responsibility to them is entirely dependent on whether or not I want their acceptance, and in most cases I do not.
Logic is only empowering in the hands of those who actually know how to use it. The thinking of pseudoskeptics is neither logical nor empowering; it is merely a mental cage for them to sit within, and keep repeating to themselves that nothing exists. Their interpretation of science is almost exclusively about negative assertions, you will notice; what supposedly does not exist, or what can not be done. The entire reason why a negative assertion is not provable, is because the subject of such an assertion itself does not exist. In the context of logic gates, a NOT gate or inverter is defined by the absence of current.
This is medieval logic, and it is provably sound. I am a magician, not a scientist. I remain convinced that the Enlightenment was actually the direct opposite. I have been taught how to think by the likes of Paracelsus and Agrippa, and by my experience with both computer programming and magick. Paracelsus was rejected by mainstream thinkers in his own time, just as I am in mine. I like to think that he and I have a fair amount in common. The scoffers of his day accused him of unspeakable arrogance; but even if it was, it was not unfounded. When he referred to his critics as fools, he was able to demonstrate that they were.
I am also an empiricist before I am a rationalist. That means that if I attempt to perform a given dimensional jumping experiment, and my own results are consistent with the honest testimony of others, then I assume that the phenomenon in question exists; and I do so even if I do not initially understand the principles at work which generated the experiences. That is to be worked out over the course of repeated experiments. Magick is first and foremost exploratory in nature, and in fact specifically assumes and allows for initial ignorance and lack of understanding. I will leave it to the scientists to carry the ball and chain of complete certainty. It is far too heavy and restrictive for my tastes.
"You are not yet blessed, if the multitude does not laugh at you."
\ -- Seneca de Moribus.

An excellent assessment. I too am "an empiricist before I am a rationalist". Subjective experience is primary, connective fictions (explanatory frameworks) are secondary, but useful and perhaps in some sense causal.

The main-push physicists of the early-mid 20th century were not at all like most physicists and scientists today (who are effectively "engineers with beliefs"). They knew exactly the nature of what they were doing (modelling observed regularities, not uncovering truth). Some still do - e.g. George Ellis here [https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/cross-check/physicist-george-ellis-knocks-physicists-for-knocking-philosophy-falsification-free-will/] and here [https://www.nature.com/articles/516321a] and there are many others. As their points are more subtle, and less attractive to funding and to the popular "gee whiz!" media, they tend to get less coverage unfortunately.

Related, I was reading an article [https://www.sheldrake.org/reactions/the-anti-sheldrake-phenomenon] the other day, about the aggressive responses to Rupert Sheldrake's (morphic resonance) work, particularly by super-skeptic Michael Shermer. It's worth a read. (Sheldrake's morphic field ideas are very close to physicist David Bohm's implicate/explicate order, but because Sheldrake is inevitably closer to "everyday life" as a biologist, he got a kick-in.)

It then so happens that there is a moderated dialogue taking place [https://thebestschools.org/sheldrake-shermer-materialism-science-replies/] over these few months between Shermer and Sheldrake. Interesting to read reader's comments as much as it is to read the main participants contributions.

"It only works if you believe"

It's actually not about belief - or only in the sense that, you have to fully commit to it while you are doing it, because deliberate or implied intention is a requirement. The sidebar already describes the appropriate mindset.

You have cleverly chosen a phenomenon which can't be duplicated, recorded, or proven in any way.

The point isn't to prove anything to a third party, of course. And you're right: if the world-pattern moves self-consistently, there can be no trace of the previous state except in memory. How convenient! But in both senses!

The technique, being about shifting your own experience going forwards, is indeed subjective - and what else is there, after all? Conscious experience is entirely subjective: try proving that you are conscious or have thoughts, other than to yourself...

The assertion being made is:

"If a person does this thing, then the person will have this experience".
"Nobody can supply proof of that to the person, he must examine the matter for himself."

But nobody cares if you do it or not. However if you don't, you can't reasonably make a comment on whether an effect occurs, nor comment on the nature of that effect.

you should include a disclaimer in the sidebar stating that dimensional jumping is purely a thought exercise and in no way affects the 'shifting nature of reality'.

The problem is - it does do something that shifts your experience of reality, if you try it. What the nature of that change is, is up for debate. There is no mechanism, other than the experiencing.

Essentially, detaching from your senses and using a metaphor to conceptualise a change with intention results in a change in subsequent perception. But not just in the "values" of your perception; it apparently affects the "facts" also. Which is why it's an interesting area to explore, and potentially useful too.

EDIT:

Preface

I'll preface this with, nobody is telling anyone what to think here. Your response seems to be based on that idea, and the idea that other people can't be trusted to bring their own judgement to bear on things. You should always be the authority of you.

Historically, those who promote a position (politically, scientifically, historically) have always turned out to be partially incorrect at least.

Acceptance should always be provisional, in matters you have not or cannot personally verify, and all explanations should be treated as useful, not "true", since even the most apparently robust worldviews shift regularly as additional observations are incorporated - usually after a lot of in-fighting rather than an organised transition.

Response

False. By having this discussion right now I have proven my sapient self.

To yourself.

Everytime I drop the weight and observe it, it will be the same, and everytime you drop it, it will be the same and if we compare notes our numbers will match. This is not a subjective experience.

Of course it's a subjective experience. That isn't to say we can't have subjective experiences that, through communication, we subsequently agree are identical in the key respects. Of course we do!

That experiences are subjective doesn't rule out intersubjective agreement. In fact, this is exactly what science is: identifying the subset of experiences for which there is intersubjective agreement, and producing descriptions in language which can be agreed upon. However, it is probably the case that, beyond very common regularities, most experiences cannot be agreed upon in this way.

Again, your claim boils down to "You can't prove that it isn't real unless you do it. And if someone does it and experiences no change your answers will always be...

No, those won't be the answers. As I said, nobody is saying anything other than: I've done this and had this experience, try it out for fun. If someone doesn't get a result, then it didn't work as far as they are concerned. Case closed.

In that regard I can say I did it and before, everyone on earth had three eyes and now they only have two. You can't prove my claim wrong, and I can never prove it right.

Who's claiming anything or proving anything other than to themselves?

Now, if there are many accounts of an effect, then that may encourage others to give it a go - but until they do so, they shouldn't believe anything. Nor disbelieve it really, just leave it open, but that's entirely up to them. Fine to say "that doesn't make sense to me, what rubbish!" if they like, particularly since intersubjective agreement is inherently a problem with this phenomenon.

You are stating a belief as fact. Because what you claim is, by it's design' impossible to prove, you cannot state it as fact.

Nobody is promoting a general position, they are reporting their experience - describing the process; describing the subsequent experience. Actually, I usually say "apparently results in". The thing is though, there is no difference between saying "apparently results in a change in perception" and "actually results in a change in a perception". How does one distinguish between an "apparent experience" and an "actual experience"?

The reason "facts" is in quotes, is to avoid asserting a change in some external world beyond perception, about which nothing can ever be said.

Is a less harmful statement (but still deluded).

But your modified statement is incorrect, because you are responding to a position nobody is taking. In context, the statement I made isn't a "position" or a statement of fact, it's a report of an experience.

If I were to make a change to clarify things for you, it would be to preface it with "People have found that..."

We might compare this with, say, lucid dreaming. If I say that I have the experience of being conscious in my dreams, it makes no sense to make me add "I think that" or "I believe that" I have the experience. That would be like me telling you are you are not conscious, you simply think that or believe that you are conscious!

...

A2: because compared with pseudoskepticism and scientism, I quite seriously consider insanity to be genuinely preferable
lol

POST: Is there any non-anecdotal evidence for jumping success?

Well, it's important to realise that no consciousnesses are exchanged and there's aren't parallel universes in the sense of spatially-extended places. You aren't really swapping places with anyone. (Aside: MWI in physics is a pretty crappy philosophical interpretation of a mathematical theory and is not very well regarded, even though it gets a lot of coverage in "popular science".)

These descriptions are "active metaphors" - ways of conceiving of dramatic changes in your experience, and subsequently triggering them. They offer a way of changing your "world-pattern" by loosening your hold on it, and intending a shift.

You might view this as triggering shifts similar to the spontaneous experiences reported in /r/Glitch_in_the_Matrix. As with those stories, often the only evidence is the memory of those involved. Why?

Inherently, there can't be any "objective" evidence - at best, only intersubjective agreement by a few participants. If the state of the whole world changes, there is no residual evidence of how it was before. The world-pattern remains inherently self-consistent. In fact, that may be the only rule.

If there's a bit of physics to support this, it's Wheeler's "Delayed Choice Experiment" - from which you would conclude that only observations are important, and the story we describe of what happens between observations is an imaginary "explanatory fiction". (See my comment here [https://old.reddit.com/r/Glitch_in_the_Matrix/comments/37ylzn/theory_scientists_able_to_make_the_present/crqvcad/] to a post about that experiment.)

Wheeler himself was of the view that the "universe" was basically dimensionless information which accumulated and become more defined with each observation. In other words: each observation defines a "fact" which constrains what might be seen in subsequent observations.

Relevance to "Dimensional Jumping"? Well, "jumping" is a way to reset the accumulated observations to a certain level. Some of the key points:

  • There is no world behind the scenes, beyond our experiences.
  • All explanatory schemes are fictional.
  • The pattern of your mind = the pattern of your world.
  • "Dimensional Jumping" is a way to shift that world-pattern.
  • The "one rule" means that after a shift all subsequent observations will be self-consistent. In other words, you will never encounter evidence of the previous world-state other than your own memories. (And you cannot guarantee those, necessarily.)

TL;DR: It's inherently an anecdotal phenomenon although it can be an apparent multi-person experience.

POST: Intended to attempt dimensional jumping and wound discovering something completely different called Mirror Tratak

At the bottom of the Darkroom Vision post there's a link to a "stranger in the mirror" article. There are loads of comments under that which are pretty interesting.

Random comment:

I never tried this with a mirror, but the effect is all to familiar. Me and my girlfriend 20 years ago would stare into each others eyes for long moments. Ah, the good old times.
On several occasions, starting at the exact same moment for the both of us, this illusion started. A rapid series of faces of young and old people would start.
While it felt uneasy and erie to me, it scared the hell out of my girlfriend, who is a believer of afterlives and reincarnation. She believed those were the faces of people we once were. To me, the strangest fact was that this effect would start and stop at the exact same moment for the both of us, and that it has never happened that she or me saw the faces while the other did not.
Also, after it happened a few times, we began to recognize the faces and their order, but this felt so bad that we looked away for a second as soon as it happened. It isn’t a pleasant feeling, so we started to avoid it.
I do not think my room was as dark as suggested above. I seem to recall this happened in the daytime too.
-- Dave, Posted September 18, 2010 at 7:47 pm, The strange-face-in-the-mirror illusion

POST: Would this be too big of a jump...

[POST]

Hi, I'm haven't "jumped" (that I was consciously aware of) before.. I've been learning meditation and reading self-help books, I am at a point where I am quite present the majority of times, I understand my existence and so finding this sub and it's contents was no surprise to me--nothing I wasn't aware of. I've been focusing on the Law of Attraction & reality shaping/creating etc, envisioning how I'd feel if I already had everything i dream of & feeling it. I have some form of IBS or Candida... Whatever, basically I currently have a messed up stomach/bowel system in which I have pretty much all the negative effects you could think of. I've spent years wrestling with medicine, diets, homeopathy, even started making my own fermented foods. I can't find anything to fix the issue, it's affected every aspect of this "life", I act as if its not there & adopt a positive mindset, but it is still always there in the background. Wondering if it'd be wise to attempt "jumping" to an experience in which I have found the correct treatment methods and skipped all the bullshit. Like, I actually found a medicine combination that cured me & I could go about life without this controlling me. Do you think this is too big a jump? Should I start small? Or should I continue practicing to manifest a reality in-which this no longer exists in my experience.. This is quite long as full of rambling about things you couldn't care less about, but I feel as if I'm close to an answer and a fix to my problem, I am yet to find the path. Cheers....

[END OF POST]

You might check whether you are directly interacting with your experience or whether you are thinking-about things, when you are working on this. Are you picturing a future situation "in your head", or are you overlaying that situation over your 3d-sensory experience right now, as if it were actually happening?

This is the difference between fantasising about something vs creating an "observation". What you want to do is create an observation which implies that the situation your desire is a fact. You might also experiment with placing your attention in your stomach/bowel area (again, not thinking this, but actually mentally sitting with that region in space) and just feel out what's actually there; sit with it. See if there's any information - "stuck thoughts" or "incomplete movements" (no pun intended!) there.

More aggressively, you could include that area in your attention and directly will a better feeling in its place. Basically, directly overwrite that area of your experience. The trick to this is to "go looking for" the desired feeling, in that location - as if it were already there, and simply needed discovered.

I thought I was doing this.. Treating it as if it was actually happening in reality. But as I said, the problem remains, lurking in the background. Maybe I'm just not doing it right :/

Try "asking" it what the problem is? Just sit quietly, rest your attention there and wait - and "let it speak".

My other thought more generally: Are you taking time out to detach and relax when doing this? Summoning things via imagination should be effortless. You can't force it, because you need it to naturally become part of your "world-pattern".

Maybe I'm just so used to this reality that it'll be a long process unlearning? If you get what I'm saying.

I do. These things are like "habits-of-the-world" really. Sometimes it's difficult to break them, because they are so intertwined with other parts of our world that they keep getting re-triggered. You have to let go and stay let-go.

That's why "technology" can be useful:

Rather than saying "I have the power to heal myself" - which can be hard to commit to if you don't really believe you are your experience - you instead "outsource" it to another part of the world. You say "this object or action has the power to heal me" and then let that play out. So don't be afraid to use other routes. And just because diet and drugs aren't "real" doesn't mean they don't and can't have an effect. They are established aspects of your dream, as it were. It can be easier to flow with them rather than de-pattern the whole of your reality. However, the intention you attach to these 'magical objects' is important.

Remember, habits are a good thing: Without habits, you'd have to manually create and maintain everything constantly. Objects would fade in and out, nothing would be stable. A bit like when you start lucid dreaming (if you've done that) and you're not very good at maintaining concentration.

Example: There is no reason why you can't survive being hit by a truck. However, "solidity" is a very strong habit of your world, and the experience of "being hit by a truck" tends to be followed by the experience of "being mangled pretty bad". On the upside though, you don't have to constantly focus on not falling through the ground due to being mildly distracted and forgetting to enforce "solidity".

When you say overlay the situation, do you mean sort of role play as if you are already what you want? Am I wrong in thinking that dimension jumping is a lot like manifestation?

Yep, I'd suggest that manifestation and jumping are both just ways of saying: "Changing this sensory experience to a sensory experience that I want". It's just that the metaphors are different. When I say overlay, I don't quite mean role play (depending on what you mean by it).

Conceive of it as literally replacing the sensory experience you are having now, by superimposing one that would mean you were in the situation you want while intending that this happen. Without the intention, it's just messing around with role play. With commitment and intention and full imagination, it's basically changing the patterning of your world. The experience you are having now is imagination, solidified. Imagery with momentum, you might say. Detaching and intending is a way of moving from this experiential imagery to that experiential imagery.

By role play I mean I act as if I have that life already. I make my decisions based off what the version of me in that life would do. This sounds a bit silly, but I even have a scrapbook of it. I collect photos of my ideal from magazines and paste them as of they were moments in my life. Then I browse these clippings from time to time. It helps "set" my mind and intentions.

Act "as if it were already true". I've never done it quite like that, but that's a great approach for getting more immersed in it - visions boards and scrapbooks. I've played with certain acting techniques to help with "embodied imagination".

POST: Dead celebrity?

"Daydreaming" is detaching and is basically the first step of this stuff. (The other part is deliberately directing it; knowingly intending a particular change.)

I think whenever we "let go", a little bit of realignment of your world takes place. It just loosens the influence of previous observations and allows things to settle a little in correspondence with how your are feeling and thinking at that time. This has a "pulling" effect on the whole "world-pattern" though, so apparently-distanct facts can drift a little, go a little fuzzy; you end up re-establishing them on your next encounter. (See recent related comment here on that. [Following post on this compedium...])

POST: Got a little question

[POST]

I'm planning to jump soon but when i read how this works. This question is related to the Schröders Cat:
The cat has 2 states: Dead and alive. Only as Long as we don't open the box/see it or saw her living
So and now when i jump but i think of something that i want to Change, i'm thinking about. So it can't actually Change because i saw that thing and know how it is and im thinking about it. Am I wrong or got i misguided?

[END OF POST]

Well, "Dimensional Jumping" is about updating the current facts of your world, by detaching enough from your experience so they can shift to a greater or lesser extent. It is the approach designed to make the change you describe. You can certainly use it to decide the state of the cat before opening the box. But more interestingly, you can potentially use it to change the state of the cat after it has been observed.

In more detail:

Everyday Life Mode

You might say that your world or "world-pattern" is the sum of all the "facts" you have observed. Every observation further narrows the set of subsequent observations which are possible. The world-pattern can adopt any form, but because it is a continuous pattern there is one rule that normally applies:

  • The only rule is that the world-pattern is always self-consistent.

In other words, the world always "makes sense". We might call this process Observation Accumulation and we might call the rule The Law of Coherence.

The proper interpretation of Schrödinger's Cat is that it has no state unless it is observed. Nothing ever "happens" unless it is seen to have happened, by observing it or by observing something which implies it. But once an observation is made, that observation adds another fact to your world-pattern, and from that point on all subsequent observations will be consistent with that new fact.

Normally we just let the world-pattern unfold and evolve spontaneously, without manipulation. Each observation follows from the last, without us directing it, and we only intend actions which are consistent with what we observe. In "Everyday Life Mode", our observations appear to us, arising naturally from the current state of the world-pattern as it evolves and unfolds.

Dimensional Jumping Mode

In contrast, "Dimensional Jumping" is the process by which we deliberately add additional observations (assert new facts) into the world-pattern, using our intention and imagination - observations which do not necessarily follow from our present experience, and can even be contrary to and overwrite existing facts. We disrupt the part of the world-pattern and shift it to a new state. When we do so, The Law of Coherence means that the world-pattern will shift as one interconnected shape, so the new state will "make sense". This inevitably means that other facts are pulled out of place as a result of our change.

  • If the world-pattern is shifted, all subsequent observations will be consistent with the new state.

Metaphorically speaking, if the cat had been observed to be dead and we "re-observe it" to be alive, then from that point onwards all observations, all subsequent experiences, will be based on the cat always having been alive. This may include the experience of retrieving a memory about the cat.

Note that immediately following a change, there might be a transitional period where the world-pattern is settling out, and inconsistencies or confusion may linger. The extent of this will depend on how detached you are, whether you are holding onto and resisting the movement of some aspects of the world.

TL;DR: It's all about creating new observations (sensory experiences) which imply that your desired situation is a fact - generating an experience which means to you that something is true.

POST: [META] I'd like to suggest that not all jumps are preferable, and that to the extent you believe in this phenomenon you should be respectful of its power and prayerful in its application.

This. It says right there in the Tesseract Working that this is akin to suicide. The fly by night way some approach the idea of Jumping betrayed their immaturity towards responsible magick

It shifts your world including your experience of "you", so it's good to be cautious. It's an effective suicide in that the "you" that you are experiencing will shift more discontinuously than is usual. Having said that, most people are unwittingly do a version of this quite frequently - but they are just oblivious to it because their world is remaining self-consistent.

The problem with the mirror method and the tesseract approach is that they present a ritual which is by default "undirected". Since most people don't understand what "intention" is (even if they imagine something, they'll often not will it to give it context) even directing it is a little haphazard.

That's why I think Neville Goddard style approaches or pattern-triggering are problem better, because you are more conscious of an "act" taking place, and you already have a direction in mind. A problem with all magickal dabbling is that people tend to not believe it, or believe that belief is necessary, and so mess around - and then get actual results whether they realise the connection or not.

Fortunately, basic mirror-staring is unlikely to cause problems; it's most likely simply to accelerate the path you are already hurtling along.

POST: About dimension jumping..

[POST]

So...a long time back, I lost a couple of friends. No, their not dead. We just had a big fight.
I was wondering...
Is there a way to jump into a dimension where I didn't ever get in a fight with them?

[END OF POST]

A1: It would be easier to jump to where you have all forgiven each other. Whereas it is possible to jump to where the fight never happened, it would require identifying and letting go of a larger, indeed much larger, set of beliefs.

Q: What do you mean by 'set of beilfes? And I would prefer to the fight never happened..but what about...jumping to one where I never met a certain person? If I didn't meet that person...the fight wouldn't have happened..

A1: This explanation might diverge from the consensus here, but I have evidence to make a strong case for it. Reality is inside out. What you see is what you project. What you project is formed from what is within. In order to change what you see out there you must change what is within. You are contemplating a big jump. To go to where you never met someone you would have to let go of everything that you're holding onto about that person. You'd let go of every emotion and every belief about that person. Furthermore, you'd likely have to let go of beliefs that you hold about your friends' opinions about that person. Unless you can identify one core belief that unravels all of the other thoughtforms... Maybe there is a core belief that led you to that meeting that would unravel it all. However, the connections of that core to all of the other related beliefs could disentangle other connections, which is where you run into unintended consequences that you don't want. It would be so much easier to find that place of forgiveness.

You make a good point. The problem with massive changes is that, because your "world-pattern" (by which I mean the set of all current facts) is a single continuous thing, tugging on one part of it inevitably leads to shifts elsewhere - shifts that may make no logical sense and are hard to anticipate.

A metaphor - Imagine you have a large expanse of material, formed into a hilly landscape with a different shaped object on top of each hill. The shape of the object is the current state of that region of the landscape (the current "fact"), and the hill represents the history of that that object.

  • If you change the shape of the object (from pain to forgiveness) that is just an additional change in the ongoing development of the region. The region will evolve a little and will affect other parts of the landscape, but it will be a harmonious shift.
  • If instead you work to change the hill (the history) then you are also tugging on the rest of the landscape - thereby changing the histories and positions of other objects discontinuously, in complex ways that cannot be predicted.

POST: [Theory] The Mirror Method Is Just Another Metaphor for the Dimension Jumping Metaphor; A More Direct Approach to Shifting Reality

[POST]

The mirror method puts the reality shifting process outside oneself. Bring the process back to the Source within yourself, and it makes the transition easier and with less chance of unintended consequences. Back in late May I decided to try the mirror method. Over a few days I jumped a few times with pretty good results, though I had very little somatic feedback to signal that I had jumped. My intentions weren't for external changes. My intentions were for internal changes.

My intention for one of the first jumps was to know that I could shift reality. I intended to be a master jumper. In the days following, I started to see a lot of synchronicity. At first it was surprising to see my thoughts reflected in reality. It was so accurate that I ruled out the possibility of confirmation bias. I chronicled some of the events at /r/Glitch_In_The_Matrix. However, the results were better with spontaneous thought than with intentional thought. I wanted to know why, so I took the red pill and went down the rabbit hole.

My search revealed many metaphors and ways of saying the exact same thing, that reality is inside out. My mission was to find the most direct approach to change what is within in order to change what is projected without. After looking at the many different layers that I found in the Library of Babbling On, I was repeatedly drawn to the Ho'oponono prison story. It reveals a very direct approach to shifting reality, cutting out all of the nonsense and mumbo jumbo that is heaped onto the process of what is very simple.

  • Take responsibility for everything that you experience.
  • Identify the experience that you want to change, and find it within yourself.
  • Let go of the experience by/thereby letting go of that within you that projected the experience outward.

"I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you." - Ho'oponopono Prayer.

The incantation effects the following:

  • Apologizing recognizes responsibility.
  • Asking for forgiveness lets it go.
  • Gratitude accepts the change.
  • Love for oneself (since the reflection is from within) sets the right tone to accept that change.

Last night, I thought of a friend's pain, and I took the aforementioned action. It took very little time, compared to the mirror method. The somatic feedback, like a cool breeze within my chest, was immediate and very strong. This morning when I woke up, I felt a hot tingling over my entire scalp. I feel the change. We'll see what the Universe shows me next. It could also be done with one's own reflection in a mirror. Be the change that you want to see, whether you jump with a mirror or without one.

Edit: typo

[END OF POST]

Agreed.

It's all "active metaphors", as it's phrased in the sidebar. They are all different ways of indirect creation and amendment in what amounts to an imagined world.

Remember that even with the mirror method, you are dealing with something that is within you; the so-called "mirror" is inside your experience. Real mirrors are actually just very stable ideas of mirrors.

So in the mirror method you are declaring that "mirrors" have the property of allowing jumps - and so they do. Equally, you could declare that visualising a desire in detail "inserts it into the universe" and so it will come to pass. And so it does.

Or perhaps there is a bad situation, and you bring forth a thought about it. Implicitly in doing so, you are recognising that this thought is the situation. By updating the "bad feeling" into a "good feeling" you are literally changing that situation. (This is the Ho'oponono approach.)

In all cases, the implicit truth is that everything in experience is basically objects made from imagination. To imagine-that you are doing something is to actually be doing that something - subject to the other things you have imagined to date.

You can have a lot of fun experimenting with this. Random example: take two glasses, one filled with water, one empty. Declare that the empty glass is you and that the other glass is the world. The water is an experience you desire. Now, pour the water from the world-glass into the you-glass knowing that you are pouring your desire from the world into your personal experience.

To "reprint" something from before:

"However you imagine that it works,
That's how it works." -- The rule of metaphor

*Q: I like how you think. Yes, you are correct that the mirror is inside my experience.
I tried the mirror method several times, and I kept a private journal. I had a few difficulties with the method:

  • very little somatic feedback -- these sessions averaged about 40 minutes long;
  • difficulty with visualizing -- though I seem to imagine my world quite well;
  • difficulty accessing emotion.
    The Ho'oponopono approach as I used it required no visualization but provided instant access to emotion and provided nearly instant somatic feedback that it had been accomplished.
    Of course, the access to emotion was attached to my repentance for my responsibility for projecting a hardship for my friend, so it was more emotional than intending to jump with a mirror to improve my ability to jump. However, I could have accomplished the same by taking responsibility for my friend's not having the power to resolve her loneliness because I had accepted that I was powerless to shift my own reality.
    Instead of saying this method is easier, let's simply offer it as another technique and list the pros and cons. For someone who has strong visualization skills and easy emotional access the mirror method might be more suitable. Someone like me with strong empathetic triggering of emotion and lesser visualization skills this method would be more suitable.*

Yeah, the word "visualization" is a bit of a problem I guess, because it implies an actual visual. Maybe the word "shadow-sensory imagery" is better. Anyway, the main point is that doesn't have to be visual, just summoning a sensory aspect of any sort is sufficient. Even just the feeling-idea of something. What it's important is that the experience you summon is viewed as actually being the thing your are trying to access and change.

So if I think of my (say) friend in trouble. That thought is that situation, and having accessed that thought I may allow it deepen and become clearer, and then adjust it accordingly.

The "full responsibility" part is really just a recognition that you are experiencing your own "private view" and that everything in your apparent world is you. Things are not your fault but they are literally aspects of you. So if you want them to change you must do so yourself, either indirectly via second cause ("causing" an email to your sister which apologies for the trouble you caused at the wedding) or directly via first cause (accessing the "sister relationship" directly in your mind and modifying it). Both are actually first cause, of course, because that's all there is.

[On the complexity and detail of the mirror method]. Is it not a bit too complicated for what you might do with two glasses and some water?

You might do it with two glasses of water, but how many everyday people are going to take it seriously and actually declare that the glasses and water literally are that situation?

The pomp and ceremony of the mirror method ritual and its opacity to logic are beneficial for getting people to anticipate that something valid is going on. Mirrors do have that "other dimension" vibe and setting things up to be a bit scary and detached from normal experience really helps commitment - the implicit declaration that this ritual corresponds to dramatic change. The other methods listed (subjective imagination, tesseract magick, re-patterning) are more direct but people do like to feel they are performing an action before they will commit to change. The main problem is that we can't actually experience willing or intending, we can only experience the result. So folk tend to want to "do" something that they can call "the act", even though that is a result too.

Of course, fault is a loaded word, and I don't recall using the word.

No, you didn't use the word "fault". It was me using it preemptively (for those who might read) because it's often the first thing people think of when it comes to the notion of being responsible for the world - rather than getting the "it's all you" interpretation.

EDIT: I forgot to add: thanks for the thoughtful post, it was a well-written read!

It all boils down to building and accepting a model that allows a space for your intentions to work. Different strokes for different folks. You are welcome. Thank you for your thoughtful feedback. I always enjoy reading your thoughts.

Yes. And the models you make are made from the same stuff as the experiences you are having. Really, a model is just another experience, another observation which you've "decided" means this. It really is all about ascribing meaning to things.

Responsibility=Response Ability

Cute!

I agree. I think that is where religions went wrong, when people started treating abstract and symbolic ideals too literally, and the ideas behind symbols went dead. The same with the mirror - it doesn't matter what kind of candle you use :-P you can invent your own ritual entirely, it is the spirit of the whole thing that counts.

Although those electronic candles are a poor choice, simply for elegence of design. They are the Comic Sans of the illumination world and the God Of Dimensional Jumping will surely look upon their use poorly! ;-)

POST: To answer a few very common newbie questions. The name "dimensional jumping" doesn't really describe it well.

Calling it "dimensional jumping" confuses a lot of people. It makes them think that they are jumping to an alternate dimension. It is just you making an alteration in your perception of how you perceive your reality.

Although I'd add: using words like "reality" is problematic also, though. What does it mean to "perceive your reality" and change that? Those terms are quite loaded. The problem with the term "dimensional jumping" isn't necessarily with the words, it's the assumptions that are brought to the words. Assumptions about what "you" are and what "the world" is, in the first place.

So although the name can be a source of misunderstanding (because it has associations with science-fiction type imagery), the process of unpacking that misunderstanding can be very useful - because it reveals that there is perhaps a much wider misunderstanding underlying that one.

You aren't going anywhere.

But then, in what sense are you really ever anywhere anyway? And so on. Ultimately, it might turn out that the distinction being made between literally changing dimensions and metaphorically changing dimensions is not a meaningful one - that they are, in their essential natures, identical

This is a really good point too. I really enjoy trying to wrap my head around it.
I was wrong. Thanks for disagreeing with me. I enjoy being in the wrong in this type of scenario.
Honestly right now i'm probably typing a really stupid reply to you. I have just come down from vyvanse, and i'm all jumbled.
I think that i'm going to delete my post. Or maybe i should keep it up, so others can see your comment. Yeah i'll just leave it up.

No, definitely don't delete the post. It's a good starting point for a discussion.

It's not that you are "in the wrong", it's that there are multiple ways to consider things, some of which may be more or less useful for one's purpose.

Our eventual aim should (perhaps) be to be able to take the "meta" position: that is, to consider different interpretations as relatively true while being held, but recognise that from a fundamental position those are just "as if" positions. (Of course, this is a conclusion we would arrive at via personal investigation; it is not something to 'believe in".)

This is where the literal vs metaphorical argument comes in. If you are having experiences "as if" something is true - that is, consistent with a particular metaphor - then it is, surely, indistinguishable from being literally true. We are then left to ponder what is the "nature of experiencing" itself.

I've a question that could be slightly off topic. Let's say you use "Dimensional Jumping" In order to "manifest" a girlfriend/boyfriend that is just perfect for you. Is that person a sentient being? or is that person merely an appearance arising within your awareness?

That's exactly on topic, I think. So, the place I'd probably start is, to pause and work out if and in what exact sense you are a "sentient being". (And also perhaps ponder why you used the word "merely" in your description.)

Wow, for some reason, I knew this is exactly what you would say. This reminds me of a dream I had. I was having this "serious" conversation with one of my dream characters, when I suddenly realized that he wasn't "real." Realizing this made me a bit fearful and even angry, and I lashed out saying "you're not even real!." He disappeared and I woke up. But, the funny thing is that, since I was dreaming, from the perspective of the waking-state "reality," I was not "real" either, yet I was accusing the dream character of being unreal. If I were to guess, when we manifest perfect mates, I'd say they're just as "real" as we are. But then other questions come up. Such as, does this person has an actual history, in the same way we have a history? Your thoughts probably differ here. But, let's say the "soul" concept is true, and that we've had many lifetimes. By manifesting a perfect mate, does that person also has a history stretching back countless of lifetimes? Interesting questions.

Ah, good example. So, that leads to the idea that you could "wake up" out of this current experience, and then you'd have to recontextualise this life. However, it's worth considering that you don't wake up out of anything, as such - there is no hierarchy, and hierarchies are just one way of thinking about the experience. Rather, your actual experience remains at the same level, it merely changes discontinuously.

As regards your "actual history" - in what way do you have such a thing? Your actual experience is, to occasionally have thoughts about an apparent history - in the ongoing now. If you recall a "past life", it could be the experience of "remembering something", it needn't have "really happened", and so on. Your state could change at any moment, into a state where you had a particular set of multiple lives, and then change again in an instant to apparently having had another particular set. You get the idea. "Souls" and "histories", too, are ways of thinking about experiences, perhaps.

However, we can short-circuit all of that, I would say. We might contemplate, if we are going with the "soul" idea: is the soul inside a world, or is the experience of an apparent world arising within the soul. (Here, I'm going to define "soul" as something like that-which-is-aware.) Without resolving that, it's very hard to talk about "other people", because we've not yet addressed in what sense we are "a person".

Could this be another way of saying, that, all "realities" are equally real, or unreal?

Or - that all moments of experience are of the same nature, and it's only the narratives we apply to them that organise them in terms of a hierarchy, and so on. We experience this moment then this moment then this moment (is one way to describe it); it's only our stories that label one moment as "real" and another as "dream".

We do evolve into higher and higher states of consciousness?

Well, I'd be inclined to say that all patterns and states are pre-existing, and we simply adopt them. In the same way as we might associatively flip through our memories, so we might flip through "moments". The story of "higher states" is similar to the story of "progress" in society. Really, things change, with notions of progress or improvement being a parallel narrative, I think.

If all moments are available always, then any moment can be brought into experience at any "time" (because "awareness" is "before" time), which means there is no necessary development - although "associative traversal" of moments might tend towards an experience of apparent continuous evolution of some sort.

as a conscious entity...

Are you a "conscious entity", though? It might seem pedantic, but it's important to be clear about the nature of this experience. If what you are is, for example, an "awareness" whose only inherent property is being-aware, and which "takes on the shape of" experiential states, resulting in experiences "as if" the dominant fact-patterns that constitute those states are true - then "being a conscious entity" is a formatting of your experience, not what you are.

What you are in that case is not an object, hence not an entity, at all. There is not actually "one" of you - because what you are is "before" division and multiplicity - and therefore there cannot be more than one "awareness" either, not fundamentally. There is just... "awareness". Which cannot evolve, really. However, it can certainly "take on the shape of" the experience of apparently evolving. But equally it could just adopt, on a whim, the state of being at any point of such an apparent evolution!

And, actually, for several years, this fear of solipsism has bothered "me."

That's a key point, actually: people often push back against anything that has a hint of solipsism about it, because they don't like the idea that there's "only me" or everything is in "my" mind. However, we are not talking about "my" mind at all, because "awareness" isn't a container or a thing.

This is where we get into problems due to language, though. The very fact of using a word suggests an object, meaning we are "already wrong" (the "awareness" that can be spoken of is not the true awareness, to paraphrase). Language and conceptual thinking are already "too late", because they are experiences which are dependent upon the formatting of experience into objects, which are then related in mental space. It is not possible to think about, or have an experience of, that which experiences are "made from". That would be like trying to build a sandcastle which is the shape of both "sand" and "the beach". The sandcastle is both sand and the beach, but it cannot capture those things in form.

All of which suggests that, say, seeking "enlightenment" in experiences is pointless - because all "enlightenment experiences" are simply more experiences. You always are your nature; it is not something you can find or think about. However, you can infer this by noting the content of your experience directly, and how the only thing than never changes is the fact of being-aware - that is, a permanent contentless truth.

This is, oddly, a very freeing concept. And this is coming from someone who is very interested in "enlightenment." It's ironic, but this has been a very enlightening conversation!

Ironic indeed! And I think "ironic" is probably a good way to describe experience in general - as good as any, anyway. There's definitely something "mischievous" about the whole thing!

"Mischievous" ---It's comforting to think the entirety of "existence" is some sort of a joke. Thank you for such an awesome conversation! :)

Our own joke at our own expense, at that! Still, at least we've got a sense of humour eh? That was a nice little exploration - cheers!

* * *

TG Comments: /r/Oneirosophy

POST: Hell Zen. (by AesirAnatman)

[POST]

http://hellzen.pen.io/
Not original content. Not to be taken as truth, of course. Use it to stimulate your own contemplation, if you find it interesting as I did.
Also, there are a couple good mind experiments in there.

[END OF POST]

A1: Here are the most interesting proposed exercises inside:
Grasping mind:
The Buddha, sitting in Jetta grove, said: "Past mind can't be grasped, present mind can't be grasped, and future mind can't be grasped." Why take his word for it? He was speaking from HIS experience. Try it for yourself and see what happens. Grasp past, present, or future mind I am waiting. Did you grasp your mind yet? Did you grasp any mind at all? Past? Present? Future? It's getting scary in here. Don't be afraid. Scary moments like these are what my Hell Zen is for. That's when it really jolts into gear.
Shiva Zen
Let's try some Shiva Zen. Ready? This will take about four minutes. Shut your eyes and, breathing in, sense your subtle energy (ki, chi, prana, or what have you) flowing up the spine. Up from the bottom. As the subtle energy reaches your head, it bursts into a golden or white radiance and goes simultaneously everywhere at once. This is Manifestation, or Creation. Your energy has become all forms, everything simultaneously, expanding like the post Big Bang universe. Breathing out, now, once you've reached the limit of your breathing in, feel the energy drop down your spine, to the bottom. Your golden-white energetic radiance, so explosive on the in-breath, is now contracting, sinking, becoming a zero point. Utter darkness. Utter stillness. Quiescence. No forms. No thoughts. Everything has now contracted into the tanden (ki-point, 2-3 fingers below navel). This is just pure and empty potential, consciousness without anything to think about. It's imageless. Yin. It's so wonderful, this Yin zero point when every phenomena has collapsed back into pure potential, isn't it? Some people want to stay here. But no. If you're going to live, you've got to breathe. So breathe in again. If you don't, your body will make you do it anyhow. Right? You're now breathing in again, the energy is going up your spine, forms are appearing, you'll see bits of dream, galaxies forming in space. It's all exploding from your head, especially just above the crown, in all directions. "Let there be light." Wonderful! A universe appears. It's fun to see the universe appear and disappear with your breathing. You'll also discover pretty quickly whether or not your personal preference is for "forms" or "formlessness." IN breath rises and expands infinitely. OUT breath sinks and contracts infinitely. In breath = everything. Out breath = nothing.
Pervasiveness of awareness
What is IT that's intensely aware of your body and its movements in space, yet mysteriously, when you look for it, is found nowhere at all? Put your hand behind you and touch the back of your skull. Feel the awareness in your hand. It is aware, isn't it? You can feel your hair. The awareness in your hand is now located a few inches in back of your brain. If it's the brain that's aware, how is this possible? You have just been introduced to the pervasive nature of awareness.
Unchangingness of awareness:
Let's try an experiment. Sit down, shut your eyes, and concentrate on trying to find your awareness in space. If it's in your head, what part of your head is it in? See if you can find the center of your awareness. Isn't it strange that your awareness seems to be as much "in" your chest, or shoulder, or feet, as it is inside your skull? Weird stuff. But even there, can you find the exact point where your awareness is? This is the interesting part: try bending forward with your eyes shut, concentrating intensely on your awareness. Now straighten, just as slowly, to your former sitting posture. Did your awareness move? Did it bend slowly forward when you did, then back? Try it from side to side. Lean back, all with your eyes shut. You're aware of all this, clearly aware, but is the awareness moving at all? If the awareness IS moving, does it move at exactly the same rate as your bodily movement? Does it lag behind? Or jump forward?

That's really good - straight to it.

Zen isn't Sutric buddhism. You understand the Void not just with your brain but your whole body, down to the cleft hooves. In Tantra, this is called the Yoga of Spontaneous Realization. It is an ongoing and unending Enlightenment you don't need to name or grasp.

And an enjoyable read.

For anyone who liked the exercises, you might like Rupert Spira's efforts, his books Presence Vol I & II are filled with one-chapter little experiments exactly like that - just questioning what your actual experience is. I put it in the reading list I think. Sample here. He gave a recent conference talk, transcript here [dead link], which is maybe worth reading to get the idea.

Not quite so much fun, though!

POST: How would you detach from reality in an easy manner?

There's a saying in zen that would have helped tremendously for me to have understood at the time that says, "All fear is an illusion. Walk straight ahead no matter what."

I've never encountered that saying before, but it gets directly to the heart of it.

Ultimately, if you want to have dramatic things happen, you have to "be okay with whatever happens" and not block the unfolding of the patterns you have made - you can't be re-intending every time an uncomfortable feeling or apparently "incorrect" sensory scenario arises. Doing so results in you "thrashing your world" due to repeatedly intending something then re-asserting the previous state once the "out of control" or "happening by itself" feeling comes up (which commonly accompanies change).

The whole thing about "surrender" and "allowing" and "non-attachment" is really about the recognition that, although we might intend a specific target experience, we do not deliberately select the sequence of moments which arise between "here" and "there", and so we must give up to the mystery as the unknown path unfolds.

Definitely a good question to ask ourselves is: Am I constantly unwittingly re-asserting my starting state?

You make a good point about emphasising that it's not surrender in the sense of giving up, it's surrender in the sense of trust. You are giving up the fight, because the right thing is happening, so there is nothing to fight.

To cover "starting state", let me reuse an example:

If you are sat in a chair, and want to stand up, you should intend being-stood-up and let experience unfold accordingly. If you approach it this way, your body will feel like it moves "by itself" and there will be a sense of effortlessness - because no muscle movement is occurring other than that required to shift position. (If you are feeling muscular effort, that is the feeling of creating effort, which means you muscles have done their movement bit, and are now doing something else.)

However, what people usually do is being this be re-asserting their current position. They begin by locating themselves being-sat-down and fully establish that before beginning. They then try to overcome being-sat-down by intending their muscles "manually" in order to get to being-stood-up - which they do by keeping being aware of being-sat-down throughout. In effect they are continually re-asserting their initial state of being-sat-down as part of their strategy for being-stood-up.

So, this is similar to people who try to make changes to the world in other ways, but do so by starting with the world as it is, or be constantly checking how they are doing by comparing where they are now vs the initial state (which simply re-asserting the initial state again, to a greater or lesser extent). This is really part of the broader problem where people try to be "over here" while making changes "over there", in space or in sequence. For example, wanting to fill the room with your 'presence', but attempting to do it while remaining firmly located in your body area, maintaining a mission control aspect. This can happen because people confuse being "detached" with being spatially located separate from the world. This is not quite what is meant. "Detached" really means "allowing".

I really dislike the langauge of surrender because for me it evokes something external whereas you're trusting your own process of othering

Yeah, I don't think there's any single "best" way to phrase it.

The language for "that thing where you stop interfering which feels a bit like things are happening to you but they are the things that you have already created" is pretty tricky, and I'm inclined to think it just depends on who's on the other side of the conversation.

For someone whose main problem is that they are constantly grasping onto their sensory experience, "surrendering to the flow" type imagery probably capture the feel of it. So long as the context is one of being assertive in other ways - in other words, the reason you surrender moment-by-moment control is because you've already asserted the outcome - then it cane useful.

However, if it gives the sense of "surrendering to God's Will" without also informing you that "God's Will" corresponds to the landscape of your accumulated previous intentions and their implications (including any ideas you had about a "God"), then it's more problematic.

Some of this is unavoidable if you want to have a sense of progression.

I don't really mean this in the sense of extinguishing your notion of the past, or your memory. I mean it in a much more straightforward way of not re-asserting the current state, by looking for it or implying it.

Firstly, I want you to remember that I still continue to respect your opinion. Nothing has changed in that regard.

Likewise! Your last response is on my list, so don't regard my delay in replying as anything other than me wanting to mull it over for a bit, because I think we ended up talking about slightly different things (releasing the current state vs releasing accumulated progress over time).

Quick thoughts:

There is nothing stopping you skipping from one "frame" to another in my description, other than refusing to release your current state, or somehow re-asserting it. By "refusing to release your current state", I simply mean not continuing to assert aspects of the current frame (sensory aspect or implied pattern or fact), so that it can shift. You can't stand up if you keep focusing on the sensory experience of being sat down.

The essence of a "patterning" approach is that there is no permanent solid structure at all, even though we have built up some habitual structure over time. If you look at the grid metaphor animation, for example, the starting and ending frames are totally disconnected. All potential frames are simultaneously available and accessible.

The brutal simplicity underlying all this is:

You are an "imagination space" - that is the context. Sensory experiences arise within it, via patterning - that is the content. There are no restrictions on content. Changing the content means intending-imagining what you want (basically: intensifying the contribution of a pattern) while not intending-imagining something contrary to it, and hopefully not something that limits the manner it can appear to manifest by.

Everything beyond that simple account, is a description of specific patterns which we already have, or which have benefits if we format ourselves with them. This is the idea of "Active Metaphors" - you intensify a metaphorical pattern, and your ongoing experience starts to align with that metaphor.

So if we wanted to have the experience of teleporting, then for sure we could just intend fully and do a "frame jump", since there is no fundamental underlying mechanism to things other than intending-imagining them happening. However, another approach is to introduce into your world a mechanism or fact, to make it possible as part of the content of your world rather than an exception or jump outside of it - e.g. the "infinite grid" or whatever.

Looping back to your points:

  1. For convenience, a "frame" is just any particular sensory arrangement. So it doesn't really make sense to say that a frame would be flexible internally - because that would be another frame. (Remembering, though, that the concept of "frames" is just a handy metaphor; experience is not really arranged that way, although it can be formatted to behave "as if" it were.)
  2. Think I've tackled that above. There is no true model of reality. However, models can be useful for coming up with ideas for "as if" experiences.
  3. I agree with what you say about "confidence". Really what one wants is to fully be the entirety of content and then shape-shift. There is no technique to that, and it is always true anyway, however we can get stuck imagining-that we are not this. Stuff like "letting go" is just one way to relax the division and settle out into being the entire space and all that's within it. It's not letting go of control as such, it's letting go of (spatial) attentional focus and, counter-intuitively, becoming fully attended as a result. It's also letting go of re-intending the current state, to allow yourself to shift. I say "also", but in effect the two turn out to be the same thing. Holding onto attentional focus is one of the last ways, having allowed body and thought to flow, that we subtly restrict our shifting of state.

Okay, I ended up typing a full response there, but perhaps it clarifies where I'm coming from and how it connects with your comment.

The everyday example is, if you're getting up from a chair to go into the next room, you don't being by feeling out with the senses to find the experience of yourself sat down, and then try to manipulate that experience into standing up. You think only the fact of being-stood-up and allow your sensory experience to apparently flow towards that position.

Pushing this further, if we were to teleport from one room to another, how would that play out? We wouldn't be aiming to forget the memory of the room we started in, but we would be aiming to completely let go of the fact of being-in-the-room, to allow it to be replaced as a relative truth by the fact of being-in-the-other-room.

So that's the sense in which I mean not checking or comparing. It's perfectly okay to spend some time contemplating how much you've progressed. But when you are actually performing a state-shift, you should not be checking on your progress by bringing up the initial state for comparison, because that re-asserts that initial state again. You keep finding yourself sat down in the chair / un-teleported again!

I probably do feel scared quite often, just in everyday life. Or maybe "nervous" is a better word. Generally though, I find unusual situations - those which reveal things to be not as they seem - to be comforting rather than scary. Although it wasn't my conscious aim in exploring these things, when I reflect on it I think that the mundane version of the world would actually be much more scary.

So, I was probably quite a fearful child I think, and to some extent that stayed with me, but a counterintuitive side-effect of it has been that I've always been good for emergency situations when things go wrong - because I was comfortable with an ongoing sense of discord anyway. Unflappableness derived from baseline flappability? :-)

For "this stuff" - mind and reality - I was interested in it from when I was in early high school, so I started playing with stuff like astral projection, did that thing of being super-scared of the onset of the experience, eventually committed to it. Over time you accept the fear as a feeling that comes up, and later when you have a sense of being-the-context as your identity you are more okay with the content that comes up, because it's within you rather than something external coming at you. So what's important is finding new moorings after unusual experiences have cut the ropes on the old ones. And being okay with not-knowing - the inherent mystery of not having pre-experience of your upcoming experiences - while also having confidence that intention is effective.

You still feel the feelings though. You're still having a "person" experience. But it's more like ripples in an ocean, rather than disturbances in a glass of water.

You know, something I was pondering lately: I think it's quite common for people to think that they want a cool "glitch" or a "manifestation" - until they get it, and then they're suddenly not so sure. There is an anxiousness that comes with it, the anxiousness of intuiting that there is potentially no inherent stability or boundary? How would you phrase it?

The implications of "high weirdness".

  • The world is not a "place". That's a pretty scary thing to realise. Anything might emerge from the "gloop"!
  • I am not a "person". That's troubling too, initially. The stable foundation I thought I was, has no solidity!

Without anything to replace those two negatives, we are left with just The Unknown without any sense of trusting, and that can be scary. So the story of being okay with being scared, is to have a replacement for those? When you get a fear response with "reality" stuff, what sort of thing is it that you find shakes you?

Stacked Weirdness & Power

I was feeling like I no longer knew what reality was, what was real and not, and then I started to get scared. Then I backed off toward normality again.

I think knowing that one can pull back is a definite advantage. It's an option we want - "the right but not the obligation". At least then we can experiment and still feel safe.

There is an issue that once you've allowed a level of weirdness to happen, it does tend to multiply and become dominant. It's not like you've tweaks a specific event, so much as adjusted a generalised fact, like having ticked the checkbox called "Enable Hyper-Associative Events" on your Life App, and the corresponding fact-pattern is now overlaid upon all experience.

In general, I'd say the more we react to a pattern, the more prominent it becomes. It doesn't really matter whether that's a positive intention or a negative reaction - anything that focuses on or even implies the existence of the pattern, intensifies it. And so we get that guy over at Glitch who had been fighting the ever-growing instances of "11:11" for decades, not realising that anything he does about it will persist it. This is the real danger I think: that if we don't twig, then we can end up battling against something we've triggered, and get swallowed by it.

I had a dream once, where I was floating in the void. I came across an infinite invisible wall. I pushed and pushed and couldn't get past it. It started to feel very claustrophobic and unbearable. Finally, I took a step back... and just walked through it. I think that dream was maybe trying to tell me something at that time! :-)

It's not as though I suddenly become more powerful myself.

In what sense do you mean, "more powerful myself"? If you are looking for the experience of feeling yourself "do" reality shifting things, then I'm not sure you are going to get that, since intention itself is effortless, and you sort of are the whole of everything. Or do you mean just having a more direct sense of the impact of your intentions?

I feel something shifting inside me. It's like, "Oh... I used to feel like that.. but now I don't. Hmm..." That's the best I can describe it.

Ah, that's really interesting, particularly what you say about the less you need to make deals, the more powerful you become inside. As a general approach, I think it's very good to, when you realise you have attributed power to some "outside" imagery, to intentionally draw that back into yourself (metaphorically, but also that's not a bad way to imagine it).

You mean not a human. You're still a subjectivity, which is also a kind of person. Just not a human or conventional person.

Yes. I think the phrasing of "not a human" sounds to a lot of people like we are claiming to be something else, like "non-human", but I like that term "a subjectivity" - it's similar to "a perspective" but without the implied point of view aspect.

Fear of the Unknown & Dreams

Like for example that dream where I felt things got so real that if I didn't wake up, I'd be dreaming it as my life instead of my old life... I guess unknown can be freaky if you expect yourself to have some needs in the near future.

That was a really good example and description. So, it's a variant of "not knowing how the world works anymore" and the fear that comes with it. This can happen both in "this" world when weirdness starts happening (even when that means getting something we want), and in the "other" worlds of dreams and projections when we have no accumulated knowledge.

I think perhaps we can prepare ourselves for this in our daly lives, and it's about building up confidence in something we rarely use. It doesn't necessarily required weirdness, but a sort of openness, in order to answer the question: how do I survive in an environment that I don't (think that I) know?

One of my little experiments used to be, to ask my body to go and find things, and then let it move by itself. The mild version of this was, to just ask to "know" where something or someone was. If I was late meeting up with friends and didn't know which bar they were in on that street, I would just ask my body to go to where they were. In both cases, you are intending an experience and then allowing it to arise - whether that's the experience of an action or the experience of a thought.

How doe this work? Well, if what you are is really a "subjectivity" who is currently having the experience of being-the-world-from-the-perspective-of-a-person, then all facts are available and all events are possible. One simply intends an experience, and allows it to unfold as overlaid upon the currently active patterning.

A couple of examples in the dream world where one draws upon knowledge implied by the situation, via intention, deliberately and not:

However, in order to progress in your dreams you will occasionally need to make a leap of faith. Make sure that you take them sparsely, and that intuition is on your side.I started walking into a direction that took me away from where I previously was. Putting my focus on something else put my body into auto-pilot. In this case I got the idea of the key being for my spaceship mid-way. (Spaceships use ignition keys, just like cars right? cough)
My body automatically walked me towards where this spaceship is, even though I did not know where it was. Somewhere deep within my thoughts I knew that I had gotten to this space station somehow. If the key indicates that I own a spaceship, then I would have arrived in this spaceship, and I would also remember where I parked it.Putting myself in "autopilot" I can walk to locations that make sense for me to know within the dream plot, even if I don't consciously know where they are.
-- From Hyu's guide on Persistent Realms

and:

We went outside and he gave me the strongest bear-hug I've ever experienced. I couldn't breathe and soon became unconscious. It was like waking from a dream; this world was a dream and I awoke to a reality more real and vivid than this world is. I saw the illusion of this existence on Earth dispelled! It faded away and I didn't regret it. Soon I found myself in the "real" world in a huge city that I already knew. My memory seemed to return--Yes--I had gone to sleep and dreamed of a little place called "Earth" and now I was awake. "That was a silly dream" I thought, and I soon forgot all about "Earth." I continued my life, just like before I fell asleep. I lived in that fantastic city for years and years--centuries it seemed. I lived there so long that I COMPLETELY forgot all about Earth. For hundreds of years I had forgotten Earth. If someone was to ask me about it, I couldn't remember, since it happened so long ago. Then one day I was walking to a store. Suddenly a confusing loss of direction hit me and I felt myself falling. Suddenly I opened my eyes only to see strange leaves, the sky and FD and the other boy looking at me! Where was I now? How did I get here? What happened? Then I remembered: Hundreds of years ago, I fell asleep and found myself here. This place was called "Earth" and was a part of a weird dream. I must have fallen asleep again. Slowly my Earthly memory returned. I asked the boys how long I had been unconscious. They said only a few minutes. They asked me what happened, and I told them I didn't want to talk about it.
-- From Robert Peterson's OBE guide

In other words: we do not need to fear the unknown. Just because we have not explicitly thought about the knowledge, recalled it, does not mean that the "right action" is not available to us. In fact, right action is always available, because we never truly act, rather than intend or imply outcomes and experiences arise in line with those intentions. We can surely confirm this for ourselves in non-challenging everyday life and develop a confidence for fun, before putting ourselves in any situation where this would be required for survival?

So, much of interest there (and your paddling and swimming imagery was nicely evocative). I'm thinking that perhaps they can be seen as pointing to a single idea perhaps, which also takes in that option to reduce our needs rather than fulfil them (or as a way of fulfilling them). It comes down to this idea of the "tactical" move and of "power".

I'm gonna riff on that a bit -

I suggest that there is only one mechanism, only one thing that ever "happens" - and that is intending. Even the apparent actions and events that occur, they are not "happening", there are (metaphorically speaking) aspects of a landscape that is static between intentions. The experience of "time passing" is itself a static pattern.

This means that there's no such thing as "tactical" this or that, and no variation in levels of power - because all that there is, is the "nuclear option". There is only one way, and that is the pressing of the big red button. Every intention is a reshaping of the landscape, and therefore in effect the complete destruction and then creation of a world. There is no path to power; the fundamental truth of the matter never changes. Having the experience of "feeling powerful" - that is just another sensory experience, and has nothing to do with power as such (except in the sense that one uses the true and only power in order to generate an experience of "feeling powerful").

Yes, I'd agree that if you can imagine something, then you can intend it, because imagining is an intending really - an intending of the experience of an image - and only a small adjustment is required to make it "real" - to intend it 3D-immersively rather than in a separate strand of thought. And this leads us to an important point I think...

What we intend is always to have experiences. Our intentions correspond to generating experiences "as if" things were true. Experiences themselves have no causal power - one moment does not cause the next moment, they just arise sequentially is all - so there can be no tactical or developmental strategy. You have intended an experience like "this", or you you have intended an experience like "that". The content of experience is itself actually irrelevant, other than personal preferences. What we are, is the context of experience - and having recognised this, we are freed from concerns about power, mechanism, and so on!

Sp, we may desire the experience of feeling ourselves "doing" our events, rather than experience them "happening to us", but it will just be another experience. Intentions are always "global", even though experiences may be apparently localised. Knowing this, we have a choice, and that is what matters. We can have... fun. If we switched our experience to one of "seeing the entire landscape" rather than just a partial view, then we'd be having an entirely static (although blissful) experience. We'd get bored pretty quick... except that there would be no time, so that makes no sense. :-)

What else is there, except for intention? There is no other method or mechanism - it's all sensory theatre. It doesn't matter whether it's small or large changes, moving your arm or moving a house, you are always intending: "intensifying the thought that something is true".

For sure, the "infinite grid" is imagination - but so is "the world as place" and anything else we can conceive of. That is the such-ness of things, and everything exists always. It's just a matter of how prominent that particular imagining or pattern is in our experience. Relative intensities of contribution. The world is ourselves as aware imagination itself, shaped into a particular form - and intention is the reshaping of ourselves.

So I'm not saying that the "infinite grid" or whatever is how things are - the opposite really. I'm saying there is no fundamental unchanging "how things are", other than ourselves-as-awareness taking on the shape of a state. Anything beyond that, is the form we have adopted. Fundamental truth (context) vs relative truth (content). And we are free to shape ourselves however we want.

However, this does in effect mean we are always using the nuclear option - the full power of God, as it were - because there is no other option. When I interrupt the flow of things and move my arm, I'm just intending the fact of arm movement, but actually I move as the whole world in order to do so, since there is no separation. The process is always: I shift state as a whole, and my subsequent sensory experiences arise from the new state.

And of course the world - as in, the complete description that constitutes its state - is static between intentions, between reshapings. If it wasn't, then that would imply there is a power outside of ourselves, even though we have no outside!

So, to emphasise: This isn't about the any particular approach we want to experience ourselves apparently doing; it's what underlies all apparent approaches - our nature. Beyond that we are completely free to do detail work or broad shifting however we please, for the simple enjoyment of it. (Knowing that all approaches are basically optional, chosen because they fit our views at the time, how comfortable we are with them. After all, there's not much point making changes for the sake of it - the purpose is to have fun or otherwise increase the quality of our experience.)

Knowledge. There are different ways to conceive how experience should be structured.

Knowledge, I would say, corresponds to an aspect of "state", as distinct from intend-ing would be the change of state. Beyond that, of course, everything's up for grabs.

How would you define "knowledge"?

In some sense you always use the most powerful capacity of intent, but that's generally below the level of conscious awareness.

Well, that's quite the thing isn't it? You don't experience yourself intending as such because intending isn't a thing, and an intention isn't a thing but an aspect (although once can use an object to represent an intention). If you aren't "looking" at the part of the world you are shifting, then you won't experience anything - other than sort of very slight felt-knowing.

You seem to ignore the relative problems that human or recent ex-human beings have. You can't answer a real life problem with theory.

Well, it does answer problems in the sense that it shows the relationship between aspects of experience - importantly, it highlights that no structures are solid, and that cause is intention and not in the content of experience - but then we progress to specific examples to illustrate this.

I'm not sure what exactly your objection is, in terms of how it would relate to life and making changes? The base notion is of course just "relative intensities of facts = state ---> sensory experience". The conclusion is that you don't need to worry about mechanisms and techniques, except in the sense that you imagine-that you are doing something causal, then you are, and that if you decide something means-that another thing is true, that is cause. But nature of that cause is "the thought that something is the case". After that, it's playing with examples, to demonstrate that causal/acasual mix.

If you teleport somewhere, the me that you'll meet there...

We actually just can't talk about that - it's meaningless to talk about "the you" that I will meet, right?

On fears, they really have to be tackled specifically. There's the general fear of change, which I think can be answered by recognising our true identity as the context of experience - but specific fears depend on their relationship to one's identify, I'd say, so there's some unpacking to do, unless you just commit to an outcome. Eventually, it's the story of developing trust?

We hit the limits of language and metaphor here, because "intending" isn't a thing or an act, since that implies a doer and a thing done. But that's never stopped me typing away before, and it won't stop me now...

Intending vs Sensory Theatre

Firstly, you should view all of your sensory experiencing as a result. No part of a sensory experience causes another part of a sensory experience. If you feel yourself moving your arm - maybe a verbal thought then a muscle tension then an arm movement - you need to recognise that all of that was a result, and none of it was the intention.

  • Intending has no sensory aspect.
  • If you experience a sensory outcome, it is arising as an implication of the intending.
  • You cannot experience yourself intending as such.

"Intending" can be viewed as you changing your state - where "state" means the current distribution of patterns and facts that constitute your world, dissolved into the background of your experience. One way to think of this, is as a landscape whose contours are the facts and patterns. Your ongoing sensory experience then arises, like a mirage, from this landscape. You cannot change the mirage itself, all change is indirect. You change your landscape-state, and subsequently all your experiences will be aligned with that state.

  • Your state is the 'cause' of all your experiences.
  • It consists of all possible facts and patterns, at relative strengths of contribution. It therefore implicitly defines the sequence of moments that are queued up into the future.
  • All change is indirect and is a change of state, a change of the relative prominence of certain facts and patterns, a redistribution of the landscape. "Intending" is what we call changing state.

"An intention", then, is what we call the pattern which we are going to emphasise in our state. It is like an unbounded non-sensory thought, a dimensionless fact. Emphasising such a fact involves a literal and direct reshaping of this 'landscape'. Basically, a reshaping of ourselves. But wait - if we only sensorily experience something when intending if the intention affects the part of the landscape we are currently "looking at", how do we loop this back to direct experience?

Mostly: faith. But for the purposes of exploration, we cheat. Although we can direct without any sensory theatre, it is easier initially to use misdirection and create an experience of doing something, but have that "doing" not interfere with what we are trying to accomplish.

Back to the Chair

When people get up from a chair, they typically use misdirection by intending muscular tension (an experience of "doing") and during that the intention of standing up occurs. But in this case the misdirection and the desired outcome are opposing one another.

Instead, let's have our experience of "doing" be independent. We sit in the chair, and we place our attention on the background space of the room, and we decide that by focusing on the background space of the room, our body is going to stand up. Rather than intending that "tensing my muscles means-that I will stand up", we are intending that "focusing on the background space of the room means-that I will stand up".

Of course, one could simply non-sensorily intend the fact that "I will stand up" (the "just-decide" approach), but actually the "assignment of meaning (or causal power)" approach gives you a good experience of a general principle. That is, that intention is always the true cause even though it cannot be sense.

Once you've played with the background space example, you can try "looking out the window means-that I will stand up". Then, "saying 'stand up' means-that I will stand up". And penultimately, "being here in this position right now means-that I will stand up". After that, you are at raw intention, and are in a position to extrapolate your new understanding of causality to your experience of the world more generally.

Was that a sort of intending that I was doing or was the energy already there being unleashed from the awakening I was going through and I was just overlaying unnecessary imaginations on top of something that was already happening anyway?

I'd say that you were imagining-that something was true with conviction, and your ongoing experience was patterned accordingly. There was no energy "out there" but it is enough that you have an idea of "energy" and imagine yourself accessing it. You committed to your own logic, and everything else followed.

In terms of the parent comment, you were "intending" a situation as true by implication, and then experiencing it. (You could have directly asserted what you wanted without any of that "sensory theatre", however it's much easier to allow something to happen if you think that it "makes sense" somehow.)

What your awakening did, was free you up from your habitual patterns, crack you open. and make things more fluid in terms of what could be asserted or implied. Although, as you notice, you can make yourself quite unstructured quite quickly if you're not careful - basically, put yourself into a manic mode!

For some reason the idea of there not being any challenge at all seemed to take the fun out of things.

Indeed.

So you can directly assert something by simply just-deciding that it is true. This amounts to assigning fresh meaning to the current experience: "my current situation means-that this is true", which is equivalent to "my existence means-that this is true". All perhaps without any sensory aspect to it at all.

But as you've noted: where's the fun in that? Because where that would end up if we pursued this fully, is with a completely disconnected experience, just like everyday casual associative thinking or just random hypnagogic imagery. Getting bored, we would once again allow that imagery to coalesce into a scene and then an environment, just like the beginning of a dream, and we'd be in a world again. Although this time we know its nature.

Understanding this, we can skip that process.

So, overall, once we have the idea that the only causal power is ourselves as intentional state-shifters, this frees us from our limited concepts. Strangely, one of the benefits of the realisation is that we no longer have to burrow down to the fundamentals, because we've recast all experience and so can be high level again - while retaining our updated perspective. Basically, be more playful, treating ourselves and the world within us as "all imagination" and all imaginings as facts at different relative levels of intensity or contribution.

POST: Sensoria vs visualization.

Another good question is, why is it so easy to imagine your dream world? Not this one, your sleeping dreams. That also is imaginary.

Yet, it's completely without effort. I was talking about this elsewhere, intention + automatic pattern completion, copy-pasted below. The point is, you shouldn't be doing much of anything with your conscious mind except "requesting" - effectively raising a part of a pattern, which then naturally "raises" the rest of it.

Excerpt:

Good point about "allowing" imagination/results. I learned visualisation from David Fontana's The Meditator's Handbook which basically amounts to:

  • Regularly try to visualise various objects and environments.
  • Eventually realise that it's not "you" that creates the images. They arise in response to you intending to have them - if you allow this to happen.

Relevant quote:

Visualization: A Key to the Inner World
. . . [When visualizing people] At this point, notice the creative power of the mind. If you have worked through each of the visualization exercises I've given, mastering one before going on to the next, you will find that, as in dreams, the mind creates the face for you without conscious effort on your part.

The world around you might be described as appearing in the same way. Dissolved within you are beliefs, expectations, knowledge, all sorts of accumulated archetypal patterns and so on, which might be said to "filter infinity" into superimposed patterns (facts-of-the-world as 'dissolved into the background'). Your intention is a "selection" from the resulting possible patterns.

You do not need to control the details because - like the smell of a flower bringing forth all the related memories and knowledge associated with it - the result is already part of the extended pattern with which the intention is associated.

In other words: Intention is a static selection mechanism; it is an additional 'fact' you add to your world. This is why "allowing" needs to be the basic approach: you are not creating an image, you are 'letting form' or 'letting through'.

The whole point with visualization is to begin bringing subconscious/unconscious capabilities into the conscious domain.

Why would you want to bring things into the conscious (actually: present moment expanded sensory) domain? That's like people who want to be directly aware of all the "steps in between". But there aren't any steps, unless you are experiencing them. If you get whatever you want, that's enough. There is no secret mechanism behind it. There is no "how it works" to anything.

The "point" of visualisation is... to summon desired sensory experiences.

EDIT: The so-called "unconscious" is perfectly present at all times as the background to conscious experience. It just isn't experienced as unfolded image-sound-texture. It's the stars in the sky vs the midday sun.

What if you could not only begin to visualize on the level of sensoria, but also share those visuals and other senses with another being in the so-called waking sensory universe? For me this is where the interest lies, and it would be of great achievement if it were possible in a consistent way. This is real magic we're talking about. I've experienced something along these lines, so I know it to be possible in some capacity. In your scenario you describe you are simply trading one illusion for another, except you would be the God of the illusion. Perhaps that comes with its own perils, and if it is so that we are already in an illusory universe that is "run" so to speak by a God, then I'm not sure that trying to master the illusion is the correct goal - I would assume that mastery over the Truth would equally provide mastery over illusion, with the added benefit of being aware of the true nature of reality - not simply being a master of shadows.

And this is a key issue, right? Say you have the ability to create a fully convincing visualisation of an army of angelic warriors, floating in the sky above you.

If everyone can see those warriors, you're God.
If only you can see those warriors, you're mad.

Right, so I'd rather aim to be God than mad.

Good choice! :-)

Thing is, it's how deep you go to make the changes I think. Mild autosuggestion and you are creating hallucinations for a localised self (dreaming you are mad: oops). Deeper, deeper and you are creating hallucinations for consciousness as a whole (dreaming the whole world is mad: fine).

So many dilemmas of free will vs determinism when you get into that though.

Don't worry about it. You always have free will relative to the "dimension" you are standing on, which corresponds to the one you can't perceive at all. For instance, you are having a 4D experience of a 3D world right now, which means that you are "standing" on and intending from 5D. (Although actually you are awareness and beyond dimensions fundamentally, but this is a convenient way to think about it.)

I questioned how this could be. How could some other being be having free will, but also be synchronistically answering my inquiries?

It happens all the time. One may think of it as over-determination. That everything is already taken into account. So, the conversation in the bus is about whatever it is and is about your situation and is about the guy next to you's situation, all happening simultaneously. Since this is a headache, it's easier to just say: look, waking life is just as dream-like and metaphorical as dreaming life. It is filled with personal meaning because it basically is yourself as projected out.

Imagine that everything that you are is folded down into a little, tiny speck in your heart area. But what this does is, it projects out in all directions a metaphorical representation of you. You are therefore literally experiencing yourself, exploring yourself as you go about your day.

If you want to include other people in this, imagine they too have the same setup, so that everyone's projections overlap "holographically" as it were, and the final result is meaningful for all. (You can skip that part because everyone is all you anyway, in effect.)

How are you picturing this 5D world to be?

So for a 4D space (which you are viewing from a 5D stance) you can see it as the Infinite Grid metaphor I posted previously. If you then visualise each small square as being a tube, then you can go further, etc. But really there's no need, because we've already chosen one organising concept ("moments") and said that the grid is infinite. See yourself as the vast conscious space in which the (determined) grid appears, is dissolved in, and imagine traversing the moments by unfolding them one by one (free will).

Remember though, there is no dimensionality "really"; it's just a way of conceptualising things and formatting experience so that you can contemplate it and formulate intentions.

There is no time or space aside from your experience of time or space. There is no spatially-extended world beyond theses walls; the world is instead a list of facts dissolved into the background, unfolded into/as the senses as you explore it with your gaze.

How does everyone have free-will if they are me?

Other people: Think of them as "Extended Persons" with many aspects, only one of which is being experienced in-the-senses by you. But really it is easier to think of them as parts of you. Or: That every moment, every perspective, every possibility will have a turn at being experienced.

As you see, it depends how you look at it: in-time, or from outside of time, etc.

There give been reports by people of everyone suddenly looking round...

It's like a choose your own adventure story book.

Good metaphor! Everyone "on Earth" is reading the same book simultaneously, but they had different starting pages and take varying routes. :-)

...and therein lies the paradox.

Right. Eventually you'd choose limits again. You don't really want all your friends and family to be puppets, do you? Most people just opt for a little bit of influence in times of need. The very occasional "I command that this will happen", and a guaranteed result.

If you do bring about a massive discontinuity, would you want to remember it? For instance, jump back to correct a mistake? I think that once you'd done the deed, you'd opt for ignorance again.

Do you mean looking around or looking rotund?

Ha, rotund, good! I mean, people who have "waking up" moments and it seems like everything goes quiet and the other people notice, it goes all Inception. The puppets pause...

Relevant because it's a flicker of loosening grip and focus, and yet being the whole environment.

No, but I've come to the conclusion that I want my body to be my puppet.

Easy:

Relax. Decide that your body is a "shell". Tell it to do something and let it move by itself - e.g. "body, go to the shops" or "body, resurrect". Simply be the experiencer. Build from there. Read the middle sequence of the Missy Vineyard book for inspiration.

POST: Some reasons I hate this realm.

[POST]

==1) In ideal circumstances, life here is too short.

  1. The body is weak and subject to damage if exposed in most environments too long.
  2. Sentient beings reproduce in this realm without the permission of or consideration of the community of sentient beings in the realm
  3. The body depends on material resources simply to prevent decay and death
  4. Most sentient beings here are unwilling to communicate and compromise at all, and those that are willing to communicate and compromise are on the whole extremely ignorant
  5. Beings here are concerned with pleasures, status, and possessions above wisdom, integrity, and virtue.
  6. Magick is almost non-existent.
  7. There are limited resources available, and essentially all of them have been claimed - making it difficult to pursue material games and arts or even survive in this realm without becoming a slave.
    My goal at present is to end up in a realm where these qualities are all 100% the opposite. What are your opinions on this realm?
    But, hell, at least I don't regularly have molten metal dropped upon me, get sliced into pieces, suffer from a ground made of hot iron, or get attacked by beings with iron claws and fiery weapons until I'm rendered unconscious from pain at which time I am revived, over and over for 1,620,000,000,000 years.
    Edit: oh, I forgot one
  8. Sentient beings eat each other in this realm==

[END OF POST]

Nice list. Wondering: If there is only one being, being the world, does most of this go away?

  1. Magick is how the world works, right now. Perhaps: What you really mean is that you are displeased with previous results (established habits in experience) and wish they hadn't become so ingrained.

If there is only one being, being the world, does most of this go away? Hmm, I'm not sure what you're asking. Would you clarify?

Well, it seems churlish to complain about the details of one's own creation (following the subjective idealist angle of this subreddit). And your desire to "end up in a realm" seems quite passive?

That depends on how you understand magick. I understand magick to be direct acts of will that break the fundamental rules of convention: the laws of nature.

I'd go with something along the lines of: the process by which desired experiences come into being.

Past intentions create patterns which may place limits on the routes by which future intentions unfold. The results of previous magickal acts may become "ordinary" with time and familiarity, may even become so entrenched as to be called "laws".

I think if we define magick more broadly than this, then the word ceases to correspond to its conventional meaning, and starts to become indistinguishable from 'will/intent' in general.

I see where you're coming from. But I'm thinking that to separate the two in this way is a false dichotomy which might obscure the flexible nature of things - the mechanism and process is identical. The "rules of the realm" aren't rules/laws so much as habits, etc.

Opening your hand and levitating are the same. But... one is less likely, apparently.

We can never know why we created a place as we created it, so that has to wait I suppose. But ...

Why do you think transforming yourself will allow you to leave this place? Or rather, that this is the way to get to another realm?

On the magick thing: You are correct of course on the distinction, but the humdrum and the strange arise by the same process, from and of the same origin. This matters because...

Who cares about "convention" and other people? If this is the realm that you created, then all that matters is what is conventional or frightening to you. The "normal" simply corresponds to habits you have developed, experiences you have fallen into repeating. The "esoteric" are just those that are less commonly experienced. There is no difference other than that.

So... the question to ask is, why have you fallen into treating some things as a big deal and not others? Is that perhaps the reason - the only reason - you find certain things more difficult?

Are you effectively just procrastinating making "the jump" by presenting it to yourself as a challenge?

If I want to create and maintain a new realm, I have to change myself.

Might we rephrase it something like - "change the form that I have taken"?

Another reason they're difficult is because a part of me thinks it's dangerous to tamper with my mind in these ways. I'm not totally comfortable with and confident in my own mental power. I think I might go insane or hurt myself. Physicalism is still a deep habit I'm fighting against, even though I intellectually reject it.

Right, and that is where the stress comes in. I was conversing with someone the other day, about how "anything might be possible" but that we actually would often choose not to be able to just, say, command people or instantly teleport, because it would break our model of the world, our sense of stability and safety.

This is why I wondered about the "procrastination explanation". And that you might want it to be a slow, gradual, effortful, challenging process where you fiddle about and transform each subtle pattern and structure.

Habits don't usually just disappear, and I'm not sure I would want them to anyway.

The second clause is key. They can and do disappear instantly. And this realm disappears every time you dream or do an OBE. You could just not come back. You could create a persistent dream world and attach to it, or create a tulpa wonderland and swap places, and you're outta here. Or a 'dimensional jump'. They're all the same thing really.

Because by investigating and experimenting you're not really accomplishing anything except making yourself more comfortable with radical change (nothing wrong with this, it's a perfectly acceptable way to progress). What you are doing is "dreaming more experiences" for yourself, only these experiences are "about" uncovering how the world work and changing it.

You can't get away from dreaming (because you and the dream are the same thing) but you can dream anything at any time. The only trick is that you have to let go of dreaming that you are adjusting this dream, and you have to stop applying effort because it implies a certain sort of dream itself.

Someone asked my a short while ago if there was a 'cheat sheet' for using the 'Infinite Grid' metaphor, and I drew this up. The key is the "allowing". Just as with visualisation or even daily perception, mastery involves coming to the stage where you let go and "let the world come to you". Effort prevents this, because it implies and creates a different experience.

Not that I think instantaneous transformation is impossible, but it's not for me right now.

That's totally fine. And the exploration-investigation aspect is pretty good fun anyway.

You got infinite power. Get used to it. ;-)

POST: The Block of Family Members

[POST]

I am having a block in my progress that pertains to family members that perhaps someone can point me a way out of.
I am finding myself making tremendous progress when I set my intentions correctly and maintain mindfulness of the situation I am in - more clearly, that I am in fact God observing the situation unfold and creating it at the same time - whilst simultaneously acting as a character in the drama. However, there is the one aspect of my life that seems to draw me back into the belief systems of being a simple human with the same limitations I have always had - and that is my family. My family, whom I see very frequently, seem to be distracting me from this truth at every turn - in part it is my temptation to speak to my father about very esoteric ideas, and our following disagreements. It is a very bizarre relationship, one that is constantly pitting me against myself in ways that I cannot fully describe. I feel forced to act a very stiff role, one where I am very limited in what I can say. It is a role of naivety, perhaps much more than I truly am. I also have some friends whom I play this naive role around. I am very tired of it and wish it to be gone. I know a healthy amount of naivety is good for business, but I do not wish to fake it any longer. Can anyone else relate to this, or have any advice with relationships with family members? Friends I'm not too worried about as I can always cut out friends I am not jiving with, and make new friends along my wavelength - but family seems to be a difficult block for me right now. Maybe I need to manifest myself a life in a place more distant from them.

[END OF POST]

Can anyone else relate to this, or have any advice with relationships with family members?

You could go directly into this. Actually, perhaps it's the perfect opportunity for you to amend some of the 'facts' of your world. Wanna be God for real? Just keep it simple. It doesn't matter how you do it, but I'm going to give you one approach.

First - Decide on a scenario that would imply that you and your father had now found a way to converse about 'the nature of the world' and all that you'd like to share and discuss. Perhaps the two of you sat at the table, talking in an animated and enthusiastic way, drawing diagrams, bantering about possibilities.

Then - Having decided, go and lie down somewhere and let yourself relax. Now, bring to mind that scenario, as it would be from your perspective, looking out from your eyes, and make it super-vivid, until you really feel like you would feel if it were happening now. Persist until it is real to you.

Really bask in the experience, in that sensation, immersed in the feeling of it being true-that-it-is-happening, right now. Then go grab a beer, watch telly.

I appreciate the approach, this could work, but it feels too much like affecting my dad's free will to be the way he is. I'd rather let him continue to be entrenched in his own ideas at this point. I have given him enough clues to the nature of reality, and will continue to. I think wanting him to see things the way I do is unnecessary, and probably limiting my progress as I try to continually skirt around these things with him.

Well, your Dad is free to experience whatever world he wants from his perspective and you can't affect that anyway. All that you can affect is the aspect of your Dad that you experience. This is not a simple shared dream - it is "highly dimensioned" and you'd be better thinking of everyone as an Extended Person. Everyone gets to experience whatever they want; including the sort of experience they have of others.

In any case, the suggestion I'm giving doesn't change him, it just means you are going to have an animated, open discussion about something, as father and son. His views can remain the same afterwards. :-)

POST: What are some of your tips for shaking off the physicalness of physicality?

...paying closer attention to the daily bodily motions that we consider automatic.

Right, but you don't need to then fix those automatic motions. That persists them. The answer is to learn to not do anything physically at all. Ask to do something, then let your body do it in its own time, spontaneously. I have to say that lots of Alexander Technique books and lessons have lost the spirit and experience of the core idea. That's why I specifically recommend the Missy Vineyard book because of its middle section; that's where the insight is. It is the realisation that you don't need to do being a body.

When you experience yourself "doing" something, you are in fact experiencing yourself tensing up and opposing spontaneous movement. And once you have the idea of body-doing in this way, it lingers. You are always subtly "holding yourself in position" - and this is what gives you a sense of being a solid body, rather than a transparent space in which sensations occasionally arise. You have basically creating a permanent, oppositional felt-experience in the body area, that you will seem to have to push through to achieve anything.

In reality, you can just decide to move and your body will do the necessary things itself. "Stop doing the wrong thing and the right thing will do itself." In fact when we make such "decisions" the whole universe moves a bit in response, in answer to the larger intention.

Over time the accumulated sensations and ill-formed ideas we've become wrapped in will naturally dissipate once you stop re-imagining them all the time, and you will feel more "transparent and open", although you can take more conscious action to help yourself if you like.

Here is a different example that uses this approach for using this to rediscover an object you've lost and can't remember where you've put it. The final step is the most important.

TL;DR: We tend to want to experience ourselves doing-the-doing. The secret core idea of the Alexander Technique is that this is impossible - we in fact only experience results - and any attempt to control the "how" of movement actually opposes it, and increases our sense of inertia.

I did this exercise a couple of nights ago, and I had the same feeling of futility... Perhaps the Missy Vineyard book will have some pointers on how to do-not-do when it comes to the body.

It can be frustrating. The book is good because it can spend the time telling the story, give you a feel for the time it takes, not something we can do in these comments. Having twigged 'something was up', she is determined to have the experience and it takes a while, until one day... her leg just "moves by itself". Remember, you've spent years maybe even decades constantly implicitly intending yourself to stay still, to stay fixed and controlled. You've created a hurdle of immobility which opposes your intention to "just allow movement". But it will happen.

Vineyard isn't necessarily correct in her explanations for things; but she describes well the process and experience for spontaneous manifestation of bodily activity.

I know this may be a tough question to answer, but in this lost object example, what does the command or deciding feel like that the body responds to?

It actually has no full sensory component. Sure, we might internally verbalise or something, but that is all just theatre. What it's like though is, the background felt-sense of the world shifts a tiny bit. It's already true, you are just waiting for it to happen now. If there's a feeling, it's of "absolute allowing". It's a state of fact and knowing, rather than an action.

Intending/deciding and free will are before sensory experience. That's why they can't really be talked about or described, even though you "know" you have them.

To Contemplate

What is the difference between your arm moving spontaneously and your heart beating and the sun moving in the sky? It's like the Zen thing about who it is that "makes the grass grow". Perhaps you "do" them all, but you ascribe authorship only to a subset of your experiences, for some reason. How do you distinguish between what you are the author of? Is this an arbitrary distinction?

Could it be that we don't "do" anything at all, we merely decide what we are and the kind of world we live in, and sensory experiences then arise spontaneously in accordance with that? Imagine that! ;-)

EDIT: Made a few tweaks, added some sentences.

POST: Invoking the Witching Hour. New exercise

[POST]

So I came up with a mental exercise today that I think that tackles the issue of both cultivating temporal lucidity and lucidity in general. Legends talk about the so called "witching hour" where witches and sorcerers would cast their spells and call upon spirits. It was traditionally around midnight but most occultists agree due to our new modern lifestyle the witching hour is around 3am. But what is so potent about the witching hour and late night time in general? Is it because it is dark outside and no one else is up. Well that is a big part of it yes, but in an oneirosophic context, it is generally the time of day when we are asleep and dreaming. In other words 3 or 4 am is the time of the day when the physical and spiritual are most closely linked because it is the time of day our selves and our meat suits associate ourselves with being asleep and in a dream.

Instead of thinking about being in a big waking dream, try to go further and assume you are actually in one of your many sleep cycle dreams right now. So the exercise I lay out is very simple, whatever time of the day it is, try to convince yourself it is around 3 or 4 o clock in the morning. If we think of ourselves at being at 1 o clock in the afternoon, its a time we associate with being awake and not dreaming, and hence not lucid. If you ever have a lucid dream, even if its the day time in the dream, there is a vague sense that its very late at night or very early in the morning even if in the dream its full blown daylight. In other words when its five o clock in the afternoon, you want to create the feeling that this is not only a dream but in actuality its very early in the morning and you are about to wake up for work/school.

And if you really want to take this to the next level pretend its no only 3 am, but since its spring right now, pretend its actually 3am and early winter or late fall. When it comes to lucidity, there is that time when a lucid dream collapses and there is nothing, but you still cant feel your body yet, the awareness of that place/state of mind is crucial IMO.

[END OF POST]

I like this.

Related-ish article here [dead link]: In olden times (because of the darkness, work hours, and lack of electricity) people would have two sleeps. They would go to bed fairly early after nightfall, then get up in the middle of the night to perhaps talk, have something to eat with the family, or spend time thinking and writing, before returning for a second stretch of sleep until morning.

Because of the sleepy-dream-time that this period of wakening occurred in, the mind would be more attuned to the symbolic, creative, dream-like realm and people's writings would reflect this.

I think it might have been me that posted it before, but since I couldn't find the comment, I figured I'd repost. I just liked the whole 'vibe' of the situation it describes. Except, how would I charge my phone?

POST: How To Grow Faster?

Define "grow"!

You're already complete; it's just a matter of having one experience rather than another. Is there a particular experience you are looking to have?

Q: You're already complete
So says you. And then a thousand people implicitly or explicitly tell him he's a piece of shit. What should he believe if he continues to solicit the opinion of others? People don't all agree with each other. If you really solicit opinions of others as something that can potentially define who you believe you are, then you're cutting yourself off at the feet, and you'll never be confident in any endeavor, including the endeavor of leisure and relaxation.

It seems obvious to me that everyone should agree with me - and indeed, will. ;-)

Good point though: Don't believe thoughts or experiences as your source of what is true - assert.

But to assert effectively one needs some stunningly glorious wisdom and understanding of one's own mind. It's not cheap. I've been at it for some time now and I am pretty serious, and still I can't rate my asserting abilities as anything above pitiful. I know I can do better, and will.

The assertion itself isn't as important as the detachment (withdrawing emotional investment from the present 3d sensory experience) and "absolute allowing" (letting any experience come through, without obstruction). It must also be an open, unbounded, spacious mindset.

These are challenging, because it feels quite vulnerable and exposing to do this. Imagine that! :-)

Very good point. Asserting is important, and finding ways to give your assertions gusto and matter of factness is important indeed. I agree with you that detachment is the more critical and perhaps more difficult step for some. I find that I can assert myself to be detached. The trick is being constantly detached without having to constantly remind yourself verbally. Would love some tips on that!

The trick is being constantly detached without having to constantly remind yourself verbally.

Yeah, once you "just decide" to become detached, it happens (because it's a change of state just like any "decision"). The trick is to never directly interfere with yourself ever again. Ever.

But... habits.

You have fallen into the trap of thinking there are "levels"... There will always be more and it will never be enough.

This is a great observation, I completely agree with it. We can think we are discovering the secrets of the universe, looking closer and closer and uncovering more detail and relationships within the world. But actually, we are not getting deeper at all. All you are doing when you investigate the world is... creating more world.

There's awareness (the background that you are). And there's experience (game content). And you are signed up for an unlimited, on-demand DLC package.

POST: Why experience exists?

Q1: The question: why does experience exist? is made of experience. So would be the answer. So how could that be satisfyingly answered?

Q2: Good point. So it seems we'll never know...

It's really that there is nothing to know - because it's not that you exist, it's that you are existence. And to exist at all is to be, and to be is to experience being, and to experience being is to have an experience.

This is a problem of language: language is "too late" for examining this sort of stuff, because to speak we have to conceptualise, and conceptualisation is thought, and thought is "shadow-sensory", and that requires division and relation of mental objects... which is unfortunate, because we are trying to talk about the thing that is "before" division and multiplicity (because it is it).

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Pub: 27 Sep 2025 04:16 UTC

Views: 5