Bob is brilliant for several reasons. One, he expresses himself in completely unambiguous English, and is obviously a talented writer. Two, he sticks to his guns even when there is no one there to agree with him. Three, he suggested something similar to the mycelium network to explain the intrinsic connectivity between consciousnesses, and perhaps souls. Big fan of Bob.
I don’t think I’ve read “Escape into Madness”, but am going to look for it now..
Well he’s on point in my opinion. I respect people like him a lot. I’ve always been shy to put myself out in the open. I was always looking to be accepted and couldn’t stand rejection or any sort. I ended up taking a healthy dose of psilocybin mushrooms around 4 years ago that shook the belief of my experience to its core.. the “ego death” experience… which is a misrepresentation of what it really is… it’s more of a dissolution but I have to tell you it was both amazing and extremely terrifying at the same time… that’s really what started it for me
He has also written a book and released it for free on Substack:
I could only dream of having the abilities this dude possesses
They grow wild here in Scotland and are pretty easy to find, been a while though..
Well I’ll tell you something man…. To have ego death from the compound like that is not a guarantee. I have come to understand through a number of attempts that certain things have to be “in place” for it to be…. One of those being the question of “who am I” or “what is this.” That shit has been floating around in the mind space my entire life… I am certain it’s the itch looking to be scratched…. This sort of looseness to your idea of who or what you are. It happened first try because I was just ready (circling the whole idea of suicide at the time). If you check out Shawn Ryan’s podcast he speaks to a lot of vets that have been through it and many of them have had the experience without really understanding it… I didn’t either that’s why I went on the hunt to figure it out… and it’s been a fucking journey to say the least… I stopped when I found Zen Buddhism… then one day I was sweeping the kitchen floor and it hit me without the drugs and I was like “ooooooooooooohhhhh” lol
We literally are blind to it because we are so tightly bonded to the “I” that we never see anything without it first. I could really go into detail but ultimately it’s not about what you can read or hear and understand it’s about the experience… like I said before….Experience is where the learning comes from… the Buddha knew this… Jesus knew this…. Anyone and everyone who has ever leaned anything knew this…. And another part of the journey I found out was the thing that we think we are… often referred to as “the ego” doesn’t want it to be understood because once it’s figured out it can’t been unseen…. You can’t put the shit you experience back into the box if you get what I’m saying
Out of the wild is dope and I haven’t even finished the first three pages…. Thank you very much
No. That’s exactly it, once the box is open, even if you try to cram the lid back on again and forget about it, it’s too late. I discovered a new way of thinking a while back, one that starts with complete personal honesty and a thorough moral review of all the things I’ve done.
I came to the conclusion that I’m not a bad guy, because even though I’ve done bad things, I know that they were bad and I’m not going to do them again, and I learned from the experience. We can’t change the past, but we can sure as f**k can live in the present and be mindful of the future, and that’s what’s important.
The problem with Christianity is that it expects the impossible, turn the other cheek, live like a saint, emulate Jesus. No one can realistically achieve any of that, so none of it ends up being applicable to daily life.
I think the Buddhists and the Muslims have a more practical view of things, and their religions are more applicable to daily life. I sometimes wish Jesus would return, just to set the record straight, because the Christianity I was raised with never made any sense, it was as if it was the opposite of what Jesus taught..
Yea man Christianity ended up deluded as they all sort of did…. It’s like that shit where one person says something to another person originally in a long line of people and by the time your like 50 people in the original messages as been distorted for all kinds of reasons…. Thanks a lot king James you asshole lol…. But seriously Buddhism is the same way… there’s a lot of good stuff in it but it went top down just like the teachings of Jesus… that’s one of the reasons I lean toward zen a lot. The teachings are like super raw and sort of “back to the fundamentals” way of Buddhism which are the 4 noble truths and the 8 fold path. I’m going back over it again currently. It’s like watching an old movie for me… I’m seeing it after not having seen it for awhile and I’m experiencing new shit I didn’t realize I missed the first time. I try with Christianity as I grew up catholic but I always have a hard time with the rhetoric but I always have to also keep in mind about the eastern stuff that the translations don’t always equate. So it happens often that I spend a good amount of time (days to weeks to months) stewing on even just one passage or line or script or whatever. I’ve sort of realized that it’s kind of how it goes… you get the interpretation and then at some point you get the actual experience like I said with the sweeping I was talking about… there’s a time delay lo… oh and If you ever come across a thread where I leave text that sound like I’m speaking like an absolute ignorant asshole it’s because I am. I’ve seen how some of the contributors on this thing say stuff that has a lot of what sounds like fancy ideas end up being ridiculous and insulting so I stopped making it a point to come at some of that with an open mind and heart like that dude with the binary thoughts on biological machines binary food to poop ideas or whatever the fuck he’s always writing… it’s just more fun to be a pompous ass at that point… you remember…. You warned me and I took it lightly lol… still it’s an interesting way to see what kind of people are out there just being in the world…
here’s one thing I’ll say about how I try to view the world…. I do my best to utiilize the taijitu as like a lens to see shit… if you don’t know what that is it is commonly referred to as “yin yang” but the taijitu is the actual name of the symbol. For a sort of parallel you can use the trinity knot which has an actual name too although I often forget it.
So like with the whole chaos and order thing… you can’t have one without the other and each can be found in both. Same shit with the “I.” People think “well I’m the I there isn no other thing but me here. I can’t not be the I so anything that say that I dosent exist is bullshit…” … I don’t for telling people that the “I” doesn’t exists… I tell people that what and or who you think you are is a misunderstanding of what’s really going on… and the I do my best to explain what I’m saying but it’s usually met with aversion skepticism and often distrust for many reasons like the binary guy was saying “I can not be and illusion because you have to exist in order to say you don’t….” Blah blah blah …. Which I again say it’s not that you don’t exist it’s that your idea of what it is, the self, is misunderstood. The self exists but it’s not the center of the life that is. It’s the avatar of the life that exists. It’s in the holy book telling everyone that as well as in the other traditions… that whole spirit thing… that’s what I’m talking about… think about it like this… the soul and the spirit…. One is not the other but they are both in the same experience… i like to say shit like this “I’m a soul on a spiritual journey” it’s debatable and I’m not opposed to it but I’m also not willing for anyone to just straight up say shit like “ you don’t know what your talking about. Where’s the evidence show me some science on the matter.” How many would have said that to Jesus right now? Not a god damn one but how many of those same people want hard proof…. All and what is the saying “ the proof is in the pudding?” Yea Well …. I’ve been not alive, resuscitated back to “Alive” and I’ve experienced hat it’s like to be alive and not be “Vince” (that whole ego death thing) and so what I’ve experienced has pushed me to look for a boundary between “myself” and “reality” only to come up without any results… I don’t believe in god as in the one commonly referred to. I don’t believe in anything other than the experience of being consciously aware and then not and then being consciously aware while not being “Vince” because I’ve had both of those experiences. You see how I’ve been one thing and then the other thing and I’ve also been both alive and not me at the same time…. Now… think about the “yin yang” you have one part and the other part and in both you have each opposing parts and all of it together makes up the balanced whole…. Same with the knot…. But I know for sure I’m only getting started… there no way to know it for sure and know way to know it all so I simply say I know nothing and am here to have the experience to know which will never stop or end until it does which if we are all in on the god thing or whatever is your thing… is infinite…. That’s why I ask people “how far does your mind go?can you find the boundary? When you do tell me about it.” I’ve looked and looked and I’ve yet to find it. I look for a boundary that draws a line between the experience of me say from a physical stance and yet to find it as well…. The body is always touching some part of what we think is “out there” wether it’s perceived or not.
Yes, and the taijitu for me obviously represents an early deep understanding of the fundamentals of the Universe. However, there is always a third state, in my opinion, which can be one of several things:
It’s that third state which interests me the most, and in this age of extreme polarisation, where everything has been divided neatly into two, I try my best not to fall into either category. I think that I regard myself as an “Equilibrist” these days, despite my obvious aversion to chaos. There needs to be more balance, a fulcrum to support the weight of manufactured prejudice. I’m always on the look out for others like myself, and although they do exist, they appear to be extremely rare, especially nowadays, where everyone is expected to take a side and declare it loudly so that they can find others to agree with. The only time I do that is in opposition to manufactured chaos, especially death and destruction.
Maybe I’m just a hippie, who knows?
‾\_(ツ)_/‾
===> You say: Physics is so full of chewing gum that it resembles the underside of a table in a diner.
However, l’m only referring to the scientific process. It is the art of angling, fishing for facts. Anything else is just accreted data and speculation, which in totality becomes lore.
===> You say: Perhaps the “observable Universe” is quite new? I posted a silly story on here a while back about “bubbles”, now I’m no scientist and it was all a bit tongue-in-cheek, but who is to say what we can observe is everything?
However, that is mere whimsy. It is baseless, even if true. There is no reason to believe the CMB stops at a certain point and then there’s a bow shock. It is currently thought that the CMB permeates the entire universe. The CMB is only attributed to a physical Big Bang, not an explosion in scale factor. As such, the universe had a starting point and physically expanded. As such it cannot be infinite as you cannot physically expand into infinity from zero. Nor for that matter can l conceive of expansion from 1/infinity to infinity.
You use the same whimsy to dismiss the relatively low concentration of white dwarf stars. Being the endpoint of normal stellar evolution, if the universe were infinite there’d be more white dwarf stars visible. I could counterargue that even white dwarf stars decay away, and given time, infinite time, then an equilibrium could be reached between the totally-gone former-white-dwarves, and the still present white dwarves. And maybe that equilibrium varies from localised bubble to bubble.
INTERESTINGLY l’ve just discovered, white dwarves are thought to decay into non-emitting black dwarves, which are hypothesized to eventually explode in “black dwarf supernovae” due to slow quantum tunneling, turning into iron over timescales of 10^{1100} to 10^{32000} years.
BUT get this: ZERO black dwarf stars have been observed, and for me that definitively puts the nail in the coffin of an eternal universe. You’ll need to invoke a bubble to get past that, but it’s starting to look really bad. Like, someone walking with a carrier bag over their head (a junkie, which l’ve seen) or an ostrich with its head in the sand (which l’ve not seen). Either way it’s not where you should be. The only thing propping up an infinite universe is, in my opinion, popular culture and l’m not levelling that accusation lightly, you can see my working-out now.
===> You say time is older than God.
You say: Time exists before and after everything. Everything depends on it, but it doesn’t depend on anything at all. Everything is relative to time, but time is relative to nothing. It doesn’t exist as we imagine it, it just is. We have some very wacky ideas of time, in my opinion.
===> You say: As far as I understand, you follow Islam. Morality is much less subjective as dictated by that religion, but otherwise in the west, the lines in the sand seem to be redrawn on a constant basis. I am not without ethical or moral standards, but they are not swayed by “popular” morality, I tend to focus on the basics.
I’m still trying to work out the relation between morals and virtues, but as l see it, Virtues are the progenitor of Morals.
Virtues relate to logical aspects of God.
When you contemplate God as infinite actual, then Virtues become defined.
For example:
Love (transcending matter, thus transcending the body, unlimited thus not constrained by personal needs - this is a mother’s relationship to her baby, no? She would not hoard food from her baby and she would die for that baby)
Patience (timelessness etc.)
Wisdom (this actually derives from love, in that when love collides against the physical plane, the person who holds on to love, can see beyond the immediate physical: they are wise)
===> You say that the whole thing about the primacy of order and chaos is not descended from pop culture.
You say: Once again, I am completely disinterested in pop culture, I only know what I can observe myself, and what I have personally been affected by. My beliefs are not the result of some fashionable trend, they are the accumulation of over 50 years on this Earth searching for the truth.
Fantasy novels such as Dragonlance, Susan Cooper stuff, etc. etc.
Hermeticism, Thelema, Wicca
Ordo ab Chao - the motto of the 33rd degree of the AASR
I say: Were you around during major wars e.g. Napoleonic, WW1, WW2, it would surely be on your mind that evil is Order, against good, another Order. Seeing those enemy troops parading, seeing the might of the Prussian nation, hatched from a canonball. That is terrifying order. Evil. Mussolini’s black shirts, Hitler’s brown shirts, Japan’s imperial might: Terrifying, ordered.
===> You say you don’t believe this life is all there is. You say there will be an infinity to untangle past deeds, perhaps make amends?
You say: Me and my soul have much more to learn, enjoy your heaven, I’m off somewhere else.
===> You indicate that God did not create the universe to be known i.e. as a theophany.
You say: Oh the arrogance of humans, assuming that God has nothing better to do than constantly involve Himself in the affairs of some hairless apes on only one of the myriad of worlds He has created. The Quran opens with “All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of all worlds.” … But there are all those layers of man-made doctrine, perhaps not as bad as certain other religions, but they exist nonetheless.
I say: God can be interested in all of creation all at once, without tiring. That is because he is beyond time, and thus because we are all under time, we are all merely a figment of his imagination.
One of his 99 Beautiful (Hasan) Names (i.e. the names found in the Qur’an) is Ar-Razzaq, which means The Sustainer. He is the archetype of Sustenance.
Sure, there may be other worlds.
I have no problem with believing that he could create and destroy the universe a zillion times per second, thus giving the illusion of time, as we pass through each altered configuration.
One of his 99 Beautiful Names is Al Khaliq, meaning The Creator, so yes, l’m sure he can do that, not that he does create and destroy the universe a zillion times per second but he could. You seem to think it’s untenable, l don’t feel so.
MY CONCLUSION:
On balance then, my critique stands:
The middle way man… that’s how the Buddha taught it…. Balance between… I’m sure Jesus had a similar teaching
p.s. sorry about the bold font in my replies, i was merely putting a few hashmarks in front of my replies to distinguish them from yours, it was only your openings that were deliberately put in bold. The forum seems to also be turning my bold front replies into some sort of link, due to a misunderstanding about the triple hashmark?
OK. Tell me at which point you disagree..
Time is infinite.
God is infinite.
The void is infinite.
The Universe is infinite.
If you disagree with the last statement, then you are implying that undeniable infinity spawned a finite Universe. I don’t subscribe to that, because infinity is everywhere. We can try to apply all of our finite understanding to it to cushion the blow, but even between integers there is an infinite set.
Be careful your ship doesn’t reach the edge of the finite Universe now.. Copernicus would like a word..
I spent a bunch of time on that second to last post I hope It didn’t get missed
It’s markdown, a blessing and a curse at the same time..
You can use this button to split the input into markdown / non markdown. If it is mistranslating your input, you can precede things with a “\”, for example *I want to keep the stars*
Personally I just wish there was an ON / OFF button..
and so it is life lol
Did you get through the word salad, Americano?
I know you prefer beef…