[sammalloy]

> I find this description quite unsettling because it is so common.

More importantly, the description isn't just found in trip reports. It's found throughout history, in reports of people who have had what are called peak experiences, sometimes involving trauma. There are many stories of prisoners in the literature, for example, who come to the realization that both the jailer and the jailed are the same.

Jack Kornfield is one of many who is famous for relating the story about how the person being tortured suddenly observes that the person torturing them is the same entity. I believe there are also many reports from concentration camps coming to the same conclusion. It's difficult for us to admit this, because normal waking consciousness would have us sort things into us and them, but there is a level of perception that one can reach, where the interconnectedness of all things is seen.

Many people tend to toss these things into religion or spirituality, but there's nothing supernatural about it at all, it's a biological and ecological reality. The question, however, that doesn't go away, is why are these peak experiences trying to communicate the same or similar ultimate truths to us, truths that seem to contradict and oppose the conditioning and programming of our dominant culture, which tells us we are separate from each other and should be fearful, aggressive, and violent.

[roywiggins]

The boring possibility is that humans have to self-generate an ego- babies don't really know the difference between themselves and other people, it's one of the recognized developmental stages. So in unusual situations it's maybe not surprising that that particular ability could get disrupted, it might actually be quite fragile.

[sammalloy]

Agreed. This kind of ego dissolution starts to look like philosophical panspychism if you stare at it long enough, particularly when you read the reports of people identifying with non-human animals, plants, and yes, even rocks. At that point, there might be another mechanism at work. If life and mind are just emergent properties of organized and self-replicating matter, is it really crazy (or juvenile) to look back and reflect on everything around us and see it not as a discrete set of things, but as one continuous form? Maybe the problem isn't what we are experiencing, but how we think about it.

[gremlinsinc]

I'm an atheist (post-mormon) but I do consider it "spiritual" but I hate religion, so I don't group it in there, but I've been having some sort of "awakening" ... I'm not fully atheist though I guess, I could sign on to us all being one consciousness re-living until we experience them all, or just multiple consciousnesses that somehow floated through space and got attached to this earth...

Something something... I can buy an afterlife, just don't buy there's a God, at least not one like any worshiped on earth, they all resemble kings too closely, and are too narcissistic. Enki might be the only exception, he was a scientist - stood up for man, gave us knowledge, but basically is as most scientists humble and could give a rats ass about being worshipped, considers us just the discovery channel. Keyword: Aloof.

Of course, that's just a myth. Still, my favorite mythological character. Anyhow, tangent aside my point - is no God, no need to worship. however if we're all each other, and we are the universe, or part of it and it's all different layers of conscious "agents" as Donald Hoffman calls it, then I think maybe a religion based on that could at least encourage fairness. One tenet : All are one, treat all as you would yourself regardless of race, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, etc.

Honestly, I see that as the penultimate human utopian ideal, but I think as long as we give elitism roots, we'll never get there, there's no room for elitism in a world where all are equal.

[shrimp_emoji]

>I could sign on to us all being one consciousness re-living until we experience them all, or just multiple consciousnesses that somehow floated through space and got attached to this earth...

Why did they need to exist before they were generated here? Firefox didn't float through space before people invented computers and wrote it up in 2002.

By the anthropic principle, we happened to start here, of all possible places, in our heads, of all possible heads, and will end here. What's beautiful, I think, is being okay with that, and overcoming ego enough to realize how petty and small our differences from each other are -- you from me, us from Ancient Romans 2000 years ago, and us from the uncountable consciousnesses 2000 years from now, which will be witness to wonders we can only dream about. The local tragedy of death is a momentary drop of sorrow in an global ocean of adventure and beauty, experienced by people whose difference from ourselves and each other is a different sensory feed and a lonely, selfish conceit of the self. :p

You only need an afterlife insofar as you can't overcome the ego to empathize with those who come after you as much as you do with yourself.

[lostmsu]

> ultimate truths

OMG man, this is delusional. We are not all the same person. To be specific, you and I are not the same person by any reasonable non-trivial definition of a person. We may only be parts of some larger entity (duh) like humanity, which may or may not be considered a person (separate from us, its parts) depending on definition you choose.

[sammalloy]

See nondualism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondualism

It's considered an "ultimate truth" in those traditions. The question isn't whether or not this is delusional, it's why is this experience widely shared across human history.

[lostmsu]

Judging from the page description they make the same mistake of simply ignoring definitions and coming up with their own.

Is there anything special to this experience? Historically, all kinds of delusions were "widely shared". This is true even today. People "talked" to trees everywhere around the world.

[sammalloy]

> Is there anything special to this experience?

Yes, it is plausible, but logically impossible.

[lostmsu]

What do you mean by "impossible"? I just described exactly how people get that experience: they mess up definitions. It is a perfectly logical description.

Under influence people think peeing in public is OK is plausible, though logically it is not the best action to take. So that is not unique either.

[sammalloy]

Use the concept of paradoxes in Taoism as a metaphor for nondualism:

> The paradox is that by talking about the Tao, and by attempting to define the Tao, we ensure that the reader does not actually grasp the concept. At its heart, the Tao is nonverbal in its essence, beyond the confines of language. The Tao is an experience rather than definition.

Each tradition has their own version. For the west, it's the coincidentia oppositorum of Nicholas of Cusa. This goes beyond definitions because language can't describe it. This is not a failing, this is the essence of its impossibility.

[gherkinnn]

> Many people tend to toss these things into religion or spirituality

It is a shame that interesting and/or valuable aspects of our lives are held hostage by (what I see as) irritating cults.

[tcmb]

I would call spirituality in general the 'mapping' of these spaces, descriptions of the way to get there and navigate them, and the preservation of accounts of people who've visited them.

A religion, as I see it, is already focused on one particular version of the map. This can be fine, for example if the particular path is especially compatible with the rest of the culture that's around it. It starts being problematic once it discredits other versions and accounts. Irritating cults is what it becomes when it gets further warped by ego concerns and misinterpretations.

[UbrtrbNchDneRle]

The relationship aspect is also an important feature of psychosis in paranoid schizophrenia.

I think it’s possible we, as a social species, just have an elaborate model of other people and things in our brain which gets mixed up with the experience of self under certain conditions and the brain is coming up with unifying explanations trying to achieve homeostasis under the influence.