(Note: It's been a long time since I've written to this journal. I've been demotivated to write in this political climate, but I feel the need once again. Sorry for my long absence.)
>My Two Gods
Six months ago, I had two experiences, about two weeks apart. Both of these were incredibly profound and the latter one was fairly scary as well. Both were in a darkened room, with a bluish-green light source. (I vary the color of the light source for different kinds of meditations now.)
In each, I basically met God personally. No wait, hear me out.
On the first night, sitting in meditation, a very large "being" for lack of a better word, approached me quickly from my left side. It was very large, perceivable through the walls and floor and ceiling of my room, like a glowing mountain-sized amoeba. I'd met something like this BEFORE.
This time, the being grabbed me. What I mean by this is that it came at me and engulfed my body about halfway, so that I was partially embedded in it, stuck fast. I could not move. The left half of my body, the half that was embedded in it, painlessly dissolved into it so that I felt like I was partially-digested, almost. I was integrated into it somehow. I felt like I was a tiny fly half-stuck in amber.
Then the communication began. None of it verbal, all fast-moving pure concepts thrown into my mind, pure understanding without language. I could see what I truly was. This being was showing it to me. After all, I'd been asking for my entire life.
This experience reduced me to a mere thought in that being's mind, nothing of what I thought that I was, no real body, all false, all a dream. I was just a thought, a piece of information in this being's vast mind.
I could see myself, but what I saw was not a body, but a symbol. It reminded me of an Arabic numeral, the number seven (7) only was more ornate, with "hitches" or slight curves to the top, horizontal part. I was this symbol, and nothing more, not to this being.
Along with my symbol, I suddenly saw many other such symbols and was made to understand that these were all the other people in the world. Also merely the thoughts of this being.
So I was not alone, this was not solipsism. This was worse. Even I didn't exist. Nobody exists. Not as anything more than this being's thoughts.
And yet I was not dismayed. There was a beauty to this. At least I could understand it.
Towards the end of this experience I asked the being, out loud "How do I know that you're real and not my imagination." As I finished the question, in less than a second, my air conditioner started to whine loudly. On cue.
Now, my air conditioner whines occasionally. However, not very often. So it was a bit scary and rather convincing that I got an auditory reply to my question.
And then it was over, except I still had that "embedded in another being" sense afterwards, which gradually faded over the next hour or so.
Incredibly profound, and it left me with a very positive feeling. A sort of lasting euphoria. That persisted until two weeks later, when, in another meditation, the being returned, but now it was angry.
Again I was embedded, as before. This time however the being showed me clearly that it wanted me to stop meditating on salvia, forever. I was in no position to disagree at the time. It was like I was in the jaws of a tiger and it was telling me what to do to avoid being eaten. For that was the implication, that the being would simply stop me, by causing me to die. At that very moment. So I agreed.
It released me.
Apparently I lied to it, because I decided not to stop. I haven't had any more experiences with the being since. Truly, it's been hard to trip at all since. It's like my mind refuses to succumb to the beginning of the experience so I remain lucid. My rational mind dominates me too much to trip.
This added to my lack of desire to write about my experiences. I seem to be getting over it, though.
I think these experiences, had they happened to anybody else that did not prioritize remaining linked to reality and not succumbing to beliefs, those people would have been transformed by them, believed them, and become a believer in God, at least a Deity of sorts. I did not.
This brings me to another important thing: I am not a true believer, at least not yet, even with these two incredibly realistic and profound experiences. Here's why:
>POSSIBLE FALSIFICATION OF ALL SUCH "MONAD" OR "HOLISTIC IDEALISM" TYPE VISIONS:
I've been thinking lately about how we perceive reality, the scientific view, that is. Science tells us that each and every one of us constructs a "dream" that is literally our only waking reality, based on the data we receive from our senses. So when I see another person, what I'm really doing is interpreting sensory data in signal form from my optic nerves and **translating** that information into a dream-form of the person I'm looking at. We only think we directly see things, directly sense things, but science tells us that this is not the case. We construct a dream of reality and confuse it with actual reality, which none of us has ever truly directly seen. Same with all the other senses. Our mind has no "direct contact" with reality, other than a hyper-realistic dream we all construct representing it.
So, this is science. Not mysticism. This is how we see reality: We actually don't. None of us do.
Taking this scientific fact into consideration, I think it is possible, under deeply altered mental states produced by various means including drugs and meditation, to become able to perceive that your reality is "nothing but a dream" and still be wrong. You may be merely perceiving the fact that, yes, reality is a dream to all of us, because that's how the brain processes sensory information, by constructing a dream to fit it. You may be perceiving the actual dream of reality in all of us, not some overarching dream reality in the mind of The One, or a Monad of some kind. We ourselves may be the Monad. Our own minds may be the culprits here. We may be merely perceiving our own World Dream, not an actual dream-based reality but a necessary evolved function of the normal mind required to integrate sensory information.
This would also neatly explain why so many people who use psychedelics and entheogens report that the experiences seemed "realer than real life." When you consider the fact that your "real life" is a constructed dream based on sensory information and you're looking under the surface of that constructed dream from an altered state that is more basic, closer to your inner self than your constructed dream is, of course it looks "less real." It is! We made it! At some level we realize it isn't real.
Now, do you think that I believe that?
Of course not, I don't believe anything, remember?
I just wanted to make it plain that I do truly retain my rational side throughout these experiences.
I also have had so many experiences in visions and meditations with salvia divinorum that have seemingly affected reality, from awakening my wife or dog on cue, to things like the air conditioner whining or other sounds perfectly on cue like that, that I must still remain neutral and uncommitted. Once I simply took my salvia, the "rush" hit me, and all the lights in the house went out for about 4 seconds. An actual power outage, rare here.
Another thing: Lately I'm also directly sensing, while meditating, that mathematics is involved in my own mental processes.
I'm beginning to directly sense the mathematical nature of thought itself, so I think it's possible, as stated in previous entries here, that mathematics, not consciousness per se, is the "ground of all being." As in, we're all literally "made of mathematics." Everything is math.
To read more on this idea, again I present this link to Max Tegmark's BOOK.
However, what does this mean, if true? It means that all our most emotional experiences, even love, and all our most abstract thoughts and imaginings, are still "merely" a flowing, incredibly complex mathematical process.
(Such incredible complexity is to be expected when considering the vast spans of time involved in our development.)
It means that all consciousness is a mathematical process. All consciousness is mathematics. Therefore, mathematics can be consciousness, or even conscious. Therefore certain aspects of our mathematical reality can seem to be consciousness-based when they're really mathematics-based.
As I've said before, what can you think of that would still remain if you eliminated space, time, matter, and energy?
The only thing I can think of that quite possibly cannot *not* exist, is mathematics.
Food for thought, no?
Addendum:
>An Afterlife Speculation Based In The Multiverse
Science, specifically physics, tells us that the past is real. We can never journey to it, but the past, at least according to our best mathematics, is still "there" somehow. If we could go back in time, there would be time to go back to.
Think of the implications.
All our memories of the past... we're still "back there" making them. We're all still alive in the past, experiencing, perhaps over and over, those remembered experiences. If I could travel back to my past, I could see myself making the very memories that I carry of that time in my head.
When I die, science tells us that I will still be alive in my past.
We are all still alive in our past timelines after we die. Quite literally, forever.
Now, let's add in the concept of a multiverse, since this seems to cry out for one. Let me explain:
If I die, but I'm still alive in the past, it is *possible* that I, or rather my consciousness, will merely, as I expire, return to a previous time that I can remember in my past.
But then there would be two of my consciousnesses there. Or would there be?
What would likely happen would be a split, a divergence of universes, creating a new one in which I explore a different path. A different future. A different death. And the cycle continues. We'd all explore an infinity of paths forever. Literally forever.
Ahh, sounds kinda nice. Certainly better than many religions.
Do I believe it?
You know the answer by now.
I wonder if I'll ever truly believe anything, ever again. Best not to, I think. Too dangerous.
