Hah! Could say this to be my opinion too. I was religious, lost faith completely, then found spirituality that's unrelated to religion. That spirituality is entirely based on Self-knowledge. The reason why I found your choice of words remarkable is because it is the verbatim description given by the teacher I follow. If you're ever inclined to read, do check out 'I Am That' by Nisargadatta Maharaj. It's available online for free.

Natural steady state... Your choice of words here is remarkable. Are you into spirituality as well?

>Show me where in the universe magnetism and electricity do not exist? Or gravity?

You're right. They exist everywhere, but manifest as electric current or magnetic flux in special cases where certain conditions are met. In other words, these un-manifest phenomenon become manifest.

Similarly, un-manifest consciousness pervades all universe, but manifests in certain conditions, namely, a living biological body.

>The idea that consciousness requires a “biological body” only means that it requires electricity.

Certainly. Consciousness requires all the bells and whistles of the laws of universe. It requires electricity for the nervous systems. It requires fluid dynamics for continuous replenishment of nutrients via vascular system.

>How can you assume consciousness and matter are separate while claiming a non-duality philosophy.

Because we are discussing physical reality, and in this realm, you do need to break-down components to understand a model. But if you are talking about metaphysical reality, then yes, everything is consciousness. In fact, you'll not know anything besides your consciousness your whole life.

>I'm probably operating with different definitions than all you panpsychists.

I'm not a panpsychist.

>For me mind means 'qualia' and 'oneness' or 'unity' would imply we all share qualia.

And you'd be wrong. This is something that western philosophy and science are kind of behind on. The mind can be understood far more easily as a separate entity from consciousness.

> I've done psychedelics before and I don't think any amount of them will ever make me start seeing through other people's eyes.

That's a shame, isn't it? Empathy is how you remove differences between each other, not by simply stating a premise. It's not that psychedelics won't show you this, but you are so conditioned to not give any credence esoteric ideas.

>Sure, we're all united in that we all experience qualia, we're all living beings, whatever, but that's a pretty meaningless statement.

I find it ridiculously humorous that you just brush away the oneness as being a matter of fact, when in fact a direct experience of this oneness is what changed an astronaut forever. It isn't just a meaningless statement, it means that all the distinctions that we can draw up amongst humans, animals, or any living being for that matter, are completely subjective.

>Furthermore, I don't see why everyone thinks having an ego is a bad thing. It's not synonymous with being selfish.

Ego isn't bad, it is just unruly and often compels you to do things that are counterproductive to your life. What is recommended is that you grow out of your egoic habits/thought patterns.

>I'm a dualist and a theist and to be totally honest panpsychism seems like hippie nonsense even to me.

I'm not a panpsychist, so I don't know why you keep referring to it. What seems like hippie nonsense is the same nonsense Buddha spouted. I'm sure he was heck of a hippie. And it doesn't end there. Stoicism has a metaphysical aspect that sounds almost like the same hippie nonsense that offends you. Perhaps Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius should have taken notes from reddit. > I value independence and see no compelling reasons why I ought not.

You have no idea how encumbered you are by the weight of your ego. True independence is not being bogged down by the vagaries of your mind. And who ever told you that by giving up your ego, you are giving up your freedom of being an individual?! It is called liberation in spirituality for a reason. It is a liberating experience.

>The intense feelings of love and unity and 'ego death' that people get from psychedlics - and being an astronaut, apparently - seems to me like a form of manic delusion caused by an overwhelming flood of emotion.

There are instructions in Buddhism on how to cultivate this all encompassing love. it isn't a manic delusion I can assure you. It is a controlled practice where you can remove layers of your identity until you reach the same Oneness that psychedelics can induce. Samadhi is a very well know stage of deep meditation.

>It's like religious ecstasy and people thinking they've spoken to God. It's just, iunno, unbecoming. I mean absolutely no disrespect by my phrasing by the way, I'm just not sure how else to put it.

Unbecoming would be an excellent word to describe it. You undoing the knots of your identity until you stand face to face with what is in you.

Close. I'd consider myself a Vedantin in essence.

>Why is that so-called "epiphany" presumed to be the canonical, authoritative experience, somehow informative of some deep truth as opposed to merely a momentary illusion?

These experiences can literally change your entire persona and course of life. And you think they don't deserve some form of respect?...

>Why is it assumed to be any more "valid" than the ordinary kind of conscious experience?

This epiphany you are talking about are called direct experiences in spirituality. That means, you are observing something without the added distortions of the mind. For example, a picture of a mixed race couple can invoke different reactions based on who you show the picture to. So what do you think is the difference between a racist bigot who froths at his mouth in anger looking at the picture, and let's say someone who merely wishes the couple well in life?... The difference is that the mind of the bigot is conditioned to react with hatred and bile. This added judgement by the mind is not what you would call a direct experience.

Although the example of bigotry is an extreme one, this is the reality of all our ordinary experiences. They are colored by our learned judgements, misconceptions, and identity. This is exactly what the astronaut lost in that moment. A complete dissolution of his judgements and identities. In that moment he saw how all our differences are made up, how our existence is interconnected, and how we are all children of Earth. You'll shed tears if you ever end up having such an experience. Perhaps you should then ask yourself this very question you pose in this thread.

>Sure, the former is rarer, and it's often accompanied by a sense of awe and profundity, but none of that gives any credence to it, really.

None of your experiences are real, but whatever changes they bring about in you are very much real. You can either learn to appreciate such experiences as being glimpses of unfiltered truth, or continue to wonder why such experiences are spoken with reverence.

>I wouldn’t call it a strange twist. I think our history of religious teachings is the reason the idea has so much of a foothold in the first place.

You can't simply ascribe it to "history of religious teachings" without answering why people from Abrahamic faiths usually end up buying into these esoteric philosophies, primarily from the East, when Abrahamic faiths and Dharmic faiths are at such logger heads regarding their core tenets.

I'm from an Abhrahamic faith as well, and I practice Advaita Vedanta now. I can tell you first hand that non-duality was anything but familiar to me. In fact, I found it completely strange, requiring effort to get out of my past conditioning. Of course I later learned that non-dual philosophy isn't limited to Dharmic faiths, that even Abrahamic faiths have profound non-dual philosophies, albeit considered heretical by mainstream.

>Just because we can imagine consciousness existing outside the brain does not give the theory any credence.

I don't know what consciousness centered philosophy you are talking about, but in Advaita, consciousness doesn't exist as an abstract entity in the universe. It requires a biological body to manifest.

I'm sure your take is perhaps based on the claim that universe is conscious, so you assume that this means the entirety of the universe is a conscious entity. That's completely incorrect. If we can use same language, we could also describe the universe as being electrified or magnetized. It simply means that electricity and magnetism are properties of the universe that can manifest under right conditions. Similarly, consciousness is a property of the universe that can manifest under the right conditions (a living biological pod).

The reason this is central model in non-dual philosophies is because, to subside the ego, it is necessary for you to adopt a different identity than that of being the ego. Consciousness is a good neutral ground for you to be able to observe the mind. But unwittingly, this also turns your subjective experience into an enigma. This is what the astronaut experienced.

>and raised by a different family then maybe it would be the equivalent of a completely different person and consciousness (basically the same as if a different baby was born).

Consciousness remains the same in whatever body you observe it. What does differ is the conditioned individual, AKA the ego. And you're absolutely right, the conditioned individual is completely unreal. And your example is apt for demonstrating this. If Hitler was an orphan raised by an adoptive Jewish family, he might have turned out to be a completely different person in history. It's not as if there's an archetype of Hitler as an anti-semite existing somewhere outside of existence.

Most of us who fantasize about winning a million dollars, or going back in time to relive life, do so with the assumption that you would end up being the exact same person we are. But in reality, even a small event can completely change the course of history, so how can the individual hope to also remain the same.

>Why is that distinction so hard to understand?

There are layers/hierarchies of abstraction built into our everyday life that we take for granted. The most dangerous of these abstractions is the belief that you are somehow different from the universe.

>It's like saying cars move, and cars are part of the city, so the city is moving.

As I said, there are hierarchies of abstraction we use in day to day life. So the next time you hear someone say "the traffic is easing", know that there's no single block called "traffic" that is easing, but rather the individual cars.

>No, despite the poetic value of that claim, it's simply absurd.

It's not absurd at all. If anything, it's the most rational thing you can say.

The identity you hold of being a conscious individual is just an illusion. In reality, there's just laws of the universe that drive all the biological entities that inhabit earth. And the agent that enables any individual activity at all is consciousness. This consciousness emerges in matter in specific configuration. So, consciousness is something that happens to matter.

My question to you is, if the universe is what we call the observable field of matter around us, is it incorrect to say that consciousness is universe observing itself?... Of course, you'll have objections to the freedom I've used in equating matter with the universe, but it is the exact perspective shift that is required for spiritual liberation.

Tat tvam asi! You're it.

Everything is a subjective experience, so if the ontology of reality is inexorably changed for me, it still counts. Spiritual endeavour are about finding equanimity in your existence, and defining a purpose for yourself. Not postulating theories of science.

I love Advaita Vedanta for this. It separates the world into a transactional reality, which is the world we're all so familiar with, and a transcendental reality, that is completely subjective, indescribable. So all my spiritual realizations are placed in the bucket of transcendental reality. And scientists can happily go about making discoveries in the transactional reality without ever affecting my "beliefs".

>Regardless of my own personal beliefs I think it’s important to recognize that this question of the primacy of mind or matter is in fact a question of belief as there is no way (as of yet) to conclusively dismiss either theory.

You can have an unintended experience that can jolt you out of your current beliefs. Isn't it what this article is about? A highly decorated astronaut, who had no such predilection to spirituality, yet an indescribable experience turned him towards it.

Or take Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) who was a Harvard professor of psychology, yet went on to become a baba because of the experiences he had on psilocybin, and the resolution he found for his own inner turmoil in Hinduism?

How do you explain that with the assertion you've made.

>This “problem” stands in reproach to the staunch materialist atheists who take such pride in being so purely logical and scientific (and by implication smarter & better). The simple fact is that their outlook is based on belief too.

The word you're looking for is "dogma". And yes, the materialist atheist are as dogmatic as the religious nuts when it comes to their vehemence. I should know, I was one of them.

The boring response to this is that you won't experience this oneness directly unless you have significant changes in the working of your mind. As long as your ego or identity is strong, you will run around in circles trying to grasp at that oneness. But in reality, the only thing needed is softening of that ego that wants to prove it wrong.

No worries friend. We have nothing to debate about. Have a good day!

>I think its more that the nazi’s thought they were the good guys, genuinely rather than people doing evil for the sake of evil.

Yes, that's the 'warped perception' I was referring to. It was a worldview of a very insecure, power-drunk Hitler that became their guiding light.

>My examples are imperfect, but the premise of her argument is that nobody is capable of assenting to a judgement they think is evil. Everyone assents to doing “good” at some level.

Your example are great actually. Yes, as long as you can brainwash people into believing they're doing good, and we know how easy it is to do so, people will continue to commit evil rather enthusiastically.

>Her paper was intentionally controversial and was not meant as an excuse for the holocaust.

It may not have focused on the overall evil of the holocaust, but the general mechanism is the same. You adopt a flawed or limited worldview, and then commit evil in the name of your greater good.

Excerpt:

Hanna Arendt believed that the banality of evil is what happened when we don’t understand the full consequences of our actions. Thus, evil is a cognitive error born by humans’ limited intelligence.

The sentence seems butchered, but I agree with the overall conclusion. That evil can only exist in a warped perception of an individual.

Well, to be fair, it wasn't just pharmaceuticals, but also had health devices and other assortment. A lot of people buy health devices for their near and dear ones I suppose.

Believe it or not, pharmacy retail. And yes, holiday season was their biggest.

Yeah, try being the IT support for a retailer during holiday season when 40% of all yearly transactions take place. The entire holiday season was crunch time.

Agreed. But such a community will not be conducive for the wealthy, powerful, and demagogues. Hence the current state of affairs of the world.

>What is the most frustrating for me is watching almost everyone sinking in this quicksand trap, inteligent people also,

Intelligence is a vast category of human skill. Just because someone is good at one subject doesn't mean that they will be good at others.

The main issue with humanity is, and always will be, tribalism. This is embedded in human psyche just as much as belief in god is. Dealing with this issues requires the art of self-contemplation, being able to see your own flaws and pitfalls of reasoning and beliefs. Now that is something vast majority of humans are not ready for as that will literally efface any cocoon of an identity you may have built throughout your life.

>Life is hard, but as I see, dispair is something politics and marketing is feeding on from us. We are not living life, we are living inside an implanted message.

Rightly so. You can't mobilize an ideology if everyone is content. You have to drum up discontent, feed lies, and push propaganda down the throat of society to make them feel threatened.

In a way, the article was discussing just this. How the desires of the powerful have been shaping the world.

I'm not sure about Stoicism, but in Advaita Vedanta, which does have a striking similarity to Stoicism, the mind and the body are considered separate identities operationally, but are considered one entity. The mind affects the body, and the body affects the mind.

>I guess I am struggling to see on what basis one would do anything (except perhaps the immediately gratifying) if one had no desires about future states of the world.

It's not that you can't work towards an aim, but just detach yourself from the expectation of outcomes. It's ok to want to become rich, so that you can help your near and dear ones, and work hard towards it. But always be aware that the outcome of your effort need not be plentiful always.

>Unlike Arjuna I can’t just ask a god what I should do!

You can read the Bhagvad Gita.

Because even with your best intentions and preparations, things will often not go your way. When you're detached from wanting certain outcomes, you're free from strife. It doesn't mean that you stop doing anything at all.

This is the same advice Krishna gives to Arjuna in Bhagvad Gita.