I put online a video that is a “spiritual atheist” ritual/meditation that very reliably gives people deep experiences entirely free of superstition, by using techniques of mindfulness meditation and NLP.
It also obeys a stricter set of formal rules than almost anything of its length ever published in the English language: strict common meter, double rhymes, no first or second person singular (so it can be spoken in unison, ceremonially) and strictly facts-only with only the slightest use of metaphor.
I’ve released it into the public domain, and it is the first of seven of its kind: the Seven Secular Sermons.
Separate point: please give citations or descriptions for the techniques you used and why you expect them to work. Also please provide evidence for your claim that it reliably gives people deep experiences.
Before I put the text online, I’ve spoken this text to about 80 people—mostly in groups, but also individually. Most were friends, so universally positive feedback wasn’t surprising. But some cried, and many more had tears in their eyes. Several have used copies of the text to speak it to friends, and reported back that they got very positive feedback too. And perhaps most importantly, almost everybody I’ve met again after reading the Sermon to them has spontaneously reported that it resonated with them and they’ve been thinking about it since, been more awestruck by the sight of the night sky etc.
I should say this mostly wasn’t your familiar atheist Sagan-savvy crowd and many of the thoughts I used were actually new to them. I expect less intense responses from people who already know about stellar nucleosynthesis etc. Also the personal (especially one-on-one) delivery is surely more intense than doing it via a YouTube video.
Among the techniques I used, I believe the repeated use of “here” and “now” is the most important, because that is what makes the story feel real and personal. From mindfulness, I stole observation of the body as a technique for getting people into the present moment. For the language to be hypnotically suggestive, it needed to be an unbroken story (no sudden jumps between topics), contain no surprising assertions that break suspension of disbelief and use sensory modalities that dominate mental processing for most people (i.e. no smell or taste). And what the text does is that it reframes the listener’s identity, while getting around ego boundaries by avoiding the first and second person singular and using the first person plural exclusively.
If this reply does not satisfy you, please pose more specific questions.
I was expecting it to return to more specific sensory experience at the end. I’m not sure whether that would have been an improvement, but I think it’s something I would have liked.
It this point, any native speaker of English would probably be an improvement!
My hope to find such, or even trained voice actors, to speak the text is part of the reason I put it into the public domain. If you, or anyone, would like to do a better performance, please go ahead and outclass me.
I will find (a) trained voice actor(s) for it eventually. But since this project has barely started (I have six more Sermons to write), I’m not in a hurry about that.
I have meditated every day for a couple years, so I was curious to try meditating to this. I found it less effective than my typical meditation in silence (well, usually with white/brown noise), though I admit I haven’t tried much guided meditation which would be a more natural comparison. I didn’t have any deep experiences.
Some general reactions:
The structure of the rhyming was reminiscent of Dr. Suess, which I found to be a somewhat odd choice. Somehow I found it a little discordant with meditation. I couldn’t quite “groove on it” if you know what I mean, because either the rhyme scheme was too regular (or being forced too hard), or because the meter wasn’t quite regular enough perhaps. It’s hard to compare against an imaginary benchmark. I get the impression that if someone soothingly spoke the lyrics of Lose Yourself by Eminem I would find the rhyming and meter more amenable to meditation due to irregularities (unfair to compare it against one of the greatest works of lyrical skill, I understand).
I wasn’t so negatively disposed towards the narrator’s voice as other people. I actually kind of enjoyed it, notwithstanding the portions which were whispered or overly excited. I had my eyes closed the entire time, and flipping around through the video afterwards I could see how one could describe the voice and expression as smug together. The accent lent it sort of an air of old-world authority.
The background noises (cars, dogs, etc.) I found to be distracting at times, although at other times I kind of liked it when it wasn’t too punctuated.
I found the concepts being described to be discordant with mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness tends to make the direct sensory processes more salient, while most of what was being described were things that one can’t even visualize, like hydrogen being turned into helium in the center of stars. I’m not sure whether this comes down to a matter of taste, or whether I don’t understand the purpose of the ritual/meditation. It felt like it was, perhaps, “trying a bit too hard,” by which I mean forcing common interests of the sort of people who browse Less Wrong into domains in which it isn’t a natural fit. I think I am probably less enamored by the fact that we are all supernova dust clinging to a pale blue dot floating in the endless void than the average Less Wrong user though, perhaps (I don’t really mean this pejoratively, I mean, it’s amazing and all).
So, all in all, interesting but didn’t really do much for me vis a vis meditation. It may be highly effective in some sort of ritual / chant context, I don’t know enough to make accurate judgments on such things.
I can see where you are going with the “stricter set of formal rules” thing, but I think I disagree on the grounds that the strictness of a set of rules should be determined by how constraining they are, and some of the rules that you describe are not terribly constraining, such as requiring only the use of facts and the lack of first person singular.
OK, I guess people want a more substantive reply, so here goes. Sorry for the initial post, which must have came off as insulting, but I sincerely believed that this was a troll.
A few days ago, I described a post as “almost the epitome of what I don’t want to see on LessWrong.” This post, on the other hand, is the epitome of what I don’t want to see on LessWrong.
It makes weird and unproven claims (“very reliably gives people deep experiences,” NLP, etc.), generally takes itself way too seriously (“stricter set of formal rules than almost anything of its length ever published,” “Seven Secular Sermons”), and exists entirely to plug something that I think is generally poor quality.
I did not have a “deep experience” on viewing this video. I had much the reverse—I cringed and closed the window before watching the entire thing, because I considered it generally creepy and in poor taste.
I don’t want content like this associated with LessWrong. I think it is completely embarrassing, and I say this as someone who plans on attending Solstice events. Your username doesn’t help either, though I know that certainly one’s username does not necessarily reflect their true personality, etc. etc.
But my least favorite part of this post is the fact that, on seeing it, I knew it was going to be upvoted significantly, simply because it was on the “right side.” And that’s a really bad omen for LessWrong as a whole. There shouldn’t be sides or positions that LessWrong favors thanks to external factors—there really shouldn’t!
That is why I thought your post was a joke—I thought you were trying to make fun of the LW community’s support of certain kinds of content without any real eye for merit. I apologize for that presumption and any insult it or the above remarks may have caused, but I consider this an important issue for LessWrong as a whole—too important for me to mince my words.
I’m not surprised that after having a negative reaction before you even clicked the video, you did not have a deep experience. Maybe I should have substantiated my claims, as I now did in my reply to drethelin.
You are right that I do take this quite seriously, for two reasons that will only make sense for someone willing to take poetry seriously at all. First, this project is about raising the sanity waterline by replacing religion. All big religions have didactic poetry, so it might be an important component that any post-religion should feature! The last time atheism got something like this was Lucretius’ De rerum natura, which is 2000 years old, doesn’t rhyme and still had an impact that is hard to overstate. Second, nobody has done strict meter double rhymes for more than a few stanzas because it is really hard. (Please give counterexamples if you can. The ones people have named so far—John Donne, GK Chesterton, David Rakoff—all used laxer rules or wrote much shorter pieces) This kind of writing is essentially a prolonged search among hundreds of possible formulations of each stanza to find one that doesn’t violate any of the rules. This was a lot of work, and this is what makes it unique.
I don’t expect you to take this seriously, I’m merely explaining why I do. This is essentially an art project, and art isn’t what LW is about or should be about. But this is the bragging thread, where achievements that LW isn’t about may be celebrated, so that’s what I do.
I had a good experience, but not an astonishingly deep one.
Who knows whether it obeys a stricter set of formal rules than almost anything of its length ever published in the English language? That’s a vague claim (it’s hard to judge how strict rules are) and impossible to check.
I put online a video that is a “spiritual atheist” ritual/meditation that very reliably gives people deep experiences entirely free of superstition, by using techniques of mindfulness meditation and NLP.
It also obeys a stricter set of formal rules than almost anything of its length ever published in the English language: strict common meter, double rhymes, no first or second person singular (so it can be spoken in unison, ceremonially) and strictly facts-only with only the slightest use of metaphor.
I’ve released it into the public domain, and it is the first of seven of its kind: the Seven Secular Sermons.
Please see it, upvote it, send the link, react to it, remix it etc.
Separate point: please give citations or descriptions for the techniques you used and why you expect them to work. Also please provide evidence for your claim that it reliably gives people deep experiences.
Before I put the text online, I’ve spoken this text to about 80 people—mostly in groups, but also individually. Most were friends, so universally positive feedback wasn’t surprising. But some cried, and many more had tears in their eyes. Several have used copies of the text to speak it to friends, and reported back that they got very positive feedback too. And perhaps most importantly, almost everybody I’ve met again after reading the Sermon to them has spontaneously reported that it resonated with them and they’ve been thinking about it since, been more awestruck by the sight of the night sky etc.
I should say this mostly wasn’t your familiar atheist Sagan-savvy crowd and many of the thoughts I used were actually new to them. I expect less intense responses from people who already know about stellar nucleosynthesis etc. Also the personal (especially one-on-one) delivery is surely more intense than doing it via a YouTube video.
Among the techniques I used, I believe the repeated use of “here” and “now” is the most important, because that is what makes the story feel real and personal. From mindfulness, I stole observation of the body as a technique for getting people into the present moment. For the language to be hypnotically suggestive, it needed to be an unbroken story (no sudden jumps between topics), contain no surprising assertions that break suspension of disbelief and use sensory modalities that dominate mental processing for most people (i.e. no smell or taste). And what the text does is that it reframes the listener’s identity, while getting around ego boundaries by avoiding the first and second person singular and using the first person plural exclusively.
If this reply does not satisfy you, please pose more specific questions.
I was expecting it to return to more specific sensory experience at the end. I’m not sure whether that would have been an improvement, but I think it’s something I would have liked.
consider hiring a voice actor who does not sound so unbearably smug.
Edit- I think this is the primary reason Katydee was so offput by the video.
It this point, any native speaker of English would probably be an improvement!
My hope to find such, or even trained voice actors, to speak the text is part of the reason I put it into the public domain. If you, or anyone, would like to do a better performance, please go ahead and outclass me.
I will find (a) trained voice actor(s) for it eventually. But since this project has barely started (I have six more Sermons to write), I’m not in a hurry about that.
I have meditated every day for a couple years, so I was curious to try meditating to this. I found it less effective than my typical meditation in silence (well, usually with white/brown noise), though I admit I haven’t tried much guided meditation which would be a more natural comparison. I didn’t have any deep experiences.
Some general reactions:
The structure of the rhyming was reminiscent of Dr. Suess, which I found to be a somewhat odd choice. Somehow I found it a little discordant with meditation. I couldn’t quite “groove on it” if you know what I mean, because either the rhyme scheme was too regular (or being forced too hard), or because the meter wasn’t quite regular enough perhaps. It’s hard to compare against an imaginary benchmark. I get the impression that if someone soothingly spoke the lyrics of Lose Yourself by Eminem I would find the rhyming and meter more amenable to meditation due to irregularities (unfair to compare it against one of the greatest works of lyrical skill, I understand).
I wasn’t so negatively disposed towards the narrator’s voice as other people. I actually kind of enjoyed it, notwithstanding the portions which were whispered or overly excited. I had my eyes closed the entire time, and flipping around through the video afterwards I could see how one could describe the voice and expression as smug together. The accent lent it sort of an air of old-world authority.
The background noises (cars, dogs, etc.) I found to be distracting at times, although at other times I kind of liked it when it wasn’t too punctuated.
I found the concepts being described to be discordant with mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness tends to make the direct sensory processes more salient, while most of what was being described were things that one can’t even visualize, like hydrogen being turned into helium in the center of stars. I’m not sure whether this comes down to a matter of taste, or whether I don’t understand the purpose of the ritual/meditation. It felt like it was, perhaps, “trying a bit too hard,” by which I mean forcing common interests of the sort of people who browse Less Wrong into domains in which it isn’t a natural fit. I think I am probably less enamored by the fact that we are all supernova dust clinging to a pale blue dot floating in the endless void than the average Less Wrong user though, perhaps (I don’t really mean this pejoratively, I mean, it’s amazing and all).
So, all in all, interesting but didn’t really do much for me vis a vis meditation. It may be highly effective in some sort of ritual / chant context, I don’t know enough to make accurate judgments on such things.
I can see where you are going with the “stricter set of formal rules” thing, but I think I disagree on the grounds that the strictness of a set of rules should be determined by how constraining they are, and some of the rules that you describe are not terribly constraining, such as requiring only the use of facts and the lack of first person singular.
Is this a joke?
OK, I guess people want a more substantive reply, so here goes. Sorry for the initial post, which must have came off as insulting, but I sincerely believed that this was a troll.
A few days ago, I described a post as “almost the epitome of what I don’t want to see on LessWrong.” This post, on the other hand, is the epitome of what I don’t want to see on LessWrong.
It makes weird and unproven claims (“very reliably gives people deep experiences,” NLP, etc.), generally takes itself way too seriously (“stricter set of formal rules than almost anything of its length ever published,” “Seven Secular Sermons”), and exists entirely to plug something that I think is generally poor quality.
I did not have a “deep experience” on viewing this video. I had much the reverse—I cringed and closed the window before watching the entire thing, because I considered it generally creepy and in poor taste.
I don’t want content like this associated with LessWrong. I think it is completely embarrassing, and I say this as someone who plans on attending Solstice events. Your username doesn’t help either, though I know that certainly one’s username does not necessarily reflect their true personality, etc. etc.
But my least favorite part of this post is the fact that, on seeing it, I knew it was going to be upvoted significantly, simply because it was on the “right side.” And that’s a really bad omen for LessWrong as a whole. There shouldn’t be sides or positions that LessWrong favors thanks to external factors—there really shouldn’t!
That is why I thought your post was a joke—I thought you were trying to make fun of the LW community’s support of certain kinds of content without any real eye for merit. I apologize for that presumption and any insult it or the above remarks may have caused, but I consider this an important issue for LessWrong as a whole—too important for me to mince my words.
Thanks for not mincing your words!
I’m not surprised that after having a negative reaction before you even clicked the video, you did not have a deep experience. Maybe I should have substantiated my claims, as I now did in my reply to drethelin.
You are right that I do take this quite seriously, for two reasons that will only make sense for someone willing to take poetry seriously at all. First, this project is about raising the sanity waterline by replacing religion. All big religions have didactic poetry, so it might be an important component that any post-religion should feature! The last time atheism got something like this was Lucretius’ De rerum natura, which is 2000 years old, doesn’t rhyme and still had an impact that is hard to overstate. Second, nobody has done strict meter double rhymes for more than a few stanzas because it is really hard. (Please give counterexamples if you can. The ones people have named so far—John Donne, GK Chesterton, David Rakoff—all used laxer rules or wrote much shorter pieces) This kind of writing is essentially a prolonged search among hundreds of possible formulations of each stanza to find one that doesn’t violate any of the rules. This was a lot of work, and this is what makes it unique.
I don’t expect you to take this seriously, I’m merely explaining why I do. This is essentially an art project, and art isn’t what LW is about or should be about. But this is the bragging thread, where achievements that LW isn’t about may be celebrated, so that’s what I do.
Fair points, I’ve upvoted this comment.
Upvoted because this is the bragging thread.
I had a good experience, but not an astonishingly deep one.
Who knows whether it obeys a stricter set of formal rules than almost anything of its length ever published in the English language? That’s a vague claim (it’s hard to judge how strict rules are) and impossible to check.
Very relaxing and cheering.