At the extremes, people have one of four life goals: To achieve a state of nothingness (hinayana enlightenment), to achieve a state of oneness (mahayana enlightenment), to achieve a utopia of meaning (galts gulch), or to achieve a utopia of togetherness (hivemind).
In practice, most people exist somewhere in the middle, depending on how much they want to change their conception of the world (enlightenment) vs. changing the world itself (heaven), and depending on how much they view their identity as seperate from other things (individualism) or the same as other things (collectivism).
I think I’m already past stream entry, and this is why the above diagram scares the shit out of me:
It seems like hinayana enlightenment may be an attractor state even if I have a significant amount of values that would want to create a utopia of meaning.
If I was confident that I could go the mahayana path, there’s the “Bodhisattva option”—stepping back from your enlightenment to bring others in, thus creating heaven.
But it’s not clear to me that I won’t end up at nothingness instead of oneness, and I’m not aware of a path to step back from nothingness and create a utopia of meaning, in fact they feel almost diametrically opposed.
I’m interested in a medium-fleshed-out version of this comment that holds my hand more than the current one does. (Not sure whether I’d want the full fledged post version yet)
(In general, happy to see more people using shortform feeds)
((also, you probably didn’t mean to call it a short-term feed))
Interior and exterior is one component of heaven and enlightenment. It’s possible to break up that one axis into several axes but its’ usually correlated enough to not have to do that for the vast majority of people and organizations.
At the extremes, people have one of four life goals: To achieve a state of nothingness (hinayana enlightenment), to achieve a state of oneness (mahayana enlightenment), to achieve a utopia of meaning (galts gulch), or to achieve a utopia of togetherness (hivemind).
These are not distinct things—they’re alternative ways to frame one thing. All roads lead to Rome, so to speak. The way I see it, full enlightenment entails attaining all four at once. Just don’t get distracted by the taste of lotus on the way.
This is a common belief and it may in fact be true, but it’s at odds with the ontology as presented. There are tradeoffs between which one you choose in this ontology.
Ontologically distinct enlightenments suggest path dependence. That seems correct on reflection; updating and reframing.
Enlightenment is caused by a certain observation about mind/reality that is salient, obvious in retrospect and reliably triggers major updates. The referent of this observation is universal and invariant but its interpretation and the resulting updates may not be; the mind can only work with what it has.
In other words, enlightenment has one referent in the territory but the resulting maps are path dependent. This seems consistent with what I know about spirituality-related failure modes and doctrinal disagreements. Also, the sixties.
So yeah. Caution is warranted. Just keep in mind that your skull is an information bottleneck, not an ontological boundary.
ON HEAVEN AND ENLIGHTENMENT
https://scontent-sjc3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/56656099_10220056198495676_9079758874621247488_n.jpg?_nc_cat=107&_nc_oc=AQm42c-keDXguTwDHsVQz7hGt5AK-DkYK_eG13XXmHcybXql4JvgoYZC4r0Uy4LvMAU&_nc_ht=scontent-sjc3-1.xx&oh=bb4a1f996cfde07165c9e22fdfe7c06d&oe=5D901596
At the extremes, people have one of four life goals: To achieve a state of nothingness (hinayana enlightenment), to achieve a state of oneness (mahayana enlightenment), to achieve a utopia of meaning (galts gulch), or to achieve a utopia of togetherness (hivemind).
In practice, most people exist somewhere in the middle, depending on how much they want to change their conception of the world (enlightenment) vs. changing the world itself (heaven), and depending on how much they view their identity as seperate from other things (individualism) or the same as other things (collectivism).
I think I’m already past stream entry, and this is why the above diagram scares the shit out of me:
It seems like hinayana enlightenment may be an attractor state even if I have a significant amount of values that would want to create a utopia of meaning.
If I was confident that I could go the mahayana path, there’s the “Bodhisattva option”—stepping back from your enlightenment to bring others in, thus creating heaven.
But it’s not clear to me that I won’t end up at nothingness instead of oneness, and I’m not aware of a path to step back from nothingness and create a utopia of meaning, in fact they feel almost diametrically opposed.
Hence ‘Stream entry considered harmful.’
I’m interested in a medium-fleshed-out version of this comment that holds my hand more than the current one does. (Not sure whether I’d want the full fledged post version yet)
(In general, happy to see more people using shortform feeds)
((also, you probably didn’t mean to call it a short-term feed))
Will do.
You should add integral’s interior and exterior to the diagram.
Interior and exterior is one component of heaven and enlightenment. It’s possible to break up that one axis into several axes but its’ usually correlated enough to not have to do that for the vast majority of people and organizations.
These are not distinct things—they’re alternative ways to frame one thing. All roads lead to Rome, so to speak. The way I see it, full enlightenment entails attaining all four at once. Just don’t get distracted by the taste of lotus on the way.
This is a common belief and it may in fact be true, but it’s at odds with the ontology as presented. There are tradeoffs between which one you choose in this ontology.
Ontologically distinct enlightenments suggest path dependence. That seems correct on reflection; updating and reframing.
Enlightenment is caused by a certain observation about mind/reality that is salient, obvious in retrospect and reliably triggers major updates. The referent of this observation is universal and invariant but its interpretation and the resulting updates may not be; the mind can only work with what it has.
In other words, enlightenment has one referent in the territory but the resulting maps are path dependent. This seems consistent with what I know about spirituality-related failure modes and doctrinal disagreements. Also, the sixties.
So yeah. Caution is warranted. Just keep in mind that your skull is an information bottleneck, not an ontological boundary.