The first one looks related. Hard to say though: a lot of it comes across to me as navigating conceptualizations until the concept circle broke. Something like that happened during my kenshō but it wasn’t the focus for me at all. That was the distraction I had to set aside in order to Look.
The second one looks longer than I want to dig through right now. Apologies. Is it easy for you to sketch what the map you’re referring to is?
Is it easy for you to sketch what the map you’re referring to is?
Not OP, but I can describe the map he’s referring too. Jeffery Martin interviewed 1,200 enlightened individuals and found that while their reported experience was different, their descriptions of their new phenomenological experience fell into similar clusters or ‘locations’. There’s around 20-40 locations in all (he is vague about exactly how many there are) but Jeffery only talks about the first 4 because that’s where the vast majority of people spend their time and he believes talking about the later locations is dangerous. The project is a little sketchy but there’s no one else doing what he’s doing. People have noticed a resemblance between the locations and the Theravadan 4 path model but locations are typically temporary ‘states’ whereas paths are irreversable shifts.
The quick summary of the distinctive characteristics of each location are,
Location 1
Expansion of sense of self, connection to divine
Much less affected by ‘self’ thoughts
Distance from but still have positive and negative emotions
Deep peace but can be suppressed by triggered conditioning
Effects from perceptual triggers fall off quickly
Deep peace and beingness feels more real than anything previous
Trust in ‘how things are’
Personal history less relevant, memories less
Location 2
‘Self’ thoughts continue to fade
Peace increasingly harder to suppress/conditioning fades
Shift towards increasingly positive emotions, until only very positive emotions remain
Intermediate levels of perceptual triggers increasingly fade
More likely to feel that there is a correct decision or path to take when presented with choices
Higher well-being than location one
Location 3
Only single positive emotion remains
Feels like a combination of universal compassion, love, joy, …
Higher well-being than location 2
Location 4
No sense of agency
No emotions
No ‘self’ thoughts
Perceptual triggers at their bare minimum
No sense of divine or universal consciousness
Life was simply unfolding and they were watching the process happen
The kind of nothingnessness that she describes in this post seems like it might be connected with why awakened states haven’t been able to scale effectively. It seems to me that it is a non-obvious step to integrate a high level of awakeness with ongoing meaningness. I think that among other things, it requires having a community of people with a shared sense of awakeness. This makes sense, since humans are socio-cultural creatures. And then if the only sorts of communities that can maintain such a state tend to be unproductive (genetically or economically) because they are monasteries… then there are natural scaling limits.
This raises questions like “what would an enlightened family look like?” and “what would an enlightened company look like?” and “what would an enlightened school look like?” It seems that (for lots of reasons) the cultures would be very different than what we’re used to.
I am interested in knowing if Valentine or others have thoughts on these questions or any other questions related to scaling or avoiding what are in essence nihilist traps!
Is this enlightenment anything like described in https://aellagirl.com/2017/07/07/the-abyss-of-want/ ?
Also possibly related : http://nonsymbolic.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/PNSE-Article.pdf (can you point on that map where you think you found yourself)
The first one looks related. Hard to say though: a lot of it comes across to me as navigating conceptualizations until the concept circle broke. Something like that happened during my kenshō but it wasn’t the focus for me at all. That was the distraction I had to set aside in order to Look.
The second one looks longer than I want to dig through right now. Apologies. Is it easy for you to sketch what the map you’re referring to is?
Not OP, but I can describe the map he’s referring too. Jeffery Martin interviewed 1,200 enlightened individuals and found that while their reported experience was different, their descriptions of their new phenomenological experience fell into similar clusters or ‘locations’. There’s around 20-40 locations in all (he is vague about exactly how many there are) but Jeffery only talks about the first 4 because that’s where the vast majority of people spend their time and he believes talking about the later locations is dangerous. The project is a little sketchy but there’s no one else doing what he’s doing. People have noticed a resemblance between the locations and the Theravadan 4 path model but locations are typically temporary ‘states’ whereas paths are irreversable shifts.
The quick summary of the distinctive characteristics of each location are,
Location 1
Expansion of sense of self, connection to divine
Much less affected by ‘self’ thoughts
Distance from but still have positive and negative emotions
Deep peace but can be suppressed by triggered conditioning
Effects from perceptual triggers fall off quickly
Deep peace and beingness feels more real than anything previous
Trust in ‘how things are’
Personal history less relevant, memories less
Location 2
‘Self’ thoughts continue to fade
Peace increasingly harder to suppress/conditioning fades
Shift towards increasingly positive emotions, until only very positive emotions remain
Intermediate levels of perceptual triggers increasingly fade
More likely to feel that there is a correct decision or path to take when presented with choices
Higher well-being than location one
Location 3
Only single positive emotion remains
Feels like a combination of universal compassion, love, joy, …
Higher well-being than location 2
Location 4
No sense of agency
No emotions
No ‘self’ thoughts
Perceptual triggers at their bare minimum
No sense of divine or universal consciousness
Life was simply unfolding and they were watching the process happen
Memory deficits/scheduled appointments, etc.
Highest well-being reported
Not easy, no. But there is a shorter version here : http://nonsymbolic.org/PNSE-Summary-2013.pdf
I’d be interested in Valentine’s opinion of the paper. I read it and posted a long response to it in a reply to Elo.
(Does LesserWrong support links to comments?)
ETA: link to that comment.
Yep, just click on the timestamp of a comment, and you get a link to it.
That UI decision seems to be nonobvious, how about instead adding it to the menu that currently contains Subscribe/Report?
I clicked on a link in the first one and found my way to this post: https://aellagirl.com/2016/08/21/421/
The kind of nothingnessness that she describes in this post seems like it might be connected with why awakened states haven’t been able to scale effectively. It seems to me that it is a non-obvious step to integrate a high level of awakeness with ongoing meaningness. I think that among other things, it requires having a community of people with a shared sense of awakeness. This makes sense, since humans are socio-cultural creatures. And then if the only sorts of communities that can maintain such a state tend to be unproductive (genetically or economically) because they are monasteries… then there are natural scaling limits.
This raises questions like “what would an enlightened family look like?” and “what would an enlightened company look like?” and “what would an enlightened school look like?” It seems that (for lots of reasons) the cultures would be very different than what we’re used to.
I am interested in knowing if Valentine or others have thoughts on these questions or any other questions related to scaling or avoiding what are in essence nihilist traps!