Theres tons of talk here about Buddhism but whats actually more popular right now in society is this thing called nonduality. Basically all pop spirituality all over the internet, including tiktok youtube and instagram, is sort of a form of nonduality. Buddhism tends to be more for nerdy men, boomers, and colorado female types. Nonduality is basically "the thing" behind what people refer to as spirituality nowadays. So has anyone here gone down the rabbithole of reading people like Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta, Rupert Spira, etc? The big variants are the indian influenced traditional type and then the neo advaita type which tries to frame things in less hindu terminology.My own thoughts on it are that while its initially appealing in that it purports to solve psychological problems faster than Buddhism (and western psychology) it leads to a type of semi nihilistic world denialism and anti intellectualism and anti curiosity and a sort of closed system (despite initial claims that its all based on your own direct observation and not authority) of unhealthy idealism. Concepts are the problem, thinking is the problem, etc, seems to be sort of a root issue with almost all of modern spirituality I think.
>>23815101Read Hegel.
Been a while since I had a reason to post this
Hahahahahahahaha How The Fuck Is NonDuality Real Hahahaha Nigga Just Sit In The Lotus Position Like Nigga Close Your Eyes Haha
is this a mind-body dualism thread or is dualism something else?anyway, a lot of "you" is determined by hormonal response. find a tough, non-empathic strongman and cut off his nuts, and in a year he'll be talking about how important it is to to be kind to others, so that shit is demonstrably false.
>>23815106Hegel writes strictly for experts and specialists. If the student has not yet read Kant, then don’t bother with Hegel.Even then, the reader of Kant might find it impossible to read Hegel chronologically. Hegel’s first work (1807) should probably be the last work by Hegel that one struggles to read.To begin, do this: (1) Read only the Introductions to Hegel’s Lecture series; (2) Read them all, including Philosophy of History; History of Philosophy; Encyclopedia; Philosophy of Right; Philosophy of Aesthetics; Philosophy of Religion; (3) then, read Philosophy of Right from start to finish; (it’s probably his easiest book).If the student can follow Hegel that far — then there is hope. Read Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion (tr. Hodgson, 1990) from start to finish, to satisfy oneself that Hegel was a solar system away from Marx.The final two books that the student should approach are: (1) Science of Logic, 1812; and (2) Phenomenology of Spirit, 1807; in that order.
>>23815572>>23815603oh nevermind. it's that nonsense "philosphy" that nobody can even adequately explain, much less agree on. i am a retard but "nonduality" is so retarded you have to be a highly intelligent to hold such an absurd concept as valid.
>>23815101>it leads to a type of semi nihilistic world denialism and anti intellectualism and anti curiosity and a sort of closed system (despite initial claims that its all based on your own direct observation and not authority) of unhealthy idealism. I think this can definitely result from either 1) improperly understanding the teachings or 2) uncritically accepting the teachings of various online figures and quasi-newage figures as being authoritative and as being representative of the tradition when they really aren't.Traditional non-duality was meant for initiated monks or in some cases people who had renounced all desires and conducted themselves on the inside as monks while remaining in their job, but still live a relatively ascetic existence in doing so instead of pursuing things for the sake of desire. It's not meant to be practiced by people who are still focused on fulfilling desires, romance, acquiring wealth, raising a family. In the cases where the teaching has been somewhat understood (as opposed to be totally bogus newage crap), the resulting issues usually results from people not understanding the boundary between the layperson's live and the live of the monk and how something that is appropriate and fitting for one is not for the other and vice versa.A lot of online figures who give talks on non-duality are not really qualified to be doing so is another issue. Swami Sarvapriyananda is pretty good though.You can still study authentic non-duality and be profoundly changed by it as a layperson engaged in the world, but you have to maintain some awareness of the limitations of doing so as a layperson and not try to larp as a monk or wrongly think that one is entitled to do properly all that an initiated monk is entitled to be doing or these sorts of contradictions and confusions can arise.>Concepts are the problem, thinking is the problem, etc, seems to be sort of a root issue with almost all of modern spirituality I think.In traditional Advaita one is supposed to eliminate the fundamental misconceptions about Self/reality/plurality/etc that arise from avidya or spiritual ignorance, but simply trying to stop all thoughts is seen as not being very helpful or efficacious outside of perhaps doing so as a temporary preliminary meditation that stills the mind and prepares it for deeper insights/realizations later on.
>>23815613>oh nevermind. it's that nonsense "philosphy" that nobody can even adequately explainNon-duality is talked about in Hindu, Buddhist and Sikh texts and it can mean different things in different instances, but most videos online and talking heads are talking about the Advaita Vedanta school of non-duality when they use that term. Advaita has a group of core teachings or positions that can be coherently explained even if you don't agree with them. They interpret "non-duality" in referring to mainly two senses:1) That the absolute reality of Brahman, God, the One, is utterly simple and without real differentiation, parts or division.2) That one's innermost being and awareness is identical with that utterly simple absolute reality of the OneThe first sense is not absurd at all even superficially and is basically just an extreme form of divine simplicity, an idea which is common to various forms of Christian, Muslim, Jewish and Neoplatonic theology/metaphysics.The second sense may seem more unusual at first to a western reader who is a newcomer to a topic but when you read non-dual writings they point out how it can coherently be maintained as a plausible theory and why experience doesn't actually contradict it and why it's not actually absurd. For example, the innermost awareness that is identical to Brahman is not objectifiable as an object of thought or the senses, so if you try to grasp X about your body or mind in experience and say "experience tells me that this X cannot be identical with the partless Brahman" you are talking about something other than that inner awareness at that point (because it will never be the X that you point to as an object), which means that X cannot provide empirical proof of your inner awareness being different from the immortal, ever-free, partless unconditioned Brahman.
>>23815825Imagine being this smart and still wiping your butt with your bare hand
>>23815101Epistemic non-duality is based, ontological non-duality is cringe
>>23815101non duality is totally different from solipsism because... i- it just is, ok?!
>>23815835Sounds based beyond belief
>>23815613Imagine getting filtered by a philosophy as normal as monism.
Yeah, it’s retarded. Non-dualists will never actually tell you what non-dualism means concretely and that’s intentional. They don’t want to be exposed as contradictory relativists who when it’s convenient affirm monism and when it’s convenient affirm something like multiplicity or even a trinitarian doctrine. All should read the book The One and the Many by RJ Rushdoony.
>>23816008>>23815613am I still retarded if my gut instinct is always correct?
>>23816008>Non-dualists will never actually tell you what non-dualism means concretely see >>23815825>They don’t want to be exposed as contradictory relativists who when it’s convenient affirm monism and when it’s convenient affirm something like multiplicity or even a trinitarian doctrine.Non-dualism doesn’t do this, wtf are you talking about?
>>23815101You mentioned Nisargadatta, and I remembered a non-dual PDF that was going around on /x/ called You Are That. http://files.catbox.moe/92xli9.pdfI've been meaning to read Spira's Presence books. I keep pushing it back though and I'm very scattered... somewhat ironically
>>23817076>read Spira(experience)as corny as that sounds
>>23815101Dialectical monism is the only way
>>23815101Non-duality is a metaphysics before it is a spiritualism. It's not a de facto religious belief, it's an assertion about the nature of being. So there's no reason to muddy the already murky philosophical topic with spiritual connotations as they add nothing to the conversation.Dualism never sat right with me because of the quantificational arbitrariness. Why should existence be split into two general substances? The mental and the physical? This division, at best, is inelegant. Why should these two arbitrary substances be in tension? Couldn't we just have an expanded definition of what's physical to include the mental, or vice versa? Then, to deny the pure mentality of mental predicates, you have to twist your thoughts into pretzels to eliminate qualia or ignore pure psychological properties (like Dennett). Physicalism struggles to find the right words to explain conscious states. The more you think about it the more physicalism seems the less plausible... I have more direct, intuitive understand and access to mental states than I do physical states, which are wrapped and abstracted by a sheath of perceptions. Ontologically it's actually more sensible to start with consciousness and try to view the physical in terms of it, rather than to start with the assumptions of the physical and try to make consciousness fit. For mature non-dualist metaphysics: see CS Peirce's objective idealism. The mental and physical are really one substance in different phases.
>>23815962Depends.>all mental constructs are one thingYou get realist idealism monist.>all mental constructs are an illusion of a big soul/thing/guy behind the curtainYou get psuedo-solipsism, but with the personal self being dissolved into a greater ocean>all mental constructs are constructs that dont point to anything and they're all compound phenomenasYou get a weird deconstructionist anti-foundationalist anti-anti-realist type that Buddhists use
