How do you learn spirituality?

For a person who accepts the platform of their personal direct sense perception as the final last word in determining reality it is a difficult proposal

 

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And certainly not impossible. I'll use myself for example. I have had rediculously robust and powerful hallucinations (naturally) since I was a child and I know how to distinguish between what is and isn't hallucination. I was lucky in this respect because the high frequency of these experiences let me make alot of observations and experiment. I suspect there are many others in the same boat and I am willing to bet some of them have some pretty good teaching skills.

 

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so how do you know that this message in quotation marks is/is not a hallucination

"the rain in spain falls mainly on the plain"

 

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It's part of an experience that is consistent, persistent, and without contradiction.

 

if you determine consistency, persistency and non contradictory thing s with your senses you have problems because the senses are not concsistent,persistent or without contradiction

 

Your senses gain you access to information. Take that information and process it with your brain. Experiment, take several samples of an experience and think about if it is consistent, persistent, and non-contradictory.

Do you remember your dreams (I mean the sleeping thing)?

 

I don't remember my dreams so much when I am awake - but when I am asleep they appear factual

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If you ever have the opportunity I want you to try something. When dreaming, take a look at some text in a book or something... look away for a moment, then look at that text again... repeat 5 times. The question that I would want you to answer is 'does the text stay the same'?

Should you have the opportunity to do this in a dream and remember the result, I think you'll have achived a way to discover one type of hallucination.

 

Well i think any value/belief/ideological system is prone to flaws but im not sure thats reason enough to not follow a principle such as the golden rule (if that is what youre suggesting).
I think theres also a big difference between placing value on a creature so as not to exploit/damage/destroy and placing value on a creature to the extent that you wish to interfere with that animals life because you feel you have that animal's best interests at heart.
Id also say the example you used illustrates how someone is really using another creature for their personal amusement rather than placing than any kind of value on that animal as it relates to the animals own sense of value.

 

Isnt there a problem with that criteria though? if you experience something transitory which you have no mental point of reference to and which you never see the likes of again, youre going to outright assume youve hallucinated.
But people do and have experienced things very real which simply existed outside of our current model of reality at that specific time (fireballs, sprites, anomalous creatures).
I think theres a critical flaw in your reasoning.

 

When you are awake do you find that you sometimes lose things because you forget where you put them?
As heliocentric is indicating, there is no scope for advancing in knowledge with your view point, because everything that is non-anomolous is instantly disregarded

 

Actually my point was that service to god stands as superior to service to humanity (the golden rule) - the reason is that distinguishing what is the value to be worked forward for their betterment is not so readily apparent since we do the viewing through our own perspective (soap opera script writers work on this a lot - the husband wants to benefit tthe wife but the wife claims she is not understood - the wife wants to benefit the son but the son claims he is not understood etc etc)

 

If there is an anomolous event that happens too quickly then it's perfectly ok to declare that you don't know if the event was hallucinatory or not. The only critical flaw is the assumption that "I don't know" is not an option.

 

Yep.

I think you might have fallen into the same cognitive trap that he did. If something anomolous occurs very quickly then you might miss the opportunity to make key observations as to whether or not the experience was hallucinatory. What you're left with is a simple "I don't know" scenario.

There is a SciForums member named Zanket and he was absolutely convinced that a particular hypnotherapist allowed him to experience previous lives. So, I offered to go to the exact same person, undergo the same experience, and provide feedback.

The sum of it was the hypnotherapist was able to induce varying combinations of sustained hypnogic hallucination as well as light lucid dreaming. While I was under, I tested the environments I found myself in. I found lack of consistency, persistency, as well as contradiction.

More importantly, I found a variety of definitive tell tale signs that I was hallucinating. While the entire experience was powerful, fulfilling, and just outright cool... it was nothing more than what my own mind was generating.

I presented my findings to Zanket and we actually have everything documented in one the threads. While my analysis didn't convince him that what he expereinced was hallucination, it did allow him to take the position of "I don't know" instead of asserting the fantastic as objective truth.

 

But even if youre 'serving god' youre still projecting any number of assumptions onto your chosen diety. 'God wants me to do...xyandz', i think theres far more room for error and flawed logic (rather than superiorty) in living that kind of life.
I think the problem is you've no real way of knowing what god wants, where as you can actually observe that every organism wishes to survive, procreate, and live in good health.

I think youre making it far more complex than it needs to be to be honest, organisms practically without exception want to be treated compassionately and to not be caused harm or pain. And that is all the golden rule suggests that you do.
It only becomes a problem when you begin to meddle and conclude that 'you know whats best!' for whoever or whatever it may be.
Although id argue that that that sort of treatment is moving far beyond what the golden rule lays out.

 

Agreed.

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I think this whole forum is an excellent example of learning about the variants of spirituality.

However, speaking personally, spiritual experiences come from inner stillness and silence and a willingness to mentally let go... That may be a lot harder for many here.

 

Mannava Seva, Madhava Seva - Service to man is service to God.

What's the use of meditating to serve God if the person next to is suffering?

 

What is the use of viewing the (attempted) removal of the material conditons of
suffering as the topmost perfection of spiritual life in a world of birth, death, old age and disease?

 

The only way you can learn anything spiritualy is by experience. Spirituality is not something quantifiably, and not subject to analysis. At least thats the general premise