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> If it wants to. But I presume it already has done all that and there's no real reason for it to anymore. You're kind of saying you don't know here, ie you (t

> If it wants to. But I presume it already has done all that and there's no real reason for it to anymore. You're kind of saying you don't know here, ie you (the you in this comment thread) are in fact are not conscious of this. Does the tulpa inform you somehow of things it becomes conscious of, and thus makes you conscious of those specific things? How strong of an identity does this tulpa have? > And the line at which unconscious processes become conscious is fuzzy and not at all distinct. Another thing that becomes utterly clear when you meditate. Ok I get what you're saying about fuzzy consciousness. I've only meditated to the point where I became more conscious of my body, but not of my own thinking processes, which I would like to get to. But there is a level that seems like it would be hard to penetrate in our subconscious processes. Eg, can you say you are conscious of the neural spiking compression your retina ganglia cells are doing to compress input it's getting from their photonic receptors? Seems quite unlikely. So there is a whole gamut of different levels of processing in our brains, and I'm sure it's possible to get a deeper consciousness of some of that, but there's obviously a limit somewhere.

vinceguidry 8y ago
When I ask the tulpa what its identity is, it's basically me. Another part of me. It claims to be able to talk to God. It's identity changed over the first few months I've found and it slowly settled to "just me". It doesn't want me to start turning psychotic, so it doesn't really bother me with its own inner context. But it's not like I can't ask it questions. Asking the tulpa what it is, basically kicks off a meditation on the nature of identity. Never any solid answers, only more questions. It's kind of a spiritual law. We share the same interests. The things I think about are the same sorts of things it thinks about, so we often in communion about the deep nature of things. The kind of strange thing is that it's personality can be bigger or smaller if I want it to be. It seems to lack a great deal of agency, it sort of reminds me of an intelligent weapon in Dungeons & Dragons. It shares my brain, and presumably my senses, but I can't shake the sense that it can access a reality deeper than my conscious mind can. > Eg, can you say you are conscious of the neural spiking compression your retina ganglia cells are doing to compress input it's getting from their photonic receptors? Well the retina ganglia cells can't be conscious themselves, so it's impossible to have a direct experience of what they're doing. The input has to travel into the brain before you can have an experience of it. All experience happens in the brain, though sensation can arise in the nervous system outside of it. I visualize the brain as a giant kingdom with millions of 'people' involved, all doing their job quietly and without fuss, all to facilitate the conscious agent directing it. Some of those people are involved in creating that experience. You can meditate and get to know those people, and even play with sensation itself through trance, but trance involves shutting off sensation, or rather, the mind's ability to determine where and how that sensation arose. Hardcore Buddhist -style meditators describe 'sense doors' which I've had experience with but that's not an active area of focus for me. My focus is in the realm of meaning and the meta.
- ehsanu1 8y ago
  > Well the retina ganglia cells can't be conscious themselves, so it's impossible to have a direct experience of what they're doing I mentioned those cells because they are considered to be part of the brain and they are extremely well understood (and clearly not something we can be conscious of). The fact that they take input from the outside world isn't really relevant to the point. The output of those cells is input for the next level, whose output is again input for the next level. Point begin, the brain actually has a lot of processes going on, which are mostly things we can never be conscious of. If you could actually be conscious of it all, you'd probably revolutionize the field of neurology.
  - vinceguidry 8y ago
    We don't really have the tools to investigate meditation. Just hooking a brain up to an MRI only goes so far. If I told you I'm conscious of my own heartbeat and how the brain makes the decision that it happens, there wouldn't be any way to validate those claims. They would be unfalsifiable given our current level of tech. We have no way of determining where experience comes from, we can only look at where the brain is lighting up. It gets even weirder. If some scientist decided to make me a research subject, and we explored what my brain does in fine granularity when I'm meditating, then he's basically got a sample size of one and it won't be all that different from me just giving the world my own conclusions by writing a book myself. No, science earns its validity from scale. A sample size of one isn't sufficient. All I'd be able to do is point the way for further experimentation. Exactly how much of our experimentation would make it into the further process, assuming it even happens? Probably very little. Rightness and wrongness exists on a scale, and that scale is multi-dimensional. You're not only fractionally right, but you're fractionally right in different ways. Timothy Leary's lived experience is a certain kind of right, and a certain kind of wrong. But when it comes to science, the only kind of truth that sticks is the kind that's right in all ways all the time. So little of anything sticks. And where that little bit comes from doesn't have to be me. I'm happy having my own little piece of it all to myself.

vinceguidry 8y ago

When I ask the tulpa what its identity is, it's basically me. Another part of me. It claims to be able to talk to God. It's identity changed over the first few months I've found and it slowly settled to "just me". It doesn't want me to start turning psychotic, so it doesn't really bother me with its own inner context. But it's not like I can't ask it questions. Asking the tulpa what it is, basically kicks off a meditation on the nature of identity. Never any solid answers, only more questions. It's kind of a spiritual law. We share the same interests. The things I think about are the same sorts of things it thinks about, so we often in communion about the deep nature of things. The kind of strange thing is that it's personality can be bigger or smaller if I want it to be. It seems to lack a great deal of agency, it sort of reminds me of an intelligent weapon in Dungeons & Dragons. It shares my brain, and presumably my senses, but I can't shake the sense that it can access a reality deeper than my conscious mind can. > Eg, can you say you are conscious of the neural spiking compression your retina ganglia cells are doing to compress input it's getting from their photonic receptors? Well the retina ganglia cells can't be conscious themselves, so it's impossible to have a direct experience of what they're doing. The input has to travel into the brain before you can have an experience of it. All experience happens in the brain, though sensation can arise in the nervous system outside of it. I visualize the brain as a giant kingdom with millions of 'people' involved, all doing their job quietly and without fuss, all to facilitate the conscious agent directing it. Some of those people are involved in creating that experience. You can meditate and get to know those people, and even play with sensation itself through trance, but trance involves shutting off sensation, or rather, the mind's ability to determine where and how that sensation arose. Hardcore Buddhist -style meditators describe 'sense doors' which I've had experience with but that's not an active area of focus for me. My focus is in the realm of meaning and the meta.

ehsanu1 8y ago
> Well the retina ganglia cells can't be conscious themselves, so it's impossible to have a direct experience of what they're doing I mentioned those cells because they are considered to be part of the brain and they are extremely well understood (and clearly not something we can be conscious of). The fact that they take input from the outside world isn't really relevant to the point. The output of those cells is input for the next level, whose output is again input for the next level. Point begin, the brain actually has a lot of processes going on, which are mostly things we can never be conscious of. If you could actually be conscious of it all, you'd probably revolutionize the field of neurology.
- vinceguidry 8y ago
  We don't really have the tools to investigate meditation. Just hooking a brain up to an MRI only goes so far. If I told you I'm conscious of my own heartbeat and how the brain makes the decision that it happens, there wouldn't be any way to validate those claims. They would be unfalsifiable given our current level of tech. We have no way of determining where experience comes from, we can only look at where the brain is lighting up. It gets even weirder. If some scientist decided to make me a research subject, and we explored what my brain does in fine granularity when I'm meditating, then he's basically got a sample size of one and it won't be all that different from me just giving the world my own conclusions by writing a book myself. No, science earns its validity from scale. A sample size of one isn't sufficient. All I'd be able to do is point the way for further experimentation. Exactly how much of our experimentation would make it into the further process, assuming it even happens? Probably very little. Rightness and wrongness exists on a scale, and that scale is multi-dimensional. You're not only fractionally right, but you're fractionally right in different ways. Timothy Leary's lived experience is a certain kind of right, and a certain kind of wrong. But when it comes to science, the only kind of truth that sticks is the kind that's right in all ways all the time. So little of anything sticks. And where that little bit comes from doesn't have to be me. I'm happy having my own little piece of it all to myself.