Techniques of Consciousness Change – Robert Anton Wilson (Lecture)

Robert Anton Wilson speaks about the riddle of consciousness and how the human nervous system locks the entire body together, including the mind.

He describes the brain and how it reacts to our cultural programming, our reality tunnel, how our nervous system reprograms itself, and how we can crack our minds open through directed thought.

Lecture Topics Covered:

The Government And Drugs
Yoga And Other Techniques
Timothy Leary’s Eight-Circuit Model Of Psychological Types
Elements Of The First Four Circuits
Techniques For Changing Imprinting
The Top Four Circuits
Programming Your Own Experience
The Church Committee And Space Migration

We live in our fantasies and endure our realities. – Robert Anton Wilson

Oct 23, 2014Jun 17, 2016

How to be Ultra Spiritual – Funny Parody with JP Sears (Video)

Ever wanted to be ultra spiritual? Well, look no further than JP Sears parody video that hilariously captures the essence of what it means to be spiritual today.

Perhaps it is our ability to laugh at ourselves and not take ourselves too seriously is what increases our spiritual growth.

JP Sears is an inner coach who strives to empower people to live more meaningful lives as whole individuals by guiding them to move beyond their symptoms of pain and sabotage.

Regardless of his mission statement, JP absolutely kills it in this video. It’s a well produced timely piece that is hilariously accurate.

Aug 19, 2014Jun 17, 2016

Vinchen: Social Commentary From Ohio’s Best Street Artist (Art Gallery)

Vinchen’s street art offers simple insights into supposed complex social issues. It causes us to question the notion of their complexity altogether, leaving you to wonder why we are plagued by social inequities at all.

Asking questions incidently leads to answers, and Vinchen’s street art places the onus back on those looking back.

Vinchen – Social Commentary Street Art Gallery

Aug 14, 2014Jun 17, 2016

Don’t Believe in Anybody Else’s BS – Robert Anton Wilson (Video)

Robert Anton Wilson shares his view on belief systems and offers us a glimpse into the framework of his own.

A must see for anyone who is having trouble harmonizing their expanding beliefs (many of which may be contradictory).

If one can only see things according to one’s own belief system, one is destined to become virtually deaf, dumb, and blind. – Robert Anton Wilson

Omega Point created this video, his youtube page has a number of similarly themed works, featuring luminaries Alan Watts, Terence Mckenna, & Carl Sagan.

Aug 6, 2014Jun 17, 2016

The 4 Stages of Enlightenment According to Buddhist Scripture

As he guided his followers over the 45 years he taught, Buddha recognized four distinct levels of realization, each marked by a deep and unmistakable experience of selflessness, followed by certain changes in outlook and behavior.

The experience generally occurs during intensive meditation, when the attention has become one-pointed, and follows extensive study and understanding of the basic truths of Buddhism (especially the three marks of existence: selflessness, impermanence, and dissatisfaction).

The four stages of enlightenment are Sotapanna, Sakadagami, Anagami and Arahant. The teaching of the four stages is a central element of the early Buddhist schools, including the surviving Theravada school of Buddhism.

The 4 Stages of Enlightenment

Stream-enterer

The first stage is that of Sotāpanna (Pali; Sanskrit: Srotāpanna), literally meaning “one who enters (āpadyate) the stream (sotas),” with the stream being the Noble Eightfold Path regarded as the highest Dharma.

The stream-enterer is also said to have “opened the eye of the Dharma” and is guaranteed enlightenment after no more than seven successive rebirths, possibly fewer. The stream-enterer can also be sure that he will not be reborn in any of the unhappy states or rebirths (an animal, a preta, or in hell). He can only be reborn as a human being, or in a heaven. The stream-enterer has attained an intuitive grasp of Buddhist doctrine (samyagdṛṣṭi or sammādiṭṭhi, “right view”), has complete confidence or Saddha in the Three Jewels of Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha, and has good moral behaviour (Sila).

When you become a stream-enterer, you can never again believe that you’re really a separate self that lives inside your head and looks through your eyes. Your experience forever eliminates this illusion. When you look within, you can’t find a self anywhere.

In everyday life, however, you may still feel like a separate somebody and may still get caught up by greed, anger, ignorance, and various other negative feelings and patterns. Fortunately, the stage of stream-enterer also brings an unshakable confidence and dedication to the Buddhist spiritual path, so you’re motivated to keep deepening and refining your realization.

I observe treasures of gold and gems as so many bricks and pebbles. I look upon the finest silken robes as tattered rags. – Buddha

Once Returner

The second stage is that of the Sakadāgāmī (Sanskrit: Sakṛdāgāmin), literally meaning “one who once (sakṛt) comes (āgacchati)”. The once-returner will return to the human world only one more time, and will attain Nirvana in that life.

After you become a stream-enterer, your practice includes reminding yourself of your new realization of “no-self,” as well as paying attention to the ways that you’re still attached and your resistance to life as it unfolds. After a period of time (generally years of devoted practice) in which your concentration gets even stronger and your mind becomes even more tranquil, you have another direct insight into no-self. (Remember, knowing this truth as a concept or memory is one thing, but experiencing it directly, beyond the conceptual mind, is something else entirely.)

This insight (essentially the same as the first but even stronger and clearer) brings a significant reduction in attachment and aversion and the suffering that accompanies these states of mind. For example, occasional irritation and preference replace hatred and greed, which no longer have any hold over the once-returner.

Again, someone who reaches this stage has only one more rebirth before becoming completely enlightened.

I see myriad worlds of the universe as small seeds of fruit, and the greatest lake in India as a drop of oil upon my foot. – Buddha

Never-returner

The third stage is that of the Anāgāmī (Sanskrit: Anāgāmin), literally meaning “one who does not (an-) come (āgacchati)”. The non-returner does not come back into human existence, or any lower world, after death. Instead, he is reborn in one of the worlds of the Rūpadhātu called the Śuddhāvāsa worlds, or “Pure Abodes”, where he will attain Nirvāṇa; Pāli: Nibbana; some of them are reborn a second time in a higher world of the Pure Abodes, but in no case are born into a lower state.

An Anāgāmī has abandoned the five lower fetters that bind the mind to the cycle of rebirth. An Anāgāmī is thus partially enlightened, and on the way to perfect and complete Enlightenment.

After the experience that signals entry to this stage, all of the worst hindrances, such as hatred, greed, jealousy, and ignorance, completely drop away, but a hint of a self-sense (a “me”) still remains — and with it, the slightest trace of restlessness and dissatisfaction sticks around as well. The experience itself is rarely accompanied by any emotion or excitement, just a clearer recognition of what has already been seen twice before. These people appear to be extremely content, peaceful, and without desire, but the subtlest preference for positive rather than negative experiences remains.

I discern the highest conception of emancipation as a golden brocade in a dream, and view the holy path of the illuminated ones as flowers appearing in one’s eyes. – Buddha

Arahant

The fourth stage is that of Arahant, a fully enlightened human being who has abandoned all fetters, and who upon decease (Sanskrit: Parinirvāṇa, Pāli: Parinibbāna) will not be reborn in any world, having wholly abandoned saṃsāra.

At this stage, the path bears ultimate fruit in nirvana — any residual trace of a separate self falls away for good. The experience, frequently accompanied by unimaginable bliss, has been compared to falling into the depths of a cloud and disappearing. At this point, the circumstances of life no longer have the slightest hold over you; positive or negative experiences no longer stir even the slightest craving or dissatisfaction. As Buddha said, all that needed to be done has been done. There’s nothing further to realize. The path is complete, and no further rebirths are necessary.

I see meditation as a pillar of a mountain, nirvana as a nightmare of daytime. – Buddha

> Four Stages of Enlightenment | Tamqui

> Four Stages on the Path to Nirvana | Dummies

> Buddha | Lucid Cafe

Jul 16, 2014Jun 17, 2016

Weaving a Home: Collapsible Woven Refugee Shelters

Human life throughout history has developed in alternating waves of migration and settlement. Navigating this duality between exploration and settlement, movement and stillness is a fundamental essence of what it means to be human.

In the aftermath of global wars and natural disasters, the world has witnessed the displacement of millions of people across continents. Refugees seeking shelter from disasters carry from their homes what they can and resettle in unknown lands, often starting with nothing but a tent to call home.

Designed by Abeer Seikaly, “Weaving a home” reexamines the traditional architectural concept of refugee shelters by creating a technical, structural fabric that expands to enclose and contracts for mobility while providing the comforts of contemporary life (heat, running water, electricity, storage, etc.)

Design is supposed to give form to a gap in people’s needs.

This lightweight, mobile, structural fabric could potentially close the gap between need and desire as people metaphorically weave their lives back together, physically weaving their built environment into a place both new and familiar, transient and rooted, private and connected.

Structural Fabric Weaves Refugee Shelters into Communities

In this space, the refugees find a place to pause from their turbulent worlds, a place to weave the tapestry of their new lives.

They weave their shelter into a home.

> Structural Fabric Weaves Tent Shelters into Communities | Abeer Seikaly

Jun 18, 2014Jun 17, 2016

Fist of Jesus – Gory and Hilarious Zombie Short Film (Video)

Fist of Jesus is an outrageously bloody comedy short film about a Jesus who kicks ass in a world full of Zombies, Mutants and Sinners.

Support the Fist of Jesus IndieGoGo:

We want to make our 90 minute Feature Film in the style of the 80’s B movies, avoiding computer FX at all costs – we do not want digital effects. We want our monsters to be entirely physical, and when a corpse bursts open it looks real and spatters the actors! This means that most of our budget will go towards the creation of physical FX – makeup, characterization, animatronics.

Our dream is to make a comedy that is a cross between the New Testament and “Mad Max”, with the humor of “The Life of Brian” and the style of Peter Jackson’s early works like “Bad Taste” or “Braindead”. Above all it is an epic movie – Jesus’ journey compared to that of Odysseus or Atreyu in “The Never Ending Story” or any of the “Conan” films, but crazier, in the style of Ash in “Army of Darkness”. – Directors Adrián Cardona & David Muñoz.

May 15, 2014Jun 17, 2016

Comedian Louis C.K. Learns About the Catholic Church (Video)

Driven by simple curiosity, Louis C.K. does some investigative reporting and finds some surprising things about the Catholic Church.

This is a pretty old clip (2007) and certainly doesn’t reach Louis’ current level of comedy, but it’s worth watching.

It’s super tongue-in-cheek (or is it dick-in-ass), but it actually raises some valid points. Regardless of your religious beliefs, we can all agree boy-fucking blows.

Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot.

Mar 23, 2014Jun 17, 2016

Scientific Evidence For Reincarnation: Fact or Fiction? (Video, Study)

Reincarnation Video Description

Six decades ago, a 21-year-old Navy fighter pilot on a mission over the Pacific was shot down by Japanese artillery. His name might have been forgotten, were it not for 6-year-old James Leininger.

Quite a few people — including those who knew the fighter pilot — think James is the pilot, reincarnated.

It is not surprising to be born more than once; everything in nature is resurrection.
– Voltaire

Reincarnation is spoken of in many cultures and religions as something that occurs to souls when they have lessons that still need to be learned in physical incarnation. Some return for lessons, some apparently return to alleviate karma from past-lives, and some return simply to do good work on the earth and help other souls evolve here.

However, reincarnation is not something you can objectively measure. So the question becomes: Is there enough evidence to justify a belief in reincarnation?

Dr. Ian Stevenson, Ph.D., former Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, spent 40 years researching reincarnation stories with children.

This former chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Neurology investigated over 3000 independent stories of children who claimed to have memories and know people from their alleged past lives. According to Stevenson, the number of cases that are worth considering is so high that it exceeds the ability of him and his team to investigate them all.

Facial recognition software confirmed that there was in fact a facial resemblance to their alleged prior incarnation. Some had birth marks on places where they allegedly suffered fatal wounds from in their past life. They were often dramatic and sometimes bizarre lesions, such as malformed digits or missing limbs, misshapen heads, and odd markings.

About 35% of children who claim to remember previous lives have birthmarks and/or birth defects that they (or adult informants) attribute to wounds on a person whose life the child remembers. The cases of 210 such children have been investigated.

The birthmarks were usually areas of hairless, puckered skin; some were areas of little or no pigmentation (hypopigmented macules); others were areas of increased pigmentation (hyperpigmented nevi). The birth defects were nearly always of rare types. In cases in which a deceased person was identified the details of whose life unmistakably matched the child’s statements, a close correspondence was nearly always found between the birthmarks and/or birth defects on the child and the wounds on the deceased person.

In 43 of 49 cases in which a medical document (usually a postmortem report) was obtained, it confirmed the correspondence between wounds and birthmarks (or birth defects). – Dr. Stevenson in ‘Birthmarks and Birth Defects Corresponding to Wounds on Deceased Persons’

In an article where 3 cases were looked at in great detail by Dr. Stevenson, he reported that each of the 3 children made roughly 30-40 claims regarding memories that had of their past lives, 82-92% of which were both verifiable and correct.

The particularities and specific details that were given by the children ranged from the names, personalities, and occupations of their former parents and siblings, to the precise layouts of the houses they lived in.

It was not uncommon for Stevenson to encounter a child who could go into a town he had never been in before and give him the details of the village, former personal belongings, the neighbourhood in which he lived in a past life, and the people who he use to associate with.

What seems to be more than mere chance is that children were able to accurately identify former acquaintances and relationships they had with people in their prior lives. Most impressively was a Lebanese girl who was able to remember and identify 25 different people from her past life and the interpersonal relationships she had with them.

During a presentation at Penn State University in 2005, Dr. Jim B. Tucker, a child psychiatrist at the University of Virginia, described how a mother was leaning over the changing table to change her son’s diaper. Her young toddler unexpectedly said, “When I was your age, I used to change your diapers.” Sam Taylor, of Vermont, was born 18 months following his grandfather’s death.

When he made this comment, he was only a few years old. When he was four and a half years old, however, Taylor was able to pick out his grandfather from a class picture of about 20 people and identify his grandfather’s first car from a photograph.

Upon examining all these findings and publications, we must ask ourselves:

What is the best explanation that can accommodate all of this evidence?

Why are there be so many cases of children who claim to have been other people, who know the specific names and interpersonal relationships of the person they recall being, have similar behaviour and personalities as the people they claimed to be, have birthmarks and abnormalities where they claimed to have suffered wounds in their past lives, and have phobias linked back to alleged past life traumas if reincarnation did not exist?

It seems as though we are not only justified in believing in reincarnation, but it may be the best explanation we have.

What do you believe?

> Evidence for Rebirth | Spirit Science and Metaphysics

Feb 25, 2014Jun 17, 2016

Science and Religion Are Not Compatible – Neil deGrasse Tyson (Video)

Neil deGrasse Tyson explained the relaunch of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, a series meant to promote science literacy and discussion about our place in the universe. During a segment about the Big Bang (16:46), Tyson disputed the notion that religion and science could coexist when trying to understand the nature of existence:

Moyers: Do you give people who make this case, that that was the beginning and that there had to be something that provoked the beginning, do you give them an A at least for trying to reconcile faith and reason?

Tyson: I don’t think they’re reconcilable.

Moyers: What do you mean?

Tyson: Well, so let me say that differently. All efforts that have been invested by brilliant people of the past have failed at that exercise. They just fail. And so I don’t, the track record is so poor that going forward, I have essentially zero confidence, near zero confidence, that there will be fruitful things to emerge from the effort to reconcile them.

So, for example, if you knew nothing about science, and you read, say, the Bible, the Old Testament, which in Genesis, is an account of nature, that’s what that is, and I said to you, give me your description of the natural world based only on this, you would say the world was created in six days, and that stars are just little points of light much lesser than the sun. And that in fact, they can fall out of the sky, right, because that’s what happens during the Revelation.

You know, one of the signs that the second coming, is that the stars will fall out of the sky and land on Earth. To even write that means you don’t know what those things are. You have no concept of what the actual universe is. So everybody who tried to make proclamations about the physical universe based on Bible passages got the wrong answer.

So what happened was, when science discovers things, and you want to stay religious, or you want to continue to believe that the Bible is unerring, what you would do is you would say, “Well, let me go back to the Bible and reinterpret it.” Then you’d say things like, “Oh, well they didn’t really mean that literally. They meant that figuratively.”

So, this whole sort of reinterpretation of the, how figurative the poetic passages of the Bible are came after science showed that this is not how things unfolded. And so the educated religious people are perfectly fine with that. It’s the fundamentalists who want to say that the Bible is the literally, literal truth of God, that and want to see the Bible as a science textbook, who are knocking on the science doors of the schools, trying to put that content in the science room. Enlightened religious people are not behaving that way. So saying that science is cool, we’re good with that, and use the Bible for, to get your spiritual enlightenment and your emotional fulfillment.

Jan 23, 2014Jun 17, 2016

Take a Shamanic Journey with Yucatecan Trance Induction Beats (Video)

Music and sound can cause different reactions depending on the person.

We’ve all experienced how that special song can make us feel a certain way. Music can drum up long forgotten memories, or even increase our level of motivation.

To illustrate the point, the soothing voice of Christopher Wallace (aka Biggie Smalls) and his East Coast style was enough to stop the tears of this crying baby.

Notorious B.I.G. Calms Down Crying Baby

But just in case you weren’t recently born, considering a different approach may be helpful.

Binaural beats (and their varying frequencies) are one option for brain entrainment. Binaurals are wonderful because they create a constant frequency in your brain causing you to resonate in tune with the preferred beat.

Hacking your brain with Binaural beats can be great, but that isn’t why we are here.

Yucatecan Trance Induction Beats

In the late 1960s, anthropologist Dr. Felicitas Goodman was hired by the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health to help investigate the religious trace states of 486 societies around the world. Her most revelatory findings weren’t in the drug-induced voodoo séances of Haiti or weeks-long meditation ceremonies of India, but in “conservative” Catholic churches throughout the Yucatan of southern Mexico. There, indigenous people had hybridized pagan beliefs with those of Christianity to create a weekly mass service unlike any other.

Part of the mass included Trance Induction Beats, in which a drummer would tap out a pulsing rhythm at 210 beats per minute on a hollow gourd for about a half hour. (A similar tempo was later discovered by scientists in the 1960s to induce the deeply relaxing Theta waves in the brain.) Goodman discovered the pulsing drum rhythm was effective in lulling not a few, but all members of the church congregation into a deep trance, usually within the first ten minutes.

Wondering if the indigenous Yucatecs were just easily coaxed by Trance Induction Beats, Goodman tested the rhythm on a group of western students, many of whom were not prone to entering trances through other methods. Within fifteen minutes of Yucatecan Trance Induction Beats, every one of the students entered a hypnotic, trance-like state that lasted until the experiment was over.

Yucatecan Trance Induction (Theta state frequency)

Video Description

For thousands of years humans have induced hypnotic trance states, usually as part of a religious or spiritual ceremony. This Theta trance induction track is taken from the indigenous people of the Yucatan peninsula who practice a hybridized version of Catholicism combined with pagan beliefs. As part of their mass ceremony a drummer performs a simple rhythm at 210 beats per minute on a hollow guard for about a half hour. This track is purely instrumental with no vocals so it can be used for self-hypnosis towards any goal, desired outcome or as a relaxation tool to combat stress.

For best results listen with headphones in a relaxed position, allow a few minutes for the trance to take hold.

> Yucatecan Induction | Get High Now

Tag: Religion

The 4 Stages of Enlightenment According to Buddhist Scripture

The 4 Stages of Enlightenment

Stream-enterer

Once Returner

Never-returner

Arahant

Fist of Jesus – Gory and Hilarious Zombie Short Film (Video)

Support the Fist of Jesus IndieGoGo:

Take a Shamanic Journey with Yucatecan Trance Induction Beats (Video)

Notorious B.I.G. Calms Down Crying Baby

Yucatecan Trance Induction Beats

Yucatecan Trance Induction (Theta state frequency)

Follow TM and don’t miss any content!

Vinchen – Social Commentary Street Art Gallery

The 4 Stages of Enlightenment

Stream-enterer

Once Returner

Never-returner

Arahant

Structural Fabric Weaves Refugee Shelters into Communities

Support the Fist of Jesus IndieGoGo:

Have you seen any of these god damn churches lately? There’s one that takes up the whole block in New York.

What do you believe?

Notorious B.I.G. Calms Down Crying Baby

Yucatecan Trance Induction Beats

Yucatecan Trance Induction (Theta state frequency)

Follow TM and don’t miss any content!