In S03E05 of Penn and Teller's Bullshit!, "Holier Than Thou", Tibet is decried for gouging out the eyes of their criminals, no matter how petty the crime or how trivial the theft.

SWIM would like to discuss the merits of Buddhism, because DMT and spirituality are virtually synonymous. SWIM cannot say what has already been said more succinctly and more elegantly than in the following, so SWIM is pasting several snippets by Michael Parenti here, verbatim:



What are everyone's thoughts?

Religion is hypocritical and poisonous. The proof is in the pudding. History is this pudding. Those blinded by faith will never see this and the hypocrisy will continue. Stuck in the quagmire of limited belief systems. Controlled by fear. Period.


"I am increasingly convinced that the time has come to find a way of thinking about spirituality and ethics beyond religion altogether." ~Dalai Lama

The kinnnnggdom of God is within...

My thoughts are that enforcing arbitrary rules require arbitrary means

Simply the amount of force required to enforce is proportionate to the degree of resistance

With religious decree functioning as a white card for its followers all too often they take full advantage of it probably due to some internal feelings about those who are not "with them" in following these rules


But on another note swimwitove do you work for BuzzFeed by any chance? Your post titles clickbaityness is uncannily similar to theirs !

It's not about religion, it's about hierarchy, especially non-consensual hierarchy. If my faith exercises no authority over others without their consent, I see no problem with it.

There's this fantasy, especially among educated, atheists that religion is somehow a unique force of evil and that if we all got rid of it, we could all live in some kind of harmony. This ignores the inherently complicated nature of religion and spiritual practice and the tremendous amount of comfort religion has done.

Anyone who says religion is universally bad should take it up with the slaves who used religion as a way to survive the horrifying abuse imposed on them by their masters.

Anyone who says that atheism is the path to freedom from oppression should take a trip to the Soviet Union, circa 1950.

When people have authority over non-consenting others and are able to use force to restrict their autonomy, that's when abuse occurs. It could be a religious institution, a state government, or a private business.

Also, I just want to throw out there the irony of Penn and Teller lecturing *anyone* about being 'holier than thou.'

Blessings
~ND

True those Atheists that believe that religion is the root of all evil and without it we'd be living in utopia are usually plenty religious. There's a reason for the -ism in Atheism.

And then there's the evil cousin of Atheism, Scientism, the silent killer that already far surpassed the human death & misery caused by organized religion. At least the romans crucified people, for everyone to see how petty they are to resort to that, the modern equivalent is pretty much universally venerated as heroes.

What always bothered me about buddhism are the nihilistic tendencies, I do believe the core idea behind it to be true, but they take such a pessimistic stance about that, only kept in balance by promises of the possibility to escape.

Also them denying their psychedelic/shamanistic roots is so silly. And them seeing psychedelics as cheating, too easy and a quick fix. Sitting all day thinking about thinking or trying not to think vs. getting shot out of a cannon into orbit, getting cut to pieces by interdimensional beings, spending felt years there, getting bombarded by information and trying to piece together everything afterwards having inherent amnesia. Yes your method sounds so much harder.

So are you saying Buddhism is an offshoot of Hinduism? SWIM couldn't find anything about the psychedelic roots of Buddhism, but SWIM does remember reading or hearing something somewhere about the plausible psychedelic roots of Hinduism. SWIM has just done another Google search, and here's a snippet that might've just been it:



Everyone else everywhere is also saying that Buddhism is an offshoot of Hinduism. So if Buddhism has psychedelic roots, then those roots must come from Hinduism.



Agreed. Here's a very, very good post of Graham Hancock elaborating on this. It's called Meditation vs DMT:
https://www.facebook.com.../posts/10152228383832354

DMT is released endogenously during deep states of meditation, so why these monks see exogenous DMT as cheating is beyond SWIM.

No that wasn't quite what I said. It really depends on if you believe that Gautama Buddha was a historical person that existed, and attained enlightenment by himself without external influence, and that western Nepal was the epicentre. Doesn't matter really though, post-buddha Buddhism was coloured by culture anyways.

But yes for sure Hindu influence, just look at the art, but the real question is, where did Hinduism come from? I'm not sure. The whole situation in South Asia is so complex, so I drew a map. I know it's a mess, but I hope I can explain it well enough so it becomes clear what I mean. This not a map about the spread of Buddhism, but about the spread of culture & genes. Most of it is pretty certain, some of it opinion. But the real hypothetical paths are the arrows marked with a question mark.

Green circles mark locations of ancient high cultures.

Turkey Göbekli Tepe
Pakistan/India Border Indus Valley Civilization
Cambodia Khmer Temples
Indonesia Former Continent, Gunung Padang etc

The Cyan circle stands for shamanistic nomadic tribes.

The yellow circles are major buddhist sites.

Afghanistan Bamiyan Buddha Statues, keep getting blown up by Taliban
Western Nepal, supposed birthplace of Gautama Buddha
Tibet, Tibet

Red Circles are South Indian Peoples

Purple Circles are Middle Eastern/Aryan Peoples

? Nomads West
Highly speculative that the Göbekli Tepe civ. was founded by central asian Turks, but possible.

? Nomads East

? East

I'm not sure how far into India the Cambodians got if at all.

Okay now the interesting stuff. Where did Hinduism & the South Indian people come from?
Recent genetic analysis showed that the north and south indians were distinct tribes. And that the closest relatives of the South Indians live on the Andaman Islands click, home of pretty much the only uncontacted tribe in the world outside of the equatorial jungles(if you don't count getting shot at with arrows as contact.). So where did their ancestors and therefore the ancestors of the South Indians come from? Especially since they likely had a hand in the formation of the Indus Valley Civilization. Although that culture also might have come from the middle east, or both.

Three options in my opinion.

? South Cambodia

? Indonesia

And the last one is the most far out one.

The big double circle ? to the south

Some (nationalist) Tamil writers keep insisting that their people came from a now sunken continent south of South India. Commonly known as Lemuria (note, location just a guess). Considering Graham Hancock keeps on piling up credible evidence in support of his theories, and you can see most of it anyways on satellite images. The recent genetic evidence that the South Indian didn't come from the north, amonst other things is why I think it's a valid option.

Personally I think Lemura = Madagascar, or at least Madagascar is what's left of it, the plant life is pretty similar if you compare Sri Lanka & South India with Madagascar.
Just a theory, who knows.

About drugs and Hinduism/Buddhism. Not even a question for Hinduism.
I think early Buddhists were stoners & shroomers for sure. Nepal is the Cannabis diversity hotspot in the area considering the size of the country, only rivalled by the Altai Mountains in Central Asia. Also note the orange shroom on the map, that's Chitwan National Park, a particulary low elevation & tropical area within Nepal, famous for shrooms. If Buddha were to smoke some charras at his home town, he could levitate there in like 5 minutes .

Not so sure about late buddhist, might just copied the style sober, or they might genuinely reach exactly the same states naturally.

Tibetans are different..No known drug culture at all. Still they went faaaar out. Masters of ego death. Check this out, 3D model of an 2D Thangka: click click2

Care to back that claim up? The whole declaring a wild hypothesis as fact trope has really gotten old...

Care to elaborate on that? In my experience, 'scientism' is little more than a snarl-word by folks who tend not have much first-hand experience with the scientific method.

Blessings
~ND

That's a fascinating map you've drawn up Hermes. Do you have any thoughts on indigenous Australian/pacific nations?
Because if Hancock's history turns out to be somewhat correct, it would appear as though this region remained relatively untouched from the disaster/s he outlines.

@ Nathanial.Dread

Imho it's a valid term, and you've just helped explain why. First-hand direct experience & contemplation, is that to be discounted in the quest for knowledge? There are plenty approaches to seeking truth, including the stance that truth objectively isn't real.
You may choose verifiable experimentation to be the best option, which is a reasonable stance to take, but imho it's foolish to not be aware of its limitations. It's one of the few things I like about Nietzsche, his realization that science is great at describing how things are, but fails at explaining why things are the way the are. I try to not pick favorites.

Wiki:


Just look at those Thangka videos I've posted in my last post. Would you really be comfortable claiming that Tibetan monks know nothing about architecture?

But yeah I admit it was a bad term for what I was trying to get across, language failed me.
I meant a few scientific & political/economic ideologies being the root cause for what I consider toxic for society. Scientism among them, especially for the population to keep silent when absolutely redundant & nefarious technologies are implemented, all for the believe in a higher power(science, or government). Then there's the ideologies of the ruling class, Eugenics,Technocracy,Social Darwinism etc.

@Sphorange

Well I think it's safe to say that in recent history, the aboriginal Australians probably came from Papua New Guinea. As for before that & the Poly,Micro etc-nesians, I don't know.

I faintly recall having read that Papuans have a good chunk of Indonesian ancestry. I think it's fair to say that the Nesians have East/Central Asian ancenstry. From when and where though, I don't know. Could have been a few tribes of the Siberians that made it to northern & south America. Peruvians supposedly made it to the eastern Islands. Interesting to note in that context are the Olmec jade masks that are of a chinese style.

Yonaguni Japan is also of interest as the location of a hypothetical ancient high culture.

Then there's the myth of Mu. I'm not sure what to think of it. Certainly not much to see much on satellite images, as opposed to the supposed locations of Atlantis & Lemuria. I'll attach some pictures of those two, what I find suspicious are these gigantic fissures.
But then there's also the huge landmass under New Zealand & Polynesia. Certainly the only thing visible in the area that looks like a continent.

Yeah Australia was in a comparably safe spot. But still the sudden rise of sea levels were still no joke if Hancock is right, which I think he is. Up to people like him to really get into it and look at what makes sense from the timeline. Genetic analysis also keeps supporting some of these theories.

I'll also post an interesting map from James Churchward.

You also might enjoy this blog post.

I'm still not entirely sure what 'scientism' means in this context though. It sounds as though you're suggesting that science is the root cause of cultural toxicity, which just doesn't square with my understanding of what science is. Yeah, it has limitations (limitations that the world would do well to understand), but how is science responsible for the implemantation of "redundant and nefarious technologies?"

People have been doing terrible things to eachother since WAY before science came onto the scene.

Blessings
~ND

Yeah I had another paragraph in there explaining some more, but I already felt my reply was too long so I deleted it. And to be honest I don't want to go into some of the details publically.

But as I said, poor choice of words. Authority would have been much better. There is not one single root cause for all societal issues, but rather a chimera made up of The Government, Science, Religion & private Organizations/Interests of course. I don`t have a problem with science, I just think it's dangerous how it is kept unchecked [and the way scientists are financed] and often taken advantage of by the other parts of the chimera.

And the blind belief in science/authority by the general population, which is steadily shifting from the old religions, to science/atheism [as a religion, but ultimately authority] (not that I think the old paradigm is any better), is allowing that abuse to happen.

Understandable?

About the technologies and other ways this abuse manifests..Pick your poison..literally
How about Bisphenol-A in almost all plastic food packaging and tin cans? A substance first discovered to be a estrogen substitute, what is that doing there?
Or how about the several incidents of genetically modified mosquitoes and fruit flies released into the wild? GMOs in agriculture are redundant. We'd be much better served reversing the system away from monoculture and reintroduce real sustainable agriculture. All about patentability, selling pesticides (minimum negligent, maybe intentional, who knows), committing biopiracy while preventing others to etc etc. How about the long list of additives of tobacco, freebasing it to make it more addictive, using radioactive fertiliser. Or how about the pandemic of the year scam going on forever now. The list goes on.

I hope thats clearer. Sorry English isn't my native language and my brains fucks up a lot when I switch too often between languages.

Blind belief is unavoidable. No matter what your beliefs are, there isn't any way of looking at the world that doesn't require some kind of 'foundation', some axioms or dogma's, whatever term you'd prefer.

Ofcourse, to question everything is good as a mental exercise. But i think that blind faith in science isn't so bad.
Not when the alternative is: 'everything goes'.

"there is no objective truth, everybody has his own truth and it's all equally valid" is quite a dangerous point of view.

It's the starting point for all fact-free politic's. If there is no objective truth, then why would eye-gouging even be a problem?
Why would the invasion in Iraq be a problem?
Some people belief that there where WMD's in Iraq and some people don't, and it's all equally valid. Some people belief that the Iraq invasion had catastrophic results and some people don't and it's all equally valid.

The acceptance of 'objective truth' is good because it forces us to take responsibility. It forces us to be humble. Science is humbling. In some branches of science, the majority of the experiments done, fail. Failure is good because it's humbling.

How can a religion fail? It can't, because you can never prove that something that you can't see, smell, touch or hear, doesn't exist.
So of all dogma's, the scientific one is the least dogmatic.

Lack of ethic's is just that: a lack of ethics.
You can't blame science or religion for it. Everybody is responsible for his own actions. If the least little excuse, like another persons authority, is enough for someone, to abolish any form of ethic's or the notion of personal responsibility, then thát lacking is the actual problem.

Good points. For the masses, as things are now, most certainly true.
For some individuals, not necessarily. Are you familiar with cartesian doubt?
It's a way of thinking pioneered (at least in the modern era) by René Descartes. The only foundation is, that he thought the only thing he can be certain of is that he exists, with the reasoning that he must exists since he is contemplating his own existence. Using this as the only starting point, he worked himself up by dissecting every concept & belief into the smallest possible units, only believing what he knows for certain to be true. Socrates comes to mind too.

It's not no foundation, but imho a pretty good one. It's debatable if that should be categorized as a blind belief or not. But if it is, how could there be anything else but blind beliefs? EDIT: Just realized I've come to the same conclusion as you, depending on if you consider believing to exist to be a blind belief .

As I said I try not to pick favorites and consider everything.
I certainly agree with everything you've said below that. Blind belief in science is certainly the best option compared to blind belief in other ideologies, but blind belief is blind belief.

What you said made me think of this Terence McKenna snap that I've just recently saw here somewhere posted again : Terence McKenna denounces Relativism in 5 minutes (with subtitles)

I do have to wonder sometimes though, if he still would be with us today if he'd placed his trust in something like Ayahuasca instead of cutting edge science, given what we know now about Harmalas & DMT and cancer. Not to forget his love for CBD rich Lebanese hash.

@ Hermes
During a meditation I had an insight (likely bogus and full of confirmation bias) in which the myth of the rainbow serpent of indigenous Australian peoples was actually the tail of a comet as it entered our atmosphere at just the right angle and time of day to refract enough sunlight to create a rainbow in the sky seen by many indigenous nations. The myth states the serpent shaped the landscape creating mountains and valleys and rivers - which is concurrent with an impact of sufficient proportion.

You might enjoy this read mate . It's about the connection of dragon myths & celestial objects.
Thought first this was a multi-parter. A bit meager that one article. But he elaborates some more about the idea, can't recall where exactly though.

Thanks for the link man. Yeah he mentions serpents briefly. Im sure if we approached an anthropologist on the matter we'd be laughed at. Aboriginal mythology is a nice glimpse into a time where our species was deeply implicated in its environment. Where stories and song describe the landscape and flora and fauna. It's just a wild guess but I'd say this form of description and language was around for a very long time, preceding the domestication of fire and tool use. Where extraspecies communication was achieved if not - the illusion of it was there.
The dreamtime was a time before deeper thought and contemplation, where the cognitive modus operandi was instinctual and animalistic. But what was important for group survival was told through narrative and song. If a particular song was sung in conjunction with and action such as turtle fishing - to the apprentice observer these two things are inseparable - The song and action cannot exist without each other. Like a dance I guess.

Anyway I've hijacked this thread enough with my nonsense.

Yeah but what do they know, few of them can put themselves in other peoples shoes. It's all primitive to them, ask the Yanomami . People like Mircea Eliade are better to ask imho.

True that, the cultures that perfected this method of transmission of information never developed writing, and why would they.

I def. agree with your line of thinking that this is something in the collective psyche because of cataclysms. But there is a deeper reasoning why the dichotomy of the winged serpent & sun/lion gods is present in all old religions. I recommend looking a bit into gnosticism, especially the myth of Sophia in that context. gnosis.org is your friend.

Yeah this thread is far off topic, but I'm more to blame than you. Appreciated your input.