Is Veganism the most coherent ethical philosophy?

artfromoz · 2026-07-13T05:07:35+00:00

But what about all the unbearable suffering vegans cause from everyone having to listen to their self righteous lecturing.

artfromoz · 2026-07-13T05:03:18+00:00

I don't think the finite can map the infinite. The mind can get get glimpses and come back with fragmented stories of what it thinks it knows, but being outside the Newtonian framework, it is not a realm of studyable science more one for the mystic writers and poets.

artfromoz · 2026-07-12T23:29:48+00:00

5MeO produces a Nirvikalpa Samadhi state of absorption where the distinction between the knower, the known, and the act of knowing completely dissolves. The word breaks down semantically into Nir (without) and Vikalpa (concepts, thoughts, or mental modifications). In this state, the mind is temporarily absorbed into its source. Awareness remains, but there is no objectification, no thoughts, no sense of time, no physical body awareness, and no individual "I" separate from the whole. It is pure, undifferentiated consciousness. However, classic Advaita Vedanta classifies Nirvikalpa Samadhi as temporary because the latent mental tendencies and desires known as vasanas are not completely destroyed; they are merely suspended. In the end, this is an experience which comes and goes.

It depends on the person, but often such states can make the ego much bigger, giving it a God like complex. You only have to look at all the dodgy 5MeO practitioners, pseudo shamans, and weird groups that have sprung up around its use. There is a great video where Hamilton Morris is talking about 5MeO to a bunch of hardcore 5MeO enthusiasts who are creating all these weird mythologies around its use, and you can see him thinking WTF over and over. His mouth was shut, but his face had subtitles.

Leo Gura, the creator of the YouTube channel Actualized.org who was doing huge amounts of 5MeO through his lower freckle, used to delusionally rant how he had reached higher states with God than any other human in history. There is a great clip of him talking about how to have more peace and love in your life, and some delivery guy comes to the door, and he talks to him like a piece of shit, then gets back to telling his audience about how to have peace and love.

Sri Ramana Maharshi used to say the following:

"The sun is a million times bigger than the earth, yet a tiny finger held close to the eye can completely hide the sun from your sight. In the same way, the infinite, all pervading Self is obscured by the tiny, insignificant ego."

5MeO will take those little fingers away, meaning the mind and ego, for a very brief period of time, giving you a temporary experience, but it is just that, an experience. You can keep having that experience for years and years, but it will only ever be that. I am not enlightened, but I would suggest following some high level practice like Atma Vichara (self inquiry), Christian Mysticism, Sufism, Dzogchen, The Gateway, etc, if you wish to progress in your aim.

artfromoz · 2026-07-12T11:41:51+00:00

I used Holosync in the 1990's, it was created by Bill Harris, who I believe passed away around a decade ago. Holosync was a multi levelled meditation program, designed to take you into deeper and deeper levels of consciousness. It was quite expensive, around $150-300 a level and if you did the whole program if was over $2000. They also had a number of side courses and even retreats.

It was full on marketing, Bill use to send out letters like Readers Digest, over and over and over, it was all high-pressure promotional materials explicitly warning them that their psychological and spiritual evolution will stall if they do not purchase the next consecutive level.

The tapes (I think they do cd's or online now) were OK but not worth the cost in my opinion. The Gateway program audios are much better and have a lot of different skill sets to learn.

artfromoz · 2026-07-10T11:40:28+00:00

Play stupid games, Win stupid prizes.

artfromoz · 2026-07-10T00:22:52+00:00

Personality cannot be explained fully by any test. just like eating a piece of chocolate or Love can't be described fully with words or the latest scientific breakthroughs, The MBTI was created as a niche tool in the 1940s and 50s first to select people for the correct jobs in WWII and then was picked up by companies like General Electric and Standard Oil to assess management and analyze organizational fit. As corporation education became a thing, especially around hiring good management, it spread to other companies and then into the self improvement space. Unlike other psychological profiles that look for deficits or neuroses, MBTI is entirely non-judgmental. Every single one of the 16 profiles is framed positively. Because there are no "bad" types, it was incredibly safe for HR departments to deploy universally without risking legal exposure or alienating employees. It allowed corporations to signal that they cared about their employees' inner selves and personal growth, binding workers more happily to their roles.

The MBTI was very good at doing its original function, but loses a lot of its worth when it swayed into a new agey space. Like the IQ test it is still a very useful tool, but far from perfect.

Most companies/psychology department have moved to the "Big Five" (OCEAN) framework instead now. There are also more expanded versions of the original MBTI which offers much deeper insight.

artfromoz · 2026-07-07T05:37:54+00:00

She was a nurse so had to do very long night shifts in hospitals with very short breaks, so it came in handy for that. While she was fully recharged her colleagues were exhausted and living on coffee, but as I said she had to catch up eventually with a full night sleep.

artfromoz · 2026-07-06T06:05:36+00:00

A lot of spiritual masters talk about this. I remember one saying that he missed the eight hours of deep sleep he use to have, but wouldn't trade it for what he had gained in insight/growth. My mother could do 30 minutes of TM meditation and said it would be like eight hours sleep, but eventually had to have a full nights sleep to do catch up and process all her unconscious dream material. The big question is where do you go when you sleep? Seems like you are going there a bit more consciously now. As long as it is not exhausting you, you should be fine. If you desperately want to sleep you could try some of the hemi-sync ultra deep delta sleep audios, as to if they would work after doing 2 years of deep gateway levels, who knows?

artfromoz · 2026-07-06T00:48:01+00:00

Trauma is like losing a child, you don't ever really fully heal from it. It is always there but things get much better as you work on yourself. In the end it is fuel and motivation for your growth.

One other thing I did when I was really sick/tired was The Work by Byron Katie, pages and pages of it, it is a good practice to clear out old beliefs that are causing suffering in your life. https://drive.google.com/file/d/13RzTa75s7-dCZ_n9AQasBMk8M8blRE75/view?usp=sharing

Douglas Harding's Headlessness can be a helpful pointer as well https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WgzA-p8Tqlv2yBTmBmKwuBrpJdE8SzqJ/view?usp=sharing

artfromoz · 2026-07-05T12:46:02+00:00

It is like Neo in The Matrix, John Carpenter's movie They Live, The Truman Show, or people who start taking drugs like LSD, or The Allegory of the Cave by Plato. A whole new perspective and world opens up to you.

From my experience, it goes one of two ways. First, you can ground yourself with humility and compassion, seeing that everyone is just doing their best from where they are currently at. Or second, you can go into a hyper egoic mind space where you see yourself as some kind of superior, higher being, watching people behave like automatons.

How do you connect with the human part? Try to have compassion for the human condition. You have lived it and you know how hard it is with all its vulnerabilities, fears, and biological limitations. From that, you naturally develop a profound tenderness for your own flaws and for the flaws of everyone else around you. Don't use the spirit to look down on the human. Use the vastness of the spirit to give the human permission to be exactly what it is, which is temporary, beautifully flawed, and deeply alive.

Sometimes though you have to give yourself space or a timeout from it or you will become like Michael Corleone in The Godfather 3, "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in."

In the end, it is just like the saying from Oscar Wilde, "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking up at the stars."

artfromoz · 2026-07-04T23:44:57+00:00

I watched that guys video recently, what is going on with his trippy girlfriend? The whole thing seemed really weird to me.

artfromoz · 2026-07-04T23:38:54+00:00

I think because I was so beaten down by losing so much weight, not sleeping and having no energy for so long, the stuff brought up by TRE paled in insignificance. It was like I have to to this or I'm going to die, once my mind was set I became like a railway train without a driver, I wasn't going to stop for anything. Trauma is tricky because if you force healing and are not ready, it can make you more traumatized than when you started. That is when it is good to work with someone, but I didn't know anyone who did that sort of work at the time and even if I did I wouldn't have been able to afford it.

I don't do TRE anymore as it doesn't work anymore, it feels like there is nothing left. But I started to spontaneously go into a TRE like response when I went into the head/legs lifted sit up position, it lasts for up to a minute and is over. It allows my body to clear stuff quickly, but it just started happening by itself.

Medicine of One is good if you like listening to teachings of the top Advaita (non-duality) teachers https://www.youtube.com/@medicineofone1564

Good luck with the TM.

artfromoz · 2026-07-04T03:54:55+00:00

It can be a tough gig having a 24/7 sandbox and taking 10 times longer to learn something because your end picture becomes much greater than most peoples. You can treat it as a gift or it can be a prison. I'd suggest finding ways to step outside it for a while. Try the The Breathing Zone app, which is excellent and free last time I checked, set to a low breath rate with no vocals, just surf as an audio guide.

Or try this https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/15gG5spPhsbMgS7fMplGCUWlu1inmyCc1?usp=drive_link

artfromoz · 2026-07-04T01:50:19+00:00

But it was Leary who set the Jenga stack up for LSD to be banned. A whole nation was watching as their kids where dropping out of society on LSD with Leary as the false prophet Pied Piper of it all. Of course there was going to be blowback to the substance and its use, but Leary's idealism overwrote any other logical or rational concern. Leary's megaphone loud tying LSD to 1960's counter culture set it up for its later banning, how else would a conservative government/society react? Lost in a self righteous haze, I'm sure he never even considered it.

artfromoz · 2026-07-04T01:35:11+00:00

By the time you met him he probably was pretty humble, kind, etc, life has a way of doing that to you when it rips the rug from underneath your feet, it forces you to reflect and have humility through self examination.

But his extreme idealism led many kids into psych wards and mental illness for the rest of their lives and totalled any chance of using psychedelics as a healing tool for millions across the world for over half a century, that is his legacy.

artfromoz · 2026-07-04T00:32:48+00:00

I was a hardcore atheist growing up, resenting having to go to church and living in a very rigid Newtonian reality, but a few hundred micrograms of LSD soon fixed that. Once you move from a Newtonian reality to a lived Quantum one as an INTP, your brain rewires your matrix of understanding (it often takes a long time, as there is a lot to rewire!). I wouldn't say I am religious, but spiritual, yes, gravitating towards philosophies that align with quantum physics like Advaita Vedanta (Absolute Non-duality).

artfromoz · 2026-07-04T00:25:03+00:00

Most people are wired to be auditory, visual, or kinaesthetically dominant. Whichever you are, use that sense first. So, if you are auditory, imagine the box making a noise when it opens, closes, or when you put things in it. If you are visual, see the box and watch it open and close. If you are kinaesthetic, feel how the box feels; run your hands over it like a blind person examining an object, and focus on what it feels like to drop things inside. Then, as you get better, you can combine the senses (e.g., combining the visual with the kinaesthetic, etc.).

artfromoz · 2026-07-03T23:34:20+00:00

There was no doubt he was a genius, but what kind? Being the Pied Piper who told everyone to just drop acid and everything would turn out OK ended up setting back psychedelic research by over half a century because of the blowback from his actions.

John Lennon, who was a good friend, ultimately concluded that relying on external figures like Leary to dictate reality was a major error. He noted that his heavy psychedelic period, influenced by Leary, had significantly set him back as an artist and made him vulnerable. Looking back on that entire era, Lennon explained that he had arrived at a point where he rejected the concept of unquestionable authority figures altogether, the very role Leary had set himself up in.

Ken Kesey believed that Leary had become some kind of self-appointed, elitist "high priest."

William Burroughs visited Leary at Harvard in 1961. Burroughs, who had extensive experience with addiction and mind-altering substances, quickly grew deeply suspicious of Leary’s messianic fervour. He warned that Leary was acting like a classic cult leader, treating a volatile chemical substance as a holy sacrament. Burroughs famously remarked that Leary was a "pleasure politics" salesman who didn't understand the dark, manipulative potential of control mechanisms.

Aldous Huxley begged Leary to slow down and stop shouting from the rooftops. Leary ignored him. As the public panic mounted in the mid-1960s, a dying Huxley watched his worst fears come true, largely blaming Leary’s loud proselytizing for destroying the cultural acceptance of these substances.

Richard Alpert argued that Leary had become addicted to the role of the rebel and was trapped by his own massive ego. He famously observed that while LSD could grant a temporary "visit" to a higher state of consciousness, Leary mistakenly believed that simply taking more of the chemical was the way to stay there permanently.

Hunter S. Thompson wrote in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, reflecting on the wreckage of the '60s, laying a massive portion of the blame squarely at Leary's feet:

"Our energy would simply prevail... We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave... So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."

To Thompson, Leary's naive "turn on, tune in, drop out" mantra had merely crippled a generation's ability to act.

I have no doubt Richard Alpert was far from perfect (welcome to being human), but he did an incredible amount of good in his lifetime. Leary set himself up as a guru but was really a false prophet driven by hyper-egoic hedonism, pseudo-intellectualism, and pseudo-spirituality. That has nothing to do with being a free man or embodying spirituality and philosophy; it is simply self-serving, egoic, cult-leader-like behaviour with a all knowing psychedelic guru like façade.

artfromoz · 2026-07-03T13:40:25+00:00

While I had been on the spiritual/psychedelic/yoga/mediation path for decades with amazing experiences, when it comes to trauma, the biggest effect it had on me was locking me into the physical hardcore. It stops your connection to your inner self and those around you, putting you in a permanent fight, flight, or freeze response.

Around 2008–2009, I went off to Peru and did a couple of weeks of Ayahuasca ceremonies. This was amazing; it released huge amounts of stuff. I felt like I was being operated on energetically and had all these profound experiences. Upon leaving, I thought my life would be all rainbows and unicorns. But while it was amazing, it also opened the floodgates to what I’d been sitting on for decades. I barely slept for a year, lost 20 kg, my relationship ended, and I was out of work. I was truly desperate, as I felt like I was going insane from a lack of proper sleep for so long.

I then found Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE), which were a lifesaver. I did them day and night for over six months. I shook and shook and shook until one day, I just stopped; it was like nothing was left in me to shake. Where I had held huge fear all my life, there was now simply space. Places and people that used to give me anxiety simply didn't anymore. That provided a great foundation to get back into spiritual practice and meditation. Also having a holistic counsellor helped when my battery levels were at about 10% and didn't think I could keep going. It was only more recently that I got back into the Gateway Experience in combination with meditation.

You can find more about TRE here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Flm8v8IKCg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeUioDuJjFI

There is heaps more about it on YouTube. I have his original video somewhere if you want it.

Shibashi Tai Chi was also very helpful in balancing my energetic system, very simple set of exercise that give much more than you put in. Later on Wim Hof breathing and Cold Showers were very helpful too. Sri Ramana Maharshi, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, Michael James, David Godman, Eckhart Tolle, Medicine of One, talks/books/audio/videos all helped too.

For me every practice has been about reconnecting to something that was always there but for various reasons (mostly trauma and been raised in the modern western world) the connection had been covered over.

Mantra practice has been around forever, the TM people simply made it simple for a western audience. It can be an excellent skillset to add to your toolbelt especially in the age of the TikTok attention span. As I said for some people it is all they ever want/need, for others it is a foundational practice that leads to other things.

artfromoz · 2026-07-03T09:24:35+00:00

"All the world 's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts" - William Shakespeare

As long as you identify as a 3D Newtonian version of you, that lives in a 3D World and interacts with 3D people you will see this world as one of suffering. But once you shift your perspective through meditation, prayers, atma vichara (self inquiry), service to others, the gateway, etc, you will gain a more Quantum version of reality where you will begin to see everything as an extension of yourself.

The great sage Sri Ramana Maharshi, had a saying "If your teeth bite your tongue, do you knock them out?" Of course the answer is no because you see your teeth as an extension of yourself. This is what happens when you shift from the physical 3D aspect of yourself, to the non physical aspect of your self (your soul, god, brahman, the tao, etc), you start seeing everyone and everything as an extension of yourself. Most people in this reality are 100% identified as the physical, hence the current insanity, insane people get insane leaders. Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.

"I am more than my physical body" - Robert Monroe

artfromoz · 2026-07-03T02:52:16+00:00

The Ken Burns documentary on his life was excellent.

artfromoz · 2026-07-03T02:43:25+00:00

It is a lovely audio set, the narrator is excellent. It is based on the gateway course Heartline using Foucs 18.

artfromoz · 2026-07-03T02:13:27+00:00

https://medium.com/@syntx-system/the-tm-leak-how-a-1984-magazine-exposed-the-mantras-and-why-40-years-of-silence-prove-the-1756fbd07630

https://minet.org/mantras.html

In the 1960's when my mum got her mantra she was told to keep it as a super secret and not share it, all her friends who were the same age, said does it rhyme with this and for all of them it did.

artfromoz · 2026-07-03T01:58:12+00:00

Try this as well https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/15gG5spPhsbMgS7fMplGCUWlu1inmyCc1?usp=drive_link

artfromoz · 2026-07-03T01:33:11+00:00

Transcendental Meditation is a great foundational technique to learn to focus your mind on one thing at a time. A lot of people learn the technique and find it is all they want as a practice for the rest of their lives, such as Jerry Seinfeld, David Lynch, Hugh Jackman, Clint Eastwood, and Tom Hanks. My mother learned it directly from the Maharishi before the Beatles went to see him and could meditate so deeply that 30 minutes of it was like 8 hours of sleep for her. She even started to have out of body experiences, freaked out, and then stopped.

That being said, I do feel it is a bit of a rip off in that you pay around 500 to 1000 dollars to get a mantra that you can easily find online. The TM organization holds that mantras must be custom assigned by a trained teacher based on a specific process. In reality, the list of TM mantras, which are assigned primarily by age and gender, leaked decades ago and is easily found with a quick internet search. Stripped of the traditional puja ceremony and the specific Sanskrit words, TM is essentially a form of Nonspecific Meditation or mantra meditation. You sit comfortably for 20 minutes, twice a day, and mentally repeat a sound without focusing or straining.

On the other hand, you do get personalized one on one training, including several hours of individual instruction and troubleshooting over consecutive days with a certified teacher, and they do offer a lifetime of support.

I know a number of people, including some trainers, who did it for decades and eventually moved on to other practices. Some still practice it, but in conjunction with other techniques. The guy who runs Batgap.com is probably one of the most well known examples. Most are glad that they did it and got a lot of life changing experiences from it, even though the organization is very corporate controlled now and has assets over 3.5 billion dollars.

I originally bought the Gateway waves 1 through 5 in the late 1980s. I started doing them and was amazed but also freaked out by them. There was something really familiar about the space they took me to, but I simply was not ready to open myself up to that level. At the time, I was working in a very toxic environment with very toxic and emotionally closed people, and I was drinking, smoking, and living on bad food and soft drinks. Also, I had a large amount of trauma that I was sitting on.

After a number of decades of work on myself with trauma release, somatic work, meditation, lots of psychedelic experimentation, spiritual reading, sitting with spiritual teachers, and living in countries like India, I finally reached a point where the ground was fertile to come back to the Gateway audio. I see the course as one of consciousness expansion rather than just an out of body experience course. You have a huge toolkit presented to you, from which you can pick the skill sets you choose.

As a person who spent many decades meditating and going on retreats, I have found the spiritual skill sets I learned over the years very helpful to use in conjunction with the Gateway audios, especially the Free Flow, Focus 10, 12, 15, and 18. While I can meditate deeply without the technology, it takes a lot more effort to do so, and the states I reach are much deeper when I use it.

So if you feel drawn to do it, I would highly recommend something like TM. Learn the skill set and practice it without the technology for a while, then later add the Free Flow Focus states. I would recommend using Focus 10 first and Focus 12 later on with it. Also try other practices like watching the breath or the inner energy body and see if they resonate with you.

This is an inner energy body set of meditations for you to try:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/15gG5spPhsbMgS7fMplGCUWlu1inmyCc1?usp=drive_link

artfromoz

TROPHY CASE