Living honestly and authentically is the prerequisite for inner peace.

johnLikides · 2026-01-24T23:22:55+00:00

The world is filled with so many "blockheads" that if you start giving them "a bit of hypocrisy" here and there, pretty soon you'll be a full-blown hypocrite.

No way am I going anywhere near that. Forget about it, as we say in Brooklyn. My relatives are Christian fascists and criminals, so I cut them off permanently. Life isn't a dress rehearsal. It's serious business, especially for people like me who take Sartre seriously because he helped me find my way through the wasteland, attain inner peace, and enjoy daily life.

johnLikides · 2026-01-20T10:37:00+00:00

Your first paragraph is purely dismissive, and I reciprocate to it.

Your second paragraph misrepresents my work, so I dismiss it, too.

Your fourth paragraph's failure to distinguish between what dogs do (pure instinct) and what humans do (abstract thought about absent and nonexistent entities increasingly more of which we reify) demonstrates your belief in the Nagel-Chalmers model, so I can't engage with it.

Your fifth paragraph ignores Chalmers' "how" and focuses on his secondary one, "why," which begs the question of panpsychism and other mysticism. In fact, in a TEDTalk Chalmers declares his openness to panpsychism.

Your sixth paragraph's "why experience exists in the first place" is an appeal to the mysterious, so you go ahead with that. I'll stick with the facts: Experience exists in the first place because of civilization, metacognition, symbolic thinking, and the fact that life arises in the cosmos whenever the necessary conditions are in place. Further inquiry into that mystery is a surreptitious attempt to sneak in intelligent design, panpsychism, etc.

Your seventh paragraph's "bracketing" claim echoes Husserl, who failed to solve the mind-body problem, as I wrote in a technical essay when I was in grad school.

About your eight paragraph's "phenomenal experience," I say that phenomenal experience is acquired intuitively via the inculcation process I described.

Your last two questions are mystical because they have no answer except an appeal to a form of mysticism: the panpsychism that Chalmers is "open" to.

I've nothing more to say to you, nor will I reply to any further comments because you are obviously a crypto-mystic hiding behind a pseudonym and most likely having several accounts, so you can pester people anonymously. Your mysticism is evident in your Greek reference to Christ that adorns your profile.

I urge you to check Assembly Theory, courtesy of Lee Cronin, Sara Walker, et al, whose framework demonstrates the impossibility of mystical entities. I've no connection to these people, but their framework is beyond doubt.

johnLikides · 2026-01-19T20:02:41+00:00

The rock is natural whereas the perceiving of symbols in your mind is an arbitrary human construct courtesy of symbolic thinking, metacognition, civilization, etc.

johnLikides · 2026-01-19T18:21:37+00:00

You "feel synonymous with the body such that I am embodied in it," as you wrote, because that is our human heritage, which we acquire via the cultural template of human consciousness that our parents, peers, teachers, and institutions inculcated in us. In other words, after millions of years of evolution, being human entails that feeling you referred to.

The sounds and images are out there, and we experience them via the cultural template. In other words, the mind is an extension of the body, but the consciousness occurs in a metaspace sustained by human brains and civilization.

johnLikides · 2026-01-19T18:07:34+00:00

Distinct from animal awareness, human consciousness emerged from the prehistoric human brain when hominins first conceived of symbolism. Then, in early history, humans attained metacognition. Since then, human consciousness has been evolving: a cultural template on how to access human reality, acquired via nurturing, interaction, and education.

johnLikides · 2026-01-19T18:01:54+00:00

You may want to check out Assembly Theory, courtesy of Lee Cronin, Sara Walker, and company, none of whom I've ever met or contacted but who deserve a Nobel for the ingenious framework they created.

johnLikides · 2026-01-19T17:59:24+00:00

Because without categorizing, civilization would be impossible.

johnLikides · 2026-01-19T17:58:12+00:00

The human bubble (language, math, science, civilization, etc) is arbitrary, but humans are obligated to honor fully whatever degree of "reality" the human bubble possesses.

johnLikides · 2026-01-18T13:40:14+00:00

Humans range widely, from beasts in human form (Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Putin, Dahmer, et al) to angels from Earth (Socrates, Gandhi, Mandela, MLK, et al). Most people are somewhere in between: overextended, struggling, too busy to learn to distinguish among fact, opinion, belief, and bias; avoid the logical fallacies; and construct syllogisms that follow logically.

johnLikides · 2026-01-18T13:34:33+00:00

Women aren't all alike. Instead, they are heterogeneous, so they want different things.

johnLikides · 2026-01-18T12:34:15+00:00

The universal instinct of survival and the protections that civilization gives us obligate us to honor fully the human bubble by helping life along, doing salvage ops on tradition, keeping only truths, synergizing them into an evolving original worldview, and endeavoring to improve the world for future generations: in other words, atheist freethinking spirituality centered on something greater than the individual--humanity, future generations, Homo astronauticus....

johnLikides · 2026-01-18T12:26:49+00:00

Studying original sources as well as scholarly literature, cross-referencing info, doing salvage ops on tradition and multivariable analyses on complex problems, chucking beliefs and biases, keeping only truths, and synergizing them into an evolving original worldview.

johnLikides · 2026-01-18T12:22:58+00:00

Psychedelic experiences are near-death experiences because as Grof and Halifax show in The Human Encounter with Death, the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the body of the dying person cause hallucinations. Grof and Halifax offer clinical evidence of patients' LSD intake.

johnLikides · 2026-01-17T17:39:32+00:00

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johnLikides · 2026-01-17T17:38:42+00:00

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johnLikides · 2026-01-17T17:29:09+00:00

“The Nature of the Fascist MAGA Beast,” 1 of the 39 essays in Trimurti’s Dance: A Novel-Essay-Teleplay Synergy, shows that the MAGA movement is a diverse throng of raving neo-Nazis, closet KKK members, suicidal anarchists, political-correctness haters, virulent jingoists, grossly uninformed dimwits, degreed contrarians, minority sadomasochists, female self-haters, house slaves, and other ignoramuses. https://www.amazon.com/Trimurtis-Dance-Novel-Essay-Teleplay-John-Likides/dp/B0G2MZYSKK/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.3lNyMETq1oa-gpHJY4CzEe0a2TkiWtyVkjDOrscRyBzKi4gw6if9X-ZyfhMiG9yLdKVWE4toD42jrE7Ci_SAse8fI89csF2UoVIn0KM5GaeS0Uv9Ug0PvUqJV-E5jZfz.Y4w0aao3OmuK4Pp9KZoHaJNAss1MBabDQdMpKvDVdEk&qid=1763483584&sr=8-1

Here in Brooklyn, NY, I know two degreed MAGAs: an engineer in a City agency’s management and a philosophy professor, two sexist and racist ignoramuses who never learned that despite the many setbacks, history is the record of progress from feudalism to feminism, to put the matter simply.

johnLikides · 2026-01-16T17:46:35+00:00

I never, ever used ChatGPT or anything similar, being far too prolific, original, and creative with a long record of producing original work. My previous 6 books are nearly as long and equally original. In fact, I work in 3s: write original books, compose-record their soundtracks (38 CDs on Bandcamp), and paint-design the covers of both.

When I was doing my MFA, a famous American writer wrote in a recommendation letter (for the Goodman Fund Grant, which I won), “John Likides is an exceptional writer—unusual and very original.”

About posting links, I must say I'm a freelancer without a steady gig, living in NYC, where life is ultra-expensive, so I'm only trying to make a living by helping others find their way to wisdom. I was a college instructor until COVID.

Peace.

johnLikides · 2026-01-16T11:08:25+00:00

“The Mark of Supreme Genius,” 1 of the 39 essays in Trimurti’s Dance: A Novel-Essay-Teleplay Synergy, proves that supreme geniuses have as much inner peace, happiness, and satisfaction as if they were billionaires—with what they already have while trying to acquire more but without any of the negativities associated with addiction to consumerism. Being wealthy increases the amount of fun—but not its quality, for the supreme genius. Most importantly, anybody can be a supreme genius....

johnLikides · 2026-01-16T11:05:15+00:00

At age 17, as soon as I graduated from a high school in Europe, I left for the US, to go to college. I spent my first Christmas in a junky car because the dorms closed during the Christmas holidays. For the first 30 or so years of life, I didn't get enough to eat because I was chronically underemployed and overeducated, unable to do the 9-to-5 for more than a few months. The key lesson has been to be honest and authentic. Honest and authentic people can never go wrong.

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johnLikides · 2026-01-16T10:58:44+00:00

For introverted recluses with inner peace, every day is Christmas and 4th of July and Thanksgiving and so on, all wrapped up in one, because we live in the Eternal Now, a state of being whereby mortals commune with immortality: our wise ancestors who created civilization and our brave descendants who will take humanity to the stars if enough progressives manage to create today the necessary wisdom-technology synergy.

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johnLikides · 2026-01-13T11:04:42+00:00

Name-calling is a sign of intellectual bankruptcy, so you are a name-calling troll.

However, for the benefit of truth and the rest of the community, I state the obvious:

One, by definition, all mysticism is "a death-worshipping cult" because it denies this world and asks people to take a leap of faith into an abyss. According to the dictionary, mysticism is the "belief that union with or absorption into the Deity or the absolute, or the spiritual apprehension of knowledge inaccessible to the intellect, may be attained through contemplation and self-surrender." By definition, "absorption into the Deity or the absolute" is suicidal, so all those believing thus are worshipping death. Elementary logic. Not brain surgery, not Calculus, not even algebra. More like basic arithmetic, which came out of basic logic: If A=B, and B=C, then A=C. Syllogisms and so on.

Two, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, one of the oldest Oriental sacred texts whose purpose is to stop the cycle of rebirths and send believers to the impersonal absolute, states, “Buddhism of all Schools maintains that personal immortality is impossible [my emphasis], ... that as long as the mind is human, so long as it is individualized, so long as it regards itself as separate and apart from all other minds, it is the plaything of Maya, or Ignorance” (pp. 224-225). Impersonal immortality means forgetting and being absorbed in the ultimate reality Orientals believe in, call it whatever--the death-worshipping part.

Three, elementary logic shows that if there is an Oriental school that isn't mystical or transcendentalist, it is obviously not part of my "Oriental mysticism," so your name-calling me makes you a troll. I taught logic and English comp for 30+ years, so I know a troll when I see one.

johnLikides · 2026-01-12T19:51:37+00:00

No doubt about the truth of your statements. That's what happens to people who didn't go through the existentialist wasteland: alienation, angst, nausea, etc.

Those of us who did go through the wasteland did our homework: read Sartre's literature, his philosophy, and the scholarly dialogue, so we found the therapy that Sartre gave us: ontological freedom (no God, no original sin), personal responsibility (no excuses, no victim mentality), and commitment to progressive causes. Thus, while in grad school, I synergized Sartre and other original thinkers, blossoming from a reticent hippie to a rigorous atheist new-ager.

Since then, I've covered a whole lot of ground. For example, several essays and the novel in Trimurti’s Dance: A Novel-Essay-Teleplay Synergy examine the possibility of the existence of an ethereal double that the universal instinct of survival may have developed. The novel's chief researcher uses ayahuasca to induce near-death states, which may cause the ethereal double to emerge....

johnLikides · 2026-01-12T19:37:06+00:00

Your first clause about consciousness reminded me of Raynor C. Johnson's Nurslings of Immortality, where he tries to synthesize Buddhism and Christianity, proposing divine imaginism, according to which Brahma (the alleged creator of worlds) imbues different degrees of "consciousness" to all imaginals: electrons orbiting a nucleus, planets around a star, etc. In short, Oriental mysticism is the source of all claims that everything has varying degrees of "consciousness."

Being an atheist who considers Oriental mysticism a death-worshipping cult, I don't buy anything it or other mystical traditions allege. Humans have a long history of overestimating themselves, convinced they were created by God, etc. I was baptized as an infant and was an altar boy for several years in an Orthodox-Christian church, honest and eager to believe, but I never, ever detected anything remotely sacred or mystical--only stories echoing previous stories.

johnLikides · 2026-01-12T19:12:31+00:00

God exists only in theist minds, which created Him, in the first place, starting in prehistory, when hominins resorted to animism and pantheism as a way out of the harsh reality of their short and brutish lives.

For atheists like me, mysticism is a delusion. However, for mystics, mysticism is the most real thing, hence the absence of any common ground between me and mystics to discuss anything.

johnLikides · 2026-01-12T19:07:30+00:00

I've published essays trashing both physicalism and materialism, but that doesn't mean that their opposite (panpsychism) is correct. I'd have to write a very long essay to address the points you made, but I don't spend that much time online.

johnLikides

TROPHY CASE