Derealization

[massen]

I think my brain finally utterly uncloaked everything during that game. Ev-e-ry-thing. You know how the brain filters out stimuli and modes of perception in order to function as a coherent self? It was like all of that -- ALL OF IT -- had just dropped away, exhausted from me never letting life just be. It was my brain said, "Okay motherfucker you really wanna see life without filters, here ya go chief, enjoy."...

Like I said above, the reward this time was a freedom and peace I had never felt before, never thought even possible.

Yes, I think what you describe is what the TBOD calls The First Bardo. Also what Castaneda / Don Juan referred to as 'stopping the world'. Ego death, halting the internal dialogue. It is literally 'unspeakable', as it is beyond or rather, before, words. It can be completely surprising, to the exiting ego, and yet utterly familiar, like going home.

Moving into this state can feel like being propelled through a kind of membrane, a coming forward - there's almost the sense of a sound accompanying this, a rushing / tearing sound. And then you're there. Everything is different, and yet exactly the same as it was before. It is nothing at all like a hallucination, it is like the opposite, the breaking of illusion.

[FourthBase]

fourthbase,

I found your posts very interesting and would appreciate any more info on reality you might wish to share!

Would you call your experiences "Enlightenment"?

Meh.

First: I'm just a dude who's had a series of mind-blowing (de)realizations. I'm hardly the only person who has experienced a similar awakening, and I'm probably not in the wisest or most eloquent percentile who have. The following is just me winging an interpretation.

But...

Yeah. Pretty much. Not that I completely understood/understand it. But I literally cannot imagine a deeper, more hidden, more "enlightened" layer beneath what I perceived, especially in the first few minutes of that first filterless shock. It was/is the metaphysical bedrock I had been digging to reach at the expense of my personal happiness since I was 17 without really knowing what I'd find. Not that I was some all-star digger: All roads eventually lead to what I saw, with enough persistence and earnestness. I think.

Do you find everyday "normal" life a sham/illusion/joke/pointless/beautiful now or what?

All of the above, I guess. However, the cosmic pointlessness is purely neutral, and I have used it since as solid ground for my (now unsinkable) optimism to walk upon. Shit can get scary and depressing at times, but ultimately: It's nothing less than a miracle to be alive, no matter what the conditions are. Vonnegut was wrong, there are zero fates worse than death. At the absolute worst, life is a cruel unfunny joke. Shriek at the gods all you want, mock them, accuse them, I sure as hell have. But in the end, as trite as it sounds, life is what you make of it. It's pretty retarded to make life any worse than it already is, and it's irresponsible not to do whatever one can to make life as worthwhile and enjoyable as possible for yourself and for as many people as possible. The gods, if they exist, envy whatever amount of free will we have, and despise us for the way most of us abdicate our power to live fully.

Does anything we do matter, in your opinion?

Without a doubt: Yes. That's not just an opinion.

Back to opinions:

Animals (including us) feel very real pleasure and pain. Every single human being has a measure of influence (however tiny or gigantic) over the physical and emotional existence of others, and that measure isn't predetermined. It's the moment-by-moment product of one's will to be...helpful. Ergo: Life has meaning. What we do (and don't do) matters. Matters a little too much, even! A mental furlough of utter meaninglessness now and then is probably a healthy thing to have in your pocket, it has been for me so far.

And is there anything in the universe that cares about us strange creatures and the fantasies we play out on Earth?

Just ourselves, as far as I know. Maybe there are ghosts, or gods, or some such uber-entities. Doesn't really change the complexion of one's earthly individual life sphere, though, either way -- since whatever else exists has probably always existed, whether we've been aware of it or not.

[FourthBase]

I think my brain finally utterly uncloaked everything during that game. Ev-e-ry-thing. You know how the brain filters out stimuli and modes of perception in order to function as a coherent self? It was like all of that -- ALL OF IT -- had just dropped away, exhausted from me never letting life just be. It was my brain said, "Okay motherfucker you really wanna see life without filters, here ya go chief, enjoy."...

Like I said above, the reward this time was a freedom and peace I had never felt before, never thought even possible.

Yes, I think what you describe is what the TBOD calls The First Bardo. Also what Castaneda / Don Juan referred to as 'stopping the world'. Ego death, halting the internal dialogue. It is literally 'unspeakable', as it is beyond or rather, before, words. It can be completely surprising, to the exiting ego, and yet utterly familiar, like going home.

Moving into this state can feel like being propelled through a kind of membrane, a coming forward - there's almost the sense of a sound accompanying this, a rushing / tearing sound. And then you're there. Everything is different, and yet exactly the same as it was before. It is nothing at all like a hallucination, it is like the opposite, the breaking of illusion.

Right, exactly. So...I went through something that is best described by whoever wrote the fucking Tibetan Book of the Dead. Great.

One thing I'm not sure I mentioned before was the strange sense of physical space. Like, I was sitting on the edge of a couch cushion in a square living room on the 3rd floor of an apartment building with the TV a few feet in front and a coffee table next to me, and when everything fell away it was like I was floating-in-place in the middle of deep space, like the room and everything in it was lightly floating-in-place in space, both a complete loss of big-picture spatial orientation and also an exact, almost omniscient sense of where I happened to be situated in the universe at that moment. I don't mean "universe" there in a figurative sense. I mean, literally: The universe, in its entirety. Like I could sense every dimensional axis extending through me out in all directions toward the farthest invisible corners of the entire universe, simultaneously. It did feel strangely comforting, kind of like I was in the exact center of the largest womb imaginable. This'll sound weird (even in this thread's context), but at some point a few minutes into it, after the initial shock and dumb wonder, I became acutely aware of my anus, lol -- or rather, acutely aware that my body possessed an anus, as if it I were just then taking in for the first time ever what I myself happened to be, a fleshy alien thing with this quivering valve in the middle of my body, as if it were the exact center of my exact center, like Eliot's "still turning point of the world". That was not the most delightful feeling, lol -- it made me anxious at first, but within a few moments I was totally accepting of that, too. If any of this gets too weird, just say when, lol.

[massen]

Right, exactly. So...I went through something that is best described by whoever wrote the fucking Tibetan Book of the Dead. Great.

Actually those are my descriptions

I think the title of the Tibetan Book of the 'Dead' has been understood as being metaphorical, or rather that what it describes is also applicable to experiences attainable by living persons. It refers to ego death. Possibly it had to be couched in those terms as a result of religious persecution, or maybe it's because of monastic elitism.

One thing I'm not sure I mentioned before was the strange sense of physical space. Like, I was sitting on the edge of a couch cushion in a square living room on the 3rd floor of an apartment building with the TV a few feet in front and a coffee table next to me, and when everything fell away it was like I was floating-in-place in the middle of deep space, like the room and everything in it was lightly floating-in-place in space, both a complete loss of big-picture spatial orientation and also an exact, almost omniscient sense of where I happened to be situated in the universe at that moment. I don't mean "universe" there in a figurative sense. I mean, literally: The universe, in its entirety. Like I could sense every dimensional axis extending through me out in all directions toward the farthest invisible corners of the entire universe, simultaneously. It did feel strangely comforting, kind of like I was in the exact center of the largest womb imaginable.

I suppose that along with everything else this entails the letting go of concepts about 'where' you are and internal maps of the rest of universe. I guess that notions of scale go out the window as well. I would say though that if you are at the stage where you are 'thinking' about this perception or about how strange it is then you have probably already receded from the peak of the experience to some degree. Some of this may be ego distortions, illusion returning, as the Tibetans would have it.

[FourthBase]

Right, exactly. So...I went through something that is best described by whoever wrote the fucking Tibetan Book of the Dead. Great.

Actually those are my descriptions

Ha! Well, you nailed it, more or less.

I think the title of the Tibetan Book of the 'Dead' has been understood as being metaphorical, or rather that what it describes is also applicable to experiences attainable by living persons. It refers to ego death.

That's a relief. All I know about the book is what's written in this thread.

One thing I'm not sure I mentioned before was the strange sense of physical space. Like, I was sitting on the edge of a couch cushion in a square living room on the 3rd floor of an apartment building with the TV a few feet in front and a coffee table next to me, and when everything fell away it was like I was floating-in-place in the middle of deep space, like the room and everything in it was lightly floating-in-place in space, both a complete loss of big-picture spatial orientation and also an exact, almost omniscient sense of where I happened to be situated in the universe at that moment. I don't mean "universe" there in a figurative sense. I mean, literally: The universe, in its entirety. Like I could sense every dimensional axis extending through me out in all directions toward the farthest invisible corners of the entire universe, simultaneously. It did feel strangely comforting, kind of like I was in the exact center of the largest womb imaginable.

I suppose that along with everything else this entails the letting go of concepts about 'where' you are and internal maps of the rest of universe. I guess that notions of scale go out the window as well. I would say though that if you are at the stage where you are 'thinking' about this perception or about how strange it is then you have probably already receded from the peak of the experience to some degree. Some of this may be ego distortions, illusion returning, as the Tibetans would have it.

Very true, again. It was definitely a telescoped experience, and flexible at that. The first 10 or 20 seconds were the truly unspeakable moments, not even divisible into moments, just pure absorption, absolutely strange and terrifying. Then my brain started trying to put everything into a feeble wordless context, barely translating the experience into a quick trickle of glimpses. Then within seconds that attempt collapsed back into the total mindless (but still quiet) terror of experiencing the unreal. Then I started regrouping again, making fleeting tiny bits of sense of what I was absorbing, bits that got progressively more sensible, like, "...space...floating...uhhhh...wait, this is real....this is reality...twitching plasm creature...Coco Crisp...nothing stopping that crowd of creatures from breaking into brutal chaos this very moment...uggggghhhhh, oh christ....or this moment...order is a mutually agreed upon illusion...so delicate but we pretend that...holy fuck..." and so on, but most of the epiphany wasn't iterated in my head in the slightest. The peak experience took a grand total of one half inning.

[chiggerbit]

The last couple years, occasionally, usually but not always when stoned, I have perceived life around me as if I were from another universe, a "control" universe if you will, observing an utterly bizarre and arbitrary congregation of plasmatic creatures vocalizing and gesticulating and swarming.

Well, now that I think about it, I suppose I experienced something a little bit like that after my husband died. His death was sudden and totally unexpected. For about a week, I had this feeling that I was out in space, just there, not floating or sitting or anything, just there, but I was able to see people scurrying around like ants in an anthill with their lives, parents nagging kids about grades, people working hard to get more money to spend money on bigger houses and bigger and bigger cars, but they weren't individuals, they were this mass of people. It was the triviality of the human anthill, I think that was imposed on the feeling. I don't know how to explain this, exactly, but watching people from this perspective had the same feeling of foreigness(?), emotional detachment, a kid gets when watching and trying to imagine what it would feel like being an ant. And it was specifically ants, with people swarming like ants do over their mounds. Yes, swarming was the very word that was in my mind at that time. And, yes, I knew I was in was outer space, with its immensity behind me. And the feeling was worse after the sun went down, not so bad as soon as the sun came up (I wasn't sleeping much.) Weird, huh?

[compared2what?]

This is the way I experience the world, and always has been, from earliest memory. Yet I have less to say about it, consequently, rather than more. I really only notice if -- for some or no reason -- it gets much more or much less severe. Otherwise, I just...experience it, mostly. Along with the many, many compensatory coping mechanisms that are also of such longstanding that I wouldn't even call them second nature. To me, they're just nature.

[FourthBase]

Chigger, the swarm indeed. Although I'm a sports junkie, I don't think it was coincidental that the two most vivid (de)realizations I've had began while watching 1 - a Red Sox game, during a Coco Crisp at bat (with his fro at the time and his frenetic insectile batting stance, he's a weird looking dude no matter what state you're in, lol) and 2 - a Celtics game, during a Paul Pierce free throw (another weird looking dude, compared by some "haters" to Beetlejuice the Howard Stern guest). It wasn't so much the players though -- it was the crowd surrounding them, the buzzing chattering swarm of spectating creatures.

(BTW, as terrifying as those swarms were, the recent opening ceremony in China was just as "swarmy" at times but in a most welcoming beautiful life-affirming way, political considerations be damned)

C2W, if this has been your POV all your life...christ! Seriously???

[compared2what?]

Chigger, the swarm indeed. Although I'm a sports junkie, I don't think it was coincidental that the two most vivid (de)realizations I've had began while watching 1 - a Red Sox game, during a Coco Crisp at bat (with his fro at the time and his frenetic insectile batting stance, he's a weird looking dude no matter what state you're in, lol) and 2 - a Celtics game, during a Paul Pierce free throw (another weird looking dude, compared by some "haters" to Beetlejuice the Howard Stern guest). It wasn't so much the players though -- it was the crowd surrounding them, the buzzing chattering swarm of spectating creatures.

(BTW, as terrifying as those swarms were, the recent opening ceremony in China was just as "swarmy" at times but in a most welcoming beautiful life-affirming way, political considerations be damned)

C2W, if this has been your POV all your life...christ! Seriously???

Well....yes. It has its pros and cons. It's kind of a long story.

[FourthBase]

I've never actually felt like hugging someone online before.

[compared2what?]

I've never actually felt like hugging someone online before.

I can feel it, and I appreciate it. But honestly, I enjoy being me, except when I don't, same as everyone. Or at least, you know: Same as everyone who enjoys being him- or herself, except when he or she doesn't.

[slimmouse]

'The first man to see through an illusion that has held men captive for centuries stands in a lonely place. In that instant flash of insight, he sees that truth which to the uninitiated appears as nonsense, madness or heresy.' — James Arthur Ray

Just found this quote on the Icke website, and thought of this thread.

It would appear that this is a truth on many levels[/i]

[Eldritch]

'The first man to see through an illusion that has held men captive for centuries stands in a lonely place. In that instant flash of insight, he sees that truth which to the uninitiated appears as nonsense, madness or heresy.' — James Arthur Ray

Just found this quote on the Icke website, and thought of this thread.

It would appear that this is a truth on many levels.

You bet it is. You're right.

Did you ever see Midnight Express? If memory serves, that's the film that has an amazingly instructive scene where the main character is moved from his brutal prison life into a madhouse mental institution for a time. While there, he discovers many of the other psychiatric inmates are walking around a particular pole in the community yard—all of them in the same direction. Of course, they don't know why!—they're just doing what everybody else is doing because everybody else is doing it.

The main character, however, decides to walk around the pole in the opposite direction. Of course there was an immediate uproar! Who does he think he is walking around the seemingly "sacred pole" in the wrong direction?!? What heresy.

The current civilization in this allegedly "scientific age" is much like that madhouse. Much like it indeed.

And those who question the precepts of this civilization are considered "suspect" by nearly everyone, all the way up from the village idiot to the ivory towers of the intelligentsia.

Those who reject this madhouse outright are almost universally considered "insane."

[brainpanhandler]

bump

This is the way I experience the world, and always has been, from earliest memory. Yet I have less to say about it, consequently, rather than more. I really only notice if -- for some or no reason -- it gets much more or much less severe. Otherwise, I just...experience it, mostly. Along with the many, many compensatory coping mechanisms that are also of such longstanding that I wouldn't even call them second nature. To me, they're just nature.

More severe these days for me and trending toward the new normal and occasionally bordering on complete withdrawal with robotic forays into the real world as the only immediately viable coping mechanism.

[Nordic]

Cool thread. I sorta remember it from before.

I've experienced something like this back in college. No drugs involved. It actually was kind of terrifying, and its what made me get out of pre-med. I saw my fellow humans as an alien visitor would see them, or like the way aliens would look to us. With total objectivity. First time it hit me I was in the shower looking at my feet, seeing my feet as these very oddly evolved appendages. I found it utterly amoral, which was what scared me about it, seeing humans as just blobs of protoplasm, the end result of random evolutionary pressures, what's stopping us from treating any of them the way Mengele did?

I had an experience like chiggerbit describes above when my mother died. In that case the objectivity I had was a different kind, an emotional one I suppose, and even in my intense grief I realized this sense of the world and other people was utterly beautiful. Having trouble describing it, I would use the cliche of it put everything in perspective, to an extreme level that was like a zen-like calm. Only I was grieving. If that makes any sense.