Talked about the Übermensch and whether it’s something you become or an ideal, Zarathustra and the teaching of the overman, the “last man,” Nietzsche as the most-read philosopher in the world and why he speaks to young people’s souls in a way analytic philosophy doesn’t, and the Christian moral interpretation of the world. There are timestamps in the description
I was cursed in the subway, and I’m worried. I was walking through the Barra Funda subway station when an older man stopped me to ask for a snack. I’m going through a difficult financial situation, so I couldn't help him, he got angry and started making gestures, saying that the devil would now walk with me, and that I would lose everything, ending up with no money and no health.
Every time I tried to walk away, he would grab my arm and keep ranting and cursing me. I always carry a lucky tourmaline stone with me, but should I be concerned? I admit I was a bit scared by the way he spoke.
About three months ago, I experienced a state of consciousness that completely caught me by surprise. It has never happened again since.
I feel that every attempt to describe it falls short or sounds too vague, but I'd really like to understand what actually happened. I'm not looking for a mystical explanation—I want to stay critical and grounded. Hopefully, despite the limitations of language, someone will recognize what I'm describing.
For context, I've struggled with derealization, anxiety, and various psychosomatic symptoms for a long time. I have been diagnosed with CPTSD, I'm currently in psychotherapy, and I practice mindfulness and breathing exercises recreationally because they help me manage my symptoms.
One day, while walking home, I focused on my breathing and on the act of perceiving itself. It wasn't really meditation; it was closer to what some people might call grounding, although I wasn't consciously using any established technique. It may simply have involved the same underlying mechanism.
I began to notice the space between myself and the objects around me. This may sound strange, but during derealization I often experience the world as flat, almost like watching a movie, and I lose my sense of spatial depth. This time, depth suddenly returned, along with a vivid sense of reality.
At the same time, I realized that I could consciously shift the way I interpreted my own perceptions, which fascinated me.
That evening I went to bed feeling anxious. To calm myself, I imagined that the anxiety was happening inside me while everything around me remained quiet and peaceful. The next morning I woke up with an incredibly strong sense of reality—a feeling I had almost forgotten existed before derealization became part of my life.
Over the next several days, a series of unusual but remarkably consistent perceptual changes occurred.
For example, I could simultaneously feel emotional pressure inside my chest while also feeling the touch of my clothing on exactly the same spot from the outside. It was as if I suddenly became aware that these two sensations were separated by only a few millimeters of physical tissue, yet in consciousness I experienced them simultaneously.
The same thing happened with my head. I was aware of my thoughts "inside" my head while simultaneously feeling the breeze on my scalp. Again, I became intensely aware that only a thin physical boundary separated my inner experience from the external world.
Eventually, this culminated in a strange feeling that I can only describe as transparency or permeability. Not literally, of course. Rather, I stopped experiencing a clear subjective boundary between "inside" and "outside." Thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations, sounds, and tactile sensations all seemed to unfold together as one unified process.
I also found that I could deliberately shift the perspective from which I experienced ordinary things.
For example, I stopped experiencing sound simply as something "coming from outside." Instead, I became aware that sound only acquires meaning because my brain constructs it. Rather than feeling like "I'm hearing sounds," it felt more like "I'm experiencing my hearing from the inside." I could simply hear sounds without immediately attaching meaning to them. It sounds strange, but this shift in perspective made me feel profoundly present.
Ordinary sounds gave me goosebumps and sometimes even mild feelings of euphoria. Food tasted much richer. Despite having diagnosed ADHD, I found myself completely fascinated by ordinary, previously boring activities without craving constant stimulation.
My thoughts didn't disappear, but they stopped pulling me into them. They felt like a movie playing in the background. I could watch them pass by while continuing whatever I was doing. I no longer felt compelled to engage with them.
When walking down the street, I became aware that not only my body, but also my thoughts, emotions, and feelings were all moving through space together with me.
The same emotions that would normally trigger panic attacks or anger still appeared, but something fundamental had changed. The usual bodily panic response never came, and anger no longer overwhelmed me. At the same time, I didn't feel like I was suppressing anything. I could approach emotionally difficult situations calmly and rationally while still fully feeling the emotions themselves. I experienced emotions as events occurring within consciousness rather than forces that defined or controlled me.
The most remarkable change, however, was my ability to perceive multiple streams of experience simultaneously without feeling overwhelmed. Thoughts, traffic sounds, the sensation of my clothes, the movement of my body while folding laundry—everything existed together as one continuous lived scene.
I never felt like my attention had to switch between different stimuli. I was extraordinarily present without effort, meditation, or deliberate concentration. It felt as though my brain had simply switched into a completely different operating mode.
Another striking aspect was an overwhelming appreciation of the uniqueness of every single moment. I don't mean this in a spiritual or mystical sense.
Rather, I directly experienced the fact that no one else in the world occupies exactly the same perspective as I do. Even someone standing one meter away sees the world from slightly different angles, hears different acoustics, notices different details, and simultaneously inhabits an entirely different inner world.
I didn't merely understand this intellectually—I experienced it directly, and it filled me with an incredible sense of wonder. Suddenly I couldn't understand why I had always sought adrenaline or novelty just to "feel something," or even how boredom was possible when every moment is, by its very nature, completely unique.
This state lasted for about five days. It was stable and remarkably consistent.
I knew exactly which way of thinking seemed to bring me back into it—for example, imagining that I was "hearing my ears from the inside" rather than hearing sounds coming from the outside.
Even when derealization appeared, I experienced it merely as a kind of perceptual filter laid over reality. I no longer identified with it. It became just another experience that I could calmly observe.
Then, after about five days, everything abruptly collapsed.
I developed dizziness, nervousness, fatigue, poor concentration, and my methods of becoming present suddenly stopped working. I couldn't return to that state anymore, despite doing exactly the same things.
The state has never returned.
However, I also don't feel like I went completely back to where I was before. It feels as though something fundamental remained after the experience, as if my baseline way of experiencing life improved slightly.
To this day I have no idea what actually happened, or how something could begin so suddenly, remain stable for several days, and then disappear just as abruptly.
Was this some kind of temporary change in brain function? Did I accidentally discover a particular attentional process? Did I somehow enter an unusual meditative state? Or is there another explanation entirely?
I'm curious whether anyone has experienced something similar or whether there is any psychological or neuroscientific framework that could help explain this kind of experience.
The Inland Empire Logbook dives into the abyss. Anyone read it?
Yesterday, leaving for work i saw that a bird pooped on my passenger side window, leaving a streak of white running down. I haven’t had bird poop my car in… i cant remember.
This morning when i was walking my dog, i saw a dead bird, i think a morning dove.
I love birds, have a lot of air signs in my chart and just wondering omen wise what Reddit’s interpretation of these series of events could mean? TY!
You might think of money, time, or information. But both Kardec and Emmanuel point in a different direction.
In question 919 of The Spirits' Book, when asked about the most effective means of improving oneself in this life, the spirits reply by quoting an ancient sage: "Know thyself."
And in the book The Consoler, Emmanuel reaches the same conclusion. For him, our greatest need is not to accumulate things, nor answers. It is self-knowledge — the very same lesson passed down from ancient civilizations.
And maybe that's why, with so many answers right in the palm of our hands, we still feel a bit lost. Because information comes from the outside, but wisdom is built from within.
Full Episode 5 on YouTube and Spotify. Chat with RIV, our Spiritist AI: iaespirita.com/riv
References: The Spirits' Book, question 919 (Allan Kardec); The Consoler, question 232, Emmanuel (1941).
Mysticism is simply the direct experience of god or higher/expanded states of consciousness. Really, almost any state of love, peace, or joy we could call mystical. However often mystics will gain access to those aforementioned emotions to levels beyond what any average muggle would likely experience. Alongside those deep feelings of love/bliss, is often an experience of peace, spirit, or something inexplicable.
Underlying all religions and present in all ages are teachings, practical exercises that allow the seeker to connect.
I see the universe as infinite, and when one begins to align one’s individual geometry with the cosmic geometry, a sort of synchronization.. resonance, occurs. The fractal of the infinite, that one is, becomes resonant with the uncreated light and rises up the spheres into the heavens.
To explain everything here would be like trying to fit all of the library of congress onto a single page.. it’s impossible. However, the goal is to align oneself, in mind, body, and spirit. It is very much real and when you experience the effects of different ancient esoteric practices.. like shambhavi mahamudra kriya, latihan, rajadhiraja sadhana, yoga asanas, rajadhiraja yoga, pranayama, brahmacharya, theurgy, the jhanas, vipassana, and on and on and on you will realize much, that there is something very tangible here. Each practice giving you a doorway a glimpse at the infinite from different angles, imbuing you with a different vibration or spirit as it were, another drug to add to the toolkit of the one who is mad enough to become intoxicated by the infinite. You’ve found something great, keep going.
I was thinking of getting a tattoo of Rasputin, searched google images, and he’s frequently doing this with his hands. What does this gesture mean?
If you could share one idea, realization, theory, belief, or experience that changed the way you see reality, what would it be?
Write as much or as little as you want. I'm not here to judge, only to learn from as many perspectives as possible.
I'm on a journey of learning, and I'd love to hear from all kinds of people and perspectives.
It can be about consciousness, spirituality, science, religion, philosophy, death, love, the universe, reality, or simply something you've learned through your own life experiences.
I'm here to listen and learn ❤️
Image: The Slav Epic cycle No.20: The Apotheosis of the Slavs, Slavs for Humanity (1926) - Alphonse Mucha
Spirit entered the living unity of soul and body as a dividing power. It turns participation into observation, rhythm into measure, image into concept, and the living self into an ego that stands apart from the world. In this sense, spirit appears as the enemy, not merely because it thinks, but because it mistakes its abstractions for reality and its distance for freedom.
Yet perhaps the best possible world is not one in which separation never appears, but one in which separation can be experienced without ever becoming ultimate. The illusion of division is allowed because even estrangement can become a path of recognition. Unity passes through the dream of otherness and returns conscious of what it had always been.
History is therefore the history of the ego where it attempted to secure its imagined independence through naming, measuring, possessing, and mastering. It imagined it needed to be saved or that it was the true master of the cosmos. The ego created a world of objects because it had to first make the world other before it could rule over it. It called this distance knowledge and this mastery freedom, while beneath both remained the unbroken life of soul and body.
Returning does not mean travelling backward into a lost age or destroying consciousness. It means relinquishing the ego’s claim to sovereignty. The ego is not annihilated but restored to its proper scale, a function within life rather than the ruler of life. Spirit, insofar as it can be reconciled, ceases to stand over life and becomes its servant, thought without domination, distinction without severance, and consciousness without exile.
Soul and body do not need to be reunited, because they were never truly divided. What must end is our allegiance to the division. How many have chosen a side? Sides aren’t a real thing, haha, only perpetuation of the confusion. The world appears lost in that division today, or because of it. The ego has played all its cards and now is collapsing back into itself. So we see every kind of delusion and confusion.
We can’t think, religion, science, or politic our way out of this.
Return is not an achievement but a recognition, not the recovery of something absent but the acceptance of what has always been true. We do not cross the distance separating us from life, we awaken to the fact that the distance existed only in the act of measuring it.
There is no real distance between anything.
History is our long dream of separation.
Awakening is the discovery that no one ever left.
It’s all gonna be just fine, it always has been and will be just fine.
We are how cosmos knows itself.
When you awaken, the dream of “I” will dissipate.
There won’t even be any mess to clean up.
Your ashes will blow away in the wind.
Sounds awful to the grasping ego, I know.
It’s not at all.
It’s perfectly natural.
What I’m pointing to is jivanmukta, deep surrender to the mystery of Daath.
The knowing of not-knowing, doing not-doing.
It feels like extinction.
Like the blowing out of the flame of life.
But this is where we become most truly, madly, deeply ourselves.
This is Ipsissimus.
This is the chemical marriage.
Asar un nefer.
From here, a state of spontaneous union, we may exist in samadhi.
What is the name of God?
Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh, “I AM what I AM.”
You are the wind.
To be the wind is sahaja samadhi.
In “I-I” eternally, there is no night and day or ignorance.
Sing prayers and praises at our good fortune!
Fully participate with whatever arises before you.
Those strange attractors in your life are all drawing you toward this…
Apotheosis!
In Worlds of Vesture (1902), Waite sketches three worlds. The first is all surface glamour — beauty that’s “specious only,” bringing the heart no real message. The second is raw sensation and appetite, a “restless crowd.” Both are coverings — that’s what “vesture” means, a garment over something.
The third world is inward, and here’s the part I find genuinely odd for an occultist: he makes science the engine of spiritual advance, not its enemy. “By the glass of the astronomer” and “the flights of mathematic thought,” the seeker goes deeper — and as the mind advances, “Great Nature widens.” The universe expands to match the soul exploring it.
The line that sticks: “The goal is still within ourselves alone… the outer world marks but the limit of the human soul’s advance.”
It’s a tidy inversion of how we usually frame the inner/outer split — the cosmos isn’t fixed scenery you observe, it grows as you do. Curious whether people read that as literal metaphysics or as a psychological claim dressed in cosmic language.
In this video I use the symbolism hidden in plain sight to show how this logo is actually a map of how to become one with God. I would try and type up more but it will sound like nonsense trying to make my point without images and videos to help make it easy to follow. So with that said let me know what you think and if there are any other associations you can think of that I missed.
What do you think? What do you feelsee different? Did anything resonate with your mystical things about the whole deal of wearing flesh to interact with this realm? Discussion welcomed and dissension will be dissected to ensure we all win...
I’d like to hear recommendations for books or articles about or by people considered atheist mystics. This is a new area of inquiry for me. So “fundamental” works in this space would be fine. I’m not looking to start a discussion/debate here. Just looking for reading recommendations. Thanks.
Recently, I have been doing some study into the theology of Baruch Spinoza, and I am shocked that I had not come across his work before. While we disagree on the exact nature of reality, we are fully in agreement that not only is God one with the natural world, but within us rather than some external force.
Growing up in the church, I was taught that God, and truly the “divine” as a whole, was something separate from humanity and nature. God was outside and above all, not within and an intricate part of all. And, of course, the very basis of the Christian faith is that humanity separated itself from the divine. Nowadays, human exceptionalists have attempted to separate humanity from nature as well.
As if humanity could rid itself of what makes it human.
The divine, the natural, and the human are all projections of one underlying reality – that is, reality. This is what Spinoza meant when he said, “God or nature.” What seems like a choice at first is, in actuality, a challenge.
Spinoza saw a universe governed wholly by natural laws, and that those natural laws and their effects were a source of awe and wonder. Miracles are absent in his worldview, and can he be blamed?
The one miracle of existence that remains more or less untouched by science is consciousness. I am of the opinion that, no matter how advanced humanity becomes, science will never fully explain consciousness. The brain is perhaps the most densely complex concept in the universe. Though there are fascinating theories of consciousness arising from quantum fluctuations – and this indeed may be the ultimate cause of consciousness and subjective experience – consciousness remains, by definition, a miraculous event.
Now, Spinoza’s God possessed no sense of morality or agency. This is where he and I differ. His universe was a monistic one, where “evil” was fundamentally the same as “good” in origin. I do not subscribe to this idea – one may call me a dualist – but it is easy to see his rationale.
Ultimately, Spinoza’s vision of God is an entirely natural one. And, to a point, I agree. I do believe in the spiritual and the mystical, but I understand that these are based, at the moment, purely on subjective experience.
But think of all the wonder of creation, everything from the bacteria within you to the largest quasars so many billions of light-years away. All of that exists in three-dimensional space, but the closest ideas we have to a theory of everything posit eleven different spatial dimensions. This is something we can only imagine via analogy, as our minds simply are not built to comprehend something so foreign to our experience. In this way, perhaps like a shadow of our bodies, a ghost is simply a shadow of the soul freed from its physical bounds.
If all we know is just a small sliver of what there is – and what we do know is already so overwhelming as to be divine – just imagine what all there is that we do not know.
Perhaps these spiritual and mystical beings and concepts do exist in a reality just as physical as our own, yet more or less inaccessible because we simply cannot move around in a reality like that. If ghosts are said to be able to pass through our physical barriers with no issue, perhaps there is some truth to the idea that death allows the spirit to experience reality in its true and glorious fullness.
There really are no words to describe just how expansive and all-encompassing reality is, how truly awe-inspiring existence is. And how lucky are we that we get to experience even the small sliver we do?
And if each of us is a manifestation of that awesome reality, that all-encompassing Mind, that arrangement of quantum fluctuations, or all of the above, how lucky are we that we fundamentally cannot be separate from that without ceasing to exist outright? I once wrote that we are “the eyes and ears of the universe,” and that statement may be the truest words I have ever penned.
God is not an overlord or a tyrant looking down on a pathetic humanity. God is not all-powerful or all-knowing either. Rather, God is within us all, and all of us within him.
I've had a dream quite inexplicable. But one of my deceased ancestors appeared in it and answered a pending question I had in mind about my physical world. It brought me to tears. And got me closure. But, does anyone else have such experiences?
