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Sensory Deprivation
- Leah Starspectre
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My IP lesson today mentioned it and it reminded me that I tried it last year (and I wrote about the experience if you're interested: http://missreah.blogspot.ca/2015/08/on-sensory-deprivation.html )
Do you think that once our senses are switched off that we can learn deeper truths about ourselves and about life, the universe and everything? Do our physical bodies and their sense perceptions clutter our ability to see Truth (with a capital "T") clearly? Are there benefits to confronting/exploring our mind when it is divorced from our bodies?
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhikzbGop20
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- Leah Starspectre
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I really recommend trying a sensory deprivation tank, though. Nowadays it's not too hard to find in larger cities. Generally they're part of a spa, pitching the therapeutic and relaxation side of it. But the potential for deeper experiences is definitely there, and I ended up having both when I did it. I plan on going again, too! because as strange as it was, I really enjoyed the expereince!
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Knight of the Order
Training Master: Jestor
Apprentices: Lama Su, Leah
Just a pop culture Jedi doing what I can
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I'm trying to find this quote about dreaming. It's kind of like what Poe said about a dream within a dream. I think it was the Dalai Lama who said it could be that we dream all the time but our waking mind makes too much noise to hear it. Maybe this is why sensory deprivation works so well.
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- Carlos.Martinez3
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Did u have questions?
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And what do we mean by our senses? When does a sense stop and the rest of the brain begin? Are our intuitions and internal thoughts not also something we recognize, absorb, sense? What even are "we" if not those very same thoughts? And what is so special about, say, hearing, that we can exclude that without giving up a crucial and integral part of those among us who would otherwise have it? While we are at it, would a blind person be closer to discover capital-T Truth because they are short by one sense by default? What about people who are both blind and deaf? What a great spiritual blessing that must be indeed.
I don't know what truth means. But it seems that while I am an agent within and a subject to the real world, that pretty much anything I learn that has any potential to have utility within my life for either myself or anybody else must necessarily be some sort of a description of the relation between ourselves and the things we perceive (or indeed conceive of) as well as of relations between those individual things.
While we may be unable or unwilling to say whether emptying our minds meditation-style, or depriving them of external stimuli only, as it were, leads us to find some sort of truth, what ever that means, I am pretty confident in asserting that what ever we may find in this way can only hope to be useful insofar as applying it to the internal and external reality is.
Better to leave questions unanswered than answers unquestioned
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- Leah Starspectre
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Gisteron wrote: This seems to go back to what it is we even mean when we say something is true. If something is "true outside of reality", is that not literally the same as it being "not really true"?
And what do we mean by our senses? When does a sense stop and the rest of the brain begin? Are our intuitions and internal thoughts not also something we recognize, absorb, sense? What even are "we" if not those very same thoughts? And what is so special about, say, hearing, that we can exclude that without giving up a crucial and integral part of those among us who would otherwise have it? While we are at it, would a blind person be closer to discover capital-T Truth because they are short by one sense by default? What about people who are both blind and deaf? What a great spiritual blessing that must be indeed.
I don't know what truth means. But it seems that while I am an agent within and a subject to the real world, that pretty much anything I learn that has any potential to have utility within my life for either myself or anybody else must necessarily be some sort of a description of the relation between ourselves and the things we perceive (or indeed conceive of) as well as of relations between those individual things.
While we may be unable or unwilling to say whether emptying our minds meditation-style, or depriving them of external stimuli only, as it were, leads us to find some sort of truth, what ever that means, I am pretty confident in asserting that what ever we may find in this way can only hope to be useful insofar as applying it to the internal and external reality is.
When I say "Truth" I don't mean I'm questioning the nature of reality. I mean "Truth" as that universal element that we all share: the thing that transcends time, culture and geopolitical boundary. I'm wondering if by isolating our minds by cutting off all physical senses, we can better recognize that transcendental element, if it truly exists, and gain a deeper understanding of our connectedness with each other.
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Our brains evolved to absorb external stimuli and process a number of them at a time as to hit the balance between brain sugar expenses and survival in a tendentially hostile environment. Now, the kind of thoughts it produces in an unnatural shortage of stimuli are bound to seem as bizarre as the situation should. It is by no means a surprise that we find touching experiences when doing it. Now is this telling us anything about some sort of deeper meaning that transcends our physical reality? I wouldn't dare say. I don't even know that if anything of the sort does indeed manifest itself within us we would have any remotely reliable way of identifying the event as a manifestation like that. It sounds so vague and unclear as to hardly have any meaning at all, and to be unfalsifiable to the extent to which it isn't trivial. And if we cannot tell that there is even a "there" there, how can we possibly hope that this have any utility to us?
Better to leave questions unanswered than answers unquestioned
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