Karl

Its easier to condense your hypothesis into very few words. I notice you are a master of the long and rambling post which is intended to coax the reader into accepting a large number of premises without bluntly stating your conclusion. You have said in many words 'objectivism is a cult'. So is it ? "Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment and nothing can help you escape it—that no substitute can do your thinking, as no pinch-hitter can live your life—that the vilest form of self-abasement and self-destruction is the subordination of your mind to the mind of another, the acceptance of an authority over your brain, the acceptance of his assertions as facts, his say-so as truth, his edicts as middle-man between your consciousness and your existence." Galt’s Speech, For the New Intellectual, 128. Does this sound like a cult ? It is undoubtedly a fully formed moral philosophy based around man using reason and acting 'independently'. It makes no claims as the Catholic Church does about heaven, it does not ask anyone to follow beliefs but to think independently, act independently, to have self confidence. It is singularly muscular in that regard. As regards 'spreading the message' I ask you to show me even one person in the world who is not spreading their message. It's called free speech. It is our only method of communication and we should all be actively involved in spreading our message. I see it here on this forum all the time, the fact there is a forum is an attempt to attract a wider audience, if it were not so then why have it ? Objectivism isn't a closed system, it's barely begun to permeate into human consciousness. It's important to address the priorities of thinker first, objectivist second. I didn't come upon objectivism in the way others do. Those that proclaim they were once objectivists never understood it. Objectivism is a bit like the instruction for making a good sauce base, but beyond that it remains open to the thinker. Every philosophy that tells us that thought is useless or we can't know reality is lying. Philosophies like that hang themselves because they ask us first to think, they depend on reality for that thinking. Objectivism is opposite, it tells us that we must think and that thinking must align with reality. Instead of excusing our actions it makes us responsible for them. Instead of abdicating our thinking to some higher power, or social authority, it tells us we must take control and think for ourselves. It does not tell us to drift aimlessly as if this will somehow help us to avoid reality, it says if we drift then we cannot avoid the product of that drifting. What did Rand really say when it's boiled down ? That you had better begin thinking for yourself if you wish to find happiness, that you had better not employ force to take what you did not earn, that you had better be productive and create value in order to trade for the values produced by other men. That there is no heaven so don't set your heart on what might happen after you die, that this is ALL there is and all morality and action on this Earth, in this life should be based on that fact.

I would rather have your words, or your view of his view of Rand instead of simply posting a video. If you are making a point then do so without the props.

Heck that was interminably dull, it sounded like one long note.

None of that is true of course, but it's impossible to get around the myths that perpetuate. Rand was consistent, practical but certainly not pragmatic. It wasn't dogma that drove her to follow her philosophy but truth. No one ever argues that the legion of 'guru' that regularly appear on this forum are too dogmatic, they are considered enlightened and their philosophies sacrosanct. Be it the Tao or Buddhism, I never hear anyone saying these philosophies should be more pragmatic. No one sneers at Buddah meditating for days under a tree, nor at Jesus ending up on a cross for the strength of his consistent philosophy. A lot of what passes for truth is the result of the Brandens books about Rand. She was sold down the river by a couple of snakes as I understand it. Certainly Peikoff recounts a very different Rand, one that was warm, quick witted, funny and passionate. Of course I can't confirm his anecdotes anymore than I can refute the Brandens, I wasn't there, but then neither was anyone else. I can only grasp her genius from her words and if she was consistent, them it's difficult to believe what the Brandens book said-indeed there has been another book recently that vindicated Peikoffs memories and refuted the Brandens. Rand's legacy is the ARI institute and is going from strength to strength. You can enrol and take courses free of charge. Yarron and Leonard have regular podcasts on questions related to every day life/politics hosted alternative Monday's and archived. There are thousands of questions answered. YouTube has lots of interviews with recent lectures by Yarron and the other two ARI illuminati Binnswanger and...... Then there is her novels which still sell extremely well and are penguin classics, there are plays and films. She was very productive in her life time. Enough to fund the ARI independently. https://ari.aynrand.org/

What is the purpose of your practice ? In AYP we were expected to have no purpose, it was to be done like cleaning teeth, but there was a promise of a freedom from suffering, the arrival of the witness. There were aspirations even when Yogani specifically said we should have no aspirations. I changed my meditation by hallucinating the mantra rather than repeating it, instead I cultivated internal awareness, to watch my thoughts and this translated into every day life. I became acutely aware of how I was thinking not just what. This was the rise of the promised witness, but, beyond that it was interesting to be so consciously aware, unless my intention was to walk around in a state of introspective stupor, it was useless. If we do control f on our computers we can delete all the rubbish and then reinstall a clean program, but we can't do that on ourselves, we are stuck in a limbo with meditation, it gives us access to the main frame but it doesn't relate to extrospective existent reality. We have to do that work ourselves and the brain doesn't really come with a manual on how. So the ground rules are where am I ? How do I know it ? What do I do ? This is the catalyst for restoring full working order, but not until the main frame is able to appropriate and integrate the new information. If the existing information was mis integrated, or disintegrated, then we must know how to reassemble it so it does work. Meditation provides the tools to approach the task, but not to perform the task. Continually wiping and reinstalling the same program doesn't do anything, neither does thinking we have changed something without actually doing so. This is ignorance in the first and evasion in the second.

Yes, it's doing anyone any good except perhaps the lazy farmers who are milking the cattle. I have purpose in continually pushing politically/spiritually towards freedom. It has to be both. A generation with political freedom, but without spiritual freedom would likely no cope. It's like sending a pet onto the Savanna, it wouldn't last long. It's easier to be spiritually free, but it comes with responsibilities. For now it is realised that to get the political freedom will require the spiritual freedom first and our society is set up to repress that aspect, indeed to punish it. Getting spiritual freedom prior to political freedom is hard. People prefer to find ways to blank out the walls of the cell, but to know and touch the walls, to see how strong and thick they are yet not to flinch requires a calm and reasoning mind. The brighter the prisoner, the more oppressive the walls, the harder the eyelids are squeezed to block out that reality. How can full awareness be encouraged. It's like waking up and finding yourself buried alive, but doing so without any panic ? I see the problem, I'm empathetic enough to know the feeling of terror it can invoke. Who can cope and who can't ? It's not fair to drag people awake who might be led to do so and be shocked by it and its impossible to awaken those who sub consciously know they have no intention of enduring reality. It's a puzzle. It can be done, it's easy to do, but once out there's no going back and for those who have had tough lives, that reality might well push them back to a worse condition.

I think so. It's not possible to prescribe a one route that will do it. I'm flying now, I see the issue, but it doesn't help, I cannot say how I got the courage, or the strength to fly. I can see a whole process which was partly conscious and partly unconscious. When in trance things appeared before me like magic. Now I see that it was not magic, but believing it was at the time wasn't an impedement either. It's frustrating in a sense to know, but seemingly be one of the few to know. It's not as if everyone is in such a predicament either. My wife is totally adjusted, it is only me that was the oddity. The thing is, here is the problem, the people on this forum are highly intelligent, the state doesn't require highly intelligent people that are individualists. Our education system is designed to homogenetise the population. The result is the bright ones get squashed- their families who are also products of the same system can become maladjusted and irrational too, then take that out on their children. We aren't expected to climb out of our boxes, we are expected to conform, but we keep slipping out and banging our heads on the box edges, we feel the box even though we try our best not to. It's this conflict that drives us mad. The brighter we are the crazier we become.

Isn't that simply because everyone is at different stages ? There is also a danger of someone stating 'one way' and creating a cult-even when they didn't intend it. As I see it, people on forums such as this are like chicks in a nest. They broke their shells and are feeling vulnerable and scared. Some want to crawl back into the shell, others want to remain where they are but not feel so scared. In the end we cannot really stay in the shell, pretend we are still in the shell, or ignore our predicaments. We must come to terms with who we are, where we are, then make the leap from the nest. It takes time. The nest offers safety so why the hell jump out of it ?

Yes, the hypnotic states are lovely. If you are aiming for tranquility, then they suit. I had a very blissful 3 years on AYP and took away the manic depression which had shadowed me from my early teens. It stopped me flying into rages and sudden dark holes of self loathing and depression. However, this isn't enlightenment, it's like methadone for a heroin user. It's the 12 step programme for an alcoholic. It stabilises the ship by plugging the holes in the hull. However it doesn't fix the ship, it's effectively sea worthy and floating. The day to day maintenance gets done and it copes with the storms and lulls, but it isn't going anywhere. It's engines run, it's rudder works, but the radar/guidance is off and there is no where to go, so no need to turn the propellers and steer anywhere. I expect for some this is such a relief from years of purgatory that it's sufficient. In the video it talks about awareness and here is where the problems begin. As awareness expands the ship begins to see it is simply floundering as its radar comes on line, it is in the middle of nowhere and there are dangers all over. The reaction is to switch everything off and go back to the trance state. Yet, now the glimpse of the dangers is known it becomes more difficult to forget about it. The temptation is to keep switching on the instruments for fear of missing something, then switching them off for fear of finding something. We are stuck between wanting to know reality and being terrified of knowing reality. The need to know reality can become its own pressure and create its own problems. The sticking plaster of TM only goes so far. If you can't stop peeping then it's time to move on. Real Buddhists, I'm talking about practising monks are like the epicurists of the past. They work for years to bring awareness to a high point, but live in the safety of a commune that shelters them from the external realities of the world. I don't see this as living, it is hiding. It is a fully functioning ship in dry dock. The radars and navigation are on, but there are no dangers and no requirement to navigate anywhere. I suppose the idea is that these monks are then released fully trained and fully aware into the outside world, but my experience, having met a few, is that the training has stunted them, instead of remaining aware, they to move into TM protection mode. They live in self contained bubbles of their own making and are as fragile as anyone else. There is also a tendency to lack real independence, they remain part of a group/cult all within a hierarchy which reduces individualism to a minimum. At other times, apart from their robes, they have become just like every other mixed up Westener-some even more so than average. They start drinking, womanising and grifting. The problem is how to make an individual accept reality as it is. To accept their own fears and doubts as they are. To flower as unique, independent identies devoid of the need to shelter. There is some, almost automatic sense of a need to belong and to conform. It's as if we have an instinct to act as members of a tribe and submit to a leaders will. There appears to be a necessity to shut down our own awareness and subscribe to the leader. This is a stone age hang over that we have picked up over millennia. No doubt it was necessary pre industrial revolution, but no longer. The only thing we fear is death and each other, we aren't waiting to be picked off by sabre tooth tigers, cold, hot, lack of shelter, food, water or accident. Yet we still live like we did back then and we still subdue our awareness despite there no longer being any necessity to do so. We can act autonomously now and trade with others value for value. No one needs a tribal leader anymore, we don't need a specific village, we are global.

That was my conclusion. I changed my method of meditation to awareness during the final year before I left. It never occured to me at that time that I had altered it, but, looking back I remember the change. To some extents AYP says to do so, but there's a problem with marginal hypnotic state caused by the mantra repetition of Ayam. I stopped using it, but, in a sense that's what Yogani tells practitioners to do. Unfortunately I don't think Yogani knows what he is doing and has cobbled together TM and Buddhist meditation trying to make them doubly powerful-which is why he calls it Advanced. I have made the point which the lecturer makes. Meditation is to cultivate the mind. It is to sharpen reason, to decrease emotional response, to increase cognitive power. Funnily enough I'm having a PM with Sionnach about this very subject and why meditation is a useful part of living as a human being. However, it's a bit like learning to strengthen the body without application. Making the mind knife sharp is wasted if we do not develop reason and logic at the same rate. A strong body is necessary, but useless if it cannot fetch water, feed itself and plan ahead (planning was one of the things the lecturer strongly emphasised and this needs the practitioner to develop his logic and reason actively, not only passively by meditation). In one of my later posts I was told that I had uttered an ad hominem when pointing out that practitioners needed to wake up. I told them it was not an insult, that it was a plea. People are asleep and have stopped using their minds they just haven't realised it. Your posting goes some way towards addressing this plea. Notice that he says that we cannot heal the world - or at least not yet - that the effect is purely to improve the mind of the practitioner. There is no mention of no-mind or no-thing. Although he uses the word selfless, this is in connection purely with the meditation practice. In my book I describe it as 'surrender' but it must not be maintained throughout the normal day, only during the short practices. Remember that Yogani did say to do less practice, ground more, to self pace. He didn't say go around in a state of soporific trance. The problem is that Yogani found himself so desperate to prove his technique was of revolutionary importance that he began to throw out anything that might appear to contradict it. A catch 22. The guy from the Max Planck institute said that scientists cannot find a seat of self in the brain. I have long held that view. Consciousness is axiomatic, there is no place it exists materially, but it is existent. It has an identity and so has the self. Scientists will never find it, as they will never find the cause of existence. They are axiomatic corollaries. Existence is identity; consciousness is identification. However, where I disagree is with the understanding of perception and existence. There are levels of existence inside the hypnotised mind. It is wrong to say that existence is an illusion, but I can see why someone would make that conclusion. If one was viewing a film which seemed real then this isn't existence but illusion. It is necessary to come out of the cinema and see that it was only an illusion. This is why where am I ? How do I know it ? What should I do ? Is important, because it liberates from the transcendental state of illusion. The problem with it is that people have not developed the mental focus to enable them to utilise this rope to pull themselves from the slime. Their minds are flabby, they are completely distracted because our education/ political system keeps them in a state of weakness. They cannot lift their heads from the pillows because the state has convinced them there is no necessity for them to do so. A lot of this new age stuff is aimed at the same thing, to switch off/drop out. Just like the body, the cortex that is not exercised grows weak. Even when presented with the rope to pull itself clear, it has no the strength to do so and goes back to what it knows. What's easy. Just switch off, tune out, drop out. No need for effort, just relax, things take care of themselves. Stay as sheep, docile, harmless and ready to be shorn of wool. We cannot easily learn to use logic and reason as tools of skill without the will/strength to use them. We can't just get the mind sharp and ignore the skills/tools. It requires both. Strengthen sharpen the brain to high awareness, take a course in logic, build the base of skill with the weapon. Practice but strengthen through correct nourishment and exercise.

Exactly, a highly elastic term devoid of anything measurable and the basis for allowing evil to propagate unfettered.

There is no such thing as hate speech just as there isn't any thought crime. How can it be measured ? It can't. One mans hate speech is another mans genuine, belief of a moral good. There is speech and speech should always be free. Hate speech was at the heart of soviet oppression. It was initially resisted, but waves of useful idiots in the guise of Marxist academics and liberal politicians eventually poured the same soviet poison into the West.

Yes, the state has a way with kidnap and slavery.

Oh right, my memory of the film was that they volunteered, so in that case you are talking about the false alternative ? The one that goes do you want that in red or blue, would you prefer to change now or later. It's a disgusting technique which I won't use, or certainly not consciously. If you find me doing then please point it out, as I wish to eradicate it from my argumentation.

I did, I know it well, seen it many, many times. I model myself on the drill instructor private Ralis :-) What do you see as being the double bind ? Remember that these guys volunteered for the Army and could walk at any time. They couldn't back chat the drill instructor without receiving some form of violent attack.

Not such a strange world because there are no altruists, only those that pretend there are. Dales weren't devoid of emotion indeed they appeared positively riddled with them-they feared the Doctor and that increasing pitch of their electronic voices definitely bordered on hysteria, not unlike Social Justice Warriors. They had empathy for each other. The problem with Daleks is that they were irrational and devoid of a moral compass.

Science is the tool of reason. I'm not a scientist I'm a philosopher, so, I know what the scientific method is based upon. If you deny reason then you deny science and leave only whim. Science isn't going to show us morality, or consciousness, it might show us what part of the brain is stimulated, it might count the pulses and waves, it can show how to shut down or distort perception, it can help us cure abnormalities and brain diseases, but beyond that it runs into axiomatic truths.

Or we could get back on topic with Rand's legacy ? Just a thought. All this scientific altruism, the death of reason and double binding doesn't bode well for there being any legacy at all. Double bind is really question begging if I interpret you correctly. That is 'are you still beating your wife'. It doesn't include those who create their own double bind on themselves. In fight club there are three rules ....

Aww heck. Because there is no moral code attached to the altruistic ideology. How can there be one ? You said that you don't act selfishly, you just do it. So, how can you possibly know what to do ? A cyber man and Dalek are the ideal altruists devoid of a moral code they just do whatever they are commanded to do in order to further the aims of the group. A individual altruist would be like a Dalek seperated from its master. There are two moral questions which altruism lumps together into one “package-deal”: (1) What are values? (2) Who should be the beneficiary of values? Altruism substitutes the second for the first; it evades the task of defining a code of moral values, thus leaving man, in fact, without moral guidance. Altruism declares that any action taken for the benefit of others is good, and any action taken for one’s own benefit is evil. Thus the beneficiary of an action is the only criterion of moral value—and so long as that beneficiary is anybody other than oneself, anything goes.

What a load of old piffle. Your waffling sir. This is nothing to do with evolutionary forces and all to do with your own basis of deciding right from wrong. By What moral code and from where is it derived.

Oh, but unfortunately my dear Ralis, that premise relies on using reason. You are infact uttering an absolute whilst rejecting absolutes. You can neither have your cake and eat it, nor eat your cake before you have it. Science is the method of using logic and reason. You have just proved my point beautifully. Science is dead because reason is dead. Bye bye human race.

I rejected scientism long ago, just as I rejected religion and materialism. Explain how you know what action to take ? Maybe drowning a child is better than saving one. How can you tell ? It's just a selfless action bereft of any guidance according to you and your scientism.

Where is the moral code ? Do you have an answer, or will you continue to evade and swerve ?

Its a plea.

It isn't altruism. An altruistic person is just as likely to drown people in order to save the water voles. What you are witnessing is rational selfishness in action, people making decisions on a moral basis. This is absent in the altruist, there are no morals codes.