goldisheavy

I agree. I disagree. It's not the highest at all. You can attain light body while being in a state of complete ignorance. You just need to be stubborn above all and a bit of luck.

Since I've been hugely caught in this precise phenomenon myself, I feel I am very well positioned to give an honest reply to this. Why the old guys? Well, I want whatever is authentic. I think that if some ideas have survived the test of time, they are more likely to be authentic. Hence my obsession with the ancient wisdom. The more ancient, the better. Right? Well, not exactly. After all, while I greatly enjoy the early pagan and shamanic spirituality, I wouldn't place them above Buddha's wisdom in terms of insight and general quality. So this is where "anything ancient is good" breaks down. Once we start down the rabbit hole of questioning teachings, there is no end. By this time I question everything, including Buddha. That's why I reject many features of Buddhist thinking today, even though for the longest time it was my favorite school of thought (and in some ways, still is). Needless to say, I no longer believe that whatever is ancient is authentic and whatever is modern is fake. But I've been caught chasing my historical tail for so long, I figured I could give you an honest answer.

Here's the problem. It's possible to learn to manipulate energies without truly understanding the broader and more fundamental truths about those same energies. An example of this is a car mechanic. Every time a car mechanic is fixing the car, he's manipulating fundamental energies of the universe to do so without really knowing how they work and why. Through trial and error, through copying others, this kind of person found something that works and just keeps repeating that something. This kind of activity has some value. At the same time, this kind of person does not aim at the pinnacle of wisdom, and if you follow one such, you'll be influenced by the smallishness of the mind such people often have. It's also possible to learn the more fundamental truths without learning how to use that knowledge to manipulate things. An example of this is a physicist who knows far more than the car mechanic about the fundamental truths of the energies being manipulated, but who may not necessarily know how to repair even the simplest malfunction in the car. This kind of knowledge is more beneficial to society because from this knowledge the trade of the car mechanic can be derived much more readily than trying to derive the knowledge of the physics from the car mechanic's activities. That's because physics is a higher-order knowledge. From physics many many trades and activities can be derived with relative ease precisely because it's a higher-order knowledge. In the spiritual realm this analogue exists as well. People like Sariputra were considered enlightened by Buddha, even though Sariputra couldn't perform any fancy tricks. Sariputra was considered foremost in the development of wisdom. At the same time, Maha Moggallana was also considered enlightened, and he was considered foremost in the development of psychic powers. Ideally an enlightened person should have both wisdom and power, but if you have to pick only one, pick wisdom every time. In conclusion, many manipulators are ignorant shallow people, and many people who cannot manipulate anything are true gems. As long as you don't forget this, go ahead and develop power.

That first video is pretty interesting. It contains some distortions and exaggerations but it also contains a lot of what I would call credible information. Sediment formation, radiological dating difficulties, getting living from non-living matter, failure to observe beneficial mutations, complexity of genome and where would new genetic information come from, there is a lot there to chew on. Of course none of this proves God. It's just as likely that aliens seeded this planet or that things have spontaneously arisen in this form from the ground of consciousness without being created on purpose by a theistic God.

I've had friends who are illusionists, and here's what they'll universally tell you. When it comes to illusions, always ask yourself this: "Why are they doing something unnecessary?" In this case, the straw is not necessary. Why isn't the master sitting in the boiling oil up to his waist? Why is he sitting on top of dry straw? So obviously something unnecessary is done there, something that wouldn't be done if the demonstration was an honest one.

You could, but most people who like to practice with energy channels believe these channels are real self-existent things. With a mindset like that it's really hard to do wizardry. For the most part when a person learns about the subtle energy systems, the person takes one's mindset, together with all that it believes about the human body and the world, and just adds onto it another layer of beliefs about the subtle energy body. So instead of loosening up of the beliefs (good for wizardry) you are adding more beliefs on top of the old crusty beliefs (bad for wizardry). So in addition to all your stagnant and ignorant beliefs about the physical body and the physical world you now also have another huge layer of beliefs about the subtle energy body, channels, centers and so forth. So with the energy practice the person tends to multiply their beliefs and opinions instead of reducing them. The extra layer of beliefs that is embodied in the subtle energy body is in some ways more powerful and more freeing than those beliefs about the gross physical body, but because the energy body beliefs do not get rid of the physical body beliefs, most practitioners end up with this huge baggage about who they are and what they can and cannot do (bad for wizardry). And this is why some Chinese Daoists talk about transforming jing to qi to shen, because by itself, if you begin believing in qi, you begin sensing qi, you still didn't get rid of your belief in the physical body, right? So what can you do? Well, if you believe you truly have a real actual physical body, you have to transform it! This is hard to do because the idea of substantiality is contradictory to the idea of transformation. (The idea of emptiness is more conducive and more compatible with transformation.) At the very least, if you belief something to be substantial, you must also belief that transformation occur according to some universal laws, usually with great effort and struggle because there is no free lunch in substantialist view. So the whole process of transformation is hard or even impossible, and also necessary because the body is seen as a king of lead weight holding one down. Without the idea of gradual refinement the naive Daoists have no way to get rid of the body. I don't think all the Daoists are naive though. Some of them understand the role of the mind in maintaining the apparent solidity of the body and they realize nothing needs to be externally transformed. Only beliefs internally need to be transformed. The inner belief transformation is the real authentic alchemy leading to real magical life. But it's also scary and crazy because it works. It works because it strikes the true heart of reality instead of firing wildly all around. With the Hindu conception things are even more crazy than with the Daoist external alchemy (refining substances from gross to subtle). Kundalini rising up the spine is just a fun game. Thinking that some energy hits your head and you become enlightened means that enlightenment doesn't require any kind of change in understanding, and that it's purely a mechanical and almost a biological process. So this kind of idea that you can become enlightened while retaining your ignorant mindset is the most deluded idea ever to exist on this planet. But I can understand the appeal. No one wants to change one's mindset. Most people want to lead "normal" lives. They just want a little extra sauce on the side. Just more health, more fun, something cool to play with, a little internal excitement, and kundalini delivers exactly that. What kundalini doesn't deliver is changing what you believe about reality and about yourself. Energy practice can be a useful tool in the hands of those who understand illusion. It can really be something handy. You can use it to warm up or cool down your body, heal yourself and others and for some other things, without getting stuck in it thinking it's actually there. You know how Tibetans replaced the idea of deities with meditational deities? That's the right idea. So replace the idea of energy with the idea of meditational energy, and you'll get some benefit. You know what the difference is between a deity and a meditational deity, right? A deity is thought to be a real self-existent being that's actually out there (same thing people believe about themselves and other objects in the so-called "physical" world). A meditational deity is understood to be an empty and lucid appearance in the mind, so it gives all the benefits of the deity without any of the delusional drawbacks. So a meditational energy will have the same benefit.

There is no way to get the real enlightenment through energy practice of any kind. Energy practice is something mundane, like say carpentry. It can help. It's a tool. It's like having a chair to meditate on can help, but at the same time, sitting on a chair is not whatsoever a guarantee of enlightenment. A yoga mat can help, but again, yoga mats do not lead to enlightenment. I hope you're starting to see the relationship. Insofar people believe the energy channels are really real, this is a stumbling block on the path of realization of emptiness. Even our bodies are not ultimately real, so what to say of energy channels, which are even more mind-made than anything else. Working with energy channels can give one some interesting experiences. These experiences will sometimes challenge your core beliefs. That's a useful function when or if it occurs, when it comes to enlightenment. But by itself, without contemplation, it's of no avail. In fact, if you believe you know what energy is and how it works, you are far away from enlightenment because you don't really understand emptiness. If you read Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, you'll see that Yogis also understand that energy channels are sidetracks. So it's not fair to saddle Yoga with energy practices. Yogis also have Jnana, bhakti, seva, and other yogas that don't depend on any kind of energy channel practice. If you read Avadhut Gita, you'll see once again, there is no point in energy practices from the POV of enlightenment even in Hindu Yoga. So energy practice is really a specific niche. It has more to do with having fun, health, some minor magic, things like that. Energy channels are appealing to people with the physicalist mindset. Energy channels are the spiritual analogues of physical structures of the body, and people who demand structures find this appealing. So instead of diving into a world void of structure, they go from the human body, which is structured, toward energy channels in the spirit, which are again, structured. So they go from a gross structure to a subtle one, and this is comfortable and fun for those people. But when they do this they don't understand the true nature of structures, which is emptiness, because they demonstrate huge commitment to these energy systems as if they were absolutely and inherently real, just like the believe the human body is. So think of energy as you do of mundanely useful things, like carpentry or like plumbing. It's a useful skill and you can get paid if you know it, etc... but it's not going to make you into a wizard or give you greater understanding all by itself.

I know. That's why I ask. Mundane simply means whatever is ordinary for you. As you practice what is ordinary will change, but what won't change is the fact that some things will always be ordinary. So while you can transform the way your mundanity appears to you, you cannot really get rid of it or get out of it. You must have some virtue or you wouldn't even think to train. It's hard because the self is what does all the eliminating. You can't really imagine what it is you want, but it seems you know you want something other than what currently is. So in a way you don't know where you are going yet. You seem to be very open and trusting, which is a virtue, but you should be careful. Don't become anyone's slave. Be your own person even if you learn from 10,000 teachers.

Some of these techniques are very elaborate and involve many steps. In real fights the opponent doesn't wait for you to execute all that stuff. So even if you succeed initially with dragon rolls over, for example, it may not be enough, because by that time the opponent may be in a place you don't expect doing things you are not prepared for because you've mentally committed yourself to an elaborate response. All the quicker and less elaborate stuff has to be drilled to the point of being subconscious to be effective. The more elaborate stuff is a waste of time, imo. Arm bars are not easy to execute with a non-cooperating opponent. That's why in MMA matches it's common to see a fight drag on for what seems like an eternity while the grappler is waiting for an opportunity for a bar or a choke.

This is more or less how I live my life. I think the future is neither completely obscure nor completely predictable. If you are well informed and if you have access to a relatively dispassionate area of your being, you can feel the future moving and crystallizing inside your being. You can feel where the state of the world is going. It's not a scientific process and it does not give one a way to predict the future in every detail, but I think we can see certain trends develop. When you are talking about personal future, such as what is the best possible future for you as a person, that's much more complicated to know. It's almost impossible to know for anyone other than you. My dad could not really predict my own future as an individual. I've done many things that have surprised him in terms of the details, but when it comes to my general development, I don't think he's surprised. I've read somewhere that whatever we try to consciously teach kids only ends up being 5% of what they learn. Kids learn the other 95% through subconscious cues and hidden assumptions. In other words, kids absorb parental body language, they absorb unspoken implications, and so on. All that hidden stuff makes up 95% of what kids learn and the consciously spoken stuff is only 5%. I tend to agree with this assessment. So in other words, even if you don't try to teach the kids much, or if you do, it almost makes no difference. Kids will pick up all the bad ideas and all the good ideas that the parents have simply through all the subtle cues they can perceive subconsciously. Of course kids also learn from their peers and from strangers as well. They learn from the whole of society. So the best way to teach kids the right thing is to transform one's own being before having a kid. Then no matter what you say, the kid will pick up on the hints of that being. Still, even with the best efforts, kids are their own persons. We can't really control them. Kids will walk their own path anyway. It's futile to try to manipulate them beyond just giving them some starting tools.

I see. Well, I prefer honesty above all. For me to say "just don't worry about it and have fun" is dishonest. I enjoy my life, and not just any life. I enjoy life as I know it. I also don't enjoy my life. In other words, generally I enjoy my life, but there are many aspects I don't enjoy. So to be perfectly honest, I would be OK with all the life stopping as long as I was alive. I am OK being alone. It doesn't bother me. I know how to entertain myself with nothing but my own mind. I also happen to enjoy other people because I like surprise and I like reflections. Other people offer me reflections of myself and they also bring surprises. This makes life better. But I like other people for purely selfish reasons. I just enjoy them for myself. I am not afraid of death anymore, and haven't been for some time. I am afraid of transfiguration. So for example, when my body becomes infinite, that's scary. I also fear a state of mind where I don't know what is real and what isn't. As it happens, such a state of mind is crucial to freedom, so I am basically afraid of freedom. Now, the reason I don't fear death is because I don't associate myself with my body or my personality. I've seen myself without the body and without personality and even without a shred of humanity in me. I know I can exist in those other forms. So when those forms end, that's no longer a cause for panic. So I don't fear death. But I still have a preference. So while I no longer panic at the idea of my customary form going away, I still fear what would happen if I become altogether different from how I am now. The main reason is that I don't know if it's going to be comfortable or not. I don't like pain or discomfort. That's a complicated question to answer. This is how I think he did it. First, he's a widely read individual, so he had a very broad knowledge base spanning many topics of human knowledge. Also, it's not just reading books, but it's having a genuine interest in the topics. Genuine interest is the key because without genuine interest, you can read for years and learn nothing. Secondly, my father is highly skeptical and he imparted this skepticism on me, and to this day I consider it the greatest treasure. He told me never to believe anything 100% and to always leave room for doubt. I took that advice to heart as soon as I heard it. So my dad looks at all things with a critical eye. Naturally this means he had the capacity to look at the social order and the actions of the government in that light. Thirdly, my father was working at the management level, and he socialized with a lot of people, some of whom were pretty high up in the hierarchy of power. This gave him access to some amount of privileged information. That amount was small, but it was better than nothing. Fourthly, even though the government controlled the media, if you knew how to read between the lines, you could see the criticism of the government all over the place. In other words, control of the media can never be total. Meanings are much too subtle and nuanced to fully control. My dad always emphasized reading between the lines when I was growing up. In this manner you can learn things even if someone tries to repress information. But reading between the lines is not easy because it relies a huge deal of inner honesty. It's an art. So my dad would simply reflect on all that he knew about the situation and he determined that the situation was not sustainable.

That's a terrible post. If you're going to criticize something, you have to do better than to say you don't like something. You have to explain why you don't like it. This way you are giving me a chance to make a choice: I can choose to reject your reason, or I can choose to honor your reason and change my behavior. If you simply say you don't like something without giving me any reason why not, then I will assume you are basically a bully. At best I think a post like yours is negligent. That's the best thing I can say about it.

I agree such distinctions are useful at times, but what are those times? When is it useful to distinguish direct experience from indirect? And when is it useful to question such a distinction? As a reminder:

Yes, it is a cop out. I don't always have the energy to expound at length about how I view things. I'm not doing it to be mean. Also, I wasn't accusing you. I was saying actually I didn't even know what you were saying to me in the last paragraph there: As for the future, they really sometimes can know some things about the future. They can't know every detail, but for example, my dad predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union and we left right before it collapsed. That's one example of knowing something about the future. If you can reword it so that a 10 year old can understand, maybe I can reply to it.

1. Crack open your skull. 2. Separate the two hemispheres. 3. Place them on the scales. Left hemisphere goes on the left plate of the scale and the right hemisphere goes on the right plate. 4. The plates should be balanced. But if they are not, you will need to trim a piece of the brain off. So if the right plate dips, you need to trim a bit of the tissue off the right hemisphere. That's the Northern School way. Alternatively you can try to weigh down the left hemisphere with a tiny lead weight. That how the Southern School does it. 5. Reconnect the balanced hemispheres. 6. Insert the balanced brain back into your skull.

I think we are talking about the same thing here. I am responsible in the sense that I always have an option to disbelieve. So if I internally rubber stamped some brainwashing, then who should I blame for this? Seems like I should be blaming myself in this case. It doesn't mean I beat myself over the head. It just means I do what I can not to get caught in that trap again. Well, children want to believe that their parents love them and that they only have their best interests at heart. And for the most part it's kind of true. Parents don't think of what they are doing as brainwashing. They usually think whatever it is they impart on their kids is for the good of the kids. I know my parents tried their best with me. They wanted to give me the best future possible. What??? You're being so clever in the last paragraph that I can't even understand what you're saying. I'm not going to get into a discussion on the scope of one's being at this time.

The one who says such things is not me. At least not right now. Alright then. You have a privileged position to ask your son a question he might enjoy answering. I don't believe there is such a distinction at all. Such a distinction is ultimately a delusion and it's only useful in the same sense any other delusion is useful, namely, it's fun to play with until you get disappointed with it.

Pure garbage. It basically says Islam is right and everything else is wrong. Oh, and Jinns are very real - be afraid!! Boo!! Of course everything has its dangers. Just living normal life you can die in a car accident or develop cancer. Islam is more dangerous than qigong to your psyche.

Practice can help when those moments come, but in my opinion, when the real deal happens, no amount of technique practice will keep you stable. The only thing that helps is the real ability to face death, disfigurement, torture, and 10,000 demons, and nothing less will do. How do you practice for that? I don't think there is a single technique that can prepare someone for this. Contemplation can prepare a person for this, but contemplation is not a technique. Simply put it's just a fancy way of saying that you consider something deeply, steadily and repeatedly over the years. That "something" better be something pivotal, the root of the matter, or it better be something very close to the root. And the whole process has to be honest. There is no way to trick oneself into courage. I agree. I find this belief in myself in many forms. I am not anyone special to know anything good. I am not good enough to defend myself from accusations. I don't deserve to be respected or valued by women. I am not smart enough. You name it. I see all that as basically the same belief in personal insecurity and personal worthlessness, just expressed in different words that apply to different situations personal worthlessness tends to manifest in. I like to think I have squashed most of this nonsense through constant examination and vigilance, but I am not so stupid anymore. After my father vision debacle, I now understand it's quite possible for my subconscious to have beliefs about myself that I don't consciously approve of. Yes, imagine that. Imagine going through life constantly pissing and shitting on yourself from the inside. The damage the world can do to you is nothing compared to what you can do to yourself internally. We are our worst enemies and we are also our own best friends. Someone who has become his own or her own best friend is feared in society. Why? Because such people are hard to control. Such people are hard to intimidate, hard to bullshit, hard to manipulate, and so on. When a person like that appears, people who feel threatened call for humility right away. What it means is that they want you to either take a sincere shit on yourself internally, or they at least want you to hide your power, to stop showing it in public. It was drilled into you? Don't be so sure. The drilling certainly happens, but we do have a choice to go along with the drilling or to reject it. I accept personal responsibility for all the drilling that's been drilled into me. In my next life I am almost certain my parents will have a job of drilling conventional nonsense into me and I am equally certain I will reject everything negative and disempowering they say. I am already set to reject it right now. People are free to drill us. And we are free to ignore them.

Well said. People who talk lightly about changing beliefs really don't have the slightest clue. Even superficial beliefs can be hard to change. Changing beliefs is possible though. I hope no one interprets anything I say as pessimism. It's just that you have to be ready for nothing less than a total voluntary insanity if you want to change a nontrivial belief. Yes. It's not really the parents per se, it's simply that our egos are not what we think they are. We think our ego is just our personality. Our ego is the entire universe as we know it. Parents play a big role in that, but it doesn't stop there. People sacrifice themselves for the betterment of mankind all the time -- this level of sacrifice is sadly not sufficient if you want Daoist immortality. Why not? Because all those people die fully clinging to the world as they knew it. They died protecting it. This is the true extent of the person's ego. This is why I hardly ever talk about ego. Talking about ego generates so much misleading bullshit in people's minds, it's counterproductive. Telling people to be more humble is a very self-absorbed thing to do. Demanding humility and punishing arrogance -- all that is egoism of the highest order, the deadliest possible egoism, in fact. That's why talking about ego is a waste of time. It's much better to talk about fears and to talk about hopes than it is to talk about ego. What do we fear? What do we hope for? Before we dare to move beyond hope and fear we have to know what they are first. One doesn't move beyond obstacles by a way of ignorance, by ignoring those obstacles or by pretending they don't matter when they in fact govern every breath you take, not to mention every important decision in life.

How is very simple. Visualization and intent. If you don't have too many blocking beliefs then you don't even need visualization even, just intending to stay warm is enough. What the scientists can't determine is how to fit this into a physicalist worldview, where things like intent and visualization don't make any sense.

It's impossible to experience reality either. At best you experience an infinitesimally tiny fragment of reality.

I hesitate to say "never." I've heard of cases when people had life-changing experiences, usually near-death ones. Barring a near-death experience, I think most people die believing largely the same things they believed at birth. It should be reasonably easy for you to get your own opinion on this independently. All you'd have to do is talk to people and ask them, or if you can, just observe how they behave. Behavior reveals beliefs better than anything else. So for example, if someone claims to believe to be able to go through walls at will, but is careful to avoid oncoming traffic in day to day situations, then you know that someone is lying. Should you rid yourself of your beliefs? I don't know about that. I'm not sure you can appreciate how monumental of a task that is and how dramatically different you'd be and feel if you did that. Most people fear insanity. When enough beliefs change a person starts to feel insane, because the person still retains a memory of what a normal sane person believes, and there is a huge mass of fear. Of course sages often tell us that what people commonly consider "sane" they consider insane. But it's one thing to read something reassuring like that, and it's another thing to experience all that happen in your own being. It's like reading that a modern open heart operation is relatively safe, but would you jump under the knife if there was no life-threatening emergency? Real immortals, or real enlightened adepts do end up with a significant portion of their core beliefs altered (compared to a "normal" person). It's not that they rid themselves of beliefs so much as change them. Is that what you want for yourself? I think only very few people can answer "yes" with all sincerity because most people love their lives largely as is. Sure people like to tweak things, but the things people tend to tweak are superficial, kind of like rearranging the furniture in terms of relative importance. This is why when people sign up for a yoga class, what they mostly want is to feel that nice relaxed glowy state. They want a health benefit. They want to retain their ordinary life together with most of their ordinary beliefs, just as is, but they want just a smidgen more fun and a smidgen more health while they're at it. To change your unhelpful beliefs or to even rid yourself of some of them, you first have to become aware of them. This is hard because like I said, beliefs are not necessarily what we may naively think we believe. Beliefs are what we are and what we do. This is where spiritual practice comes in. During spiritual practice there is a chance you'll notice a conflict in belief, meaning, you'll attempt something that you realize you don't actually believe in. If this happens, then that's one access point. That's one way to become aware of a belief. I'll give you a personal example here. This is something that really blew my mind when it happened. I didn't expect it at all. I was convinced I was very independent, right? So if you just asked me something like, "Do you feel relatively independent?" I'd answer "yes." And in some sense I'd be right too. Perhaps I am a smidgen more independent than some other people I know. But am I as independent as I think I am? So one time I was meditating and post-meditation I'd often have visionary experiences of a mind-blowing nature. In one of those experiences I was feeling my being expand to the point where I felt I was dying. As I felt myself to be on the verge of death, I was gathering my inner strength to allow myself to die. I've died many times in such experiences, so I know I can do it, but it's not always easy for me. And as I was readying myself to die, suddenly my father's image appeared and gave me a very stern disapproving glance. And right after this the whole experience collapsed. I was shocked. I felt deep in the core of my being I knew exactly what all this meant! It meant that everything I was doing required my father's approval! I was shocked and bewildered for weeks after this. I was so disappointed in myself, that I had always believed something terrible like that and bam, it got revealed to me clear as day in a visionary experience. I realized something very important that day. I realized that all this talk about overcoming one's ego is pure garbage. It's pure trash talk. The real barrier is not oneself! It's one's family and the world itself! Wow! Talk about a huge discovery. I was ready to die. I had died many times, so it's no joke when I say this. But at the same time I found that it wasn't my body I was afraid of losing the most, but my family's moral support. And when I looked at this carefully, I realized that more than losing my own body or my own personality what I feared the most is to lose my world, my universe as I know it. I was ready to lay down my body in death if I could just assure myself that the world as I knew it would go on, and that my loved ones would be safe and sound. So in other words, after I realized a significant degree of detachment from myself I found myself attached to other people and to the world even more thoroughly and more intricately than I was attached to my own imagined self. I am ready to kill myself, but am I ready to kill my father? Am I ready to destroy the whole world? The answer turned out to be a resounding "not yet." So when you're talking about ridding yourself of all beliefs, you're talking about eliminating the world as you know it and all that you hold dear. I'm not going to tell you what you should be doing. You decide. I just want to tell you, "be serious." Try to understand the implications of what you're saying. Some beliefs are relatively easy to modify. For example, if you believe that without your make-up you are ugly, that's something that can be modified with ordinary effort. That's just an example. This kind of belief is what I call a superficial belief because whether or not your believe such a thing, your life is largely the same. Some beliefs, the ones I call core beliefs, are as hard to modify as it is to perform an open-heart surgery on yourself by yourself while trying to also have a normal day to day life. Real significant change is a slow process. I think it's best not to rush. The heart of the mind needs time to adapt to serious changes. Beliefs change over the years in the course of being under constant examination or in the course of being in constant conflict with your day to day practice, or something like that. Becoming open to change is something you can accomplish in an instant. To become open means to admit there is a possibility of believing something different. Openness isn't that hard and it's something everyone should try to accomplish, in my opinion. But from openness to the real transmutation of beliefs is a huge long road, often filled with some very threatening-looking parts, and only you can walk it.

Let's not confuse the ability to verbally profess beliefs with actually having them. Animals certainly have beliefs. Often very deluded ones. For example, my dog believes the world is a flat plane. How do I know this? When we come back from our walk, I tell him to "go home". He knows what it means, but he has no concept of vertical axis. So the dog goes to the correct door on the first floor when we live on the second. He does this consistently. We've changed where we live and in our new place we again live on the second floor and again the dog goes to the correct door but one floor below. Other evidence for the same idiocy is when I toss a ball and it lands on the chair. The dog is stumped. The dog has no problem finding the ball on the ground but if it's 2 feet off the ground, it really perplexes the hell out of him. Why? Again, it's the same assumption in his mind that the world is largely flat. My theory for why it is like that is simple: animals that climb or otherwise operate in all 3 dimensions of space understand those 3 dimensions. Animals that spend most of their time operating in 2 dimensions don't understand the vertical dimension as well. It's a huge mistake to think that beliefs are merely the verbal conveyances.

This is the kind of stuff that makes my blood boil when I think about it. You called it "absurd?" How about criminal?