The Religion Behind the Scenes

• The Religion Behind the Scenes
  • Why is there religion?
  • Conscious States / Mystical Experiences
    • Insights
    • Opening "Critical Periods" of Learning
    • Strange Experiences to consider...
    • Triggers for Mystical Experiences
  • Ancient Priesthoods started modern religions, why?
    • It wasn't all mystical
  • Culture and governments, religious orders
  • Some Information Theory of mind...
  • Directing consciousness
  • Basic cosmology

Why is there religion?

What motivates human beings to put such stock into "God" or gods, heaven, hell, aliens/UFOs, spirits, ghosts, elves, angels, demons?

Since religion and mysticism is common among humans. Perhaps there's something in the science realm that is fundamental, would be recreated, and explains why. Why have stories that require belief, at all? Isn't reality good just the way it is? Pantheons of gods, supernatural beings, the fairy tale creatures and stories, why are some for children and some are for ever? What motivates grown adults to have this mass delusion, and all sign over large portions of their life, money, time and mental space to it?

So let's explore the science behind what's going on, "The real" (that which leads to mystical systems and religion),
Later we can then talk about why "The Fairy Tale" (that which requires belief). Is there any science there?

Conscious States / Mystical Experiences

We have built in mental hardware / physiology to do lots of things. From logic to emotion to survival, etc. our brain is an expansive (very dense) pattern recognition and information storage/retrieval system. So would it surprise us to find that there's built in ways to experience mystical experiences?

Insights

Pattern recognition and insights happen as knowledge is gained & connections strengthen, and as we shift our perception to explore those connections.

Opening "Critical Periods" of Learning

A critical period of learning refers to a specific time frame in development where the brain is especially receptive to learning a particular skill or behavior. During these periods, exposure to specific environmental stimuli is crucial for normal development of that skill. If the necessary stimuli are absent during this period, it may be difficult or impossible to develop that skill later in life. 

Or what the zen buddhists call "beginners mind"

Connections reconfigure when we learn new things, but especially when our brain enters unexpected or new states, which open critical periods, like:

• learning disruption (e.g. new education, schooling, conferences, job training, finding a new mentor)
• mental stress (e.g. loss of job or mate; a new threat or danger)
• deprivations: (e.g. lack of sleep, food fasting, darkness, silence)
• entheogenic molecules (e.g. certain plants, venoms, organic or synthetic chemicals)
• physical trauma (e.g. head injury)

Some of these have the potential to open critical periods of learning / imprinting (more on this later).

Strange Experiences to consider...

Familiar examples you may have heard of, witnessed, or even dismissed:

• Psychedelics of the 1960's, LSD, and Mushrooms (Psilocyben). Causes the brain to perceive new colors, shapes, patterns are seen over the world. Large doses can cause a divine experience, or a perceived communication from 'entities'.
  • Another more extreme example is DMT, which comes from a variety of plants like those used to mix Auyasca, which changes the entire picture, like teleporting to a new world full of machines made of glittering diamonds and fabrege eggs and elves, demons, angels, other entities.
• Near death experience - the bright light and floating above the body
• UFOs - abductions, examinations, contact with entities/beings, transportation and return

Each one of these experiences can come from alternate states of consciousness, including mystical experiences.

Triggers for Mystical Experiences

Starting from zero, discovery of these mystical consciousness states can be found in many ways:

• via bloodstream: eating something with the right chemical in it, getting bit by the right venomous creature
• via focus: having a lucid dream under the right circumstances; entering meditation or ecstatic states
• via death: or almost dying (near death), then recovering (and able to remember / lucid experience). Nature’s version of a psychedelic trip
• via physical trauma: head damage
• via physiology: brain developmental or genetic variations / disorders / defects, chemical imbalance of the body
• via flashback: practice with these states, makes it easier to slip in/out of at will.

Ancient Priesthoods started modern religions, why?

In ancient times, proto-priesthoods started as intellectual nerds hacking our brain physiology to enhance or shift our perception, to make insights, or create full blown mystical experiences, using a variety of techniques (meditation, plant based medicines, near death experience, ritual, music, sex, imagery, etc).

No one knows when these techniques were first discovered, nor by whom, but we can infer that

• they're as old as time itself, and
• surely these conscious states were discovered over and over by multiple individuals over many timelines
• there's not just one trigger for these mental states
• within a population, someone's stumbled onto it

Brian Murarescu's book The immortality key calls this "the religion with no name". He's talking about psychedelics, entheogens, and sacraments that impart a "divine experience". But this religion with no name has many triggers, not only chemicals.

These various avenues, Bloodstream, Focus, and Death, are just ways to trigger a novel or mystical state in the mind, and are the foundation of spirituality, and what originally started the world's religions.

We're talking about the technology of consciousness, which have been called magic or spirit, but:

These triggers are only facilitators, and early proto-priesthoods learned to direct the hyperconnected insightful states.

It wasn't all mystical

Of course, besides mystical experience for the individual, there were also other very powerful areas of focus:

• sun / solar reverence
• fertility reverence
• focus on human happiness, remove suffering

Which are specific sources of oneness, universal love, connection to others, which have potential to enhance that mystical experience, or the daily experience, alike. These powerful truths are important to humanity, in general.

Culture and governments, religious orders

To keep the collective safe and productive, culture and government puts in rules. Some of these utilize the theology created by those proto-priest nerds to lend cred to their order of things. But much of that nerd-craft ends up getting banned as governments and cultures realize that altered mental states are kind of advanced topics that perhaps not everyone should be doing. e.g. Christianity (original sacrament) and Hindus (soma). Even the proto-priest nerds end up seeking non-drug avenues, e.g. the Buddhists (meditation).

We saw psychedelics of the 1960's get quickly banned by a culture that became uneasy with so much love.

Some Information Theory of mind...

Our brains are products of evolution driven genetics for the physical structure of our brain, and what we’ve been exposed to in our life which forms our world model.   Every brain is unique for these reasons.   We all share a certain similarities due to both evolution and learning within a similar environment, or via shared ancestral lines

We build a world model in our minds, from sensory input.  We don’t see the world, we see our model.   When we look at something with our eye, we are viewing our world model focused to the narrow topic being updated by our visuals from the eye. This is updating our world model however.   

When we turn off sensory input, like when we dream, our world model isn’t fixed and jumps around to what’s been built before, can “see” whatever our focus settles to, sometimes abruptly changing as we know dreams to do.  

Techniques like Psychedelics and meditation can filter out our sensory input, or just make it easier to index into our own world model and avoid our sensory input completely driving how we index that model.   experiencing familiarity, insights, visuals, entities, patterns, etc. depending what the technique affects

These techniques sort of hyper connect the brain, or sort of enhanced pattern matching, and bringing in more of our world model than our brain would normally index on, giving us new insights or perceptions (like faces in clouds), or ability to explore environments in our model, or even talk to general archetypes or specific entities in our model

DMT and other psychedelics differ in that DMT doesn’t produce effects in 3D (Cartesian) world space, DMT invokes a "hyper space" perceptional experience - with more dimensions it's hard to describe, but is reported as "familiar".  Imagine seeing all sides of an object at once, hear it’s color, feel it’s pointedness as emotion, see machinery behind an idea or concept, weird ineffable stuff that can’t be described when back in 3D space.

Thinking about a few of the available triggers for mystical experience: Psychedelics and Meditation can produce similar results with different levels of difficulty to first effects. Near death is too dangerous, but is interesting to know about for that final trip we apparently all get to have. These are features of our cognition.

Think of hyperspace or higher consciousness, as metaphors for new pattern mappings between higher and lower level layers of our brain.  With some translation to visual & audio for us to experience it.  It’s basically an enhanced, or remapped, view into our existing world model(s), with some of the remapping allowing access to lower or higher levels of our neural stack than we normally have ability to focus on.

When we are newborns, we apparently flood our brains with DMT, and we develop fully immersed in a hyperspace brain.   Our hyperspace brain develops first.   It’s our first experience as human.   It probably creates our deep social intelligence unique to our species. 

When we revisit this state with DMT it feels familiar, and some people think they’re revisiting before birth.   Possibly they’re accessing those memories

Basically, we have a massive pattern matching system in our heads, and to make sense of that, we then have layers that interpret this to 3D space for us.   But there’s a lot of intuition machinery going on, which is largely hidden from our awareness, it's too detailed to follow when watching our model as we do life.  But that supporting information machinery, can be directly experienced in DMT hyperspace as physical stuff, like jewels, machinery, entities, eggs, rooms, all descriptions that are impossible to put into words as I am poorly doing now using 3D words instead of hyperspace ones ;-).

We talk about DMT because it is a piece in the information theory mental map puzzle

DMT reconnects our model view, a different way into our existing neural net model, and it’s coherent, like switching on alternate reality that’s vastly more dimensions than 3.  DMT is very fast, minutes and then it turns off.  No tolerance, can do it again immediately (not so with lsd or psilocybin which build tolerance quickly, without addictive desire).

In DMT hyperspace it’s common to see fabrege eggs and machine elves, angels and demons, mythical Celtic lore elf creatures which welcome you “hooray you’re back!”   Happy familiarity.  But a warning there can be an occasional creepy or very rarely a violent entity (representing fear or shadow parts, repressed trauma).   These are from your world model you’ve built for archetypes, generalized personas that drive you or protect you, or generalized types of characters you’ve observed in life - also common to other psychedelics.   DMT is famous for machine elves that welcome you.

DMT is illustrative to highlight this space. We can infer that the other entheogens, and the other techniques, are exploiting similar model view repositioning features of our brain.

Takeaways:

• this brain is a highly connected pattern recognizer
• it hallucinate if you let it (let our perception index into our model, drift around)
• it will do things for you (instead of pretty lights) if you direct it
• your experiences can manefest into these

Directing consciousness

This is psychology of self, which goes beyond norms of today. It's a self-practice for the mentally disciplined. It's utilized in ancient rites, and should give context to what is going on in those rites.

• mindfulness
  • Identifying your minute to minute thoughts as above or below the line:
    • above the line emotions are delicious, life-giving, informative, wise and relationally connecting. They are an essential part of being awake
      • Personas: Coach, Creator, Challenger (trust based).
      • Trust opens — it allows us to co-create, support, and challenge with compassion.
      • feelings above the line is rare and requires practice.
    • below the line emotions are part of the cognitive emotive loop. Feelings keep recycling and often turn into moods and postures
      • Personas: Villain Victim Hero (fear based).
      • Fear contracts — it makes us protect, control, defend. And is the cause of error. Error is often at the root of what's described as evil, but really is a very human trait.
      • emotions below the line are natural and normal.
  • Practice presence to understand where you are, make insights for change.
    • Realize where you are (above or below), then consciously shift to where you want to be. Savor the change, Build new habits.
    • Realize the universe is mental, and your own mental framing can be transmuted (e.g. from below to above).
  • Practice gratitude, empathy, intentionality, authenticity - as above the line traits, build that habit by going there often.
• archetypes / personas / parts / internal family systems
  • imagine a council (or pantheon) of personas in your mind, the protector, the fighter, the empathizer, the lover, the creative, etc...
  • imagine doing mindfulness coaching with them. Presence to understand them, locate them as above or below, ultimately you'll better Know yourself.
• critical periods
  • This is neuroplasticity, and opening these primitive imprinting periods while doing the self- and parts-work to make lasting changes, like removing attachments (like addiction) and fears. We have these periods when we're young (example of a duckling getting imprinted onto a human caretaker). We can of course learn without these critical periods. But for some deeply seated habits, it is useful to reopen our critical period, to make our brain more imprintable than usual, for some lasting self-work. Classic examples of openers are:
  • bloodstream: ketamine, mdma, or psilocyben, LSD, Ibogaine
    • Interesting Fact: There were LSD therapy trials conducted before Nixon’s prohibition, which showed strong potential for breaking substance addictions based on previous unresolved trauma.
  • trance: cannabis; music; sex; chanting
• Invocation w/ Imagery, Naming, Poetry
  • We can give "an image" to mental framing, for recall of that framing. Images could be literal images or symbols, poetry descriptions, or named personas (as we did with persona work), and impart meaning to that image/name/description. As with information chunking techniques, this serves to recall concepts, more quickly connect with parts of self, or invoke mental framing. In computer science these are named procedures or functions. In magic these are manefested invocations.

These are all limited by our physics, of course, which also limits the potential of what can happen mentally as a result of these. It adds nuance and capability to the crude concept of "positive mental attitude"... This is mental metaprogramming.

Basic cosmology

So, an understanding of the kosmology (greek term kosmos, the order or structure of things)

• the reality behind all religions, is our consciousness and how we structure our thinking with regard to our place in reality and our relationship to others and our inner selves - that kosmology or "order" or "structure" to it all. there’s certain traits and attributes, fundamental realities of how our psyches work that transcend any religion.
• humans have written many religious texts, trying to make sense of this. including this work here that you're reading. and they’re all flawed metaphorical representations. a crystalized and imperfect/incomplete (and often overcomplicated) shadow of the actual truth. But we can see commonalities that we know are true.
• and that the actual truth is simply
  • the nature of our reality and our place in it. distilling down to:
    • physics of matter (molecular, atomic and quantum interactions, dynamics, all that) and of
    • information (the mental, which is that physics simulation running - a sort of computer constructed on top of the matter) which is simply the emergant complicated dynamics of that matter physics (e.g. flowing rivers that fractally branch; galaxy fractal spirals; and brain synapses all follow the physics).
  • how consciousness works (and how we can manipulate that consciousness). (see Directing consciousness above)

and within this information theory (the mental), there is mind, people, and our relation to life and thus to others:

• and that we have emerged from our kosmos, with that one life to live, and will return to our kosmos.
• and in that situation we feel virtuous connection to others who also are in our exact situation
• and that we can think with trust or with fear, and the ultimate trust mind is what many religions call god, or we can call buddhamind/godmind. and that the ultimate fear mind is dead matter. and in between is error (villain/victim) and virtue (constructive/creative)

and finally:

• and that there is one universe (one "everything"), and we are just a part of that ever unfolding dynamic system. therefore, we can say the universe has a "mind" (stay with me here), if we only consider the human minds, then the universe has a very parallel distributed human-like mind (where those mind-nodes communicate using those physics rules available - e.g. soundwaves, light, smearing matter on other matter to leave marks, carrier pidgeon, electrons, photons, special devices).
  • we are that universe. and that universe is us.
  • there are more minds than just human minds. there's a sliding scale of "people" from human down to dog, to ant, to amoeba, to river, to rock. from spiral galaxy and it's sub components and their dynamics, all the way down. we are the bigbang. we are that physics simulation. we are the universe, and the universe is "us", it's "people", the universe is people, is a person, is one, and we are one with it. just maybe not in the way you might have expected.
• we (and everything) are waves on a giant ocean (metaphor for the dynamic "everything"). we’re drops that emerge and return, undulating the entire time, and it’s one big physics sim.
• while our 'drop' of that ocean (our selves) has coaelesced to give us this life, we can appreciate how special that experience is, and make the best use of that time we have.
  • given how special that is, we can look around and see other people in that situation - and feel a very virtuous connection to others, and oneness with them and everything.