/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.16200571]

>that weird headspace when you start thinking about how personality and your sense of self is an illusion and one day we’re all gonna die and everything will be nothing and then you start thinking about how maybe we have it all wrong and everything is already nothing and this existence isn’t really here and nothing is really here all just an illusion

[Anonymous No.16200575]

r*ddit, go the fuck back faggot

[Anonymous No.16200588]

>>16200571
>that weird headspace when you start thinking about how personality and your sense of self is
go on
>an illusion and one day we’re all gonna die and everything will be nothing and
never mind, you're a retard with entry-level takes

[Anonymous No.16200590]

>>16200575
What is reddit about it? Am I wrong? Does this not occur to you?

[Anonymous No.16200597]

>>16200588
That wasn’t the end of it, I go on to say more or less our current existence in actuality is probably no different then death

[Anonymous No.16200672]

>>16200571
>and your sense of self is an illusion
refuted by Shankaracharya
>everything is already nothing and this existence isn’t really here and nothing is really here all just an illusion
refuted by Shankaracharya

[Anonymous No.16200703]

>>16200672
Explain please if you’re not just meming.

[Anonymous No.16200719]

Was the explosion in Beirut an illusion?

[Anonymous No.16200724]

>>16200719
this. also was the holocaust an illusion? i wanna hear your racist ass say it OP >>16200571 are you denying the holocaust when you say it's all an illusion?

[Anonymous No.16200735]

>>16200724
The Jews were an illusion. Hitler didn't actually kill anyone. The man is absolved of all wrongdoing.

[Anonymous No.16200743]

>>16200735
watch your back goy

[Anonymous No.16200749]

New Agers who think being a big fan of The Matrix counts as genuine insight ruined everything

But you'll be fine, OP, avail yourself to the timeless wisdom found in holy texts such as the Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, the Gospels, and so on.

[Anonymous No.16200751]

>>16200719
Yes

[Anonymous No.16200752]

>>16200571
On the one hand I do think seclusion affects my brain and I naturally have mental illness but on the other hand I just dislike many of them. Not all but many.

[Anonymous No.16200758]

>>16200749
Please just explain how I’m wrong. I don’t like these conclusions but this is what I’ve come to after spending my whole life thinking about this.

[Anonymous No.16200781]

>>16200758
You shouldn't think of an illusion as something "not real", instead of being something OTHER than what you initially perceive it to be.

To see the reality, the truth, behind things you have to strive past your baseline perceptions, and therein lies the work of sages, mystics, scientists, alchemists, etc. across all time.

[Anonymous No.16200881]

>>16200703
>Explain please if you’re not just meming.

>and your sense of self is an illusion
The personality may be considered an illusion. The Self (Atman) according to the Advaita philosopher/theologian Shankaracharya is the self-luminous, unchanging and attributeless awareness to which all sensory and mental experiences are manifested. Mental phenomena like thoughts arise in consciousness and vanish, sensory data arise in consciousness and vanish; but this abiding consciousness to which these datum are presented never itself ceases, even in deep dreamless sleep there is simply an absence of exterior objects for that consciousness to illumine. Nothing becomes known without that thing manifesting itself to consciousness, but the witnessing consciousness to which things are presented and known never itself changes or witnesses itself as its own object but always hovers there just out of sight illuminating everything like an invisible sun. You can doubt many things, but only a fool would deny that there is a witnessing sentience observing their thoughts who is the same abiding presence at this moment that it was when you began reading this post (if it's not, why was there not an interruption of your awareness? etc). Here in this picture from his commentary on the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad you can see an example of Shankaracharya refuting the claims of those (in this case B*ddhists) who deny that there is this Self of unchanging witnessing awareness which is distinct from mental actions like thoughts, memory etc
>everything is already nothing and this existence isn’t really here and nothing is really here all just an illusion
Shankaracharya refutes this by noting that illusions cannot have nothing as their basis; people don't perceive illusory snakes in empty rooms, but only do so when there is a rope on the ground that we can mistake to be a snake. All illusions necessitate by default an existing substratum for that illusion to inhere in. If there was nothing whatsoever, we would not have conscious experience, because nothing doesn't produce anything, much less produce the illusion of being a conscious human being. And in any case, if nothing in this hypothetical scenario become "nothing, but possessing the capacity to cause illusions", than it would cease to be nothingness by virtue of being delimited and assigned a unique character by that qualification.

[Anonymous No.16200927]

>>16200571
>depersonalizing
>not realizing it’s a good thing to be able to look at things without the burden of self.
>so used to viewing the world through your own unconscious lens of perception that you assume anything viewed any other way must not be real

[Anonymous No.16201171]

>>16200751
Very convincing CG they used holy fuck

[Anonymous No.16201282]

>>16201171
Brainlet

[Anonymous No.16201310]

>>16200881
What translation of the Upanishads do you recommend, friend?

[Anonymous No.16201404]

>>16201310

I recommend the translation of the Upanishads which includes Shankaracharya's commentaries on them, which I find to elucidate their meaning incomparably better than the vast leagues of insignificant and mediocre modern 'scholars' whose uninspiring commentaries and notes end up forming the lenses through which most people end up reading the Upanishads. I'm glad you asked. I recommend beginning with the 8-Upanishad commentary compilation translated by Gambhirananda and then reading Shankaracharya's commentaries on the Brihadaranyaka and Chandogya Upanishads in that order. The Chandogya commentary translation below I consider to be inferior to the translation by Gambhirananda so if you are serious and read through all his Upanishad commentaries I recommend ordering a hard copy of Gambhirananda's Chandogya translation. If you are confused about anything you can clarify those points by reading the entirety of, or by scanning the table of contents and then reading the relevant chapter of either Guenon's 'Man and His Becoming According to the Vedanta', or just the chapters on Vedanta in Sharma's 'Advaita Tradition in Indian Philosophy', both of those are on lib-gen

https://estudantedavedanta.net/Eight-Upanisads-Vol-1.pdf
https://estudantedavedanta.net/Eight-Upanisads-vol2.pdf
https://archive.org/details/Brihadaranyaka.Upanishad.Shankara.Bhashya.by.Swami.Madhavananda
http://www.tbm100.org/Lib/Jha42.pdf

[Anonymous No.16201726]

>>16200735
Maybe Serrano was right after all

[Anonymous No.16203459]

>>16200571
Hello OP. I also have experienced that sort of headspace. It's amazing how powerfully intense and frightening a mental place can become once you start analyzing and fighting back with the voice that is doing the speaking. Maybe frightening is the wrong word, because you realize also in this state that emotions on some level must also be an illusion.
The replies in this thread strike me as strange. Like they don't even know what you're talking about. Like they think you're a child who is simply lacking some more mature understanding of the world.

> everything is already nothing
I also have felt the truth of this. It is not something refuted by saying "well you perceive objects outside of yourself so their must be a perceiver and and an outside." No. Anyone who says that doesn't get it. Once you see how non-being infitely surrounds being, how the non-being can't even be spoken of - how much nothing is the nothing itself - it becomes clear how contained, built upon, and reliant on, being is to nonbeing. We are the negative space of nothing. But the negative space is also nothing. It's hard to communicate. It's not a thought you can carry around with you on your day.

[Anonymous No.16203496]

If the self doesn't exist, who is being deluded?

[Anonymous No.16203510]

>>16200571
I, too, have played Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons Of Liberty, A Game By Hideo Kojima.

[Anonymous No.16203550]

>>16200571
this is an easy solve.
1. realize you're going to die
2. think about why you're afraid of death
3. realize that you've been conditioned to believe that the ultimate goal of your life is permanence, and that if you do not somehow leave a permanent mark on the earth, your life was utterly meaningless
4. realize that's ridiculous, futile and hopeless
5. spend the next few years of your life slowly divorcing your sense of self from your body, and the ingrained desperation for control

[Anonymous No.16203808]

>>16200571
>that weird headspace where you actually think about and reflect on concrete literary works
bizarre feeling, isn't it?

[Anonymous No.16203856]

>>16200571
Babbys first shower thought

[Anonymous No.16203862]

>>16203496
if the dish doesn't exist, who was the chef?

[Anonymous No.16203866]

>>16203496
Precisely.

[Anonymous No.16205406]

>>16203808
Based

[Anonymous No.16205424]

>>16200571
>takes one sniff of second-hand weed smoke

[Anonymous No.16205437]

>>16203496
Your mom last night. She thought I was wearing a rubber.

[Anonymous No.16205756]

>>16203866
>buddhists claim to refute other schools by pointing out their alleged internal contradictions
>but when people point to the internal contradictions of buddhism, buddhists hypocritically instead treat these as mysterious koan-like riddles designed to lead to enlightenment

really makes you think

[Anonymous No.16207303]

>>16203866
Buddhism is so fucking cringe lmao

[Anonymous No.16207392]

>>16200571
>one day we’re all gonna die
fuck yes