Can human beings get to know beyond their sphere of concepts?
We already saw that within the sphere of language, not even the answers to the most basic questions are found, only answers to minor details.
If we call «Wisdom» the unlimited field of knowledge within which the conceptual spheres move, we can ask if it is possible to achieve it. In other words, get to punch the language.
We start with the tool that we have available, which is none other than the brain. We have already discarded the possibility of finding Wisdom in any kind of medium where the memes are stored.
In this search, everything that can be learned through books, through teachers, through concepts is discarded as a basis.
The books are only used to make a fire, or to fit a piece of furniture.
It is also evident that the human brain functioning normally does not work.
So … do we have some way to multiply your performance?
There are not many options beyond using neurotransmitters so that we can regulate their functioning to enter into ways that the brain does not normally use, but that can give us the way out of our problem.
In normal mode, the brain works towards reproduction. For that, genes have designed it. And everyone knows that, if there is a prospect of getting sex or food, the brain rewards itself with a dose of serotonin and dopamine. And if he does not succeed, he recaptures serotonin causing a strong depression.
In this way, the brain only treats you as if you were the donkey. It puts you the carrot, the happiness, so that you run after it and, if you do not, it gives you a stick called suffering.
A basic human works like this, with two gears. Happiness is the accelerator and suffering the brake. Already. It’s such a basic concept that it’s scary.The technical mechanism used by the brain is the pair attachment / aversion.
The basic human is that simple.
For this you do not need to think, you do not need to develop. Only vegetates, reproduces, gets money and dies. The basic human can not be considered more than a slave of his own genes.
If only with the dependence on serotonin (happiness) we explain the «complex» human behavior, where will it take us to combine all the neurotransmitters? And not just one by one, or in pairs, or in trios, or any kind of combinatorics.
Here, as exposed, a gigantic field of possibilities opens up to us.
Now, there is a well-known combination that is the mixture of dopamine + serotonin + anandamide which is what the classical Christian mystics used in what they called the third type of prayer. It is what has been called «mysticism» and that has accompanied man in his history. This is not new.
If we add the enkephalins we enter a set of altered states of consciousness called «jhānas» with a series of very interesting properties in order to reconfigure the brain circuits and that this organ works in other ways.
This level is what Saint Teresa of Jesus called the fourth type of prayer.
Practically the universal mystics reached the third or fourth level of mysticism.
But there is a lot more from there. Dominating 11 neurotransmitters our field expands to no less than the number of combinations without repetition.
It is called combinations of m elements taken from n in n (m ≥ n) to all possible groupings that can be made with the m elements so that:
Not all the elements are included.
No matter the order.
The elements are not repeated.
And we can calculate the combinations by factorials:
Being M = 11 and n variable. Thus the combinatorial of 5 elements that the jhānas produce is one of 39,916,800 / (720 * 120) = 462.
And that only using 5 elements. Let’s summarize those from 1 to 11 …
With 6 we add another 693 modes …
And so…
Comparing in a single way with that a basic brain works in this many ways that it can do it gives us a measure, poor, of what a trained brain can do.
Although not all combinations manage to change the way the brain works, there are special combinations by which the circuits are rewritten and, for example, are necessary to eliminate serotonin dependence. The dependence on happiness. Thus, that brain can not suffer in any way.
And it is a specific case.
Oxytocin is another neurotransmitter whose participation is capable of triggering very interesting EAC.
Here the difficulty that has historically been associated with mysticism is that it only occurred in «mystics», very strange people who were never able to describe exactly how they did it and attributed these states to «divine grace».
That difficulty has ceased to exist from my elegant method of producing neurotransmitters by concentrating in the air molded in the form of certain graphs by breathing.
It is basically the Buddha’s own method that corrected and expanded not only the neurotransmitters «jhāna factors» but many more. And, in addition, doing it in an active and immediate way and in the doses that you want.
What can Wisdom be achieved?
Of course. But only by expanding the brain faculties using their own endogenous drugs.
Mysticism is not something optional, residual, valid for a few, but rather as a basic tool for anyone who wants to be a complete human being and not just an animal with a human form.
In any case, mysticism is a NECESSARY condition but NOT ENOUGH to achieve Wisdom and with it total liberation by oneself.
In this way, the brain stops behaving like the machine of the memes and it starts to be possible to use it and not that he uses you.
This is what the Buddha discovered and it was what he used to become fully enlightened. His insistence that only experience enlightens (Kalama sutta) and in the practice of the jhānas, contrasts pathetically with his «followers» who are based on study, books and teachers and spurious practices and ceremonies that clash with rationality more simple.
Followers of the Mara, the great clueless.
«Then, prince, I remembered: ‘One day, when my father, of the clan of the sakyas, was working, I was sitting taking the fresh one in the shade of a tree. There, apart from the desires of the senses, apart from what is harmful, I reached and remained in the first meditative abstraction, in which there is joy and happiness born of isolation and is accompanied by ideation and reflection. Could not that be the path to enlightenment? ‘
«And, in the light of that memory, I understood: ‘This is the path to enlightenment.’
«Then I thought: ‘Why fear a happiness that has nothing to do with the pleasures of the senses or with what is harmful?’
«And I said to myself: ‘I do not fear that happiness that has nothing to do with the pleasures of the senses or with the detrimental.’
«Then, prince, I thought: ‘It is not easy to achieve that happiness with a body reached to such exhaustion, and if I ate something solid, rice boiled and curdled?’
«So I ate something solid, boiled and curdled rice. On that occasion I was accompanied by five monks who thought: ‘If the ascetic Gotama achieves the Teaching, he will tell us.’ But, to take something solid, rice and curd, disappointed with me and left thinking: ‘The ascetic Gotama sticks the good life, has put aside the effort giving to the good life’.
«So, after eating solid food and regaining strength, away from the desires of the senses, away from what is harmful, I reached and remained in the first meditative abstraction, in which there is joy and happiness born of the separation, and goes accompanied by ideation and reflection.
«Then, when ideation and reflection ceased, I reached and remained in the second meditative abstraction, in which there is joy and happiness born of concentration, it is free of ideation and reflection, and it is accompanied by the unification of the mind and inner serenity. .
«Then, as the joy disappeared, I remained calm, attentive and lucid, experiencing with the body that state of happiness that the Nobles call: ‘Live happy, attentive and even-tempered’, with what I achieved and remained in the third meditative abstraction.
«Then, by renouncing pleasure, by renouncing pain, and after the disappearance of joy and affliction, I reached and remained in the fourth meditative abstraction, without pain or pleasure, completely purified by attention and equanimity.
«Then, with the mind thus concentrated, completely purified, clear, blameless, free of impurities, malleable, ready for action, balanced, immutable, I directed it towards the knowledge and memory of my previous lives. I remembered my multiple previous lives, that is, a birth, two, three, four, five, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, one hundred, thousand, one hundred thousand births, many cosmic cycles of contraction, many cosmic cycles of expansion, many cosmic cycles of contraction and expansion: ‘There, that’s what he called me, such was my family, such was my appearance, such was my food, so I experienced pleasure and pain, so much my life lasted, there I died and elsewhere I reappeared; there, that’s what he called me, such was my family, such was my appearance, such was my food, so I experienced pleasure and pain, so much my life lasted, there I died and here I reappeared. ‘
«This is how I remembered my multiple previous lives with their characteristics and details.
«This one, Prince, was the first knowledge I achieved in the first third of the night.Ignorance vanished and knowledge arose, darkness vanished and light emerged, as happens when one remains alert, constant and diligent.
«Then, with the mind thus concentrated, completely purified, clear, blameless, free of impurities, malleable, ready for action, balanced, immutable, I directed it towards the knowledge of the birth and death of beings. With the purified divine eye, which goes beyond the human, I saw the beings dying and reappearing, I met the inferior, superior, beautiful, ugly, fortunate and unfortunate beings according to their previous actions, and I knew: ‘Certainly, the beings of bad body behavior, verbal misconduct, mental misconduct, insulting the Nobles, who hold misconceptions, whose actions are derived from misconceptions, after the death and decomposition of the body, reappear in perdition, in a bad destiny , in places of suffering, in the underworld. But those beings of good corporal behavior, of good verbal behavior, of good mental behavior, who do not insult the Nobles, who hold true conceptions, whose actions are derived from true conceptions, after the death and decomposition of the body reappear in a good destiny , in some celestial world. ‘
«Thus, with the purified divine eye that goes beyond the human, I saw the beings dying and reappearing, I met the inferior, superior, beautiful, ugly, fortunate and unfortunate beings, and I knew that they were reborn according to their previous actions.
«This, Prince, was the second knowledge I achieved in the second third of the night.Ignorance vanished and knowledge arose, darkness vanished and light emerged, as happens when one remains alert, constant and diligent.
«Then, with the mind thus concentrated, completely purified, clear, blameless, free of impurities, malleable, ready for action, balanced, immutable, I directed it towards the knowledge of the annihilation of the corruptions.
«I knew just how it is: ‘This is suffering’, I knew just how it is: ‘This is the origin of suffering’, I knew how it is: ‘This is the cessation of suffering’, I knew how it is: ‘This is the path that leads to the cessation of suffering’; I knew just how they are: ‘These are the corruptions’, I knew just as it is: ‘This is the origin of the corruptions’, I knew as it is: ‘This is the cesar of the corruptions’, I knew just how it is : ‘This is the path that leads to the cessation of corruption’.
«When I knew and saw this, my mind was freed from the corruption of the desire of the senses, my mind was freed from the corruption of becoming, my mind was freed from the corruption of ignorance.
«When I was released, I knew that I was liberated and I verified: ‘Annihilation is reborn, the life of holiness has been fulfilled, what has to be done, there is no more happening’.
«This, Prince, was the third knowledge I achieved in the last third of the night.Ignorance vanished and knowledge arose, darkness vanished and light emerged, as happens when one remains alert, constant and diligent.
Collection of Medium Length Discourses MN 85. Bodhirajakumara Sutta
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