RomanDavis comments on The Sacred Mundane - Less Wrong

42 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 25 March 2009 09:53AM

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Comment author: Yvain 18 December 2009 10:51:40PM 10 points [-]

From above:

This isn't interpreted as a post-hoc attribution; just as the paranoid feels like it's the CIA after them, the Christian feels like they just saw Jesus.

Another example: in sleep paralysis, many people report seeing demonic type figures. Although I haven't been able to find any explicit evidence, I've seen suggestions that the exact variety of demon depends on the sleeper's expectation. For example, Chinese see something like a classic transparent ghost, Hmong see a tiny child-like figure, and Americans see stuff like typical horns-and-tail demons or typical pointy-hat type witches.

The mental "stimulus" in sleep paralysis doesn't have any features - it's just a general feeling of fear, unreality, and oppression. But the sufferer does see a demon or monster with the culturally appropriate features.

So it's not contradictory to say both that dhyana itself is an "unconditioned" experience, and that individual experiences of dhyana can be detailed - although there may be many different types of emotionally powerful hallucination and "unconditioned" may be too vague to be a useful word.

Comment author: RomanDavis 14 August 2012 04:30:06AM 0 points [-]

I've never seen anything when I have sleep paralysis, but I have had the feeling of malevolent presence and, once, a voice that made me very afraid.