Corey Anton: HOW NON-BEING HAUNTS BEING

[@zachvanslyke4341]

“Everything is ‘natural” Could not agree more… I’ve been saying this and thinking this since childhood… you’re spot on. 🙏

[@CoreyAnton]

Thanks. Best to you

[@simongamer987]

You are the smartest dude I know, love your ideas

[@CoreyAnton]

I try

[@KevinMurphy0403]

I haven't watched you in a while Anton and I have to say this talk was magnificent. Keep up the good work. Wonderful stuff

[@82472tclt]

This is sooo good! The sense in which our body is the way time-space articulates itself is so cool

[@CoreyAnton]

Thanks

[@thankmelater1254]

New Professor Anton vid! Things are looking up!

[@silverfoxcondor46]

Thanks for talking about the "Worlding process" from Heidegger. Examples you give illustrate what we all have in common;and give the ideas a grounding that we can relate to in our own real life experiences.

[@CoreyAnton]

My pleasure!

[@williamscottharkey]

Really enjoyed this. When can hope to see a paperback copy?

[@CoreyAnton]

Thanks. Perhaps a year or two?

[@rodgerbroome]

I got my copy! Thanks Corey. I am looking forward to learning from you again.

[@CoreyAnton]

Thanks, Roger. Not sure if this will work to post it here, but here is a link to the reading group. facebook.com/Noisetoknowledgepodcast/videos/169406201616980

[@rodgerbroome]

@@CoreyAnton thank you, I hit the follow button and will stay tuned.

[@oscarrasinaho1066]

So grateful to have found you and your ruminations on life Anton, you always bring clarity. What are you thoughts on nondualism as concept? It is as you talked about in the end the mystery of the sacred geometry in which we live. Similar to dao, and emptiness a thing that can not be uttered but exist between the apparent dualities of all. Would love to hear your take on it. Been struggling with it myself. Anyway, thanks again!

[@CoreyAnton]

Thanks. Sure, nondualism is helpful, as the world and others cannot show some of their aspects without our assistance and we cannot be ourselves except through others and the world.

[@oscarrasinaho1066]

I see your point. Quite beautiful. :-)

[@82472tclt]

“We are the way the world worlds...”

[@CoreyAnton]

indeed. bodies, as they are lived, are quite different than they appear to others

[@SamKH202]

Hey Professor, thank you for putting this video today. I do not know if you have ever made a video on the ultimate question "why is there something rather than nothing" or how much you have pondered this question. In general, I am not so convinced that the idea "we emerged from nothing and will return to it" accurately tackles this great question. In the realm of infinity, that is, all that could possibly exist, all that has existed, and all that will continue to exist afterwards, why do you think that existence stops, when it never really started?

[@CoreyAnton]

I address such issues and many more in the book. Please get it into your local library. The issues at stake are much more complex and nuanced, as you suggest. For one, there are significant differences between no longer existing and never having been. The question is not why is there something RATHER THAN nothing, but rather, how does non-being haunt what is.

[@zachvanslyke4341]

Good stuff🙏

[@jake6429]

Very profound words, Corey. I find myself feeling more and more that, to borrow your words, what's haunting and absent, from the human experience is psychedelics, and particularly psychedelic mushrooms. Homo sapiens have been around for about 300,000 years; mushrooms have been around for 750 million years (just on Earth, let alone the cosmos). From my experience, and say an ethnomycologist like Gordon Wasson, the psychedelic mushroom experience brings humans immediately back into connection with Gaia Mother Earth, back into connection with the reality of the interconnectedness of all things, the purpose of duality which creates being and non being, and into the face of the 'Wholey' Other, as Terence McKenna put it, a good pun noting Totality and Sacredness. I laughed when you said, you're not advocating that we're all God. Why not? In the sense we are all worlds worlding, couldn't you simply take the position that there's a humility which precludes the sort of aloofness that comes from this scientific materialist atheist attitude which is popular nowadays? I think this whole spiritual poverty between human beings is because we're devoid of a reverence and humility which a God commands, but God in this isn't some father figure on high with all the answers it's more in line with the Hindu god Kali (Huxley gives a good intro to Kali on YT), humans need the humility which is required with say a category 5 hurricane, humility is the only way to not get fucked up. You're completely right, our biggest societal issue is that we're all running around with little consciousness of our actions playing a ceaseless ego game with dire consequences, and it's precisely because we have no clue as to what we are. I just really don't see another way without psychedelics to end this madness. Like Joyce said, 'History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.' I know you mention Alan Watts frequently, did psychedelics help you? Because they changed my life, and I certainly would never have the perspective of worlds worlding without them. And really, all psychedelics are is the macro manifestation of a quantum micro effect which is in complete harmony with our existing physiology. Like, our brains make DMT and are arguably set up to take in DMT as well. And in that sense, eating mushrooms is just the macro experience of a micro molecular harmony, which as the human experience is the experience of unconscious becoming conscious, ignorance becoming knowledge, dark becoming light, but under psychedelic felt totality without abstraction like with words. I can say unconscious becoming conscious, ignorance becoming knowledge, yada yada, but magic mushrooms actually force people to weep, knock knees in terror, break down mentally and emotionally, transform and inspire, illuminate to ecstasy. It seems as though our world is waking up and maybe electric technology will be good enough. McLuhan did say it was like LSD.

[@CoreyAnton]

Thanks for this comment. Lots of good stuff here. Psychedelics may be among the most potent sources for spiritual experiences and they may also quell death fear. But, that said, there is a significant leap between no longer fearing death, on the one hand, and believing that such experiences provide direct evidence of life after death, on the other. If we in any way are "God," as you intimate, it would seem not the ego, the self, or the "I" but that part of "me" which digests food, grows hair, heals wounds, etc.

[@jake6429]

@@CoreyAnton True, I still don't believe in life after death, at least as ego is concerned. My intuition tells me that the energy I cultivate in this life will not be destroyed at the death of my body, but continue along in whatever manner it left off, settling wherever and however it may settle. But obviously no one can ever know. You mention language, and this is something I picked up in Grammatical Man by Jeremy Campbell, which I got from you, but in that book I know Campbell puts Descartes' "I think therefore I am" on its head by referencing Chomsky, and showing that the thought of "I" as a linguistic abstraction is only acquired from the community, that language itself, our tool to abstract portions of reality, is only possible by the minds of everyone else. In which case your own thought proves nothing of your own existence. To me this is where the real 'God' aspect comes in. We each have within us the infinite creative capacity of language, the ability to say something meaningful which has never been said, understand something meaningful we've never heard, and have it translated into material reality which produces miracles. At the end of the day, building machines which can fly faster than sound and accelerate particles at the speed of light are still miracles. Newton could never expel the ghost from the machine, it's the machine that gets thrown out. We still are stuck using 'force' as a scientific meaning even though it means little that's intelligible. It's a concession of duality. Knowledge is only possible by the existence of things which cannot be known. Anyway, thanks for your response. I appreciate your videos, you're one of the most interesting people on YT.

[@CoreyAnton]

@@jake6429 Thanks. All best to you

[@82472tclt]

What is the difference between “nothing” and Sunyata (emptiness)?

[@apextroll]

Nothing. Both have something.

[@Ndo01]

Nothing is non-existence. Sunyata is lack of independent existence. Big difference.

[@raresmircea]

@@Ndo01 I’ve heard two different takes on sunyata and it seemed very interesting, and i’ll try describing it although i don’t remember much above a vague idea. The first interpretation, the most popular and coming from Nagarjuna, is just like you’ve described it-many similar aphorisms abound: "nothing is what it is by itself" or "such is the world that if you pick anything up you’re bound to lift everything else along with it". The second conception of emptiness refers to a connected but different aspect, instead of the *meaning and identity* of things it refers to the *behavior and freedom* of things. If i remember right, there are scholars which maintain that this second meaning of sunyata is ignored today but it’s clearly present in old texts and it’s something close to "space", but not as spatiality/tridimensionality but as in "lack of opposition". Think about the atmosphere, there are countless things, atoms, ions, simple molecules, complex molecules, viruses, bacteria, fungi, pollen, and they’re doing an immensely complex activity. BUT there’s nowhere in that unfathomable maelstrom that you’ll see anything that opposes the movement, as in "This isn’t right, we’re pushed the wrong way. Back!". As immense as the maelstrom is, everything within it is part of a giant continuous/uninterrupted flow. This is a metaphor for all Nature, even egos (whose attempts to change, stop and push back on the natural flows is just an *illusory* manifestation that itself is part of the flow). Once "enlightened" the ego disappears, melted into the realization that everything just flows without the possibility of something ever being against the flow. Even if you go outside and shout against the wretched Dao and his movements, *that’s still a manifestation of the Dao itself, NOT against it.* In this state there’s no feeling of opposition, of hardship, because you’re part of everything, and you flow without any effort (off course my use of "you" is forced by the constraints of language; the "you" after enlightmemt is not the you we normally mean when we use the word). You wake up early, you spend the full 2 minutes brushing your teeth, you leave early for work, and there’s no egoic sense of putting effort into overcoming, stopping, pushing and pulling back on things. But before accessing this state one must go through education and military like discipline in the egoic phase, otherwise the enlightened manifestation will lead and contribute to a chaotic existence which ultimately means generating suffering downstream-and buddhism started from one thing only: the nastiness of suffering which discloses itself as in need of being annihilated.

[@Ndo01]

@@raresmircea Right, the emptiness you're speaking is more prevalent in Daoist thinking. I've never heard it mentioned in that way in a Buddhist context. I think both interpretations more or less achieve the same thing. For me personally however, I've found the Buddhist use of emptiness to be more analytically deconstructive and useful for arriving at the realization of no-selfness. Whereas the Daoist emptiness, to me, is the phenomenological lived experience of no-selfness.

[@raresmircea]

@@Ndo01 Right! I’ve listened to an interview once with adyashanti in which he recounted a very powerful realization that he had. He said that after some many years of practice following his first insight, while being in a lay mundane context he suddenly *became* the condition that’s described/referred at by the phrase "we’re moved by a source that’s outside ourselves". And that was a magnificent state of "beatitude" according to him. I think i get what that must’ve been like but what i don’t understand is what would a depressed person experience, certainly not "beatitude"-because it’s not a magic state but one that’s emerging out of the same substrate from which all the quotidian good feelings do. And if you don’t have the neuro-physiology to produce that, then what’s left? I am convinced by a british philosopher who says that there’s no amount of "truth" that would ever compensate for a highly negative valence state, and there’s no amount of "unknowing" that could spoil a highly positive valence state. I initially replied to him by saying that i actually *did* experience betterment after realizing something (getting something about reality). But he said that as long as i felt better it meant that my brain was capable of greater valence and my realization triggered that BUT if you take someone with invincible depression and make him realize some greater "truth" he won’t experience it as "better" or even "valuable" in any way. Right now i’m pretty convinced by his idea that the pleasure-pain axis (valence axis) is a fundamental aspect of reality, a "primitive" of existence-there’s no existence without it having some level of valence. Given that i would much rather find invincible pleasure and happiness in maya than unsurpassable "truth" in enlightenment. Suffering from depression for over a decade now, and knowing the little philosophy and science i know, i don’t see the Buddhist soteriology as an ultimate anymore. The phenomenal component of enlightenment you mentioned can only be valuable in my opinion if it offers high valence.

[@PerpetualTiredness]

Please can you do a video on what you think humanity will evolve in to?

[@82472tclt]

“You’ve never not been”

[@raiseyourvibration1411]

The perfect triangle doesn't exist. Aloha, Aliman

[@CoreyAnton]

Amen

[@BTinHD]

Have you seen the movie Tenet? I thought it relates to your work.

[@kentheengineer592]

How did the first limit of consciousness get introduced

[@CoreyAnton]

It said, "No" to itself.

[@duewhit310]

The universe IS LIFE!

[@duewhit310]

It just keeps going & going Dynamically dissociative so that every life seems like it's the ONLY one you will ever have if your windshield is foggy.

[@genechorney]

Most people's definition of eternity assumes time going on and on forever ("tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow"). It really means an absence of time altogether. The only way we can live there here is in the now. Ironically we can never actually reach it because as soon as we become aware of it, we are in the past.

[@raresmircea]

If you search "Joseph Campbell eternity" you might find a sequence from an interview in which he says the same thing. Or probably you’ve already seen it. As for your last sentence that "we can’t reach it" because we’re always in the past this is inaccurate. If you’re referring to some event (ex. an explosion one kilometer away from you, a vase shattering a meter away from you, or even someone snapping her fingers right next to your head) then yes, it’s trivially true that your perception/internal experience of them is after the fact, or like you say, in the past. BUT your experience itself is always in the now. It can’t be anywhere else but in the now. Always and forever

[@genechorney]

@@raresmircea Our actual experience is in the now, but our awareness of it through replay in memory is in the past by definition. Northrop Frye made me aware of it

[@raresmircea]

@@genechorney your awareness is exactly where your experience is, in the now. You may remember a skateboarding accident that happened a year ago, reliving it in your mind step by step-that happens now! A relived memory is a *reconstruction* a *reenactment* in the present of something that happened in the past, NOT time-travel. If you reenact the battle of Borodino in an open air theatrical play everything that happens happens today 9.12.2020, not in 7.09.1812.

[@duewhit310]

Bumper sticker or Tshirt idea: We as a people are drunk on words. (Keep your drunk-ass away from me)

[@zachvanslyke4341]

Why did “it” happen? I tend to agree with Terence McKenna on this; it’s got something to do with endless novelty. And in order for novelty to be pure, mystery has to be a component somehow, otherwise by definition it wouldn’t be true novelty.

[@JamesRolandPodcast]

I appreciate much of what you say even if I disagree with your key claim of there being no afterlife (I prefer the more neutral term immortality). I'm not religious. For me, it just makes sense rationally, when you consider the astounding improbability of personal existence on the assumption that there is no immortality, no cosmic centrality to consciousness. There's this unthinkably vast universe out there and yet I'm experiencing the life of this absolutely tiny conscious creature. That leads me to believe that consciousness cannot help but be experienced by the universe wherever it arises, that as long as there is any experience it will be *me* having it. It is fascinating to me that you say things like "you are a place and moment of the cosmos," but don't seem to take that all the way to its final conclusion. Wouldn't it mean that there is a _literal_ eternity to the self, that really the self *is* the cosmos, and that therefore all life within it is experienced by the same experiencer? I am curious what your thoughts are on this view of immortality as distinct from the typical theistic view, and whether or not it makes any difference to what you've argued here. I'll partly answer my own question: whether I'm correct or not, it is certainly a guarantee that death means I will lose my loved ones, my body, my personality, my memories, talents, some of my hopes and dreams, etc., and in that sense, your message of death acceptance is very relevant. Thanks.

[@PerpetualTiredness]

I think about death everyday and I keep telling myself it doesn't matter what happens to humanity after I die, it doesn't matter what happens to the universe after I die. It bothers me how everything I care about will be lost in time and how insignificant we are. I can't help but wonder what will we evolve in to or replace ourselves with. Some times I wish I wasn't an atheist.

[@egoistorms]

hope all is well in your realm, Sir. curious if you are a fan of Pseudo-Dionysius? respectfully,

[@null.och.nix7743]

you would have been U.G. Krishnamurtis sweetheart for sure !! ;D

[@heyguysinternet]

It's no dogma of my own, but I'm not clear on why a belief in the immortality of a "soul" is that difficult of a thing to entertain, given the miraculousness of existence as we know it. Is the skepticism here that the belief too conveniently aligns with a desire for the preservation of the self and individuation? When people say that a dream was "just a dream", to me that is an indication of how we casually conceptualize reality; that is, what's "real" and what's "not real." There's still a pervasive suspicion about {Mental Health} versus {Physical Health}, because {Mental Health} is, in a sense, invisible. Yet that which is mental is physically embodied! A dream, I think, can only be "just a dream" when our idea of what truly matters is connected to the kind of hard materialism of our modern world, which is unfortunately popular. We perceive the world through thoughts, though, and dreams are arguably another modality of thinking. It's easy to bridge the gap there in meaningfulness, if we're willing.

[@allertonoff4]

when one considers speech like JAZZ solos … the sophistimation of their language … they could hypercompress a message into a Nanosecond .. they were the most intelligent of exemplars .. their habits were regular .. wandering up and down the roads of the dream city at regular intervals like Kierkegaard or Kafka … even in the dark winter evenings he would bid ''good morning' to quasi random individuals. the strategy worked .. handsome young men on bicycles whispered hello … passing prophets nodded their heads …….

[@user-gt7wo4kp5v]

any chance you could do a reading (audiobook)

[@agaperion]

ha! "How Non-being Haunts Being makes much ado about nothing." - Sheldon Solomon

[@garygrant6987]

Good video. I disagree with you about life after death, but I think you sentiment still has merit. I think CS Lewis makes some great points about why a spiritual with God- a true north, is not spirituality at all. I’ll read your first book because I like your spirit.

[@garygrant6987]

I’d love to see you debate a great living Theologian. Like Bishop Robert Barron. That would be a great conversation.

[@madebyreuben3402]

You read any Afro-pessimism?

[@Hnowier]

I still can see my dead parents and meet them in my dreams. Dreams exist, I can feel every thing when I wake up . Maybe death is deep sleep.

[@82472tclt]

Thank you for writing nothing!

[@CoreyAnton]

Thanks, Guy