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The goal of this blog is to motivate myself and others for further practice as well as provide details that might explain what's going on..


Thursday, May 31, 2018

Theses - not mine, tho

Ever since I started meditating again regularly, the problems with phlegm have almost disappeared. Another thing, actually - decided to order a new mattress, and already the knowledge of having ordered it made me feel better.

Edit: Apparently mismeasured the old mattress or misclicked the expensive mattress. It's smaller than the bed. Ah nevermind, it's large enough for me.

Attended the robotics and computer engineering theses defense yesterday. Briefly skimmed through the theses beforehand.

Found one that was really inspiring for me. A coursemate who had worked on the classification of events from EEG signals, using SVMs. This reminded me that I still have the eMotiv headset and I haven't found the time to implement event classification for it .. which was one of the main reasons why I bought it, in the first place. But then it occurred to me that I'm working on time series analysis with neural networks and that's probably pretty similar to what EEG signal analysis would be based on in the future. Pieces of the puzzle gradually clicking together =).

Found one that I sincerely felt sorry for. Wanted to ask a really aggressive question from the student. Basically, the student had developed a pretty complex system but had not performed any background research. An online component library. There's an open-source solution that a German girl has been developing for years and it serves the purpose very well. I'm using the open-source solution at the lab at work, and I'm also using it at home. Anyway, asked the hairy question from the student, due to which the student graduated with a worse grade. His supervisor was severely pissed, but to me background research seemed like one of the most important aspects of a thesis. What is more, I recognized the student - he was like one of the friends whom I hadn't met before. I'm not entirely certain but I think I hadn't met him before. He knew me, though, because apparently he had studied at the same secondary school and the physics teacher had told them about me. Luckily the student did not care about the grade that much. In fact, he was radiating happiness and enthusiasm. I'm sorry.

Students in my course had an exam that day. However, the other rooms in the building were locked. So, we had the oral exams just on the grass under a tree (actually two trees) somewhere. Seemed perfect.

Saturday, May 26, 2018

Application of Brahmajala sutra

Anniversary


In the post "stuff", I wondered about the Brahmajala sutra and what describes the universe the best. After that, I didn't really think about it as much.

Participated in the 5th anniversary of a project yesterday evening. Re-watched the documentary, enjoyed some sauna and discussions with different team members. Regardless of all the responsibilities weighing on me, I tried my best to enjoy the event as much as possible, and not let anything else get in the way.

Enjoyed to beautiful evening and fresh air. Visited the sauna for the optimal amount of time - left at the moment when I had started to feel pleasure all over the skin. There's a careful balance to sauna, and it's very easy to exceed the optimum so that it becomes exhausting. Felt very energized and had a mild euphoria after the sauna.

After the sauna, I discussed stuff with a member from India. He had an existential crisis of sorts - he had found that the universe is empty of meaning and in all its insignificance, mankind is busy trying to justify its existence. In other words, he had no goal for his life. He had been waiting for it to appear on its own, and it still hasn't.

I tried to explain to him that it doesn't even matter but he didn't seem to get it (I couldn't convey it elegantly enough). From time to time, other people intervened on the discussion. While he was frustrated that the majority of mankind is so stupid that they don't even get it, everyone that intervened, seemed even more intelligent in these matters than he was. I was amazed, inspired and for the first time I realized the awesomeness of the team. There's so much life experience and spiritual wisdom in these engineers. I hope he got some food for thought.

An excellent demonstration of the Brahmajala sutra and its importance. I was a bit surprised at my attempts to explain that eventually none of the metaphysics matters. It seems that I have at least grasped a part of it.

Dream: Abstract subspaces


There was something with water and fish. I was in the livingroom at the summerhouse. There was a cube subspace at a wall in the livingroom. Within the cube, there was a small cylindrical subspace at the wall closest to the livingroom wall. The cylindrical subspace was filled with water, and there were some fish in there. In the cube subspace, there was some water as well but it had non-uniform distribution (water was concentrated to one edge of the cube floor). In that edge, there were a few fish and a few plants that grow in the water.

Even though the cylinder was small, I wanted to put all fish in there. Still not sure why but I picked them from one subspace and stuffed them into another. After lifting a couple of fish from the cube into the embedded cylinder, I left the area. As I looked back, fish were leaping out of the cylinder. I was both disappointed as well as relieved, so neutral altogether.

I considered the dream odd because of the subspaces. I had not experienced anything like that before, and yet it seemed very elegant. Basically, substances taking form without anything to actually enforce the form. I think there was no glass around the cylinder, and there was no glass around the cube, either. Based on logic it sure seemed like there should be glass, but I couldn't see it, couldn't touch it (hand just went through) or anything. Also, everything was completely transparent without any visible seams or edges.

There was a faint invisible presence observing the whole thing but not interfering in any way.

Dream: Yuck


Some kind of a facility or something where I approached a dumpster to throw something in there. I hesitated a great deal because I knew what I would see once I opened the lid. Human body parts floating around in a goo that was alive, devouring the biological mass. WTF.

Friday, May 11, 2018

Hands-free touchpad

A geisting event today. I'm not very good at touchpads. A student's laptop .. tried to open the VSCode window in the background to double-check one of his functions. Having done so, I let go of the touchpad. For about a minute, the mouse cursor moved around the screen in complex patterns, clicking in random places, selecting text and then finally slowing down to a halt in the middle of the screen. The anomaly lasted so long that I could say "WTF", the student turned around and both of us witnessed the laptop .. alive. He even got to show it to another student - "Look, Sussch is moving the mouse without even touching the laptop". It did look quite responsive even though I did not think it was me doing it - maybe some static electricity, confusing multi-finger gestures or whatever.

After another 14h workday, took a long walk home. The lovely sunset and the sweet fragrance of the trees blooming. Awesome. Noticed that I could feel the trees slightly flexing around me. Walked slow but had a green wave for most of the way.

Wednesday, May 9, 2018

Stuff

AI


While walking home, discussed stuff with a student that I'll be supervising. At some point we reached the following:
  • In general, we the people don't like to take on additional responsibilities.
  • We would rather have someone else take the other responsibilities because we are already busy with our own responsibilities as is.
  • Somebody has to take the responsibility for a group, country or even mankind.
  • Becoming a politician is quite unappealing. However, if nobody wants to take the responsibility, then it makes sense to create an artificial entity that would do the dirty job.
  • Mankind would have willingly developed an AI to enslave itself so that it wouldn't have to take the responsibility for itself and its own actions.
  • No corruption, right? /s
Note that this is not really that far-fetched. For example, there's Duncan Cameron who claims to have visited the future and seen a similar system in action.

Some realizations


One day I realized that in reality there is no such thing as a plunge. There is only concentration and object(s) of concentration. I believed I had slipped or fallen but it was just me concentrating on a variety of fleeting feelings and emotions instead of the everlasting.

Discussed stuff with the student from India again today. Waved him bye and continued my walk home. While on the way, I realized that many years ago when I reached bliss 24/7, I simply lacked the concentration to penetrate the pleasure and became lost in the pleasure. It is not the lack of desire to evolve further that was the problem. Instead, I mistook the bliss as my goal. Having experienced now that the bliss is also impermanent, it's not a very good goal at all. It's not any better than bodily pleasure, just higher by a layer or two. There are many layers.

Dreams of dwelling


Dreams have become more of just sleeping somewhere else. Whether it's an imaginary bed in the livingroom or just grass with dew on it on a cold morning, the dreams are also brighter than before.

Waking OBE?


It was about two weeks ago that this happened, I think. Not sure, meant to blog about it but forgot.

Spent some late hours in the cleanroom at work. Stood up and noticed that something was off. Way off. Had to focus on walking straight because it constantly felt as if my head were tilted to the left .. as if tilted out of body. Quite disorienting. This lasted for about a week, fading away gradually.

Edit: Realized the cause today morning. I've been sleeping without a pillow for a while. I had probably slept with my physical head tilted off axis, whereas my astral body must've been sleeping straight.

Finite or infinite universe? 


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmajala_Sutta_(Theravada)

Expected more of the sutra. An enlightened master like Gautama surely must have seen the nature of the universe, and yet all he used to disprove the 18 beliefs was one sentence irrelevant of what the belief was about:
All of the followers of these beliefs defended and clung to their faith and didn't believe in other faiths.
Aversion or clinging does not make a theory become any more wrong. I would have expected him to mention which of the theories describe reality the best.

While thinking about it, I stumbled and fell onto Buddhist cosmology:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_cosmology

This seems a bit too advanced for me just yet. Would take a lot of research.

Tuesday, May 1, 2018

White dog

Had a long chat with a student from India, in front of a university dorm building. A lot of different topics. Then suddenly a white dog spotted me at a distance of about 30 meters, and came running at me. I didn't know how to react, especially due to having been bitten by a dog a while ago. However, the white dog had clearly recognized me and was running to me out of sincere happiness. The dog looked so happy, even though his master was frightened about completely losing control over the dog. The dog happily looked up at me while waving its tail, and then darted off back to his master.

I thought I recognized Pätu in a new body. Before passing away (ref), Pätu was a female dog, with a long jet black fur. If this white dog was indeed Pätu, then most of the bodily characteristics had changed .. except for the size and proportions. The white dog had short fur, and was male, I think. Very interesting.

Oh right, almost forgot. Had an OBE some days ago. Flew around the room, but forgot what else.