tectonicfury's comments

As a Muslim, I can assure you there’s no such thing as mystic Islam. Islam is foremost about clarity, simplicity and straightforwardness in its message of pure monotheism. It does not seek to lure people by mesmerising them with incomprehensible riddles. It hides nothing.

The so called mystic Islam also known as Sufism, is a deviant sect, and is fundamentally a gateway to polytheism, as it borrows many practices from polytheistic religions. In fact, many of the famous ancient sufis have roots in India, where paganism and idol worshipping was and is still prevalent. Hence sufis are adored by Hindus.

I hope i could be clear to you

So is it scientific or a mystery?

If it’s scientific then it must be well understood in terms of cause and effect. In which case, it is like any other physical phenomenon, nothing special.

And if it’s not scientific, rather if it’s a mystery, then scientists will have to take a call on what is.

Such religions will also never be able to tell you what they are actually about. :)

Occult practices for me means devil worship and associated rituals. I consider them bad because I consider the devil bad.

But there’s Judgment Day after it.

You have to die one day in your paradise, and the Paradise I am talking about, you don't die after entering it.

Well, what about Gebru's findings? Data in and of itself is not beneficial, we do have certain underlying beliefs about appropriateness and goodness. There is an element of innate belief at play.

Otherwise, chatbots are very good at learning abusive and racist language. It's due to our belief that it's not right and decent that we train them using a bias. And it's only due to beliefs that we rein in the rogue AI which misclassifies black people.

Edit: If you still want to think of belief as an input node whose link has weight, then set the weight to infinite

This was the original statement "Not if you are hungry. Deep mysteries are fine and all but doing so in -1 deg celcius on an empty stomach lays out the reality of existence with exacting clarity".

It was more about questioning the relevance (and authenticity) of "deep mysteries" and "existence" etc. It was not about whether or not human beings can train themselves to endure such difficulties. Which they can, apparently.

When you said "it would be a cake walk for an ascetic" I thought that by ascetic you meant one who is into meditation and all such "deep realities". Not Wim Hof.

Nevertherless, I personally don't see any virtue in being hungry in -1 degree celsius, if I have food and a warm home. Except in case someone is making money out of it, like Wim.

Pascal is throwing light and expounding upon a weakness found in (most) people, that of depending on distractions to prevent themselves from dwelling on thoughts which remind them of their mortal nature.

I didn't read his works enough, none apart from the above quote in fact, to comment on whether or not he recommends acknowledging our inner thoughts and contemplating on them.

As for me, I feel real and lasting relief from worshipping Allaah. It's something very tangible and enlightening. It might seem counterintuitive, but it does boost my productivity a lot, even though I ignore thinking about work during prayer.

Now, having belief in Allaah has its manifest benefits. I am happy as I write this. I am able to keep afloat a bit in trying times. I was able to come out of depression (and quite a few other mental illnesses). None of it I could achieve except by Allaah's help.

When I used to go to hospital for psychiatric treatment, the doctor used to advise me that whenever I feel anxious, I lie down on a bed, relax and think of some beautiful place, in order to ward off the bad feelings. So, even the best advice the doctor could give me was this.

And what better place to think of than Paradise?

What Pascal was explicit in saying is that there is no inherent happiness in material possessions. But if you know that there is a life after death, that there is a Paradise and a Hell, that there is a Merciful God who, if you believe in Him and obey Him, will reward you for you good deeds and forgive your bad deeds, you will be humble, you will be hopeful, and you will be happy.

The fact that we are even discussing such issues shows that we are indeed more than animals. And yes, many such seemingly alluring but deceptive mysteries fall apart much before the onset of difficulties like the one you mentioned

Show us an ascetic who would find this a walk in the park.

That's basically how they con you into it. Using pretty words which appear to have "deeper" and "transcendental" meanings. They entice you with words like mystery, truth, existence, universe, but the TLDG (Too long didn't go) of this rabbit hole called meditation is (wading in) occult practices.

Just a comment regarding belief in the context of learning: a lot (in fact almost all) of learning is through our innately held beliefs. Without having beliefs we would be no different than an ML model, which just keeps adjusting weights according to the data it receives. Each of us has some beliefs, which "seems right" to us and this is what shapes our understanding of what we see around us, no matter what the "data" says.

If the belief is weak (or false), it might lead to confusion and distrust, which will make it impossible to learn anything.

Also, experiencing heightened states of awareness is not necessarily beneficial, people on drugs experience it routinely.

As a Muslim, I pray five times a day, and of late I have begun to perform it "better", as in unshackling myself from worldly thoughts and other mental distractions. I attach zero importance to them and I remind myself that this صلاة (prayer) that I am doing alone deserves any importance, to the exclusion of all others. Thoughts used to come to me to try and induce panic in me, but overtime they have become so feeble that I am no longer aware of them.

And talking about the kings, one of the pious said : “If the kings and the children of the kings knew what [felicity] we are in, they would fight us over it with their swords.”