Seeing users report becoming a Ferris wheel (which is apparently a common experience), wall, a ceiling fan, a blade of grass, a line on a notepad, and even a period at the end of a sentence in a book brought panpsychism to the forefront of my mind.
"Panpsychist views are a staple in pre-Socratic Greek philosophy.\4]) According to Aristotle, Thales (c. 624 – 545 BCE), the first Greek philosopher, posited a theory which held "that everything is full of gods".\12]) Thales believed that magnets demonstrated this. This has been interpreted as a panpsychist doctrine.\4]) Other Greek thinkers associated with panpsychism include Anaxagoras (who saw the unifying principle or arche as nous or mind), Anaximenes (who saw the arche as pneuma or spirit) and Heraclitus (who said "The thinking faculty is common to all").\8])
Plato argues for panpsychism in his Sophist), in which he writes that all things participate in the form of Being and that it must have a psychic aspect of mind and soul (psyche)).\8]) In the Philebus and Timaeus), Plato argues for the idea of a world soul or anima mundi. According to Plato:
Stoicism developed a cosmology that held that the natural world is infused with the divine fiery essence pneuma), directed by the universal intelligence logos. The relationship between beings' individual logos and the universal logos was a central concern of the Roman Stoic Marcus Aurelius. The metaphysics of Stoicism finds connections with Hellenistic philosophies such as Neoplatonism. Gnosticism also made use of the Platonic idea of anima mundi."
Additionally, I adhere to Pythagoreanism.
"Pythagoreans thought numbers existed "outside of [human] minds" and separate from the world."
So, the psychic force that pervades the cosmos can be likened to a multidimensional, mathematical plane.
Imagine your consciousness anchored on a certain point on that plane… let's say (32, 58, 17).
When an ontological perturbation occurs, either through an external agent such as salvia, or an internal agent such as meditation, the coordinates of your consciousness vector temporarily slides to another point on the plane. Let's say (-11, -28, -87). These new coordinates might correspond to experiencing life as an inanimate object.
You can achieve perturbations through natural means through consistent and intense meditation, but entheogens such as salvia just happen to serve as potent transformation functions.
Death is the ultimate perturbation. Instead of sliding across the current plane, your coordinates are placed on a new plane entirely.
Personally, if I don't escape the cycle of transmigration with this life, I hope I come back as a sunflower. I'd be content with that existence. 🌻
by thelastofthebastion
1 Comment
I’ve always loved the way this quote puts it:
**Alan Watts**
>”God likes to play hide-and-seek, but because there is nothing outside of God, he has no one but himself to play with! But he gets over this difficulty by pretending that he is not himself. This is his way of hiding from himself.
>
>[He pretends that he is you and I and all the people in the world, all the animals, plants, all the rocks, and all the stars.](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fmh86yf3zofec1.jpeg)
>
>In this way he has strange and wonderful adventures, some of which are terrible and frightening. But these are just like bad dreams, for when he wakes up they will disappear.”
🫶