Can Enlightenment Lead To "Superpowers"?

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I do not believe in anything which violates the known laws of physics, so in that sense I don't believe acquiring superpowers is possible.

I think "Enlightenment" is a different proposition. Everyone might define it differently, but here are some aspects of what I consider the product of being enlightened:

You realize your lack of distinction from your environment
You realize the cosmos is neutral and without purpose other than "to be"
You realize that suffering is innate to life and is more serious than pleasure
You realize that human society is largely a complex "game" played with illusions, delusions, and manipulation
You realize that the brain is passively processing all incoming stimulus and organizing it for you
You realize that you are not merely your conscious attention
You realize that the drive to continue living is not objectively rational

Taken together, these things ought to have certain effects:

1) You should stop taking the social game too seriously. See through it instead.
2) You should stop taking yourself seriously. "You" is a very hard idea to deconstruct without describing "everything"
3) You should never knowingly cause unnecessary suffering. It's a serious offense to nature.
4) You should learn through action, internalizing intuitive ability. Analysis is limited without action.
5) You should make peace with death and destruction. Nothing suffers which does not exist.


There are many implications hidden within simple phrases such as "your lack of distinction from your environment" but I am trying to avoid being long winded.

Really good points, hope you don't mind if I dovetail on them.

ie. take stock of the sense that your awareness emerges from the all, or you could equally say the void.


Or at least that as far as you'll ever grasp the universe - you're it... and the battles you fight in your own house for your own moral survival are the most important of your life.


One good way to put it - suffering may be irradicable but you really need to know where its building up to intolerable levels and mitigate it, because those are the places that threaten any living system - individual or collective.


Key point - do rush in and try to assist if you believe you might be the only adult in the room. Obviously look around if there are plenty of others temper your own discretion accordingly. Also yes, admit that some people can see that sort of thing without needing to hid it under eternal self-effacement. If there are enough adults in the room go have a drink, etc.. - point being too lax or constantly looking for the 'next battle' are opposite sides of a similar mistake.


A much wider symphony than we can even process hence the reducing valve.


That it just happens to be the catchiest thing you're doing.


This is part of why nihilism makes no sense to me - quality's everything.


One of the challenges with evolution is that any system under entropy will take on parasites and especially in times of collapse you need to know your environment lest you get pulled into other people's machinations. Otherwise though, wholeheartedly, the rampant egotism is unneeded and unwarranted.


Which gives the lie to destructive competition (which strangely the work world seems to be overflowing with right now).


Or understanding that when suffering does hit you in a human form it's from a cascade of events within and behind them that no free will of their own fabricated.


Which is part of why arm-chair anything breaks down after a while, including armchair mysticism.


I sometimes wonder if the challenge people have with facing death in the west is that they know it's where they have shuffled a lot o their more gray moral accounting and in the end, while they may have gotten theirs, that everything's still coming back round-robin.



Something no one feels comfortable self-reporting in contrast to others (or at least out loud).

Point being - if your default mode network is dialed up too high you fall into the apocryphal Mark Twain saying about politicians to be changed as often as diapers and for the same reasons.