
What Happens When Your Brain Says You Don't Exist - ca98am79
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/07/28/426753409/a-sense-of-self-what-happens-when-your-brain-says-you-dont-exist
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arielweisberg
Fascinating that amputating a functional leg could be considered ethical in
light of a mental disorder. I am interested in what the road to getting that
procedure done looks like.

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jmnicolas
No this is criminal : the Russians had pretty good results with this kind of
mental disorder by making the patients fast, yes you read me well, just
fasting.

But it's too simple and there's no money to be made of it. So they're going to
cut legs from people that could be saved by fasting.

I'd offer a source but it's a book in French from a journalist that studied
fasting and went to Russia since during the Soviet times they made a lot of
researches on fasting.

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pavel_lishin
> _but it 's a book in French_

Some of us read French.

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jmnicolas
"Le jeûne, une nouvelle thérapie ?" ISBN-13: 978-2707175571

If you read Russian (since your nick is Pavel I thought you might) I'm sure
you could find better sources than that.

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nirmel
This made me think that believing in a self is evolutionarily advantageous,
but perhaps illusory. Those who don't associate their body and life as their
"own" in some metaphysical sense will be substantially more prone to dying
before reproducing.

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SilasX
How is someone who believes in self observationally distinguishable from one
that doesn't? How does not believing in self prohibit certain actions?

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kordless
How is someone who believes in private cloud, with zero remote management,
observationally distinguishable from one that is OK using 100% public cloud?
The answer is related to how they establish trust within their organization
and themselves based on their use cases.

Some Tibetan Buddhist monks practice a type of mindfulness that consists of
imagining bits and pieces of their bodies are being slowly dissolved or
devoured, until nothing is left. They trust their 'souls' are actually a part
of a higher consciousness that they seek to become aware of through their
actions, and death. These monks definitely prohibit certain actions to attain
their intent. Drugs, sexual desire, right thinking, right action, right
mindfulness, etc. You can totally tell the difference from them and someone
who isn't considered (at least by Buddhists) to be enlightened.

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SilasX
Except that someone can purport to disbelieve in self while doing all the
things they prohibit :-p

Plus, whatever animals you don't think believe in self.

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8sigma
so many comments are downvoted.Rare thing on hn.

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7erb
Everything that defines the self such as experiences, thoughts, and even our
physical appearance is ephemeral and intangible. There is no particular thing
to hold on to. It's all in a state of flux.

That may seem obvious, but to conceptual thinkers like myself, experiencing
non-duality (no-self) and "Thusness" (as Alan Watts calls it) is difficult.
It's why I designed subliminal posters for meditating:
[http://zission.com](http://zission.com)

Here is a specific poster for nonduality [http://zission.com/product/words-
inside-outside/](http://zission.com/product/words-inside-outside/)

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colordrops
The text on the poster is unreadable, at least on my Galaxy S4.

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7erb
The words are almost transparent for a reason. When the words are hard to
read, the conscious mind becomes preoccupied with the image and the message
imprints directly to the unconscious. It's a technique known as Critical
Factor Bypass.

EDIT: This comment is becoming transparent too. Your conscious mind will
ignore them because they are hard to read, but your subconscious mind is about
to make a choice... about deepening your meditation... and feeling a growing
sense of confidence... about buying my posters...

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pavel_lishin
[citation needed], preferably in a format both my conscious and unconscious
mind can parse.

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7erb
Critical Factor Bypass is a well known technique in hypnotherapy, and I could
provide tons of links. That said, it's an experimental project and has been
extremely beneficial for me. I thought I'd share.

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pavel_lishin
> _I could provide tons of links_

Please do!

> _That said, it 's an experimental project and it's been beneficial for me. I
> thought I'd share :)_

That's cool, but when you make vague claims that sound kind of like pseudo-
science, you should go ahead and provide citations and links and stuff,
otherwise people think you're a nutter.

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7erb
Western Journal of Medicine Oct. 2001:
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1071579/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1071579/)

 _Hypnotic trance—A deeply relaxed and focused state with increased
suggestibility and suspension of critical faculties._

The same article then goes on to say meditation and visualization techniques
are used to induce trance. Zission combines both:
[http://zission.com](http://zission.com)

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j_camarena
"A ton of links" is not one. Just saying.

This screams pseudoscience all over the place.

