I’d like to warmly recommend the following set of three articles (originally one long piece) by Dustin Broadbery:
(Part 1 has a link to 2 and 2 has a link to 3, so I won’t insert those here.)
I won’t add much more here because I’m more interested to hear from fellow 5-effers but my overall impression is shown as a comment to part 3.
Read the three-parter through once, so far. Much still to ruminate, I think. A first response - clearly superficial to the main philosophy sketched in - goes like this:
The nightmare world which Dustin describes is certainly on the stocks, I think, getting made - or attempted to be made - right now. But however far it gets, it can’t and won’t last, because of practical, material considerations that can’t be just wished away, or avoided in any way, by the evil forces behind the nightmare vision.
I won’t bang on about this, since I’ve spoken of it often enough before. But in brief: the hitech surveillance and control system getting constructed right now, as a digital, fake facsimile of reality, is happening within the limitation of a single world, one planet, from which I see no prospect of our current industrial society escaping. The inescapable destiny of this kind of societal arrangement is to fall apart from lack of physical means to continue.
We - hom sap - are already struggling in a grossly over-stressed life-support system to continue our techie-industrial ways. We are already in a state of large ecological overshoot, which can’t continue for much longer before it has strangled itself to collapse.
The long trek towards escape from Samsara is certainly doable, and indeed I would hazard inevitable. This physical reality is indeed Maya, after all; or virtual, if you prefer the modern vocabulary; though a long-evolved one, with an evolved rule-set (physics, chemistry, biology, etc.) that governs its normal (as distinct from paranormal) behaviour.
But in the already baked-in dilapidation and falling apart of our current technological society is precisely the sort of mind-freeing apocalypse -‘something getting revealed’, remember - which will induce a whole lot more attention to the basic task of escape from Samsara into deeper understanding of reality, as described in the Upanishads, and the Gita.
This ancient vision of the fundamental nature of things chimes very well with the Campbell Big TOE, of course, which, personally, I find most helpful in approaching these transcendental matters. But each to his/her own. The Buddhist and ancient Hindu teachings are equally fruitful, I’d say. As is Taoism. But of course: “The Tao which can be spoken of, is not the true Tao.” 
I’d like to engage with the text some more and follow up some of the references.
As you rightly say @RhisiartGwilym the current elite project is to build a virtual Samsara where no other world seems possible (covered very well in Part 2 of Dustin’s essay). “Reality as a service” so to speak. Disconnecting from that is not impossible but it certainly seems to be getting harder, and if we cannot engage with the world any other way e.g. to get at our digital cash then people can be forgiven for never looking past the facade.
What we need is a total and years-long power failure. None of the virtual world could survive that. And this is the Achilles Heel of the technocratic project… unless a substantial number of us are exterminated, in which case the Green Miracle Economy might be sustainable.
Rather than wilful ‘final solution’ extermination, my hunch is that the schemes of the evil forces will just fall apart, and the global birth-rates and death-rates will exchange positions again, just slightly, as they did a couple of hundred years ago, when we began the race into the final stage of our population-overshoot event, with the unlocking of fossil-hydrocarbon energy.
This time, of course, the death-rate will be maybe one or two percentage points ahead of the birth-rate, and that’s all it will take. No Mad Max melodramas, except locally and briefly. So I intuit, anyway.
I think that the evolution of souls in this illusory holodeck leads inevitably, over the sort of time-span that makes impatient humankind so fractious, to a big escape from Samsara, eventually. I suspect that that’s an inevitable consequence of what I think of as the Great Purpose of Big Mind - the ‘Larger Consciousness System’ - forced upon it by the fundamental nature of reality, which purpose is to be constantly reducing the ever-incoming tide of entropy within itself, to prevent dissolution back into primal white-noise chaos; or, putting it in more humane language: growing towards love; in all the wide-ranging meanings of the word. That does well for me, as a brief thumbnail of our long-term destiny: the Journey of the Souls…
I don´t know much about your Samsara Rhis, but your Karma seems good, seeing as you appear to have undergone your operation successfully and are well enough to share with us your words of wisdom. Well done!
A lot of bad karma to expiate, San. And as for ‘wisdom’ - well - “A Groatsworth of Wit, bought with a Million of Repentance” maybe. The way I put it these days is that, in my youth, I didn’t know what a fool I am. Now, at least, I have the small advantage of knowing it. Makes you just a touch more cautious…
KarenEliot, I will be a cantankerous bastard again.
We are all made of ‘star stuff’, quite literally. Every fiber of your being originated from the Cosmos, the Universe, or whatever you want to call it.
If quantum superposition is the mechanism that enables thought than all, or parts, of the mind might occupy different places in space and time simultaneously. We are made of star stuff and the universe is inside our heads, quite literally. Of course, we are not aware of this on a conscious level. If we were it would no doubt drive us insane. Imagine what sort of mind you would need to have in order to cope with being at all points of creation simultaneously???.
(I think I need to go to bed)
But what if all the star-stuff is virtual, Rob, and is only rendered as an information-flow when some consciousness looks to see? Otherwise, not rendered at all: no star-stuff, no stars, no ‘physical, material reality’ at all unless some mind is involved in calling it up?
‘If a tree falls in the forest, and there’s no sentient creature present to hear it, does it make a sound? No, if there’s no mind observing the event, it doesn’t happen, because there is no tree; there is no forest. All of that is only rendered - by Big Mind’s rendering function - as an individually-tailored information-stream when some sentience seeks to observe it.’
Or, as the distinguished physicist Arthur Eddington put it: “The stuff of the world is mind-stuff.”
The conclusions of quantum mechanics, like those of the ancient wisdom systems such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and their shamanic origins generally, all point to conclusions which are difficult to conceive rationally, but which nevertheless seem to hold up whenever they’re put to practical tests.
I love how @RobG warns of grumbles ahead but then says something absolutely pertinent and not in the least cantankerous 
‘We’ are, indeed, one massive sub-atomic soup. Many beings have thin membranes keeping us roughly in one ‘place’ for a while. Or more accurately a long continuous series of ‘places’ with an ‘I’ energy that is transmitted from one instant to the next. This is also discontinuous and subject to change/conditioning, and that energy is kamma/karma (depending on your preference for Pali or Sanskrit).
Some beings may exist in unbounded ways, maybe. Consciousness does, I think (whatever it is!). Our mind can ‘be’ and can ‘observe’ that being, maybe it flickers between the two very very quickly, or maybe the observing part freezes the action, in the same way that matter can be wave or particle UP UNTIL that instant when it is observed?
The notion of ‘atman’, explored in the Dustin Broadbery article, was denied by Gautama and the logic is really simple. Everything is changing, all of the time, there cannot, therefore, be an enduring atman (self). Sanskrit: anatman, Pali: anatta.
If I light one candle using another have I created a new flame, or transmitted the original flame? If the latter, how can it be in two places at once? That is a simile Gautama used. I rather suspect he knew about quantum superposition though don’t ask me how!
Suññatā = formlessness
Interesting conversation, KarenEliot and Rhis.
I’m about to crash out for the night after one of those days. Before I do I’ll chuck into the mix Descartes’ famous dictum je pense donc je suis (‘I think therefore I am’, sort of).
Descartes went methodically through all the ways humans perceive the world. He came to the conclusion that the five senses are not accurate, because they are so open to trickery, and the only real perception comes from between our ears; ie, thought/consciousness.
Students of Descartes might disagree with me on some points here.
Thing is, if you take Descartes point of view it then leaves the question: is it individual consciousness or collective consciousness?
Enough of my ramblings. I’m going to bed…
Individuated Units of the Larger Consciousness System, never fully detached, but operating, in each incarnation, with the guaranteed autonomy of free will, perhaps…?
Question.
Does reincarnation imply returning as a human being again, or as almost anything??
I’m embarrassed to say that’s about the only thing I ever remember about Descartes, but wasn’t he the archetypal dualist? (i.e. mind/body are separate)
The classical Buddhist configuration is that each of us consist of five ‘aggregates’ (kandhas), as follows.
rupa: materiality/form/image (a buddharupa is a statue of Gautama).
vedana: sensations/feelings…not ‘emotions’ - which is a distinction I struggle with personally. Essentially vedana consists of positive, neutral, negative. The basic emotions are said to be happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, and disgust… and not expecting the Spanish Inquisition.
sanna: perceptions (concepts works better, I think, as perception and feeling are rather similar words in English.
sankhara: mental activity, with an emphasis on the volitional (deliberate). The alternate translation of formations is helpful if you can keep that distinct from ‘form’ or somehow link this to the common representation of a potter shaping clay.
vinnana: consciousness… whatever that really is!
(I’ve left out the diacriticals as it’s too laborious typing them on this Chromebook but 3. is pronounced sanya, and 5. vinyana)
So: my very primitive understanding of Descartes is that he groups 2-5 as ‘think’.
Both frameworks are consistent with the notion that what we think (and which can be shaped by repetition of simple slogans… or mantras if you like) shapes what we ‘are’ and this was the theme of Dustin’s Part 2. I may be misremembering btw but as far as I recall he lived in Cape Town for a while… c.f. my post about the ICC.
…and hence I end up being sort-of on-topic with the 5 filters theme of this board . . . !
I’m not convinced of reincarnation but the traditional worlds into which a being can be reborn are shown in the image in part 1 of Dustin’s article. (The innermost circle but one. The bhavacakka is like a whole cosmology all in one image.)
This article does a decent enough job of explaining them without being too verbose about it
(Wheel of Life - Encyclopedia of Buddhism)
My own preferred interpretation is that in one moment I can feel balanced and serene (like a deva) but then some disaster strikes and I am like a helpless dumb animal… as if reborn from a higher hell to a lower one. If I were honest I spend significant amounts of time in the hungry ghost realm: thirsting but never satisfied.
The sense that I get is that it’s all down to the choice of the recently-de-incarnated soul residing between incarnations in the Bardo state; doing it’s karmic resolution work there, and eventually agreeing with the beings who work in the Bardo that it’s time to get back on the Wheel of Rebirth.
A possible choice of freshly-conceived unborns is suggested, and the reincarnating soul makes a selection. But this doesn’t have to be from the ones offered; they are simply suggested by the Bardo spirits because any of the offered choices will give probable opportunities for the soul to work on qualities that have been identified in the latest resolution work as still needing attention, in the long trek of growing towards love.
But I think that the iron rule of free will means that souls can choose to go different routes, and that means other species, if preferred. For example, I have a strong hunch that in some recent past incarnation, after already having been human in previous lives, I then took a diversion into another species. Internal insights drawn from a long history of shamanic work suggest to me that it might have been a wolf’s life, or perhaps a domestic dog’s.
It is just an intuition. I make no large claims for the sure-fire truth of the idea. But there are internal indicators in my consciousness which point in that direction.
It’s also widely asserted amongst practitioners of the ancient wisdom that sex and gender is up for choice, as souls seem able to adopt any orientation quite willingly, as learning aids.