There are a lot of things in this thread that I want to quote and scrutinize, but it would be a long and very critical post, so I wont do it.

There is one quote though, from the last few posts..

Insanity is only misunderstood enlightenment.
Insanity is only misDIRECTED enlightenment. And that misdirection, arguably, comes from ego battles within the self. It would be hard to misunderstand real enlightenment because when someone becomes enlightened they become so in-tune with the truth that they are able to communicate it to anyone they meet. In fact, a tendency to communicate your own enlightenment is probably a condition that comes with being enlightened. People who are insane dont often give advice of the quality that an enlightened person would be able to give. Insanity might be a different sort of enlightenment, but it would be a limited one relative to the traditional enlightenment.

and, to stay on topic..

What is your version of THE TRUTH?
A description of the truth as I have been allowed to understand it in my life would stretch across a bunch of posts and still come nowhere near to explaining the truth well enough that it could be understood by someone else the way that I understand it for myself. I have spent a lot of time relating my understandings of the underlying concepts in math, physics, philosophy, chemistry, evolution, biology, psychology, and anthropology. I have also taken many different types of psychoactive drugs in an effort to crawl out of the box, but to be honest I dont think that they have helped me more than hurt me, or at least so far. The good news is that I am learning how to use them more carefully by shutting out the ego, and the last few trips that I have gone on have revealed a lot to me. I have found that if I recognize the drugged mind as being incapable of traditional use and then decide not to use it but instead simply perceive it, psychoactive drugs can indeed be a teaching tool. There is truth to be found through drugs, but "drugland" (where you go when youre on a "trip") is not the only place that truth hides, so I have to broaden my search to places outside of "drugland" in order to see the bigger picture.

here is a quick version of my understanding of the truth:

a polygon with infinite sides approximates a circle, just like a polyhedra with infinite faces approximates a sphere. pi describes the ratio between the diameter of a circle and its circumference. it is impossible to find a precise value for pi, as its decimal places seem to go on infinitely.

when you describe the relationship between two points in a horizontal line on the cartesian coordinate plane, their relationship is easy to describe. every x value in that line has the same y value. for vertical lines, every y value has the same x value. this relationship is linear. describing the relationship between two points in a diagonal line is also easy - it depends on the value of the slope, which is simply a number that says that when you move x units horizontally, you move y units vertically. it is also a linear relationship.

if you define an n-sided polygon as having n linear relationships that make it up, (that is, a hexagon has 6 linear relationships between its verticies while an octagon has 8) then it is easier to see that a circle is a geometric definition of a system that contains infinitely many linear relationships.

everything in the universe is related and interrelated in an infinite amount of relationships. infinity is a concept that we cannot understand because the ego perceives its finiteness first and foremost. before we realized that earth was only a part of the solar system, we assumed that it was at the center and that everything revolved around it.

I watched this video the other day and I thought it was very well worded, though the background music is a little cheesy. Some of the related videos arent close to being as well worded as this one and some of them are completely confusing, so just watch this one :P

YouTube - Sri Bhagavan: What is Enlightenment
OnionsOfLove Reviewed by OnionsOfLove on . What is your version of THE TRUTH? Ill start: So this is something I posted in a discussion about religion, philosphy, theology, and how they all fit in with the rest of the Universe... Over the past few years of intensely searching for the truth, scouring every document on theology I could find, pouring over numerous manuscripts from ancient civilizations, perusing endless textbooks and publications on Nuclear, Quantum and Theoretical physics, and long, drawn-out, intense sessions of introspective meditation, I have Rating: 5