"Secular learning" חכמות חיצוניות is something that Rav Nahman Breslov was against. However his disciple R Nathan takes it to a degree that I think was not in the intension of Rav Nahman.

 You might have noticed there is an over abundance of insane people in the religious world and I think I can see why. Sapolsky at Stanford noticed the relationship between a mild case of schizophrenia and obsession with religious issues. It used to be on his second lecture of Schizoid personalities but Stanford apparently deleted it. The point is that while in the secular world religious obsessions are not well respected, but in the religious world they are thought to be signs of great holiness. And besides that people with mild religious obsession tend to be schizoid. So if you put  a lot of that all together, you get group behavior that is schizoid. Not just individual behavior. However the Litvak yeshiva world seem to be more or less OK. They do not seem much afflicted with these mental diseases as other parts of the religious world are.

I think, there is a way that knowledge enters the mind by reading the words forwards and backwards.

I used to do this myself at Polytechnic in NYU for Physics. As a matter of fact we do not know how knowledge enters the  mind. So this is as plausible as anything. And at last for me this seems to work but it only works in conjunction with learning fast. 

[The "learning fast" thing is advice from the Musar book אורחות צדיקים Ways of the Righteous in his Gate on Torah where he explains that that was the way of the rishonim [mediaeval people]. 

I would like to suggest that it is helpful to know if you are more Left brain or Right brain. The learning fast thing is more applicable to he right brain types. The detailed analysis more for the right brain types.

But you also need to combine both. So even right brain types, need a ertain amount of detailed analysis type of learning and left brain also need some amount of the learning fast type of learning. It is a matter of emphasis.

 vaccines

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Rav Haim of Voloshin who was a disciple of the Gra a

 Litvak yeshivas were mainly based on the model of Rav Haim of Voloshin who was a disciple of the Gra and my experience in these kinds of places was amazingly positive. So even if I have fallen from that sublime wonderous path, I still feel a twinge of regret that I was not able to stay within that context. It is like they say you never know what you have until you lose it.

However I do have a suggestion for those that are willing to listen. To me it seem the problem for me and for many others is the fact that the Herem that the Gra signed is ignored. [That is somewhat related to the idea of excommunication but within the context of halacha it is much more serious.] 

So it might seem ironic that I quote Rav Nahman of Breslov often and yet also hold that the herem of the Gra is valid. However there is an easy answer for that. It goes back to a famous book that contained the actual language of the herem and there I saw that it did not apply to Rav Nahman.

But now that I come to objective morality, I have a hierarchy of values. Natural Law takes precedence. That is the Torah is beyond natural law, however it does not override it. It is based on coming to it.

 I learn Torah to come to understand objective morality. And I think many other do so also. But that does not mean I give  a blank approval of the religious world. The best is of course the Litvaks that go by the Gra and Sefardim that keep the Torah plainly and simply. But no one group is ever OK all and in itself. Especially  we know from Rav Nahman that many  religious leaders are demons, and I have experienced much of this.  That probably means I guess that their human souls have been exchanged for demonic souls. But who knows? Maybe Rav Nahman meant it literally?

[It seems that at least one major [problem in the religious world is that they can not feel good about themselves except by pitting down others. No from any accomplishment. They are not astronauts, even though they try to convince fry yidden [secular Jews] that they are.

So what is objective morality? I would have to go with the intuitionists as far as that goes that reason recognizes objective morality [Prichard, G.E. Moore, Huemer.] But the idea that reason recognizes objective morality goes back to Fichte and Hegel. That is not all that far from Kelley Ross and Leonard Nelson except that these being faithful Kantians, hold that while morality is objective, not structures in the mind, but they can only be known by immediate non intuitive knowledge and that seems a bit too much for me to swallow. I see no reason that implanted knowledge ought to be knowledge at all.

But now that I come to objective morality, I have a hierarchy of values. Natural Law takes precedence. That is the Torah is beyond natural law, however it does not override it. It is based on coming to it.

 In order to learn Torah, what I think is the best idea is to concentrate on the basic achronim [authorities after the middle ages] that show how to get into the depths of Torah, i.e. R. Haim of Brisk and those from that school up until Rav Shach.

The reason is that maybe in first generations it was clear to them, but nowadays it is hard to get into the depths of Torah without those that showed the way. 

Now if one is in a Litvak yeshiva like Brisk or Ponovitch, one could simply learn the Gemara with Tosphot and the rishonim, and then go to the class of the rosh yeshiva. But if you are like me in so far that Ponovitch and the other great Litvak yeshivas are not within walking distance, then the best idea is to have your own copy of the Hidushei Rav Chaim and the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach.

[In my own time at the Mir in NY I learned a lot of the early achronim R Akiva Eiger, the Pnei Yehoshua etc, They were more understandable to me  I was not really ready for the depths of Rav Shach.]