Leo Gura

There are some dangers to that approach as well. There are dangers everywhere. But overall I am highly in favor of studying 100s of sources or you will become deluded. Then again, you will probably also become deluded if you study 100s of sources. It's hard to avoid delusion. Personally I study at least 100 sources and I know I would have been screwed by now if I hadn't.

Yes, of course. Haven't we stated this already? "Psychedelics don't work on stupid people." -- Terence McKenna Yeah, about the same.

It's because very few people understand the breadth of this work. It's not only deep, it's broad. Psychological and sociological aspects of it cannot be ignored the way that many narrow nondual teachings assume. An integral approach is not done by almost any teacher or school. Thus horrendous gaps result. A lot of spiritual folks are in denial about the work's breadth. They want it to be as simple as someone like Eckhart Tolle or Rupert Spira makes it seem. But it just isn't. I am what I am. My function is to teach people here.

Sure You could give yourself a panic attack without even taking psychedelics. It all depends on how your use your mind. To trip well you need to be relatively emotionally even-keeled. If your emotions and mind are all over the place, if your life is mess, you're not stable enough to trip, the ego is too fragile and insecure. You need more basic personal development work first in that case. Tripping requires maturity and self-control.

I'm not really familiar with what he does. But it's very easy to do years of Vipassana but not be awakened or really understand the depth of consciousness work. In fact I would say that most Westerners who practice Vipassana have no idea what awakening or nonduality really are. Because they are following a very narrow practice on blind faith. I have met people who have done Vipassana for 5-15 years but have no idea what the world enlightenment means. Not to mention many other aspects of spiritual work. This work goes so deep and has so many layers to it that you should NEVER assume that a person who does any kind of practice is awake or understands spirituality. It's all too easy to turn spiritual practices into narrow robotic habits and dogmas. Sam Harris supposedly also does meditation and has even had some degree of realization of no-self. But his worldview is still thoroughly materialistic and dualistic, and he is still missing 98% of spirituality. This is extremely common in the West especially. Westerners tend to dabble in spirituality while thinking to themselves that they've figured it all out. This is to be expected. As a general rule of thumb: When someone talks about spirituality, does spirituality, or teaches spirituality -- NEVER, EVER assume that they are at the highest stages of it. Always be skeptical. Especially with Westerners. True masters are very rare. Fully comprehensive teachings are very rare. Most people who do spirituality are doing it very poorly, pathologically, and half-assing it. This is to be expected given that almost no one understands the full scope of the mind's self-deceptiveness. Even awakening will NOT make you immune to self-deception. So watch out!

Yes, very clear. Sounds like you still haven't found the right sweet spot. Some substances are better/easier than others. Mushrooms can be twisted and hard to understand. Ayahausca can be overwhemling and very uncomfortable for newbies. What I recommend is tightening up your protocols and tripping in a very controlled manner. You could try the following routes: 1g of mushrooms >> 2g of mushrooms >> 3g of mushrooms >> until you hit your sweet spot 75ug of LSD >> 125ug of LSD >> 200ug of LSD >> 250ug of LSD >> until you hit your sweet spot This must be done in a good comfortable quiet setting, free of distractions, free of people, and other nonsense. You must do it on an empty stomach and you must sit still and contemplate about the nature of reality with your eyes open. Your intention must be pure & serious. If you did all that, I don't see how you wouldn't have some nice breakthroughs.

60 trips is not a lot. That's just the beginning. That's like saying that 60 days of meditation is a lot when people meditate for 1000s of days to get amazing results.

That of course is unknown. It could get worse, it could get better. We don't really know. Impeachment might not be the right move. Voting him out would probably be the best solution. All of this will get resolved in the future. Worrying too much about backlash is not a good general approach because it's fear-based. Rather than worrying about how a devil will react against your good action, just act in the highest good. Deal with the consequences as they arise. Devils will always bitch and moan against progress. This does not mean that we appease the devils and stop pushing for progress. Sometimes a battle is necessary. Seeking to maintain peace at all costs is too simplistic a strategy for navigating the complexity of life and politics. A very delicate balancing act is required. Don't be a doormat for devils. The highest spiritual teachers are NOT doormats. Jesus, Gandhi, MLK, etc were very vocal against devilry. Just be careful that when standing up against devils you yourself do not become a devil. That is the great trap. It's very hard to avoid.

Yes, that's right. But the question is, what are we gonna do about it? Hitler was also an ego backlash against the German loses in WWI. Be careful not to fall into a false fatalism here. Because you could easily make a fallacious argument like this: "Well, since Hitler was elected by the people, that must be the will of God, so I guess we should just let Hitler do whatever he wants." No! No! No! You get to decided every second what kind of reality you want to create. And deciding to let a Hitler run wild without limit would be a lack of responsibility. It was God's will that people elected Hitler. It was God's will that Hitler kill many Jews. But it was also God's will that Hitler was resisted, stopped, and killed. See? God's will is a very complex thing which waxes and wanes.

Yes, but what you're overlooking is that if we kick the tyrant out of power, that too SHOULD be happening. Reality is deciding itself in every moment. There is no fatalism in nonduality. You and we are all determining how we want reality to unfold. Do you want to sit by and let a tyrant run lose, or do you want to contain him? The choice is yours/ours. What kind of world do you want to create? This issue of will and choice is extremely subtle and sophisticated.

You'll understand when a tyrant locks you and your family in a cage. See, people are all cool with tyranny until they get on the receiving end of it. Then they hate tyranny with a passion. Most people are so myopic they never expect that their favorite tyrant would ever harm them. Not realizing that it is the modus operandi of tyrants to only care about themselves. Trump does not give a shit about you. He is like a rabid dog, which will bite its master.

Well, that's extremely rare. I would call that a spiritual gift of its own. Yes, some people literally sit down, do a few days of meditation or inquiry and BAM! -- they awaken. But this is very, very rare. Don't count on that happening. Obviously if that happens, great! Consider yourself very lucky. You won the spiritual lottery.

That's good progress! That's the trick! There isn't a "how". Formlessness cannot be reached through any method or process. Formlessness just is. You are it. You cannot reach it through any steps because it is the zero-th step. It is impossibly direct. Although psychedelics can put you there in minutes. The reaching of formlessness is a spontaneous occurrence, like a lightning strike. You cannot predict it or make it happen. But you can increase the odds by intensifying your inquiry & concentration. Of course they are a part of you -- because everything is a part of you. But they are not essential to you. For example, a thought or feeling can arise and then disappear. It's disappearance does not change your essence. So what you are -- your essence -- is independent of all arising phenomena. What you're missing is that you must distinguish yourself from all form. You have to separate the formlessness which right now is intermixed and confused with various forms. Then, later, you will realize that formlessness and form are in fact identical. But at the same time, they can be distinguished! It's a paradox. Your first awakening experience is you realizing that formlessness is distinct from all form. It's you realizing that Consciousness/You is distinct from any content that arises. It's sort of like a TV realizing that it is distinct from the images it displays. In the unenlightened state you are like a TV which is attached to the forms it displays, not realizing that in fact all forms could disappear without affecting the TV's existence. What you are looking for with self-inquiry is PURE CONSCIOUSNESS. Consciousness without any forms. But be careful, what I said above does not mean that any particular forms must be eliminated. So don't get some silly idea in your head that your sensory field will somehow turn off or go black. That's not what I mean. I mean you must realize that the sensory field is always occurring within formlessness. Like water is always occurring within some container. The True Self is the container. Find yourself as the empty container which holds the world. Right now you are so identified with the world that you cannot see the transparent container. Form = the material world Formlessness = the transparent container which holds it And ultimately, Form = Formlessness That's what "nonduality" means: not two.

@Aeris And what if Hitler was actually killing Jews for the good of the world? Should we allow him to keep doing that? Your mental gymnastics are impressive. Trump is a devil, plain and simple. There is no higher strategy with him. Of course in the Absolute sense, Trump is part of the total perfection. But that does not make him some strategic genius here to save mankind. If Trump is allowed free reign, he will cause a lot of harm. Such tyrants need to be stopped. The entire universe will conspire to stop his devilry. Or rather, his devilry will be the cause of his undoing.

That is a very dumb phrase. 99.999% of people are not enlightened. Enlightenment means consciousness of one's true nature. Without CONSCIOUSNESS of it, there is no enlightenment even though, yes, you are still God. But you don't know you're God, hence not enlightened.

Hehehe... That's a very tall order. That will require massive personal awakening. The problem is, all of history is a fiction. So he's gonna have a real hard time doing that within the context of history. The only way to achieve his goal is to become a mystic.

You must discover what is right for you. You must walk your own path.

EVERYTHING IS SPIRITUAL. It's just a question of how conscious are you about whatever you are doing. How conscious is your job, your business, your family, your relationships, your friendships, your finances, your entertainment, your art, your government, your politics, your science, your speech, your thinking, your emotions, etc. Spiritual just means: degree of consciousness, from zero to infinity. Low spirituality = massive ego, massive devilry, maximum suffering High spirituality = little ego, unconditional love & goodness, minimal suffering

It's not necessary to fast or have a special diet for long before the trip. Just make sure you trip on at least 4 hours of empty stomach and it will be fine. Fruits are good prior to and after the trip. Although usually after a deep trip I get very hungry and need more food than just some fruit. So have snacks handy. Often times I will half-way into the trip, and it creates no problems. As long as you're past the peak. Don't snack until you're past the peak.

@nistake Every creature has a unique personality. Do not confuse this primordial personality with ego or with social conditioning. This primordial personality will remain even after total enlightenment. Even cats and dogs have these primordial personalities. No two cats have an identical personality. Because every brain is unique, just like every computer hard drive is unique.

@Dlenger1 The intellectual questions are a good beginning point, but ultimately you have to graduate from that to basically just sitting in silence with a calm mind and focusing intensely on "the seer" or consciousness itself. Just sit and kinda stare at consciousness itself. The problem with asking too many questions is that the mind then gets in the mood of giving verbal answers, which is never going to be enough. The Neti Neti method is helpful here. Anything you identify as yourself, you must negate by realizing that that thing or property cannot be the True Self. What you're really looking for is formlessness. "The seer" is formlessness. So any from you think you are cannot be it. And you have to be very careful about not thinking "I am formlessness" because that is still form! This is supposed to be frustrating process and it takes intense concentration to break through. You will not break through if you do this process without intensity and consistency. 20 minutes of inquiry is just not going to produce enough intensity for a breakthrough. It's very important to schedule some long periods of time for nothing but inquiry. Like a solid week of full-time 12-hours-per-day inquiry. That is how people break through in practice. You must concentrate on it like an obsessive psychopath.

The only thing you will ever find in the universe is yourself. Deeper and deeper layers of yourself.

Yeah, something like that. Trips definitely change you and open you if you do enough of them. It's not just a temporary high, it's an upwards arch.

@kieranperez Definitely don't go chasing mystical perfection. Do you! Just do you.

Sure, but will you actually do it? That's the issue. Solo is much harder emotionally.