Perception isn't direct because it is dualistic. "Perception" is a very loaded word here. You have to understand that when he says that perception isn't direct, he does NOT mean that you will discover some new thing behind perception, like some sort of "truer" version of reality. What he means is, everything will stay the same, but you will realize that perception is actually Being by collapsing the subject of perception into the raw data of perception. Perception will get radically recontextualized, but all the raw data, so to speak, will stay exactly the same. If you saw red before, you will keep seeing red during awakening. But now red will be recognized as RED! -- an absolute, rather than a function of some biological human brain process.
I explain all this very well in my videos: What Is Perception? and What Is Actuality?
Being = perception minus ego
RED = red minus a perceiver

No.
Not in the way you think.
The hallucination itself is an Absolute.
Yes, red exists Absolutely. All the raw data you see around you exists as an absolute. The problem is that when ego looks at anything absolute, it contextualizes it as "my subjective experiences". But without an ego, your experiences would stop being "yours" and they would even stop being "human experience happening in a brain".
"These are my subjective human experiences" << is a conceptual context which the ego-mind projects/imagines in order to create a sense of self.
Go re-watch my videos on What Is Perception? and What Is Actuality? and What Is Truth?
It's all explained there.
Or just take a psychedelic and see it for yourself.

Of course.
ONENESS!
When you see a chair across the room, you ARE that chair.

This "space" isn't space. It's nowhere and nothing.
YES! But it's not a space. It is nowhere. Nowhere is the perciever/subject. But notice, this now creates a new duality: nowhere (space) vs the stuff in it. So this is not yet full nonduality. For full nonduality you must realize that all the form is itself identical to the "space" in which it occurs. If you are distinguishing space from its contents, that is still duality.
In the final awakening you must realizing that absolute indifference between form and formlessness.
If you distinguish the "space" from the ego, that is a duality.
No-self = True Self
When everything collapses into ONE, there are no more parts. Your mind is trying to grasp at parts but Unity cannot have any. That's why this is so confusing for you. You are trying to grasp Infinity using the mind but that cannot ever work because the mind itself is entangled with the question. There cannot even be 1) a mind, and 2) a thing which the mind grasps. Since that is still duality.
Things ARE mind!
The chair is not happening in the mind. The chair IS mind. The end.

All colors, sounds, sensations, feelings, tastes, smells = raw data
It's the most fundamental stuff of which reality is made of. These are the true "atoms". You can't boil down the color red any further than itself. You can't boil down the taste of salt any further than itself.

Those sound like shitty friends. Fuck 'em. Find better ones.
A true friend is supposed to be able to feel happy for you when you are succeeding.

Yes, of course! Money is super important if you are building out your life purpose / biz / career. Money is what allows you to avoid becoming some devil boss's bitch slave.
I take money very seriously, even though it's not important in the absolute sense. You should be very prudent and strategic about money. Not to buy toys, but as a resource to enable your creativity. I am very pragmatic about money. You need it and it's not some evil thing. When you set up your LP correctly, money becomes a reflection of your creative output and service to the world.
Here's how you should think about money:
For more pragmatic biz advice, see my videos: The Psychology Of Small Business Advice and Money Psychology

Although to be clear, I don't support investing in Wall Street. They are scumbags and devils. Earn your money through creative effort.

It's hard to do a lot of day time approaches. Day time approaches have to be much more solid given their rarity. Majority of my approaches were night time. Simply given that, more results will come from night because it is a numbers game.
But my first success was from day.
Day is best, if only you could find enough hot girls during the day. They tend to be very rare and it's not so good for practice. Day is when you have to execute already solid game so it looks smooth and chill and effortless. Night is best for rapid training and fun, and if you want same-night results.

That $8000 would have been better spent traveling to Vegas and living here for 3 months of non-stop club action.
You gotta be smart with how you invest your money.

@Johnny5 While the universe is appearing, it is still Absolute Truth, however it appears.

You are looking at this in terms of sex.
The proper way to look at it is in terms of growth.
He's not doing those 1000 approaches to get 1 hot girl. He's doing it to overcome his fears and to develop strength as a man. That development will pay dividends for a lifetime. So it's worth doing even if you only get 1 or 2 lays out of it.
And like I said, result grow exponentally. So the next 1000 appraoches after that could produce 2-4 lays. And the next 1000, 4-8 lays, and the next 1000, 8-16 lays. And by that point you are getting more pussy than most guys can dream of.
Business works the same way. The first few years of starting a biz, you work non-stop but earn nothing.

If you want to have sex, you need to socialize a lot more frequently and it will happen. Even without pickup skillz. That is how normies get laid. Normies tend to be fairly social.
The Incel phenomenon is gaining steam so much these days because of the rise of the internet and gaming. Real-world socialization has taken a serious hit. You must consciously over-compensate for it nowadays by pushing yourself to socialize in the flesh even though there's little need to do so (other than for getting laid).
And who knows... you might learn to joy it more than playing Fortnite.

It's counter-intuitive: the chasing of bliss is the very thing which prevents it.
Bliss is a consequence of fully facing one's fear and not needing to manipulate your experience.
It's problematic to be doing psychedelics with the expectation of bliss. I would drop that expectation and instead aim for Truth and understanding. Bliss is the fruit off the tree of understanding. Focus on watering the roots of your tree rather than jumping like a thirsty monkey at the unripened green fruits.

There actually is no such thing as POVs. There is only your direct experience. All POVs are inside your POV.
The concept of Points of View is inherently dualistic. It too much collapse.

Ah... but it's not so simple.
So long as you are in that physical body, you will have a strong identification with your sex. Sex is a deep physiological aspect of what you are as a human on the relative plane. And this cannot be changed willy-nilly. The hormones running your brain and body play a HUGE role in shaping your raw experience of life, not to mention your thoughts and emotions.
So it's not as easy as having robots do all our physical labor for us.
If you want to completely decouple gender and sex, you'll have to become like a brain in a vat hooked up to some VR game. Or via genetic engineering. But assuming your genes stay that same, you'll have attachments to masculine and feminine qualities.

And how many of them were single and you were willing to fuck?
You see? The numbers are simply too low.
If you take responsibility for this situation you can socialize with 30 single women in one weekend. Thus increasing your odds of finding the right girl by a factor 30, 50, or 100!
Contemplate how HUGE that is. Imagine x100 fold increase. This is relatively easy to create simply by going out every Fri, Sat, Sun. It's that simple to get a x100 increase. And we haven't even talked about upgrading your skills yet. With upgraded skills you will get another x100 increase.
It's not only a numbers game, but when the numbers aren't in your favor you're setting yourself up for failure.
If you were a real estate agent and you only talked to 30 people in 3 months, your children would starve, no matter how good of an agent you were. Being good at real estate requires constantly getting new leads and socializing and meeting dozens of new people every week. Same when dating.
It's not only numbers, but numbers matter a lot. And this actually works in your favor because you can control numbers pretty directly.
You can increase your numbers by x100 starting next week.
Social anxiety can have multiple root causes, some of which might be deep inner trauma which requires doing some inner work. But this is all a big part of pickup work. Pickup is not just about going out every night. It is also very much about correcting your poor inner game, poor mindsets, limiting beliefs, low self-esteem, bad habits, etc. There is a huge psychological component to getting good with women and becoming a strong, confident man. But all that inner game stuff will never be enough if you don't socialize.
You must do BOTH! Inner game and outer game. You must do psychotherapy-type work on your limiting beliefs and low self-esteem AND you must hit the bars and clubs every weekend.
The two synergize, creating an upward spiral.
Incels create a downward spiral by never going out and then creating a toxic ideology to rationalize why going out is pointless and why no girl will like them. This is a toxic cancer of the mind which creates as self-fulfilling prophecy.
You can change all those pathways because your brain and mind are plastic. That's the whole point of our work here! Everything about you can change!
If you can change your brain to stop constructing ego, you can also change it to be good at socializing.

That will depend on what kind of person you are. Some folks are more insiders, others are more suited to be outsiders.
I'm a strong outsider because I'm very clear in my vision and very independent. Collaboration isn't my cup of tea.
But your personality might be the opposite.

Yes, I have noticed that mushrooms and some 4-HO sub-type tryptamines give me a hangover the next day, while other psychedelics do not.
5-MeO has no hangover effects at all for me. Neither does DMT from what I recall although I'm less sure about DMT since I've done a lot less of it.
You could experiment with various nootropic supplements or vitamins on the day after to see if they might take the edge off. I get the sense that the brain might simply be lacking nutrients the day after which were used up the day before. If you could supplement that lacking nutrient, theoretically you could stop the hangover.
Let us know if you find something.

One day you will realize the most obvious thing ever: experience is Absolute Truth.

Of course no amount of meditation or therapy will fix that. She needs to muster the courage to leave her husband.
That is the elephant in the room. Be ware of using spirituality as a mask for basic material inaction.
The spiritual thing to do in all abusive relationships is LEAVE! Not-leaving isn't love, it's fear.

Thinking that experience is a trick, is a trick.
The color red cannot be a trick. Red is red. That's what it is.

The mind is dogmatic because it has to be in order to maintain its sense of reality. If the mind wasn't stubborn, your reality would literally fall apart.
The mind is stubborn sometimes. The mind is stubborn 95% of the time.

@OBEler It varies person to person.
I've never had difficulty breathing on 5-MeO-DMT or any other psychedelic regardless of intensity.
But you might.

It can still be valuable to build a business and be successful as part of your larger life purpose.
Business is a great way to escape wage slavery and help the world at the same time. You just have to go about it in a conscious way.
Basically 90%+ of all ways of making a living = some kind of business. So you can't really escape business. It's more a question of what kind of business you do.