Haumea2018

The point is that belief systems are reductive. They are models of reality. "All models are wrong, but some are useful." Every model fails in certain cases and some fail in a larger number of cases. Even something as eminently useful as Newtonian mechanics fails at very small and very large scales, so forget about belief systems.

Hi amirali, 1) You can function because "the self" (as you refer to the ego) is only a concept that is believed to have magical powers of thinking, sensing, feeling, doing, etc. In other words it takes credit for all those things. But it doesn't exist. It's just a thought that identifies a false center that thinks it's doing all these things. But these things are just nature taking its course. They happen whether there is a thought to identify with them or not. 2) You're not killing anything that is not an illusion that limits your beingness.

The trouble with these Dawkins wannabes isn't that they disagree with nonduality. I would love a deep, intelligent debate over the nature of reality. But they are not capable of it because they are philosophically shallow and unaware, and unaware of their own unawareness. This is what happens when your model is bad at philosophy. They are just not interesting at all.

There is no Buddhist enlightenment and A-V enlightenment, so the only difference is conceptual not existential. When Buddhists say "no self" they say the cup is half-empty. When A-V say there is a self they say the cup is half-full.

There are no "solid arguments." There are plausible arguments only if you buy the underlying premises (which are appeals to popular prejudice.) The claim that he has no ideology can't be taken seriously.

Anyone pursuing enlightenment wants a "specific outcome" and can "delude oneself." That's regardless of whether you have a teacher or pay for anything. So there's nothing here that any regular seeker is immune to.

Wow...that would be quite a claim to make. Let's break it down further. What are his fundamental assumptions about reality? If he can explicitly state them, I'll play. Otherwise, it's not something to take seriously even for a moment.

Leo literally says ideologies are bullshit. This guy in essence says "no, my ideology of rationalism/materialism/scientism/whatever "objectivity" is supposed to represent" isn't bullshit. OK -- cool story. Make a video proving that it isn't by showing that its fundamental assumptions are true. Good luck with that. "Objectivity" is as superstitious a dogma as any religion.

This guy is just not very coherent if you watch the entire video. Over the course of the video he contradicts himself, special pleads, etc. He doesn't understand himself or non-duality very well. This is what happens when your parents force-feed you something as opposed to you coming to it organically. He was never ready for it in the first place. "Objectivity" is nonsense. Nonduality is about the nonconceptual, but he is so stuck in his concepts that he commits a category error by comparing the philosophy of "objectivity" (i.e. rationalism, I suppose?) with the philosophy of nonduality, as opposed to nonduality itself. "Nonduality" is a pointer to direct experience, not an intellectual construct that can be rigorously tested through "objectivity." In other words, he just doesn't get it. He's in his head filtering everything through a mental map and not seeing into the nature of things directly. The problem is that mental maps are just arbitrary bullshit, but he doesn't see that.

I'm still trying to figure out if the objection here is that this doesn't work, or that someone's charging for it. 'Cause those are two different criticisms. 'Cause, if it's the second, and one hates the idea so much, one might be willing to attack it as a scam. Of course it's easy to find out if it works by talking to people who've done it, but that could require uncomfortable adjustments to one's mental maps. Is Alan French btw? That may explain this entire thread. I find cultural differences fascinating.

I have to agree with this. Stop talking and thinking about existential issues and deal with your emotional issues, the problems in your life that are being ignored.

Certain siddhis definitely exist, like clairvoyance, remote viewing, things like that. These are pretty common (well, relatively speaking, anyway.) I know several people who are clairvoyants. Some of the rarer ones I'm not sure about, but I assume many exist I've never observed.

There is no "I am." That implies Other. When your perception of "I am" permanently expands beyond the bodymind, you've reached some degree of awakening but the ultimate awakening is where there is no existential sense of "I am" (even expanded one.) There is just...THIS...reality...the Absolute...The Self...whatever you want to call it, or better yet don't call it anything.

See, this is why Leo's video is so good and needs to be properly understood and rewatched. Ideology is a crutch for people who behave badly, and Leo majorly triggered this guy because a) deep down he knows he behaves badly and (b) he uses his grievances and ideology to fuel his righteousness so he can continue to behave badly. This is very common among materialists and New Atheists but of course not exclusive to them. They don't really want to be better people. They want to punish others out of a sense of grievance -- any way they can. Their ideology gives them the justification to continue doing that. If you've ever wondered why so many of these types behave so badly, that's why. The ideology is always secondary, the person is primary.

BTW, what I meant by that is his suggestion that anger and passion automatically bestow righteousness (or at least indicate greater likelihood of such.) If that isn't a self-serving delusion, nothing is. This guy gives a lecture about dog-eat-dog predatory nature and deception and then claims this alongside with it. Talk about not seeing one's own contradictions. Yeah, dude, every guy who's come home angry after getting chewed out by the boss and yelled at the wife and kids was surely righteous in his anger.

Most awful people have some kind of trauma. They certainly deserve compassion and understanding for that. I'm just suggesting that it's ok to see their awfulness for what it is. Some awful people even rely on their sob story as an excuse for continuing to be awful. That should never fly. I have a shitload of trauma. I've never imagined having the need to avoid guilt for wrongdoing on that account.

That's if your goal is to be intellectually honest or you're even capable of it. Some people just don't care about that one single bit. And some people are just willfully ignorant. There are some genuinely awful people in the spirituality game. You come across them if you hang around long enough.

"Debunking" videos are "punching up." The answer is as simple as looking at his subscriber count. "Punching up" is for losers and haters. Losers and haters don't tend to intellectual honesty or basic human decency. Anytime I accidently come across a debunking video on YT, my automatic assumption is that the person is a L&H - unless they have some insider information about the misdeeds of the person or something. What I hate about the dumb YT culture is that this format by default tends to attract a certain degree of benefit of the doubt. I don't understand why. There's a ton of haters out there, and haters gonna hate.

Something that can be perceived directly, without the filter of conceptualization.

Athletics, yoga, massages.

This guy speaks the truth. This has been my experience with diet as well. I'm not sure I would put salt and fat (in reasonable amounts) into the same category as added sugar (or processed carbs) but his general outlook is something I share.

Just point out that matter is almost entirely emptiness and isn't real in any but conceptual sense. Atoms aren't these hard balls with small orbiting particles. That's a model, not reality. But really, I wouldn't engage in arguments like this at all.

I have floaters too. I got hit in the eye a few years ago during martial arts. I look at it this way: I'm ridiculously fortunate. I can still see out of that eye, there was no retinal damage, I haven't had to eliminate any of my activities. If that's the worst thing that will have happened to me this decade, I'll feel positively blessed.

Ramaji doesn't claim that. He specifically says integration takes time, maybe more than a year. He specifically teaches post-1000 seminars. The difference is that it's a lot easier to do the work after you reach 1000. There are identifiable stages to the process for a reason. Most people take time going through them. If you want to ask specific questions about the process and my experience, I welcome them.

I loved this article. This is from Chabad, who are Hasidic Jews. Some people here still believe in G-d in a dualistic sense. This article completely destroys the notion by explaining the linguistic aspects of the Old Testament. There's no difference between the Old Testament G-d and Advaita Vedanta conception of reality. These guys know their biblical Hebrew as well as anyone, so are the go-to experts here. A lot got lost in translation to other languages and cultures.