Misagh

@Leo Gura I have a sincere question: what is the point of classifying the individual soul into these color-stages? Is this meant as a practical tool to bring about self-recognition?

1. "Who Am I? The gross body, which is composed of the seven humors (dhātus), I am not; the five cognitive sense organs, i.e., the senses of hearing, touch, sight, taste, and smell, which apprehend their respective objects, i.e., sound, touch, color, taste, and odor, I am not; the five conative sense organs, i.e., the organs of speech, locomotion, grasping, excretion, and procreation, which have as their respective functions speaking, moving, grasping, excreting, and enjoying, I am not; the five vital airs, prāṇa, etc., which perform respectively the five functions of in-breathing, etc., I am not; even the mind which thinks, I am not; the nescience too, which is endowed only with the residual impressions of objects, and in which there are no objects and no functions, I am not. 2. If I am none of these, then who am I? After negating all of the above-mentioned as “not this, not this,” that Awareness which alone remains—that I am." ^ Leo has a great video explaining the practice of "Not this, not this (Neti-Neti)" for those who are interested.

@B_Naz <3

So if I wrote to you, you should let go of all YOUR egotism, who is the wise one? Me or You?

Science is useful if you want to do practical things with maya. It is best to be immersed in the self permanently.

I am not familiar with Jordan Peterson, but why not go straight to the source? Find a true guru - Like Sri Ramana Maharshi- and read his work, instead of all these aspirants who 9 times out of 10 are inspired by, if not straight-up followers of him? I'm not saying there is ONLY Sri Ramana (obviously there is Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Shiva etc. or contemporary teachers like Jan Esman, Leo, Shunyamurti, Adyashanti, Craig Holiday etc). but I find his teaching to be the most to-the-point and bereft of spiritual affect.

Not sure what "complementing" means but I think you meant to say "contemplating". Regardless I will walk you through your writing "So I have my mind, and it stores/creates memory for me." The mind does not create thoughts. The mind 'IS' thoughts. Thought is the nature of mind. Without thoughts, mind would not exist. But YOU would. Who is this "I" who has a mind? This is the important question. In truth, it is not YOU who is manipulating yourself. It is the your mind that is obscuring the truth of your existence. This 'I' itself is a thought. Therefore, it is the mind manipulating itself (a thought manipulates itself). The mind CANNOT manipulate the real you. So all you have to do is to realize this true nature of yourself, which exists as an eternal witness to all these thoughts. "This got me thinking, all the work that I do, are ultimately stored within my mind, within the brain. So my progression has obviously been influencde by the work. This would be a good thing right but..." What you described here is Karma. Karma exists for the ego, the "I", but not for the Self (the witness). "How do I know that my actions or progression or path isn't just copying the things I've read and done work on from thoughts/memory?... Isn't this just manipulation?" No it's not, and this is not a bad thing. The ONLY point mediation/yoga/satsangs/drugs etc etc. have is to imitate the state of enlightenment. It is good to copy a good practice that can bring about fleeting stages of Samadhi (nirvana, liberation. moksha etc). The residual impressions from these momentary states will eventually seep into your mind, purify it, and grant you permanent liberation. "Truth is that... If you eat cake every day, you will be happy." Then eat the cake and be happy. Don't worry about whether the happiness is truth or a lie. Happiness cannot be a lie, therefore there is no point in creating this second mind who watches over the authenticity of this happiness. That by itself will cause unhappiness!

Time is a concept. It doesn't really exist.

The best effect drugs can create in you when it comes to enlightenment is entangling you from your thoughts. This is specially true for the dissociative family of drugs. It is still required for the aspirant to have enough discrimination to be able to identify truth and illusion. For example, Ketamine or DXM might create a whole spectrum of 'images' in your third-eye. Those images by themselves are mere illusions. They have no value when it comes to self-realization. The true value is in the drug creating this strong sense of detachment from those images and your other thoughts. All one has to do in that moment, is to realize their true nature as that untouchable observer. This whole other business with "entities" and "auras" etc. are distractions at best. Usually it is the ego who is interested in those kind of stuff because it wants to be mystical/holy etc. As Sri Ramana said: the real siddhi is self-realization. The rest is maya.

Don't 'try' to do anything. Be effortless. Of course that only comes after self-realization, but until then, don't pre-occupy yourself with how you should act or behave. There is a misconception that one has to be a saint in life to be eligible for enlightenment. This is not correct.