Petals

@Commodent thank you for sharing! the introduction alone is already fascinating. I never knew he met Ramana Maharshi.

@Mulky thanks for reporting your experience. I would also describe it as a pleasant feeling, although it's of course quite surprising the first time. @cetus56 Thanks. I will see if it gets deeper with time and what happens then.

I am working with a quite powerful brainwave entrainment program. After some minutes I feel my head tilting to the right sight in the direction of my shoulder although in reality my head stays straight. I want to ask whether anyone of you has had the same sensation in your meditation practice. Do you know what is going on or what the explanation behind it is?

@Swagala we're probably talking about different things. interesting nonetheless. no, can't imagine that.

@Swagala thank you for the reply. I don't think that I have any control over it in order to increase it, I just try to not resist it. what do you mean by 'senses tilting'?

@Leo Gura thank you for sharing this. That was quite a 'Conversations with God' by Neale Donald Walsch flashback. I read it a few years ago. you two should have a conversation. do you think you could answer yourself questions that do not pertain to the highest non-dual level, e.g. about 'reincarnation'?

@Zigzag Idiot thanks so much for the detailed answer!

@Zigzag Idiot this Forth Way 'system' seems so hard to pin down. Is there something that you've taken away from it which really has changed something in your daily life? many of the concepts seem to be rather arcane, that's why I always get the sense that there is something here that other systems don't have. but is there really?

@Yonkon I can add two more techniques. The first is called LAX VOX. You can google it or watch some videos on youtube. There should be some resources in English, too. It's a simple technique and seems to help a lot of people. I have quite a severe dysphonia and had a lot of speech/voice therapy but the only thing that helps me a bit is screaming into a pillow as loud as I can. But please be careful not to overdo it!! This brings some movement into this whole tense system for me. Don't wait for a magic pill. It's very good that you see progress, so just keep going! I guess voice/expression problems seem like a minor thing from the outside but it's hard to overstate how much it is affecting one's whole being. so I can really empathize with you.

and two more. MAURICE NICOLL. I think he was a disciple of Carl Jung at some point and he looked at the Gurdjieff/Ouspensky teachings from a Christian perspective. THE PATHWORK LECTURES by EVA PIERRAKOS/THE GUIDE. Don't really know what to make of it yet. It's channeled material and very Christian.

I just want to add two names. I haven't read anything of them yet. I just stumbled upon them when looking into Christianity. Maybe it is worthwhile doing some research on them. The first ist THOMAS MERTON. The second is ABHISHIKTANANDA. He was a French monk who moved to India. Maybe he has an interesting Christian perspective on Advaita and the East.

@Leo Gura this may sound like a silly question, but what do you mean by 'ego' and what do you mean by 'self'? do you use them interchangeably? a book that I am reading right now states that a clear distinction between the two is needed. according to it, in the absence of ego there is still the self (the self-reflexive mechanism of the mind) and all experiences of the divine are self-based and not the divine itself.

I think that a very important indicator of whether one is spiritual bypassing or not is the presence of fear. I think that all bypassing/avoidance is based in fear. So for example, if there is a lack of genuine effort to achieve something you believe in, ask yourself - 'is this so because I am afraid of failure or have I already transcended the fear of failure?'. Probably in the early stages everything can turn into spiritual bypassing if one is not vigilant because one is far away from a stage where one has transcended fear. I would recommend not attaching any morality to 'spiritual bypassing'. I don't know how it is with you but when I think of 'spiritual bypassing' there immediately comes in a feeling that it is 'bad'. Remind yourself that you are never 'out of bounds' so to speak and things are so arranged that 'spiritual bypassing' will lead to suffering and suffering will lead you back on track. So SB is not 'bad' but a natural part of the journey and a sign that there is still fear to dissolve.

with 'understood' here I mean 'intellectually understood'. I hope that this can now set the foundation for the real practice of self-inquiry. and I am sharing this so that it may help you in this way too. I am not sure if this is the most obvious triviality that everybody here already knows, at least for me it is a next level of understanding and maybe it is for you as well. Please do really contemplate these sentences. That is what I wrote down as it came into my mind: since the question is 'who am(!) I?', I can only be(!) the answer, but never know it. because I cannot be something that I know. and I cannot know what I am. when there is being, there is no knowing/'not-knowing' and vice versa. that is because 'am' means oneness, and 'know' means separation (of subject and object). since 'am' allows only for oneness, I 'am' absolutely one with (all) 'am-ness' / being. 'am' is oneness. 'am' is absolute identity. I 'am' oneness (because I 'am'). I 'am' absolute identity (because I 'am'). I am not a thing that is one or identical (with sth), but I 'am' actual oneness/identity itself. 'am' not only denotes existence but also oneness. since 'am' means/is oneness, and since as a consequence there can only be one 'am-ness'/being, I 'am' that.

@kev014 there are exoteric and there are esoteric teachings. if you are interested in christianity you could read Bernadette Roberts.

@ActualizedDavid maybe it's just best to leave them alone. they seem to be real, as not only the above video by Bache shows. so if they exist but you don't experience/remember them now, there is probably a good reason for it.

@The Don and don't forget 'thank you!'. that's a good prayer. maybe even the most important one.

@Leo Gura have you read the 'discourses' by Meher Baba? I have not yet but I've opened it at random and he seems to lie in the direction that you are taking with your teachings - more 'feminine' and with care and love for humanity as a whole. He also emphasizes God as Infinite Love. As an excerpt, p.399: "Those who try to understand God through the intellect alone arrive at some cold and dry concept that misses the very essence of the nature of God. It is true that God is Infinite Knowledge, Infinite Existence, Infinite Power, and Infinite Bliss; but God is not understood in His essence until He is also understood as Infinite Love."

I just wanted to share this find with you. It can challenge your idea of what's possible or not. Is it true? I don't really know. At least it's an interesting story. If you want to go down the rabbit hole, google 'the wanderling meeting yourself' and go from there. TIME TRAVEL - MEETING YOURSELF In the early to mid 1940s a very young American boy from a small Southern California beach town travels to India with a foster couple, ending up staying several months at or near the ashram of the venerated Indian holy man, the Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi in Tiruvannamalai, south India. Prior to his departure from the U.S. the foster couple allows the boy to select one, and one only, small easy to carry toy to take with him. He picks his hands-down favorite, a metal decoder badge known as a Photo-Matic Code-O-Graph that has a picture of Captain Midnight mounted in it. In a seeming set of incredible coincidences, an American man, who was at the time around age 25 or so, and unbelievably from the same Southern California hometown as the boy, visits the ashram during the same period the young boy is there. Oddly enough, although a full grown man, he too has a near duplicate decoder with him, albeit slightly more tarnished than the boy's decoder, that has on it's surface a somewhat newer like sheen. So too, in lieu of the Captain Midnight photo, the man's Code-O-Graph has in it's place a black-and-white photograph of himself as a young boy. After inadvertently meeting each other and discovering they both have decoders, with the boy's permission, for reasons no longer known but seemingly valid at the time, they switch the two photos, exchanging the man's for the picture of Captain Midnight and vice versa for the boy. Not long after the man's departure from the ashram the young boy leaves as well, returning to the U.S. with the couple, ending up being left off by the couple totally unannounced at the home his grandmother on his father's side in Pennsylvania. When the boy returns to California, the decoder with the now switched picture of the boy in it, for reasons unknown, is left behind at the grandmother's and, rather than trying to return it, she simply stores it in a box where it slowly languishes away and soon forgotten. Several years later the grandmother dies and upon her death her son, who happens to be the boy's uncle, travels to her home in Pennsylvania to put her things in order. There he finds the decoder in the box among her belongings. Having been the boy's onetime guardian the uncle instantly recognizes the photo as being that of his nephew while at the same time remembering how important Code-O-Graphs were to the boy during his very early childhood years as well. So said, the uncle, knowing that the boy had stayed at his mother's for a short time during those same years, after which the decoder went missing, but now having found it, without really thinking about it sends it to his nephew. The nephew however, is now no longer a young boy but reaching into his late teenage years and just about ready to graduate from high school. The decoder, having lost both it's luster physically as well as in importance to the boy, floats around a few years eventually ending up stored away in a box at his younger brother's when the boy, now a man just into his early twenties in the 1960s, is drafted into the U.S. Army. While the boy-now-a-man is in the Army and fully vested as a soldier he requests his younger brother send him some much needed items. In the process his younger brother either inadvertently or mistakenly includes the decoder in the package along with the other items he requested. With the decoder in his possession and some distance from home he simply carries it around with him during his young adult years and has it with him when he decides to visit the ashram of the Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi in Tiruvannamalai, south India. During the man's visit to the ashram, in what seems to be another set of incredible if not unbelievable coincidences, he meets a young boy from his own home town who has been staying at the ashram with a foster couple for a couple of months --- and has with him of all things, a Photo-Matic Code-O-Graph --- except that the boy's seems much newer and has a picture of Captain Midnight in it while the man's has a picture of himself when he was a young boy. Following a short discussion the man switches the picture of himself as a boy that is in his decoder for the picture of Captain Midnight that is in boy's decoder, leaving the decoder with the picture of the boy in the hands of the boy, while taking the decoder that now has the Captain Midnight photo inserted in the square with him when he leaves the ashram. Over time he eventually returns home, continuing to have the decoder with Captain Midnight's picture in it right up to this day. Not long after the man's departure from the ashram the young boy leaves India returning to the U.S. ending up at his grandmother on his father's side in Pennsylvania. A few weeks later the boy returns to his home in California and for reasons unknown leaves the decoder with the picture of the boy at the grandmother's. She, rather than trying to return it to her grandson, simply puts it away in a darkened box where it is soon forgotten. A few years later the grandmother dies and her son goes to Pennsylvania to put her estate in order. There he finds the decoder and recognizes the photo as being that of his nephew when he was a young boy and sends it to him.

I have a question concerning the concept of 'imagination' that Leo uses. Basically the question is: at what level does the imagination happen? Let's say that this experience right now of me sitting in this room is an undivided oneness, but then the mind comes in and I imagine that there are objects and a me that perceives these objects. Is this what is meant by 'imagination' as Leo uses it? or does it go deeper? that is, when I look at this room, at one point I recognize that I do not know what anything in this room really is (and maybe even oneness if I was advanced). I go beyond the concepts that the mind has. But still, something is there although I don't know what it is. Is this something also 'imagined'? In summary, the question would go something like this: Is 'imagination' (as Leo uses it) something that God/Universal Mind does or is it something that the human mind (through thoughts and concepts) does? I hope this makes any sense. and thank you for your replies.

@Leo Gura Thanks Leo. I think I fell into the trap of trying to understand the process/mechanism because that's what verbs describe (although you repeatedly said that there is no mechanism). but the adjective 'imaginary' makes it somehow clearer since its definition (oxford dict.) is simply 'existing only in mind'.

@Nahm @Inliytened1 thank you. you are right. and when in doubt (assuming non-duality) there can only be one 'thing' imagining anything. but that's also just more concept.

@Anton_Pierre thank you, you are right. I'm just asking so that I can keep up with Leo's train of thought when he uses the word 'imagination' or 'eth is imagined'. @Inliytened1 thanks. what I mean is that to imagine that you are a human you maybe first need a 'medium' in which you can imagine it, just as you first need a block of stone to make a sculpture. the medium being this inexplicable moment right now full of seeing,hearing, etc.. so is this medium (seeing, hearing, etc.) already imagined or is 'being a human seeing/hearing objects' the first instance of 'imagination' (as Leo uses it)?

I would think it's only an assumption that we become God when we die. Maybe we don't. Maybe, as long as you are an ego you are just bound to be identified with a body, be that a gross or a subtle-mental/astral body. So maybe you are identified with some kind of body even after death. Then it's not 'physical body or God', but 'any kind of body or God'. it may become more clear when you remind yourself that 'matter'/the 'physical' body can't and doesn't produce consciousness.

I know you were joking, but something like that supposedly exists. type in 'rainbow body phenomenon' in google or youtube.