BipolarGrowth

@PopoyeSailor https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-near-death-experiences-reveal-about-the-brain/ This covers the materialist view/partial explanation of NDEs. You’re thinking on the right track for providing something we can work with to potentially disprove the idea of the brain generating consciousness. So far, no one else in this thread has brought up anything but theory about consciousness which I’m well aware of and have experienced what they describe firsthand. None of that solves anything. This line of inquiry could. Have you seen any verified accounts of any of these events happening when brain activity is completely gone? If consciousness is generated by the brain, this does not mean that modern-day materialists are at all correct about the full capabilities of the human system and brain. I have personal experiences of telepathy, the teleportation of small objects, potential alteration of space and time, and quite a few other things 99%+ of materialists or scientists would claim are completely impossible. Even many spiritual people doubt the legitimacy of such experiences. With the reincarnation example, if we’re trying to explain this within the brain generating consciousness paradigm, all we need is a link existing between brains. This could certainly be possible. How exactly? Idk. We already know that time and space do not exist from the perspective of light. We also know quantum particles can interact with each other instantly across vast distances. It’s within the realm of possibility that brains can access reality in a similar way. Of course this is all speculation. I never claimed to be able to explain how the brain does any of this. I don’t think any single human being or even group of human beings knows exactly how the brain works when firing on all cylinders.

If solipsism isn’t the case for consciousness, then we certainly live in universes of consciousness all on our own. Each conscious entity does not exist in one universe, but instead every conscious entity is its own universe of experience entirely. The consciousness of an individual bull frog is the complete sovereign god of its own conscious field, and anything or anyone who enters that field is merely a guest whether they be Jehovah, Krishna, Jesus Christ, the Buddha, or the ants it will be eating for its next meal. All of these beings are essentially on the same level in the domain of this bull frog’s conscious field. They are all merely servants to his overarching and infinitely potent presence. Consequently, you are also the god of your own conscious field. It matters not the degree of perceived power or elegance of another being which enters that field; your consciousness is always the king of that domain. This will forever be the case.

When I was saying changes in consciousness there, I was referring to changes in states of consciousness. I think you knew exactly what I was referring to though but disregarded it to try to prove your point. A better way to rephrase the question, if you’re going to be picky, is as follows "How can we be sure that all of existence is not generated by this small part of existence typically called the brain?"

Notice that I never said the brain was matter or was not consciousness. The fact stands that not all parts of consciousness/existence/everything effect change in consciousness/existence/everything equally. For this discussion, it does not matter what constitutes the brain (such as matter vs. consciousness). Changing the brain can literally cause infinitely different experiences of consciousness/existence/everything. Consciousness is the substance of everything. Okay? I in no way disagree with this, however, you have to admit that you can feed 10 tabs of LSD to your dog, and according to direct experience, there is little change compared to putting those same 10 tabs under your human tongue. This directly verifiable difference occurs more when we play around with the brain in “our” individual human meat suit than in any other thing. This leads us to have to seriously consider the role that the brain, specifically the brain of the individual human being witnessed more in this experience of reality than anything else, has in affecting everything else. It certainly seems that this one thing is at the top of the hierarchy if we were to examine the transformative capabilities of everything experienced in this existence that is all consciousness.

@LastThursday What that sentence is saying is that if the other beings we see experience consciousness as well, they do so in their own individual universes of consciousness (otherwise referred to as perceptual bubbles more often here). I haven’t heard even a single person ever claim that they occupied another being’s perceptual bubble.

@Someone here I’ve watched all of these before lol. They could be worth visiting again, but I doubt I’ll find anything I’m not already aware of right now to some degree.

@Someone here okay, but if consciousness isn’t capable of generating consciousness then you are implicitly suggesting that something outside of consciousness is generating consciousness OR that nothing generates consciousness. Something outside of consciousness generating it can never be verified and is imo more far fetched than believing the bit of consciousness (the brain) most heavily correlated with changes in consciousness is responsible for its generation. The idea that nothing generates consciousness seems more plausible as it would just BE without cause.

If you’ve ever read The Power of Now, you’d know the answer is yes. Also consider the millennia old practice of jnana yoga. Do you really think they’d be doing this for so long if it didn’t have the potential to work?

I know nothing. I speculate everything. Just like everyone else.

@Jonty I watched all the videos posted by people in that thread about Rupert Spira. I didn’t find any them helpful as I’m well-versed in the nondual perspective and have had quite a few of these type experiences before. Ultimately he said nothing I wasn’t already aware of. The reality is that as long as there is any separateness perceived in consciousness it is real in its effect. Just because one can have direct experience of oneness does not somehow make the direct experience of limited and individual consciousness no longer existent.

Thanks for sharing. I’ve experienced some similar stuff and can attest it’s quite real.

“I have nothing but scorn for all weird ideas other than my own, and the reason I tolerate my own weird ideas is basically because of what I’ve gone through. I would never believe it if I hadn’t seen it.” -Terence McKenna The primary thing that caused this chain of events to occur for me was going on an ayahuasca retreat and taking two moderate doses two nights in a row with integration following each morning after the consumption of the ayahuasca. I naturally felt nauseated both nights, which I had been struggling with for months both during my everyday life and on a few psilocybin trips, to the extent in which I decided to just go to sleep instead of experience the nausea and seemingly weak effects of the ayahuasca “trips” which were incredibly underwhelming compared to my previous psychedelic experiences. This is where I believe the magic happened. We’ve all heard sayings like the conscious mind is the tip of the iceberg (let’s say 10%) and the subconscious mind is the majority of the iceberg submerged under water (let’s say 90%). My explanation for the life-changing effects that followed in the next few months is that, when we are conscious during a psychedelic trip, we are ultimately trying to reprogram our consciousness and mind through the 10% accessible during conscious states. When we are asleep during a psychedelic trip, we are accessing that 90% of the mind which is more powerful and can more easily and readily invoke lasting change. All of the experiences detailed here occurred days, weeks, and months after the ayahuasca was out of my system chemically. Having been abducted by extraterrestrials at 8 years old, the ayahuasca led me to explore this experience again. I had repressed memories of this event and even gave a valiant effort to try to explain that it wasn’t real, but Mother Aya, what many ayahuasca users call the spirit that is believed to dwell within the brew, was having none of this. A few days after the retreat, I had the intuition suddenly while driving alone at night that I needed to contact the very entities that had abducted me in my childhood. Keep in mind that these entities, typically called The Grays or Gray Aliens, had been my greatest fear for my entire life following the abduction. It was very challenging to reach out to the source of my absolute greatest fear. This fear was potent enough to create auditory and visual hallucinations if I ever attempted to sit in a dark room by myself. Deciding to put my fear to the wayside and contact these beings, I naturally went to the default place one might search for such information - Google. A quick Google search led me to an hour-long YouTube video which not only described how to contact The Grays but also their intentions for being involved with human beings on planet Earth. The information about their true intentions greatly reduced my fear. When the creator of the video mentioned that people with strong psychic abilities will often sense a presence typically at the edge of their visual field, I knew that this was real. I had been experiencing this ever since the childhood abduction. She said that all you need to do to initiate telepathic communication with The Grays is give mental consent and express your desire for communication. Within three seconds of doing this, it started. I felt a cool tingly sensation trickle all over my skull. I drove home for about 10 minutes, and as soon as I got home, I laid down in bed. As soon as I was in a safe location where I was no longer driving or doing any other activity that might be unsafe while experiencing the full effects of telepathic communication, the experience intensified drastically. It’s important to mention that intense telepathic experiences continued to occur for a few months after this initial experience. This telepathic communication was as strong of an experience as taking 10 tabs of LSD or 5.87 grams of dried psilocybin mushrooms for me while also having a unique neurochemistry which often amplifies the effects of psychedelics and other psychoactive substances, but it occurred 100% naturally without the use of any substances. It also later generated supernatural abilities and experiences for me such as clairvoyance, clairsentience, claircognizance, accidental interruption of the functioning of technological/electrical devices, accidental teleportation of small objects over hundreds of miles on two occasions, drastic changes in my perception of time (even getting stuck in a “time loop” which had me drive for three hours straight while failing to move at all from my initial location), and further telepathic contact with other entities such as Lucifer, Archangel Michael, deceased human beings, and what you might colloquially call ghosts. A few weeks after my first telepathic communication, my girlfriend was laying in bed with me one day while I was 100% unconscious/fully asleep, and I sat up and said “5424, we are here for you as well.” Keep in mind I have absolutely no recollection of ever saying this to her. After I said it, she went into a psychedelic state for hours also while taking no substances, according to her. I still get the same sensation of telepathic communication somewhat regularly although to a much less potent extent. It’s possible that my specific neurochemistry and experience with extraterrestrials plays a crucial role in the awakening of supernatural abilities within me, but I think the “ayahuasca nap” technique might prove successful for others wishing to develop supernatural abilities. Ultimately this technique will likely serve those already predisposed to supernatural abilities more than the general populace. Before ayahuasca, I had a few instances of supernatural abilities such as turning on an electrical alarm clock from across the room while a surge of what I can only describe as spiritual, possibly kundalini, energy surged through me and the interruption of GPS navigation on my phone the morning after taking 10 tabs of LSD. Ayahuasca seemed to turn the power and frequency of occurrence of such events up 10 fold. These experiences, especially the accidental teleportation of small objects over hundreds of miles and a drastically altered sense of time that made minutes feel like hours as well as many other rather unbelievable events, have shown me that literally anything is possible in this reality. Physical “laws” of the universe now seem to be more like regulatory suggestions rather than fixed rules that can never be altered or bent.

@RedLine because nothing else that could be considered even remotely mainstream discusses these topics. Is everything in the show the highest absolute insights possible? No, but it comes quite a far way compared to the rest of pop culture. It’s effective in introducing topics that the average person may never find any other time in their life. Episode three covers topics that could potentially be considered more advanced than practically anything nondual teachers promote by introducing nondual “total” enlightenment as a baby step in a much deeper process of Self Realization/Actualization. Episode five is actually quite good as well. The rest of the episodes are meh.

@Lyubov I’ve experienced the complete dissolution of anything that could be considered human, Earthly, or the ego. I entered a seemingly timeless state where nothing existed other than practically blank consciousness. I’m not an initiate in this. Unless your human nervous system was evaporated at ground zero when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima or were subjected to a similarly destructive event, you have not been through complete, total physical death and have no reliable credentials to claim knowledge on such a thing. One’s speculation that consciousness can’t die or transcends complete, total physical death could be 100% correct, but until that has been directly experienced, it cannot be reliably verified. Speculation is fine as long as you don’t conflate it with Absolute Truth or unquestionable insight.

@Lyubov says the guy who has never died. Even all these people claiming to “have experienced physical death” on psychedelics or through meditation never actually had their physical body die 100%. Near death experiences do not count either because in every case the individual’s brain was able to return to at least enough functioning to articulate their experience. That is not complete physical death. When Sadhguru’s body decays into a pulp and he returns, I’ll take him seriously as a solid source of information on death. Until then, he’s speculating.

@Someone here I concur. Even direct experience leads to vastly different conclusions among people even if they experience essentially the same phenomenon or event. To be honest, no one on planet Earth ever has experienced the complete disintegration or destruction of the brain and then came back to tell a near death experience other than Jesus (although his brain was not destroyed he allegedly returned in incorporeal form) who existed 2,000 years ago and could be a complete lie. All of us on this forum and all people on the typical nondual spiritual path could be wrong about consciousness being prior to the brain. It’s just a belief that seems plausible and more developed than materialism which makes us all feel a little special inside for thinking we’ve outwitted 99% of the world whether we want to admit to that or not. As soon as the brain is actually destroyed, our consciousness or ability to experience might forever be gone. Consciousness and the brain are a chicken-and-the-egg problem whether spiritual people want to admit it or not. We’ve never been able to verify one separate from the other.

Edit: I should’ve made it clear in the initial post that I’m talking about solipsism from the point of consciousness being the self in the definition of “self alone/alone self” rather than the ego being the self instead of waiting until later posts to clarify this. This ultimately caused a lot of confusion in the responses. It was entirely my fault as I was using an altered definition of the word without clarifying, which I often get frustrated when others do this. About a month ago, I had some very solipsistic insights. This made me question every spiritual belief or even everyday non-spiritual belief I’ve had previous to that, and I’m still in a seemingly unshakable state of skepticism. Before these solipsistic insights and newly found skepticism for spirituality, I used to believe in a universe existing outside of what I directly experience in the moment. I used to believe all living beings had consciousness under the framework of Brahman. I even started to believe that all points in the universe could be conscious. Here’s an example of one thing Leo said that seems to support solipsism: Forum user - “I have determined mahasamadhi is impossible because causing emotional harm to your family members through suicide under the premise that something good will happen to you. It is selfish.” Leo responding - “Lol That's just an excuse you imagined so that you remain inside the dream. Realize deeper that your family and their suffering is just a dream you are hallucinating to keep yourself away from Infinite Love. What that is, is just fear of Infinite Love and formlessness. Once you are dead, your family will no longer exist.” The last sentence suggests that the world no longer exists when you die. This seems to be a very solipsistic view. Leo also regularly has talked about the universe as being some meta-being compared to the individual. This seems to go against solipsism, but all of Leo’s mentions of this that I’ve seen have come before that forum response and his latest video. Leo’s last Youtube video is seemingly even more solipsistic than the response above. He talks about there being no other perceptual bubbles than your own. Was this only said in order to guide people toward recognizing themselves as God and ultimately false information given for that purpose, or was it one of Leo’s insights?

The Midnight Gospel on Netflix is likely the best actual TV show you’ll find for these topics. There are likely some good movies, but I’m not aware of many other than The Fountain which is loosely related, mostly to impermanence. It’s a good one to watch though for sure.

Your consciousness will forever be alone, and this world and all its inhabitants is a dream, including your ego, body, and mind. The reality is that you as consciousness have created this dream. Do the best you can to enjoy the dream and help your dream character as well as other dream characters. This will be the most enjoyable and sustainable path, at least within this dream. Love means realizing you as consciousness have created your human self and all other beings. As the source of creation, it would be wise to treat your creation well if you wish to experience harmony.

@Vibroverse I agree. I should’ve made it clear in the initial post that I’m talking about solipsism from the point of consciousness being the self in the definition of “self alone/alone self” rather than the ego being the self instead of waiting until later posts to clarify this.

@Inliytened1 This isn’t backtracking, at least not in how I meant it. I didn’t clarify enough immediately in that same sentence, but it was covered in detail in other parts of the writing, mainly near the end. What I meant by that statement is that you can never know if the person sitting across from you has a “separate” consciousness from you. The idea of separate consciousnesses or partitions of consciousness can never be verified as they will always be perceived from the same thing that perceives your human body, ego, etc. Ultimately in the process of perceiving things from their (human) vantage point, if this is indeed possible, this would originate from the same source as you (consciousness) which aligns with everything you’re saying.

@oMarcos Thinking your mother is dreaming herself from the same source will forever be unprovable unless you recognize that capital Y You is the consciousness that is dreaming lowercase y you. Is this the source you’re speaking of, or are you acknowledging belief in the existence of a source other than “your” consciousness. Your is in quotes because ultimately you don’t have consciousness; consciousness has you. There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging that belief. I’m just trying to understand where you’re going with this. People claiming past lives have only witnessed or seen evidence for those past lives through their own consciousness. The existence of past lives ultimately is no proof that there is a consciousness other than yours. It’s all viewed from one perspective always - your consciousness. Yes, I’ve never seen him flatly say “I don’t have beliefs,” yet he regularly says that his most important insights are not beliefs. Maybe he will admit to have a belief that there’s toilet paper in his bathroom when he isn’t present, but the things that seemingly matter most to him such as Love being the framework (maybe framework isn’t the most fitting word - I can’t think of a better one atm) of the Universe he claims are not beliefs. I already see it this way. You just put it into words, so why are you claiming it can’t be put into words? Sure, words never do direct consciousness justice, but they can be useful signposts. We’re both likely aware that the map is not the territory, but we are also aware that a map can do a good job pointing out important aspects of a given territory to a limited degree. To understand more completely what I’m really getting at when I’m talking about solipsism, read this that I wrote: “When you go to sleep at night, you often find yourself in dreams. In these dreams, most people will still have a human body. In waking reality, there is an unsubstantiated claim or story given by people that consciousness is somehow generated by the brain. The experts aren’t so sure, or at least they don’t have any solid evidence. Look up the “hard problem of consciousness” to understand how this is unsubstantiated. In the dream, you typically do not think along the same lines. If you were to lucid dream, you would certainly not think you were the dream body or somehow generated by the brain in your dream head. I say you, but I need to clarify exactly who you are. You are consciousness. Consciousness is the only constant you can find in all realities. In the dream, you are literally everything perceived in the dream. It’s all generated by your consciousness. We understand fully that everything created in our dreams comes entirely from us and is an extension of us. Surprisingly enough, there’s no solid argument against this being exactly the same case in waking reality. Your brain, body, and mind are all generated by consciousness in the same fashion consciousness generates the entire reality in dreams. Beyond your mind, body, and brain, you as consciousness generate this entire reality. This entire reality IS consciousness and nothing else. It’s the same way in a dream nothing is separate from you as consciousness. You as consciousness are the sole source for everything in the dream. No one thinks everyone in their dreams are conscious, separate entities once they’ve come back to the waking state. It’s the same in this reality. There’s absolutely no way you can actually be shown something outside of your consciousness. There will never ever be proof that other beings are conscious separately or outside of your consciousness. Even if you merged consciousness with another being in the waking state as a way to somehow prove the existence of another consciousness, guess what it would be? It would be fully engulfed in exactly one thing: you as consciousness or otherwise put your consciousness. You are the source of everything that exists in your consciousness, and your consciousness is the entirety of your universe and always will be. Nothing can ever exist outside of your consciousness. Existence relies completely on perception and consciousness to even be relevant. What is the difference between a fairytale land in a book, the black void people typically conceive of as nothingness or nonexistence, and a reality you imagine exists like heaven? They’re all just imagination. The only thing that’s real is what you can experience in this very moment. As soon as something exits consciousness, it exits existence. There’s no proof for something existing outside of consciousness, and there never will be because the most fundamental building block in any proof is, you guessed it, consciousness. Before using reason or logic or any other conceptual tool to prove something you use precisely one thing first: consciousness. Even if you and I are both conscious entities, we live in completely different “universes of consciousness.” Precisely, that is to say that one consciousness can never be shown another consciousness to exist without perceiving the other consciousness through the lens of the original consciousness. As soon as one consciousness comes into the other, the secondary consciousness immediately becomes an aspect of the primary consciousness. So if you were to completely merge your consciousness with mine, your consciousness would be held within my consciousness, and it would be the same for you if the process were done from your perspective. This is a clear mechanic of consciousness. We can never know if the person sitting across the lunch table from us is conscious. We can only assume one way or the other. Anything imagined to be separate from the perspective of the original consciousness will always just be one more aspect of the original consciousness. In this way, we are entirely alone as consciousness. We are not alone as human beings. There are plenty of humans walking around. You can clearly perceive that, but by the very nature of perception, consciousness cannot perceive another consciousness without it immediately becoming another aspect of itself. Consciousness cannot perceive another consciousness as some sort of separate thing. Once the “other” consciousness is viewed, it only exists as long as it is in contact with the primary consciousness - the point of perception, and it is only truly the primary consciousness the entire time. In this way, you can never truly share space with another consciousness. You cannot perceive another consciousness. Anything you perceive is just you. You are consciousness. Everything is you. Everything is consciousness. It will be this way for eternity. You as consciousness will likely visit innumerable dreamt up worlds that you’ve created. You’ll perceive yourself as some kind of avatar or character as far as we can tell. You’ll at first see all the rest of the characters in your dreamt up creation as separate from you, but in truth those dream characters are just as much you as your primary character is. They’re just characters held within consciousness. One, your primary character who you at first feel to live inside, simply exists in your consciousness more of the time than the others. Ultimately neither the other characters or your perceived primary character is you because you are the consciousness that permeates all aspects of the dream world including its laws of physics, characters, objects, and everything else. You aren’t the characters any more than you are the objects or the laws of motion that govern that reality. You are all aspects of that reality. You are all aspects of all realities. A reality can only exist within you. Something is only real to you if it is held within your consciousness. No realities exist outside of the one you are experiencing right now. This waking state planet Earth does not exist when you are in a dream. Your wife could tell you that the world still existed while you were asleep, but you have to see how this is exactly the same as if your dream wife told you the dream reality was there while you were asleep. It means nothing because you as consciousness were not there. That seems to be the pattern in what we can verify between both the waking state and dreams.” @Leo Gura yea or nay, potentially Me/God/Consciousness-generated human being I consider to be my current avatar’s master?

@Tim R Yeah, how I’m thinking of this now considering his response is that I’m in a poker game in which I basically asked the player next to me to show his cards to see if they align with what I think they are from the recent evidence I’ve been shown which I’ve explained to the entire table of players, and he, instead of answering, sits back to see the table of players and I discuss the possibility of the cards in his hand being the cards I’ve assumed them to be. He could of course show his hand, but that would end the new mind game that’s been created at the table.

@Someone here ultimately the question is important because I’m curious if my most recent insights align with the insights of the single person, other than my personal avatar, who has influenced my journey of spirituality the most. It’s mostly a personal question if I’m honest. Is it important to you? Only if you’ve had the same solipsistic insights I have or wish to further understand what solipsism has to potentially offer, which I’m sure applies to some others here.

@Inliytened1 When I say solipsism, I’m fully aware that the ego isn’t all there is. Solipsism = self alone or alone self. I’m not foolish or inexperienced enough to think my ego is the self. What I’ve been more convinced of is that there is no consciousness that can ever be experienced other than my own. Everything within this consciousness and the consciousness itself is me or the self. In this way, my consciousness is eternally alone and can only dream up the appearance of avatars or bodies for myself and seemingly separate beings for my own entertainment and comfort which confuses me into thinking most of the time that I’m not alone.