The0Self

You sure it's not some form of kratom use doing that or at least contributing?

Solipsism, if defined as the view that nothing can be known aside from what seems to be, whatever that is... is basically a correct view. Solipsism as it’s colloquially defined distracts from that reality, as it seems many define it in terms like “I am the only human being that exists,” or “my mental state is the only one and there aren’t (even just apparently) others like me.” So if people speak as if solipsism is true, maybe don’t aloofly out dismiss it out of hand. They might just be referring to unknowing, which is the truth. I don’t know though. From the perspective of liberation, even the belief that you actually live as a human being on a planet called earth, in a universe... would essentially be seen as: as deep an entrenchment in delusion as someone who believes and apparently knows they’re a fundamentalist Christian.

If there is no actual separate soul, then anything that involves it is a dream. There aren't any limits to what can be imagined to happen in a dream. Therefore, reincarnation can be real while not being absolutely true.

@Nadosa @RMQualtrough Yeah mindfulness and steadiness of attention can be very powerful against mental disorders. But sometimes, spirituality as a whole, and viewing society itself as one big conspiracy (which it pretty much is), can perhaps be exacerbating of such conditions. Although if taken all the way, it leads to a very radical form of sanity.

@gettoefl The thread is manly pointing out how many people don't use the actual definition. Solipsism is the view that nothing more than the self (or consciousness) can be known to exist for certain... Which is both falsifiable (just prove that anything exists) and hasn't been falsified (nothing has been proven to exist apart from consciousness). The whole self inquiry process of unknowing or holding onto the clue of 'I am' is basically just holding onto the clue of solipsism. But I think we'd agree the strawmen of solipsism are certainly just more beliefs -- some might actually believe it though, so it's not even necessarily a strawman for colloquial solipsism... But if we take it to be the view that nothing more than the self (or consciousness) can be known to exist for certain, I'd say that's pretty obvious. It certainly doesn't mean that only one person exists lol. There is no actual person.

Unconditional-happiness as well as uncontrived-compassion are concepts that point to the unrecognizable perfection that is everything already.

Hid a comment that seemed incongruent with the discussion upon seeing posts that I’d missed. Thought I’d be able to unhide them but apparently not lol.

Guess I should’ve included the phrase “so to speak.”

It’s all good. The further context, however, is that I already discussed this with him earlier in PM. So it’s already too late on the one hand, and on the other he didn’t seem to be exhibiting any serious existential rumination. At least nowhere nearly as bad as I did or as badly as it would have to seem for me to shut up about it. At least not at the time. I’m certainly not saying I’m right and you’re wrong though.

Your description of “what he means” is simply not true, first of all, but I also doubt it’s what Leo means. There isn’t anything at all that exists. No one is separate. And there is literally no reality, in truth. Solipsism need not worry you, as infinity holds infinite infinities. Even though you’re alone floating in empty eternity as everything timelessly forever (and not even that), it doesn’t mean the dream can’t apparently have real others — even with their own apparent inner lives. ?

That would be irrelevant to whether or not evil exists as anything remotely resembling a concrete entity. People are all the same. Only the circumstances change. Your disposition is a circumstance. Not everyone has the same conscience anyway, but that’s beside the point. Something seeming to be better or worse than something else is real but not true — preferring one over the other still can happen even when there’s no delusion left. What do you think awake people go around seeking to do the exact opposite of what they prefer to do?

How exactly would this prove that evil is not real? The question is not whether or not evil is real. If it's real to you, it's real to you -- but that doesn't mean it's true. You can't even prove that anything exists, besides truth (or consciousness if you prefer to call it that) which has no discernible attributes other than "true," and requires no proof.

This is not a state that I'm in. It's certainly not what I wished for, but there's nothing wrong with it. There never was an experiencer. The ability to enter jhanas is not related to no-self, they're just really, really fun toys. I haven't had the compulsion to try to enter jhana for quite some time now.

The syllogistics are maximally simple: If I am, and everything is all there is, then I am everything.

Well, yeah. All the me knows is that it is. And that knowing is illusory, as there isn't actually something that knows.

For real... ? The reason for the thread was basically everyone who, I can only assume, doesn’t know the established definition of solipsism, which is quite obviously just the way it is.

Especially with psychedelics, there can be all sorts of awesome experiences and peeks behind the curtain... Unity-consciousness, etc. Fun stuff, but yeah it can certainly be very scary seeing that the distinction between you and the entirety of existence is imaginary / has no substance! But this is a very ordered dream without real danger (but also without real safety) so there’s nothing really to fear, but in many cases of this sort of thing yeah terror is basically just par for the course. Ego-death and being God can seem to happen, at which point the fear is usually gone because it’s generally such an incredibly high state, but the “middle zones” can be quite terrifying and it can sort of follow a rule of “uncanny valley” where the closer you get to ego-death without fully getting there, the scarier it is. The advanced meditation paths of Buddhism, etc plan for this by recommending very good concentration and the ability to manifest bliss-on-demand so that any fear of emptiness is met with waves of overpowering bliss that kind of distract one from the fear or make them not particularly care. Even in the beginning I didn’t exactly think this was mere wishful thinking (if I did I probably wouldn’t have practiced much) — I had faith in the techniques — but until I started being able to enter jhanas, I really didn’t have any concrete basis for thinking it was anything other than make-believe... but bliss-on-demand can definitely be cultivated.

@Breakingthewall However, the dream world is (or at least very much seems to be) an apparent manifestation of infinite intelligence. It exists for no purpose (nor does it actually exist at all), but in a way that’s the same as saying the sole purpose is amusement. All it has as the vehicle for amusement is what you call you. Synchronicities and patterns and awe, gratitude, love, joy, bliss, meaning, and awesomeness and shittiness and all manner of diversity are the nature of the dream world. It’s interesting without limit, so that it can be interested without limit. Absolute freedom. All the intelligence there is, and this is what it imagines, selflessly. If it ain’t quite awesome, look a little harder (open your eyes), and trust it; trust the flow; trust feeling. Nothing is hidden unless something being hidden is part of the unified whole or, dare I say, the plan. It is ultimately without meaning, purpose, and even actuality, but it is ordered in a way that makes purpose not only really easy to find, but also easy to forgo.

No reason. And no one would want to, aside from not being able to resist doing so, again for no reason, or maybe an aversion to untruth. The actual difference between anything is a dream. Rough visualization essentially for entertainment purposes only: Imagine two spheres occupying the exact same space (it's a rough example, because to do this accurately you'd have to, impossibly, imagine them prior to space and time). One is, the other is not. One does not appear, the other does appear. The one that is, happens to be the one that does not appear. So all appearance is not, and yet... it of course also is, simply because the sphere that is not, is not separate from the sphere that is. The sphere that is, is all that is, and therefore there isn't anything separate from it.

It's not precisely that you have forgotten that you are God. Rather, in the story, God (boundlessness; truth) is imagining what it would be like to forget that it is God if it were God (thereby imagining itself into existence apparently; but don't forget, there's no it), through infinite intelligence, appearing as a game with illusory aspects. So there isn't really a you, as there's no self-reference, duality, or actuality. This is the distinction between waking up in the dream and waking up from the dream. Upon waking up from the dream, it would never even occur that God (or anything) has any actuality, because there's no duality, only emptiness without limit (i.e. not even that). God is self-creating and therefore empty of self-existence. It's unreal yet paradoxically it's the only reality -- there's no it. Truth is, while untruth is not, and whatever manifests, is not.

It's the end of the illusory sense of I, and yet you could say the I might as well remain, because the illusion was never actually there. It's not even a real paradox but it can certainly seem like one. Reality has no substance. A dream has no need to make sense. If anything, the awake see the not-awake as NPC's (perfection appearing as NPC's), since only for the not-awake would there be the idea that there's someone inside controlling a body.

Not at all, there's just aliveness. "Empty fullness." The ordinary is not distinguishable from the extraordinary. Just no one trying to get anywhere and nowhere to get to -- this is all there is. Just typing on a computer, drinking water, etc appearing to happen, but for no one separate from that. Certainly the collapse of any beliefs in the materialist paradigm -- they'd be long gone. To tell you the truth though that all assumes she didn't pass away -- I don't know if she's still alive. Probably not hard to find out but it's irrelevant anyway. It would have been recognized that there isn't anything outside of what appears to be happening, and it's not appearing for anyone. It's whole and complete. Whatever appears is not even "something that truly does appear." There isn't something that actually appears. There's only truth which never changes. It's not graspable and yet it's supremely simple (the problem though, is that it's really too simple to get). The appearance isn't necessarily going to appear simple, but the appearance is not other than the absolute, which is irreducible; singular; attribute-less... It's as if the emotional machinery designed to keep one from recognizing that they're the entirety of existence, all alone, floating through perfect infinite absolute emptiness forever... fails to do its job.

Well, in a sense, there's no Bernadette... But the body gets along just fine without an experiencer inside it. It's just the end of dualistic, subject-object awareness.

Very instructive material on God from the perspective of fully transitioning from awakening or God-consciousness, to enlightenment, or in her terminology, God to Godhead; a great read: https://o-meditation.com/2009/10/16/from-the-unitive-state-to-no-self-bernadette-roberts/ After enlightenment there's no inner world or outer divine anymore. Excerpt: Stephan: How did you discover the further stage, which you call the experience of no-self? Bernadette: That occurred unexpectedly some 25 years after the transforming process. The divine center – the coin, or “true self” – suddenly disappeared, and without center or circumference there is no self, and no divine. Our subjective life of experience is over – the passage is finished. I had never heard of such a possibility or happening. Obviously there is far more to the elusive experience we call self than just the ego. The paradox of our passage is that we really do not know what self or consciousness is, so long as we are living it, or are it. The true nature of self can only be fully disclosed when it is gone, when there is no self. One outcome, then, of the no-self experience is the disclosure of the true nature of self or consciousness. As it turns out, self is the entire system of consciousness, from the unconscious to God-consciousness, the entire dimension of human knowledge and feeling-experience. Because the terms “self” and “consciousness” express the same experiences (nothing can be said of one that cannot be said of the other), they are only definable in the terms of “experience”. Every other definition is conjecture and speculation. No-self, then, means no-consciousness. If this is shocking to some people, it is only because they do not know the true nature of consciousness. Sometimes we get so caught up in the content of consciousness, we forget that consciousness is also a somatic function of the physical body, and, like every such function, it is not eternal. Perhaps we would do better searching for the divine in our bodies than amid the content and experience of consciousness. Stephan: How does one move from “transforming union” to the experience of no-self? What is the path like? Bernadette: We can only see a path in retrospect. Once we come to the state of oneness, we can go no further with the inward journey. The divine center is the innermost “point”, beyond which we cannot go at this time. Having reached this point, the movement of our journey turns around and begins to move outward – the center is expanding outward. To see how this works, imagine self, or consciousness, as a circular piece of paper. The initial center is the ego, the particular energy we call “will” or volitional faculty, which can either be turned outward, toward itself, or inward, toward the divine ground, which underlies the center of the paper. When, from our side of consciousness, we can do no more to reach this ground, the divine takes the initiative and breaks through the center, shattering the ego like an arrow shot through the center of being. The result is a dark hole in ourselves and the feeling of terrible void and emptiness. This breakthrough demands a restructuring or change of consciousness, and this change is the true nature of the transforming process. Although this transformation culminates in true human maturity, it is not man’s final state. The whole purpose of oneness is to move us on to a more final state. To understand what happens next, we have to keep cutting larger holes in the paper, expanding the center until only the barest rim or circumference remains. One more expansion of the divine center and the boundaries of consciousness or self fall away. From this illustration we can see how the ultimate fulfillment of consciousness, or self, is no-consciousness, or no-self. The path from oneness to no-oneness is an egoless one and is therefore devoid of ego-satisfaction. Despite the unchanging center of peace and joy, the events of life may not be peaceful or joyful at all. With no ego-gratification at the center and no divine joy on the surface, this part of the journey is not easy. Heroic acts of selflessness are required to come to the end of self, acts comparable to cutting ever-larger holes in the paper – acts, that is, that bring no return to the self whatsoever. The major temptation to be overcome in this period is the temptation to fall for one of the subtle but powerful archetypes of the collective consciousness. As I see it, in the transforming process we only come to terms with the archetypes of the personal unconscious; the archetypes of the collective consciousness are reserved for individuals in the state of oneness, because those archetypes are powers or energies of that state. Jung felt that these archetypes were unlimited; but in fact, there is only one true archetype, and that archetype is self. What is unlimited are the various masks or roles self is tempted to play in the state of oneness – savior, prophet, healer, martyr, Mother Earth, you name it. They are all temptations to seize power for ourselves, to think ourselves to be whatever the mask or role may be. In the state of oneness, both Christ and Buddha were tempted in this manner, but they held to the “ground” that they knew to be devoid of all such energies. This ground is a “stillpoint”, not a moving energy-point. Unmasking these energies, seeing them as ruses of the self, is the particular task to be accomplished or hurdle to be overcome in the state of oneness. We cannot come to the ending of self until we have finally seen through these archetypes and can no longer be moved by any of them. So the path from oneness to no-oneness is a life that is choicelessly devoid of ego-satisfaction; a life of unmasking the energies of self and all the divine roles it is tempted to play. It is hard to call this life a “path”, yet it is the only way to get to the end of our journey. Stephan: In The Experience of No-Self you talk at great length about your experience of the dropping away or loss of self. Could you briefly describe this experience and the events that led up to it? I was particularly struck by your statement “I realized I no longer had a ‘within’ at all.” For so many of us, the spiritual life is experienced as an “inner life” – yet the great saints and sages have talked about going beyond any sense of inwardness. Bernadette: Your observation strikes me as particularly astute; most people miss the point. You have actually put your finger on the key factor that distinguishes between the state of oneness and the state of no-oneness, between self and no-self. So long as self remains, there will always be a “center”. Few people realize that not only is the center responsible for their interior experiences of energy, emotion, and feeling, but also, underlying these, the center is our continuous, mysterious experience of “life” and “being”. Because this experience is more pervasive than our other experiences, we may not think of “life” and “being” as an interior experience. Even in the state of oneness, we tend to forget that our experience of “being” originates in the divine center, where it is one with divine life and being. We have become so used to living from this center that we feel no need to remember it, to mentally focus on it, look within, or even think about it. Despite this fact, however, the center remains; it is the epicenter of our experience of life and being, which gives rise to our experiential energies and various feelings. If this center suddenly dissolves and disappears, the experiences of life, being, energy, feeling and so on come to an end, because there is no “within” any more. And without a “within”, there is no subjective, psychological, or spiritual life remaining – no experience of life at all. Our subjective life is over and done with. But now, without center and circumference, where is the divine? To get hold of this situation, imagine consciousness as a balloon filled with, and suspended in divine air. The balloon experiences the divine as immanent, “in” itself, as well as transcendent, beyond or outside itself. This is the experience of the divine in ourselves and ourselves in the divine; in the state of oneness, Christ is often seen as the balloon (ourselves), completing this trinitarian experience. But what makes this whole experience possible – the divine as both immanent and transcendent – is obviously the balloon, i.e. consciousness or self. Consciousness sets up the divisions of within and without, spirit and matter, body and soul, immanent and transcendent; in fact, consciousness is responsible for every division we know of. But what if we pop the balloon – or better, cause it to vanish like a bubble that leaves no residue. All that remains is divine air. There is no divine in anything, there is no divine transcendence or beyond anything, nor is the divine anything. We cannot point to anything or anyone and say, “This or that is divine”. So the divine is all – all but consciousness or self, which created the division in the first place. As long as consciousness remains however, it does not hide the divine, nor is it ever separated from it. In Christian terms, the divine known to consciousness and experienced by it as immanent and transcendent is called God; the divine as it exists prior to consciousness and after consciousness is gone is called Godhead. Obviously, what accounts for the difference between God and Godhead is the balloon or bubble – self or consciousness. As long as any subjective self remains, a center remains; and so, too, does the sense of interiority.

@johnlocke18 Yeah I certainly didn’t mean to come off as disagreeing-with or negating anything you said. That all looks good to me. Fwiw.