Moksha

If 5-Me0 disappears your body, how can your thumb be hit by a hammer? Unless you mean that it temporarily reduces body awareness, but that body awareness returns upon sensation. In which case, it sounds quite like what I describe as lucid dreaming.

Yes, but I was wondering if when you realize infinity and hit your thumb with a hammer, does it hurt?

People spend 99% of their time wasting time, regretting that they wasted time, dreaming of the time when they no longer waste time, and wishing that the moment now was different than it actually is. Why not try something different and experience life lucidly, as it actually is? You can still have goals, but don't define yourself by them. You will never realize love, happiness, and peace in the future, only now. Your kids are here, enjoy them while you can.

When you realize the absolute on 5-Me0, is there any pain when you hit your thumb with a hammer?

@Breakingthewall The form is relatively real, just like everything else in the cosmos. If it was absolute, its apparent mass wouldn't depend on the observer. Two atomic clocks perfectly synched but moving at different speeds wouldn't show different times when reunited. The relative doesn't have to be ignored, just don't misidentify with it. @Javfly33 I was referring to the insanity of the masses, but you're right that spiritual insanity can also occur, when direct realization becomes a memory. All the more reason to remain lucid within the dream.

Most people that consider themselves sane are actually insane. Rather than seeing reality as it is, they identify as an imaginary form, and make every decision based on phenomenal desires and fears. Awakening is the realization of sanity. It is seeing clearly. When it happens, of course it is a shock to the conditioned mind. The framework it has carefully constructed for decades to define reality collapses like a Jenga tower. It is left in disarray. You have to pace enlightenment. Otherwise it will overwhelm you, before you are ready to be overwhelmed. The adjustment is disorienting. I went through a period where I was afraid to even drive. How do you know if it is awakening or mental illness? Direct realization is absolute knowledge. There is zero doubt. As your mental structures relax and dissolve, your true nature shines with increasing intensity, and you understand unconditional love.

@Yimpa Thanks for your kind words, but believe me any eloquence is despite rather than due to my best efforts

@Water by the River Astute insights as usual. Meditation and psychedelics have tremendous potential, in addition to the traditional spiritual paths of contemplation, devotion, renunciation, and service. Really it comes down to sincerity and readiness, over any particular method. Each winding path diverges and intersects with other paths in the ascent of the mountain. The great joke is that after an arduous hike, when you take the final step to the summit, you dissolve. Good people come to worship me for different reasons. Some come to the spiritual life because of suffering, some in order to understand life; some come through a desire to achieve life’s purpose, and some come who are men and women of wisdom. Unwavering in devotion, always united with me, the man or woman of wisdom surpasses all the others…the wise who are always established in union, for whom there is no higher goal than me, may be regarded as my very Self…seeing me everywhere and in everything. Such great souls are very rare. The reason matters less than the realization. The enlightening journey is love, which sees the sameness in and beyond all things. To answer your question, I've experienced so many ego traps in my life that I've learned to step carefully. My foolishness has been my good fortune. Instead of trusting the senses, it navigates now from within.

The pantheon of gods is no more real than those that worship them. When the worshipped and the worshipper dissolve together, the absolute realizes itself.

Everything unreal is imagined, and everything is unreal Imagination is simply misidentification by the real for something it is not. Absolute reality is beyond thingness and nothingness. It's paradoxical to the mind, and can't be comprehended, only directly realized.

The only true knowledge is unexpressed being. Every word, thought, concept, feeling, sensation, and experience is imagination.

@Yimpa Unfortunately (for me), there's an inverse correlation between pondering truth and being youth.

You have an open mind. That's more than many spiritual people can say. Concepts only get in the way of awakening. It's an annoying catch of the game. Every idea has to be jettisoned. It's only when you disidentify from ideas (including the idea of you) that the space is created for the absolute to directly realize itself. Yes, the concept of the absolute is also an idea. When the absolute is directly realized, it is nameless. You're intelligent enough to see the quandary. To find yourself, you have to lose yourself. Conveniently inconvenient. The good news is that once the absolute realizes itself, it is able to remain lucid within its dream. Concepts are not only fine, but are necessary for the dream to continue its apparent existence. They are clearly seen as the masquerade of the absolute within itself.

Suffering for its own sake is reifying. Left to itself, it only leads into deeper descents. The suffering has to be willingly leveraged, like a prybar, to have any worth. The wisdom of suffering is realizing its cause. When you are able, you finally see that desperately pursuing desires and avoiding fears is the source and sustaining of suffering. This realization is the knock on the inward-opening door that the absolute has been patiently waiting to hear. The door opens, and the absolute embraces itself.

@Yimpa No. In this case, suffering was the ultimate psychedelic.

Unless there are physical/mental constraints, I see no reason why people couldn't try psychedelics to have these perceptions, or more precisely, to loosen or dissolve their mental misperceptions. I want to be clear that 1) psychedelics and/or 2) meditating for thousands of hours is not required, or even optimal, for the absolute within every form to fully realize itself. These practices may be highly beneficial in some cases, but they are not universally prescribed. Anyone claiming otherwise doesn't understand the unconditional and inevitable diversity of the pathways used by the absolute to dissolve misidentifications and directly realize itself, within its dream. I have noticed a general bias in this forum from people using psychedelics, insisting that their realizations are otherwise impossible. I understand the reasons for this bias, due to the extreme states that psychedelics can produce. However, it is simply untrue that these extreme states are necessary or universally optimal for awakening/enlightenment. I am not opposed to them, but I do oppose any mandate of psychedelics as a shortcut to absolute realization. I directly realize the absolute beyond the physical senses, and it is a perpetual state of being, free from psychedelics. I don't ask anyone to validate or invalidate my direct experience. Instead, I sincerely encourage whoever reads this to find their own internal path to the absolute, rather than adopting any universal prescription. Even as a tortoise draws in its limbs, the wise draw in their senses at will…Even of those who tread the path, the stormy senses can sweep off the mind. They live in wisdom who subdue their senses and keep their minds ever absorbed in me.

. . .

Reincarnation is a central belief in Buddhism and Hinduism. Ironic, since the wisdom of these religions is that beliefs are illusions of the mind. Does it really matter whether or not the absolute reincarnates itself through a karmic sequence of forms, or incarnates noniteratively? Regardless, incarnation is imagination.

Awareness is depthless, and only appears to deepen realization of itself within its dream. Still, enlightenment is a higher quality experience than dreaming unconsciously.

There's definitely a history of people using psychedelics across spiritual traditions. Still, it's interesting that none of the major writings advocates "medicines" as a primary pathway to enlightenment. At best, they are mentioned as an optional aid to awareness. At worst, they are warned against. A few writings I've come across over the past couple of years regarding drugs and alcohol: [The] things which had entirely filled my attention on that first occasion [chronicled in The Doors of Perception], I now perceived to be temptations – temptations to escape from the central reality into false, or at least imperfect and partial Nirvanas of beauty and mere knowledge. - Aldous Huxley Those who drink to intoxication are digging up their own roots. - Buddha I had thought of psychedelics as a spiritual path, and now he was pulling that conceptual rug out from under me. From the place of oneness where Maharaj-ji sits, psychedelics are just a fragmentary shard of a vastly deeper reality. He showed me they are a limited window, all the while reflecting back to me the deeper place of love within myself… "These medicines were known in the Kulu Valley long ago," he said, "but yogis have forgotten about them." He said psychedelics could be useful if you took them in a quiet, cold place and your soul was turned toward God. "They allow you to come into the presence of Christ, to have darshan, but you can only stay for two hours." It was good to visit Christ, Maraj-ji said, but it was better to be Christ. "This medicine won't do that," he continued. "It's not the true samadhi, absorption in God. Love is a much stronger medicine." - Ram Dass No doubt, a drug that can affect your brain can also affect your mind, and give you all the strange experiences promised. But what are all the drugs compared to the drug that gave you this most unusual experience of being born and living in sorrow and fear, in search of happiness, which does not come, or does not last. You should inquire into the nature of this drug and find an antidote. Birth, life, death -- they are one. Find out what had caused them. Before you were born, you were already drugged. What kind of drug was it? You may cure yourself of all diseases, but if you are still under the influence of the primordial drug, of what use are the superficial cures? - Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj My personal view is that psychedelics can help loosen mental structures, but they are only useful to the extent that people leverage this temporary realization of spaciousness to perpetually detach from the habits of the mind. Unless they do the work of integration, they will probably only be as awake as their next trip. On the Tao Te Ching, it can be more opaque than other sources, but is worth the dive. Even if read at the surface level, people can at least realize that absolute reality is mysterious and beyond the capacity of the human mind to comprehend. That alone is a worthy insight. There are other pearls scatter along the seabed. Some of my favorites: Who can make the muddy water clear? Let it be still, and it will gradually become clear. Truth waits for eyes unclouded by longing. Understanding this and leaving no trace, The wise alone are perfectly blind Seeing clearly into the distance.

By ego, I am referring to the pursuit of desires and avoidance of fears, in the blind belief that doing so will ultimately fulfill you. It never does, and it never will. That is the secret of the game called life. Learn it or don't. People convince themselves that if they just have one more realization, or find their soulmate, or land the right job, or [insert every other desire] life will be so much better. They also convince themselves that if they keep people at arm's distance, or hyper-control their environment, or judge themselves harshly enough, or [insert every other fear] they will be kept safe. None of these lies ever pans out. To the contrary, pursuing desires and fears in the attempt to find fulfillment creates more suffering than if you stop looking for external gratification, and direct your awareness inward. You will still hit your finger with a hammer. People will betray you. Eventually you will die. Welcome to the dream. You can either live it lucidly, and in the process greatly enhance the quality of the experience, or you can live it blindly and suffer. The choice is Yours.

Ramana Maharshi sometimes settled for words, but his highest teaching was silence. As Psalm 46 puts it, "Be still and know that I am God." Silence has power, regardless of the level of the learner. The ego loves conflict, and when it encounters silence, it wilts because there is no opposing energy to feed it. Even deeply unconscious people can respond positively to silence, especially the deep silence flowing from the absolute.

Another way to see it is the unobscured absolute is the anchor, and fears/desires/vanity are the distraction of the absolute from itself. The spiritual journey is about realizing that awareness pointed outward always leads to delusion, disappointment, and suffering. Maybe not apparently at first, but seeking meaning beyond the absolute within is inevitably unfulfilling. To awaken, awareness must be deeply focused inward on itself. Read carefully what I said about judo vs. karate. To defeat the ego, you MUST grapple it so closely that its true nature becomes nauseatingly obvious. Pursuing desires and running from fears is the ego's game, and you will never defeat it on those terms. You have to see that its promises are empty. It has nothing to offer you, except perpetual misery. When you truly realize this, at the deepest level, you have grasped the ego and can throw it forever beyond reach. It is a ghost that is unworthy of you, and the possession must be exorcised by the being of light that you are.

@OldManCorcoran You could say that essentially, we are the same page. It's stunning when the implications are processed by the brain, which is wired to track time, differentiate forms, and label perceptions. It goes beyond the brain, to direct realization, but even the brain eventually submits. Arrogance and humility become irrelevant. Love is realized for what it is. Adam couldn't keep himself from naming every creature; it was in his DNA. Amazingly, while it's nowhere near common yet, the brain has evolved to the point of realizing its own limitations. Einstein saw through the illusion of relativity. He realized that there is unconditional reality, beyond the appearance of space, matter, and time, which depend on the state of the observer and therefore cannot be absolute. Feel-good Buddhism is like feel-good Christianity. People only read the insights of mystics on the surface level, rather seeing beyond to what is being pointed toward. In the various writings I've pondered (Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads, Dhammapada, Tao Te Ching, etc.), they uniformly point toward the absolute sameness in and beyond everything. For example: They see the same Self in a spiritual aspirant and an outcast, in an elephant, a cow, and a dog. Having conquered their senses, they have climbed to the summit of human consciousness. To such people a clod of dirt, a stone, and gold are the same. They are equally disposed to family, enemies, and friends, to those who support them and those who are hostile, to the good and the evil alike. Because they are impartial, they rise to great heights. They alone see truly who see the Lord the same in every creature, who see the deathless in the hearts of all that die. Seeing the same Lord everywhere, they do not harm themselves or others. Thus they attain the supreme goal. As the same fire assumes different shapes When it consumes objects differing in shape, So does the one Self take the shape Of every creature in whom he is present.

In honor of @SoonHei, I will share this. Karate is trying to beat the ego at its own game. You will always lose. The ego is the master of staying just far enough away to lure you in, before it strikes you with one bone-breaking karate chop after another. Judo is the wisdom of battling the ego on your own terms. Don't let it taunt you from a distance. You have to close the gap, until the ego is within grappling range, so tight that you can smell its fetid breath on your face. Once you get up close and personal with the ego, you see your desires and fears for what they really are. Their tantalizing promises are now clearly realized to be perpetual delusions and spiritual death. It is only then, when the ego is firmly within your grasp, that you have the power to throw it entirely out of the battle cage. You have seen its true nature, and it has no power over you. With the ego gone, your absolute nature will rise like the triumph of the noonday sun. It was always there, you just couldn't see it due to the ego's mesmerizing moves. When @SoonHei shared his Tesla analogy, I didn't realize it as deeply as I do now. It is precisely what I mean by living in the flow state.