Moksha

Time, space, and matter are only relatively real. They morph based on the perception of the observer. Absolute reality is immutable.

@Squeekytoy Defeating the hydra isn't about heroic effort, which only exhausts you, but about realizing that the hydra is only the shadow of the mind. The more you engage with it, the larger it looms. Instead of sparring with it, focus your awareness on the light, and the shadow falls behind.

To your essence ?

Not only is enlightenment a state, but there are infinite cities within it. Just because it borders the coast doesn't make it any more the ocean than Iowa is.

It's not surprising somebody would take what I shared and try to use it against me. Almost thou persuadeth me to be offended

People sometimes get confused about emptiness. It's not the absence of reality, but the absence of unreality. The enlightened being isn't sitting there in solipsistic solitude, it is seamlessly chilling with its friends.

Not to reinforce your Buddha accusations, but funny thing about names... The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. The named is the mother of ten thousand things.

?? Which came first? Love and detaching from desire leads to enlightenment, which leads to love and detaching from desire. Light resonates with light.

You're correct that nothing is spontaneous, including psychedelic exploration. Maybe the absolute will open a perpetual portal to itself through psychedelics, maybe not. I have yet to see it, but of course that doesn't mean it isn't possible. All I know directly is that suffering does the trick, when you are willing to deeply learn the lesson it is trying to teach you.

I suspect the divergence is that you are referring to the phenomenal experiences of love, passion, creativity, and inner stillness while I am referring to the disappearance of phenomenal boundaries entirely, beyond all experiences. Absolute love is a realization, not an emotion. It is within and beyond the cosmos. I have had surges of love flow through me, and surges of stillness, but these are phenomenal experiences within the dream. They are pure expressions of the absolute, but they are still only expressions. The absolute beyond the cosmos is mystery. I know its facets, but I cannot see its coreless core, only realize that I am it.

I try not to assume what others do or don't realize. If you feel that I have judged you or your journey in any way, I apologize. That is not my intention. I believe the absolute in each avatar has to carve its own path to realization. I also believe, and have said specifically regarding both you and Leo, that you are entirely sincere. When I say that I have seen no evidence of psychedelics leading to enlightenment, I am referring to what has been shared in this forum and other sources (Ram Dass, Aldous Huxley, etc.) that I have read over the years. I am looking at the perpetual state of being lucid within the dream. I am not referring to enduring positive changes, which I'm quite sure you and Leo have realized. By enlightenment, I mean being in the continuous flow state of the absolute with its cosmos. You have shared that the door opens and closes for you. Leo has never indicated that the door is always open for him, at least not that I have seen. I don't presume whether it is or not. I hold all ideas loosely, including the ideas expressed here. They are sketches on a thin scrap of parchment, and are not absolutely real. I realize what I realize, and it is what it is. It is still within the dream, and my only commitment is to keeping the portal as clearly open as possible, regardless of what flows through it, until the portal itself finally dissolves.

I can't speak for buddhas (@squeekytoy ), but I can speak for myself. As I see this, detachment = disillusionment = enlightenment = love. It is all realizing the same absolute within, between, and beyond all beings. If you are attached to an identity, it defines your reality. It creates a false sense of separation. You are different from others, and others are different from you. You believe that love, happiness, and fulfillment are states to be reached by manipulating apparent situations outside of your apparent self, and you invest all of your awareness into this endless pursuit, which only barricades you further from realizing the absolute that is always this, but is lost within its cosmic dream of separation. The state of total detachment is the state of total inclusiveness. When the absolute realizes itself, there is nothing to be attached to, or to separate itself from. All apparent differences dissolve. You are apathetic to the appearance of separation in the environment, but you are entirely aware of the unity within and beyond the environment. You are immersed in everything, because everything is the same absolute. Think of it as that final moment before the drop dissolves back into the depthless ocean. It is still the subtlest hint of a drop, but its boundaries have already evaporated.

Thank you for the sincere discussion, this is much better and you ask a fair question. I've done enough research on psychedelics to understand they have tremendous potential for increasing the neuroplasticity of the brain. With proper integration, this loosening of mental structures can help heal illnesses, and I believe can contribute toward awakening. However, I haven't seen any evidence that they assist with enlightenment (i.e., remaining awake). They give people glimpses, but don't keep the door to the absolute open. Also, while they don't appear to be physically addictive, I feel they can contribute to spiritual addiction. What I mean by that is the addiction to pursuing peak experiences, in the absence of actually surrendering to the absolute within. I don't feel there are shortcuts to enlightenment. The surrender has to be absolutely sincere. The direct answer to your question is that I am already awake. My experience is not that I need more enlightenment, but that I am having to throttle the light in order not to be overwhelmed by it. The human body is a transmitter, and while its capacity can expand, it is still limited. You have to pace enlightenment, or it can blow a fuse. I know how it sounds But I am sincere.

@Salvijus Enlightened beings don't love others as a subject loves an object. They realize that they are others, just as others are them. The boundaries dissolve. That is what I mean by love. Not the emotion of one person toward another person, but the dissolution of differences and the realization that it is all the same absolute. Does that help or is it just more gibberish?

@Breakingthewall Damnit, just when I'm done pounding my head against the unbreakable wall, you have to go and ask a sincere question. I will be plain and direct. "I perceive a certain distortion in you." As long as there is any identification with mind, there will always be some distortion. I haven't completely dissolved my demons yet, but they are wispier now than they used to be. I am far more free than I ever remember being. "Have you become absolute, infinite, encompassing everything? So, have you realized that everything is inside of you? Are you really aware of what death means? that the entire cosmos is in your mind and there is nothing else? that there is no "outside"? Have you really seen this without psychedelics, or have you read it and integrated it into your idiosyncrasy?" I haven't become the absolute. The absolute within me directly realizes itself. I know that the cosmos, time, space, individuality, birth, death, and change are all imagination. The absolute is the essence of these, but its true nature is beyond them. Identifying with phenomena is slavery. Realizing the absolute beyond phenomena is freedom. "Are you sure you're not fooling yourself? because it is extremely easy to delude yourself into thinking that you have realized things that if you are truly honest with yourself, you have conceptually integrated. Your stiffness makes me think that's the case" I'm sure. I don't ask you to believe me or not, I only encourage you to look for yourself. "Or maybe your mental suffering has been so great that you deny the mind as if it were something negative, in favor of silence, the only positive thing? both have their place. The mind is a great tool and must be used, but it has to trascend it's limitations, that's all. And please, don't tell me again: when you realize the absolute , you will see. It sounds like a defense." The conditioned mind is hell. The unconditioned mind is beautiful. Love transmutes the former into the latter. "how did you realize your infinite nature?" This is the true question. It happened when my suffering became great enough for the absolute within to surrender its pursuit of fulfillment outside of itself. I stopped trying to escape, and in the process I found truth. I was at rock bottom before I was finally willing to loosen the grip on my fears and desires. The tiniest particle of absolute truth suddenly appeared, and has never left. It is a speck, but being absolute, it is unconditional. It has become the center of my being, and the source of my freedom. I'm not going to say more than that, but it is sincere and I hope it helps in some way.

My bad, apparently I'm not communicating directly enough these days Don't confuse emotions with the facets of absolute reality. It's true the absolute doesn't feel love for anything, joy about anything, or at peace with anything. These are aspects of its absolute nature. When he chose to speak, Ramana Maharshi often referred to sat-chit-ananda. From the Upanishads: "Apta-kamam atma-kamam akamam rupam: That is his real form, where he is free from all desires because all his desires are fulfilled; for the Self is all our desire." Nothing less can satisfy the human heart. "There is no joy in the finite; there is joy only in the infinite." That is the message of the Upanishads. The infinite - free, unbounded, full of joy - is our native state. We have fallen from that state and seek it everywhere: every human activity is an attempt to fill this void. But as long as we try to fill it from outside ourselves, we are making demands on life which life cannot fulfill. Finite things can never appease an infinite hunger. Nothing can satisfy us but reunion with our real Self, which the Upanishads say is sat-chit-ananda: absolute reality, pure awareness, unconditioned joy.

You don't have to reject the relative. You created it for a reason. It's phenomenal, just don't identify with it. Dualities are illusion, and despite the absolute essence of the illusion, its experience within the dream will never be the same quality when it identifies as the illusion compared to when it realizes itself. I am so open-minded that I disidentify with the mind (almost) entirely. It's ok, I wish you the best and take no offense.

Suffering is built from self-deception.

Not only can so-called gurus be bright, they can also be deluded or disingenuous. The only guru that can be trusted is the guru within.

You do, constantly. It's always "the hallelujah" or the "horrible abyss", which you don't seem to understand are dualities within the dream. You don't have to ride the 5-Me0 roller coaster to fully appreciate the apparently ordinary experiences in life with perpetual lucidity and light. Sorry for my bluntness today, but it's time to cut through the bullshit. Sometimes it's necessary.

When you awaken within the dream, the apparent separation almost entirely dissolves. It's like flying a kite at 1,000 feet.

Why do people continue bringing up Ramana Maharshi? I'm not a bhakti devotee that worships gurus, whether its him or anyone else. I couldn't give a fuck about who it is, what I care about is whether there is luminosity that resonates, regardless of the transmitter. If I see the absolute in cow shit, it is still luminous.

I'm saying that absolute love is infinitely beyond what humans think of as love. It's not this conditional emotion that people feel when they meet someone that happens to align with their desire blockages, without hitting their aversion blockages. A triangle peg in a triangle hole is still conditional, and will eventually encounter resistance as the blockages shift as they must. Human love is still suffering because it is inevitably transient. It's incorrect to assume that enlightened beings are apathetic. To the contrary, they see the sameness of themselves in every form, and desire to relieve the unnecessary suffering of themselves in apparent others. They love unconditionally, and naturally improve the quality of the experience for the expression of the absolute within the dream.

I'm referring to limitless absolute, not human, imagination. Give yourself a break from phenomenal exploration for a while, and deepen your direct spiritual realization without distraction. Just my 2 spiritual cents

Imagination is unlimited, and it is the enemy of silence. I'm not referring to somatic and mental silence, as if submersing yourself in a sensory deprivation tank will awaken you. I'm referring to the direct realization of the absolute communicating with itself. It is light resonating with light. The words mean nothing until you realize it, and when you do, the disparagement by others is equally meaningless.