Preetom

Its not a question of should. Its where one puts one's focus on. And that comes from one's latent tendencies. One could either pretend to be a human and the whole chabang that goes with it, or one can simply wake up for good. The waking up party wouldn't be able to entertain these 'dreams' for long. And the evolving party would find the concept of waking up impossible and woo woo.

Why is that Michael? Its not as bad as you think. Whatever negative impressions you might have, they have got nothing to do with reality.

All those races, dimensions, evolutions, spiritual beings etc are relative perspective. Interesting ways of thinking thoughts, not beyond thoughts.

I dont recommend or discourage enlightenment. Its not a cutting edge diet plan. Those who are meant to get it, those with necessary dispassion and introspective samskaras(latent tendencies) as opposed to extroverted samskaras, will get it when the time is right. Enlightenment doesn't harvest a goodie nor does it solve the human problem. It simply dissolves that human and the whole 'chabang' that goes with it (as the inlightened nonduality warlord likes to use that word ?) But unfortunately most "spiritual teachers" wouldn't spill all the beans due to marketing issues. I mean who in the world would sign up for a teaching for suicide. Virtually none. Many would definitely romanticize about it, but not the real deal. I merely try not to spread misconception and maybe show a signpost here and there for those with doubts.

Being is a teaching pointer. A good one at that. All pointers point to that which is not. No pointer can say what it really is.

Joseph has said it. Its so easy to romantacize enlightenment. The ego simply can't swallow the fact that enlightenment will bring zero benefit. Zero. It cant even hide itself in some safe concept of nothingness or eternal consciousness. Well it can try, but the utter contradiction of that delusion will eventually roast it alive as well. Unfortunately the moment it starts intuiting that, its beyond the point of no return. Every single human thought becomes a hoax. Even something innocent like like ''i had a good meal or I have to make a comment on that" Really?

The wierd thing is, in a sense, that which you are calling 'yourself' who will figure this stuff out IS the greatest and only obstacle to ever reach the destination. Its like you've caught hold of a crocodile who has convinced you to take you to the other side of the river ?

yes all those pain are there to shake you up into awakening. But one wont wake up until one really has had enough

Go watch the 5 minute video in that thread. It answers your question.

@LoveandPurpose Hey! You are cute ?

I wont talk about hell realms because all realms are like dreamstates. I will try to point out the mechanism of hell or why it exists. Believe it or not, no god or a RNG model will send you to hell. It is you who will go to hell to get your 'high'. This realization dawned upon me spontaneously and then an Alan Watts video explained the exact same thing. We as streams of attention can only chase happiness(as how we define it). And then down the line we get the high or pleasure or happiness...just to start the round all over again. What happens is that all 'forms' are illusions, they are all abstractions and they dont contain any happiness in them; because those things are non-existent in the first place. But when we still chase 'things' for happiness/pleasure, at one point the potency of things start to diminish. We dont get the same 'high' anymore. So inevitably we go into realms of pain and suffering to get that high now. Let me give an example. There are people for whom ordinary, vanilla sex gives no pleasure. They need to go in bdsm or some other twisted fetishes, in other words, self imposed limitations to get the same sexual 'high' they used to get from normal, 'healthy' sex. Greater the pain, sweeter is the release and thus you get your 'high'. Note that I am not bringing morality here, i am simply describing a mechanism. So whether you get your high from 'healthy' things or painful things is not subjected to judgment here. Similarly, any addict of anything is another good example of hell. From outside, such self destruction, pain and avoidance looks like hell. But for the addict, it is precisely that high levels of pain and corresponding release/respite that gives him that 'high'; as the conventional, vanilla reality fails to please him. So you go to hell to fulfill your tendencies when heaven fails to fulfill them. Hope that gives you a new perspective to ponder. Now you might retort saying how could anyone want burning in lava etc things that happen in hell? Exactly! It is irrational- there is no idea or limit of how much pain an entity would inflict upon itself to get its high...until it happens. And guess what? Even you dont know what you really really want. You might think you do, but not really. And that's why you have no idea where you might end up. This goes for everyone

Some very interesting points here. I may have believed all of it before. But now there are few objections. 1) Yes I agree that Awareness cannot ever be an experience itself. Most people who claim otherwise are all caught up in some subtle, mindnumbing states and calling it the ultimate awareness or god or whatever...until their bubbles pop. But Awareness is not an inference or altogether absent either. The TV screen and movie analogy explains it well. The screen itself will never appear in the movie. A character in a movie can explore the whole movie universe and yet wont find the screen. Similarly Awareness will never appear as an object of experience. But does that make the screen an inference or non-existent thing? No! Actually it is the screen that is the only reality and the movie is an inference, a superimposition, an abstraction of 'things' that are not even there at all. Similarly, those who are caught up in phenomena or experience, fail to recognize that it is experience itself that is an inference or an abstraction; including a seemingly subjectless or I-less oneness, nondual experience. A nondual experience is like an image of screen on the real screen ? Basically an abstraction mimicking reality. Awareness is not inference or an abstraction. 2) The very concept of "things are just happening" sounds very fishy to me nowadays. It immediately points how the observer hasn't still considered the nature of thoughts. 'Things' dont 'happen'. There is only thought which abstracts and infers that things are happening. I know sounds woo woo, but I cant deny what i am seeing everyday. There is no 'happening', 'changing', 'flowing' without referring to thought-memory. This is what Ramana Maharshi meant when he said "the world is nothing but thoughts". 3) Which brings up the topic of Nibbana or total extinction. Its not as if a 'real' world is dangling out there and upon nibbana we will be in some infinitely dark oblivion. It simply refers to the fact that the very idea of a world along with all its features like time, space, location, causality are all thoughts or abstrations about things that are really not there in the first place. Like how in quantum mechanics, the notion of particles with location is an abstraction; things that are really not there; and yet all of our conventional reality is based on that abstraction. Same deal with language. All words are abstraction of 'things' that are really non existent. In other words, its all a very convincing, mutually reinforcing fiction. "All pointers point to that which is not" - Nisargadatta Maharaj Yes seeing like this; awareness, god, experience etc all are abstractions. Nibbaba is the extinction of this abstraction, leaving reality as it is. Now what that is or seems like, cant be communicated through abstractions

Garuda is definitely tier 4 ? I mean the mythical bird

There was an interesting exchange between Garuda and Leo in another thread about potency and contrast between guru path and psychedelic path. But they both seemed kinda rigid on their own understanding (oh the almighty paradigm lock!). For Leo, 5 meo or DPT is the ultimate guru and no other thing, people, books, energy is even close to it. Lets see if we can present a logical overview of it. Ultimately, there is but only one guru or god, and that is one's own Self. And enlightenment ONLY dawns upon by the grace of that Guru or Self. Whether its Being through meditation/self-inquiry/yoga or it is nonverbal, nondual therapy through 5 meo(as martin ball often calls it), enlightenment only dawns upon through that direct transmission of grace or satsang from that supreme Guru/God alone. No other action, object, knowledge, a chain of cause can facilitate liberation. No entity with its own effort gets there. But alas! Due to our shortsightedness we always tend to impose reality on the unreal. Love is result of happiness. Wherever there is happiness, love follows. Our Self is Bliss itself and thats why our most loved thing is our own selves, of course in a deluded way. Through any activity, relationship, substance or mind states that we seem to gain happiness, it is not the 'thing' that is the source of happiness. Rather, those things temporarily deactivate our delusion/ignorance and thus we get brief respite of our Self(the only source of happiness), depending on the potency of those things. 5 meo did it for Leo. It takes him to his real Self, the spring of happiness. Thats why for him, 5 meo is more lovable than his wealth or house. Compared to 5 meo, the potency of all other things in his life is peanuts. I am not personally targeting Leo but only trying to make a point. Similarly, those who get enlightened by an external guru(seemingly), that guru becomes the most loved thing in their life. But in both cases, reality is superimposed over the unreal. Both 5 meo and the flesh guru are but only vehicles. The only real Guru is one's Self. These vehicles merely open oneself to the grace of the Self. Money, sex, activities, acquisition, substances, books, knowledge, relationships etc are all vehicles but with tremendous variation in potency. "As a man is, so he sees" If one sees oneself as a form, everything else including the universe will appear to be objective, physical matter just like him. If one is Self, all is Self. As long as one regards oneself as a form, one needs to rely on another potent form to take him beyond. Because one is still not liberated, an external guru or a substance or a practice is necessary. But for 'someone' Self-established like Ramana Maharshi all these vehicles are same, or there is no vehicle but only the Self. To illustrate this point, when people tried to figure out how Ramana got enlightened; that narrative that Ramana is a person who one day somehow got enlightened; Maharshi played along that narrative and always told that it is the holy mountain Arunachala which was his guru and all the goodies came from the grace of this mountain. But because we see ourselves as bodies, we see Ramana as a body as well. But Ramana Maharshi is verily the Self and his own body is last thing he would ever consider as him. For Ramana the supreme Self; a box of gold or 5 meo or a catpoop are all the same Self. So ultimately a deity/external guru/lineage/activity/spiritual practices/knowledge/substances whatever it is, is absolutely crucial as long as we regard ourselves as a body and form. The potency of these things will vary depending on one's traits and tendencies. But unfortunately we lose the big picture and end up imposing supremacy over these insentient objects. I mean we confused fellas, not the Self. Now comes the topic of potency. A 5 meo trip changes one knowingly or unknowingly, one is never the same afterwards. Same thing with a legit guru! A self realized guru is a living embodiment of the Self. Just by living close to them without even any verbal exchange, people tend to change from inside out. I'd make a humble request to @Leo Gura to not make contradictory, unfruitful statements. He is a public figure and lots of people significantly shape their worldviews through him. When Leo argues and makes statements along the line of "I have reached the highest realizations in all of mankind, 5 meo is the only highest deal and the rest is bullshit, 40 years zen master is a fool compared to my insights" this isn't helping anyone's growth but only creating more pernicious confusions and contradictions. First of all, its impossible to know which sage knew what. And more importantly when Leo tries to articulate his highest insights, even he is at a loss of appropriate words and often remarks "there is no way to express this stuff in any way, it goes that deep". Almost all of his audience are modern, highly educated and openminded folks and yet all of that psychedelic insights fall on mostly deaf ears. It only truly makes sense if one is at Leo's being level simultaneously. Now imagine where the sages of the past were. Surrounded by stage purple and blue people with extremely narrow knowledge graph, you expect the real sages to spill ALL THE BEANS as the highest Absolute Truth? When its impossible to logically, coherrently talk about it in the first place? And YET, they left the clues as best as it could be done. The sages didn't leave the clues to proclaim them as the highest beings on earth and disparaging the rest as deluded pigs. They left them only for the best interest of the seekers as the great spiritual teachers they were. As you see/present yourself as a spiritual teacher, thats my 2 cents right there. Peace out ?

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@livg7046 The way I see it: your DP looks cute

Everything is hell until one finds Jesus ?

Sri Ramakrishna said that those who genuinely cry for God even once, will eventually realize God sooner or later. Good for you

lets see how it goes

People losing touch with their center and thus the circumference of their lives will collapse. More neorosis, depression, meaninglessness, anxiety, worldwide suicide, fake masks over fake masks, chaos and finally subsequent reconciliation ?☺??

Even if we take Osho as enlightened, he was from the lineage of Shiva. He was a practitioner and master of kashmir shaivism. From his young teenage years, he practiced all 108(or maybe 112) spiritual techniques mentioned in the Vijnana vairaba tantra, which is basically spiritual instruction laid down to Parvati by Shiva himself. Osho did all that and realized that in any spiritual practice or activity, it is the consciousness aspect that is the most important factor. And yet religious people make that very blunder of abandoning consciousness while mindlessly following rules, dogmas and rituals. And that's why the cornerstone technique of Osho was 'witnessing'. His message was whatever the fuck you wanna do in life, do it, but do it with consciousness. Never omit this knowing element.

@Leo Gura BTW Om Swami materialized a vision and corresponding interaction with Goddess Kali as his supposedly culmimating ''enlightenment experience". For 11 months, he did all sorts of tantra rituals and visualization contemplations of Kali for this enlightenment experience. So in this sense, Om Swami is from the lineage of Mother Kali or Shakti. Extraordinary indian sages who 'seemed' to wake up without any guru were still part of a lineage eg. Shiva, Vishnu, Kali etc So the point is, the non-existent ego or person never gets enlightened with its efforts. Its always the grace of God at work. Now that grace can work through a flesh guru or a powder or an idea about God or various other means. dude study what samskaras or latent tendencies are. Even aspects of the great Jana yoga like a strong drive for the Truth or what one is, are all samskaras. People are born with these latent tendencies. In fact a person is nothing but a jumble of his/her tendencies with a sense of I. Asceticism is similarly another tendency. Its not an end in itself. I am not bashing against effort, discipline, puritanical lifestyle etc. All of them have their uses based on the context. But just asceticism and neurotic effort does not necessarily imply high consciousness and understanding. One can be an incessant gym rat or sit on one's ass for 20 hours with herculean effort- but that doesn't automatically imply high consciousness and understanding.

Yes indeed All of it are vehicles

He had another fellow monk who gathered and cooked food for him like twice everyday..for like 11 months. Most ascetics are closet mosochists. Just another samskara. You can see similar traits in some athletes or hard working people. ? ?

Yes keep at it. With this only litmus test, ''anything perceivable or conceivable cannot be I" All the best!