Preetom

Why happiness doesn't need justification but sadness does? If you are willing to get your hands dirty in the intellectual realm, then why cherry picking some facets and conveniently leaving out other parts? See, this is the main drawback of modern science, rationality, logic etc. The problem is not that they are so intellectual; the problem is they are not rigorously intellectual enough. If they were, then rationality would eat it's own tail and all these dilemma would be dissolved. Do you see that there is a far deeper 'system' controlling you and the intellect has nowhere reach for this system? This system completely overrules everything about you, and yet you feel you are intellectually in total control.

But notice another thing here. There is no rigid hard and fast rule about what makes one happy or sad. A thing which gives you happiness maybe act as a source of sadness for others. For example, being a couch potato and watching TV maybe happiness for one. But for a physically active person, that would bring sadness and make him/her depressed. They would voluntarily inflict discomfort over their bodies to get some sort of happiness/high. A hard math problem can make one cry while make another intellectually satisfied. so on and so forth. if God banned math problems, physical discomfort etc that would take away a source of happiness for many people. So the thing in itself is not the issue here, one's internal reaction towards it is the issue. Yeah the feelings and emotions are real when they are happening. But not in the sense you think. That sense of reality comes from YOU, not from things. Happiness/sadness, events etc feel real in real time because YOU are present there.

It doesn't matter whether you like it or not. The fact remains that you are creating suffering yourself, knowingly or unknowingly. Even after knowing this, you will still have cravings, dissatisfaction, desires etc internal reactions. Where are they coming from? They are all coming from within you. It is not factually possible to satiate any desire with an object and yet you'll have desires which are bound to be unfulfilled and leave you dissatisfied. So unless you solve that maze within you, suffering will feel like a very real thing. And your insistence and doubling down on it makes it more real. BTW have you noticed when one is happy, nobody ever asks why am I so happy? or whats the point of all this happiness? or enough! I have too much happiness already! hmm..something smells fishy here...

@tsuki Thank you for your input

@Dylan Page Suffering exists because you say/feel suffering exists. Discover the truth of the one who suffers and see what happens to suffering.

Did you become enlightened as well from the counter self inquiry question? ?

Why does god do this to himself... ? It seems gods favorite pastime is dreaming up that it is god ?

Yes the traps and dangers are so sneaky and endless. The weird thing is That which obeserves a system and tries to make some tweaks, is itself part of the system. Its like the thief dressing up as the police to catch himself. Whenever one thinks he has an upperhand over 'it', actually it is 'it' that has the upperhand. Another thing to clarify is that vedanta does not teach panpsychism or a version of it like ''everything is consciousness" or ''all is god". Thats just an upgrade of the traditional religious god. Whereas religious god is an old man in the cloud and separate from his creation, the panpsychic god is actually one and the same with its creation. But vedanta doesn't teach that. At best it concedes as "Brahman alone 'seems' to appear as everything. But Brahman never actually becomes anything in reality. Just like the illusion of snake on rope, the rope never actually becomes a snake even while seeing that illusion" This is illustrated in a letter exchange between swami Vivekananda and one of his american disciples sister Nibedita. She wrote to swami how the teachings that everything is god, the mundane is spiritual helped her. In reply Vivekanda said "who told you that everything is god? I dont remember teaching such whacky doctrine. The realization is only God is. Everything is not"

Spiritual practices like various forms of meditation, yoga, visulization, tantra etc can lead to shiddhis aka more and more expansive, cosmic ego. These are all basically various forms of concentration and disciplines and they are all activities of the ego which are usually very secret within corresponding traditions and usually requires decades of brutal training...like becoming a master Olympic javelin thrower. That wont happen in few days or months. And of course like other physical/mental traits, some are already ahead or talented in particular paranormal realms. On the other hand, the direct path to enlightenment consists of understanding this distinction between real and unreal clearly and then self inquiry all the way. The strategy is to dissolve the trinity of subject-god-object. The nature of this trinity is that if one can completely see through the subject, then the entire trinity collapses because the subject is the thread on which all of this hangs upon. Thats why self inquiry targets precisely that. The closest, most intimate and important thing in your life: yourself. You cant be deluded about that. Now even in this direct path, some may start developing paranormal powers, as the limited egoic boundaries start getting erased. One should be extremely vigilant not fall for them as the real deal. They are but nice scenes along the way. Thats why all the greatest masters made this distinction clearly and instructed to leave these things alone if ones sole purpose is enlightenment. If one gets caught up in a particular realm, that is called yoga-vrashta(the one who has diverted from the path of yoga). Whatever realm he is roaming in for however long, he is not waking up. This is illustrated by a talk between Swami Vivekananda and Sri Ramakrishna. One day vivekananda complained to his guru about why he is not attaining even any glimpse of spiritual powers in spite of a lot practices whereas others around him often describe having various spiritual highs, experiences and powers. Ramakrishna replied that Vivekananda is lucky that those things are not bothering him. Later when Vivekanada reported to his guru that he might be developing a sense of clarivoyance, Ramakrishna told him "stop your practices for a while and let these pests leave you first. Then start again". The path is extremely sneaky and full of traps...until its not

@Jkris Thank you. My original purpose of this post was to draw a distinction between what Leo is doing and vedanta perspective. Leo is intellectually oriented and he is keen on using elements of god like time, space, causality in turn to understand the mechanism, layers, how, why, when, whats going on behind the curtains of god. Now i am not disparaging that or saying Leo is doing something bad. My purpose was to contrast it with vedantic perspective in order to show that this project is not relevant to ''waking up". It is possible to be enlightened and there are many cases of it without having even a fraction of juicy insights Leo has been formulating. All this levels, understanding, insights, expansions are within the microcosm-macrocosm range. The purpose of my post was to shed some light on this topic and try to dispel the unnecessary struggle and confusion of many people around here who got the false impression about enlightenment from Leos recent herculean feats. All of a sudden this awakening business got so complex. In vedantic terminology, with contrast to Brahman, even God is as unreal as my current limited ego self. So even the realization "i am god" or "i am all" is not the finality of it. The intended realization is to discover that I am Brahman, the unchanging, solitary reality no matter which level or state i am in, in this range of microcosm ego to macrocosm god.

The thing is we are now only destroying the teaching pointers. Its like we were supposed to go to a city. At the middle of the road we see a signpost pointing instructions to reach that city. Now instead of taking notes, we break and destroy the signpost, start a campfire with it, nesting there and singing kumbabya thinking we have accomplished a great feat and there is no city to go to ? I know this metaphor is crude compared to the directness of the real thing. But compared to the real thing, every metaphor is crude haha so that was a fun thought The real knower of brahman aka the enlightened one has no confusion about Brahman. He IS brahman so for him there is absolutely no misconception about what brahman is or is not. For him the Vedas(knowledge) have become Avedas(ignorance) and all the brahman talk is redundant and unnecessary. But before that, the teaching scrupulously maintains its position and perspective to act as a good signpost. This distinction is absolutely crucial for realization.

Okay I'll try to explain this dilemma with 2 classic examples. See if it makes sense. The duality of nothing-everything is already a concession. "All is Brahman" is a similar statement to "Michael's dream at last night is nothing but his mind". But take a look at your mind. Is last night's dream exclusively your mind? No. Because your same mind can produce infinite amount of other dream worlds. And ultimately that one dream really has no existence at all other than in your mind. It only feels real as long as it is perceived. This is the paradigm lock of all knowledge and perception. It feels real only when it is happening now. Have you noticed that whatever happening right now feels most real? But where is this sense of reality coming from? This sense of reality is not actually coming from things. These current same thoughts and forms will lose significance and reality when you forget about them. If you are not seeing the sun, then the reality of sun is very dim for you now. So no 'thing' exclusively has reality. That sense of reality actually comes from you the Brahman. Vedanta scrupulously maintains this discriminating view so that no form can ever exclusively claim ownership of absolute reality. Why not saying that both all and brahman are real? No they are not both real. To illustrate this there is the example of clay and clay pots. A clay pot is in and through nothing but clay. Clay can exist without clay pot but clay pot cant exist without clay. So its 'potness' is really only a self fulfilling unreal superimposition. Now if you strictly say "the clay pot is clay" that will be a true statement just like the statement "all is brahman". But you see it already concedes this pot as something real and distinct and then made connection with clay. Whereas in reality the clay remains same whether its a pot or not (in the context of this metaphor). The very idea of pot, world, all is already a concession and in that case they are really nothing but products of Brahman These are all teaching pointers and further discussion actually only breaks down language and the teaching without any outcome. So as Anna has pointed out the 'all' is like a mere shadow product of Brahman. In the same way even concepts like existence, consciousness, bliss etc are nothing but superimposed definitions on Brahman. They are helpful teaching pointers but there is nothing one can exclusively grasp and ascribe it as Brahman. This is illuminated in a Bhagavad gita verse where Krishna tells Arjuna "the entire universe is sustained with merely a fraction of my being" Similarly all real things in universe, all potentials and all 'unreal' things are nothing but Brahman. But Brahman is not exclusively any of them.

Sounds so frustrating huh? ? Well one cant eat the cake and have it

@Paul92 Paul I think you are misunderstanding something here. This nondual spirituality does not shame or blame you for having a sense of self or for having human thoughts. This is not a Christian thing. I am sorry if anyone gave you that impression about nonduality. Nonduality says that you are not 'exclusively' Paul with that specifc body and personality. It says that there is in fact a deeper Truth of 'you' which can be directly discovered. And when that truth about 'you' becomes so clear and vivid, then in comparison to that, 'Paul' automatically feels like a fiction. Now you might feel discouraged hearing that, but its not really about believing it or trying hard to convince oneself. This shift naturally happens on its own. Wherever Reality/truth is, thats where our attention and orientation automatically aligns itself. Just like after waking up from a dream, we don't need to believe or convince ourself that the dream was imaginary and waking state is real. The sense of reality automatically adjusts itself. Same thing goes with your identity shift from fiction to Reality. In your particular case, I would suggest that you stop taking all this non duality talk seriously, take professional help if necessary. Then when you feel curious about truth again, start a systematic, logical study of non duality along with practices. Truly speaking, if understand properly, this non duality message is the greatest news you can ever come across. But in your case, it seems so life negative because of half baked non duality theories and misinterpretations over it. Take care.

If you feel very uncomfortable, confused during self inquiry, I suggest that you actually sit down with a pen and paper and very accurately write out exactly how you are feeling through metaphors and examples. That itself can give you lots of clarity and relaxation. From then on you'll eventually drop your fears when you see the absurdity behind them.

One cant mistakenly eat the cake and correct that mistake ?

If this shit makes some sense to you, if you feel kinda naturally drawn to it whereas you could easily do million other shit instead of it, if you find yourself coming back to it no matter how many times you feel lost ; these are the signs you are meant for it.

Lol good luck Leo convincing people about your twisted, conflated nonduality theories. The ego as body mind basically wants nonduality served at its own level, for its own benefit, in its own language.

????

Reminds me of this song

Lol when did Good boy start typing in Bengali? Omniscience much?

Good boy slowly dying as flesh and being reborn as spirit

Another sneaky question that arises why Reality is exactly this way and not any other way? Like why we aren't golden unicorns flying in outer space Maybe God fabricated Reality precisely this way so that no individual can ever proclaim solitary supremacy over Truth as God. And thus God is the complete annihilation of all individuality. After that, there is individuality left to make any claim for oneself. That's the only way to truly know/be God.

All these death, afterlife, reincarnation questions, theories and confusion arise from one deep rooted fundamental assumption ''This body along with it's current personality and memories is I''. With this false assumption, when a person listens to half baked nonduality fantastical theories and understands even half of that, all these weird confusions start to take place. The immortality, supremacy, absolute and nondual nature of the Self gets conceptually superimposed on 'I' this body-mind. After all, there is only one I. The idea of a solid, firm entity/soul with hardwired features travelling from life to life is ludicrous. If any person looks in his/her own life, they can't help but notice how one's own personality, knowledge graph and preferences changes so radically over just 4-5 years timeline if one contemplates about metaphysical stuff long enough. So even in this one life, we play multiple roles and wear multiple masks, only the current one grabs us by the throat and we forget about the rest of it mostly, thanks to our shortsightedness and forgetfulness. Only people living unquestioned mundane life over decades see themselves as same person for 50 years. And another very common and naive tendency is conflating the absolute with imaginary relative. This too stemming from the same assumption, I am the body-mind. It all goes like this: If Absolute Consciousness is all there is, then why.... If I am God, then why... If there is no real time and space, then why... If I am the immortal Self, then why... so on and so forth.. Basically whats going on is, a nonduality theory is heard or even a glimpse is had, but immediately the ego-mind arises as I and then tries hard to fit that absolute knowledge into how it can now serve 'ME' as this body-mind entity. Putting the Absolute on conditional sentences like ''if, when, why, how etc''. Dude just stop. Stop deluding yourself. As long as there is even the slightest idea of body-mind-location-causality-birth-death-memory-bondage-liberation, One is NOT God. There is no God along with those ideas. And after all those ideas vanish as non-existent, there is no point in proclaiming oneself as God. That which needs to proclaim itself as God with a bigass mic, is not the God. And that which is really God, doesn't need to proclaim it or make a big deal out of it. The real, wise, ancient traditions of nonduality understood this problem very well and thus they left no chance behind for any individual person, place, time or condition to co-opt and proclaim the supreme authority over Truth. That's why they stressed so much on complete negation, whatever one can think/believe/concoct, however grand or however 'real' it feels, is not the Truth.

God has no problem