RMQualtrough

Did you also do that before this life? Did you go to a void where you got to choose your next life? If not I don't see it happening afterwards. One time I smoked DMT while very high on cannabis (I don't touch cannabis, ever, and smoked a fair bit of oil). Well I did not even know that this life had ever happened. I mean genuinely, absolutely, I did not have any knowledge of this life AT ALL. Not what a human is, not what my life is, not who I was... I was just flying through a kind of dim tunnel... Well, after a little bit of that, elf-like creatures began to open hatches in the tunnel. Through the hatches were glimpses of my bedroom. At first I did not recognize what it was I was seeing, but after flying a bit further down the tunnel, as the elves continued to pop open hatches, I eventually remembered it is my bedroom, I remembered what a human is, I remembered my name, etc, I mean I came down from the trip so it all came back to me... So I always imagine that any switcheroo from death here to "another life", will be like that if anything. Just like this never happened.

God isn't real IMO. Nobody on the planet doesn't think of God as "entity who reigns supreme above us". It's a pretty good in the same way 5-MeO is nicknamed "The God Molecule". And it does tick the boxes for God but not for the reasons thought of. It is all knowing, technically, because all knowing takes place within it, made of it. There is reality. When you take away the supreme sentient creator notion, then would you still think it has choice? Does reality itself choose things? It is sentient if you are for the same reason above, because any sentience is within it and made of it.

Yeah strong drugs might cause this effect. You can do it in lucid dreams too, I managed it once in a lucid dream. All you are talking about, is the typical psychedelic type of "out of body" experience.

The way through which I know it is as the "story of you". Example: Your name is Michael, you like Doritos and spaceships, a few minutes ago you were listening to hip hop but now you're listening to jazz. In ego death, the "story of you" goes away, and you are no longer anything other than the present moment. In other words there's no "story of you" accompanying reality. There's just this moment as it appears now. And no continuous "Michael" character through each either. Actually no "Michael" at all. Literally I have lol'd like "what the FUCK is a *my name*?", because there was definitely no such entity present. So that was a bit weird... And then there is dissolution of you, where you no longer have size and the sensory data completely encapsulates where you currently think you are... You don't lose consciousness... But it loses you, if you can imagine what I mean? You're both literally everywhere encompassing all objects of awareness, but also nowhere, not even a "point" or dot...

At least that's how it seemed during trips or retroactively after. Is visual diversity what gives us a sense of space and positioning I wonder.

Have you noticed that sounds for example can completely "flood" around you to where there is literally no point of origin and no "perspective". But most visuals (apart from a pure blank color) are dual in that they require a "point of view", or a viewing position. E.g. when you see a car, you necessarily have a point of view that the car is in front of you. Though this is not the case with sound, taste, and smell. Touch is probably the most grounding dual sense, since the removal of it will always trigger an "out of body" type experience where you simply flood out into sizelessness. Your mind attaches a sense of confinement to your visual input, it's actually really clever. Because the sight you have is an image generated from your eyes etc, yet touch is not, but the mind merges the two. So you think that the sense of touch corresponds with the edges of your body within the image from your eyes. But even with your eyes closed, it is what creates the sensation of confinement within the body. Sounds played in certain ways (definitely in-ear) can be impossible to place in any location. I think it would probably be the same for pure blank color if it encompassed your entire vision. Maybe interestingly, the Ganzfeld experiment, and hallucinations in heavy pure snowy landscapes, seem to show things happen when we are confronted with pure blank color, just as it can with sound.

Try something: 1. Get in ear headphones. 2. Play that track on the in-ears. 3. Consciously move around the perceived "origin" of the sound. You can concentrate and trick yourself into thinking it is playing from in front of you. Then you can move it to behind you. On top of your head. And just keep moving it around. 4. Now try to locate where it is ACTUALLY located. I had a VERY intense breakthrough like this. The sound just flooded everywhere, but it wasn't happening anywhere at all (it was happening no"where"). And the images in my head, and thoughts, and everything like that were all pushed distant in front of me. And I was nothing. Literally I was nothing. I couldn't even be a something if I tried, because anything I thought, immediately became one of the "things" which were distant in front of me.

Nothingness can't be reduced to anything else, and it doesn't require any explanation for its own being since nothingness needs no creation. Quite simplistic really. I thought that was a very common recognization in strong ego death, the fact of our fundamental nothingness? I hope so, because outwardly it sounds like philosophy BS or theory, when it isn't...

It is the same. People don't have consciousness, consciousness has people. Isolated by itself, it is nothing. I'm not grabbing a book and reciting some "deep" sentences, I am telling you for real it is nothing. And I don't see how even in theory you could have different nothings, since nothing is nothing. If the problematic and counterintuitive "consciousness" term was swapped out for Western-intuitive terms like existence, reality... Then it would be obvious: "Are you telling me a drunk person's realness is the same as a sober person's?" You see how, now, it is so blatantly obvious? A drunk person exists as much as a sober person. NOW it makes sense???? That is what all of this is. All of it. This is, we are, everything is, nothingness is (again: nothingness is what "your consciousness" is, and that can be explained also) quite literally, existence itself. We are literally existence itself. We are reality itself. That is "Brahman". And how easy to wrap your head around is that? Probably much moreso. You are existence itself reading these words. You are existence itself feeling emotions. You are existence itself seeing from your eyes. And all of these things are, also, existence itself. Existence itself is all encompassing, it is EVERYTHING.

P.S. entering so-called "God mode" is experientially, like matryoska dolls, if you were the one on the inside and you started smashing out of the bigger ones until you smashed out of the final doll. I know I interpreted this as "visiting heaven" yet there was no notion of God. I also interpreted it as religious, despite the lacking notion of God. It FELT like "going up" but I think it is more the other way. Despite feeling like going up or expanding, it also felt like being "purified", so like I was expanding VIA the removal of shells rather than gaining something I did not already possess... There was no stage where I gained more consciousness. More like a weight being lifted off my shoulder type thing, like a veil being lifted from me. It was PURER I think... The effect is I think from the removal of impurity, so for example your anxieties about work and life, your ruminations over a TV show plot you're engaged in, that sort of thing being taken away.

Okay so you just straight aren't ever going to recognize it then... Vedanta takes randomers who have not had these bizarre experiences and will tell you, "you are not your thoughts", etc (as I mentioned they do that whole neti neti process thing)... Now you will say back to them "but that's duality! I am my thoughts!" And it's like, well okay then guess you'll just have literally no chance of ever understanding it whatsoever... You're just talking about something you have never recognized as if you have recognized it, and because of that you will never recognize it... And that is ultimately why you think you "become" God and start performing magic. You will never "become" what you are. You can only ever possibly recognize what you are, but it is what you already and always were. There will never be such a thing as a level of consciousness, there isn't any tier that is higher or lower than what is rigidly the only one there ever was, which encompasses all there is and ever could be. There isn't space for it to grow into, it is itself and it is whole with nothing outside it, not even nothingness (since nothingness is fundamentally what you are), hence why: nowhere for it to grow into. All things happen WITHIN it, like the swirling images on a screen. All you are ever doing, it is not growing outwards into bigger and bigger pictures but seeing "through" the pictures so to speak. It is more like moving the opposite direction. Except you are already there...... Take this. You're at a cinema, super engrossed in the film, lost in it. Suddenly the movie cuts out. And you suddenly feel yourself in the seat there. You didn't "go to" the seat, or "become more seated". You were already and always there, ALWAYS just as seated and just as present in that chair. But you didn't realize because you were distracted by the movie. Leo would understand what I am saying but he doesn't really bother to post lately.

What can this tell us about mind and consciousness? https://www.mamamia.com.au/krista-and-tatiana-hogan/ I think this could be an important avenue of study.

Well I was trying to say something on topic to OP but I forgot what we were all discussing earlier and why I brought up the line that led to here. Must be relating to manifesting stuff though, and hence the idea that you "become infinitely conscious" and suddenly you can magic into being anything you want. When the want itself is a product of the unstoppable creation itself which is the ground of all being... If you wanted to "manifest" money out of thin air or w.e., there would initially be an idea of wanting money. The idea is itself something you are aware of and a product of creation itself..... It is also the case in lucid dreams, but the thought may align with the manifestation of the thing, which tricks you into thinking it was chosen. E.g. you might want to fly and begin to fly in the same moment, but neither of these involved active choice. In some trips I was able to make things appear by having the idea of them, but who chose the idea? There has to be a point at which something arises as a known object, which includes ideas/desires, and prior to that there is nothing to choose as the idea is not even present... Just now I "decided" to randomly think of a thought, and observe what it's like, and I thought "donkey". But who chose that it should be "donkey" before donkey spontaneously arose in my mind as a known thought? If I decide to pick a random color, first who chose the idea of that? Then "green..... yellow..." the word yellow popped up at the same time as the idea of it. There was no moment of choice where I was presented an array of possible thoughts and actively chose to have one. To be presented with an array of thoughts, the array is already a thing and already something which appeared. This is why I think reality is merely unfolding without the "free" part of free will, OR maybe better termed, without the will part, just the free... There's nothing preventing one thought appearing over another, but there's nobody willing it to be that way... It is all just being spat out by creation itself. Reality itself. Consciousness itself. Whatever... It IS creation.

If I was God I'd dream myself up a better hobby than this shit.

You absolutely will not understand it until you stop obsessing over collapsing perceived duality, and find what you actually are first... Otherwise you're never going to find your "true nature". You can't get it by just saying "oh yeah I'm everything". You're still thinking you're a person with consciousness and all sorts... Find the nothing that sits permanent and unchanging. You won't find the literal nothingness without dissociating from the images. You can't take a screen with a movie on it and say "oh it's all screen" when you haven't even NOTICED the screen. You haven't even recognized it and are just repeating something that sounded deep in a book or YouTube video... AFTER you recognize the screen upon which the images appear, you might then notice that the images themselves are also the screen and that there only ever was the screen and the shapes it contorts itself into.

But this is just being a parrot... Because if you saw everything was "one and the same" you wouldn't at the same time be discussing "levels of consciousness" etc. No matter how wavey an ocean is, it's just the ocean. That's it....... If you don't separate yourself from the appearances you won't ever find the oneness you're believing in on faith from randoms on YouTube and forums. It is logically inevitable, that there is nothing outside of reality, anything that is, is reality itself. Is is-ness itself. So anything aside from that, even from a logical standpoint, is certainly wrong. Consciousness is typically a failure of a term because it is not intuitive enough that a rock or lamppost is consciousness. Maybe in the East I don't know if they define it differently. But no way in a million years will that word be anything other than unintuitive and misleading to a Westerner... A rock or lamppost being reality itself, you being reality itself. That's like "duh". We all get it. It's intuitive and obvious.

I'm not sure there is validity. Uhm, I mean, can God "become" more God? Can nothing "become" more nothing? Can the screen "become" more screen? It's more like ceasing to identify with the elements of it. In actuality nobody and no thing is ever more or less "it". Whatever term you use. Because there is only it. There is only it, always whole and complete and fully it, and never NOT it, because it is nothing but itself. And the images on it, like a movie scene on your TV screen, don't make it any less it or any less whole or complete. Levels of consciousness is like... Completely not that. There is one level of consciousness and you don't reach it, you can only recognize it. You don't do things to "become" it for example. You don't for example gain superpowers. You have to go the OPPOSITE direction to recognize it. Which is the opposite of focusing on the elements out there (e.g. becoming more powerful and manifesting objects etc - it's the opposite direction away from what people want to recognize).

There aren't "levels of consciousness" that is some Leo BS. "Higher levels" of consciousness are not in fact raising consciousness but moreso shattering the layers of masks that reside on top of it. And nondual nature is not about consciousness and the images that it knows, it's the ultimate "substance" of both which is Brahman. Nothing. Reality itself. Etc. No Western person will ever understand the ground of being as "consciousness". Maybe in the East their definition makes it as simple as "existence itself" makes it to us.

Dude you can't mention subtle dualities when you don't rn comprehend the thing you're trying to discuss... Example: In Vedanta they have a process they call neti neti, which is where the people are taught to understand they are not the thoughts, not the images, etc... Say a guy came in without having touched realization of Brahman and was like "nah that's BS, that's a duality" it's like, oh okay, guess you'll just never get it ever then... Only the entity referred to universally as "I" can """awaken""", AKA recognize itself. The images, your entire personness, cannot... Example: Imagine an elephant in your mind. Now stop imagining the elephant. Is the elephant now enlightened? Could the image of the elephant recognize it is only an image? Could the image of the elephant start "manifesting" things it desires? Well there you go....... ALL of your person-ness is exactly like that. All just images. Your desire to manifest something, is an idea and that is ALSO an image...

It isn't real. See this: It's the only simple animation I could find. Watch how the character seems to move through time. But now stop looking at the character and just focus on the white paper page. Notice how the page doesn't ever move. That is timelessness. There is nothing to the animation but what is presently showing. You can pause it at any moment, and notice that none of the prior or future frames are existent at that moment. There is only the frame you paused on. That moment, the present, is the only thin which exists. There is just this one moment and a bunch of sketches.

Different, but like this: Like how the word "this" is a different word to "screen". But to actually get at what I was sayin in the post much further up, you have to zoom out and see that there is just a screen and images are just images. And like the words there, desires and experiences are images. So OP's desire to make lots of money, all of that. It is an image like everything else. And the pain from being pinched. It is all the same as such. Wishing to manifest something is itself an idea and all things which are things are images themselves.

It's not a language issue at all. Reality doesn't care if it's enlightened, it has no choice but to be, since it's itself and singular and absolutely completely whole. It can't NOT be "enlightened". You only want to believe that good people and bad people are different, or that your lifetime efforts to be good will come with some sort of end result that differs from the end result Adolf Hitler would receive. It's BS and false. This is not only "mystical" talk, it is also a logical inevitability. Everything that exists is existence itself. That is absolute total unity and oneness. Every single thing that is, is just it. When the images go away, like the monk's monkness, and the murderer's rape/killing of children, there is no longer any monk or murderer. It's just reality. They are both just reality. This is uncomfortable but it is not only an experiential truth in ego death, it is also a logical fact.

Well they're bullshitting. Reality is NEVER in "non-enlightenment". You go away when "enlightenment" happens and that recognition of what always is/was is what people term as enlightenment. In some traditions they use "awareness" as the vehicle to help people search, and with that wording, obviously the only thing which can recognize awareness is awareness. But people think awareness is a thing when it is written like this... All you're doing is slowly releasing your focus on the images on the screen until you see that the screen is the only thing there is and ever was. Nobody and nothing is inferior/superior because there is no "else". Just screen. Just reality. That's all there is. That's why none of your efforts to be a good person matter, because you're not a person being good, you're goodness appearing on a screen. And a bad person is badness appearing on a screen. But there is only ever just the screen. Reality itself is the only thing there is, and it is both the kindest person and the most evil. And when the person-ness is taken away from the saint and the sinner, there is no longer any difference between them, because there is only reality itself and they are that........

^ That is also why spiritual practices etc are meaningless and kinda BS, by the way. You recognize this immediately. Because it doesn't matter AT ALL how good or bad a person has been in their lives, they are still the screen. It doesn't matter WHAT you fucking do because ANYTHING and EVERYTHING is the screen. There IS nothing else but that, and so everything and everyone is completely and utterly equivalent with absolutely no superiority or inferiority between anything. A monk and a child killer. Completely utterly equal because they are both just reality itself. The idea of manifestation, calling the shots. I suppose it is like you think you are words on that screen (the words here are our individual selves, the egos, ya dig?), and you expect the word to somehow be able to control the screen. But it can't because it is only a word. It is only an appearance on the screen... A word on the screen can't become enlightened. This is another thing people think in the same vein, that when they die (the word goes away) somehow they will get to keep some aspect of their spiritual progress. How can a word have "spiritual progress"? The word is just an image. You are already whole and complete because you are reality itself. You are already enlightened because there is only reality itself and reality can only ever BE itself. Perhaps your word is not enlightened, but a word can't ever be enlightened or not enlightened anyway. Only the screen can be enlightened, or more accurately, recognize itself. Because it's the only thing there is. The WORD does not recognize the screen and never could. Only the screen recognizes the screen. The same thing which recognizes the words. Nothing to achieve, nowhere to go. This is what neo-advaita people parrot as a religious faith, I think mostly without having recognized the screen? So they are looking at words on the screen and accepting it to be the truth, without recognizing the screen. The teachings are words on the screen (I think this is what Leo means by saying Buddhism is part of the dream etc). All the sex you crave and the money you want, all of these desires and all of the experiences of them are images on the screen............. ONLY the screen can recognize the screen, and the screen can only be recognized by not focusing on the images.

Yay, good things to discuss If you miss the backdrop, that is when you think that you aren't experiencing the feeling of you pinching my arm. These elements of individuality are the masks on top, they are the appearances which can go away and change. If you take all the me-ness from me and all the you-ness from you, we are identical. It does not matter whether I'm seeing the eiffel tower while you're in Spain somewhere on a beach. Because you recognize the undercurrent of singularity on top of which is all just appearances. A "self" is one of these, because there is no thingness about you which continues from moment to moment. It's constantly shifting. You see that? Imagine you turn on the TV and these words are on it. The way your mind is currently operating is quite focused and zoomed in. So you are staring at the words on the screen. If you are so focused on the words that you only see the words, it can be right there staring you in the face telling you it's a screen, but you won't notice it because you are too focused on the words which are only appearances on it. The hard drugs and such people use for total ego death, it is like zooming outwards so that instead of just seeing the words, you see that the words are the screen, and notice the screen itself which was always there but you had not paid attention to. And when you notice the screen, you recognize the total singularity of everything. Because everything is just reality itself...... Reality is you, and it is what is observing the pinch when you pinch me. And it is what is currently observing whatever you're seeing, and whatever I'm seeing.