RMQualtrough

It IS nothing... You can experience this, which is easier than explaining... When experienced, you don't observe "nothing", that is impossible, you ARE it. Any and all content appears to you, and that can be known. It can be experienced, and then you will know it to be the case. Imagine this from your first person PoV: When all things are removed what is left? Imagine going deaf, then blind, then etc etc, no thoughts, no emotion. Tell me what is then left???????? Answer that and I think people can help you get it soon after.

@Barna Also maybe this will help: You are Barna, Barna is the limitation, Barna is the "thing" that comes (when you were born) and goes (when you die). No element of Barna will remain. The person sitting over there typing back to me, you are the limitation, you are the appearance. When your limit is removed, Barna ceases to exist, as no limit = infinite = nothing = everything. No you don't float in a void of white, that would still be a continuation of Barna. Barna ends. You can imagine that "Barna" becomes everything and everywhere, because that's what nothing is. But "Barna" is out of luck if it expects to be reborn as an antelope or some shit.

Wait though, what do you mean by "this consciousness", because you've been talking about your character. Your character will go where thoughts go once you stop thinking of them. Otherwise if you mostly understand, you need to find that "consciousness" = nothing. We aren't talking the verb, we're getting down to substance. We just know it as "consciousness", it is literally nothing. You get that nothingness would be impossible to create or destroy?

You don't have a consciousness, nor do I. Do you understand that part? We all appear in it, the entire ego, character, every feeling and sensation and memory, these are all appearances in it. Do you get that? Appearances are impermanent, like a thought, they come and go. Get it? Everything is it, and made of it. Atoms are made of it. Ideas are made of it. You are made of it. Emotions are made of it. Do you get that? And what "it" is, is nothing. Do you get that part? "Things" are nothing appearing limited. Consciousness is nothing. That is why it is eternal, uncreated, unlimited, infinite, sizeless, timeless, and all encompassing. When people say to look for "consciousness" they want you to find that you are inherently nothing. A blank canvas of literal nothing in which limit appears. Do you get that?

The brain ain't a receiver bro. There's no antennae. I can say very confidently that is a major misunderstanding of what Leo, Buddha, or the Advaita guy, etc mean. Not just a nitpick, but actually a major misunderstanding... Brains are in it, made of it. There isn't special matter that soaks up consciousness like a radio, and there isn't a little consciousness inside every particle. Rather, it is the very substance from which those things are made. Like all things in existence, things all represent """pure consciousness""" appearing as limitation. I think it is easy to imagine a computer, and the icons on the screen. Like a brain you can manipulate the icons to create a result on the screen, but the icon is not the cause of the result, it is just a visual representation of something deeper.

It's not a verb, the process of being aware of an object isn't what is being discussed when people say "consciousness". The word is used because that is where you need to look. If you look you will find every answer. Forget NDE cope. Books and posts and documentaries and sermons can tell you about it, but you're not going to and aren't MEANT to just believe it. People who just believe it , might as well just grab the Bible or a book of potions and spells.

Because you haven't found what "consciousness" is. If you found what it is, you'd know why anything even exists and whether it continues beyond death. Right now you still think you are a person who posseses consciousness or a "soul", even though your brain, which you can fuck with to experience cool shit, is as much dead matter as a rock.

People are intending to find truth and facts. Nondual reality isn't made up magic Wiccan shit, you wouldn't go on a physics forum discussing wizardry. I really enjoy seeing the New Age people in real life, their subculture is great. And it smells great because of all the candles and incense... I often walk around their stores to see all the weird and wonderful shit. Feels like Hogwarts. But it is bullshit LOL.

Manyness can only appear through limitation. There can never be two nothings. There can be many limited forms though. When a form loses limit it becomes nothing. Which is everything.

I just saw your thread after my question. One thing I would recommend then is going to very busy yet quiet places. Train stations are especially good, as there are lots of people walking around or waiting, and background noises etc, but not so much noise it overwhelms your ability to reflect. When waiting at train platforms I have enjoyed some of my most profound sober moments. You can understand that all there is to the people around you is the sight of their body, the hearing of their voice. You can close your eyes (not on the platform LOL, but like sitting on a bench there) and notice that all of the people are now merely sounds, and then imagine losing hearing. You can imagine the I-ness within each of the characters. I don't know how long that sticks for, but whenever I have to take a train journey I do this.

Thanks. You might find it interesting to know that meeting an "astral entity" during my religious awakening with DMT, there was a simultaneity to it that is very different from normal perception. On the latter end of the trip, as I came out of it a bit, a Hindu deity appeared to me. I'm not sure which one but it was blue with a forehead dot. Anyway, there was a very bizarre duality of self, because this entity seemed to be far more powerful and important than me. But infinitely less powerful than Me. At the same time as my character spoke to this being as though I were an underling, another aspect of me recognized that this deity was an appearance within me, and that it was ultimately unreal. It did not speak back to me but I spoke at it, asking if I should share this knowledge with other people. The thing asking was my character. But I also knew it to be a conversation between myself and myself.

I'm really curious as to what anyone thinks raising baseline consciousness would result in. I don't understand what it means.

Subjective Solipsism is surely the result of a finite character believing itself to be infinite. All experienced things are unquestionably finite, including so-called inner experience. And a character may take themselves, an appearance within it, to be all there is and to itself be infinite. Surely that is a mistake.

I don't follow. Pure consciousness, the thing with which you observe everything = nothing. That is not a metaphor or simile. How can nothing end? And if all something were to disintegrate back into nothing... It would cause the exact conditions that necessitate the existence of things. And thus there will always be things.

You can know. How could nothing end?????

Nothing = without limit. Pure creation itself. No limitation makes nothingness unstable... Because there is no limit or finitude to it, there is no boundary that traps it as being nothing and not something. Things are the opposite, things have limit and borders. Even infinite sets are sets of one type of thing and not another. When a limit ends, it ceases to exist, it becomes nothing, which is everything.

Yeah well the "most people" say that because they saw it on Reddit or in a book lol. Appearances aren't made of anything and there is nothing behind them, the substance of appearances is nothing. The substance of nothing is nothing. This is far clearer, explainable, and intuitive than the "is-ness" semantic choice. Something is nothing appearing limited. All limit creates thingness. Limit disappears, bubble bursts. No bubble of consciousness, bubbles of limitation.

Is there a point to it anyway? The demise of my character dissolves every aspect of it back into being everything and everywhere... What of my spiritual practices or apparent knowledge are retained or relevant? Surely this is all an intellectual quest, especially when going in VERY deep beyond the character-useful knowledge.

The idea of going into mindscapes and altering consensus reality happens when an ego tries to commandeer control of the ship, without realizing it is itself an apparition and nothing more........

Materialism is actually outright impossible, and can be proven with perhaps 10 minutes of effort. I don't think many people think things like mathematics are a physical substance. Substance is not only unlikely, but impossible.

Well the thing is, I know that I am nothingness. This isn't a theory or speculation or delusion. That is what I fundamentally am. I'm a skeptic type of person, I do not believe in magick and bullshit, but this I know...... And there seems to be implications of that. How could nothingness end? Even begin? Ever be created or destroyed? It seems untouchable. I would need further logical proof confirming that, but it really does seem to me that thingness = finity, nothingness = non-finity, eternity, and so on.

Sense of identity is only one aspect of being human. If you had zero ego you might have to live in a hospital being fed like a vegetable, as you wouldn't be able to discern where you end and other things begin. That might be partially overcome by learning though. If I learn that the fleshy stuff is my body etc, perhaps you could navigate. Life would not be very enjoyable though. It would be very difficult to do anything.

But that's the thing, "you" can't access it. You won't exist anymore, you won't be in any super-state... You will be in my limited one, everyone's limited one. You'll be in Richard Dawkins and the Dalai Llama. You'll be everywhere and everything. Which means the whole and all limitation within it simultaneously. That is what you are right now. There won't be any difference. You already are the whole appearing as something finite. When something finite ceases to be finite, it is completely dissolved into the whole. It ceases to exist. It's nothing, which is the only non-finite thing there is, and is what you fundamentally refer to when you say "I".

@Matthew85 Well those limits which do still exist which keep "Matthew" there, are the very limits which prevent Matthew from BEING the consensus reality, the thing which you say you are unable to impact with psychedelic imagination. When all limits of Matthew vanish, Matthew will be watching me type on this screen, and watching Leo vape DMT for the 50th time this week. He will BE everywhere and everything, he will be every limit and the whole.

@Matthew85 When you reach those states, assuming it is like the void, what will be happening is for ex: your body is taken out of you (word order intentional), sense of ego ceases, unity felt. Things like that. The experienced "expansion" is largely because of the first portion if I know what you refer to. When sober, your mind plays a trick by using sensory clues to anchor your awareness into an apparent location. Example, you feel you are living inside your skin because you can feel the edges of your body. When your body is removed from you, the mind does not find anywhere it can anchor the sense of awareness to (this sense always being a trick), and so it becomes entirely sizeless. Experienced directly as a sense of expansion, as it expands from beyond feeling to end at the edge of your body when your body is no longer felt. The becoming of it, unity, that is where many elements of the character ARE dissolved (which is experienced as the mentioned expansion), and so Matthew gets closer to ceasing to have any limit whatsoever (AKA being "pure consciousness" AKA nothing AKA infinity). If all limit of Matthew is removed, Matthew ceases to exist.