RMQualtrough

A seed could never become the very tree it came from. Any finite thing is an expression of the infinite, it would not work for the finite thing to try to make ITSELF the infinite, it would have to lose its finity. Which means it stops existing... But if it stops existing, nothing has actually changed. The finite thing didn't become infinite. Infinity always was. So it doesn't even work. You can't take a person which is something finite, and transform them the person into the infinite.

https://m.facebook.com/watch/?v=1661447330711697&_rdr "Hi there. I'm Cody, pronouns e/em/eir/eirs or xe/xem/xyr/xyrs or really any neopronouns that aren't ze/hir/hirs. I am a white transmasculine, femme, non-binary, temporarily mostly able-bodied, neurodivergent, obsessive compulsive, chronically ill, culutrally Jewish, Unitarian Universalist, nonmonogamous, demilowromantic, greydemibisexual, survivor of acute and complex trauma, millenial and cat parent in mental health recovery." No Cody you are literally NONE of those things.

It's completely impossible, you are trying to escape the appearance of any finitude. The person you are is finite. To fully become the infinity as a WHOLE you're talking about obliterating the finite... And furthermore there's no person anyway, a person is not a real thing so no person can become infinite, I can see it's like really off semantics to even be saying person. Imagine a leaf trying to actually, as a leaf, become the entire tree...

No, I only ever experienced themes of Oneness and ego death. And sometimes the notion of being "Brahman" using my body as a puppet. One time stroking my face saying Brahman over and over... Rather disturbing overall to be honest. Looking back over trip reports it appears I got "I am existence" and not that I made or designed anything.

The magnitude of all-that-is, reduced me to screaming and crying (tripping hard, never again).

@Random witch Because full awakening doesn't exist. Dead people are fully awakened but the Catch-22 is, when you are fully awakened you don't exist anymore, so death doesn't allow for an experience of fully awakening, just removes you. Which is equivalent to a person fully awakening.

I think it would be "Brahman" which essentially uses you like a puppet if you see what I mean. Brahman typing with your fingers, Brahman reading these words with your eyes. This being one limited point, a nexus point as you say.

@Nahm Because it would be incorrect lol. Unless I'm the only non-cutout, in which case it's correct. But I don't see that it would be necessary at all. Exactly as you say, who is deciding things I'm not consciously deciding. Who is crafting the landscapes around me (and the landscapes in dreams which occur without my conscious manipulation). No matter the answer, even "nobody", to me that is a clear display of multiplicity. Then also, if everyone else is lying about having experience, WHAT is deciding that they lie if I am not consciously doing so? Why would they not just admit "lol yeah we're zombies bro"? @Breakingthewall I think you're right. I don't think there's some secret extra level. Same I, different eyes... To me this is not contradictory. This entire identity is just one limited expression, I don't see that there could not be many of them at once.

What do you mean? There's ultimately no point to anything ofc but you still do find people discussing it. Humans are naturally curious about reality. A teaching of the cardboard cutout type Solipsism, would simply be wrong unless I'm the only non-cutout... Which is possible... But I don't know why it would have to be. Actually there's much to say on the matter. Even though it is possible my mind is all there is, it does not have the ability to manipulate reality completely when I'd expect it would as per a lucid dream... An "unconscious" level of imagination, to me, is already proving some multiplicity. Acknowledging a capital "You" is to me already multiplicity. This is where I think of trees. Some say you are the whole tree, you mean "You" the capital. Or Mind with the capital. That is very different from little you or mind uncapitalized being the entire tree. The limited is an aspect of the unlimited, not vice versa. What in this would negate the possibility of varying perspectives? It is two views of nonduality. I never got the impression that the limited view, for example this sight of my screen, must be all there is. That was never an impression I got.

Severe mental illness is RIFE in these communities. I'm not sure why the mentally ill are being encouraged to lose their grip on reality even further. And if someone goes the route of saying like, nothing matters everything is equally real etc, then you will quickly see the consequence. Bridges.

@Nahm By wooden planks, I'm basically saying the form of Solipsism which would deny experience other than, for example right now, seeing of this screen I type on. In the type of Solipsism I refer to, the seeing of your screen as you read this simply isn't happening, and when you say it is, you are just like a cardboard cutout pretending you're seeing. No experience I ever had gave me a sense of negating the idea that you would be seeing your screen as I see mine. It was more like everything that is, is just one beingness. And there could easily be many viewpoints because why not? What was denied was physical separation and form as being ultimately real. E.g. if I saw you as a human, that human form is not really there. But there was no sense of a negation of there being seeing happening from the perspective of that form. Like a shared dream scenario, that didn't ever seem negated by any experience.

@Nahm I had various strong DMT trips where certain things were revealed to me. For example the loss of categorization of things and understanding of everything as "existence". There is 0% chance I would have any interest in this at all, but my own direct experience pointed me to Advaita Vedanta (the first thing I found when Googling for monist religions following the experience). I then read and found things which reinforced to me certain things which I viewed through the lens of the experience(s) I had. My actual experience has always reflected Advaita Vedanta exactly, not so much Solipsism except in bad trips but even then it wasn't that type of Solipsism. Very odd that in that first trip, I hallucinated a Hindu goddess (some blue figure with a forehead dot) on the comedown... I have also hallucinated people in prayer with their legs crossed etc. Not sure why I saw those things. My own experience has not been like Buddhist teachings so much, except Taoism. You can't actually refer to pure consciousness unless you call it I or me or you or consciousness. When I was pulled back very far away from objects, I knew myself to be nothing. All of me was removed from me. What is left, you would call it "I" because it IS what we fundamentally are. Not a "me" anymore. In those states Solipsism did not really occur to me. I never came away from any trip thinking everyone else is a cardboard cutout acting for my amusement. I felt unity with everything like an embrace, a "WE" are everything is how it felt... It never felt to deny the essence of others, only their material appearance and spatial physical separation. It never denied the sense of others existing as alter egos of what I fundamentally am (me is also an alter ego). It could feel lonely as others were like myself talking to myself. But it never occurred that those alter egos were basically wooden planks. If Leo thinks I am just a wooden plank I know for a fact he is wrong. Rupert Spira is able to verbalize exactly what I experienced very concisely. Leo is able to acknowledge nothingness which is also something I knew myself to be. I have not ever heard anyone else discuss nothingness. Just no-thing, which is not like what I experienced when I felt to be made of nothingness.

There still hasn't been any straight answer regarding which form of Solipsism people here are subscribing to. It's pretty important to know if Leo thinks what he's experiencing is the ONLY experience, because then I know beyond question he's delusional and out of his mind, or conversely a wooden plank acting for me as in a dream. When on the ToE podcast, he was much more careful about using You capitalized, etc. Has his position changed? If people use words to retreat from the question I assume it's the wooden plank form. Otherwise it would be easy to clarify it's multiplicity with one beingness.

I'm not denying my own experiences or spending hours on semantics. You all 100% know what I mean when saying you, I, our, others. People either believe their PoV is the only one that exists, or they think there are many. Which one is being proposed? Because if it's only one PoV, you're all planks of wood and setting you alight causes no pain. Do you feel pain when I set you alight or not?

It's quite a disingenuous use of the term Solipsism if it is anything other than a denial that, for example, what I'm seeing rn is the ONLY sight, same for feeling etc. In fact I know I am seeing and thinking and feeling so that would completely prove all of you are as dead as a rock. If I were to set someone on fire no pain is felt as I don't feel it. They're just wooden planks acting. Even Leo is just a plank acting. This is wildly different to multiplicity in oneness. It means rather the sight of your computer screen is outright not happening. So that is the case or what? Are people just wooden plank actors for me to do with as I please?

@Salvijus There's nothing wrong with black coffee. Only that it stains teeth.

I think you are referring to nothing when you say "I", but that is different from not being. It seems to me that nothingness is the core of existence itself.

By how humans have decided to define it, beligerent drunk is not considered sober, being high on drugs is not considered sober, and Frank Yang is FAR from what we have collectively decided to call sober. If everyone was in mania as the natural state, then I would not be considered sober. Frank is constantly manic, and actually mentioned several mental disorders he's diagnosed with. You don't need drugs when you're naturally tripping all the time.

Because you're making a concession to some sort of agreed upon thing to discuss sobriety to begin with... We have a sort of agreed upon idea of what sober means and are talking in reference to what that idea is agreed to represent. Frank is very very very far from that. If everyone was like Frank, that would be called sobriety. It has NOTHING to do with states of consciousness, nothingness is always the same. What you mean is the contents of mind, what you mean by states of consciousness is just content of mind. And that differs.

Frank is genuinely severely mentally ill. I've noticed the mentally ill have spontaneous "awakenings" a lot, and sometimes during this, end up in an institution. I think this is like Leo says, different neurochemistry. Frank is NEVER "sober" as we'd call it, he's always somewhere off in lala-land which most of us only reach with drugs. That's why he can reach certain states sober. Because he's NOT sober (as it's usually meant). Ever.

Meditation is gay. Drugs warped my brain into giving me at least some proveable answers. Drugs are also trauma inducing. Never again would I touch a psychedelic.

The ego self, the finite experience, would be the leaf. My leaf and your leaf are different. But we are both just the tree. If you end, the tree doesn't end, the leaf ends. Is it like that, which allows for simultaneous perspectives all had by one I, or is it sequential.

If you look at a leaf on a tree, one leaf could not be another leaf, yet both are simultaneously and inescapably the tree. If everything me, which would mean this thing via which I type to you, is a leaf, sharing its treeness with many other leafs and fundamentally BEING the tree (as there is only tree), then why could there then only be one leaf at a time? It is still oneness with an appearance of division in that scenario. There already is an appearance of division necessary, since if you layered a bunch of film reels on top of each other eventually the projected image would just be black. Finitude allows for distinction and form. But is it the case that these forms and identities are like tree leaves, with an underlying singular being, or that there is just one form at a time? I think it's difficult to comprehend, I'm not sure what the answer is.

This needs to be deeply expanded upon. Time and space are mediums via which experience can happen. That is all I can say... Are you proposing a sort of sequential life-living like The Egg (in terms of first person PoV)? How does it work?