RMQualtrough

Maybe Leo would appreciate the Love song...

@gettoefl How do you personally think about physical pain? I assume you still feel it. There was an Idealist philosopher some time in the past, and he was mocked by his peers by them saying something like "you say matter isn't real until I throw a brick at your head". Even materialists of course must believe that the pain itself is not real (they think it is a feeling made in the brain). But yet in either case, still, there it is. It is easy to feel that everything is not what I really am until a needle is stuck in my arm.

I had derealization during periods of EXTREME stress. Appears to be the body's defence mechanism to detach from the pain. I also had it after a period of DMT usage. The paradigm shift was too sudden and I did not understand the implications entirely. Once it is realized that life fundamentally has not changed, it tends to subside. E.g. something a person may consider about the ideology is that literally everything is REAL rather than unreal. It also helps to leave spirituality for a little while and focus on narcissistic type pursuits until you feel mentally well again. At some point the idea will not cause this issue.

@gettoefl And yet I find that when I have a blood test done I can't help but fear the needle! Isn't it strange. I can know that fundamentally, the sense of the needle is not my true nature (rather, an impermanent fleeting thing), yet it still causes distress.

"You" is a completely arbitrary label that we apply to what even in a Materialist sense is nothing more than a relay of action and reaction... When experienceD exists there is an experienceR. There must be, as experience is made of two parts. We say that I see, I taste, I hear. But on examination you will see why it does not really make sense in a Materialist paradigm: When we see does the ENTIRE BODY see? Does the entire BRAIN see? Does only the eye see? Does only the visual cortex see? Where do we draw the line... And when hearing is happening, does the entire brain hear? Only the ear? Only whichever part of the brain deals with sound? If there are distinct elements sensing these things then there is not really a singular "self" from that paradigm. If there is one singular unchanging self that experiences all of these things despite the actual sense happening in separate locations in space, then we may begin to get an idea on consciousness as a whole. The people who undergo the surgery that splits the brain hemispheres also provide important insight.

Some might be unable. Richard Dawkins for example has a history of schizophrenia in his family (perhaps also why he is so fundamentalist-materialist?), and Jordan Peterson has severe mental health problems. He has been hospitalized before in a coma from abusing benzos so hard.

@Adamq8 I have been enjoying this book greatly.

A user here, @Mason Riggle, wrote something which has now been deleted, describing the mechanism via which everythingness arises from literal absolute total nothingness (if I understood him correctly). The mechanism was about how in absolute nothing there is no such thing as limit or boundary and followed from there, that nothingness can be anything because it's without limit. This to me was very strong. I have attempted to find religions or philosophies which expand upon or share this idea, but every time I find someone who says "nothing" they mean a something. Including physicists with their BS "nothing" (actually quantum fluctation), pushed as literal nothing due to the ulterior motive of attempting to rek Theists. So is there anything at all which lays down literal, absolute, total nothingness as necessitating infinite everythingness? If so would be very curious to read upon that.

What Is Life? - Erwin Schrödinger (famous quantum physicist and Vedanta enthusiast) Tryptamine Palace: 5-MeO-DMT and the Sonoran Desert Toad - James Oroc Consciousness Is Everything: The Yoga of Kashmir Shaivism - Swami Shankarananda DMT: The Spirit Molecule - Rick Strassman, M.D. Why Materialism is Baloney - Bernardo Kastrup (sans the psi stuff) Being Aware of Being Aware - Rupert Spira LSD: My Problem Child - Albert Hofmann ... The DMT and LSD books I got to understand the history and nature of these substances out of interest. They are important cornerstones of modern psychedelic history. I just have these books to cement my own understanding of my own experiences. Sometimes a person can verbalize something you have experienced or are thinking in a way that allows integration.

@Adamq8 That is okay, I think the above posters can just know that, essentially, "I enjoyed and appreciated their posts" lol. Thanks for clarifying on the book, I will purchase this now as I think it's on Kindle.

I saw this actually and was going to purchase it I saw it proposes nothingness is in fact just consciousness though. And I mean it is infinite consciousness LOL but like, the precise metaphysics and mechanics of the hows and whys are important to me (I'm more of a philosopher than a self-improver), and I feel that it is not "just" consciousness but all things. I am judging based on a review I read though. ---

@Nahm Do we perhaps all mean the same thing? Thank you for the reminder that mind EQUALS matter. When conceptualizing things in sober life that tends to be done by heirarchy. E.g. "appearances IN mind". I like the term nothingness because of the implicit answer to most difficult metaphysical questions. If the term "everythingness" is used (nothingness = everythingness, infinity), a typical person may ask "where did the everything come from?" If the term "nothingness" is used, the question is defeated. They mean the same thing because there cannot be literal nothingness, but that is WHY there is everythingness? But yeah to me it seems like in this paradigm, consciousness is simply an ASPECT of the infinity, of this eternal and infinite nothingness/everythingness. All things are equal to (literally ARE) that Source. Godhead. Void. Etc.

@VeganAwake Thanks for your recommendations. I just found Alan Watts before seeing your post, who has many many videos on this, and I see that is Buddhism. I already knew of him but had not gone into his work. I was not aware of Jainism.

I found this by Alan Watts: Which seems similar. I see he followed Buddhist teachings. That sounds like the Nothingness/Everythingness I mean. I see why it might be labelled consciousness considering it is impossible for humans to experience anything outside of our relative viewpoint (even in a void trip). But why should consciousness not merely be something that the everything IS. Rather than the everything being something consciousness is?

@Nahm The foundation is what I am trying to say is literal nothingness. Everything exists there all at once by the mechanism outlined by Mason. From Nothing comes Everything I think... Things don't come and go because there's only one thing fundamentally where infinity resides. Which is this nothing/everything conglomerate. I heard someone verbalize a similar idea. That intuitively we BELIEVE we come out of reality into a dream and then into deep sleep. But they proposed it is the other way round, and deep sleep is in fact the natural state where we in fact always are and all things are. That seems correct. Why that deep sleep cannot be literal nothingness (which is literal everythingness at the same time, that is the catch) I'm not sure. I like the loose ends tied up if it in fact is that way. I have heard some other users discuss similar thoughts but I am not sure what religion or philosophy reflects such a thing. I don't know why it has to be consciousness and why consciousness cannot merely be one of the infinite things "it" is. That is, all things exist simultaneously from this source. Similar to neutral monism. NOT the same as it but similar. It is still possible to have mind prior to matter. And the underlying something is just "____". There's no term. Just a literal nothingness which is an everythingness.

You couldn't ever find it, only by inference. What is observer without observed? Some Buddhist traditions tie the two together for the reasoning that they are necessary as a pair (I may be wrong?). We can say for example that a rock is consciousness (as are landscapes in our dreams), but prior to relative experience, if we envision a universe of nothing but rocks, the observer is dormant as we would be in deep sleep or under general anaesthetic. But these things and this universe still exist. It seems more basic if awareness is a property OF the nothing, that can go into and out of "deep sleep". When there is experience it wakes up, when there is no experience it rests. That way there is no "what caused THAT to exist?" because it is a something, and people like somethings to have an explanation. Nothingness does not need an explanation for how it exists, because it doesn't. It ties up some things neatly. I like this theory presently but I am subject to change a lot (lol).

@Nahm Usually they say nothing then later are like "the nothing is consciousness", which isn't actually literal nothingness (since consciousness is something which exists). I am searching for total non-existence as fundamental. Infinite everythingness is rather the opposite of limitation I feel? Unlimited things it can be. To me it feels like nothing having to REMAIN as nothing would be a limit. Nothingness without limitation or boundary on the other hand can be anything as there's nothing stopping it from doing so, and no finite boundary to stop it from being infinite and as such then being everything?

You can only get close to it. When duality stops existing, experience cannot occur. Consider a dream of a beach. The very moment you see the beach you are localized at some point within it, and there is an appearance of duality. If duality ceased, it would be impossible for you to see the beach at all because seeing is an experience, and experience creates experiencer and duality. When there is no appearance of duality there is only everythingness which = nothingness as above. That nothingness is the same state entered during general anaesthetic. We don't come "out of" nothingness and "go back" into it (there is nowhere to come out of or go to), we are all currently as we speak in a state of something like general anaesthetic. That is the ground, the foundation. We are always nothing, but something appears, and when that something appears duality appears and then it is possible for there to be an experience of something, and thus an experiencer. Who is looking through your eyes, hearing through your ears? The Absolute ("God") is. Not you AND God. Just God. You are an illusion, there's no such thing as a "you". There is only God. Where are your dead loved ones? Your dead loved ones are looking through your eyes. They are God, and so are "you". What you call "you" is merely something God experiences, God tastes with your tongue, feels your emotions, smells with your nose. God experiences your brain and hence your memories and body and so on. All of these things are inside of God and made of God... How could God possibly create something outside of itself or with anything but itself? There is no space so nowhere else to place anything. There is nothing else in existence so it can only craft something with itself. There is nothing else at all.

Hey, I was hoping for your feedback regarding experience of cessation. I believe cessation is the only "true" experience of sheer nonduality (AKA literal escape from duality), though a "person" cannot subjectively actually experience the cessation in the sense that instead you seem to just skip forward in time. Everything before cessation toes only up to the edge of the cliff face. As long as there is an appearance of ANYTHING there is still localization and hence an appearance of duality, regardless of how whatever is left interprets it.

Cause and effect is a duality, it is two things. There is a cause + an effect. In nonduality there would only be "effect". Cause has no meaning without an effect: If something happens but nothing else happens as a result, it's not a cause. Something is only a cause when something else happens as a result of it. The most fundamental thing must just be "effect", arising without cause. Everything which arises from "effect" then makes the effect a cause...

I am strongly considering that reality including mind is not real and that everything is LITERAL nothingness. Literal nothingness necessitates everythingness by way of the nonexistence of limit and its infinite nature. Someone posted something here recently which I found paradigm shifting, in conjunction with a Spira and Leo video I saw.

There ought to be a "like" react button so we can send love and well wishes without having to make a comment.

Do you want my current pet theory? I believe you are making a mistake in the sense that you think you came OUT of nothingness and will go BACK INTO nothingness. I think in actual fact nothingness is where you are and reside right now. Whatever we cqll foundational reality, it would be impossible to come out of it... Consider: If there is nothing but one thing, there is nowhere "else" to place something so that something must be placed within itself. If there is nothing "else" then whatever exists must be made OF that thing. I am thinking nothingness is the realm of what we can call metaphorical God. Dormant consciousness? Or not even that. Perhaps true nothing. I give you this analogy: In a dream you may be inside a complex landscape and have a dream body and so on, and yet where you really are the entire time is lying in bed... Consider that where you reside now is like that dream, and where you really are this entire time is residing in nothingness.

Soz to hear. I'm in the UK so to hear of people being near bankrupted to receive medical care seems insane. Surely being able to actually live is the most basic human right? What sort of Darwinian nightmare is it where we just throw the sick to the wolves to die? It seems a simple step away from eugenics. Anyway. I mentioned you a few times in my thread about the impossibility of experiencing nonduality (due to your experience with cessation). I know this site doesn't notify for such things but I'd be much obliged if you could give your input on the matter. As I see it, cessation is the only direct "experience" of nonduality, though ironically it's a non-experience.

If reality doesn't contain free will is it still "absolutely infinite"?