Cooper

All you have to do to be happy is be still.

How you view this topic depends on your state of consciousness, because ultimately everything is you, and the world is your dream. At an absurdly high level of consciousness, which is where Leo is speaking from when he realizes these things, it is undeniable that you are creating everything. He is not simply “making this shit up”. When you are in an absurdly high level of consciousness you will know you are God and there will be no doubt in your mind about it. It will feel extremely effortless and obvious to you. You will not need external verification. These discussions are silly because when you are operating within normal human consciousness, which is where the questioner is speaking from, you are in a limited state of consciousness. To experience being a human you as God must limit your consciousness, and when you do this you simultaneously project a limited world all around you, because you and the world are the same thing. And while you are limited you cannot ask another limited being in your dream for verification of what is plainly obvious at a higher state of consciousness the same way you cannot ask a dream character to verify that you’re dreaming. The only way to verify what Leo is saying is to raise your consciousness to an absurdly high level, which is not going to happen by philosophizing about it or asking another limited human being about it. And it doesn’t matter how conscious Peter Ralston is, there is no way he is at an unlimited level of consciousness where he would even be able to verify this for you because he would have to be dead. The only person who can verify this for you is God, but the catch is you are God, so you have to do it yourself.

Self-realization is a state of consciousness, but the Self itself is not a state of consciousness. The Self is the changeless substratum underlying the changing states of consciousness. It is consciousness itself. States of consciousness are like gold ornaments and consciousness is the gold the ornaments are made out of.

What do you make of someone like Ramana Maharshi who seemed to not experience fear and lived to be 70?

If you are not thoughts and feelings then they must something other than you. Can there be anything other than you? That would imply duality. Just something to think about.

Satisfaction only occurs when one stops looking for it.

This seems to be the right answer as far as I can tell. It just doesn't make sense to my finite mind because if what Leo says is true and what I'm experiencing now is all there is, that means that everything that isn't here in this now moment is being excluded for some unknowable reason. Some people would say everything IS here and now but that doesn't seem to be the case in my direct experience. There's a distinction I'm making between something existing in actuality versus something existing in potentiality which Leo would say is imaginary, and I've experienced that distinction break down on psychedelics before, but right now that distinction exists and it seems completely arbitrary why I'm experiencing what I'm experiencing right now instead of something else.

God can create an infinite variety of dreams, but if God is selfless it doesn't have any reason to choose one dream over another. So why is God deciding to dream it's a human being right now instead of something else?