Strannik

Re. solipsism ,here is a good quote: “It still remains a scandal to philosophy and to human reason in general that the existence of things outside us … must be accepted merely on faith, and that if anyone thinks good to doubt their existence, we are unable to counter his doubts by any satisfactory proof.” Critique of Pure Reason, B519. So yeah, solipsism (either Hume's or Advaitist version) obviously cannot be disproved, but neither it can be proved. It forever remains an unverifiable and unfalsifiable hypothesis, or a matter of belief if we want to take it religiously. Surely this belief is liberating in a way (from the illusion of a separate self), but in another way it is obviously lacking in huge explanatory gaps. "I am the Infinite God but I have no clue why and how I am dreaming what I'm dreaming, why there is so much suffering experienced in the dream and how to stop it." And, by the way, we do not have to believe in "I am the infinite God" in order to realize that our belief in a separate self is an illusion, otherwise we are just replacing "I am human" belief with "I am God" belief (surely the latter feels better .

1. So if you are God, then you must be driving it. Then, for example, please explain why you chose the dream to comply exactly with Schrodinger equation? And why can't you jump off the window and fly if you are God? Or (if you can't) is it that one of God's hands does not know what the other "hidden" one is doing? In other words, "I am God with multiple personality disorder. It's my other personality that is doing this and I have no clue why I'm doing this ... ". 2. "He wants us to suffer." OK, please explain exactly why, what is the purpose and what is the benefit of suffering (with an example of severely abused child). I hope you are familiar with Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Karamazov Brothers (Suffering of Children)

Regarding solipsism, it is quite obvious stuff, but the subject is confusing in this thread because of the lack of clear definitions. The classical aka-Hume solipsism is denying that any conscious experiences exist other than "my own" conscious experiences present here and now. In other words, translating to the "dream of Consciousness" language, none of the dream characters in this world (except the "me"-character) have "their own" conscious experiences. But Leo is referring to a "Universal Consciousness" variant of solipsism which is different from Hume's. Surely, if Consciousness is the only subject of all conscious experiences of this dream, then technically it is solipsism, but that's not Hume's version of solipsism because this does not mean that other conscious experiences exist apart form "my own" personal conscious experiences present here and now (in other words, that the dream characters do not have their own experiences).

The realization of the possibility of "Consciousness dreaming the world including all its characters" is so elementary and obvious that only complete idiots don't get it these days. But none of those I saw who called themselves "enlightened" have ever been able to explain how exactly this dream is being manifested and why it is following the exact mathematical rules of physical laws down to tiny particles. So, as it turns out, you/me/us, the Infinite God, is completely helpless and is so dumb that it cannot even understand how and why it dreams what it dreams, and cannot even manipulate the dream even if it would want to (any Gods here ever learnt how to fly?) Leo, in one of your videos you mentioned that you severely suffer from a digestive problem. If you are the Infinite God, why can't you manipulate the dream to stop your suffering? So, sure, we may be the Infinite Consciousness ontologically, but there is still a huge explanatory gap in this realization. We, being Consciousness, are completely clueless about how and why it dreams what it dreams, how to make sense of this dream and how to manipulate it to reduce suffering (and there undeniably is a lot of suffering experienced in this dream).

"God is First Cause" is your mind-fabricated idea. If holding to it makes you more comfortable than holding to a mind-fabricated idea of "I have a free will", then go for it. Or you may choose not to hold to any mind fabricated ideas, may be that is what the freedom is?

Right. And adding to this, what makes us even dare to think that we are in principle have a cognitive or experiential capacity of knowing or understanding those things that are "extremely fundamental to reality"? It's like even the smartest monkeys or dogs are still completely incapable of understanding philosophy or mathematics. In the same way, those levels "extremely fundamental to reality" may be completely out of our reach for our human cognitive capacity. All our natural science is simply mathematical modeling of correlations of observable phenomena, there is no evidence or reason to believe that it opens to us any deeper fundamental levels of reality. And all our philosophy, academic or spiritual, is simply trying to apply reason and logic, that we developed from studying correlations of observable phenomena, to the levels "extremely fundamental to reality". What makes us think that these primitive cognitive tools of logic and reason are even applicable to those fundamental levels? One example of our complete inability to even approach these fundamental levels is a notorious question of "why here is something rather than nothing?". Modern science and philosophy do not even have a slightest clue how to even approach this question.

Let’s start from a quote from Leo’s talk with Curt: “time is overlay or projection that universal mind is imagining on top of the now”. Similarly it can be said that “matter is overlay or projection that universal mind is imagining on top of the given conscious experience”. However, these projections are also equally part of the given “this”, of the flow of qualia of the given conscious experience happening now. Why then these projections are considered any less “true” or in any way inferior compared to the presence of the given raw conscious experience at the instance of now which we consider to be the “Absolute”? Since there is no hierarchy in the Absolute, then any overlaid projections must be equally the Absolute and must be as true and real as any other experiences, qualia or ideas. Why then ideas and projections, be them true of false, are considered inferior to the given raw conscious experience if any ideas are always inseparable from the given conscious experience? Any ideas or projections are equally qualia of our conscious experience and are in fact as “raw” as any other kinds of the qualia of conscious experience. If we experience our hands as the “reality here and now”, then the overlaid idea that “these hands are material objects existing beyond my consciousness”, if it happens to appear in our stream of conscious phenomena, is also equally consciously experienced as qualia, as the reality here and now, and there is no way to distinguish and prioritize the raw sensual experience of the hands over any overlaid idea about the hands no matter how wild this idea can be. For example, Leo says that “the shape of a castle is a concept of a second order”, but that implies the existence of a preference and hierarchy in the reality: the Being is the fundamental preferred zero-order, the raw sensual qualia are the first-order phenomena, and the imaginations and concepts are the second-order phenomena that are somehow inferior in “truthfulness” or “reality” compared to the phenomena of the more fundamental orders. But such prioritization is already an idea that belongs to the second order, and there can equally be other alternative ways of prioritization where, for example, the concepts can be claimed to be more fundamental with respect to qualia of the raw experience and to the Being itself. If fact, there is a Plationic version of idealism claiming that the Absolute Idea is the ontic fundamental, and the being, awareness and qualia of conscious experience are only secondary forms and aspects of it. So, the view that the Being-Awareness is fundamental and is prior to any concepts is only a belief and an implicit idea which lies in the blind spot of the subjective idealism paradigms (such as Leo’s, Rupert Spira’s and like). I’m well aware that we all can directly realize and experience the “indivisible Beingness-Awareness”, as I did it myself, and that’s fine, but then we construct a belief that somehow this “Beingness-Awareness” must be more “true”, more “real” and more “fundamental” as compared to all other fleeting phenomena and qualia of our direct experience, including any concepts and ideas. But that is just another abstract idea, there is actually no sound reason to believe that it is true (there are logical arguments for that, but that’s all logic and reasoning which is just another set of ideas). In order to distinguish truth from non-truth, there needs to be a criterion of truth belonging to a category of meta-truths. But there can be many criteria of truth, why prefer one over the other? In order to have a criterion of truth that is selected from all other alternative criteria, we need a meta-criterion of truth to assess the truthfulness of the criteria of truth, and by repeating the same argument we run into an endless process that never arrives to a definite criterion of truth at any meta-order. And even if we would somehow arrive at a criterion of truth at any meta-level, it would still be only an idea, a mental form among any other possible ideas or forms of consciousness with no possibility to choose and prioritize between them. Leo: “Meanings are illusions, meanings are what we construct, Being is what actually is”. The belief that the Absolute-Being exists as something of its own and as a fundamental Reality is simply one of our abstract ideas. If we carefully examine the given facts of our direct experience, we find that what we actually directly experience is only a finite flow of phenomenal qualia in our field of direct conscious experience at the instance of now, where any phenomenon (be it a meaning, idea, sensation, emotion, imagination etc) is equally present and equally real by the very fact of their presence in our conscious experience. We usually construct many ideas about this flow and about the phenomena and their origins and causal relations, but all those ideas, once they arise, immediately become equally real and equally present as qualia and as inseparable part of our field of experience. In other words, the ideas, thoughts and meanings are also simply phenomena of our direct conscious experience. This is all we can know and directly experience as facts. The unsolvable epistemological puzzle is that there is no inherent “right” way to prioritize and sort these phenomenal qualia according to their degree of truthfulness or a degree or reality, or a degree of relativity or absoluteness, because any such way of sorting and prioritizing would be just another constructed idea, another phenomenon. That includes any ideas about the primacy of the Absolute, God, Being, Awareness or whatever you want to call it. The unchangeable presence of awareness-beingness is definitely a fact of our direct experience, no question about that, but to assume that the awareness-beingness is somehow more “fundamental” or more “absolute” with respect to other phenomena is only an abstract and constructed idea. The well-observed fact that the awareness-suchness is omnipresent in our experience and never changes is not a sufficient justification to declare them to be “ontologically more fundamental”, more “true” or “more inherent” to reality as compared to any other phenomena, ideas or aspects of reality. Similarly, there is no ground to declare any of our meanings, ideas, imaginations or thoughts as “false” or “unreal” or “secondary” since they are all equally real and equally present in our direct conscious experience together with all other qualia and with their suchness-awareness. For example, what if there exists a beyond-consciousness Meta-Reality? It would be something like a Kantian “thing in itself” for us that we can never possibly know, imagine or experience, so we have all practical grounds to deny its existence based on the principle of parsimony (as Bernardo Kastrup usually argues). But such Meta-Reality would not care about our ability to experience it and about our principles, it would still exist by itself regardless of what we believe, think or perceive. We may still choose to ignore it and believe that “Consciousness is all there is”, and we indeed have all practical reasons to do that, because conscious experience is the only thing we can actually ever know and experience, and because the existence of such Meta-Reality would be absolutely irrelevant to our practical life and existence anyway. But still, this would only be a belief if we take it in a religious way, or an assumption if we take it in a philosophical way. In other words, “Consciousness is all there is” is still a limited paradigm, a belief, a choice among other possible beliefs or assumptions, and possible versions of Reality. But any belief system, no matter how practically useful it may be at a certain stage of our development, becomes a limitation at some further stage. By adopting a belief that “Consciousness is all there is” we still corner ourselves into a very specific and limited worldview, no matter how practical, comfortable or nirvanic it may be. Would not the ultimate liberation be letting go of any beliefs, including the belief that “Consciousness is all there is”? So, what if this “oneness” or “the truth of non-duality” is as much a constructed trickery of the mind as the “world of duality”? What if the “nondual Self” is as much an abstraction and projection as the “individual self”? What if we simply fool ourselves by flipping from one kind of mind-constructed view of reality into another equally mind-constructed one: from naïve realism of believing in the reality of separate subjects and separate material objects outside our individual minds and in the absolute truth of our mind constructed meanings to a naïve nondualism of interpreting the reality as a fundamental nondual “Absolute-God-Consciousness-Self-Awareness-Beingness is all there is”? The latter might arguably be more practically meaningful, functional and productive, at least for some people, but that does not necessarily mean that it is ultimately true. And what if there are other levels of realization beyond both of these mind-constructed beliefs-views of reality, and beyond any other possible mind-constructed beliefs-views of reality for that matter? Just like Leo said that any meaning is mind-constructed, but he still believes that the “Being” is prior to meaning, it would be a simple realization that there is nothing prior to anything else, and all our beliefs in the primacy of something with respect to something else is also nothing else then a constructed meaning. And then what’s left would be a real freedom from deceiving ourselves into any beliefs in the absoluteness or absolute truthfulness of anything and simply abiding in the given reality of the direct conscious experience just as it is present here and now. This is not agnosticism, not a denial of any possibility of knowledge, but a simple realization that any knowledge can only be mind-constructed, pragmatic and relative, including any realization of “Being” or “one's ABSOLUTE nature” or any other kind of “spaghetti monster” that we would want to believe to be “prior to” any knowledge. But from that perspective, we can still acquire and exercise knowledge, including non-dual realization. However, any knowledge we have will always be contingent. The difference is in the fitness of the knowledge. The fitness can be assessed from practical and consistency perspectives: any knowledge has higher fitness if it is more useful for our functioning and more consistent in correspondence with the body of facts. In that respect the nondual knowledge arguably has the highest fitness as compared to any other currently available to us.

Yeah, I get you point, I think I commented on that already, see below. It still matters from the practical perspective what kind of formlessness is at the "very bottom" in terms of whether it is accessible for direct experience (like "Pure Awareness") or not (first comment). And also, you are right only within the framework of ontology and only providing that the ontic prime is formlessness (of whatever kind it might be), which may not necessarily be the case (as per my second comment below). You might argue that, even if the "bottom-level ontic prime" is beyond consciousness, for us it would be practically irrelevant, and what practically matters for us is that the "upper-level" formless ontic prime (Awareness) is still available for our direct experience. That is actually how I approach this. But things may get more tricky in some other ontological scenarios, for example, in dual-property monism or panpsychism, where there is not only formlessness but also other forms (like material forms) outside formlessness which also don't have anything to do with our current experience of forms. Of course, we would still be touching the base of the formless awareness, it would be just a derivative fundamental property rather than the ontic prime itself. The only ontological scenario where it would all be completely ruined is materialism where awareness is simply an emergent epiphenomenon and nothing special or "fundamental".

Sure, I'm not claiming to be fully enlightened, and so quite likely still have a bunch of "absolute" beliefs hiding in my blind spots. But I'm working on them, so thanks for pointing.

In the modern Western environment people can and will do with spirituality whatever they want, self-productively use or self-destructively abuse it in all possible ways, there is nothing I can do about it. It's just that, if you look at ancient nondual traditions like Advaita or Buddhism (at least at the most advanced of their practitioners), it was not supposed to work as a "spiritual drug", but rather as a practical way to transform and liberate people from delusions and suffering in a spiritually healthy way. Again, I'm not suggesting to take it religiously, but see them as good examples of how spirituality can be approached in healthy and productive ways.

anything taken as a contingent truth is not a religion, but just a relative view. It only becomes religion when taken as "the absolute truth".

All our human life is a continuous flow of problems and suffering, yet there is nothing wrong with it, it's just the way it is We are just natural survival mechanisms trying to minimize suffering and become happier, and getting "enlightened" is just one of the natural ways to do that, and there is nothing wrong with it either

Nonduality as a teaching is actually pretty elementary for any sufficiently intelligent person (unless you want to go into philosophical debris). It's actually practicing and changing your whole psyche to align with the teaching that is usually hard. So, it's the practical stuff that matters more, and in that respect Spira's material is pretty good IMO.

I'm not mad at you, I'm concerned about you and other young people like you (purely out of compassion). You example just shows the problem in general that I was pointing to. Spirituality should not be a drug to get high on, but there are always people who want to take it as a drug, and because there is a demand, there will always be smart "spiritual drug dealers" selling this stuff.

Exactly. Osho is obviously a fake (even though a really smart one). I personally know someone who lived in his ashram for many years and knows what was going on as an insider, it was outrageous. But you still resonate with his madness giving you "spiritual high" rather than with precision and depth of Spira's teachings that require mundane and hard spiritual work on yourself. That's exactly the problem.

But one thing I want to add: for idealist philosophers and spiritual teachers the quality of teaching and presenting the material matters. Kastrup, Rupert Spira, even more populistic Tolle give good quality teachings, and that, as a cumulative effect, can make idealism and nonduality more and more influential. But poor quality teachings do exactly the opposite and compromise the movement. That's why I'm more concerned about poor quality and toxic presentations of nonduality teachings by teachers like Leo and other similar cheap teachers. Spiritual teaching requires high level of maturity, knowledge and experience, that is why in spiritual traditions (like Buddhism) the lineage holders would only pass the transmissions to the students they tested and trusted. In our days there are a lot of self-proclaimed immature "Enlightened" teachers presenting poor quality practices and teachings (which you can also pretty much tell by wild beliefs and unhinged behavior of the followers), especially because it is so tempting to make money on that, and eventually it is going to take a toll and divert people from nonduality.

omg! there is only "now" but its phenomenal content constantly changes and we directly experience it "one content at a time". This is an idiom in English language and does not mean that I believe that time is real. (and when are you going to stop pretending to be an idiot?)

Agreed!

Right, agree with that. I'm very familiar with Kastrup's work. He usually uses the parsimony argument, which is pragmatically relevant, but still cannot be used to rule out other ontologies completely (because the Reality, whatever it is, would not care less about our parsimony arguments). Other than that, I agree that pragmatically idealism is more appealing. But pragmatic choice of a paradigm is a contingent choice. Pragmatism, parsimony and simplicity cannot justify the claim of the "absolute truth". So, the bottom-line: as a contingent and pragmatic truth, idealism is good, no question about that (and that is why It's still a choice of mine), but that alone does not qualify it to be the "absolute truth" (which is the answer to the title of the topic). So, you are right about the choice that laymen take. The issue I'm addressing in this topic is that for them it is most often simply replacing one religion (of materialism or whatever they had) with another (of idealism), still remaining within the framework of religious beliefs. I'm not saying it is a problem that needs to be urgently fixed. It's ok to have beliefs, this is what majority of people do. It's just that some people may be mature enough to go beyond any religious frameworks. (what a pleasure to talk with intelligent person )

Nope, infinity is infinity, it must include everything here and now. If you are experiencing thoughts one at a time, that's not an experince of infinity, that's an experience of finitude. You can "extrapolate" it to infinity in your imagination or abstract thinking, but it would be just that - imagination or thinking, not actual experience. That's what I said (how many times?) - people are mistaking their fantasies for reality, that's how any religion works.

If you think you are experiencing the totality of infinity right now, why aren't you experiencing my thoughts or feelings that must be included in the same infinity? Thell me what I'm seeing right now and I will believe in infinity. But if you can't, that means you are just fooling yourself with a fantasy about "infinity".

well, there are so many variants of ontologies offering so many different versions of reality with different modes of interaction or causal relations between "this" and "other than this", some of them may be practically irrelevant to our mode of functioning, but others may be more relevant. How about dual aspect monism, or panpsychism, or dualism, or classical theology, or just plain materialism (yeah, it faces the "hard problem of consciousness" but that's not a complete showstopper yet)?

as I said, you can either directly experience the actual infinity (not "feel" or think about it, but actually experience), or have an idea about it. Because I don't believe the former is possible, you are just having the latter (fantasy/idea/feel of infinity) and mistaking it for the "realization of the Absolute Truth" after being brainwashed by Leo.

You don't need to believe neither in infinity, nor in finitude as the absolute truth. Just let it go. You can still use these concepts pragmatically as contingent ideas (in mathematics for example), nothing wrong with that. Better think why do you so desperately want to hold on and cling to some "absolute truth"? Yes, it brings you certainty, psychological comfort, it's understandable, but you are trading it for freedom. But sure, if you value comfort more, you can still do it, there is nothing wrong with clinging to beliefs. It's only if you choose freedom then you might think of letting these beliefs go.

because "infinity" is just your fantasy that you chose to believe as the "Absolute Truth", and so became chained by it