AtmanIsBrahman

Chris Langan is on board with Leo in terms of reality being mental, but there are important differences. Langan's view of reality includes good and evil and he even believes in heaven and hell based on his CTMU.

It stands for "Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe"

To add to what people have said, Quote 78 does seem poorly thought out. It's surprising to see this of Leo. The most obvious problem is what would be considered a lie and who would decide. Lies aren't always obvious factual lies, they can come in many subtler forms. Even if the lies are factual it's hard to prove that the person wasn't just misinformed. A department of lying in practice would lead to totalitarianism.

Like I said, I don't think there's a solution (aside from possibly enlightenment). My best advice is to fall in love with the mystery of reality.

@Ayham we're in the same boat. Its the dark night of the soul, I guess. There's no easy solution

Schopenhauer's idea of will is more about referring to the universe as one giant will, or consciousness (to connect it with Leo's teachings) Leo's point in the philosophy video is that you need to find out what is true yourself. If you think Sartre was a really cool guy, that doesn't have anything to do with finding out what is true. It just makes you more likely to believe his ideas without any real reason. Look up "spiral dynamics turquoise" on youtube. The inventors of spiral dynamics had him take it down, but it's still there on another channel.

How can we go about our lives when no one knows what reality is? We all just go about our days doing the most meaningless of things, caught up in our illusions, self-deceptions, identity, and utter ignorance. We privilege one part of reality over another: some of us like socializing over being alone, or the reverse, all of us have hobbies that we consider better than others, and our worldviews are of course always correct. In this forum there is a small island of 'spiritual' (for lack of a better word) people who want to go beyond this shallow ordinary existence. But even so, the most enlightened of us still go about day-to-day activities like everyone else, since the psychedelic peak only lasts so long. As the adage goes, 'chop wood, carry water'. If feels so random, like a joke the universe has played on us. We have been generated from a pool of absolute infinity and thrown into a limited human form. Yet few of us have ever even conceived of the possibility. As an exercise, try closing your eyes, then opening them and looking at your body? If you're able to think, WTF?!, then you get the insight I am trying to describe here.

Maybe some of you have heard of the classical theistic proof of God that was formulated by Aristotle, Aquinas, and a bunch of other philosophers. It goes like this in its simplest form: 1) There is stuff 2) Stuff came from somewhere 3) What it came from is God Now, by the way, try your best to disprove this argument-- I don't think it can be done, even though I made up the most basic and bordering on stupid formulation of the argument (but it is genius in its stupidity). But the key oversight is that all this stuff here, also know as creation, consciousness, or reality, doesn't have a source beyond it, and really God is the creation and the creator. The essence of this argument is a causal chain: a -> b -> c ; etc. The point is that there must be something at the end of that chain that is sourcing it. But what is it? The laws of nature, some material thing? Of course not. The source is the entire causal chain and its beginning and end; in other words, it is infinity. Reality is groundless, but at the same time it is grounded and it is the ground. Now let us apply this thinking to awakening. Where is the end of awakening, or does it continue infinitely? Is the realization that it goes infinitely the awakening? It seems that there could be a final insight, a final awakening that brings together all the others into a superposition, almost like when all the buildings fold into one another in the movie "Inception." The end of infinity.

It’s an okay movie, not that deep imo despite the title

It isn't common to find truly high consciousness movies. This one, "Knight of Cups" by Terrence Malick, is essentially a long allegory about awakening. It has no real plot but is just filled with beautiful imagery as the main character loses himself in "the dream". The first video I linked is a trailer; the second is a compilation of all the voice-overs from the movie. I highly recommend actually watching the whole movie though, because it is like visual poetry and extremely profound. Images can go beyond the limitations of language. That's why profound, existential films like this can potentially cause an awakening, or at least bring the possibility for higher consciousness. The director of this movie was originally a philosopher and turned to film to do what philosophy can't.

Highly recommend it! I think it is even better than tree of life, which is a great movie in its own right.

How do you know if you've had an awakening? Is it really such an undeniable realization that you know for sure is true, like Leo and other teachers have said? What about self-deception... and what does it really mean to be conscious of something... Let's say I'm conscious that reality is infinite in this moment. But what does that really mean? Do I know that since reality is one by definition, that there cannot be any other reality to impose a limit on reality, and therefore reality is limited? This is a sort of intellectual understanding, but it is understanding nonetheless. Does it mean that I have an unusually imaginative mind and I can imagine a fractal that appears as infinite in my minds eye? But what about all the other ways the fractal could manifest, what about all the other things besides the fractal, what about cat infinity, video game infinity, all infinities - the infinite set, the set of all sets? If I've taken a psychedelic and feel a cosmic connectedness combined with visuals of fractals or something similar, and get a feeling that I have seen infinity and I am infinity, the godhead, the absolute, have I really become conscious of infinity-- and if so, to what extent?

I'm not sure the analogy applies Yes, but isn't it possible that you could deceive yourself? And the awakening is probably just to one facet of infinity, not the whole thing. I honestly wonder whether it's possible at all to awaken to absolute infinity. There are always more levels.

How do you know "others" have not attained the same realization of solipsism as you but just frame it differently?

@Leo Gura isn't solipsism and oneness of reality really just the same thing. Isn't this arguing on the forum just about definitons, different ways of attempting to express absolute truth using language (which can't be done)?

This is my personal impression of the pros and cons of Sadhguru and his teachings. Pros: 1) Obviously, he has very high levels of consciousness. God realization?- I'm not sure, but he has definitely had some awakenings. 2) He seems to be great at the embodiment side of spirituality-- he has a conscious, loving aura and something about him just radiates consciousness. Also, the Isha Foundation, which he created, is one of the best organizations for increasing the consciousness of humanity that I know of. 3) Sadhguru is good at using parables or stories to point to spiritual truths. This makes it easier to understand what he is pointing to without him explicitly saying it. 4) He claims to live in constant bliss, so if that's what you're going for he might be good to learn from. Now the juicy bit... Cons: 1) Sadhguru is awful at conceptual things. He has no grasp of science whatsoever. Yes, he is a spiritual master and so you might think he "has no need" for science or something, but the truth is that it shows a smidge of closed-mindedness in him. 2) He clearly has a preference for Indian culture and Hinduism. It's obvious from his videos that he sees Indian culture as supreme and looks down on other cultures to a certain extent. 3) He may have killed his wife. 4) Sadhguru might take Hinduism literally. If you watch enough of his videos where he goes in depth on spiritual topics, he tends to bring up Hindu terminology a lot, such as Shakti, Krishna, Atman, Paratman, and some other words I'm forgetting. It's hard to tell whether he actually has construct awareness about Hinduism and isn't mistaking the map for the territory when it comes to these concepts. In his rare videos where he actually answers stuff like "what is the origin of reality," he tends to answer in terms of Hindu ideas of different deities, making it unclear whether he actually is conscious of the answer to some of these questions Interesting Questions to Contemplate 1) If Sadhguru is lacking in ability to explain things, should that cast doubt on his level of spiritual realization? Does enlightenment always come with the ability to explain it? (at least in some limited way) 2) Does high conciousness automatically make you not care about concepts (as is the case with Sadhguru) or is it an aspect of the person's personality? Anyways, hopefully you got something from this post. I'd like to hear your guys' thoughts on Sadhguru.

I haven't looked into his courses, so I didn't mention them. I've seen some of his videos on aliens, which seem interesting. What I mean about his Hindu bias is that he explains existential things with a Hindu framework, and I'm not sure he realizes that it is just a framework.

I'm not going to accuse you of being a fanboy. I generally agree that what sadhguru does is good, I was just trying to point out some limitations of his teachings. That being said, the last video you shared about the 84 universes is an example of where Sadhguru tries to go into scientific and conceptual topics and ends up spewing nonsense. Hopefully you can see that there being exactly 84 universes is a ridiculous notion.

I watched Knight of Cups after seeing this, and… wow. Never have I seen a movie that was so clearly about awakening, yet without ever mentioning it directly. The whole movie is like a display of consciousness and all the forms it can take, all within a dream. Knight of cups got bad reviews most likely because it is so experimental… and also because critics don’t get non duality. I’m even not sure whether Malick himself meant to make a movie about awakening, but it’s great. I would highly recommend this movie!

It's placing a limit on God to say that it "can't" explore without bias/separation. Of course language has limits, so I guess I understand what you're saying, but really God is unlimited. God chooses to explore through separation, just because its one possible state of consciousness so why not.

You thought the most beautiful equation in mathematics was e=mc^2? Or e^pi*i=-1? You thought wrong This is the equation of the universe: 1 = 0 = ∞

This is going to be long and touching on a lot of topics. I've been wondering about a certain inconsistency in Leo's teachings. He says that there is really no separation between good and evil, and that really everything is good. So Hitler is good, rape is good, etc. and you just imagine it is evil because of your selfishness as an ego-- it goes against your survival needs as a being with a limited sense of self. And this is because reality is infinite and includes everything, not just the stuff that you like. But at the same time, if we're being honest, Leo does admit a certain duality between good and evil by calling it consciousness and unconsciousness. So although Hitler is good in some absolute sense, he is low-consciousness: his perspective is too narrow, focused only on Germany, and he is not aware of truth, enlightenment, and spirituality, or even more basic concepts such as liberalism and democracy. Same with rapists, murders, and the like. Now, having heard this, people ask, "Why shouldn't I do evil stuff? What is stopping me, since it is absolutely good?" Leo's answer across multiple videos has been that there is no reason why you shouldn't do "evil". But then he follows this up by saying that there will be consequences to your actions. Is this some law of karma, or what? If it is, then doesn't this mean the universe actually favors good and punishes evil? And if not, then there aren't really any consequences for doing evil. Now, this leads to the question of what high consciousness is. The way Leo talks about high consciousness, it is like a higher stage of development. But does this mean more intelligence or more emotional capacity? Let's imagine a serial killer who is highly intelligent, calm, and collected. He meditates regularly and, though not enlightened, has a high level of consciousness. We can hypothesize that he kills for some kind of spiritual high. Next, let's imagine an unusually good, noble person. He doesn't mediate, has poor control over himself, and is unintelligent, but he helps people and avoids doing evil things such as murdering people. These people don't add up according to Leo's model of high vs. low consciousness. The serial killer should be low-consciousness and the "good guy" should be high-consciousness, but we see from their descriptions that it seems more like the opposite. So basically, my question is, can a high-consciousness person do things that are thought of as evil with full awareness of what they are doing but be so spiritually developed that they don't care? Can a zen master be a serial killer? Does this contradict them being a legitimate zen master, or is it possible? Then, as a side note, does high consciousness have to do with intelligence, self-discipline, and these sort of things or is it something entirely different? Anyway, this was kind of convoluted, but I'd appreciate any comments or answers people have.

@Osaid I guess I am talking about Leo’s model of reality. When I used the term enlightenment, it was a loose use of the phrase. Still, any model of enlightenment has to involve higher and lower consciousness (unless enlightenment is an instantaneous 0-100 type of thing, which I don’t buy into).

This is just an insight I had. I was thinking about how everything anyone does is selfish. Obviously there is what we normally think of as selfish, but also altruism. If we do something for the good of someone else, that’s only because it makes us feel good. In other words, because we include them in our idea of self. Then I realized that our degree of selfishness or selflessness depends on how large our idea of self is. If it includes the whole universe then that is infinite selfishness— which is synonymous with selflessness. And this is basically what oneness is.