Deep

I pretend to believe in what others do such as death. I enjoy playing the game that way. Sometimes people ask me, "What is the concept of God in Hinduism?" I don't feel prepared to tell them yet, so I tell them you can think of God however you want. I know life is a huge delusion. After a person knows that, they can enjoy the world a whole lot more. Most humans are lost in the game because they think the experience is real. If the experience didn't feel real, the game wouldn't be fun. lol Do you pretend to believe the same things others do?

Yes beliefs are false and so is the experience we're having right now. My beliefs are constantly changing. I don't think beliefs prevent enlightenment like many people on this forum do. Sorry I forgot to add that in the question.

@elias There are two different types of yoga: physical and spiritual. The word yoga means to join or to merge. It's aim is to merge with the God within or to realize that you are God. The physical yoga is called Hatha yoga. Spiritual yoga is divided into 4 different paths. They are: Bhakti yoga, Karma yoga, Jnana yoga, and Raja yoga. All of them are difficult but Raja yoga is the most difficult. I will give you brief description of each one. 1. Bhakti (devotion) yoga: This involves being devoted to God or a higher ideal. The love between a devotee and God becomes so strong they no longer see themselves separate from God. This is not the same as believing in God, this is about experience. Many people who believe in God don't really love God. 2. Karma (selfless work) yoga: This involves doing selfless work for society like Mother Theresa. As a person works for society, they start to feel the separation between them and others disappear. They start to see in God in everyone else. 3. Jnana (wisdom) yoga: Through extreme wisdom one can discern what reality is. One discern the delusions of the mind until the mind is destroyed. 4. Raja (royal) yoga: This path involves meditation. The yogi practices severe disciplines before sitting down to meditate. Yoga is an entire lifestyle that a person lives. My favorite is Karma yoga because it doesn't require severe discipline. It's also possible to mix and match techniques from all of them. If a person succeeds in one of them, they get honorary degrees in all of them. They are designed to dissolve the ego over time.

Yes, God is always here. I'm suggesting we remain skeptical of that until we experience Absolute Infinity ourselves. The dream state is like being a zombie in comparison to that. Just because someone tells us we are God, doesn't mean we should accept it. If we blindly accept it, it becomes an airy fairy idea.

They would feel love but they can defend themselves if necessary. They know there is no death.

The mind is metaphysical and the body is physical. The mind is a limitation on consciousness. Once the mind is destroyed you realize you were never in the body to begin with. It's a real experience that we can have. Imagine how much freedom you feel when you realize you aren't the body or mind.

No, there is lot more to it than that. The enlightenment I'm talking about is almost impossible without 5-MeO. There are a lot of false realizations along the way that can be confused as enlightenment. What you're talking about is still in the dream state, it's not experiencing God.

@Prabhaker How rare is full enlightenment in your opinion?

Everything has to be understood in the proper context. If I had a gun and someone attacked me with a knife, I would shoot them. It doesn't determine if I'm enlightened or not. People looking on the outside can judge me as a horrible person but they didn't know my intentions. It's unlikely that a master would kill for no reason or rape.

I don't know. They're free to accept whoever they want as enlightened.

I love Krishna and I also love everyone else. I don't think there is anything wrong with people practicing Bhakti yoga for Krishna. I love the idea of Virat swaroop, in which Krishna shows that he is Brahman. God can be thought of in infinite ways.

@Loreena Be patient.

What Leo is saying is correct from God's perspective, but it's not exactly what enlightenment is. Enlightenment is simply realizing there is no "you", there is only God. When God incarnates as humans, it has to appear ignorant. It can't be any other way. It's pretending to be finite. Their is no fool proof way of knowing if someone is enlightened. You can study their life and see if you agree with their teaching.

@Alii This is a good a discussion. I'll share my opinion with you. Enlightenment is realizing you are God after experiencing yourself as God. It's literally mind blowing! It's called liberation because you are free from the body/mind complex you are identified with. It's hard to tell who is enlightened and who isn't because an enlightened master would seem like a weirdo to many. Some enlightened people can help others to attain enlightenment. Some of them don't. In the Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna to kill all of his relatives before the Kurukshetra war because they were a menace to society. For a person who is trapped in the mind that would seem crazy. Krishna also says to follow your dharma without worrying about the body. It means following your purpose or what God is doing through you (since you aren't who you think you are), even if your body dies.

@The Universe There is no such thing as chakras. When you succeed in Raja yoga, the kundalini automatically rises. You can feel something moving up your spine. At the end you get to experience yourself as God. It's not easy.

@alyra Non-duality and duality are intertwined. It's impossible to understand; it can only be experienced.

@Shin No beliefs can prevent enlightenment from happening. You can only realize your true self when the mind holds still, not any time before that. I've had the good fortune of experiencing that and it was the most intense thing I've ever experienced. You only feel like you're in the body because your mind is telling you that. You were never in the body to begin with. You'll know when it happens to you. During the no mind state you realize what you are (which is everything and no-thing at the same time).

@Prabhaker I wouldn't say they are "false gurus." A high school basketball player might be the best in his school but he isn't Michael Jordan. The high school player doesn't experience or play basketball in the same manner because God is expressing differently through him than M.J. The high school player can't teach you to play the game, the way Michael can. Same with spirituality, Buddha played the game of life differently from us. LMAO

In the past, one had to experience themselves as God before they were considered to be enlightened. A sage was someone who can experience God through their own discipline. Most modern teachers haven't experienced God. I can tell by listening to them. It's like a virgin talking about sex. They have concepts about it but no experience. There are many teachers in India like that as well. There are a couple reasons why I don't think modern teachers have experienced God. They are: 1. If they experienced God, they wouldn't be able to talk about it. It's so intense there are no words to describe it. 2. They wouldn't need to save the world. If everything and everyone is God, who needs to be saved? Patanjali had done the hard work necessary to experience God. Krishna only spoke the Gita because Arjuna needed it before the war. This doesn't mean they had more access to enlightenment than anyone else. It doesn't mean they were more "godly" than anyone else.

No, that's not what the ego is. The ego is the inauthentic part of us. Why do you think people have an ego in the first place? They aren't being honest. The ego comes from social conditioning. I was just saying if someone is practicing Raj yoga and they genuinely felt like saying that, they would have to. It simply says what one thinks, says, and does have to be aligned that's all. Most people's lives are hypocritical. Raj yoga is about experiencing samadhi which is different from what Rupert is talking about. I like Raj yoga because the techniques have worked better for me than what Rupert teaches.

One has to "die" for God to realize God. Patanjali makes the 10 commandments look like a joke. For example, it says you can never lie not even by mistake. If you feel like telling your boss to, "fuck off" you have to do that. It requires being rigorously truthful. You can end up getting killed for it like Jesus. Jesus did succeed in Raj yoga unknowingly. Who wants to be that honest? lol

@Prabhaker Yes because acquiring siddhis is very rare and it sounds woo-woo to rationally minded people. They shouldn't believe in anything they haven't experienced. I think Ramakrishna was a fully enlightened master. Two people came to him who had siddhis. He took their siddhis away because they were misusing them.

@Natasha I agree with you. I think the process goes like this: enlightenment>samadhi>full liberation. In the Indian scriptures there was no word for enlightenment. They only talk of samadhi because that's what the sages experienced. They were enlightened well before experiencing samadhi, but samadhi is icing on the cake.

@Natasha Enlightenment might not be extraordinary but there are definitely higher states of consciousness. In my opinion it's necessary for people to experience higher consciousness before declaring they are enlightened because it can become a spiritual ego. The ego can delude them into thinking they are enlightened when they truly aren't. For example, if the intensity of our experience is the same it would be suspect. We cannot say we are God if we haven't experienced anything more intense than this normal state of being. Enlightenment is the realization that comes after having a transcendental experience. I understand that Rupert is just trying to help people and it's a good start.

@Dharam Your problem is low self-esteem. There are two types of egos: healthy and unhealthy. The healthy ego loves itself and is confident. The unhealthy ego is low in confidence and self-esteem. The healthy ego is easier to dissolve. You have a long way to go before dissolving your ego. How can you love God if you don't love yourself? You can't.