What the devil secretly craves the most, is to be God. It is just that he is going about it the wrong way.
Here's real-world example. Research has shown that up to 55% of all heroin addicts and alcohol addicts were really just looking for an experience of God. But since they didn't know how to have the real deal, they instead turned to heroin and alcohol, confusing it for an experience of God. When they finally experience the real deal, they stop being addicts. The 12-step program is based on this insight.
This is generally true of all human beings. Everyone is basically looking to become infinite, but the ego is confused so it goes about it in the oppoosite ways. It tries to become infinite through acquistion of material stuff: food, sex, money, children, cars, clothing, fame, success, technology, scientific knowledge, religious tradition, luxury, power, etc. But none of this will work. The only way to become infinite is to drop all material methods and realize God is what you are.
Rather than fighting God, die to God. Be infinite! That is the counter-intuitive move which the ego fails to see because it is too scared. The devil's dirty little secret is that he is too afraid to die to God. He isn't able to take the leap of faith required. So he becomes an arrogant devil instead. He says, "Fuck all this talk of surrender! I will never surrender! Fuck you God! I don't need you. I will be my own God instead!"
The desire to become infinite is baked deep into everyone's psyche. It is just being dsyfunctionally manifest because of one's ignorance and selfishness.
Baked into the desire for life is the desire for ego-death. Life and death go full-circle. They are one and the same thing! But good luck getting the ego to see it.

Empires fall because they are dictatorial and egotistical.
If a system is built on ego and falsehood, it will ultimately collapse.
White supremacy and racism, for example, are collapsing.

I HATE hearing all the negativity around psychedelics.  It's the most culturally constructed crap I'm aware of and it's to the detriment of anyone seeking something beyond our mundane experienced reality.
That being said, I don't actively try to do psychedelics anymore.  I've had a few great experiences with them opening me up to the spiritual world and helping guide my path of personal development; it's incredible seeing how much more there is to consciousness and reality- they really help expedite you into seeing the potential that living a spiritual life can have.
The reason I've stopped doing them is because I've come to recognize that these miraculous experiences are very temporary, and create craving (yes, vipassana), and I'm tired of living my life fueled by craving.  Once you've realized even a small facet of truth using psychedelics, or had some glimpse of an enlightenment experience, hopefully it gets you motivated to walk the right path. 
Why get mad at Leo for being a guinea pig and trying these psychedelics though? Him posting that last experience live was the most authentic thing he's done IMO.  It bothers me that just because you've been indoctrinated to an "anti-drug" mentality, that you would be so close-minded to the potential that psychedelics might actually be beneficial in some way. I'd recommend looking up the research/literature on the effects of psychedelics on things like depression, and other psychological health issues.  You might be surprised that these drugs actually have many POSITIVE benefits for people, including also literally making people more open-minded, one of the qualities Leo stressed is of utmost importance in this work.
 
 

Hehehe...
It's not clear to you because you haven't experienced the Absolute.
No-self is just one facet of the Absolute. No-self is identical to Absolute Infinity and Emptiness.
Infinity and Nothingness are identical. And of course there is no self, there is only the Infinite Self, which is Nothing, and Everything. You are God. God is Nothing. The end.
There's no confusion here at all if you actually experience the Absolute fully.
Buddhism = Vedanta = Yoga = Christianity = Islam = Judaism = Quantum Mechanics
There is nothing to reconcile when your understanding is totally holistic and inclusive.

@Leo Gura Consciousness is Knowing. And knowing is Being. That's the best explanation for those who are confused. And just overall the best explanation imho.

People generally misunderstand what the word "consciousness" means. Consciousness is not mental activity. Consciousness is Nothingness. It is the "substance" of everything.
This confusion happens because of the subtle assumptions of the materialist paradigm.
Absolute Consciousness is what Buddha taught. It does not depend on the sense organs. The stuff that depends on the sense organs would best be called perception or experience. Yes, perception and experience is impermanent.
Don't confuse consciousness with thinking or experiencing.
 

@Samra God YES! We need education reform so bad.
These test-based systems are terrible. It's like a form of child abuse.

@Stoica Doru No, you’re God. Not a fragment. A veil.  It’s the beliefs, the ideas you hold about God. Those are your veils. They are voluntary. 

The paradox of valuing enlightenment vs materialism comes from the fact that you see it as a binary choice (or non-choice in your formulation).
Your life is both materialistic and spiritual and growth occurres from your recognition of the latter and incorporation in the former (or vice versa).

There's an intellectual component to consciousness too.  There's experiential awareness and then there's cognitive awareness.  And actually both of these are happening simultaneously.  Being conscious means that you have a huge shore of reference, that you are studied as much as you are aware of the present moment experientially.  We don't talk about this much and nobody ever seems to explain this right.  They just want to focus on experiential awareness.  Well, a baby has experiential awareness, but that doesn't make the baby very aware, if that makes sense.  What the baby is missing is cognitive awareness.  You need both to be conscious -- experiential awareness and cognitive awareness.  And cognitive awareness uses concepts, thoughts, the Mind.  So, don't dump your intellectual life in this work so fast.

Societies are NOT man-made systems. They are self-driving, self-evolving organisms.
You could not stop globalism with World War III.
Higher levels of organization are going to happen whether you like it or not.

@Scholar That's good. You're definitely on to something there. Seems like you're becoming conscious of the immediacy of reality. That nothing is hidden. That every object is hollow, like a hologram. Appearance is reality.
But! You still haven't answered the question, Who am I? What am I?
You have yet to awaken to the fact of no-self. Inquire into what you are. Not objects, not the body, not thoughts, not emotions, but YOU! What is doing the observation? What is looking out your eyes? What is being aware?

@sarapr Not really. Big picture understanding is the deepest understanding there is. The deepest depth comes from wholeness, not from technical specialization. It's deep because it encompasses everything, interconnecting more dots. Big picture understanding produces wisdom and vision which technical specialization cannot.
Yes, you can do both. Although there are obviously tradeoffs between where you allocate your time and energy.
For the most business/career success, you need to specialize in one thing.
For the deepest personal development, you need to go broad and understand many things.

The distinction between science and pseudoscience is nonsense. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. 100 years ago x-rays were pseudo-science. Today, it would be pseudo-science to deny their existence. 400 years ago, telescopes were pseudo-science. Today, you would be called insane if you say, "Telescopes are a tool of the devil meant to deceive mankind." Yet that is exactly what the good scientists of the day told Galileo.
No! Empirical evidence does not matter at all when you're dealing with a dogmatic person. That's the whole point! The evaluate evidence properly requires total openmindedness. Stop assuming that scientists have it. Not even close.
Yes, it will. And it has. And we have it. But so what? It will not become a part of mainstream cultural knowledge or mainstream science because they are the gatekeepers and will throw it away. It will just become religious myth.
No, he won't. He will be ridiculed as a fraud or delusional religious kook.
And in the rare case where you do succeed in getting a lab to study him, that lab will get discredited and their results thrown out for "improper procedural methods." Obviously the methods must have been improper, because everyone knows that stopping the heart is physically impossible.
You're still not grasping the depth of this problem.

@MM1988 Well, when they hooked Sadhguru up to an EEG machine, it registered him as clinically brain dead.
Science has done a poor job of researching yogis. If a serious scientist measures a yogi with no heart beat, what do you think will happen? Do you think he will say, "Oh! Look! All of our understanding of human physiology is wrong!" or will he say, "Oh! What a fluke! This is just some strange anomaly. I can't explain it, but this obviously can't be real so let's get back to studying normal people."
Any scientist who starts to validate mysticism will be outcast by his peers and called a mystic himself. It's a political game you cannot win. So most scientists have learned not to even approach this domain of investigation.
All scientific evidence of the paranormal (and there is much of it) is automatically dismissed as impossible. Because it doesn't fit the materialist paradigm. And the paradigm is what's king. You can only "see" evidence which your paradigm is open to. You're thinking about this whole thing backwards. It's not evidence which supports the paradigm, it's the paradigm which creates or denies the evidence.

@MM1988 The problem is that you are expecting yoga to be commensurable with your materialist ways of quantifying the world. And it just isn't.
You cannot grasp the subtle with the gross.
There are aspects of reality which cannot be mapped, symbolized, or quantified.
The scientist needs to have enough self-awareness to realize, "Oh, yeah... I shouldn't expect yoga to fit my terms, but instead I should fit myself to yoga's terms."
Instead of testing yoga in a lab, you should ditch the lab and sit down and do yoga yourself. That IS the test.

Crying is good stuff. That's when you know the work has really begun.
Also, with emotions, make sure you're deeply feeling into them, not just escaping them with a phony air of detachment.
The problem is not that you feel too much emotions, the problem is that you don't actually feel them with full richness and nuance. Pay attention to when you're trying to escape an emotion -- and surrender the desire to escape it (as best you can). It's not easy. You won't always succeed at it.

@egoless i feel you man, same line of thinking here (intj).  This just is an emotionally intelligent mans world, not to say Im very intelligent, but being over analytical is a form of intelligence. I have practically nothing to say to new people that I meet, I can kinda swim by with what others say, but If im with other introverts im like..........  Im practicly Hannibal Lecter minus the killing and eating of others and snobbery, plus way better sense of humor (imo :D) 
This of course has many many benefits and there are definite pros that come with this kinda personality. It's easier for me to concentrate, cut the bullshit, do work, connect the dots, see the big picture etc granted that Im not feeling lazy. I can easily override my emotional side to bust trough work that I just have to do, and it does not tax my wellbeing too much. Emotional people just collapse if they are forced to do this. Byt yeah,  lazy + over analytical is a hard combo not to beat yourself up with. 

It's very simple:
There are 7 billion unique minds on this planet, and they will all interpret and understand (or misunderstand) nonduality in their own unique way, as you would expect a complex organism, composed for trillions of neurons to do.
Nothing surprising here. The surprise would be if 7 billion different minds all agreed with each other.

Because he became enlightened as fuck.
His level of attainment is very unusual, even among enlightened folk.
There is a level of enlightenment at which you appear superhuman, godly to by-standards. Those were the levels reached by people like Jesus and Buddha. It wasn't your run-of-the-mill Neo-Advaita enlightenment. It was a very deep embodiment. One's level of embodiment is what makes people say, "Holy fuck! Look at that guy!" And then that produces tons of loyal followers and free mass marketing.
Massive deep enlightenment is the oldest method of viral marketing. Because it's so rare and amazing and inspiring.

Here is the Kalama Sutta of Buddhism which was composed many centuries before:
"Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it.

Do not believe in traditions simply because they have been handed down for many generations. ... 

Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. 

But when, after observation and analysis, you find anything that agrees with reason, and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it."

– Buddha, Kalama Sutta
 
And here is the modern version that I wrote 
Don't believe in anything simply because it is on the internet...
Don't believe in anything simply because it has 1 million likes in social media...
Don't believe in anything simply because it is said in a Youtube video..
But when, after observation and analysis, you find anything that agrees with reason, and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.

As a powerlifter you might be interested in Patrik Baboumian who thrives on a concious plant based diet. 
You are making the right choice and you can have all the nutrients you need. In facts, plant based diet eaters have generally higher intake of all micro nutrients than omnivores. At least those who are at least slightly interested in what they eat. 
To keep motivated and educated here are some people you may want to check out:
Powerlifting - Patrik Baboumian Fitness, Diet, Bodybybuilding - Simnet Nutrition , Jon Venus,  Compassion - Earthling Ed, James Aspey, Gary Yourofsky Science - Dr Michael Greger (nutritionfacts.org), Dr Neal Barnard, Dr Joel Fuhrman, Dr Brenda Davis, Mic The Vegan Drama and fun - Vegan Gains From a personal experience of someone who has been in fitness for 15 years (plant based for past 12 months only), I can say you can only gain, once you rid yourself of all the animal food you will discover a true beauty of plant based meals and your energy levels will skyrocket. 
Good book sto get you started: How Not to Die and How Not to Die: Coockbook from Dr Greger. 

That’s right. As I said learn yourself. Don’t learn from anyone?
 
Typicaly/commonly the self/ego never falls alway. 
Thats because there remains the fragmented movement/time based progression. Continuity of the self that reaches for that state of timelessness. This is an impossibility. 
People spend years at this and yet don’t bring about any fundamental change in there daily conduct. 
I never even seen her before and don’t think I will again either. That’s not important. What is important to see is that Wholeness can not be taught. 
Doesn’t matter what she says. You have to explore yourself. 
Forget about her and explore fragmentation. 

@Psyche_92 Ussually people see you how you see your self. So you still have a belief that you are a "young boy" because if that wasnt true it would not bother you. So you must change inside and it will reflect outdiside and people will see it.

@completegraph Your dose was too high. Drop it down to 20mg.
The point is to become conscious of the truth, not to barely recollect it after the fact.