Scholar

I disagree. You don't know how the world would react to it. You even gave the perfect example. Galileo shared his knowledge about the world despite conventions of the time, and even risking his own life in the process. Imagine where we would be if noone ever stood up to it because of some moralistic view like "I shouldn't do that because my god says so!". Imagine how different the world would be. You talking in this forum and claiming that you have these abilities is already egoic. There is no difference between claiming it and showing off. You are basicly showing off right now, and if you were concerned for your gods rules, why did you even tell us about it? Of course it's not special whatsoever, but it doesn't change the fact that people are living in delusion, and that delusion is causing suffering throughout the world. You can stop that suffering, but you don't because your inner voice says not to? This is not about showing off, this is about lessening the suffering of others. And you said it yourself, there is absolutely nothing special about these abilities. If I tell someone the earth revolves around the sun, is that showing off? Why would a god tell me not to tell someone about it?

Isn't it egoic to keep it from the world? You being concerned about your own safety is egoic. We are talking about revolutionizing the world. Actual proof of any of the abilities you claim to have might literally keep mankind from extinction. Just think about how spiritual the world would become if we had proof that these abilities could be created by meditation practices. Modern scientists would have no choice but to investigate the true nature of reality.

As people said, a good way to free yourself of racism is simply understanding. Racism, like so many other problems we face, is rooted soley in ignorance. Your emotions come from a lack of awareness, so to alter them you need to expand your awareness. Be aware of the mechanical nature of the human mind, how helpless it is to it's own doing. Let go of the strange belief that somehow the human mind possesses free will. "Will" itself is a very intregal aspect of the mind that can be investigated. People act the way they do for a reason, no matter what the action is. They have no control whatsoever over the reason. This is the notion you will have to give up, because it doesn't matter whether you are right or wrong. Maybe most refugees are intolerant and evil, maybe they are not. It shouldn't really matter whatsoever. If you see the full truth, there is no need for fear, anger or sadness. As a practical solution I would suggest expanding your meditation habit. What you really need to do is simply become aware of the workings of the mind, and because your own mind is the only one you have access to, that will have to do. Of course you can read literature on this subject, but awareness usually comes from direct expiriences. You need to expirience how the mind works, and you need to be aware of it. The more you will do that, the more understanding you will be of other human beings. You will be able to feel more empathy even for what you would call evil human beings. There will be an understanding of why there is no choice, no other way, for people to act the way they do. When a stone rolls down a hill, you don't get angry at the stone because you know it has no choice. It is simply acting the way it does, it is a force of nature. It is the same way with the human mind, and you can see that with unbiased investigation. As you do that, your mind will accept itself, and thus accept others. There will be no need to judge and moralize, but instead there will be a will to create viable solutions. So, to really solve this problem you have to accept reality for what it really is, not for what you want it to be. It is a problem within your perception. What you basically are right now is delusional. Working on that delusion will take great effort, but it really is the only way to find sustainable peace that I know of.

It's not really about what is practical, but about what is true. True love doesn't mean loving the person, but instead what the person truly is. The person is a facade, a shallow expression of the essential being. If you become conscious of what you are, and thus, of what everyone else is, it'll be difficult not to love it all, because you will actually be aware of there being no difference between your wife and child, and the person who is harming them. They are the same, so loving one over the other will simply make no sense. Either you love it all, or you do not, at all. The question whether or not it is wrong is essentially the question of whether you like it or not. Everything that is evil and wrong is what the human dislikes. Everything that is good and beautiful is what the human being likes. You have to inspect what the love you are describing truly is. You feel the need to protect something that is yours, to defend it from something that is not yours. Why? Is it not because you would feel terrible if something happened to your children? What is it then truly about, is it about your child and wife, or is it simply about the way you feel for them? Do you truly act out of love, or do you act out of anger, fear and sadness? You will know if you inspect how you feel while committing the act. There are alot of people who confuse anger with love. Acting out of love does not contain any anger or fear, it simply is an action of love. Most human beings haven't even once acted out of true love, so they do not even comprehend how powerful it is. Acting out of true love does not keep your from protecting your children, it simply means that you will care for both the beater, and the beaten. A mother who watches both her children fight can still keep them from fighting, even if she loves both of them. Infact, the compassion she has towards both allows her a deeper understanding and a solution that brings the least amount of suffering. That doesn't mean that she cannot use force, it just means that she won't unnecessarily harm them. In your case, if someone tries to harm your children, you would try your best to understand the position of the harmer. What leads him to this desperate action, and what way could you protect both your wife and child and the harmer. Anger, fear and hatred will make it impossible for you to really solve the problem. You can beat the shit out of the person, but that will only make him more angry, and if he has a family, it will bring just as much suffering to them as it would to you. In the end, you create more suffering by acting unwisely, feeding the system of aggression. If you truly love, then you will try to find the best solution for everyone. It might not be possible, but atleast you will try. In the end, only a wholistic solution will truly benefit us all.

I think your mind is beginning to realize the egoic falsehood of love and compassion. It is discovering the selfish discrimination of what we value and what we don't. People do not love each other, they love aspects about each other. Their looks, personality, achievements, relationships and so on. Why does a mother love it's child? Because it is the mothers child. If it wasn't, the mothers love would be gone. This is how fragile and discriminate conventional love is. You just have to change one circumstance, and it disappears. Brothers and sisters love each other because they are brothers and sister, and because they have known each other since birth. Take away that relationship and they don't care about each other whatsoever. So what love really is, is a selfish act of perserving and taking care of something that is part of oneself. "My child", "My sister", "My boyfriend". It's all about yourself, if it wasn't, you'd love everyone uncondtionally. If they don't give you joy, chances are you will not love them, or care for them. This is why true love is unconditional. It is permanent, because it does not discriminate. It is not about what is yours. It is not about "your family", but about all families. It is not about "your species", but all species. It is simply a love of everything there is. If you realize that this is the one and only, true and honest kind of love, you will see how shallow every other kind of love is. The great love of the mother becomes a selfish act of self-preservation. The "selfless" act of a husband sacrficing himself for his wife becomes equally selfish. Because in the end it's always about them, about what is theirs. They do not sacrifice themselves for someone else wife. In the end everyone wants love, but at the same time everyone is too selfish to develope true love. There needs to be an absence of attachements, because each attachement will create a selfish desire to perserve one thing over the other. It shouldn't make a difference wether you are saving your own child, or a helpless dog on the streets. Infact, it shouldn't make a difference wether you are saving Adolf Hitler or Jesus Christ. As soon as it does, it is a selfish act. True love is completely unconditional, because the conditions themselves are selfish. They don't hold truth, they hold what you like and what you don't like. You don't like mass murderers, so you decide not to care about them. This process of discrimination is what keeps one from true love. We only love what we like and we give compassion to those we prefer most in our lifes. Ironically, most people prefer to be with happy people, so their compassion goes towards those who already have a good life. The sad, miserable, angry and truly lonely people are scary, disgusting and boring to us, so we keep away from them, distancing ourselves until they act out their suffering. Then we wonder what could have made those people do these things, completely ignorant to the source, which lies in all of us. There is so much suffering in the world, the craving for love is so great that people are unable to give back. They endlessly search for a tiny bit of authentic love, and because most of them are doing it, none realizes that simply stopping and giving true love and compassion would completely solve the problem. Our selfishness is creating our own suffering. I think once you see this, it is hard to unsee. The shallowness of what people call love and friendship today is so obvious, it can hardly give any fulfillment. But it doesn't need to, because in the end you don't need that to be fulfilled and happy. You can take joy in it if you start seeing life as the little game that it truly is. Humans tend to take their existance way too serious, if you can let go of that, you mind will realize that it brings only suffering to you and others. The next time you say you love someone, think about what you are referring to when you say that. Do you love them, or do you love aspects about them? And then think about what they truly are, what these people are at their essence. Asking that question is the same as asking what you are. The essence of your being, what is it? Is it your personality? Your genes? Your looks? In the end, what you truly are, is consciousness. And in the end, what everyone else is, is consciousness. You can call it soul if you want. But the thing is, the essence of everyone is the exact same thing. Everyone is essentially consciousness. Every living being that exists. So, if you love one of them, you cannot not love everyone else, because they are all exactly the same. There is no difference whatsoever, not even between yourself and others. Of course, the content of consciousness differs from one person to the other, but you are not the content, are you? And so is noone else. This is another way of seeing true love. If you discover what you truly are, and you love that essence, you cannot help but love everyone else, because you know they are the exact same thing.

I think I might have some useful advice, coming from my personal expirience. In the past few meditation sittings I have noticed that there are particular skillsets for exploring and adventuring within the mind. When you want to meditate, or as I would say "explore the mind", you will first need to develope the ability to calm almost all obvious processes that are going on. It starts with thoughts and conceptualization, or what people call the "monkey mind". But it also encompasses the "virtualization of raw input", for example when you look at a chair, you should be able to make the object go away, and only leave the raw colour information that is present on your visual perception. All of this you can do by focusing on the moment, and really trying to let go of everything. This, on a good day, usually takes a few minutes for me. In general one could say that you need to be able free up space or psychic energy, to leave processing power for the tasks ahead. Conceptualization, dimensionalization and interpretation processes need all to be shut down to minimum to continue. The next skillsets are holding focus and directing focus. You need to be able to change focus on any perceptions at will, and you need to be able to hold your focus where ever you please, for however long you want. This is a difficult skill to develope, you can try yourself by focusing only on a point on a wall. It's not as easy as it sounds, because even the point can represent a multitude of perceptions within you. You might focus on the visual information or the position, even a certain feeling the point evokes in you, which are all very different thing. What the mind tends to do is switch around between these subtle perpections, of the same "object" so to speak, without really noticing that it is shifting focus. Focus tends to be very unsteady in the untrained mind. Learn to control this feature, because it is essential for further exploration purposes. The even harder part, and why I think it takes years for people to become "enlightened", comes next. You might never, ever even come close to enlightenment if you do not have the skill of "finding new ways". It's hard to put into words, but the mind has the ability to find new things to focus on. New perceptions, so to speak. So for example, you might be able to focus greatly on the raw sound that you hear, but you might not be able to focus on the processing of sound that your mind does every single second it is operating. Every single sound you hear is brought in context to previous sounds, creating sensations of harmony or disharmony depending on the sounds. So, as everything is really happening in the moment, you will notice that there is a certain memory to sounds. This process you can become aware of, and you can focus on it. But you can only do that if you find the process. So it's essential to have the skill of becoming aware of processing within your mind, that you previously were not aware of. It is one of the most important tools of exploration. When talking about consciousness, or the witnesser, you could find a hint of it today if you just found the right way to recognize it. For example, if you focus on visual perception, you can ask yourself "Who or what is seeing?". This question can be completely empty and mean absolutely nothing to someone, or it could trigger someone else's mind to go seek new "processes" that are taking place within their mind. So, the same words can mean nothing to one, but trigger a new way of "seeing" at things in another. This is a very particular skill, and you can notice that it is actually happening. It's like switching your "focus beam" at something you have never had your focus on before. And like this, you can explore your mind. Of course, it's quite hard to learn this skill, especially before you even know what it is. To that skill I would say comes another difficulty, the difficulty of recognition. Focus can sometimes jump to one new "process" of your mind, be confused, and jump to another without really recognizing what it is. So, it is quite possible that you have already had an expirience of witnessing the witnessing, but you simply didn't recognize it. It's quite strange, but I would say it has to do with how much psychic energy you have free to use? I don't know. And the last skill would be to be able to remember how to get somewhere. Exploring the mind is far different from exploring dimensionality. You cannot really remember the way, if you know what I mean. For example, an enlightenment expirience might have been trigger this way: Focusing on visual perception -> focusing on the flatness of visual perception -> focusing on the "canvas" on which visual perception is happening -> focusing on what is actually expiriencing the canvas, or where it canvas is happening Now, the last step would be the focusing awareness on itself. There are two problems though. If you haven't developed the ability to hold your focus, you might just "expirience" awareness for a split second and then your focus will crumble and fall onto something else once more. The far bigger problem though is remembering how the hell you got there. Sure, you can mark each steps with some conceptualizations, but that will not really help you to get there again. It's hard to explain, but I think people who do consciousness work will know what I mean. Our mind has not really a basic function for remembering the "location" of processes. It's not really a location anyways. The mind is really bad at creating "mind maps", and it's even worse at following the whatever maps it created. So in the end you really have to do it so many times, until it becomes "muscle memory". I do not know if there is another way but intuition. This means the first enlightenment expirience might be years apart from your next, but the more expiriences you have, and the more often you "went the way", you basicly get better at it. I guess there is a genetical disposition to people who can intuitively do this faster than others. Like some people can simply learn faster to paint, some might learn faster to become enlightened. So basicly, these are all the skills that, as far as I am aware of, need to be trained: 1. Clearing and shutting down mind processes 2. Steering Focus 3. Holding Focus 4. Finding new "mind processes" to focus on 5. Recognizing new "mind processes" 6. Remembering how to move your focus to specific "mind processes"

What ways do you guys know of to cultivate true compassion? I heard Thich Nhat Hanh talk about "Deep listening", but I'm not exactly sure how to practise that on a daily basis. I'm an empathetic person, but I feel like I have mostly used that to manipulate people instead of helping them, even if it was subtle and not ill-intended. How do create undiscriminate motivation to resolve someone elses suffering, even for people that I haven't met before, or people that I don't seem to like? Are there any special meditative methods to develope it? Or is it just about mindfulness at all times?

I think there is a reason for why this kind of thought-pattern, or paradigm, has not survived and become an established religion. It is because, if you take the road to non-duality, or enlightenment, before having taken the road to love and compassion, one is destined to manifest into complete absence of action. In a way, it's quite like evolution. Those who were enlightened and loved, spread their enlightenment, because they indeed did not belief everything to be pointless. They have engineered their psyche in a way, that despite facing absolute nothingness, they could still operate from love. From that, actions of love took place, revolutionizing the world in the process. Now, everyone who was enlightened and did not take the path of love, did take another path nonetheless. That path simply lead to them not do anything. Their enlighenment showed them that the world is illusion, and even love was illusion. They had no reason to love anyone or anything. They had no reason to relief other beings of suffering, because after all, other beings don't exist. See, both paths are equally valid. The zen devil just as much as the enlightened buddhist. There is no reason not to love, just as much as there is no reason to love. Whether you will love or not completely depends on the leftovers of your psyche. The structures of your psyche will decide the actions you will take. And make no mistake, because even the absence of tradition will lead you to one set of actions over the other. How your mind interpretes "enlightenment" completely depends on your psyche. And ironically, any interpretation is illusion. Yet, the interpretation always happens. I choose the path of love now, not only so that it gives me strength to actually take this path to the end, but also because I want to act out of love if I ever am "enlightened". And if enlighenment was my only goal, I'd simply jump off a building. That would make short shrift of my ignorance. The true question is why not meddle with it? The avoidance of action, after all, is an action in itself.

I'd say this is an entirely linguistic problem. The problem is that "consistency" is a concept. "Physical laws" are concept. Even what you call "awareness" is merely a concept. The entire cognitive system is based on concepts and symbols. The ideas are not invalid because they are wrong, the ideas are invalid because they are ideas. They are not reality. "Everything happening in awareness" is just as much concept as the notion of physical laws. Infact, any interpretation of reality is completely invalid. The notion of truth itself is invalid. That is the problem, and that is why people tend to have problems. Enlightenment is the art of not knowing, but people take it and use it to pretend they know. One needs to understand that understanding itself is not what it is understanding. Any notion is unreal, even the notion that any notion is unreal. This is so hard to comprehend because there is no way to comprehend it. Any attempt to comprehend is already a mistake. So in a sense, any words even the most enlightened person utters is completely invalid. In the end the only thing that is left is silence. And make no mistake, that silence doesn't mean anything. It does mean that "everything is awareness". It doesn't mean that you are infinite. It means absolutely nothing at all. And that, the absence of truth, the absence of understanding, is all that will be left. I guess a lot of people hope for some ultimate supremecy of truth. Ironically, truth exists, it's just exactly what we think it is, a thought. Not more than that.

Okay, I want to write this down before this state I am in disappears. So, I just meditated, and I don't know how to put it into words, but I see the content now. I can see the content for what it is, I think? And I am aware that the content is nothing but content, and I am aware that something is witnessing the content. I have no clue what it is, but I am aware of it being there. I feel like I am a movie, and this person is sitting there and watching the movie. And, I can sense the calmness of that person, even though I am still the movie. I feel anxious right now, but at the same time it's like I am completely calm. I don't know what just happened, but whatever it was, it was so fucking obvious I am can't believe it. I don't feel any different, but at the same time everything is different. I wasn't even meditating for 20 minutes and this happened. I have no idea, but this is way too underwhelming to be enlightenment. I don't feel any different at all, I don't even feel really happy about it. But it's like I'm aware that I'm dreaming? That the content is just content... And before, I thought I was aware of content being content while meditating, but right now, as I am writing this, I feel like I am in a more meditative state than I ever was, even though I am nervous. This is so strange and subtle, but it changes everything, and it's kind of scary at the same time, but I am not scared of the "scariness"? I was just talking to my dog and it didn't even feel like I was talking... But this can't be it? I still feel the ego being there, I don't feel "unconditional love". It's more like I am aware of the "simulation"? I am pretty sure this will go away after a while, I don't even know if I want it to stay this way. But at the same time, it's so fucking obvious, that I don't even know if I can unsee it. This is just so fucking weird. I hope I didn't break my mind or something. I'm thinking that maybe I'm seeing the tail of the bull, or maybe the trails? But, I haven't even been meditating for a year, and not more than 20 minutes a day. It's impossible that this is it, I'll just wait until this goes away. Someone probably had similar expiriences, right?

Thanks! I don't know, maybe I really need a proper guide. This is what I mean with my ego no being ready, I feel like if I continue on pushing, the it or "I" would just do something stupid. But I guess I am more afraid of falling into Depersonalization Disorder, because this is kind of what I'd imagine it to feel like. https://www.msdmanuals.com/professional/psychiatric-disorders/dissociative-disorders/depersonalization-derealization-disorder Shinzen Young talked about it, too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zIKQCwDXsA I feel like I should better do this with someone practised, before I screw up my psychology unrepairably... maybe become a monk some day or something. I just remembered that as a kid, I sometimes was in this state for a few minutes, completely randomly. It's like everything seems like a dream, and even knowing that it isn't, doesn't change the feeling. It always just went away, but it hasn't since I had the expirience yesterday. It's like I'm zoomed out of what is going on within my mind.

It feels like I have "leveled up" my mindfulness. I'm just much more in the moment, and meditation was really easy today. It's like I can just bask in the moment, even when thoughts are going on. But at the same time, there are fears that are creeping up on me from time to time. I don't know if my ego is prepared for continuing this path? Because it seems like if I continue, more and more of what I think is real will just become pointless to me. What if I end up just not caring about anything, because it'll seem like everything is an illusion anyways? And what if I can't go back anymore? I have no idea where I would find "unconditional love", if anything it feels like I'd just become aware that everything is illusion, and that I am completely alone, stuck in this illusion. Why would I care about others if they are just content?

I feel like I am becoming a Zen-Devil...

I don't even feel like this is a special expirience. It's just so obvious. I think whenever I meditated previously, I was always trying to do something. Even when I was pretending not to want something, I simply was. It's like I was trying to focus in on awareness, not realizing that I have always been focused on awareness. I was so caught up with trying to find out what that "awareness" might be, that I couldn't simply expirience it, as I was all the time. It's so strange how the feeling of past and future is so fragile. Right now, it seems like there has been no past, everything that happened always happened in the now, and all that I thought the past to be was merely a feeling and memories, that all still happened (happen) in the now. Even describing now as now is kind of silly, because there is nothing else than now, so there is no word needed to describe it. It literally is everything that exists. Even using present tense is strange, as if there was something else than presence. I don't know how to describe this feeling, but it feels like the nothingness before death was just part of the moment right now, as everything else I have ever "expirienced". If I had to put it into words, it's like awareness is the moment, and the moment never, ever changed. And somehow, the content just became a resonance of that fact. So, even if the content changes, even if I go unconscious tomorrow, it will not matter at all, because I am part of content. The moment will not change no matter how much the content will change, even if tomorrow the content is death. I don't even feel like my own suffering is bad right now. It's strange, because I do care about my suffering when I am wanting to do something. But the condition I am in is giving me such a great certainity that suffering is completely irrelevant, that I don't even care about caring about suffering in the "future". Everything is the moment, every single thought I have, every single concept. I don't see a difference between being with the concepts and thought, and being purely with whatever else is there. Both are content, no matter how "chaotic" the content is, the moment is always completely still and calm. Having monkey mind is just as much of being "in the moment" as every other state is. Even the most unconscious state is "being in the moment", because there literally is nothing else than that. Not wanting monkey mind is the content trying to be a certain content. Wanting to be "enlightent" is a state of content. Whether the content aligns with the moment or not does not matter at all. The content will never have influence on the moment. Wether the ego exists within content or not does not matter either. Isn't it the ego itself that wants the ego to disappear? Because, what else is there to want anything? The moment itself doesn't want anything, it's just there. And if the moment is the only permanent thing there is, why even bother? The moment always has everything it wants, because it doesn't want anything. It is beyond wanting. Wanting to understand and become the moment is the contents desperate attempt to change itself, isn't it?

I have just done some research and I do think I saw the tail of the ox. https://ancientforestzen.wordpress.com/2012/12/09/seeing-the-ox/ But how do I proceed now? Do I just do the same meditation for longer periods of time? I'm not even quite sure how I did it, it's like I was in a dark room filled with thousands of switches, and accidently I found the right one to turn the light on. Shouldn't I "note down" where the switch is so I find it again once the room goes dark again? Maybe I am too fascinated looking at the room, now that I see it for the first time, but all the excitment will distract me from finding the switch later again. I always tried to make the content disappear, but I think it's the content, the true recognition of what the content is, what leads one to the source? When I just become aware of sight, I also become aware of "where" sight is happening. I guess you can do this with everything? Maybe it is a way to disillusionize the mind. Instead of thinking everything is illusion, simply look at everything the way it really is. I want to try this with the feeling of "someone else".

@Nahm I don't know, but I feel much more patient.

I feel am so calm, it's almost funny to me.

Yes it's a very strange situation, I do kind of feel like I am going crazy. It's like I don't see reality as "reality" anymore.

I don't know, I don't think I did enough meditation work to be aware of the witness or anything. Maybe I am just deluding myself? It's so hard to explain. I can "feel" this something now, but it's not really a feeling. I am just aware of it, the best way to explain it is like dreaming? I don't feel like I am really writing this. I don't even know how to explain it, I don't even know if there is a point in explaining it.

I can't seem to get past this confusion. So, let's say we fast-forward 1000 years into the future. And let's say that science has uncovered the entire functionality of the brain. Now, let's look at this from the spiritual perspective. The scientist, that does not exist, sets a subject, that does not exist, into a device, that does not exist, that can manipulate the brain, that doesn't exist, in any form it pleases. The device, that does not exist, is capable to deactive and alter any system of the mind, that doesn't exist. The device, that doesn't exist, can turn off the cognitive system, that doesn't exist, that is creating ego, that doesn't exist, within the mind. Once the non-existent device turned off the non-existent ego, suddently the non-existent subject feels like he is becoming absolute infinity. That non-existent subject reports of losing the sense of self completely, saying infact the self was an illusion. Let's say the non-existent device can alter the non-existent cognitive systems in a way where time and space ceases to exist for the non-existent subject. The non-existent subject loses all sense of reality, as perfectly predicted by the non-existent device. The non-existent device can manipulate the non-existent brain to alter the non-existent subjects reality in any shape of form it pleases. It can turn the non-existent subjects reality into that of a plant. It can alter the reality in such fundamental ways that the non-existent subject will get a sense of nothingness. But the non-existent device can once more alter the non-existent subjects non-existent mind in a way that the non-existent ego emerges once more out of nothingness. The non-existent device could do anything. It could alter any function of the non-existent subjects mind in ways that the non-existent subject could have impossibly even imagined before. The non-existent subject might lose all sense of outer world, it might lose the sense of location, or seperateness. The non-existent device can play with the non-existent subjects mind in whatever way it wants. One moment the non-existent subject is enlightened, and then the next the non-existent subject is once more egoic. How can a non-existent device do anything? How can it predict the behaviour and consciousness of the non-existent subject? It would know exactly when "enlightenment" would occur, yet the expirience of enlightenment reveals that the device cannot exist, and that it is just a illusion of the mind. But it's the non-existent device that has absolute control over the non-existent subject, not the other way around. Of course the reality of the subject will change, because the device is in control of it's reality. It can control wether or not the expirience of the subject is that of absolute emptiness, or of seperateness and ego. Ironically though, the subject, once it expiriences emptiness, will belief that it is reality, because it doesn't even have the cognitive functions to distinct between anything. So, it is merely left with emptiness, and once the structures of the mind reemerge, the subject will belief it expirienced reality, when infact it just expirienced a different expirience, and altered reality. The non-existent device is in absolute control of the consciousness of the subject. The subject will at any time be absolutely certain that it's reality is reality. The egoic reality is an illusion once the subject is put into a different kind of reality. But what if both realities are illusions, that of nothingness just as much as that of ego. What if, whatever the non-existent device really is, is reality. What if that reality is so inaccessable, that we cannot even imagine it's properties, because properties themselves are part of the limited reality of the mind? Why else could a non-existent device play with a non-existent subjects consciousness as it pleases. Why else would it be able to alter consciousness in any way it wants, creating an enlightened being within a split second. What if, when the device decides that it wants to get rid of the subject, true nothingness will emerge? A nothingness so empty that it is void of expirience and consciousness itself? An emptiness that is so empty, that there is nothing to witness it? Maybe the rational mind underrestimates how much the subjective reality can be altered? Maybe it cannot grasp that whatever it "feels" reality to be is nothing more than an illusion, and yet, it is everything it has? Because if it cannot recognize that, then it will never recognize that even the greatest truth there is, is nothing but a lie. Even the most real and unlimited expirience, nothing but a simple expirience that does not go beyond what the expirience itself is. And, maybe it cannot recognize that everything that is expirienced, is not actually everything there is? What if the mind is just too limited to actually become aware of that, ever? If one expiriences "everything", isn't it merely an expirience of everything that the mind is capable of expiriencing? And to the mind, it will be infinite, because by definition it will literally be infinite within the perspective of the expirience. But why would the mind fall into the belief that the expirience of infinity is actually everything there is? Or is by definition saying "everything there is", merely pointing to the contents of the mind, because after all, what is beyond might be so incomprehendable that even content itself would be a false desciption? Or is true enlightenment, or the expirience of nothingness, merely a recognition that reality is beyond words, so beyond words and concept that everything the mind can come up with is absolutely nothing?

Just a random thought, but are you multitasking as you work? If so, you might want to try to avoid it for a while and see if it makes a difference.

But how do you know that all beliefs are false? What if some beliefs are just correct? How would you proof the opposite? By a certain expirience that you think is true? By pure absence of all conceptualization? I am still confused as to how it's even possible to get to the conclusion that "consciousness is all there is". Yes, from the perspective of the mind that may be the case, but how can one be absolute certain that consciousness is absolutely everything there is? Literally everything "we" expirience is consciousness, so obviously we'll have to say that consciousness is all there is. For me it's like alot of people just ignore the mystery of the outer world. Materialistic people are completely absorbed in the conceptualization of the inner world. But spiritual people seem to completely ignore the possibility that there might be something consciousness has absolutely zero access to. Where does this absolute certainity come from? What if consciouss is nothing and everything, but still merely a limited part of a reality we have no access to? Again, how can we trust the expirience to be the truth? Is it only because it's all we have? What if even the expirience of absolute truth is merely an illusion? What if concept is real, and the world is made of concept? And what if our mind has no access whatsoever to true concept, but merely is able to access the reflection of concept within consciousness itself? How can we be so certain that it is not the case? And why are people so certain of it before they are even enlightened? Who in this forum considers themselves truly enlightened?

You stand infront of a cliff and think "I will die if I take one more step.", or you stand infront of a cliff and think not at all. Taking another step forward, which of these two states of consciousness captures the truth? Or in other words, what will happen once you step forward and fall down the cliff? It may very well be that the thought does not describe what will happen, or that the description itself is not really what will happen. But does the absence of thought hold any more truth? And wouldn't any investigation of truth within the mind always lead to nothingness, because the mind is inherintely uncapable of fabricating truth?

But as I said, all of these findings that you guys describe are completely explainable by rational means. You don't have a body, because whatever the mind thought the body was, was simply an expirience of the mind. As I said, everything is the expirience of the mind, from the perspective of the mind. If I look at a tree, whatever I expirience the tree to be is not really the tree. It's simply another expirience, an illusion. But that doesn't mean that whatever that I am refering to does not exist. We have zero access to the outer world whatsoever, not even a glimpse of it. We have so limited access to the outer world that infact, whatever we think the outer world to be is always part of the inner world. The inner world is everything we expirience, and I understand that. Even the "body" that we expirience as "body" is part of the inner world, so it's an illusion. But that doesn't mean that whatever the inner world is referring to as "body" doesn't exist at all. If it doesn't, go ahead and test it. Let's see if the body is an illusion after you cut off your arm. Let's see if "death" is an illusion once the expirience of your mind completely stops. I can recognize that we have no idea what the mind is. That we are completely clueless, and always will be, what exactly consciousness is, alteast in a conceptual manner. And yes, consciousness is the ONLY thing we have access to. But why do we assume that everything is consciousness? It's obvious that the mind will have the expirience of "everything" being "consciousness", because for the mind, everything in it's existance is consciousness. A good example is 5-MeO-DMT. I mean, 5-MeO-DMT is an illusion. It's simply a concept of the mind that is completely generated by the mind. But yet, once you take 5-MeO-DMT, you will alter the expirience of the mind is such a way that the structures that create the ego suddenly disappear. And once that happens, the mind has access to the entire expirience of itself, and that expirience is literally unlimited in every way imaginable. Previously the mind limited itself in a way to expirience itself in a specific way, but once you alter that, the entire reality of the mind alters. I mean, how can we just ignore that with rational means, the expirience of absolute infinity is easily explainable? There is no great mystery about it, it's simply how we know the mind works. Yes, we don't know what exactly the mind is, because the map is not the territory. But it's like you guys just say the territory doesn't truly exist, because after all all we have is the map. Yes, the map is part of the territory. The "expirience" is part of the territory. But the expirience is evidently not the territory itself. And with expirience I mean everything the mind could possibly expirience, even "infinity". My biggest question here I guess is, why can we trust the "expirience" just because it's everything we have? Why do we trust the expirience of enlightenment, or the direct expirience of god. How is that a good idea? I mean, look at us. Right now, for our mind, the ego is part of it's reality. But, you can alter the mind in a way where it becomes obvious that ego is just a structure. But then the mind thinks it's everything because you still expirience everything the mind is capable of expiriencing. Sure, nothingness is an expirience, but how does it apply to actual reality that we don't even expirience in any shape or form? I can have the expirience of nothingness, but I will still die of starvation if I don't eat. So, is "eating" not real? Is "hunger" not real? Yes, what we expirience as hunger or as starvation is not real, or rather it's just an expirience of the mind. But as I said, it doesn't change the facts whatsoever. I don't doubt for a second that if I take 5-MeO-DMT, whatever I think reality is right now will change in such a drastic way that I will be left with a completely different reality, so different that I can't even imagine that it's part of the mind. But what if, what if the mind is actually capable of generating an expirience of absolute infinity? And, isn't for the mind the expirience of absolute infinity nothing more but the expirience of it's own, entire reality? The problem I seem to have is that, right now I have a very specific feeling of reality, and yes, if the ego disappears I will suddenly realize that the mind is that expirience of reality. But what if that expirience of reality, of infinity, is just a fabrication of the mind? We can never proof that it isn't to ourselves, because the MIND is EVERYTHING we expirience.