Carl-Richard

There are just some words ("God" is another) that it seems cogent to draw the line on when you're teaching people who have no clue (which is often the case on this forum) and which generally seem less useful overall (I never felt the need to use "solipsism"; I always used the word Oneness). Again, the only reason people use the word in here to this extent is because Leo made a video on it, there was no mentioning of the word in relationship to non-duality anywhere near the same extent before that video. If it really was that useful for describing non-duality, you would've expected consensus among other teachers and you would've probably already heard about it. That Leo presented it as some idiosyncratic and radical thing ("Absolute Solipsism ooooo") is partially true because it is that, but not because it's revolutionary or deep, but because it's generally seen as a blunder of teaching and teachers refrain from it for that reason. To be clear, I have no problem mentioning the word solipsism as a passing remark if I'm talking to somebody who understands (or is likely capable of understanding) the difference between Cosmic solipsism and ego-solipsism and I'm making it clear in that very sentence that this distinction is important. But in cases such as this forum, where people don't seem to know the difference and they regularly do not explictly mention the importance of such a distinction as they're talking about it, you're just practicing autism and not being aware of how you're relating to the environment you're trying to interact with, just spewing personally significant word salad that has no significance to anybody else. It's of course dependent on your level of taste for clarity and empathy to the people you're engaging with where exactly you want to draw the line; if you simply dont care as much about those things, maybe you will go through the hassle of using words that people scratch their heads over again and again and you will take your time to unpack it and bang your head against the wall because "those people" are supposedly so dense. It's just that what I've seen of threads on the subject, and I will again mention the particularly enchanting example of "solipsism debunks veganism", I feel that's a boundary you just are much better off setting than honoring that one word that's in your vocabulary every time it enters your mind. It's like if somebody beats you once, twice, three times, where do you draw the boundary and call the cops? Up to you.

I've acknowledged "God" is also a problematic word which I'm particularly very hesitant of using around noobies, but it's not exactly the same, that's why I said it's unique, the reasons I gave above. Then I will ask you the same question I asked @Nemra: if I were to use the word "materialism" to describe God-realization/non-duality, what would be the problem there?

No you. I have dove into it. I have had the experience of being completely alone as consciousness.

Hence autism; lack of social awareness and self-focus. And I can do that too with "materialism". My definition of materialism is logically consistent with non-duality and God as an infinite Absolute mind. You do break the logic according to most people's conception of it. Yes, exactly. You're starting to get it. The issue comes from the people you're talking to and you're feeding into it rather than dealing with it more intelligently (in my opinion). Yes, but again, you do know I can define "matter" and "materialism" to be entirely compatible with non-duality? The only way you would be against that is if it clashes with most people's conception of those words. Yet you don't seem to care when it comes to solipsism. In one case, the disagreement (between my/our conception vs the common conception) is about how to define "matter", in the other it's how to define "mind". In both cases it's about defining one word differently. Yet you seem to think there is a substantial difference(?)

I do. I would in fact propose that not doing so "says a lot about you as a person" 😉 So phone screens are more dirty than toilet seats; you're touching it with your hands and touching your face and mouth all the time and you never clean it, yet walking inside with shoes once in a while — which may or may not carry microscopic or macroscopic traces of dog poo for the soles of your socks to pick up which you change every day or so anyway and you clean the floor once a week or so anyway — is supposedly more disgusting. I think we can conclude it's more a religious ritual than a scientifically informed choice to be dogmatic about having shoes on or off inside if the concern is about germs. My concern is not really as much about germs but visible dirt if I walk with shoes inside. It's more about aesthetics than contamination; the sight of it and the feeling of dirt and particles under your socks sucks.

If I were to choose between licking the bathroom floor vs the asphalt in my remote suburban area with 2500mm yearly rainfall, it wouldn't surprise me if I chose the latter. Besides, your bathroom gets cleaned like maximum once a week with your microscopic shit stains sprayed everywhere from flushing vs your shoes get "cleaned" if you walk on damp grass or even just sufficiently wet ground (which for me is more often than not 2-3 times a day), give or take the odd dog poo / poo stain in the middle of the path landing directly underneath one of your shoes (which is what, 1/100?, 1/1000?; of course that number becomes larger if other people also step on the poo stain area and spread it along the path with their next steps, but how far can such shoes carry the stain before proceding stains get titrated to near zero? Poo physics).

Want to see a video clip of somebody licking the bottom of their shoe?

I sometimes cba if I'm in a rush and I forget something before going outside. Shoot me.

It's less intellectual, more autism; lack of social awareness and being self-focused.

in the common conception of it. Yes, which is what they do. So why associate with that? It's not a very good choice, I agree; I would be very hesitant about pulling out that word to a noobie to explain non-duality, I have always been that. But solipsism is arguably even worse, as per my earlier argument about people being particularly bad at distinguishing between personal minds and transpersonal Mind, and that it's a very specific concept with a very specific cultural connotation (concentrating the erroneous conclusion) while God is more general, leaving a more open and indecisive approach to the term ("what do you even mean by God?"). The thing about solipsism is people don't seem to ask much what it really means, it's that they ask whether it's true or not. They have already made the conclusion about what it is but they are uncertain about whether to accept it (because it seems so counterintuitive, because again, I would propose they are making that conflation between ego-mind and God's mind and they don't actually believe that the ego-mind could be the only thing that exists). And I would say "materialism" (to explain non-duality) is probably even worse than that again. I was simply using an extreme example to show how it works.

The fact of the matter is that words have cultural connotations and it's your job as a communicator if you wish to be understood and teach effectively to tailor your use of words to what leads to the least confusion, misunderstanding, conflation of terms and ideas. So defining "materialism" in a way that suits a non-dual interpretation of God, even if it's perfectly valid and internally consistent within your framework, might not be the best choice. I'm saying that might also apply to "solipsism".

But the logic depends on how each word is defined. And that if you define "your own mind" as ego-mind, it changes the logic of "your mind is alone" entirely. So there is no difference there (in my example vs what you're doing); in both cases, the words are defined differently (by myself/us vs the larger culture). So what is the real issue? Why is referring to "materialism" to explain God an issue? That's exactly what is not implied when you define "your own mind" as ego-mind. That implication goes out the window. The logic is changed.

I used to be skeptical of sounding foreign in my English accent, until I learned about the history of the place I'm from and how the dialect was "made" so to speak and it made me really do a complete flip where I started to really endear it. It sort of clicked for me once we had a professor from the same place who lectured us in English once and he just completely embraced that rough and really apparent accent, it almost made me want to undo whatever moved me away from that (I have a lot of high school friends from international schools where I learned to speak more "native" English). I still sound like that in some moments but I like it now. I didn't watch the video yet by the way, I have a hard time watching long videos currently for some reason 🫠 This is the guy I'm talking about by the way: 52:16

Gary Weber does not get talked about much, but he brings an important perspective on enlightenment that integrates modern neuroscience and it allows him to make very precise distinctions about how the enlightened mind functions. Very insightful interview.

But that's just the common cultural conception of the word, right? "Materialism: God is the only material that can be known to exist, it precedes the knowing of anything else." What's the problem there? The problem lies in what "your own mind" means. The common conception of "your own mind" is different from the one you're probably intending (if you're intending to communicate non-dualism and "God's" infinite mind). The common conception is the ego-mind, the body-sensory structure. So the common conception of solipsism is probably different from the one you're intending.

@Nemra If I were to describe non-duality and God as "materialism", what problems would you have with that?

The solipsism word seems to be unique in that it works through a conflation that many people are just very inequipped to deal with (the distinction between personal minds and transpersonal Mind). For me personally, it wasn't before I had started my psychology degree that I started to get a firm grasp on the distinction. If you don't have that kind of background or haven't read similar stuff or other relevant fields like philosophy, it seems like the default is to not know the difference. The word is culturally contaminated in the sense that in the most common cultural conception of it, it holds the personal mind to be the center, while the non-dual geeks hold the transpersonal Mind to be the center (and Absolute), and then when the non-dual noobie starts to learn about non-duality and then learns that the solipsism word is actually (allegedly) a way to describe non-duality, then they get pulled into the culturally contaminated version while at the same time holding on to the notion that it's non-dual and Absolute, which is of course contradictory, but they don't know the difference so they don't know that. The antidote is of course educating oneself about the difference, but this is not as easy as it sounds (evidenced by the countless threads expressing confusion on the topic; see the latest one on solipsism apparently contradicting veganism), and it might simply be better to not bother with that particular word. Many teachers and traditions (Buddhism) are careful with that word exactly because of its cultural connotations. But it seems to be less pernicious than solipsism, at least on this forum, because you arguably see less threads of people being very confused about what "God" actually means or trying very hard to grasp or logically prove it to themselves. "God" is also a much more general concept than "solipsism" even in the general culture (it can be deistic, monotheistic, polytheistic, pantheistic, etc.), so you'll perhaps be more open and questioning rather than conclusive when learning about it in the context of non-duality, while solipsism in the general culture is reliably interpreted in a very specific way ("personal mind is the center"), so you're much more reliably forced towards one specific and in this case contradictory interpretation and to be more conclusive. You can of course use it to mean "Cosmic solipsism" if you know about that philosophical interpretation, but again, that requires actually knowing about that, and it doesn't seem to be meaningfully the case for most people.

You don't want to know what I had typed as a response but decided to not share lol.

Cessation is where all sensory phenomena disappear; time and space, sounds, sights, gone. I've not "completed" a cessation, but I have entered what felt like the beginning of it because I was so close to simply disappearing (I aborted before it happened). It felt like being slowly injected with anesthesia. Body, mind, thoughts, location, all disappear. The center dropping out (if I understand you correctly) or mind being quiet is not quite the same; it's ego dissolution but sensory phenomena is still occurring. I've had intense ego dissolution that did not seem like cessation (the "oh shit I'm dying" feeling), one time while listening to music (and I was still hearing the music when I got the feeling), but it absolutely blew my mind still. But the thing about those experiences is they can likely lead to cessation if you keep letting them unfold and especially if you stop moving your body (I've never heard about somebody entering cessation while moving). Somebody like Sadhguru, when he describes closing his eyes, he says "the world just disappears". He said he was doing a brain measurement once because people were curious and when it was over, the people allegedly started hitting him with a hammer to make him come back. And funnily enough, they said his brain readings said he was dead. It seems like when you're enlightened (which I think Sadhguru is), you'll basically automatically enter cessation if you close your eyes and stop moving for long enough.

Fucking god no.

Not at all, hypotheses tend to precede the testing of said hypotheses. But if we provide evidence, will you read it or will you pretend like you never asked for it? By the way, if we need evidence of psychic phenomena, I had intially planned to simply type the sentence about evading presented evidence instead of the long disposition of hypotheses. But you would've accused me of being obsessed and passive aggressive (you'll maybe still do that).

The intentions that are "doing" the manifestation could be influenced by other things (mind states, etc.) perhaps in positive or negative ways, so that would be one mechanism. And the way the intention actually does the manifestation could also have a mechanism (i.e. it has a causal structure you can analyze), but we maybe just don't know about it yet (hence you would call it "magical"). And of course, like I've put earlier, mind states associated with manifestation beliefs can influence actions that create the desired outcomes (that would be another mechanism). You can also create a causal model based on interpersonal psychic assumptions. If intentions formed in one mind can affect another mind psychically (or the intentions exist in the larger "mind space" that people's individual minds are somewhat tapped into), it could influence the actions of other people in a given direction. Hence the "universe" (other people) selects for actions in that direction, in a "magical" way. Besides, interacting with other people with an intention in mind could create microscopic non-verbal cues that influence people in a certain way (which would again be a case of mind influencing actions).

Can you explain cessation?

I'm saying if you don't have experience of cessation or being established in enlightenment, you don't know what it's like.

Did you have a cessation?