Carl-Richard

The point of contention is that senses are thought to be a specific thing, and you can experience a state without sense content, i.e. cessation or the void. The absolute is not a specific thing. It's all things. So when you say "senses are absolute", it's limiting the absolute, thus it's not absolute. "But if all things are absolute, then senses are absolute because it's a part of all things". Yes, in that case, you can call everything absolute and you would make a video on Absolute Spiral Dynamics, Absolute Nine Stages of Ego-Development Theory, Absolute Politics, Absolute Cooking with Leo. But then nothing becomes absolute. What is "the absolute" actually pointing to? It's pointing to an experience of yourself as God. That experience is not the same as the average joe having a taste of ice cream at Cosco or whatever; of course, it's not structurally different, because God is again absolute and independent of such structure ultimately. But you wouldn't call that average joe "awake" just because he is having experiences of senses. Heck you even call us not awake, us who claim to having had experiences of God. No, the absolute is fundamentally beyond all that. It's an experience beyond all specifics of experience. It's the totality. So when talking about the absolute, if you're indeed talking about the experience of yourself as God, it would make sense to try to honor that totality, not get hung up in "your senses are absolute" as if that is a point to get hung up on. Unless, you take everything to be equal to senses, even the state of cessation or the void.

Tom Campbell recounting shared out-of-body experiences with his colleague at Monroe Institute back in the 70s. 8:13

Last night, I had a dream that I was being chased by several tornadoes. Then today I read about the tornado incident in Kentucky with an estimated death toll of 100 people, which is the worst tornado event in the history of Kentucky. About two weeks ago, I had a dream where PsychedSubstance got kicked out from his own house. Today he released this video: The night my dad's boss died from drowning, I had a nightmare where I was being chased by a ghost, fearing for my life. I usually never have those types of nightmares. What is this?

It's God when God pulls the blanket over its eyes. Lack of sensation is also God. Are you telling me the void is a sensation?

Yes because Markov blankets are propietary of Siddharta Gautama 500 BC, of course. Tell me, how is a sensation, as distinct from a shape, absolute? Surely, the absoluteness occurs before any such distinction, correct?

The "colors and shapes" you see is your personal dissociation (a part of the Veil of Maya, the Markov blanket), and labelling the colors and shapes as distinct entities is an operation done by the conceptual mind which the ego is a siamese twin to ("conceptual" can technically be task-oriented and "selfless" but also self-oriented as in the default mode network). But it's perfectly fair to use "ego" more broadly to refer to all these things (I personally tend to use "personal mind" for this). Nevertheless, using the term Absolute to refer to any of these things (as isolated limited things), is a mistake.

That's the common cultural conception of the term. That's wrong in the common cultural conception of the term. The only thing that exists in that conception is dependent on limitations associated with the body and related sensory organs like eyes (hence the confusion in the original thread, talking about literal biological eyes as if it matters to an infinite being). The "ego mind" is the subjective perspective and derivations/abstractions of those structures (e.g. thoughts are abstractions of sensations). When a solipsist in the common conception says their experience is the only thing that exists, they reliably refer to limitations of their sensory field (eyes, bodies, positioning), and at the center of this sensory field is not coincidentally their own body and the thoughts that are generally related to that body (the ego mind). The ego mind is a software that accompanies and is created to conserve the body. That software and its projections (objects, distinctions, sense perceptions themselves) is at the center of the common solipsistic conception. Firstly, no, you created a red herring that it was about syntax rather than semantics. Secondly, introducing excess linguistic entities (especially generalizing ones like algebraic symbols that by definition have multiple meanings) and odd unnatural text that breaks with natural speaking patterns (excess syllogistic language) reliably decreases comprehension.

I've said multiple times in here that "God" also sucks as a word when talking to noobies generally. I just think "solipsism" sucks extra hard, again generally. Feel free to explain why you think "God" is more "abused" than solipsism. The larger point is to know your audience. Rupert Spira has a good view on this: 6:44

It does break because you changed the meaning of x. That's the entire point. This entire thing you did here where you tried to retain the syntax between the two different understandings is more or less schizophrenia, just a lot of things irrelevant to the larger discussion. The problem is the semantic meaning is different, not the syntax. Besides, you only chose quite arbitrary sentences. I can retain the syntax for two materialism understandings but they will still be different semantically of course (by definition) which is what the actual problem is: "x is all that exists". Replace it with "matter" (as in the common perception of materialism) or "God" (as in my for-the-sake-of-argument perception of materialism, where also God = matter) and the syntax is retained. Yet of course the meaning of the word "matter" in the two understandings is different, which is again what the actual problem is. Likewise (or conversely), I can try to and fail to retain the syntax between two understandings of solipsism: "x is the only sensory-bound, biologically body-centered locus of experience that exists". Replace "x" with "my mind" and you'll get the common perception of solipsism, replace it with "God" (as in the Cosmic solipsism perception) and the statement is false. Agaiiin, the problem is we're clashing with the meaning of the word in the common cultural perception of it; the syntax of a few sentences is irrelevant. By the way, using algebraic notation in text is another textbook example of a blunder of communication (it's more often needlessly complicated) and a sure way to make yourself think you're saying something insightful but it's in actuality wrong because you've overcomplicated it but you can't keep track of how.

Then you'd like the thread I linked 👀

Train your focus (meditate), increase your energy (e.g. health, nutrition, celibacy), release attachments (deconstruct the self, investigate the sources of thoughts, feelings, tell yourself you'll be fine whatever happens to these things / that you're fine without them).

What argument do you need? It's tautological. The infinite doesn't inform you about any specific limitation. It informs you about all of them, which is limitless. You cannot use the infinite to deduce anything finite. You can only "deduce" all of it.

This is very new stuff.

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 explicitly mention the importance of such a distinction as they're talking about it, mentioning it is 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".