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I have had the experience with thinking who is behind the eyes too. It went to a point, I felt literally gone and that I was an infinite nothingness behind my eyes from where I look from. Strange daily experiences for me would be like: Looking in the mirror and not feeling it's me. Just some body. I really find it handsome though. Every now and then the 'lucidity' pops up. Where I am suddenly lucid of reality and am like, "What". It happens multiple times a day. I consider it as practice and try to pop it up whenever I can.

Hey everyone, I'll write down my insights on happiness following this, please read and point out any holes, loops and places I missed to explore. Tell me where I can go deeper, and just your insight on happiness in general. Thank you. I feel that Happiness is deep satisfaction that lasts. The feeling of being whole and complete. When you feel that you need nothing to complete you. When all your needs vanish, and you are truly ready to die. Really freedom = Happiness = Love. Then what prevents us from being happy? Worries and Wants. Why do we worry? Because of our desire to maintain, which is the same as attachment. We have the desire to maintain, because we fear the collapse of whatever we are trying to maintain. Collapse into what? Into pure nothingness, pure potential, infinity, death. We are scared to die. I think to stop this fear, we will need to realize, we are which we fear collapsing into, the pure nothingness, pure potential, infinity. Why do we want? Because we want to feel complete and whole. Well, that's an assumption that we aren't actually complete and whole. Let's question that too and test the assumption. Am I actually not complete and whole? Well, to question that, I need to know who I am first. And well, turns out, I am the pure nothingness, pure potential, infinity. Which means I am actually complete and whole. So complete and whole that I contain the non-complete and non-whole. Assumption was wrong. Therefore, there is no need to want. And you are truly free for the first time. So, true Happiness and actual freedom comes from realizing our true nature. Who would have guessed. Took me a whole 1.5 hours of contemplating and running into loops to come to a conclusion that I have been told the whole fucking time.

First of all I'm newbie to enlightenment and Consciousness so these are my questions about conciousness. Okay seems silly, but i don't grasp it. If Consciousness alone exists how can i go to be in the state of nothing and suddenly time or events passed by? Yes I'm not denying it all occured in conciousness but how the events passed when I'm(conciousness) is in the state of nothing. Example :- Sleep, why and how time just passed by, when nothingness existed and howcome events happened in that time period.

From the perspective of stage blue/low orange shadow in which they "pray for egoic aims" such as more money, better house etc. is it in Gods possibility to grant our egoic wishes simply by praying to him? Does God think in that manner? Lets say I wanted a better job and i prayed for it, would God respond? Would the "nothingness" respond? Is there a differnece between the two?

@Leo Gura I appreciate your answers. When you say Let's make an analogy. Let's say I spend years looking at clouds non stop. For fun I "see" or interpret things out of the clouds, like here's a lion, here's a cat, etc. What you are saying amounts to saying "all those things are just clouds!" which makes total sense. I'm just so used to my stories in the clouds that I forgot I'm looking at clouds. My problem, and my question, is how can one interpret stuff without the clouds? Can you start interpreting and seeing shapes out of a totally blank sheet? When you say "you can't stop something from coming out of nothing", I see how this statement is not totally correct. I would personally prefer "interpretation is always possible". There's infinitely many ways to look at the clouds and there's infinitely many ways to interpret nothingness into life. Many things are still unclear, but thank you for the answers.

Have you actually verified this? Because as true as this may be, the problem I see with the Ego, is that even when you realise No Self the ego still remains. I mean even if you awaken to nothingness, you will eventually come back to the ego. So how do we permanently fix this? Is it even possible, because as long as we are in human form we have needs and when these needs aren't met, we aren't "happy". Thanks brother

You're confusing states of nothingness with states of unconsciousness. When you're sleeping, you're unconscious of the passing events, like a rock on the side of the road.

For me the problem is that with meditation it is impossible for me to get close to the tearing of the veil that occurs with psychedelics, even in low doses. Lately I've seen the need to meditate as much as possible, partly for pleasure, partly to get deeper, but if I stop doing psychedelics for a while, my mind starts to buzz with questions and there's no way to stop it. a small dose of 5 meo sometimes and a momentary glance at the nothingness that dreams that I am makes everything go back to order. I hope it is no longer necessary, but I wonder how many people really see in normal meditation that it is the infinite nothingness that is dreaming. It would be nice if it were like that every day

Whatever you can think about, infinity contains all that. If you start to get unsure about infinity, try to imagine the edge of the universe. What is outside of that edge? Nothing? What is nothing but an infinite nothingness? What is infinite nothingness but infinite potential? What is infinite potential but infinite actuality?

Infinity is nothingness. If it is not something you are imagining, it exists as Infinity or actual nothing (pure Actuality)

Guys im so deeply confused about leo's teachings (like "Why brains dont exist" & "making sense of paranormal phenomena" )and there is just way too much videos for me to know where to start. In this case I cant connect teachings like: there is no self but there is also no external world(everything being a hallucination/perception) and stuff like: yes, there probably exist immaterial souls (my interpretation of leo saying we might have lived many different lifes) (video: outrageous experiments in consciousness 30 Awakenings in 30 days) and I might have lived many different lifes but after death there is only nothingness forever. What I also dont understand is how idealism should solve the mind body problem (because stuff still feels solid and my brothers or dogs body is hurt when I punch them) and I havent found much value on this forum either. Also how does besided the mindbody dualism the semantic dualism of nothing and everything collapse? And how is the dualism of my perspective of planet earth versus my brothers perspective of planet earth collapse? Also what does general & special theory of relativity and Quantum Electro Dynamics mean for my thoughts, my actions and the following linear consequences like my mothers, the planet earth's (The fossil record tells us that life on Earth has lasted at least 3.5 billion years ->implies science has taken measurments of the external world and predictions say that in 2 billion years our ocean will be boiling due to the swelling of our sun) or my death? Also I recently took an MRI-Scan, Shouldnt this prove the existance of my skull on planet earth? Can someone give me a model of reality, the world, humans and myself including this empitness/void/nothingness everyone is talking about and also explain me the here stated paradoxes? Please be very concrete if possible, 90 % of the stuff I read here I dont really understand. You'd be my hero. THanks in adavance

God = Everything/Nothing (God can not be 'known' in relative/rational/logical/dual terms... 'it' has no limits, no qualities, no 'somethingness') For 'Everything/Nothing' to 'seem like something'.. introducing... 'imaginary duality'. (by 'pretending/imagining' that 'Everything/Nothing' is not what it is (is separate from itself).. Something 'appears' (seems to be)) All 'duality/limits/qualities/description' is 'imaginary'.. and this is what 'Creation' is... the 'mechanism by which Everything/Nothing 'knows/imagines/creates' itself (Somethingness, rather than 'Everythingness/Nothingness') The Map (imagined duality/separateness) is not, and can never be 'The Territory' (non-duality/oneness), and at the same time.. it IS the territory (you, me, everything there 'is').

@Stefan Heuer I'm still wrapping my head around it too. Basically all of reality is happening in God's imagination. Even the physical world. Because of this, its not real. None of it ever happened or could possibly happen. It's nothing at all. God is having a human experience in it's own mind. Physicality only is possible because reality is infinite nothingness in the first place. The problem with science, hitting other people, is that it's all contextual and takes place within the dream. But because we have forgotten we are God, it all seems so real. It's kind of like saying "Well, if its a dream then how come all this dream stuff is happening?" I found the Book Labyrinths Of Reason's opening pages really useful. The dreamer is beyond any individual person or ego, its a universal dreamer. God has forever to do whatever. Forgetting is a virtue. God wants to explore itself and get to know itself through its limitations. How else would god experience what it's like to be mortal unless it used it's immortal power to experience that? Only an immortal could be a mortal. It's a paradox. The only thing that can be immortal is nothing. Nothing can be anything. You are experiencing a sliver of that anything nothing right now! I don't know about the multiple lives thing. Other than you actually don't live any lives. The fact that anything exists at all is hard for the materialist mind to wrap itself around. once you catch a glimpse of eternity and infinity it starts making more sense. Honestly I am still a newbie on this path.

I do not deny the existence of preferences. Because, preference is the very nature of being - but within these, there are further dualities, with boundaries, however imaginary, that can be ascertained to a degree, according to the levels of your perception --- and these are pushing you towards something that you are inadvertently attached to. The key point here being - comprehending the nature of the intricate dualities of the concept of preference. An 'indifferent existence' is an oxymoron. It cannot, and will never exist together. Existence can never be indifferent - it can masquerade as that, in an illusory form, hidden underneath some sort of deeper, and most probably, egoic manifestation - giving an idea that you are being indifferent - where in reality, you just aren't, and never can. As you said, total indifference cannot exist beyond concept, and therefore, is not a pre-requisite to this discussion, altogether. Did watch the video, and it does stress upon the point that I tried to put forth, ab initio - Leo talks about something called the 'Emergent Phenomenon' - that the randomness coincides with the non-randomness, too - there is a complex order to it, and variations do tend to have a very real effect. The point with the free will debate is not that people become hopeless (hint: egoic love for self, and the consequent loss of it masquerading as indifference), but that people comprehend the nature of ego and Nothingness, in the first place. This was one of Leo's first few videos on such topics, and what he is trying to say, in facile terms, is that it's all God - and that free will requires the acceptance and realization that it is all Oneness - and there's nothing quite outside you - for Everything is you, and you are a product and the manufacturer of it. That, an 'I' is not solely responsible for all that happens to 'themselves', because in the greater picture, 'I' work in tandem with the vastness, unbeknownst to my egoic self that strives for rigorous separation. He talks about these 37 trillion cells working for us, and not the egoic 'I' - and that is what it is - there is something working, that is not so arbitrary. We cannot shun it by saying that nothing makes sense, because quite evidently, there is some sort of meaning that we are able to give. Moreover, one cannot give meaning to things that do not make sense - the meaning and the cohesiveness of a certain thing have an inter-dependent relationship. He gives the example of being seated in a car, and realizing that you have no control since you are not the one steering the vehicle towards its destination - the idea behind this is that while you may realize that your illusion of control has been broken, it doesn't completely erase the fact that you are in a car, and are actually going somewhere. Therefore, understanding the concept of free will, in my opinion, means that while I may be walking the path, it is not the 'I' that is walking the path --- but anyway, both of it does mean that the path does exist, and is being travelled upon. As Leo put it, it is the mind that constructs preferences and thereafter makes the decisions - and each decision has a consequence. With the example of Google that he gave - if just because Google considers itself an input, no matter how deceived it is, it will never cease being an output - it is a something, and the something has real functions and is striving in some regard, and will behave in a particular, predictable fashion if certain buttons are pushed. The free will debate just juggles around the concepts of ego vs surrender - but it cannot deny the existence of things and or the functions attached to them - that is, once you have realized that ego is at play, and that it likes to take all the 'credit' - you, as an enlightened being, will try to not include it in the actual play. . Preferences do have mechanical elements to it - if one needs results, they need to train and try - and that's a very coherent process of this reality, as well, that would be absurd to deny. The results are the attachment. And if something is mechanical, it works by cultivating 'practical' relationships that need to be honored for its effective completion, without which the goal will never be reached. To be honest, we are all seeking something, and that, by its very nature gives it a mechanical touch. The very concept that surrendering gives the feeling of 'power', is somewhere, in itself, a subtle sort of attachment. Now that I think of it, haha, existence is nothing but a series of infinite attachments, glued together with love or whatever we may call it - that we can just accept through becoming enlightened through empathy; nonetheless, the lack of judgement, coming back to your original question, cannot happen in this finite, human lifetime, because judgement is the very core of your existence. The path is the judgement - that requires attachment for its effective, mechanical completion - with its own set of consequences based on the levels of 'personal' conduciveness. The path has a lot of choices, which you are not making, but You are making - that cannot be completely controlled, but regulated, for components of it are mechanical, and in the human context, limited.

It's just in my experience when I was sedated a couple times for surgery, it was just nothingness or total unawareness / unconsciousness. It can even be described because it's soooo nothing.

All of this just feels like a mystery. Whether it is the so called "sound" of a so-called "dishwasher", or the so-called "human's" so called "Search" for so-called "enlightenment". The contrast between nothingness and somethingness. I can safely say i can never know what enlightenment is or whether i have reached it or not. I mean, i could be enlightened already but wouldn't know it because i cannot see what they mean by enlightenment. All i got in the end are descriptions and stories from other people.

@Inliytened1 It's tricky, Osho put it perfectly, there is no God (noun) there is only godliness (adjective). From the awakenings I had into the nothingness, God didn't create anything, god is creation/existence. At least they are right about God not being able to be conceptualised or illustrated. Now thell them that jesus wasn't the (only) son of god and that this forum is full of prophets. I wonder if people who learn about God post-awakening would recognize their awakenings as (christian/muslim/jewish) God.

I can assure you that I haven't seen this song before a few days ago. It's a very memorable music video... especially the creepy part at the end. But it isn't that my experience had these visuals or anything. It wasn't really a visual experience at all during the death. It's more like these visuals are a metaphor for what was experienced... especially where everything dissolved into the infinite body of the Goddess in the video. So, the imagery in the video is very universal/esoteric/archetypal as I can recognize the life mother, the death mother, the magician, and the memento mori as archetypes. But the psychedelic imagery and dissolving is also relevant. I would imagine that MGMT (or whoever created the music video) has experienced ego death while on psychedelics or something like that. My experience was that my body was fragmenting and falling apart and that I died, which was not a visual experience at all. And in the fragmenting, I merged into nothingness and experienced being it. So, the radical de-centering in the video where everything merges into flowers on blackness that make up the body of the deity, felt very reminiscent of the shift in perspective that death is. But of course, neither words nor image can accurately describe it. It just has some semblance to the experience... which is why I said it was a great visual metaphor for what was experienced. I got a little shudder down my spine when I first saw it because it reminded me of it. As close to a representation of death as I've seen.

@Mannyb what even is 'material' from a non-dual paradigm? (material/immaterial, real/imaginary, this/that.. all duality) I use 'material' 'real' 'physical' etc interchangeably.. they are all imaginary duality, which must be, for any of those 'qualities' or 'limits' to mean anything. Were 'I' to be fully awake to the 'nothingness/everythingness/formlessness/infiniteness' of 'reality', there would be no 'me' who knew it.

No. Nothingness, Infinity, and Consciousness are identical. You need an awakening.

Reality is nothingness. Consciousness is a label projected onto nothingness. Nothingness and consciousness are not equal or synonyms. They're on two different levels. Nothingness is first order. Consciousness, or human experience, is second order.

It's obvious that consciousness is a concept and that it is partial and flawed. The most obvious limitation of everything is consciousness theory is that it can never explain how others and the external world exist outside of one's own bubble of reality. Consciousness is, by definition, a first person experience, and so it cannot explain a third person's experience, or even acknowledge it for that matter. How does the world continue working while you're unaware? Consciousness has nothing to do with that, obviously. This is Sam's argument. And y'all are just deflecting it with your smart ass non-dual arguments cause you're too closed-minded and identified with your position as if it's absolutely true. Yet, when you are presented with an argument as such, you will immediately go to the absolute vs. relative distinction, as if it's gonna answer anything at all. What you're actually doing is that you're just confusing your relative perspective with the absolute. But you're not aware enough to see that. And now that I'm saying that, you'll either hate me or call me names, even though I'm just telling you the truth of what you're doing. It's a tragedy that you claim open-mindedness while being dogmatic. Sam is careful at least. He's willing to admit your consciousness theory if it can resolve the 1st person vs. 3rd person contradiction. But since it can't, he doesn't admit it as absolutely true, and he's correct for that. Y'all are the deluded, naive, and closed-minded ones here. Not Sam. Now you will probably say that I don't understand what you mean cause I'm not awake or whatever, but that would make you even more confused cause you'd be disproving your own theory by the sheer fact of trying to prove it to "others". Your theory is solipsism, and it's impossible to prove. Now you will probably say that you don't claim that solipsism is true. And you will think that I've made this mistake cause I don't understand non-duality, but I have an answer for this already. You think that consciousness is the ultimate ground of reality. To you, reality IS consciousness. Right? Well, you're deluded for thinking that. Why? Because reality is unconscious when you're unconscious. So why do you think it's consciousness? I would guess that that's just a projection from the human consciousness onto reality. And that it has nothing to do with the ultimate reality, which is nothing. And I know what you're gonna say, you will say that consciousness IS nothingness, but at that point you will be just arguing semantics, cause I could call nothingness toilet paper, or bird's milk, or ox turd, or anything else. Consciousness is just a meaningless label that you're using to describe the indescribable. But since you confuse your relative perspective with the absolute truth, you will identify the indescribable as consciousness cause you're too identified with your non-dual narrative.

Ajata Project Welcome An Empty Answer You want me to “say more” about nothingness. Could anything be more paradoxical for the reader than to try to understand “nothing”? Why? Because most people start from the conviction that there is something which does exist; if nothing more, at least “me”. So, you will not likely appreciate nothingness unless you have come to realization through advaita. At least we will, then, begin without the assumption that a “me” really exists. But even for the realized advatin, there will almost certainly be a presumption that “something” exists in the realm of reality. Even “reality”. Advaita points to ajata, and ajata is about nothingness, or emptiness. The Diamond Sutra of Buddhism, points exclusively to it. Hui Neng, the Sixth Chinese Patriarch, declares flatly: ‘There is nothing from the start.” These sources, among others, set your foot on the path, but recognize that most people are then going to immediately be lost. I have written clearly about advaita, and several have understood what I’ve said. I have spoken, to some of these, about what lies beyond the “Absolute,” and a couple have understood. So I will try to explain it, as best I can. The “ultimate condition” (if any) is nothingness, the complete “absence” of anything—no thing, of any possible description. The (approximate) comprehension of this would be to conceive of “emptiness”, as the emptiness of which not anything could be emptied; pure unassociated emptiness, and not even an emptiness which is within some imagined boundaries. The word “void” could be applied; but this “actuality” is not void of something—in any positive sense. So the nothingness of which we speak is totally empty, free of any subtlety which could even be envisioned. Hence there is not anything “within” it that can be subject to any kind of movement, or even change. Not anything can “come from” nothingness, nor “return” to it. It is not the “origin” of anything. In fact, it could not be applicable to say that it exists, or does not exist. Thus we can’t say that this is the “beginning” condition or the “ending” condition. At best, we could say that (if it were “existent”) it would be the ever-present condition. Yet, it is not an abstraction: its presence is “eternal”. “In” its presence are supposed creatures, and the world and universe they seem to inhabit. But all of these supposed things are “in” nothingness. They have not appeared from nothingness, or out of nothingness, or because of nothingness. In fact, they have not actually “appeared”, except as nothingness. The creatures take their reality, their “existence”, for granted; and thus also the reality or existence of the world and its universe—not knowing that they are nothing. The assumption is: ‘There was a time when I didn’t exist, a time when I existed, and a time when I will no longer exist”. But there are no such times. Not anything has ever “existed”, from the standpoint of nothingness. In nothingness, there is no “time”. What makes this so difficult to understand, is that because we say that “I have existed”, we conclude that there is some thing. And indeed we look around and say there are other things, such as a world or a universe. But the presumption that there was a time when I did not exist (or do; or will not exist) is false: no arising, abiding or decaying exists in nothingness. In other words, not anything “happens” in nothingness. “We” are nothing, the “world” is nothing, the “universe” is nothing. In nothingness, there is neither existence nor nonexistence. There is only nothing. From the standpoint of nothingness, no questions can arise. We can not ask for, nor expect, an explanation: not anything ever happens, in nothingness. The value of this understanding is that not anything really matters. Even understanding this does not matter. All is emptiness. That is the “empty” answer. The scriptures speak of one who is in sahaja samadhi as having “no mind” or an “empty mind”. It is this appreciation of nothingness that is referred to. - Ajata Project (Robert Wolfe)

It was the most intense for sure. But I suppose profundity and intensity are two different things. All were profound. The first two were beautiful and pleasant. But the latter was very intense and very bad trip by any measure. So, I've had three very profound Ayahuasca experiences. But the latter reminds me of this video... though it wasn't a visual experience at all. The first two were amazing experiences of being grounded in one-ness and getting some distance from my ego and a dropping away of suffering and fear. And an immersion in a kind of love that I can relate to as a human being. They were profound in a way that was grounded within Maya. And I was able to see all the little ways that I would self-deceive and a bunch of other psychological happenings that I was previously unconscious to. I can say that these were experiences of the merging of the human and divine and to recognize the divinity in the mundane. The third was very different. It was all about death and emptiness... very much akin to what I pointed out within the video. It was like being pulled behind so many veils. And then my body was falling apart. And I died and merged with the nothingness from which the everythingness springs. And I was this nothingness, and I intimately experienced and understood all the connections between everything in the infinite existence all in one instant (though time was not a thing... nor was sensing nor understanding). I knew things and remember knowing things that I can't possibly understand now. And I both was and wasn't able to handle everything in infinity. And as I (God) had a hard time experiencing the elements of infinity that included suffering, I (God) who was impervious to suffering would wrap around myself and comfort me (God), and in a moment things would resolve and there would be peace. And then I (God) would wake back up the the infitine nature of my existence and I (God) would panic and freak out... then I (God) would wrap around myself again and comfort me (God) and I (God) would understand an infinite amount of connections and comfort me (God) again. And this kept happening, until I (God) felt unable to handle it. I (God) had to surrender to the fact that I (God) needed mercy and a reprieve from my infinite nature as I (God) longed for the experience of finiteness. And then, I began to remember Emerald. And I (God) made a conscious decision to live as Emerald and to experience this finite story line and to surrender to my humanity and to relinquish seeking to transcend or get rid of my finite nature. It was clear to me then, that the intention for my life was to exist fully as human as that was the experience that I (God) wanted to have.

Yes consciousness is attributeless, obviously. A.k.a. nothingness. (But not literal nothing.)