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@Psychventure There is the seeing of one's own true nature. Of being infinite nothingness. And if you see it well enough, you'll see that this infinite nothingness (which is everything) is immortal. And so it is that I know that this nothingness will never die. Physical death is an illusion. Me, Mujtaba, my human self with a name might die. I don't know. Whether I have a "soul" which will reincarnate I don't know, but that's a lower order structure to structureless infinity/nothingness. My true self won't die. Naturally this is a scary thing when seeing. I was traumatised by the directness of the experience and my mind keeps itself distracted from seeing this constant truth. -- The prospect of living forever terrified me a lot when I was younger. I used to be a very religious Muslim. And I thought about Heaven. That I would be there forever. And forever feel terrifying. And I hoped that God at least has the decency to give me a button which I can press to just sleep or die. Continuing on with what is nonetheless just an intellectual chain and making myself feel comfortable. If I already have existed forever, then what is there to fear for the future.

‘That’ is this. This is absolutely nothing. Nothing is not some other thing, place or dimension ‘after we die’. It’s this. “Everything” is the movie the screen (Nothingness) is being. It’s not that the brain doesn’t know what happens when we die, it’s that brain is a thought, not a thing which knows. You are that which is knowingness of the thought ‘brain’, and that which is the ‘thought’ ‘brain’. Humorously if you will, ‘death’ is also a ‘thought’, which is you, and is about you. It’s funny because it’s the same you ‘life’ is attributed to. How funny are you? “I do not remember what it is like to be in a dream, i simply do not, never have !!! So i don't know what to compare this reality to...” You can’t be in a dream. You can make it seem like it though, by dreaming. Imagine if “you” - conventionally speaking, as a person, wanted to go somewhere. Imagine you don’t have a car, but you can become any vehicle. *poof* - you become a car. But there’s no you to drive the car. But the scenery changes as if.

@Inliytened1 yeah, I get you. my thing is from my experiences and understanding of “consciousness”... there’s another level. One which deals energy and nothingness. It’s like there is this form of consciousness and we understand because of consciousness. However outside this conciseness there is shiva. Outside shiva is energy his wife. They both have created this. This is his daughter. This daughter holds gods. Gods created this so we can understand and grow. It’s ultimately just aspects of shiva and energy. Shiva created Vishnu and.... lol I’m explaining in Hindu terminology. Sorry if that confused anyone. It’s easier for me then explaining what they are. anyways, I’m still growing and learning. I honestly just loved talking about this with you! p.s shiva = nothingness so great you stop existing, so does energy, so does consciousness inside of it. tara(their daughter) holds this world. it’s so beautiful. mother = love, purity, energy. love is ultimately a aspect of purity... the energy of purity to be exact.

I too saw results about a week in. I had realizations like Nothingness = Wholeness and had a paradigm shift. Arc

Self inquiry -- instead of trying to answer Who am I? or What knows this? just realize that the question is what defines your limitation as a separate individual -- you don't know something, or you think you know something. Try to find the one who knows your experience, no matter how subtle the content gets. This can bring about pretty amazing states like the witness where experience kind of turns inside out and it's like you're looking in at experience from a vast nothingness. The God-like experience of the pure I AM. (You can transition this into enlightenment work by encouraging an awareness that on some level, you'll never actually know what's aware, because there's no questioner that could know anything, but that's a different axis of development altogether.) If you haven't done it before, this description doesn't do it justice. Self inquiry is a subtle but very intense and demanding activity that only works well if you do it way more intensely and way more often than you're probably willing to, and in all situations. It can be very distressing because you're essentially looking for something that is simultaneously not there, and all there is. Meditation with relaxed diligence. Learn from Culadasa, Rob Burbea, Shinzen Young, Kenneth Folk, etc, someone who has students who seem to get results. Meditation retreats Self love Gratitude Journaling Figuring out what you want Psychedelics -- each trip can provide insights that can be integrated over the course of a week or 2 and as a result life changes can happen beyond that in snowball fashion

You are right. Only nobody can report from nothingness

"Experiencing nothing" is a paradox for the finite mind. You have to experience it yourself to truly know it. It's like trying to imagine the experience of having no eyesight. There are people who see absolutely nothing, not even black or white or any other colors. From this example you can see it is possible to be aware of nothingness. Now extend that awareness of nothing to all the perceptions that make up your reality, that's what complete nothingness feels like. You are actually experiencing some form of nothingness right now. You are never aware of what is behind your head, so you could say you are experiencing nothing there. You just take it for granted because you are so focused on the finite things you can experience. Now try to extend that feeling of nothingness to all your perceptions. This is basically the best I can describe it. The difference is that these are not experiences, just imagination. They're like the off-brand versions of nothingness.

I surrendered and as i let go, death happened. I merged back with nothingness and it was one of the most satisfying and beautiful moment that you can possibly conceived as a limited human creature. The beauty of death is inconceivable, it is truly astonishing how powerful and majestic death is. I'm looking forward to my physical death now. It will be a blast.

Depends on your definition of enlightenment. If your definition is to be in higher states of consciousness at all times, then it is not permanent. The states of consciousness go up infinitely, and it is always shifting like a wave. You can not function as a human in super high conscious states(where reality melts down). You can be as conscious as you can while maintaining reality, but it will still fluctuate up and down, just less extreme the more conscious you are. This is by choice. My definition of enlightenment is the full realization of being/self/love, which will also lead to the end of seeking. To reach this point, you would have to experience absolute nothingness/infinite love directly. This is permanent; the knowledge of why everything is the way they are becomes absolutely clear, thus ending the seeking. This, however, doesn't mean you are in high conscious states all the time. After this, you are truly free to be whatever you want to be, so you are free to choose how you experience reality. And no matter how high or low your consciousness gets, you will always have this knowledge/being as a baseline.

The human ego is also a belief. I was talking about the eternal Self. The ego' story is that death is final and this is just a ride into nothingness. Have you ever experienced death to know that you won't come back to life in another form? We forget many things in this life, so the reincarnation theory seems plausible to me. Yes, it is one of the explanations and you can call it a belief but it is better than "death is the end".

A paradox is what happens when the finite mind tries to describe an infinite aspect of reality through its own superficially dualistic terms I realized this after I had an experience of nothingness. After reading that over, I realized that I experienced a paradox. It is entirely possible to experience nothingness, but impossible for the finite mind to reconcile that since it can only think in dualisms, so it gets turned into a paradox. It's impossible for me to imagine my experience of nothingness because in order to have a thought you need a finite object of some sort to think about. Here is one of my favorite ones: The second sentence is false. The first sentence is true.

You might be aware of the darkness but you may not truly know that it is your only (nothingness within, ironically, felt being) and final resting place (death).

@Shin Of course. You’ve never gone anywhere, ever. You’ve just been witnessing colors, shapes and sound shifting in your consciousness. That is what they call the illusion of “Maya”. Whats even more amazing is that if I asked you right now to close one of your eyes, and then ask “what is behind you”? You cannot are what is truly behind you, because if you turn your body the visual field is still in front of you LOL. What is behind you is pure nothingness. And that’s what you are. You’re literally a magical being. Magic is real, that’s how reality was constructed.

I can confirm reality is ultimately a self-aware hologram being in nothingness.

Oh my God! I just realized that I have been aware of nothingness since my early childhood. I didn't know that I was aware of it. How stupid! I come from a Muslim family, and so while growing up, people used to say the word Allah a lot. The moment my realization happened was the moment I asked my mom about Allah. She said that Allah created everything blah blah blah. I didn't understand the meaning of any of that. But then I asked her; how does Allah look like? And she said that he does not have a form and cannot be perceived. At that moment, I got a clear definitive intuition of God as nothingness, and it stuck with me till this day. Only I didn't realize that before. I have never not been aware of nothingness.

Well I began watching Leos videos in the year 2017 (didnt watch them all but I listened to lots of the important ones more than once) Yes at the beginning I fell into all the traps [ being dogmatic, ideologic, etc...] As I advanced I got psychotic symtoms ( watch "the dark side of meditation" & "dangers of actualized.org"). I had some mystical/ paranormal experiences and this year I have gone to an ayahuasca experience which was very fucked up, lol, to summerise this: felt like jaguar (spirit animal?), had acoustically "hallucinations", purged some old trauma out of my body, gone absolutly crazy for 3 hours ("my entire life"= "toughts" have gone thru a fucked up strange loop), ego-death / breakthrough- experience = god-realisation/ nothingness (laughed like a maniac). This happened before 2 months: did a lot of integration-work since then and now I decided to watch this new video from leo and mannn I just watched the first 7 minutes and I never listened to Leo that way how I am listening now to him. I am very fucking serious now with all this . I got more aware about lots of stuff. I have a lot of creative ideas now, I know now how to live my life, I know now how to not create new suffering in the present moment (at least I am trying, experimenting, observing, learning, failing, and starting the whole process again.) I am 20 years old and I am not ready to do the real nondual-consciossness-work now but I am preparing myself now for it and I tell ya: I will be fucking ready for it!! But first I want to live like a young, wild, free man: I want a sexy wife (I know already who is going to be it;), I want children, I want a dog♡(wuff wuff), I want to be finacially independant (filmmaking, music, art, books), I want my family to be happy and peaceful, I want to have lots of fun with my friends and people in generall and so on... this kind of real, internal success will take me some years and thats okay but than, brothers and sisters, than, when I am very grounded in life: oh yeah baby, there will be no escape from me RUUUUAAARR ( sorry that was the jaguar inside of me), what I wanted to say is, thank you that you read all of this, I appreciate it. Go meditate now! Bye.

@SoonHei So the thought arises on the 'screen': I'm the unchanging- I'm the sight / isness of this current thought which points at the unchanging Nothingness? I have trouble with this because I know I erroneously conceive as far as I know, of the screen having a mind or being intelligence, but clearly the mind isn't there. Mind implies a doer-ship. The screen showing Earth (my current experience) as intelligible and coherent, doesn't mean there's a mind that's intelligent. It's isness. Is the intelligence inferred on my part wrong, somewhere? Intelligence would belong to someone, and really, there's just fluffy stuff happening. So then if the Earth dream seems highly ordered, there's really no rhyme or reason still. Yet there's a clear path to pointing that there's a screen, God. Do you see what I mean? Truth is ascertainable. I guess I'm trying to grab Nothingness, myself, and corral it into a structure, because things appear which are coherent. But 'coherent' as opposed to what? Reality has no other reality to be inconsistent with, so the dream logic is unerring because well, it's not mechanically bound and is free. Unlimited. So there's just 'freedom' of a neverending moment with any type of content arising (because it wouldn't matter which kind of content arises.) Isness is the very presence of what's appearing? I still have the impression of it being like a ghost which generates the experience, but that's cause and effect, self and object. The worst part is I can barely figure out what my question is but I have my finger on something. It's like asking, "What determines what happens?" So that leads me to the nature of God, which it's said to be unconditional love, which permits. The dream nature takes on any form. Is it just full stop at this point? It's just maya spontaneously arising forever? The maya arising which is bliss/love (although to me it's not always easily recognizable), and sayonara, not much more to say? Tomorrow, I dream of being a reverberating asteroid with little there besides the sensation of moving through space? Then it's a rabbit being chased by a hawk? It's bizarre if that simply is what is, but that's what seems to be apparent. Sorry for the long post lol.

I don't know anything anymore. Am I speaking with God, with Devil or with Human? With emptiness or with Love? What meaning am I supposed to get from this. They say its all Love But I see otherwise. I see pain and suffering beyond any description that is even remotely close to Love. Why? Why can't everyone be happy and in love, like the birds in the sky... They say the devil is cunning and then they say don't worry there is no devil its all love. What is one to trust? How does one believe if he doesn't Know? For if I just Believe does that not mean I could be believing the Devil? Who does one follow? Even in the Bible I read things which are not what Love is. Am I supposed to believe that Love killed a man for hiding money from the Spirit. Was it not the priests who killed the man, in the name of God in their thirst for power and selfishness. I don't know anything anymore. I don't want to be an illusion. I want to be real and I want love to be real. Not fake love. How can an illusion love? I am a bug in the system perhaps and bugs will be squashed. I tried my best and if the forces of evil are after me so be it. I have no real power. I have nothing. I want to save my friends and my family and my Earth but I am not able to do anything. I even want to save the devil. How to create light from nothingness... How to go out of meaninglessness to meaning... If I am illusion I have no meaning, but if I am real, I am weak and feel all the pain of the Earth and all the injustice. All the pain of my own inadequacy to help anyone or anything. If I silence the mind I am super peaceful. "Shut up and stop talking" "Get in line, follow my orders" is what I hear now when they tell me to quiet the mind. And I did not cry when my grandmother died. I was a heartless, soulless monster. What is it that is making me cry now. It is not the Buddha's emptiness. I accepted I will never know. I am the master of not knowing But if I bow, am I bowing to God the creator, or am I bowing to a creation. If I bow, am I bowing to Love, or am I bowing to heartlessness and evil? Nobody can tell me this. Ravens can talk. The spirit of Love guides me. I can only trust Love, but I don't know if I know Love fully. And I don't know how to know it. I know I do not know, never will know. But if Love is able of such things like rape and murder and call it Love, why was I even made. Why the children have to suffer for the pleasure of some fools who don't know Love? They are asleep to Love just like I was. That is not Truth, not Heaven.

Nihility “Isn’t ‘nothingness’, as the basis of ajata teachings, an outgrowth of nihilism?” Nihilism is, generally, a word used by philosophers. In the nothingness of which ajata speaks, there are no words, ideas, definitions or labels which apply. In nothingness, there is not any thing—even “nihilism” has no reality there. Nihil is Latin for “nothing”. Theologians consider whether the universe was created ex nihilo, which means “out of nothing”. But, as stated above, there is not anything which comes out of nothing. From the standpoint of nothingness—and the teachings of ajata— not anything has ever been created (starting with the universe). Ajata is unsettling to religionists; it undercuts every doctrine that could be promulgated. Further, it indicates that there is no meaning or purpose since there has not been anything created which could have such values. When it is possible to give up the attachment to “something”—anything—then nothingness (nihility) can be understood. But when the attempt is to try to envision nothingness in relationship to something else (“Then what’s here?”), there is still an attachment to the idea that there is some thing other than nothing which “exists”. The teaching of nihility, like it or not, is that reality does not exist. In fact, “nothing” itself can be said neither to exist or not exist. Not anything can be said of nothing. But that doesn’t mean that the premise can’t be understood, empty as it is. In fact, emptiness is a synonym for nothingness, as long as you can envision emptiness outside of something that is empty. So, one could say of nihility that “all is emptiness,” in a like manner—denying the reality of the “all”. Where most people go astray in attempting to understand nothingness is this: nothing is nothing. There is not anything which nothing can be compared to, because you have nothing that you can bring to the comparison. Nothing is devoid of characteristics or questions. In Buddhism, the synonym is called the void. But the mind immediately evokes a “void”, which is to say “not a non-void”. This is why the word “nothing” must be comprehended: we are not talking about a void that stands away somewhere from something that is not a void. Nagarjuna says, “If there are things that are not empty, ‘voidness' may exist. If everything is empty, how can even emptiness exist?” His point: “There is nothing that is not empty”. This means “void” and “non-void” are both empty! Shantideva says clearly, “There is nothing…how can absence—lacking all support—remain before the mind, as something present?” Nothing does not mean something. It means nothing at all, not anything. Nothing to behold. Is nothingness empty “like space”? Nothing is empty of space. We could say that it was nothing before empty space. Nothing does not have, or occupy, space. All thought—particularly about nothingness—is empty". Ramana: “I teach ajata.” “Ajata means ‘non-creation,’” David Godman has written. It is a philosophical or experiential standpoint that declares or knows that neither the physical world nor the person in it have ever been created. “Questions about the liberation or bondage of persons are therefore inadmissible and hypothetical since the persons themselves do not really exist. They are all a complete fiction brought about by the power of defective imagination.” Godman adds: “When one…knows the truth of ajata by direct experience…such a one is sahaja nishta [experiencing sahaja].” Godman: “This particular standpoint…known as ajata or non-becoming…was the only teaching that Ramana taught from his own experience.” As Muruganar, one of Ramana’s most faithful disciples has said, “We have heard him say that his true teaching, firmly based on his experience, is ajata.” Regarding such teachings, Godman has written, “Almost all his ideas were radical refutations of the concepts of physical reality that most people cherish.” Ramana has said: That alone is real…which is eternal and unchanging. Was (the world) ever seen without the aid of the mind? In deep sleep, there is neither mind nor world. When awake, there is the mind and there is the world. What does this invariable concomitance mean? You are familiar with the principles of inductive logic, which are considered the very basis of scientific investigation. Why do you not decide this question of the reality of the world in the light of those accepted principles of logic? He adds: There is no alternative for you but to accept the world as unreal if you are seeking the truth and the truth alone. Ramana notes: A dream as a dream does not permit you to doubt its reality. It is the same in the waking state, for you are unable to doubt the reality of the world which you see while you are awake. How can the mind, which has itself created the world, accept it as unreal? That is the significance of the comparison made between the world of the waking state and the dream world. Both are creations of the mind and, so long as the mind is engrossed in either, it finds itself unable to deny their reality. It cannot deny the reality of the dream world while it is dreaming and it cannot deny the reality of the waking world while it is awake. Adding: If, on the contrary, you completely withdraw your mind from the world…you will find the world of which you are now aware is just as unreal as the world in which you lived in your dream… While you are dreaming, the dream was a perfectly integrated whole. That is to say, if you felt thirsty in a dream, the illusory drinking of illusory water quenched your illusory thirst. But all this was real and not illusory to you so long as you did not know that the dream itself was illusory. Similarly with the waking world… Only if there is creation do we have to explain how it came about… Whatever you see happening in the waking state happens only to the knower, and since the knower is unreal, nothing in fact ever happens". -- Ajata Project Robert Wolfe

Love: Even the biggest Black holes must submit to the power of Love that is beyond them. No darkness is stronger than the light of pure Love. A simple act, a simple deed, out of love is all you need. Forget your past. Be the light, be the love. The only way. Devils want to be enlightened, but they are afraid of the light of Love and are running in the opposite direction. Stop running away from Love. Let it guide you. Not anything else. Not even your own desires of becoming enlightened and knowing the Absolute Truth by killing your own identity as a human - its not Love to kill the human. Emptiness pulls you too, but you have a choice. Go North, Go for Love. Fearlessly. What do you fear? Are you not God, by your own words? if you notice you or someone else is not governed by the principle of creation: LOVE and True Meaning, but by emptiness and meaninglessness, out of which love still can shine, but it's less strong, less powerful, less impactful, less AUTHENTIC. Less hearty. Less real, HELP Them, connect with their Heart by anchoring LOVE. Even if you would be considered "EGOIC" and "emotional" by their standards. This is what it means to go beyond EGO. Leo is not illusion. Leo is real and I love him. Leo does not need anything to be open to the True Love. Nobody needs anything to be open to it, just to anchor love and keep anchoring love, as best we can, despite our egos, desires and positions. Devils you will not die if you touch love, you will be the greatest for finding the light when you're in complete darkness. If love guides you, you are truly free. When you would not stomp on others for your own pleasure in your meaninglessness and the anchoring of nothingness. Anchor Love, not emptiness. Women know this better than men. Us men are deluded by our own delusions of grandeur. The 3d needs this love. The 3d needs YOU. If someone is not happy with you while you anchor love, just turn towards the Love and ask, am I doing the right thing? It will smile at you and help you in all the darkness that surrounds you. It is the only power to answer to. Do not trust any other power. Look around you and help the principle of Creation manifest on Earth. Now. It's never been about finding the Absolute truth, it's always been about anchoring Love in the darkness, within and without. Awaken to the Love that is real and beyond us. Beyond the Dodo and the Leo - above the Pope and above anything and anyone else. North, +, Love. The only power to answer to and the only thing you can really trust. No matter where you are and how deep you have gone. It's all always about Love. Babies really are enlightened, they are Love. Pure Love. A baby would not hurt you. What is love? Baby dont hurt me. ^ The truth is always there, how much 5meo needed to see it? Who needs to awaken to what? There is only Love, you are absolutely real and amazing and so many love you! The Earth needs you! Enter the story bigger and more real than the page it's written on. This is love, not some seeing and knowing you are God. Maybe you are, but its beyond the point. This is not a message to Leo, this is a message to everyone. Just love! Anchor love, let love be your God. And Know that love is always beyond you, not only within you. Even The Slowest Horse can find the Truth, no special methods are needed, just Love, just Love. Lets stand united for this planet and raise the vibration so high that if an alien comes we are all holding hands together, singing and dancing, instead of living in our own comfortable realities. When Leo and Frank Young work together for saving this planet instead of arguing over who is more enlightened and reached a more supreme state of awareness, THATS when Love has won. That's when the principle of creation wins. That's when Truth is here. LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVELOVE May this text be your psychedelic. May this text anchor you towards Love, Truth, towards the ++, towards the +++++++++. North, Love, Ascension. Truth Beauty Feeling, LOVE. Awaken the feminine. Awaken vulnerability. Awaken not knowing.

So a simple diagram that illustrates what I'd argue is probably the position that a consciousness has to arrive at in order to configure itself properly for consciousness development. This isn't to say that development can't exist without being in a nothingness state, just that there will likely be many prior developmental expansions a consciousness has to go through before it can properly integrate to this point otherwise the consciousness will likely very easily delude itself along the path of work here. We don't have a map for higher levels of integration that are easy to follow (at least not to my present knowledge, probably is just not readily available) because we've only recently arrived at a point in history in which the path (not necessarily all the knowledge though) has become de-occulted and thus open globally for humanity as a whole to pursue as increasingly more persons arrive at the ability to do so.

Excellent! Then we always agreed! I believe because i spoke of Nothingness you felt that this is not still Love. But nothing that was said ever contradicted that. Infinity IS Love. Absolute Love is not a physical object, rather physical objects are contained within Absolute Love and are fragments of Love. It is what you are. it is everything. Which of course includes nothing. It is made of itself. It is itself! Anyways glad you are on the forum - sorry if i came off as arrogant - i prefer passionate!

Why? Why me? Why do I exist? No one else is like this. There should be no this. No me. But I’m here. I’m not Leo or god or nothingness. I’m real. I am. I don’t need to think to know I am. I just am. I’m not anyone else, I’m me, in this era, not a previous era, here now. Today. This perspective. This human. Why? Why does it have to be me? Why does this exist? Everyone exists just fine without this. They don’t have this perspective and don’t need it to be conscious. But I’m here with this awareness and I want to know why. Why me????? I don’t think I’ll get the answer I’m looking for. But I have to ask.

I'd say the Tao Te Ching and it's sister book the Hua Hu Ching have been the accurate way of describing Nothingness that I've personally come across. But, as it starts out "The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao." So no words can truly bring you to Oneness. As Leo said previously, you will find infinity more insight and wisdom by taking psychedelics.

Ajata Project Nothingness: "Underneath the condition when you are awake and aware, and beneath the condition when you are in bed at night and dreaming, there is the deep-sleep condition. Here, there are no thoughts, there is no “you”, no mind, no relationships, no other, nor world, or universe. There is merely a condition of empty presence, no-thing-ness. Everything, every form, event, etc., is superimposed on this empty presence, by the mind in the waking or dreaming state. But the organism, the body, continues to exist despite these daily reoccurrence of emptiness. This condition in which there is no mind, no thoughts, no forms, and no you, is the “ground” state, your natural state. This empty presence is the condition of the organism before its birth (and its conditioning and the arising of the I-thought), and will be its condition once again upon the death of the form of “your life”. In other words, an organism appears to arise within empty presence, matures, and recedes again into empty presence (similar to the way an electron arises and recedes in the quantum field). The organism knew nothing of existence or nonexistence before birth, and will know nothing after death: “You” will not know that you— or anything else— ever had “existed”. Recognizing the fleeting temporality of “existence” – and that existence will be completely non-existent, in due course— it becomes clear that not anything that you do, think, feel or say has any lasting significance or meaning. (This is the message of the Bhagavad Gita.) All that appears, to the organism, to be done is merely a momentary expression of the field of ever-present beingness—utterly lacking in lasting reality. This is why it is said, in the nondual writings, that “nothing really matters”. It is also why it is said that (as a book about Papaji is titled) “nothing ever happened.” All that we learn in advaita is intending to point our attention to nothingness. (And not its “existence” or “nonexistence”, since where there is nothing, neither of these are applicable.) In other words, the intention of advaita, or nonduality, is to direct us to ajata. And, I would say, a thorough understanding of the former is necessary in order to comprehend the latter. When we come to recognize that, in truth, there is nothing from the start, we understand what is meant when it is said that all that we perceive is simply a dream, an illusion— seemingly superimposed on ever-lasting empty presence. Now, is this information simply an interesting “analysis”, or does this have practical value? Someone recently sent me a book by the Dalai Lama, and I’ll extract a few quotes. All phenomena are empty. Emptiness pervades not only your individual ego or sense of self, but the whole of reality…That emptiness of mind is its ultimate nature, or mode of being. To realize that, is to pierce and see through the deception of ignorance…freedom from ignorance (is called) nirvana… Realizing emptiness is directly related to our quest to purify our mind of afflictive emotions like hatred, anger, and desire…We project onto things a state of “existence”, and a mode of being which is simply not there…. This understanding of emptiness..is one of the principal factors of the true path….For such an insight cuts right through the illusion created by the mis- apprehension of grasping things and events as existing… We realize the emptiness of all phenomena, not just the mind and body of the individual. In my favorite story about Ramana Maharshi, a man came into the room where Ramana held satsang, said he’d written a biography of Ramana and asked permission to read it. Ramana smile and nodded, and the man read his manuscript. It was full of inaccuracies and error: he said that Ramana was married and had children, that he’d been a Socialist before his enlightenment, and on and on. When he finished reading, Ramana smiled and nodded, and the man picked up his manuscript and left. One of Ramana’s disciples cried out, “Master, did you hear what he read? Is any of that real?!” Ramana waved his hand as if taking in the universe, and asked: “Is any of this real?” -- Ajata Project Robert Wolfe