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The first and most important thing to realize is, that nonduality is NOT a concept. All concepts are dualistic by nature because lamnguage and symbols are dualistic by nature. Nonduality is not. This is why you have to have a direct experience in order to truly understand it. You have to become it. It's very helpful to have some understanding about the nature of insight. There is a great video interview series, that Leo did with Peter Ralston, that I highly recommend: https://vimeo.com/181710583 As far as books, also Ralstons material is great, and I also recommend the books of Andre Doshim Halaw. I love them, because they are very short and conscise and crystal clear. I also like Daniel Ingram and Shinzen Young very much. Especially Shinzen has some great descriptions of infinity. There is a great audio progam by him, called The Science of enlightenment. Also Leo's videos about the topic.

I'm currently struggling with this nonduality concept, what kind of material would you recommend?

Fuck. If you told me a week ago what I am going to write now, I would have laughed at you. On May 25th I realized absolute Truth. What I did: During the week, that passed I had a 6.5d solo retreat and with some intense 10 to 12h of daily practice. The weekend before (May 18th-20th) I went on a nice camping trip with 3 of my friends and fellow self-actualizers. We did some inner and regular self-actualization work together and enjoyed time in nature. This was a great preparation and helped me to put some space between practical everyday life and the retreat. My intent was to reconnect myself with spirituality and to go deep into the work. I combined several different practices, kriya yoga, labeling and do nothing meditation, holotropic breathing, walking meditation starting at 5am in the morning. On the 4th day I took 300µg of AL-LAD. I tried to time everything in a way that I was a least likely to get disturbed by my housemates. Here's my schedule: M = meditation SDS = strong determintion sitting SHF = "see, hear, feel" (labeling) Holo = Holotropic breathing Allthough I was able to follow through with the entire schedule without missing one single practice (which I am kinda proud of ), I ended up having a lot of what I would call half-assad sits and sloppy meditations. I had to move and open my eyes a lot, even during strong determination sitting, and I ended up getting lost in thoughts a lot. Nevertheless I was able to enter a state of great calmness by wednesday. I also did 1h of walking meditation 3 times/d, just walking around in a park next to where I live so I wasn't really that isolated from the rest of humanity allthough I didn't really speak to anybody. In case you might be wondering, I had psychedelic trips before this one. I was actually doing psychedelics before I stumbled about Leo and the concept of personal developement. And over the last 5 years I had a couple of mushroom and salvia trips, one 25I-NBOMe experience and 3 AL-LAD trips prior to this one (100, 200 and 150µg). What I experienced: The actual retreat and practice itself was rather ordinairy. I had to go through some emotional work and purging to enter a state of great calmness and equanimity on day 3. To cultivate this internal peace helped a great deal with preparing me for day 5. The holotropic breathing also did a lot. I typically fall asleep soon after the breathing is over after a state of trance where most of the purging seems to happen for me. After waking up I alway feel so relieved. On the 5th day, I prepared everything for the actual trip. I sat down and said to myself: "I am ready to learn! Whatever may come, I am open and will accept it." Then I orally administrated the 300µg of AL-LAD and listened to some music for about 35min to help myself relax a little from a mild pre-trip anxiety. As I noticed it starting to take effect, I turned off the music and laid down on my bed. I started to see visual phenomenon and allowed myself to get fascinated by the patterns of the ceiling above me. I just let myself ooze into them and start to get absorbed. Everything got more and more intense and suddenly everything (my whole visual field, but also the inner world of mind and the fields of sound and touch) collapsed into one giant mosic like totality. And then, I suddenly realized what happened. I was no longer there. There was just infinite formlessness. I became Truth. I should note, that the experience was profoundly beautiful and profundly shocking at the same time! My human body just contorted in awe and horror. I felt every single emotion at the same time. I also noticed, that I started to hear sounds. High ringing type of sounds, that augmented the chirping of the birds outside and low drone like sounds, that seemed to be related to my breath Now the really profound thing was, that I seemed to be able to switch back and forth between this state of being absolute formless infinity and the state of being a contracted human form. This was immense! I experienced how I (absolute infinity) contract to create form, mind, relative reality, ego and suffering. I realized, that I am god and how I am constantly creating everything. I realized, that what most people call hallucinations or visuals on psychedelics are actually artefacts of how creation of form from fromlessness happens. They are just how absolute nothingness looks like when it creates reality. This switching back and forth produced enourmus insight and I was able to learn so much! It went on about 4-5h and then, I started to stay more and more in the domain of forms. As the trip became milder and taper off, I decided to take a long-ass walk because I wanted to be outside and in nature. It was so beautiful. My mind still was in this hyper-intelligent mode, that it seems to enter on AL-LAD and started to produce insight after insight, and it integrated all the theory and concepts about nonduality with the experience. The trip was about 8 to 9h long and I entered a nice afterglow, that lasted the whole next day, as I continued my retreat. I returned back to the state of great calmness, I had the days before the trip and the experience became more and more of a memory. I started to realize, that this glimpse won't be permanent. But the insights stayed with me. What I learned: I became Truth. I experienced, what I truely am. Everything is in perspective now. I learned how creation and existence work. I understood how I (the Big I, nothingness, god, infinity, formlessness...) contract to spit out all dualistic forms including my human form, the mind and reality. I also realized, how I have to create suffering and ego in order for this to happen. This was an profundly powerful and eye opening insight. It also showed me, how I (my human form) can literally not exist and be happy at the same time. For my body even to take a single breath, I have to create form and therefore suffering. And it made this whole issue of having to physically die to get enlightened very clear. Letting go completely litterally is the way, that I can return to nothingness. There can only be Truth or there can be creation and suffering. I understood every single contemplative practice, how each one works and in what way it is supposed to reveal Truth to you. Kriya, breathing, and all the different meditation techniques, Leo and Shinzen talk about make total sense now. I also learned how to meditate intuitively. The way Infinity came to me and the way, I had to let go sort of made a permanent imprind and I was able to recreate the way I focused my mind and surrenderd myself on the next day. It's basically a combination of open, choiceless awareness and a very deep surrender (simular to the do nothing technique). Leo's guided meditation video actually get's pretty close to it. Allthough I am not able to recreate the deep state I had on my trip, I can archive a calm and extremely peaceful no-mind kind of state that way. I learned how life purpose and spirituality work together. This became so clear to me by becoming infinity and seeing how reality comes into existence. Maintaining a minimal sense of self for this mammal, that I am to survive is best done by aligning myself more and more with the truth and with living an integrated purposeful life. I learned how the whole issue of authenticity and relating to other people is connected with spirituality. This was huge insight. The only way to relate to other beings without creating suffering is the way of utter vulnerability. Like if you literally would lay you naked body in the arms of another person, exhale your last breath and say: "You can have everything! My entire existence, it's yours!" This kind of surrender is the exact same surrender that is needed for enlightenment. I learned, that the biggest trap, I can now fall into is to cling to the memory of my awekening too much and to have too strong of a desire to recreate it. Whenever I am clinging to the memory, I am not surrendering to the Truth. What's next: More practice and more tripping. This experience of infinity I had is already fading and I see, how I have to do a LOT more work, to make it penetrate the core of my being more. I want to take my spiritual practice way more serius and I want to embody what I have learned. More theory. Even though I have studied quite a lot, I now feel like I needed the experinece to truly understand any of the theory. There is so much more to learn now. More life purpose work. I am curently building a life around being a musician and I want to do it in the way that is as alighned to Truth as possible. Having seen infinity made it increadibly clear to me how this has going to happen. Doing more for my body. I have seen what increadible miracle it is to have the form of a human being and I want to take care of this mammal that I am as best as I can. And allthough I have a pretty clean diet, I have all sorts of tense muscles in my back and consume quite a lot of caffeine. Getting more into fitness and exercising is inevitable right now. Working on truthful and authentic relating to others. I want to be able to open myself to others way more and to become a lot more honest. Tips and advice: Unlike Leo, I would advise you to have your first experience of Truth with AL-LAD rather than with 5MeO-DMT. I understand, that this is sort of personal, but if I would take the 20min of my trip, that where most intesne and imagined myself getting blasted into this state within a few seconds, I wouldn't have been able to let go so smoothly and I guess wouldn't have learned nearly as much.> Think of it this way: If you were trying to understand light, and you can choose between a lightbulb, which is nicely dimmed on and off again, and a single bolt of lightening, I guess for a first timer, the lightbulb is much more helpful. Probably my most important advice: Study the theory! If I wouldn't have been studying the theory of nonduality for the last couple of years I would literally have gotten nothing out of the experience. My mind wouldn't have been able to make sense out of anything. It would just have been some hallucination for me. Having concepts of what I was experiencing helped a great deal with recognizing it as absolute Truth and the way that AL-LAD makes your mind become this hyperintelligent wisdom machine worked greatly with that (which is another reason why I would recommend AL-LAD over 5MeO for a first time experience). On retreat, practice starts to take on at different dynamic on its own. Stuff comes up and it might be getting very hard to do some of the techniques as good as you would be able to do them in your daily practice. Don't judge yourself for that and don't judge your performance. Surrender to whatever happens and try not to get frustrated. The retreat is at play here and it will give you whatever you need to learn right now (sort of like a trip). Thinking in terms of good or bad retreats is not useful (recisely like thinking in terms of good or bad trips is not useful ). Solo retreats are perfect settings for breakthrough doses of psychedelics. If you are serious about experiencing Truth for the first time than this is definately one of the most recommended alternatives. If you're struggeling with this issue of life purpose vs. spirituality, consider psychedelics. For me they made the solution to this increadibly clear. They actually showed me, that there is no real difference between the two, especially, if you understand how your core values relate to Truth. Lastly: Remember, that letting go is the key! I am so greatful right now. Awakening is so powerfully life transforming and liberating. Thank all of you for walking this path together. I hope this report is helpful. If you have any questions, I am happy to answer.

nonduality is what it is always real. You are awareness. Awareness is another name for you. Since you are awareness, there is no need to attain o cultivate it. All you have to do is to give up the idea of being other than awareness.

The nondual is when the dualistic is not. Any attempt to capture by conceptualization and “description” that which is nondual is dualistic. If the dualistic mind is the fact in oneself, then nonduality is not.

@Spinoza here's an analogy. Spinoza is a wave, thinking it's a seperate volitional entity (a person), but it is a part of the ocean (the world), but both are none other then H2O/water (consciousness/awareness), appearing as the ocean and a wave. So, the person is really one with the world and the person and the world are nothing more then awareness/consciousness. Nonduality means, not two. So, the manifest and nonmanifest are one. Nisargadatta Maharaj — 'Wisdom tells me I am no-thing. Love tells me I am every-thing and between the two my life flows.'

@Mikael89 @B_Naz Thanks, yeah, in the past, I had been in some nonduality wars (not fun), but things are different now. Id rather say, let's agree to disagree, if I don't think there will be some kind of a meeting of the mind. With faceless, I don't know where he is getting his info and it's not my perspective. So, that's the end if the road for this topic. Lastly- keep it relatively simple or you could/can get lost for years.

That's not true! Well, maybe you think it's true, for you. No, im not "my" consciousness. I "am" consciousness. There is "one" awareness/consciousness, everything arises within awareness (nonduality). Meaning awareness is always "full of things", but awareness doesn't have to be bound (or identified), by what appears. Who's promoting deception? What exactly do u mean when u say, "end duality in themselves"? That's left wide open for mis-interpretation. No, I dont actually.

This is all a romantic idea until all dualistic movement ends. You are your conciousness. If it is full of things then you are that bound by things. If consciousness is empty of its conditioned content and dualistic movement, then that conciousness is empty of things, and therefore that is NO-THINGNESS. Its important not to get caught in illusion and self deception. As that is not being conscious and has nothing to do with truth. The problem is when we are communicating ideas about nonduality it very easily becomes a belief “escape from fear” unless people actually end duality in themselves. I don’t think we should promote such self deception. You see what I mean??

I'm trying to understand non duality, I can see the duality and the non duality (for me now both are right, it depend from which angle we see it) but i can't clearly see that the duality is not real and only the non-duality which is real I came up to an idea that seem to me clear, that we are all a "one" experiencing "himself" in an unlimited number of different experience, every experience is a person Me and you = the same essence, we look separate and different because of material world influence that created a different experience and a different visual If we erase all the material world's influence and the characteristics that we did not choose, the only thing that remains, it that we are the same "thing" "same essence" The other person you see, is you. If you had the same experience, background, genetic, environment. you will see clearly that he is you i don't know if this is a way to explain non-duality, for me it make a lot of sense.

“You” can’t. Any positive movement is a movement of thought “things” or “duality” One can not go from duality to nonduality. Duality must end. When means all dualistic movement of the doer/doing illusion “time” must be totally understood. Dont try to get anywhere in particular as that implies the doer. Just understand what is causing all this contradiction. This understanding isn’t mere verbal understanding but to be able to relate all the different aspects of thought/the thinker and see them holistically in movement as they arise. Anyway, the more one strives the more one is nourishing the movement of THINGS.

Well I would say that would be wise. I would ask you if you were referring to real or unreal movements. I would ask you if an illusion can still be a fact. And then I would recommend you inquiring into those questions, but in the form of self reflection, and not in the form of abstraction, like books and or an authority. That's right But thought is movement and a very persistent movement at that. Duality is an illusion but even when one who may ”know” that, it still often continues to dominate every step we take in our daily life. One can ”believe in and know” nonduality very well yet they may still be moving in a dualistic manner. One will say they known oneness yet every action they take implies separateness, and expressed dualistically. Knowing nonduality and actually ending duality in one's self is dramatically different indeed. To acquire and accumulate nondual teachings is quite different than putting all ones energy into self knowledge and self understanding, which sees and negates all positive action “duality”...In self reflection we learn all aspects of oneself and in that there is a maintaining a choiceless attention to innatention. This the essence of awareness. Duality and belief have much in common. Both movments of divison. Both movements of contradiction, both movements of fear. Actually both are really one and the same movement. This becomes quite apparent when we explore/observe ourselves with diligent religiosity.

This may not be for everyone but... All practices are movements of concentration and imply duality which inevitably leads to illusion/deception. Everything “you” the self does implies division/duality. Practices will only perpetuate duality therefore are acts of ego/self. Any movement to understand/realize nonduality is this direction will always be a movement of duality therefore not non duality. To end duality actually in ones self implies nonduality. If the doer “a movement of duality” is attempting realize “nonduality” then that is a movement of contradiction. Because the doer is the doing...There is no division between the doer and the doing. It’s one and the same process. If one moves in that grove then that is an escape of what is and implies fear, pleasure, and contradiction. And to escape chasing the illusion of psychological security always leads to psychological insecurity. This is a means of escape. This is disorder. If one really wants to live a timeless life, then there must be a negation of all dualistic/divisive movements of self/thought. Thought must be understood completely. Investigate how the the self/thought always moves in a dualistic, fragmented, and mechanical way. Understand the nature of fear and the compulsion to escape that fear “what is.” See the subtle ways in which fear will influence every movement one makes. See how subtle the self/thought moves. Learn about yourself. And in the understanding of yourself you are free from what is “duality” Or one can get caught up in the game of fear and contradiction for the rest of there lives. Your choice

In my opinion even when we realise nonduality (if i understand it well), it can help you to not take life issue seriously and not overthink, but you will still live in the dual illusionary world, you will still have to follow society rule and pay internet bill. If you really look at the experience of life as non dual, you won't talk no more, won't eat, won't look for happiness, and won't do anything since you are aware that no words can describe anything, all effort are done to achieve an illusion and everything is mind creation. first you will look so crazy, after some days you will die it seems impossible to exist/live out of the illusion

Even the accumulated ideas/experiences reality/nonduality.

Explanations of nonduality have no meaning

@Highest Yep. You’re God alright. Nonduality. There is not two. If there is, in appearance, that’s illusionary. The actual Truth, really is, there is only God, no illusion. The creator of all. And you are that. To realize this, you have to Be without belief, and without a concept of self. Prior to this realization, it is not believable, or understandable. Nonduality can’t be communicated, inherently. Only direct experience, until complete collapse of duality of the Self & God, will do. Just for clarity sake, let me state again, this is not believable. So, I am acknowledging, it is not possible, to believe this. It is not possible, to understand this either. Only to realize.

Let me try to put it this way: Everything is an interpretation. I am your interpretation. The whole 100% me. Even if you saw me in flesh, I would still be 100% your interpretation. There is no difference between me and you. I am you. Ring any bells? Enlightenment? Nonduality?

@Truth Addict You can’t simulate a psychadelic in meditation. If there’s internet and a keyboard in your country, there’s psychadelics, when you’re ready, they’ll show up. Seen the matrix? Know when Morpheus says, No one can tell you what the matrix is, you have to experience it for yourself? He’s talking about psychedelics and nonduality, and it’s an accurate line. The Truth is unbelievable, unimaginable.

If you are so nondual, or so self-realized, why are you wasting so much of your time fighting others? This is such a rookie mistake. The reality is that nonduality is a difficult thing to teach, no matter by what method. Traps are numerous NO MATTER WHICH PATH YOU TAKE. There is no such thing as the perfect path. There is no such thing as a path with no downsides or traps or potential for delusion. Any path you take can be misused. Any teaching you hear can be misused. Any teaching can be dangerous in the wrong hands. Any teaching can be nitpicked and criticized into ill-repute if one so desires. You can easily write a massive diatribe about every single spiritual teacher and spiritual path ever devised by man. And you would be half-right. But all of this is just an ideology game. It's a fundamental failure to understand the other person. It's also rather annoying to moderate and creates idle controversy where none really exists. Not only does it turn good people against each other, it's false and ignorant. - Leo Gura

THIS. Nonduality.

Nonduality by accumulation of ideas/experiences lol Kinda like reading a bible thinking that will get you to heaven

Evasion a sign of fear. Only a center/ego fears. And by the way as I said, non dual teachings are totally unecessary and only lead to traps. If one understands the whole of duality/thought and puts all ones energy into every second of the day by applying total attention/awareness of that movement one can end time/duality. That’s the only way. It’s not about the accumulation of non dual teachings “ideas” but instead the ending of duality. “Fact that this movement/process ends.”... The ending of the self/time/the conditioned consciousness. And actual nonduality embodiment has absolutely nothing to do with experience. This is so. Stop defending and explore. It’s never to late to end experience/time. And please enough with petty games. I’m only communicating with you for the watchers at home. We need to be responsible here.

@Faceless If there’s a problem with nonduality, it could only be one thing man. I dont think you’ve experienced nonduality. And of course duality would be realized before nonduality. At the same time, it’s only you, so you can call anything whatever you like really. “Who” could tell you otherwise, right? Lol

@Highest Research verifying you’re alive. Might open your mind up and get you to where you’re talkin about, more so than ‘ego death’ ‘physical death’ verbiage. @Faceless When ‘you’ no longer hold to “facts”, or being “right”, there is no more illusion - it was YOU all along! ❤️ “Illusion” goes poof!? That, is nonduality. ?