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Don't blindly listen to any one teacher. Don't place any one teacher or teaching on a pedestal. Corrupt teachers are no problem when you are pulling from 100s of sources, as you should be doing if you care about Truth and understanding. And you understand the dangers of the epistemology. All schemes for quantifying consciousness are very limited. Don't take them too seriously. You cannot understand higher levels of consciousness without actually going there yourself. It's like trying to tell a blind man about the color red. Nothing can be said. It's a very complex and technical topic which would require a lot of detailed explanation. 1) No idea. Not a valid question. 2) Well, of course I am a teacher, because I teach stuff. Maybe in the future I will travel around more and do some live talks/meetups. But not right now. 3) I'm a lone wolf type guy. I don't like personal support from anyone. I like to do things myself, or not do them at all. 4) Not really, it's become just normalized. I don't really do the work for you, I do it for me. 5) I consider all the videos leading to sagehood for those who are serious about it. I'm not tied to the notion of being a sage. It's just naturally the direction I'm pulled. Actualized.org is the sage school. Doubt, as in thinking it's untrue? No. I've experienced beyond a shadow of a doubt now that nonduality is factually the case. Do I backslide into old bad habits and struggle with embodying nonduality? Of course. How could it be otherwise? That will only be fixed with decades of work. You gotta accept the backsliding and not beat yourself up over it. You can only grow so much so fast. Nope, no light. No, I doubt that. You're not going to trick the system. If there is reincarnation, it's there for a reason. You're not going to shortcut consciousness or trick the universe about your level of consciousness. It knows. Just because you died on a psychedelic high, your base level of consciousness was still very low. If you die on a psychedelic, you'll probably be reincarnated as a jackass Sure, anything could in theory be used for growth. But I wouldn't expect serious growth from a fiction book. That's be way to easy. I like to be conservative in my planning. Then I can be pleasantly surprised with any excess Sounds like it. I may need to take some time off to work more deeply on myself. But then I think I'd return. I like giving advice. But it does distract me from doing the deepest work on myself. That wouldn't happen for some years. Too much on my plate as it is. No, they tend to be toxin and unpleasant. I've got better stuff to try. 1) There's lots of nuanced and basics-type topics. 2) I covered many of them in my recent Paranormal Phenomena video. There's a lot of weird occult spiritual stuff to research. A lot of weird stuff within psychedelics. 3) The extent to which our society, marketplace, food industry, drug industry, media, marketing, business, government, education system, and politics is corrupted by capitalism, dogma, ego, and money. If people only knew... There would be a bloody revolution. Shinzen Young is really good at teaching that. A little, but mostly they don't care, so I keep it to myself. I don't think they watch my videos much. They live an ordinary, chimp-like existence.

You've realized the cosmic joke! It is funny!..then it just is. What is all of this? From my point of view (and Vedanta), it's all made of/created out of the substance-less substance which is you, pure awareness. How this is so, gets a bit tricky and too lengthy to write in a post. It's not something neo-advaita is going to explain to you. They just dismiss the world as not existing and call it a day. Have you heard of the wave and the ocean analogy? The ocean is you, pure awareness. The individual waves are "apparent" objects within and created from the ocean. Is the wave different then the ocean other then in appearance? No, they are both water. Does the wave depend upon the ocean for its apparent existence? Yes. Does the ocean depend upon the wave for its existence? No. They are one, water, there is no difference, therefore non-dual. There is no seperation between the ocean and the wave. However, nondifference (nonduality) does not means sameness. From the Self's point of view (pure awareness), there is no difference, but from the person's perspective (reflected awareness), there is difference. As there apparently appears to be duality. One is real (Satya), the other is just an appearance (Mithya-illusion). It exists, but isn't real. All analogies eventially break down as they are just pointers. Anyways, it was learning Vedanta from James Swartz and Ted Schmidt that finally answered my questions. The teaching needs to be unfolded in a certain way to make sense. James has a full 16 part Satsang series on youtube. He also has a website with tons of written email Satsangs, if you're interested. I've been emailing Ted for about 18 months with my questions, ect, but they do want you to have at least the basics of Vedanta before you email them. If that's something anyone is interested in.

@LetTheNewDayBegin Firstly, our universe is not the same as all of reality itself. Consider: what you know of as "our universe" is an infinitesimal part of reality. Secondly, that is not what is meant by infinity. Infinity is not a size thing. It's not a matter of measuring the universe's perimeter to discover whether the perimeter is or is not finite. Every physical thing is by definition finite, including the universe. What we mean by infinite is an "object" of actually infinite nature, which means it has no properties whatsoever, and therefore it isn't even an object, nor does it exist nor non-exist. It is Nothing. All of reality as a whole is an infinite non-object, object. Within that are found an infinite number of finite objects, including our universe. All of it neither exists nor doesn't exist. That's why it's called "nonduality". Everything is so ONE that even existence and non-existence collapse into one.

@Outer Public/private is a conceptual distinction which you invented. If the self/other distinction is conceptual and unreal, surely the public/private distinction is so. Meaning is something you also invented. Being has no meaning. That is nonduality. Meaning only exits for egos.

@Gneumatics Think about this now... It's very simple: Maybe you are the body, but if you are not the body, then you are mistaken about what you're taking the word "you" to refer to. See? So when you say, "Why do I follow it (the body) everywhere its ever been" what are you actually saying? What is following the body? If you're the body, as you insist, then there's nothing to follow the body. There's just the body being you. Nonduality doesn't say you follow the body. Nonduality says, You do not exist! The body just walks around like a zombie on its own. The problem is, it thinks there's someone inside it. You are like a robot who's been programmed to believe it's a human. When you think, "But I'm a real human." << that's just a program running. That program has no one behind it. In the same way that when you look at your computer, you don't think of it as having a "soul" in there somewhere. It's just a bunch of mechanics. What you REALLY are is the empty field of Nothingness within which the body walks around.

@Nichols Harvey this thread will make him well known in this forum... we see already that one person has searched for him and found his video.. Let people learn from him if they find his teachings useful. As I said, I am not against him and have no intention to put him in bad light. But in general, I see a problem in the followers or teachers of any guru... They blindly accept everything that is said, including the opinions of a teacher. And, they react emotionally to criticisms. If James thinks that Osho was not enlightened, that is just his opinion which I think is not correct. If he thinks Osho's teachings cannot help someone, then he is completely wrong as well.. Because I found Osho very helpful and I wouldn't have understood anything about nonduality without the help of Osho's teachings... If you find James helpful, then go ahead and learn from him. But don't expect to be correct all the time about other teachers or paths. I don't expect that from Osho either, sometimes he made very ridiculous assumptions about other people.

All these points arw valid and make sense, but only in the realm of mind aka from the human perspective. There seems to be a Good that transcends the good and bad of duality. When Barna is saying All is joke, I assume that he means, from the place of that Good, the good and bad duality and all other dualities are seen as jokes. With all is love, I guess he might be saying that from that place of Good without opposite, All is Love, because there is no opposite. But if someone cut their baby's throat or does anything else obviously negative in the realm of form in the name of nonduality or spirituality, that is labeled : Spiritual Bypassing. It's the mind trying to pretend it is awareness and trying to attain awarenesses qualities. But it cant, because mind lives in duality. Hence for the mind there should be right and wrong, and it's vital.

http://www.nondualitymagazine.org/nonduality_magazine.1.jamesswartz.htm This is an interview of James Swartz with nonduality magazine. He is who introduced me to Vedanta. He's been teaching Vedanta for 45 years. The 2nd question they ask him applies here. When the questioner says "awakening", it means the same as "Self realization". James changes the terminology half way through answering the question by saying "self realization/awakening". Here's the part- " NDM: What do you see as the distinction between Bodhi/awakening and moska/liberation? Ram: Awakening is an experience that happens to the mind, one that gives the individual some kind of understanding that there is something beyond the visible. It is not enlightenment although it is often thought of as enlightenment. Most modern teachers are simply awakened. The self is ‘the light.’ It never slept. It is not enlightened. Enlightenment is moksa, freedom from experience, including awakening, and the notion that the self is limited. It is the hard and fast knowledge “I am limitless non-dual ordinary actionless awareness…assuming that it renders all vasanas non-binding and cancels the sense of doership. Chapter 2 of my book deals with this topic in depth. There is a sub-heading in the chapter called Stages of Enlightenment. The second stage roughly represents self realization/awakening, where there is still an individual who has ‘realized’ i.e. experienced the self. There is still the sense of duality, a ‘me’ and the ‘self’ which appears as an object. It differs from the third stage, which is not a stage, called ‘enlightenment.’ The word enlightenment is not actually technically suitable because of its experiential connotations." ............. I'll have to get to the other aspects of your reply post in a bit.

That's wonderful Yes. Yes. That's pretty much what I said I am not clinging to any concept. What I said is just what I experienced before. It dosent mean I am attaching to the concept. And to be clear, I never, not even for a minute claim that a certain concept is the real and only TRUTH. Yes. What I wrote is a concept. How else would I express "Enlightenment" if not by theory/concept? I simply don't know any other way I could express it, if not by theory. ? Yes, that's also a theory. Isn't it ? Yeah. That's the dream state, the matrix, the shadows on the wall. Although I am not clinging to thoughts, I answered what you asked based on my direct experience and trying my best to express myself with words. Yes. I realize it. That's why I am not going around and thinking about it. My practices does not include "today I will spend the whole day thinking and finding a good theory for what is enlightenment" LOL. Well, It's in fact an interesting subject to discuss, however in my opinion there is really no point to discuss too long. That would be the same as going to the movies and enjoying it, and then spend hours and hours trying to "get" something more out of it. Now if asked, how does one reach a permanent state of nonduality, that's another long and interesting subject as well

@Nahm I'm definitely not a fan of nonduality. I don't accept duality either or the idea that one or the other has to be true (this is an example of a false choice fallacy). But I have had an ego-death experience in the sense that I no longer cling to a notion and feeling of myself as a thing, and I do practice being in nothingness, meditation, and watching/monitoring my thoughts. I do not believe all is one. And I don't think Leo's concept of enlightenment is possible. You can't lose your self entirely. That's a fiction. Maybe 85%, but not entirely. And I would never believe that or espouse that unless I experienced it directly and firsthand myself first. Otherwise it's a pipe-dream at worst and hypothesis at best. And I don't mistake hypotheses for truths. Until I experience the crack for myself, as Leo has referred to it as, I will continue to believe that Leo's concept of enlightenment is a fiction. Nobody else's testimony is really persuasive to me because I can't really climb into their mind and verify it for myself. But I still keep an open mind and welcome testimony, naturally. I never stop listening. To believe it, I must first see it for myself firsthand, especially with something as radical as Leo's concept of enlightenment.

You had a nonduality experience Now, I recommend you to drop everything your mind believes it's the Truth if you wanna go a step further into consciousness. A good starting point is to stop seeking a certain pleasure experience

Hi there, Short introduction about myself : I have been on the spiritual path for about 2 years. My path is mostly focused on yoga, awareness and meditation. Leo's videos has indeed changed my life perspective. I have had many nonduality experiences, some short and some that lasted months. Recently I had my very first out of body experience. I have felt completely oneness before, which was very different of an OBE. So there I was.. lying down with headphones listening to binaural beats, my body just started moving accordinly to the wave of the beat - starting at 285hz. Slowly I realized I wasn't feeling my body, but the energy only. After about 40 minutes I thought I was feeling pain on my arm but then when I looked to it my arm wasnt there, not at the same level where I was... it was just a strong heavy wave of energy. Eventually I came back and with difficulty I puy my arms safely down behind my ears. I started leaving again, and felt a strong heavy wave of energy on what would be my face and it was similar to what I had experiencied earlier, but more on my face. I stayed on this higher level for about 40 minutes. When I came down I started doing yoga to keep moving the energy I had just experiencied and any time I would stay a few seconds without moving and focusing on my breath I would feel way beyond my body. Seems like I was experiencing a very strong energy field, perhaps much more than what my body can handle. This happened around 12:30pm to 2:30pm. That night I simply coudnt sleep until 5am and kept having the feeling of leaving my body, I felt the energy still strongly moving trough me. When I woke up, I had pain all over my body like I was hit by a truck. Any thoughts? Any advices ? ---- 1. It may sound silly but I didn't know binaural beats were created specifically for this purpose when this happened. I decided to listen to it with the intention to meditate with different sounds, not specifically grasping for a certain experience. 2. This path has way too many traps as Leo often says. I read many books on Leo's book list as well as about other 20 books that I found elsewhere, yet I am still lost on what to do next. Keep working with binaural beats to perhaps open my energy field even if it may be painful ?

In our own development, seeing life from 100's of different perspectives I think can give us a preview to our own hero's journey and help us expand our mind and our realm of possibility. Fiction books seem to help in this regard. What fiction books have struck a chord with you the most? What fiction books inspire you on your own hero's journey? What fiction books have increased your creativity and expanded your realm of possibility? My personal favorites: The Witcher Saga by Andrzej Sapkowski The Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (a good intro to nonduality in my opinion) The Green Mile by Stephen King Hmm, I personally would include Autobiographies as well if we are looking at the fresh perspective standpoint, but still, that's not fiction.

The theory I have which I got from the nonduality community is that "everything is consciousness," and I find myself getting defensive when I, for example, read articles which argue against this theory. And, I find myself wasting meditation time trying to rationalize how everything could be consciousness. The theory has become like a security blanket, how can I take it off?

@Annica No problem. Carefully evaluate the pros and cons. For me it was a good strategic move to go to university for a number of different reasons (earning a degree not being even one of them, lol). It can be a good strategic move if: You don't need to pay for it (in my country higher education is entirely free of taxes for a limited number of people) If this is the case, you can use 10% of the time towards schoolwork and the rest to discover yourself, grow and learn to live independently (going directly into the workforce won't give you time to figure out what you really want and learn). I used these soon to be 3 years in order to get a headstart on life and figure out what I want from it and who I really am. I didn't party or do anything like that. Do this only if you or your parents don't have to pay for the education, but only for your expenses. This is the plan I followed in these 3 years: My parents couldn't bother and influence me and my decisions/mindset or changes I want to make in my life. Being alone in a different city helped with looking at things objectively I planned to become a knowledge sponge (read over 40-50 books on topics ranging from nonduality to business, to marketing, sales, mastering emotions, handling people etc.) --> aka getting a headstart in life. I started to study with a music career coach and guitar teacher in order to get my financial situation and professional career handled as soon as I step out into the real world I started doing self-improvement hardcore because this may be the only chance I get at a massive amount of free time before a 30-40 year career span. (you need to build the infrastructure for your future success and build a solid theoretical and practical foundation for your life) This includes: changing my diet/habits/self defeating mindsets entirely changing the way I approach life getting to know about how human psychology works etc. I started to distinguish fake friends and temporary friends from real friends I started to do a lot of exercises and courses to figure out what my strengths are, what my weaknesses are, what needs to be fixed, what doesn't, what my long term vision is, what my goals are, what I want my life to look like, what are my unconscious beliefs etc You get the big idea. This can be a huge chance to become one of the 1% of people who get to live life to it's highest potential if used wisely. But it's also context specific. Again, weigh the pros and the cons for YOU and not for the average psychology student or youngster or whatever.

@Leo Gura Do you still sometimes have periods of doubt about nonduality and fall back into assumptions of the "old" paradigm? If yes, how do you deal with such periods?

Hey guys, I am very experienced with psychedelics for spiritual and personal growth. Interesting fact is that just on my last high dose trip of psilocybin I got to a point where I said " I must start doing this alone". I realized that having a sitter does change the whole perspective of the trip. When I reached a point to go deeper and/or face the scariest fears, deep down I knew if something went strongly wrong it wouldnt take long to my sitter come and rescue me. I am still working on having a high dose alone. I admit I am scared to fully face my darkest fears. I have had nonduality experiences, many sober and some more with the help of medicines, and I know some part of the darkness has started to come out ... only I dont know how much more fear and darkness I will have to face to fully become the truth. As someone that has experienced a fear is pure illusion, I am somehow still struggling to dig deeper. I am still recognizing myself from the egoic self. Recently I did a small dose of psychedelics alone. I am now working on make my way to a higher dose... Would anyone here be interested on sharing point of views on the subject ? How experienced are guys with psychedelics? How/what point did you decide to do solo trips ? Outcomes after the first solo trip ?

@Yamazaki Good work! Some heavy lifting done there. All very positive stuff. Your future trips can now go deeper into Truth. This was you getting your cup emptied of bullshit. You've felt a tinge of ego-death, but it gets way deeper. After you work through some of your worst fears, the immense beauty of nonduality will shine through. Take some time off and your mind will be back to normal in no time. 5g is a pretty strong dose, and mushrooms are pretty twisted. You might want to consider future trips on small doses of LSD or AL-LAD or the like, which give you more opportunity to contemplate and make sense of nonduality without getting your whole world flipped inside out.

@SOUL You make a good point with the dog exercise. We do and don't control our thoughts. We do and don't have free will. We are all one, yet we are separate. I completely buy into the concept of nonduality, yet all of our experience is set up on these fundamental examples of duality. The universe is obviously nondual, yet duality is the essence of our experience.

@unknownworld I don't say they're invalid teachings. I just make fun of the way newbies misinterpret them. Buddha was definitely seeking. He sought so hard he nearly starved himself to death. You cannot even begin to appreciate that kind of seeking. Seeking is the whole path! You seek until you can seek no more. Telling people not to seek is worse than telling people to seek. The oldest Indian scriptures tell us to seek like our hair is on fire. What the Buddha called the Middle Path would make you shit your pants, it was so hardcore. Don't go romanticizing the Buddha, or Jesus, or Mahavira, as some softy Ekhart Tolle figure. They were certainly not that. The non-seeking is the organic END RESULT of seeking! You cannot skip the seeking part and go straight to non-seeking. Your logic is so silly! It's like saying, "Don't go to school to become a doctor. You already are one!" Yes, it's true, once you're a doctor, you no longer need to work hard at being a doctor. Of course! But you don't tell that to newbies. What you're doing is taking a nuanced piece of advice -- "Stop seeking" -- which was meant for highly advanced practitioners and hardcore seekers who've been seeking for years like their hair was on fire, and you're dolling it out to newbies who haven't truly seeked a day in their lives because they are so addicted to internet, TV, food, porn, shopping, success, family, work, ideologies of all kinds, etc. and expecting that to help them get enlightened. Well, it will have the opposite effect. All nonduality pointers and advice is contextual and individual. You need to match the medicine to the disease. The mind entangles itself in many ways, both to the right and to the left on the spectrum. The advice is only useful when it helps people mitigate their personal excesses. Excess of seeking is NOT most people's problem today. Complacency is the overwhelming problem. The proof is always in the results. If the Neo teachings worked as they are advertised, the whole world would be enlightened. And yet we have Trump for president. So it just doesn't pass muster. So much for Tolle's New Earth. The New Earth might turn out be nuclear winter. The problem you, and Ekhart Tolle and Rupert Spira, have to explain is why the whole world isn't enlightened, if no seeking is required. And also why the vast majority of the most-enlightened masters where such hardcore seekers that they abandoned their careers, houses, wives, and children. This whole non-seeking debate is just absurd. Just factually false and confuses newbies. The problem is not that they're trying too hard, it's that their trying too little. The 100 million Ekhart Tolle fans out there are trying too little. Which is why they aren't enlightened and don't even have a clue how serious enlightenment is. They are dabblers. And that's fine. But don't go spreading that dabbler mentality around here. You can go to Ekhart Tolle for that.

@username Organizing all this material in a comprehensive way is extremely challenging. There are so many traps and nuances and depths of understanding, all of which need to grounded in direct experience. It's really a life's work. I am trying to do it, but it will take a good 10-20 years. If you notice, very few teachings or teachers give you a comprehensive, big-picture view of anything, not even their one specialized domain, let alone all the important domains of life. They just give you tidbits. Because organizing it all in the right way takes 100x more work. For example, before one can talk about psychedelics properly, one has to try at least a dozen different ones in different ways. Almost nobody does that. They just speculate and give excuses. Show me a guru or teacher who has dozen 12 different psychedelics and understands nonduality. They don't exist.

What's happening is a reasoning from the ideological position of nonduality based on the concept that duality is a construct of the mind in which good/evil and right/wrong are just imaginary and symbolic but not 'real'. Although, to believe that someone who is "enlightened" would rape is to disregard many of the attributes expressed in enlightenment.

Lol, you ain't gonna master shit in 1 year. Least of all nonduality.

@username And how to I work towards being able to handle consciousness work? Yes, the thoughts feel like reality when they happen. Is meditation the ONLY way to overcome it? I meditated today for a first time after a long layoff and it felt great. Also, worthy of mentioning is that I'm not pursuing enlightenment right now. All the questions I'm asking and researching are just for schoolwork for my degree. And for me it's much easier to include nonduality in the schoolwork because none of my peers do that and I can get high grades easily with it. Though -> it leads to unconscious self inquiry and emotional labour. So what is actually happening is that I do advanced level stuff for school, stuff that I don't think I'm ready to integrate in my life yet at this level. I don't let myself go at my own pace. I remember Sadhguru saying the following as a metaphor for enlightenment: ”When you are not physically fit, climbing a mountain is extremely hard, but when you ARE physically fit, it's a pleasure to climb it.” Maybe I just haven't done enough meditation to be able to relate to my thoughts from a 3rd point of view, thus creating unnecessary suffering for myself, cutting myself with my own mind.

less than 1 year. in the beginning i would practice mindfulness intentionally 24/7. it required a lot of effort to stay present. but after a few months, the practice started to live in me and i wasn't doing it anymore. it was doing me. and it became completely effortless until this very moment. be careful not to fool yourself for an enlightened one works happily for his own living. i am a mathematician and i could be anything else. chop wood, carry water. be more sincere towards what you want. and by being sincere i mean go for it. if you want to live like a monk then do it. if you want to program then do it. as long as you don't practice any kind of violence, mastering nonduality has nothing to do with the role you play. it's exactly the opposite: knowing that you're not the role you play. when a man embodies truth, the result is the practice of all virtues. ask yourself if you're not letting yourself be filled with laziness.