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1) Consciousness affects matter (I'm curious what someone like Sean Carrol would say about these studies) 2) LSD and Magic mushrooms have been shown to reduce brain activity (contrary to what materialism would assume) https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2016/04/the-lsd-study-youre-being-subtly.html https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2014/08/magic-mushrooms-and-brain-activity.html 3) Instead of weakening, the brain is more active than ever during anesthesia (again contrary to what materialism would assume) https://www.cheatsheet.com/health-fitness/what-really-happens-brain-during-anesthesia-truly-terrifying.html/ 4) A new paper argues the condition now known as “dissociative identity disorder” might help us understand the fundamental nature of reality https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/could-multiple-personality-disorder-explain-life-the-universe-and-everything/

It was a necessary trap to have gone through I think, based on my life circumstances. I was born into a Roman Catholic upbringing, but left religion at 14. Nonduality filled the void from 16-25. I won’t even get into how difficult it was to leave my extended family members a few years ago (I still speak with my immediately family since they are more open-minded). Now I’ve been building my life these past few years (I’m 26 now). Ketamine and cannabis helped open up that possibility. I’ve made lots of progress with my relationships and learning to live independently; I’ve also had to face fear head on many times (I still will, of course). I’ve still got a looooong ways to go, but I’m in a much better place than I was before. — Thank you all for the guidance, I’ll contemplate what is being said. I’m excited for this new chapter of my life. If you’d ask me to question nonduality just a year ago, I would have thought you were foolish. Little did I know that I’m the fool. And I pity the fool

If you take nonduality to mean that then that is definitely a trap. It's simply false. You can improve your life even if there is no so-called "doer". This is like another one of those conflations of relative and absolute domains. You are also God but that doesn't mean you can grow wings and fly.

You're applying nonduality to the materialist plane, "since there's no doer, I have no way to change the trajectory of my life and to make my life circumstances better for myself and others." if there is a "your life and circumstances to make better", then there is also a "doer". You've been taught only a part of non duality.

In many corners of nonduality (I.E Rupert Spira) deep sleep and death are often compared. It’s explained that your “true self”/consciousness loses all the extra layers (relationships, desires, personal stories) in deep sleep and also in death. Of course deep sleep is temporary- it isn’t feared because you have the expectation of waking up again in the morning. Why are deep sleep and death talked about by many as a way someone returns to their true self? Doesn’t that sound dualistic? There was never a someone to return to a true self- it’s all THIS. Also why is death talked about as no problem because it’s akin to deep sleep? As I said before you expect (most of the time) to return from deep sleep. In death we truly don’t know what occurs but returning to the physical life as you know it isn’t in the cards.

It's hard to dodge all 3 of those bullets in the spiritual space. Because spiritual people do not actually think. They subscribe to one dogma or another. 95% of spirituality is dogma. And I'm not talking about religion. I mean the non-religious stuff. All of nonduality and Buddhism is dogma. These people are not seriously thinking. The dogma tells them not to think and they follow it. It's the most devious kind of self-deception. You can be the best meditator in the world, but that doesn't mean you know how to think.

seeing the futility of nonduality and no-self “Emptiness, Pt. 2” by Mount Eerie The feeling of being in the mountains Is a dream of self-negation To see the world without us How it churns and blossoms Without anyone looking on It's why I've gone on and on And why I've climbed up alone But actual negation When your person is gone And the bedroom door yawns There is nothing to learn Her absence is a scream Saying nothing Conceptual emptiness was cool to talk about Back before I knew my way around these hospitals I would like to forget and go back into imagining That snow shining permanently alone could say something to me true and comforting

Here's the blog entry Leo shared: https://www.actualized.org/insights/actualized-quotes-030 It's really unsettling and disorienting, especially since I've had several glimpses into solipsism in the past. I feel like it's overwhelming because I have this human need of being comforted by others, the need to feel companionship and sharing words, ideas, feelings etc. The most impacting part is the last one: I am always projecting space and time outside of my direct experience. I have zero experience of others, I only have experience of my interpretation of others. This is scary as hell. Sometimes I feel like the absolute Truth is just insanity, not in the sense that it's false, but in the sense that Truth is just pure existential madness. I keep on doing my spiritual work, regularly and with passion, but the more I go on the more I sense existential terror. I don't even know why I'm going on, I must be becoming insane. Who knows? The paradox is that the more I go on with seeking the Self and awakening, the more I become conscious of my psyche and heal it in a wise direction, I can tolerate more and more of my emotions and I can learn a lot more from everyday life. It's like nonduality and the awakening path are teaching me how to learn from life. Yet, at the same time I feel like my mind is becoming more and more and more central in reality, hence creating the sense of madness. I remember that before starting my awakening path I was 100% solid in reality being made of matter. Now I can see more and more how it's just made of subjective experience and there is no physical matter but just sensations. I am conceptualizing others, yet I have no solid experience of them. What are others? The only thing I possess of others is my perspective, which is still something made by me for me. I really hope this is not going to damage my psyche in the long run. Thus far, seeking the Truth of who I am has only benefited me, it's been like shining a really bright light on my psyche and dissolving a lot of that darkness and closemindedness. Maybe the most important question is: Why me? Why do I keep going? I wanted to share this with "others"

It certainly isn't limited to 11 dimensions. That is a very artificial construct. Salvia is insane. It will deatroy all your ideas of awakening and nonduality. It's way more profound than anything Buddhism teaches. It's not merely that you see some crazy object like watching it on a screen. In order to see that object requires your whole field of consciousness to undergo a radical transition where you hardly feel human any more. That is the scary part. You lose your humanity and sanity in the process. Then you see some impossible geometry, as you are in the middle of losing your mind.

Seems like the rabbit hole goes on forever Can we call these insanely deep levels of awakening still "God"? Is it still the Self? Or would you say that there's something deeper beyond God realization? Something akin to realizing that nonduality is not the deepest level, I mean.

What's it like at the lowest level of nonduality? Leo has been many orders of magnitude beyond this. Do you stop thinking? Once one has a Kundalini awakening and is working toward it, how long will it be to reach the initial stages of nonduality?

Are you referring to the "Beyond God Realisation" video? As I understand it Frank was talking about how "God" is just a more expanded experience of ego, and that there is more to go to arrive at total permanent centerlessness. He wasn't exactly saying that Leo's insights are below "traditional Enlightenment". He was outlining some trappings on the path that prevent people from attaining centerlessness, which is something that Leo doesn't really talk about... I wonder if Leo's attained it. If he has, awesome. But if not, he should.. and THEN critique Frank. From how Leo talks about and dismisses the no-self insight, I am not sure he's actually had it. Not deep enough to realise permanent centerlessness anyway. Maybe he has... But I don't think so simply because I've never heard him mention it. And I've watched basically everything he's put out on enlightenment, consciousness and nonduality.

What are your Realizations about how this Universe works (about God, Infinity, Nonduality, Solipsism, Purpose) How does it feel to be highly conscious (what exactly changes, do visuals remain the same) Is Consciousness absolute or are there also finite seperated Sub-consciousnesses within the Absolute Consciousness Can Consciousness replicate or divide itself or create something disconnected from itself Why is my Consciousness not on a constant level and sometimes higher and sometimes lower / why am I not conscious when I sleep What is the difference between being Consciousness and being conscious Am I conscious (me who is typing and asking this questions) / do I or my Consciousness exist Am I your imagination or are you my imagination Is Imagination the activity of Consciousness when it takes a form/shape (like a table) If I am God/Consciousness why am I not simultanously conscious about everything (the whole Universe with all creatures consciousness) Why I am a limited me and look at the Universe being "behind my eyes" instead of being everything at once

It's okay to be wrong. But that's not issue here. The issue I have is with people who get into Buddhism and nonduality, and then start thinking they know everything, and start acting closedminded and gaslighting me about God, Awakening, Truth, Love, Consciousness, and psychedelics -- denying these things in one way or another. This has become a recurring problem. I can give you a list of people who have come here to gaslight me about Awakening, and the error of their ways. Whether it was WinterKnight, Nahm, Frank Yank, Rali, or many others. Curt has done some psychedelics. Obviously not too much because he is scared of them. Yes. Everything boils down to understanding. When I say "understanding" I am not just talking theory. The understanding I talk about requires massive levels of consciousness and direct experience. So it's not just conceptual. True understanding requires direct experience and Awakening. Surrender is important in that your ego will not be able to manipulate its way to the highest levels of Consciousness. So surrender plays a role of course. But it is not an end in itself. Basically you surrender to Absolute Truth/God. The point is not to surrender, the point is to access God, by whatever means possible. Well, that's the trick. Deconstruct all that stuff and see what remains.

Nope, that's just a narrative in your mind. Understanding Consciousness is way more tricky and radical than that. Yes, absolutely they are mental constructions and dogma. This situation is so bad that even after you have some of your so-called "enlightenments", even THAT is mental construction! Yes they are. You are doing it. Pure nonsense! This is self-deception! Most of the so-called "enlightened" people on this planet are deeply self-deceived. Nonsense. You fundamentally misunderstand how psychedelics work and what Truth even refers to. No. You fundamentally don't understand what Truth is. Consciousness comes in many states and degrees, and all of them are True. However, Awakened Consciousness is an extremely rare state and you will not be in it 24/7. Nor must you be in order to understand what Truth/God/Consciousness is. You are treating truth as some abstraction. What's not what Truth is. Truth is your entire field of experience, no matter what that experience is. However, even though that's the case, that doesn't mean you are Conscious of much. A dog's experience is Truth, however the dog is not Conscious of anything existential. I can say the same thing for all your meditative achievements. Even the fact that you have ever meditated is a concept/memory. So if you are going to deny me access to memory, I will do the same to you, and therefore even Buddhism doesn't exist because it's just a memory. You have never read a Buddhist book nor ever sat down to meditate nor done a retreat -- by your own logic. Calling me schizophrenic is completely nonsensical. You have no idea what that word means. Concepts can be used to make sense of reality, there is no problem in doing so, as long as it is done carefully and you understand what you are doing. This is Buddhist dogma that you picked up and which now forms the background of your entire worldview. This is just one way to frame things, and it certainly is not Awakening nor any high degree of Consciousness. Nor is it any kind of deep metaphysical understanding of reality. What you are talking about is shallow stuff. I don't give a fuck about equanimity or surrender. That is Buddhist dogma. What matters is Consciousness and understanding of reality. You are chasing the wrong thing. No! You have no comprehension of what God or Omniscience is. More Buddhist dogma. A piece of dog shit is God. But that doesn't mean you're deeply Conscious of anything. I'm well aware of what you're referring. What I'm referring to is a whole order of magnitude beyond the things you're talking about. You cannot even imagine what I am talking about because it is so radical. Simply irrelevant to Consciousness. You are full of shit and I see through all your Buddhist posturing. You haven't even begun to comprehend Consciousness. And if you keep acting in this utterly arrogant manner, you will be banned from here. You actually believe you comprehend Consciousness better than me? You're insane. You are a posterboy for the dangers of Buddhist and nondual teachings. You've turned them into a just another dream state which you now call "enlightenment". That's not Awakening, that's just a spiritual dream. I repeat: Buddhism and nonduality is not God-Realization nor Awakening. Enlightenment is dream. Since your mind is closed, I will no longer me making an effort to teach you. This is a consequence of your own mind's design. That's how you wanted it. So that's what I will give you. I am not going to teach people who refuse to listen and think they know better than me. You have not outsmarted me. You've just fooled yourself. I told you from the very beginning how much openmindedness is required for this work. You failed to learn that basic lesson. The amount of arrogance and gaslighting that I have to deal with from people like you is outrageous. You should be be ashamed of yourself. You have no respect for the sheer intelligence I offered you. I'm one of the only people on this planet who could have helped you access the highest Consciousness. But now you can go swim in the dream that you and your Buddhist friends have constructed. What I teach is not Buddhism. Because Buddhism isn't Awakening. If you don't like that then you're in the wrong place. The things I teach, no other human will teach you. It will take you a long time to appreciate that, if ever.

Okay, let's look at that. Realization (enlightenment, etc) is about what is TRUE in direct experience, in this moment. That is like the entire game. It is a radical and uncompromising commitment to authenticity and to seeing clearly. Concepts like "nonduality" and "no-self" and "dependent origination" emerge FROM that investigation, they are not dogma going into it, and they are never considered TRUE of themselves. They are pointers to what is true, guides to deepening the investigation. Once completed, self-deception literally isn't even possible, because there is no "room" between this and that, between a self and a truth, between experience and someone to judge experience. Pure seamlessness. Your psychedelic "truth" is a joke for several reasons. It is never NOW, but always in the past, a memory, an experience, and always seen THROUGH the contractions and conditionings you retain as "you" in this moment. The memory occurs now, but it is only a simulacrum, a reconstruction. It is not IT any more than a photograph of London IS London. Your only defense against this is a ludicrous one, in which you ASSUME the so-called "truth" you got from the trip and apply it circularly (e.g. you'll say shit like: You're just God imagining that he remembered the trip"). This is epistemological BS and you know it. What is true MUST be true NOW, or it isn't fucking true. It's not about brain chemistry or no-mind or any of that crap. If it IS TRUE, it is true now/always (and not in concept! in experience!!!). All of your remembered trips is nothing more than concept, period. And I call you schizophrenic because that is the delusive state in which concept is taken to BE reality, which in your case is pretty fucking accurate. "The work" as you say leads to THIS. It is the only thing it can lead to, because it is right here and right now regardless of the content, regardless of what is perceived or thought. But see, you don't seem to understand how this actually progresses at all because you literally didn't make it out the gate. You don't understand that sensory clarity deepens, and eventually allows one to see the finest grains of experience, and you don't understand what happens when you bring equanimity to ever more subtle gradations of "selfness". You don't understand how self and resistance arise together, mutually dependent, to precipitate out of Nothing "everything", in a sense, even consciousness itself. Boundaries are just more distinctions, more resistance, and they CAN be dissolved with equanimity and surrender. The agent/doer is more resistance, the watcher or observer is more resistance, even Being God/omniscient or Being Nothing is more resistance. This isn't seen in a mystical flash, but in a microscopic AND macroscopic examination simultaneously that is clearer and clearer until even clarity gets sucked into the black hole that collapses all dualities. Being and non-being, existence and non-existence, God and nothing at all... all collapse, but not into "emptiness" (which the buddhists are not using in the way it sounds in English), but into THISNESS, which is just a way of saying there IS this dance happening, but that in it the divine and mundane are unified utterly. A piece of dog shit is as divine as the most incredible alien god-realization you could ever dream up. Literally, there is nothing "outside" of THIS because it is itself without a self. The tongue twists and fails in describing the collapse of duality, yet it can be KNOWN literally as true Unknowing (what do you think Ralston's title really means?!). But this realization is achieved only through this radical journey of acceptance and love at deep and subtle levels. Loving a criminal is a walk in the park compared to loving the subtle horrifyingly painful vibration that you feel to be you in your deepest existential being. It must be done until "done is what needed to be done." You, sir, have no ability to imagine or understand this, no matter how many trips you do. Someone being able to "talk" about the nature of God is only a disqualification, never a qualification. THIS cannot be spoken of, and disregarding that as folly IS folly. You probably won't hear any of this, being the dishonest narcissist that you are. But to anyone with whom this resonates, I sincerely encourage you to look to your heart for truth, not to Leo.

@mr_engineer The (Masculine and Feminine) has its roots in Chinese philosophy, specifically the Zen tradition. It is referred to as Yin-Yang, as in the famous nonduality symbol. It has also been around in Plato's philosophy. But more recently, it was popularized mainly by Carl Jung. Essentially, Yin and Yang are the two forces that are opposites in some way, but not entirely. They are distinct enough from each other, but not completely. They interplay with each other without cancelling one another, which gives birth to this phenomenon called Life. And these two forces exist on every level that you can imagine, from microscopic to universal. They also manifest in different forms, like the psychology of a person, or the cycle of life, or just the inhalation and exhalation of air in each breath. Basically, any duality that you can perceive can be thought of as an interaction between the two polar forces of Life. The labels are interchangeable and there's not really hard distinctions between them. That's the Chinese philosophy, and it's centered around the concept of balance. Then comes Carl Jung and starts making connections between that and the human psychology. Eventually, he came up with the Anima and Animus theory that explains one's personality as an integration of two opposite aspects that he referred to as the masculine and the feminine as they were culturally associated with gender. Now, I'm not entirely sure about this but I think that Jung understood that this cultural association is not absolute, and that it can change depending on culture. The concept is solid, as every man has to repress some woman (feminine) qualities inside himself and every women has to repress some man (masculine) qualities inside herself. This is necessary in order to be a functioning part of society. And it's always valid to refer to the counterpart with its corresponding label, because there are only two counterparts. For example, you can always say that a person who has problems managing their emotions is dealing with Anima possession, regardless of their gender. So the feminine part of their personality which is responsible for managing emotions is in their (unconscious) shadow, which is another Jungian concept. And in order to correct this problem, the person needs to consciously examine the part that is causing problems in order to make it aware, in this case the feminine, so that it leaves the shadow and enters the conscious mind. And while emotions are typically associated with females in our current mainstream culture, Anima possession can affect women as well, as neither parts of one's psychology has a gender.

Not just a religious person..You seem to claim that NOBODY at all understands what God is . This is an outrageous claim .you seem to claim to be the most awake person ever and you shit on Buddhism, Islam, advaita, nonduality and almost all spiritual teachings and teachers since the dawn of time. You have yet to prove that you know better than all mankind.

There's criticism of nonduality from above, and from below. So watch out.

Nah dude, I agree with you on transcending even nonduality. When I first met my current therapist a year ago, I mentioned being into nonduality. She (implicitly) communicated to me that nonduality is ultimately bs And, yes, my therapist IS me!

@Yimpa I put my foot down on issues of highest importance for reaching the highest levels of consciousness. I see my role as helping people transcend the illusions created by Buddhism and nonduality, which have become so popular today, and go unquestioned because students do not have the balls nor intelligence to question it. But follow whatever path resonates with you most. Just don't expect me to follow any human teachings. I am playing a much deeper game.

With all due respect, what happened to your rule about nonduality wars not allowed here? Seems like you’re contradicting your own standards lately.

Hey @Ninja_pig! I hope you're holding in there okay! I know this stuff can be really challenging - I experienced something very similar over the past year and I'd love to share what it was like for me and how I've been finding my way out. I hope it's helpful to hear my story! I'll try to keep it as short as possible, but I know this is gonna be a bit of a long one Leading up to June 2022, I had done a substantial amount of spiritual work and I felt like I was on the cusp of something. I had some intense psychedelic experiences, meditated rigorously, and even popped into short non-dual states. But in all those years of spiritual work, I was still under the materialist paradigm and the illusion of a material universe. Sometime in June 2022, I took around 300 ug of LSD on a lazy Saturday. I had already tried 4.5 g of mushrooms and some NN DMT, so it's safe to say that I wasn't expecting that LSD trip to rock my world. But at some point during the trip, I fell into divine love and unity. I was writhing around in tears of pure bliss and had the realization that there is no physical world... there is only beautiful, loving consciousness made of nothing dancing in nothingness The realization had been building over years, but it snapped during that trip and cracked me wide open. It was the most beautiful experience of my life up until that point. ...and then I started to come down lmfao. There was a HUGE discrepancy between the love and truth that I experienced during that trip and what I experienced on a day-to-day basis during that time, and because of that, it threatened my ego BIG TIME when it came back online. It was essentially a massive episode of ego backlash immediately after my most ego-less experience! Leo has a great video about ego backlash. The way I understand it is that following an experience of love and truth, my ego was so threatened that it had to lash out with fear and delusion in order to stay alive... so it threw my worst fear in my face: Nihilism! All of a sudden, I started experiencing violent intrusive thoughts. I was so caught off guard because of what a beautiful experience I had just had on the LSD that I didn't even see it coming! But I was pummelled night and day with questions like "If God is whole and complete and you don't exist as a separate self, why stay alive?". Ultimately, these were fearful questions that had been in the back of my mind during my whole spiritual journey, and I believe that my ego used these as a last stand to fight against the experience of God realization that I was having. I felt existential dread every day for months, but I had this intuitive sense that the only way out was through. So I continued meditating intensely, reading, and of course, watching some lovely Leo videos to figure out what was going on. And the last time I tripped, I had a breakthrough! I realized that this fear, nihilism, existential dread, and even loneliness only happen in the human mind through ego-centric thoughts. In my most loving and truthful states after a deep meditation, there are no thoughts about that kind of shit... in fact, there aren't many thoughts at all. My mistake in dealing with my ego backlash was that I tried to fight my fearful thoughts with more thoughts! I thought there was a LOGICAL way out of it. But God isn't lonely, depressed, or nihilistic. God is love. And God doesn't need some external reason to exist. The point is itself! So anyway! Instead of engaging these ego backlash thoughts, I just do my best to love them and drop them. I get present and relax into the nonduality instead of going through thought loops about it! Because without the petty shit that my ego mind throws, there is no nihilism. There's just God! And nothing else. And now I'm back to crying my eyes out on the floor over the beauty of God! Full circle lol. Some helpful techniques include Vipassana meditation (or any meditation really), Leo's Satisfaction meditation, Metta meditation, and lighter, silly things that help me out of my head and into presence/love (watching standup comedy, appreciating some nature, laughing with friends). I hope you can gain something from hearing about my pitfalls and successes here @Ninja_pig! I apologize for the long post - this is just a topic near and dear to my heart and I wish you the best of luck working through it. It's been a beautiful milestone on my journey and I know it is for you too Also shoutout to my boi @Leo Gura the spiritual goat - thanks for helping me to realize nothing heheheee

It goes way deeper than which terms you use. What I look at is not the terms per se, but one's fundamental grasp of what Consciousness is. Does the person understand how it works, why it exists, what its highest levels are, how the mind constructs reality, etc? Buddhism and nonduality tends to flatten all this rich terrain down into a 1-D plane. And it is a distinctly human sort of plane.

Hehe.... It's way more than pure practice. It is an entire worldview and not only that, it will actually prevent you from reaching the highest levels of Consciousness. You will not reach God-Consciousness via any kind of reductive system like Shinzen's. Consciousness is non-reducible. You cannot understand God by breaking your field of experience down into pieces and chunks as Shinzen attempts to do. This is the mistake of materialism all over again in the guise of Buddha's authority. Judge for yourself, but what I'm saying is that cessation has nothing to do with Awakening. Have as many cessations as you want, in the end you will still not understand God. Cessation != understanding. And nothing beats understanding. You should not trust any human. Seek the truth independently for yourself. Consider all these humans are just tricksters testing you with traps and games. Your job is to outwit them all, not to subscribe to any one. As soon as you stop thinking independently, you fail. - - - - I am working on a course that will once and for all explain how to reach God Consciousness and completely deconstruct Buddhism, Vedanta, nonduality, and absolutely all human spiritual teachings. Until you reach Alien God Consciousness, Insanity, and Infinite Kinds of Love, including Alien Love. And ultimately Omniscience.