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I don't refer to the subject-object consciousness here, that is form consciousness. Consciousness is also formless; experienced beyond the subject-object distinction. However, this formless consciousness also does not exist. When there is consciousness, there is rebirth of consciousness. It's only a form (subject-object) and formless (beyond subject-object distinction, unable to lable) mental fabrication. First you become conscious of nothing is, or nothingness, (nothing is formed, no self, no formation of subject-object consciousness) and then you dissolve, because nothing is not (nothing is formless). So there is no consciousness, not in form nor formless, and therefore no rebirth. Nothing is and nothing is not.

@Emanyalpsid You do realise there are multiple stages of enlightenment in Buddhism. Arhatship or nirvana is complete eradication of all conditionings. Nothingness is realized way before arhatship.

I'm curious to hear people's opinion on whether psychedelics can be used to access fundamental truths about Reality. Obviously we know Leo is of the opinion that Reality = Absolute Infinity (or Absolute Nothingness) and one can become directly conscious of this by taking 5 MEO DMT. But I'm curious to hear the public opinion. Personally, I have gotten a sense of something I could call Infinity on other psychoactives, namely 2c-b, mdma, mda, mushrooms. There was something revealed in those experiences that felt more true than my ordinary waking reality. Also, how would one respond to someone who would argue that there is no way to prove this "Truth" objectively because it only comes about through a personal subjective experience.

@Aakash The texts in their entirety are too long to read. Too boring due to the language used, and most people will not understand why the nuance in them is relevant. They aren’t a good place to start. The core of the traditions. Especially Buddhism is different, however. They are great places to start. In other words the universally agreed teachings it aspouses. The 4 noble truths, the dhamma and so on. Then start with the more popular suttas, and instead of understanding see if anything resonates with you. In Buddhism and Jainism. The importance isn’t placed on any realisation. Non dual. Nothingness and etc. The total eradication of the fetters. Cravings, impurities in mind are the goal. This is one major difference between the traditions started by those who have gone all the way and random dudes in low states of realisation. ”emptiness is form and form is emptiness.” Yet so many in modern times neglect the world. Try to pretend it doesn’t exist. Disvalue it. Even if they say they aren’t. They look away. Avert their eyes from their humanity, and focus solely on “that which is prior” to blah blah blah. @Serotoninluv like this guy. What is your point? It has been revealed to me for a number of years, and honestly I couldn’t give a shit because reality is not one dimensional. If you avert your eyes to parts you dislike and call them illusion. You are just a child lost in fantasy.

The main thing that keeps me on the spiritual path are these questions: What am I gonna be when I won't have a body? How am I gonna live when I won't have a brain to think with? These are questions related to my mortality. And I don't even have to believe in an afterlife for these questions to be effective. Because if there's nothing after death then from the perspective of the nothingness it doesn't even matter that I "wasted" my whole life with meditating on these questions.

@Shin If I help you take 10 steps but that which helped you take ten steps. Those words limit you from further improvement. That is still not good. Leo is a good dude and he helped a lot of people, but his overconfidence in his opinions, and the teachings which have helped many on here. Also limit people on here. I don’t understand the reference of the jihad thing, but I’ve tried my best to help as well. Have dedicated 3-4 hours daily up until recently with students, being active in different communities and etc. @Sockrattes I do not feel attacked. Merely frustrated at the lack of self honesty, lifelessness and the amount spiritual bypassing that goes on here. All which will greatly limit and delude everyone on here that is guilty of what I said. https://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/buddha.html You can read the story of the Buddha there. In the story the Buddha meets a “master” and realised through direct experience the dimension of nothingness. Yet the limitations of nothingness become clear to him. He still has cravings. His mind still not under control. He continues. Teacher, after teacher. Until no teacher is of any use anymore. Buddhas liberation and enlightenment is not mere non duality. It is the complete cleansing of the mind. Total eradication of all cravings. I am not a Muslim. Theravada Buddhism is the best, most complete teaching, and I never said the 4 noble truths are not buddhas teachings. Don’t understand why you think I did.

@Sockrattes Didn’t say he doesn’t have a point. The Buddha understood and realized nothingness way before his enlightenment. Years before. If you read the story. All this non dual gibberish. Happened to the Buddha in the beginning of his path. Having a glimpse and the interpretations you come to from glimpses or even low states of enlightenment isn’t worth much. That’s what the Buddha realized. That’s why each time after realising everything a teacher had to offer through “direct experience” he said next. Next. Next. The 4 noble truths come from the teachings of such a man, and have stranded the test of time. Millenia have passed and many enlightened people of many stages have reaffirmed their truth. That vs people that trip. Have a glimpse into something. Then come down to egoic consciousness and let us hijack and pervert each of those seeings. Wrong conclusions and interpretations. Neither buddha nor Jesus, nor Nanak nor any enlightened being in any state worth being in spouted such simplistic, non nuanced, extremely nihilistic, and ultimately lifeless nonesense. @Shin asides the 4 noble truths. They had to be taken on faith for the Seeker to even embark on the path.

This is such a fundamental one, should/could be read or listen to before the "Spiritual Enlightenment, the most shocking truth you'll ever hear" Thank you so much Leo! What is perception? “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is infinite” William Blake What is perception and what is the relationship between perception, the mind, the brain, consciousness and reality? How it is that perception can happen at all? After a 14 days meditation retreat, Leo discovered that perception is an illusion, perception does not exist. Perception is not a biological or neurological process, it doesn’t occur, the raw data of perception is undeniable, you hear sounds and see colors. The visual and auditory field, the sensory bubble that you are in, including perception or experience, is like a snow globe painted from the inside. Perception carry in hidden metaphysics as it implies a subject and an object. By definition, perception and experience requires a subject, someone who is having an experience. So what does an experience look like when we remove the owner of the experience. Is the color red literally floating in the vacuum of empty space without you to experience it? When we take away the subject and we make the subject and the object collapse together, can we still call that an experience? On one hand we can say that the color red is still an experience that is not occurring to anybody. The raw data would still stay the same and it is no longer yours, it is not happening to you, that is a radical recontextualization, it’s not happening to your brain and your mind and not even a part of your life anymore, but the universe is experiencing it. Imaging an object that exists all by itself in an empty universe and no-one perceiving it. How does the universe register that this object is there? Your current conception of what reality is that 1)There is an external objective material world, that this world exist independently of you. 2)They are two kinds of objects like rocks, cars, building and planets and then there are sentient creatures like humans and animals. 3)These sentient creatures perceive the external world. 4)Every creature has its perceptual field or bubble. 5)You are one of these sentient creatures 6)Perceptions occur inside the brain or are produced by the brain which is itself a dumb object like a rock. We don’t know how the the brain can produce this perceptual bubble field, but nevertheless it does because here it is. But 1)There is no objective external material world, the only one thing that exists, is this one universal field of consciousness. 2)You did not come into existence as an object, nor as a sentient creature but you were born as an idea. You are the idea that you are a physical object. 3)This idea of “You”, when it came to existence, took ownership of this field of consciousness and misinterpreted it as its own perceptions. But there is no such thing as perception. You believe that this bubble is yours, or you, comprising your life. You imagine that birth is a bubble of perception coming in to existence and that death is the extinction of this bubble. The ego constructed out of this field, carved out of an infinite block of stone, a personal story, the sense of “me” like a child receiving a toy believing that it is his toy. Nothing about the toy changes when you call it “my toy” or “it’s mine”. You are creating the idea that “it’s mine”. So here you can see that it’s not a simple word game, that ownership is some sort objective property of the universe rather than a projection of your own mind. The belief you have about the ownership of the bubble of perception, is like that child. You bought into the idea that you are biological sentient creature. Education reinforced that idea. But what you are is more like a negative sculpture, a hole that was carved out from that universal field of consciousness. You believe death is the disillusion of this structure which will break appart a negative space. If we remove the “you” out of the bubble of perception, the raw data won’t change. Still, if we remove the “you”, the picture changes significantly. We might say that perceptions are just floating out in the vacuum of empty space… It seems strange and radical and it is a radical recontextualisation. There never was such a biological creature organism, that was an illusion, that was a negative space. The objective material external world out there causing your perceptions never existed. Appearance is reality, there is nothing to reality than appearance. But also the internal world is not real and never existed, you have mistaken the external world for the internal world. What you thought was the internal world, colors, sensations, our subjectivity, our individual bubble is actually the external world. Those two interpretations of reality are not opposite, they are actually identical. Notice that the raw data stay the same, the colors, the feelings, the shapes stay the same, the only thing that changes is the interpretation of your experience to the point where you cease to exist by removing the subject. When you reinterpret yourself out of existence, what you see is the substrat that was carving out the negative space, perceptions become being. Experience = Perceptions vs Being. Being is Perception minus the Ego, or Experience minus Ego is Being. Perception is Being plus Ego. Perceptions and experience are technically speaking a misinterpretation of being as the ego take ownership over this being. A good but limited analogy is when you take a sponge, they are bubbles of empty space. you are one these bubble. There is no subject, there is only the bubble. Who is perceiving this sponge? That is the mind fuck, no one is, the sponge just is, without anybody looking at it. It doesn’t change what it looks like but it changes what you look it to be, it takes you out of the equation and depersonalize everything. The sponge contains time and space and is infinite, it contains infinite amount of dimensions, and you are just one of these bubbles, the negative space. But physically, you are the whole sponge, we are all one. To realize that you need to stop identifying with one of this bubbles. This is what enlightenment is. The collapsing of all categories and distinctions, like subject and object, inner and outer, internal and external, mind and body, going from the mind/body dualism of Descartes unifying all into one field of consciousness. Do the following exercice: Ground yourself in actuality by looking at your hand, put your awareness on the visual field and realize that you are not a biological creature, this field is not some part of a biological creature coming from some brain, this visual field is not yours, it feels as though this field is your life, try to see your hand as an object floating in the vacuum of empty space, try to see that there is no you looking at the hand, the hand just is, try to depersonalize the experience of the you, your emotions, your sensations, this is the external world, the raw fabric of the universe, it’s just existing. Your thoughts and perceptions about the external world, sounds, colors, shapes, smells, emotions, feeling, ideas, understanding, that is not biology, that is the raw physical universe. How is possible though that it has all those subjective qualities? It’s possible because here it is! What you thought until now was just a groundless assumption. The universe is this. It’s not happening to you, it’s happening to itself, it’s always happening without a you. The only time when you think something is happening to you is when you think it’s happening to you. When you are not thinking about it, it’s not happening to you, it’s just there for itself. You strip the you or the ego away from this experience, this change the experience to be not an experience anymore but to be absolute being or Truth, the Truth is “this” without the you. Don’t expect the sound or sight to change when realizing it, don’t expect angels or anything else, you will realize that there never was a you here, and that the Truth is pure Being. The difficulty in this exercise is not by seeing something different but the reinterpretation or recontextualization of what you’ve always been experiencing, breaking out of the illusion. This is why they say enlightenment is already here or that you’ve always been enlightened. This is what waking up is. You misinterpreted it because of your drive to survive and your fear of death, because you want you to survive. Your number one priority in life is to be you, the reason why enlightenment is so rare is because you don’t want to surrender the you. The process to surrender might trigger a lot of egoic reactions, because your mind wants you to survive. Survival is not about fairness, not about truth, it’s about lies and deceptions. Your mind will work overtime to maintain the deception that you have been under your entire life because your entire life hingers upon it. When you realize this, that will be the end of you, you will die. But death is not what you think it means. Death is not the cessation of perceptions, colors etc, it means the elimination of the idea of you, just an idea. There will never be a physical death of you because that would mean that you were a physical object, that was a false assumption. What you think of physical death is actually conceptual death, (the sense that you are one of the bubble of the sponge). If you say: “ this is not possible, there is physical death ” … what is that but just another concept. The mind traps itself with concepts, mistaking concepts for physical reality. This is why people are so touchy when we question there metaphysical, scientific or religious beliefs. If we question it too much it starts to pull apart there entire reality. They don’t fear that their reality will fall apart, although some might experience the fear of insanity. When your reality falls apart you might experience that you going insane. But before you get to that fear, you experience a more primal fear, the fear of death. As soon as you get anywhere close to realize you are not one of these bubbles of the sponge, your ego goes crazy, hyper reactive and emotional in order to distract you away from the truth and to drive you deeper into falsehood, deeper into the illusion with negative emotions. This is the explanation of the entire game of life. Spoiler alert ;-) When you understand this at the cellular level, your life will never be the same again, it transforms your entire relationship to life, human beings, living and non living things and creatures. -Is the universe self-aware? If there is nobody to perceive the sponge, how is it possible that it’s being perceived? You assumed that awareness is something living creatures do when in fact there is no such thing as a living creature, your mistake was to come up with this idea of sentient living creatures, there are no such things and you are no such thing. -How can there be an awareness without a living creature? Well,…, how can there be an awareness with living creatures? No matter how you try to explain it, awareness is a very weird thing, that is exactly what science can’t explain. Awareness is not a thing, it can’t be explained, it’s irreducibly mystical and mysterious, because it’s the most fundamental thing there is, you can’t get more fundamental than awareness, it is not property of biological creatures. It’s not that rocks are not aware but one day when matter evolves to microbes and bacterias, fish become mammals and so on, finally the lizard becomes aware. Awareness is not a thing. Technically speaking awareness doesn’t even exist. Awareness is pure nothingness, a pure void or vacuum, that in which the sponge is suspended, nobody has or produces awareness. To think that there is awareness is already a mistake, because we think of it as a weird field, but it’s just nothing. Imagine there is a alternate universe in which awareness doesn’t exist, no sentient creatures, no internal worlds, no perceptions, only facts, nobody to perceive what is happening. The collection of what is happening, all the facts of that universe is the Truth, it’s just Being. You might think it’s boring, there is no love, no knowledge, living creatures a dead universe. Well this universe is our present universe, this is what is happening right now. Our entire universe consists of only one thing, the raw truth, the raw facts. All this colors and shapes, sounds and smells it just pure raw data happening to absolutely nobody and perceived by nobody with no awareness, that is Truth with a capital “T”. -But how come I Am perceiving it? How can the truth just be? How can it look as if it’s been “awared”? Truth just is. It’s just “isness” There is nowhere else to go, it’s the only thing that there is. It is self-apparent, or self-aware. But this is the limit of communication right here. Non-duality cannot be put into words concepts or analogies. You need to go beyond all that. Not with beliefs, ideas, philosophy or concepts. Look at actuality, what is happening around you ,the pure truth. -How do you explain that the brain affects perceptions? If my brain is damaged, how come for example my sight could be altered? The brain is itself a perception. That is important to understand. All scientists believe that the brain is something more fundamental than a perception, prior to perceptions. That is not the case, we bring the brain at the same level as all the perceptions that we attribute to the brain such that the brain itself is also one of the perceptions. When you do that, the brain ceases to have that same kind of explanatory causal power that it uses to have. You can no longer use the concept of a brain to metaphysically ground the rest of reality and perception. The brain is a special perception. It’s a perception that tends to have a global effect on all other perceptions, like when you take a drug or a pill. The pill is just another perception. So we take a pill, a perception, we put in our mouth, a perception, going through the blood, a perception, chemicals get into our brain, chemicals are perceptions too. This is how the universe works. A field of perceptions interacting with themselves in various ways, sometimes with local effects, sometimes with global effects which is what happens when your brain got damaged. We are using the world perceptions, but what we really are talking about is Being. We have being interacting with being. This one unified field of consciousness is self-interacting, it’s not static, it’s constantly morphing and changing. The bubbles are always popping in and out of existence, that’s what you would think to be your physical birth and death but it contains absolutely everything. In conclusion, perceptions is being or absolute truth when properly interpreted, but most people on earth misinterpreted this because of the sense of self. They mistaken perception for the self, “my perceptions”, they mistake the self for being a sentient creature, but they are all illusions, like negative scultures in this one unified field. How is possible to know any of this? It’s possible for anybody to realize it by shutting down the mind, becoming very focussed on the present moment and doing it every day, hour after hour for months and years until it clicks. You can’t make it click, it will click on its own, but you can do serious technics that lead towards the clicking, like meditation, contemplating, psychedelics. You can listen to this episode prior doing psychedelics and you will see it. Here is the many thousand years old mind/body problem resolved. If you go through this whole process, it will transform your entire life, the doors of your perceptions will be cleansed and what you will be left with as William Blake said, you will realized that you are the infinite, the entire universe, not a little object in the universe. To get there you must go through all of your fears and neurosis, surrender your arrogance, your judgments, all the demonizations of others, to be radically open minded to break through. The end result is the most amazing joy but the process of cleansing the doors of your perception is some of the greatest hell and struggle that you can possibly imaging. You will never know what you miss unless you do it. What you’ll miss is so great that it is impossible to put into words.

I would now, after reading that, liken the experiences to a samahdi-like state. And I'm not sure if it relates to the physical aspect but I can feel the body sensations occuring, but occuring on nothingness. I keep trying to conceptualise it as a substrate but that's a thing.

Trying to talk about Nothingness is difficult , as soon as you try to describe it you already trigger someone, as it can't be really described!

@purerogue I thank you for the peaceful response and willingness to discuss. I have found what you said to be correct as well. Nothing is the ground of anything. Absolute Infinity is literally groundless and limitless. So Nothing can be the ground of a groundless thing and Nothing can limit a limitless thing. It was this semantical type of ‘Nothing’ that I was trying to find words to refer to. I realize where my communication failed. I was defining emptiness or void as a thing when most people consider that Nothingness. So when I said ‘Nothingness’ most thought I was just referring to Absolute Infinite emptiness. But of course Absolute Infinite emptiness is still within Absolute Infinity. I guess a better way for me to describe what I’m referring to, is that it’s neither full nor empty. It has no fullness and no fullness is fuller than Absolute Infinite fullness. It also has no emptiness and no emptiness is emptier than Absolute Infinite emptiness. This is why I say it’s beyond Absolute Infinity.

@triadne Yes, Absolute Infinity can produce realities where 2 + 2 = 5. But the 5th item would have to appear from either somewhere or nowhere (something else or pure emptiness). This inconceivable “nothingness” that I’m referring to could not only make 2 + 2 = 5, but it could make the 5th item just be there... without appearing... not even from emptiness.

@triadne If you can conceptualize "something" that is neither fullness nor emptiness, than yes. What I've been calling "nothingness" for lack of a better term is fuller than Absolute Infinite fullness and emptier than absolute infinite emptiness. That's why it's neither full nor empty. It's outside of both extents. It could make the 5th object be there without appearing from somewhere or nowhere. So it wouldn't even need to pull the 5th object from pure emptiness! Isn't that insane!? I realize this is silly, but has its own "realness" beyond Absolute Infinite reality.

@Leo Gura Yes you got it. You said,” beyond Absolute Infinity is silly. There’s Nothing beyond it.” Exactly! That ‘Nothing’ that you call silly. That’s what I’m “experiencing” (non experiencing). Trust me, I only sound like I’m speaking in dualistic terms because it’s hard to speak without them. I don’t like how it all sounded either but I wanted to give verbal communication a shot. Believe me, I understand that complete and utter emptiness is still within Absolute Infinity. I also realize that Absolute Infinity is both Absolute Infinitely full and Absolutely Infinitely empty. It's everything that it is, and yet, everything that is not it (the negation or emptiness of itself). Absolute Infinity holds the set of all places as well as the empty set of nowhere and every combination of every set in-between. I was calling the emptiness a "thing" which is where my attempt at communicating failed. What I was referring to as Nothingness (for lack of a better term) can't be described with either emptiness or fullness. The best I could say was that it's fuller than Absolute Infinite fullness and emptier than Absolute Infinite emptiness (yes, "silly," as you said, I agree). That's why I tried to allude to it as illogical but I realize that wasn't enough to express it either. I didn't elaborate on what I meant by the 2 + 2 =5 example as much as I should have. Please, allow me to attempt to re-explain. This "nothingness" can allow 2 objects to be placed next to 2 others and the result will be 5 (without the 5th appearing from somewhere or nowhere). The 5th wouldn't even need to appear from pure emptiness! Of course, in Absolute Infinity, there are places where 2 and 2 objects can make a 5th appear from somewhere or even nowhere (pure emptiness). Yet this silly nonsensical "nothing" is just the "first" of a "line of concepts" beyond Absolute Infinity that I want to share with you for your enjoyment.

@Ethankahn The way you are speaking it strikes me that you have not directly experienced the Absolute deeply enough. Otherwise such questions and issues would not arise. Maybe you got a taste of it, but not the Full Monty. You need to go back and directly experience the Fully Monty. To say there is something beyond the Absolute is silly. The Absolute is Absolute and there is nothing beyond it because it is total. You are still holding Nothingness and Infinity as distinct things, which is a duality, which must be further collapsed, thus resolving this entire thread. What more is there to say if you are fully conscious of the Absolute? The Absolute is all there is. There is nothing but the Absolute.

Absolute is 0. Zeroness is oneness. Anything added,divided,multiplied or subtracted to or from it is still itself. 1+1is 2, but 1+0 remains itself, 1. 2+2 is 4, but 2+0 is 2 If we add 1 to 0,we get 1,but that +1 comes from the source or ground of 0. What comes from zero carries the "essence", of zeroness from which it came. Anything added,subtracted,divided,multiplied to 0 is of the nature and comes from the ground of 0. If 0 is the absolute reality,anything other than that is a manifestation from that, and not the absolute truth or absolute reality. What appears as a reality/or multiple realities is of the essence and/or nature from which it came. That of zero or nothingness. Just some musings floating around.

@triadne That’s a good example but it’s still not what I’m getting at. First, have you seen your example being done? I’m “experiencing” all of Absolute Infinity right now and nowhere is there a being who can put 2 objects besides 2 others and have 5 (without the 5th suddenly appearing). Your example still calls for the appearance of the 5th. Secondly, I didn’t say that illogic was only in the imagination. I said that imagination can never grasp it because you can’t picture 2 objects being put besides 2 others (without the 5th appearing). Now, triadne, there is a “space” where the illogical “exists.” But I said that it’s outside of infinity. Yet, when you ask the average person, “what’s outside of infinity,” they say Nothing. That’s why I call this illogical “space” Nothingness. Because Nothing is outside of infinity and Nothing can defy logic. I’m telling you that this Nothingness is “real” in a “reality” beyond infinite reality. I hope you understand what I’m getting at. I’m always happy to discuss if you have more questions.

@winterknight I’m not debating you, but I (not my ego, the “real I”) have found this to be the “answer” to why there’s Thingness rather than Nothingness. Thingness and Nothingness are only distinct to each other. But, there’s “another” state where they are unified. I call it Contra-Thingness because It’s a state of “being” both Thingness and Nothingness. That’s logically impossible, but not for Contra-Thingness. Contra-Thingness lies beyond logic because logic only applies to Thingness. So Contra-Thingness can overcome logic itself and make Nothingness into Thingness. I hope you enjoyed.

@triadne I have “experienced” such a “place” where 2 + 2 = 5 and I call it Nothingness because it is beyond logic, beyond Mind, beyond space, and beyond experience. Don’t you see? We actually agree.

@Leo Gura Thank you very much for responding. I’m very happy to finally be able to discuss with you. Please don’t take anything I’m about to say as disrespect. I’m just trying to establish a common form of communication about these concepts. Yes, I realize there’s a “state” where logic and the distinction of nothingness vs thingness is relative. I am continuously “experiencing” that “state” as well. However, that’s not the “state” I was discussing in this post. What I was referring to as Absolute Infinity is only Existence itself, and therefore, not as powerful as this Nondual “state”. You have to understand that we have different definitions for our terms. What I call Absolute Infinity is Absolute Anythingness and Everythingness while what you call Infinity includes that AND nothingness. This post was about discussing my definition of Absolute Infinity so as to gauge your’s while laying a foundation for the “insights” that come later. There are “things” that are not even able to be labeled. Not even in Nondualistic terms. By the way, you’ll see me use a term called The Absolute Magnitude. It expands upon what you were talking about with the various forms of logic/illogic. Yet, there’s still “more” (in quotes because ‘more’ is a magnitudinal term) “beyond” The Absolute Magnitude.

I'll start off with "The Mirror Exercise". It's something I've came up with not a long ago. What do you do? Stand in front of a mirror; right before going to bed or early in the morning when you are feeling the most honest about yourself. Stare into the mirror for 15 minutes, thoughtless. That's it! What I found was surprising. I gazed into the eyes of the human being on the other side, then I focused on the whole picture, then on the eyes again. And suddenly, the barrier between the two melted. My face disappeared in a way that I could not tell the difference between its surroundings and it. Results: I realized where my life purpose lies. As inspiration for the others here, I would like to share it. It is: To feel as one with The Universe. ... and show people the beauty through art. Long before this I started working on an adventure book mainly for youngsters of my age (15-18). It's a story of a mountain pass, and beneath the mountains lies what I literally called Nothingness. Two dragon brothers once stepped in and forgot who they were. The book is meant to make the reader more open-minded by the time they finish reading it - while keeping it all subtle and hidden behind metaphors and typical fantasy book elements. I also started to learn photography. I've been looking for a job for the past 6 months, but didn't find any (I live in the Czech republic). There's literally nothing within a 40 km radius during the school year; that's why I can't afford a digital camera, but at least I can learn the theory. If you've got one spare, I wouldn't mind, haha. I'm serious. Go try the mirror exercise and see for yourself. It might not work for you, but it certainly did for me. See you all in another life!

Like all questions about the experience of the enlightened one, it cannot be answered. Yes and no, in other words, or rather neither yes nor no. Well, it's some sort of a glimpse. But the real thing is not that which can come and go. Any experience which comes -- like yours did -- and then leaves -- is not the final thing. Indeed, enlightenment is not an experience at all, of voidness or nothingness or otherwise. I was always a vegetarian. For the other three, no. Felt no need. No need to avoid these things, but for certain people it can be helpful. The question is whether it increases mental peace to abstain or not. That must be determined on a case-by-case basis. It's fair to say that enlightenment is the realization that there is no waking state and no one to become lucid in it.

I thought I'd share my journey with this mysterious substance. About 3 months ago I acquired 500mg of 5-meo-dmt HCl. I don't really have a history of doing psychedelics or any other substances for that matter. My first introduction to psychedelics came from Leo's video about 5-meo and Enlightenment. My main focus was doing Spiritual work, and I decided to cut to the chase. I used 5-meo as a prescribed medication. I followed up on my trips almost every week. I forced my ego into doing it as a practice, despite resistance. It really helped that I don't have a full-time job and I work from home. I had so much free time to introspect, that there was no excuse to not partake in this spiritual therapy. I've posted a couple of reports from various trips I had. I've done 11 trips for the past 3 months. They were all powerful and contributed to my growth, but not all of them were breakthroughs. Here I want to give a short summary of the two major breakthrough trips, and some results from doing this practice. For some reason, I needed much higher doses to get the same experience. Maybe substance purity or body tolerance is to blame, but ultimately it doesn't matter. Consuming the substance does not produce a "standard" mechanical response. Each trip is a going inwards towards self-discovery. There is no way to accurately predict what will happen on any dose. Many times I went on a trip expecting reactions based on doses and previous experience, I was surprised every single time. I don't generally like to discuss spirituality. Every discussion is pointless and ends up fueled with spiritual Ego. It's just thoughts that go around and to create more thoughts. Ideas trying to deconstruct other ideas, how silly. It's all conceptual and none of it is Truth. It's easy to get lost in that and mistake it for actual experience. I will still write some spiritual Mombo-jumbo nonetheless, just to illustrate what 5-meo can do for somebody who never tried it. The first breakthrough - "Ego death" A couple of trips in, I experience ego-death. With me dying, the whole external world collapsed on itself. My body/mind mechanism disassembled completely, and what remained was indescribable. There are really no words to put this experience into a category. It was not out of this world. I merged with pure consciousness itself in the infinite void of existence. It was an extremely powerful and life-shattering experience. I can't recall any memories, because all of them are things, and this was no thing. I don't even know what happened to my body while I was gone. I do remember how I came back though. Suddenly I felt a loud pounding in my veins and in my head. I felt my heart pumping blood through my body really hard. It was as if my heart stopped and later restored by an electric shock. Maybe I wasn't getting enough oxygen, as I found myself lying face down on the bed. Either way, there was no external existence, so my death didn't really matter. This was a powerful NDE trip. It left me in a complete state of shock, awe, and maybe a touch of PTSD. My previous self died on that trip, together with all my materialistic believes about reality and myself. It was an extremely powerful Samadhi experience. My brain rewired and my awareness expanded significantly. Two weeks after the trip, everything in my visual field occurred as though it is made out of glass. I felt every sensation as though for the first time, and it was amplified by a thousand. I would stare at people intensely. I was constantly alert and aware of my surroundings. All of that accompanied by strange tensions in my head and a feeling of euphoria. The second breakthrough - "Being God" This trip happened quite recently. It was my last trip, and I gathered every bit of substance I had left. It wasn't that much. I've done much higher doses on other trips. The catalyst for this trip was the process of self-inquiry. I've started a more serious introspection practice after Leo's "How To Do Self-Inquiry" video. It also showed me that there is much more to learn on the spiritual journey, so my mind was open to it. As soon I closed my eyes, after a period of the typical come-up sensations, I became aware of true Self. I was there just swimming in an infinite sea of awareness, and out of the blue, I was shown my existence as God. There is really no other way to put it more softly. You created yourself and this reality... It is impossible to conceive from the human perspective. You can't really see it being in a human form, as we are right now. But as soon as you step out, it is obvious. It's like me saying "I just held a thought in my hand" or "I just walked on water". It doesn't make sense as long as you are in this objective reality. Yet even then, I can say "I walked on water in my dream", and you think "okay that is possible". The same thing happened here, as I'm writing this, I am me - the person. But when consciousness goes to another plane, I am God, and so are you. You created millions of distinctions and points of view to experience them all. It's truly all your Karma. For me, the key that opened this door was the realization that there is no external reality. Everything happens within me and my awareness. But even then, it is not really "my" awareness, as it is impossible to monopolize awareness. There is only consciousness and it can shift and morph. One moment it can manifest this entire existence, and in a split second, it can go back to nothingness and infinite void with no recollection. It's kind of similar to when you were born, it just happened in one snap. Except that you weren't born into the external world, the external world was born within you. Aside from any spiritual insights, 5-meo cracked my mind real good. I've experienced immense psychological maturity. Just for that reason alone, doing this practice was worth it. I look at things very differently now. My ideas became more holistic and systematic. I have a better understanding of where other people are coming from. I see everything as a part of a bigger body. Nature, people, politics, technology, everything functions and exists of its own accord. I'm less arrogant about my knowledge, thus, I invite the state of "not knowing". This openness is usually followed by a true understanding and deep insights. Thanks for reading my post. Right now I want to shift my focus away from spiritual discoveries and more towards life purpose. I want to say a huge thanks to Leo and his work. Seeing the effort and contributions of somebody like Leo, drives me to pursue a meaningful life purpose. After all the gems and growth I've received from Actualized.org, it is really unfair to not work on giving true value to others. I think everybody should consider working harder to provide practical results. The cost of all the knowledge we receive from Leo, is working on ourselves and helping others. As Uncle Ben once said - "with great power comes great responsibility".

@QandC The ultimate perspective is that there is no such thing as holding a perspective and that by in of itself, all perspectives are actually truth. No matter what perspective you look at it holds a curnell of truth. I THINK what your trying to say is that you want the whole perspective to be 100% and not like only 2% or 3% if this is the case you will literally be saying cliches to people nothingness infinity oneness etc... yes or no ?

Posting as well as self indexing this for myself. As you know or have heard of the idea that you are not your body, mind/thoughts, senses but are the perceiver of them and thus free from the association/suffering with them. Then, if you'd like to discover yourself, here's how. As this question: Who Am I? Then wait, and allow whatever *answer* arises in your awareness. Now, whatever that *answer* was CANNOT BE and IS NOT *YOU*. The *ONE* who "saw" / "became aware" of the *answer* is who *YOU* are. Notice how "what *YOU* are" cannot be grabbed or grasped in any way... Just slips out instantly from whatever tries to grab. You are the only weighing scale in existence... Able to weigh everything but Yourself. Only *YOU* can know yourself... not in a conventional sense where there are TWO things. For example, an object which is known and a knower of that object. You can be known only via a deep knowing sense and that is self-awareness. That knowing sense is very directly accessible. When you ask the question: Am I aware? Whatever feeling/knowing your attention goes to after which there is the response *YES, I am aware* is what YOU are - self-aware. Simply that. That blank empty space of nothingness is what YOU are. In that space all vibrations of energy arise. Those vibrations are interpreted as sounds, images, tastes, senses, feelings, sensations which all combine into ONE experience. Notice how that sense of knowing isn't like anything else in your experience which only can include sights, sounds, sensations, thoughts, feeling, taste and smell. It's because That knowing sense is not an experience... That knowing sense is *YOU*.