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I'm not even talking some nondual "there is no you". I'm talking about the atmosphere and "spiritual teacher" propaganda. No nonduality, just some good ol "let's not allow ourselves to be manipulated".

You misunderstand me. I don't deny the existence of thinks outside of my individual subjective awareness. The most reasonable thing to assume is that there is an external world outside of my awareness. I can understand this external world by using mental constructs. One mental construct is matter. However I have no access to any other category of existence other than consciousness. Therefore the most reasonable assumption is that the external world is also made of consciousness. A materialist posits a new category of existence that is ontologically separate from consciousness that then gives rise to consciousness through its behaviours. How am I being dogmatic? Have you ever experienced anything separate from your conscious awareness? I have no idea what your trying to say. With my truth I can explain both consciousness and the behaviour of the external world. Unlike materialism. I don't know what you are trying to say here. This is a false equivalency as there are no explanatory gaps in your examples. There is a difference between the neurons in my brain when i see the colour green and the experience of the colour green. When you cut open a brain, there is no colour green. If you think consciousness is a fundamental property of matter then that is panspychism, not materialism. How do you know? Seems a bit dogmatic. Again, this is panpsychism, not materialism. You literally just admitted here that you would choose practicality over truth. This is exactly what the ego mind does. Is this not the definition of dogma? You would still believe in materialist even if it were proven that everything is one field. But all separations are theoretical ideas in your head. Its a shame that you don't want to debate anymore but I do agree that this debate was going nowhere. I think the main problem is that you don't actually understand idealism and nonduality and instead attack a straw man version of it. Perhaps if you actually understood what I was trying to argue, we would have a better debate. If you want understand the idealist/nondual argument better then I would recommend the works of Bernardo Kastrup and Donald Hoffmann. While I disagree with you and was perhaps annoyed by a lack of logic in certain arguments, I do admire the fact that you admit that you don't know everything. Thx and have a nice day.

Straw man argument. I simply doubt the existence of separation. I only experience a unified field of conscious awareness. Separations are things my mind generates. I gave you proof in the example of quantum fields. And they were all disproved with a field analogy. You are still identifying with the contents of consciousness rather than the underlying consciousness itself. You are begging the question as your arguments implicitly assume a separation between things (i.e. a circular argument). You have not yet understood the idea that 'you' and 'me' are excited states of one underlying field. You are accusing me of not using logic, yet these arguments are not logical at all. Another strawman argument, I have never claimed such a thing. You are mistaking your ego mind with the universal consciousness. Your ego mind is a pattern within universal consciousness. This is the main crux of your problem and most other materialists. Conceptual separations are 'practical' but they are not real. You care more about practicality than the truth. The illusion that things are separate is useful for your survival so you take it as absolute truth not because it is actually true. Practical is not the same as true. You care more about survival than truth which is fine. They would be part of the same circuit. The concept of separate devices exists in your mind. What makes devices separate? your mind does. Now extend that analogy to every object in the universe. You accuse me of using dogma yet you posit separation as absolute truth without ever questioning it. This is literally dogma. There are extremely analytical, logical arguments for nonduality made by philosophers and scientists like Bernardo Kastrup and Donald Hoffman. Since we don't have access to anything besides consciousness, why assume anything else except consciousness exists? Here is the most important question that no materialist can answer. How does unconscious matter give rise to subjective experience? The reason I abandoned materialism for nonduality was because materialism cannot even begin to answer this question. Thank you for your politeness btw.

The ego usually plays a game: It likes to imagine itself like he can "catch" experiences of Awakening/Enlightment/NonDuality/Love/Consciosuness...etc after they had passed, the Consciousness, if its not aware enough, might "believe" this mind ideas and thoughts might be actual Love/Experience, and this the terrible mistake. Thinking "you got it" its terrible for you. Please let go of this. This just creates suffering because is indeed an attachment and it's just shows once again that the ego is the enemy of the fundamental skill of "letting go". This topic might be controversial for some people here but the more time it passes, the more I am clear that no intellectualization or conclusion about spirit/Reality/You/God should happen. All ideas and concepts the moment you catch them let them go as fast as you can. Because they are just thoughts and ideas! That is rubbish, you don't want that. You want ACTUAL EXPERIENCE. Ideas and conclusions are not only not the goal, but a distraction. I know this might make me hated here but that's my view. In the big scheme of things, I am just sharing this so everybody can move closer to God and higher state of Awareness. If that means that these message its not going to be popular or liked at first, then I'm fine with it. Peace.

God doesn’t know the difference between a chicken and nonduality Yet God also knows that, too

God-Realization does not contradict oneness. It's even more one than nonduality.

It didn't seem like this was his problem. He was already deeply into psychedelics and meditation. Then he felt it wasn't working for him and felt like he was getting signs to look towards Christianity. I do think this could have been a problem of his. He was into all of the shiny things in nonduality/spirituality without seemingly having an understanding of them.

I guess I could just quote it in full (from a review on GoodReads): "First book I have read by Dr. David Hawkins and it was very dissapointing. This is basically Ben Shapiro writing about nonduality. The majority of the book is him expressing privlieged, uneducated and unexamined American exceptionalist, imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist and patriarchical talking points and views. There are some OK parts dealing with epistemology and ego mechanics, where there are some insights. However, these become quickly muddled with his ultra-conservativeness and arrogance of his gradation of consciousness level of various historical figures, ideologies etc. If you are interested in a western take on spiritual enlightenment and nonduality I would recommend to instead turn to teachers such as Rupert Spira, Chuck Hillig, Leo Gura instead of Dr. Hawkins. Perhaps his other works focusing more strictly on epistemology, and less on his views on basically anything else, are better than this one."

Saw a discussion on his book where someone described him as akin to 'Ben Shapiro writing about nonduality', which makes me wonder if I might be better off finding these insights elsewhere without wading through braindead political takes to get there...

@Dino D What you are doing is called a gish gallop. You are posting an overwhelming number of arguments all of which lack quality. ''During a Gish gallop, a debater confronts an opponent with a rapid series of many specious arguments, half-truths, misrepresentations, and outright lies in a short space of time, which makes it impossible for the opponent to refute all of them within the format of a formal debate'' anyways... There's a difference between being open to an idea and believing and acting on it. Strawman argument. Few nondualists would say this. as for the paragraph below that one, what the fuck? Its pretty nonsensical rambling A whirlpool on one side of the world cannot interact with a wave on the other side of the world even though they are aspects of one ocean. There's a difference between 'your' limited human experience and the you which is the entire universe. Also, you do experience stuff when you sleep and people sometimes recall past lives. Why can't a guru charge money? After all, he needs to survive and spread his teachings, all of which require money. As for drugs, most gurus dont take drugs, and even if they did, what's wrong with that? As for fucking up their lives, that's just complete bs. 1. Reality is infinitely complex 2. Leo is pretty different from most teachers Because it's a mental construct Because are minds are optimized for survival, not truth. These methods remove the deception mechanisms. huh? This argument is incoherent Because there is no answer. You are trying to grasp nonduality with the conceptual mind which is a mistake. How do you think the conceptual mind understand things? who is this 'you' and 'me' you are referring to? 'you' is a distinction that the mind makes to separate an aspect of consciousness from the rest. It's a mental construct. As for the other arguments, I cba

Just watched this youtube video featuring 3 people that are very very, intelligent. They discuss nihilism, but of course from a dualistic perspective. Many, many times they border on the possibility that all of reality is groundless, but that's never really explored... Well ya can't blame them, the only way to explore it is by drowning in silence Just as a disclaimer, I'm not trying to discredit these guys at all. I just found it fascinating that you could intellectually reach the edges of duality but nevertheless end up trapped. I suggest you check out more of Cosmicskeptic's stuff, though he is fundamentally one of those "Atheist channels" that seem to run contradictory to most of the stuff we do here at Actualized.org, the guy really does try hard to push his boundaries and you can see him questioning a lot of things including himself.

Look, in the end, what you want is totally up to you. Maybe you want a cucumber up your ass. I dunno. But there is nothing more satisfying than God-Consciousness. I'm sick of listening to these nondual monkeys talking about their nonduality. They are parroting stuff someone else parrotted to them and they are inventing their liberations and nondual states. These are people lost in nondual dreams.

I came across this video where Aaron Abke has an interview with Jesse Lee Peterson - A far right youtuber and radio host. Aaron is a pretty advance spiritual teacher and he tries to explain nonduality and spirituality to Jesse however, his words get twisted to fit the right wing agenda. Its clear that jesse has no idea what Aaron is talking about because his mind is far too closed. I was surprised to see someone as spiritually advanced as Aaron even on this show, and at certain points in the interview he shows some pretty strong right wing opinions about abortion, vaccines, gender, etc. It's worth a watch just to see that even spiritual masters can have some pretty conservative views.

Nonduality as a teaching is actually pretty elementary for any sufficiently intelligent person (unless you want to go into philosophical debris). It's actually practicing and changing your whole psyche to align with the teaching that is usually hard. So, it's the practical stuff that matters more, and in that respect Spira's material is pretty good IMO.

But one thing I want to add: for idealist philosophers and spiritual teachers the quality of teaching and presenting the material matters. Kastrup, Rupert Spira, even more populistic Tolle give good quality teachings, and that, as a cumulative effect, can make idealism and nonduality more and more influential. But poor quality teachings do exactly the opposite and compromise the movement. That's why I'm more concerned about poor quality and toxic presentations of nonduality teachings by teachers like Leo and other similar cheap teachers. Spiritual teaching requires high level of maturity, knowledge and experience, that is why in spiritual traditions (like Buddhism) the lineage holders would only pass the transmissions to the students they tested and trusted. In our days there are a lot of self-proclaimed immature "Enlightened" teachers presenting poor quality practices and teachings (which you can also pretty much tell by wild beliefs and unhinged behavior of the followers), especially because it is so tempting to make money on that, and eventually it is going to take a toll and divert people from nonduality.

i did not see this coming...

I have no idea.

Basically, Leo's teaching is a version of neo-advaita, which is essentially classical Advaita stripped from Indian cultural baggage and presented in modern language, with some psychedelic stuff added as a bonus. But historically, Advaita is not the only approach to nonduality, there was also Buddhism, Zen in particular as one of its pinnacles, that approaches nonduality from quite a different angle, and that is what I'm trying to vocalize here, also presenting it in modern philosophical language. The fierce dispute between Buddhism and Advaita went for 1500 yrs in India until Buddhism was eradicated from India by Moslems, but it revealed all practical and philosophical details of the differences in their approaches to nonduality. I just encourage people not to limit themselves to Advaita only, but stay open and explore other approaches to nonduality. I am myself a long time practitioner of both approaches, so I was able to compare them from both practical and philosophical perspectives. I found that Advaita works well enough, but the Buddhist approach leaves more freedom and opens more dimensions for liberation. Advaita is still a religion (albeit a good one), while Zen is beyond any religion.

If there is a consciousness identical to me... (two not one-non duality gone)... i was able to recognize a telepathic connection... because it was fully awake like I was and this can only work if both are fully awake, one God reaching to another God, two absolutes reaching to another God... If you would ask Leo: are you above Jesus (higher level), Budha, Ramana Maharshi in the awakening stage or knowledge, guess what this humble man would answer... Just analyze the psychological style and way he talks about his (perfect persona-absolute God), not only the content of his words and ideas (i know he is super intelligent and has enormous knowledge (that partly trapt him into overdrive and not freed him into peace)... there is the same patterns seen in delusional people, and narcissism and so on... so even if he is right, he sounds like a lost cause... he is getting more and more criticism for being deluded evan from followers... I just try to see his body language, his patterns his ways of speaking and acting that don't give me a positive vibe, and where i can see patterns of someone who is delusional or trapt in overthinking and over his fantasies and everything that pops up in his head, mental masturbation can only produce so MUCH content and overthinking (manic behavior) videos, blogs, forum, never ever stopping, that can not come from a peaceful and enlightened soul that mostly just IS, and does not endlessly search and think and lives on the internet typing and filming what it thinks(that does an unrested mind) be it even sophisticated nonduality, at the end it lost its ground and lead to falsehood...

Yeah I agree. It's a shame because he has some amazing videos on nonduality and enlightenment.

Awareness is not a "thing". These nonduality teachers are teaching bullshit. You are Consciousness. Consciousness is Absolute Truth. The end. It is a mistake to try to do some reductionist deconstruction of your conscious field, trying seperate out perceptions from "awareness". That will not result in God-Realization. These people do not know what God is. They are parroting nondual dogma that they have brainwashed themselves with. Nonduality is just brainwashing at this point.

To make some parallels with spiritual traditions, what Leo teaches is fairly close to Advaita, just presented in a modernized language and conceptual framework. The idea ais that our "Atman" - pure consciousness-awareness that we directly experience, is ontologically identical with "Brahman" - the "Ultimate Reality of the Infinite Universal Consciousness". But Advaitists and neo-Advaitists fail to realize that is it just a belief, an assumption. It is a reasonable assumption, no question about that, at least more reasonable than materialism or naive realism. But the fact that it is reasonable does not necessarily make it ultimately true. In other words, Advaita is still a religion. However, Zen goes beyond that, beyond any religion. Zen is living in a direct experience of the given at the moment of now without any views or suppositions about the "Ultimate Reality", without any interpretations of the given. It is just "THIS", be it a pure presence of awareness without any phenomena, or presence-awareness with a flow of qualia-phenomena. There is essentially no difference between the presence or absence of phenomena. Any ideas or concepts are also included in the flow of phenomena, but with clear realization that they are simply contingent ideas, they are just thoughts, not true and not false in the "ultimate" sense, but some of them may be more practically useful than others. This "given", as it is given, is neither dual, nor nondual. It is just what it is. "Duality" and "nonduality" are just concepts automatically included in the given. It is true that this "given' is only our direct conscious experience, yet we do not know whether "all there is" is also only conscious experience, or whether there is anything beyond that. But we do not need to assume whether "all there is" is only conscious experience or not. Either way, these assumptions would still be just concepts and beliefs.

That's good, but there are still degrees of no-self realization. No-self is still pretty profound. It is not to be poo-pooed. A) Much of mainstream nonduality is shallow Neo-Advaita stuff. B) Just because Sam is familiar with Maharshi does not mean he understands the depth of what Maharshi was talking about. Maharshi had some serious God-Realization going on. It wasn't just some tepid no-self insight. You need to be careful to distinguish all these different teachers. Some of them are shallow, some of them are deep. Rest assured there is a lot more for you to become conscious of and awaken to. The really good stuff is way ahead for you. Serious Awakening is very special. It's not some tepid insight. No book will convey to you how special it gets.

Turquoise is not nonduality.

The user Egoless has got me questioning things as of late, particularly with this video he posted. How do we know the non-dual state of awareness reveals to us the true nature of reality when it simply is the consequence of an alteration in brain activity? The man's explanation starts at 6:00. How do we know which perception of reality to trust? Could the enlightened perception of oneness and identification with the whole of reality simply be an error of judgement?