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My friend is fascinating. He does not follow any self help, or enlightened gurus... Yet, after I told him about consciousness work and consistently conceptually mindfucked him with No Self, Enlightenment, Non-Duality, Absolute Infinity he slowly started to shift his paradigm and move to a more Non Dual way of thinking/conceptualizing. He is at the point, where he BELIEVES that enlightenment is true and a non-dual perspective is the right perspective, yet the thing is, he doesn't care to do any of the hard work to become enlightened. He does not meditate, or read any books to advance his overall intellectual knowledge on the subject. He simply lives life like everyone else does. He has a girlfriend, who he is very happy with, and he has a passion, which is music, he smokes weed, drinks, eats junk etc. I just had a deep conversation about this with him and I curiously asked WHY it is that he cannot put in the work to become more conscious. He told me that the truth was, that he simply doesn't feel that he needs to know the Truth. He said he is completely content with the suffering that he has to go through while living in a conceptual reality. Now he also admitted, that he has never had any direct experience with the true nature of anything, other than on LSD (maybe.) He said he ultimately trusts life. He believes that whatever is true and meant to be, will come to him, and if he is meant to do enlightenment work, it will eventually come to him. For now though, he finds no need in inquiring rigorously about the Truth. He likes his conceptual reality. Still, he talks and understands many of the concepts of enlightenment on an intellectual level and agrees on pretty much everything that I communicate to him about this work. I want to know, is there anything wrong with this approach to life? I'm asking this simply because I feel that I am largely stuck in this same stage of development. I conceptually understand and believe a whole lot of what is being discussed here, but I sure as hell don't live it through my bones. I still go out every now and then and drink/smoke/put on roles filling my void. I'm still clinging onto myself, not wanting to accept the nothingness that I am. I guess the only difference between us is, that I put in the work to make this stuff a reality, not just more beliefs and concepts. What does it mean when he says, that he is fine with all the suffering that comes with living in a concept based reality? is there something wrong with this attitude? Does my friend have potential with this work?

Curious. Don't give me some kosher bs theory answer. Look within to answer. I'm starting to resist the theory more and more; the dogma. Am I God, am I a pissant? Am I superior to both and neither? Am I inferior to both and neither? How can I attach any trait to me good or bad? Am I glory or nothingness? Bigness or smallness? Strength or weakness? Purposeful or purposeless? Necessary or random? A great video on point.

Can be, I don't know. I went for enlightenment because it felt right. I am very intrigued by nature and contemplated since I can think. So when I heard about it from Leo I was like: "Whuuuuut? This shit is possible?" So there was never a need to push myself or something. It was how things went. So it's right for me. However, I'd say it's not for everybody at all. A lot of people need to experience other things on the "table of experiences" and they will have their "enlightenments" through that. One thing you'll realize after enlightenment (stream entry), is that you have just been introduced to a new "table of experiences". To a new show. So there are at least a few other fields in consciousness you can get enlightened about and they'll probably be even harder to get into. For example understanding how relativity works, what an object is, what emotions are, what thoughts are, how this dream works, how nothingness works... etc. So yeah, let's see where it takes us.

I was watching Zeena and Nikolas Shreck vs Bob Larson part two yesterday..and they spoke of this topic. Nikolas said all of the information gathered and stored and imprinted in your DNA will be returned to your higher self after your death, although it is a popular belief in the LHP that if you follow Abrahamism, everything that is you; your psyche, personality, being, whatever you want to call yourself will cease to be and you will become nothing due to your submission to the universe and the Abrahamic egregore on the astral plane using the information you've gathered here as it's own energy source. This popular LHP belief also proposes that the white light is actually a trap that lures RHP followers into the battery, and that those who have followed the occult and evolved themselves spiritually will be prepared to traverse the after life realm with their astral body (through programming their chakras and mastering astral projection) and return this sacred information and stored data to their higher self, and potentially ending the process of reincarnation, and existing eternally. Speaking of Alan Watts, I'm reading his book The Book on the taboo....and he mentionsthis idea of black nothingness after you die, and says that people create afterlife ideas simply because they cannot fathom and wrap their heads around the idea of non existence I also think it's important to note that while some ideas of death and the afterlife sound more plausible and may fit ones paradigm more than others, and regardless of what a god/deity tells you, what you read or hear from some spiritual master, or what revelations or epiphanies you have about death, no one knows for sure what the fuck is going to happen, or if anything is. The expectation that a "something" is going to happen is based on faith, and we should all make the most of this eternal moment now, and this one life never to be repeated in history again (that I'm sure of) the fact you or I or Leo even exist is such a miracle and is beautiful for no reason but that it exists, and if you've read this, you are lucky beyond most people's understanding

@Dodo You gotta love Adyashanti. What I said about whether nothingness is conscious awareness or not has a lot to do with how I feel theses days and I'm questioning what is true reality. I could throw out knowing all together. It's ran it's silly course.

Then why is it, that we feel out of sorts when we are sad, negative, angry, disappointed? Why do we pull ourselves back to happiness? Even unconscious people know it's not right when they are stressed, anxious, unhappy etc. This is the entire point of life, to be happy, why do we have this bias between equanimity, happiness, calm, peace etc? Why are enlightened people so happy, so calm, so soothing, funny, all of these traits we know are good, if reality is nothingness?

@cetus56 I just watched this video with Adyashanti and this reminded me of our conversation about whether nothingness can be aware. Starting 11:11 (lol synchronicity), it's interesting to contemplate.

Adyashanti talks about nothingness and who we are.

I don't know either about this. But seems more plausible based on my current experience. By the way don't get me wrong, the hallucination bit is awesome. Here's my problem. If the brain is hallucinating everything and brain exist, who is hallucinating the brain in the first place? We will go back to nothingness every time no? This is the same as finding a God out there or the beginning of the universe.

I don't know. Does nothingness have consciousness? What would nothingness be conscious of? Maybe consciousness is a aspect of existence only. Could it be that the absolute has no awareness of existence or of itself? If existence is Maya. And all existence is created by consciousness, Wouldn't that mean that consciousness is also an illusion? I know that's thinking outside the box here.

Yes, if there is such a thing in the first place. Maybe it proves the use of conscious nothingness.

Dodoster's guess is that Dodoster is probably a figment of nothingness' imagination.

"Then why is it, that we feel out of sorts when we are sad, negative, angry, disappointed? Why do we pull ourselves back to happiness?" There is no you to be happy. That is the bad thinking. You need nothing to be happy. "Even unconscious people know it's not right when they are stressed, anxious, unhappy etc." "This is the entire point of life, to be happy, why do we have this bias between equanimity, happiness, calm, peace etc?" Watch these two videos: "Why are enlightened people so happy, so calm, so soothing, funny, all of these traits we know are good, if reality is nothingness?" Watch this one: And finally this one:

I am having a continuous spiritual experience after practising Mooji's clear seeing technique. Everything that is, will always be surrounded and grounded in Nothingness. It's a simple fact. You can always zoom out. Nobody has seen the nothingness, because it is outside of existence, it contains existence. Existence is a bubble in Nothingness. I am grounded in Nothingness and shine within nothingness as nothingness. Everything that is will always be ungrounded. It's not form that is holding this together. It's absolute nothingness and it's who I am, that's why I speak with such conviction! Actually there is a self, it's just no self. But truth is that the self is! Always, no matter what!

Let me rephrase the question : Is my nothingness the same as your nothingness? Sounds silly!

This point is something that has really been on my mind lately. I feel like I have established pretty clearly that reality is all there is. Reality basically is composed of sensory perceptions, thoughts, and nothingness. It is strange to me however, that there are other human beings in my direct experience that seem to be having their own version of reality. If there is only one reality, then how does one explain the seemly billions of different realities that exist (and even more if you include all sentient life)? It seems that their realities are just as valid as what I am experiencing. So if it seems like other humans are experiencing something similar to what I am experiencing, is there more to reality than what just I can perceive? Does that make sense? If not I can try to clarify a little better.

How could it not disappear? If it didn't literally disappear, you couldn't go to work, because your consciousness would be populated by "your house". The reason you can't be both at your house and at work is because your consciousness needs to empty itself first. Like an LCD screen, it has a hard time displaying two images at the same time. This is not a matter for speculation or philosophy. You need to look at your direct experience. Blink your eyes right now and notice that your room disappears. That's what's literally true. Everything else is concept. Your mind fudges literal truth so that you can live in a cushy conceptual matrix. This work is all about stripping down the conceptual matrix to what is literally true. Don't conflate this with silly expectations of burglars not being able to enter your house. When you're switching paradigms, you have to recontextualize all your old facts about reality. Instead of thinking of reality as a solid physical thing, think of it as a collections of dreams or hallucinations. In a dream, a tiger can eat you, even though both the tiger and your body are imaginary. Reality is literally no different than a dream. It's just a bit more consistent, clear, and vibrant. There is no "substance" behind the dream. The dream is not taking place anywhere, like in your brain. There is no brain! There is no world. It's just pure dream afloat in nothingness. That's idealism for ya.

It's both, depending on your level of consciousness. The Divine Paradox is this: God is in all things, and yet God is not any of those things. Atman = Brahman. Form and formlessness are one. The Absolute is the sum total of everything relative. But practically, you need to learn to distinguish God (Nothingness, formlessness) from all the forms you see around you (Maya). Even though Maya and God are identical, a distinction can still be made between the Absolute and the Relative. Since you're already extremely familiar with the Relative, your work now is to connect with the Absolute. Once you accomplish that, then you can come back into the Relative to see that it's actually not separate from the Absolute. It's sorta like separating an egg yoke from the white, and then merging them back together into one whole egg. You can't appreciate the wholeness of the egg until you've experienced the yoke and white separately.

Vedanta "It is this Akshara (the Imperishable), O Gargi, so the knowers of Brahman say. It is neither gross nor subtle, neither short nor long, not red, not viscid, not shadowy, not dark, not the air, not the ether, not adhesive, tasteless, odourless, without the sense of sight, without the sense of hearing, without the vital principle, mouthless, without measure, neither interior nor exterior,. It eats nothing, nobody eats it." - Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 3-8-8. ............................................................................. Buddhism “There is that dimension, monks, where there is neither earth, nor water, nor fire, nor wind; neither dimension of the infinitude of space, nor dimension of the infinitude of consciousness, nor dimension of nothingness, nor dimension of neither perception nor non-perception; neither this world, nor the next world, nor sun, nor moon. And there, I say, there is neither coming, nor going, nor staying; neither passing away nor arising: unestablished, unevolving, without support [mental object]. This, just this, is the end of stress.” - Buddha (in Nibbāna Sutta: Unbinding (1))

@Anna1 There is no subtle body. That is an illusion. All distinctions are existentially false. Reality is Nothingness.

@Leo Gura But Leooo, so are you saying there could be non-physical organisms? I've actually never thought about that. I think my core assumption was if something is not in our perception, then it is literally nothingness. But not-perception is still a thing right? So it's not nothingness. And if reality is absolute then it can contain individual souls that had past lives, human egos and pizza galaxies where everything is made out of pizza. Damn, that actually makes sense in a very weird way. But eighter way one part of the dream wouldn't be more spiritual than living as a human ego or an ant. They should be equally ignorant from the nondual perspective.

@Leo Gura I have experienced a complete ego-death, which showed me all that is arises from nothingness. However, I have difficulity putting this knowledge into actual practical use in the ego game. I think trying to explain/understand what it is on a intellectual level will only make me walk in circles and will do the opposite of becoming enlightened. Isn't the purpose of self-enquiry ultimately to understand that one should stop seeking? Like going full circle to realize one already is and that all external theory will bring you further from the truth? Or is there no such thing as truth at all?

@Principium Nexus You are the Truth. You are the Self. You are Brahman. You are the contents of experience stripped of thought. You are the whole of awareness. You are the holder of the ego as thought. You are not the voice. You are the Truth basking in itself. Don't think of yourself as the screen, that is concept, belief. Whatever you are is nothingness. Pure emptiness. Emptiness is anti-conceptual. That's a huge hint. But all somethingness occurs within emptiness. So you are all non-conceptual somethingness too. The Self is God.

Philosophy leads you nowhere, Moses, Jesus, Buddha and every enlightened master had a realization, they were not philosophizing. The most important thing about India is that it has no philosophy in the same way that other countries have philosophies. The word 'philosophy' means love of knowledge. In India we have never praised love of knowledge; we have praised love of experience. Knowledge can be borrowed, experience cannot be borrowed. That is why we have called our way darshan, not philosophy. To call darshan Indian philosophy is basically wrong. Philosophy is a mind thing - you think about it. Darshan is a realization, a thing of your innermost being; you realize it. Philosophy needs logic; darshan needs silence - no thoughts, everything in absolute nothingness. Only then you will come to know yourself. Philosophy means to think, and darshan means to see. Both are basically different; not only different, but diametrically opposite. Because when you are thinking you cannot see. You are so filled with thoughts that perception is blurred, perception is clouded. When thinking ceases, you become capable of seeing. Then your eyes are opened, they become unclouded. Perception happens only when thinking ceases. So Buddha is not a philosopher; neither is Jesus. They have seen the truth; they have not thought about it.

This is my recount of my first experience with psilocybin mushrooms. I took psilocybin mushrooms for the first time in late June 2017. I woke up a bit after 4:30 am in the morning. I made sure to go to the bathroom and get a bottle of water before the trip as I did not want anything to interrupt it. I retrieved my psilocybin mushrooms and weighed exactly 5 grams of dried Psilocybe Cubensis mushrooms. Before I ingested the fungus I took about five minutes to sit in silent meditation. My room was also in complete silent darkness as psilocybin preforms best in this environment. During these five minutes I listened to some calm music and mentally prepared myself to completely let go of everything. I got into a mindset in which I was ready to die; right there and right then. I was ready to be completely obliterated. After this meditation of complete surrender I turned off all technology around me. I paused out of respect for the fungus, I then looked at the mushrooms and said “I will go wherever you take me, with grace”, and then I ate the mushrooms. They actually tasted quite good. After eating the mushrooms I then got into lotus position and meditated at the edge of my bed. This was one of the stillest meditations I had ever had. It was almost as if my body knew the profundity of what was to come. After about 20 minutes of silent meditation in darkness I felt the first effects of the psilocybin. My body began to feel heavy and I felt a tingling all over my body especially in my spine and in my head. I then leaned my back against the wall as I meditated. I began to feel nauseous as well; I was prepared for this as I had a vomit bucket next to me. As the effects intensified I then had to lie down flat on my back. The effects became more intense. As I laid down I immediately got in a bilateral symmetrical position. Somehow I knew that this was going to be very important. I remembered listening to interviews with Martin Ball and the importance of bilateral symmetry during psychedelic experiences. Then the weirdest and most profound experience of my life began. As I laid in the silent darkness of my room on my back with my eyes closed it was as if my ego structure was sucked right out of my mind in an instant. Through no volition of my own my body began to contort into various bilateral symmetrical poses very similar to the ones that martin ball discussed. It was an extremely strange yet beautiful experience. I had no control over these movements and it felt like the psilocybin had possessed my body. My nerves were tingling the entire time this happened. I could feel my nervous system trying to balance itself as the psilocybin entered. As my body continued to contort into these various poses they became more wild and intense, it felt as if the psilocybin was testing the waters. It was entering my body and trying to see how it could take control of my nervous system and guide me. It felt to me that it was trying to get accustomed used to being in a human body. My perception of time dissolved as well. When I opened my eyes I saw intense visuals in a grid like pattern overlaid on my vision. At this point I could see the light from the sunrise through the blinds in my room. As I peered out it was so bright. Brighter than anything I had ever seen yet so beautiful. The bodily contortions slowed and I heard an intuitive voice say something along the lines of “ok, that was your introduction, now are you ready for what I have to show you?” There was no ego present however I knew that this was about to get very intense. At this point I don’t really know how to describe what happened as there was no ego and no sense of time. But I will do my best to recount. My consciousness / awareness was then catapulted outside of space and time in a void of complete nothingness. I then heard the intuitive voice say something along the lines of, “I need you to understand the profundity of the things that I am showing you.” “People rarely get to experience things like this.” In the nothingness a light formed and I was that light and the witness of the light at the same time. The ego then tried to ask questions to try and understand, label and interpret what was occurring. The psilocybin did not like this at all. Immediately as the questions of the ego arose the experience began to turn negative. In the void I saw red and black vivid colors emerge. I saw hundreds of psychedelic demons come into existence and general chaos ensue. Keep in mind that I was the colors and demons and chaos. The ego of Thomas roger became concerned at this and tried again to ask questions and understand. But it was as if the psilocybin said “NO!” “You will wait until I am finished showing you what you need to see before you begin to intellectualize any of this!” “Simply sit back, experience and observe this.” After the psilocybin said this, the ego of Thomas-Roger was obliterated in a sea of destruction and chaos. I felt the pain and agony of being completely ripped apart in every way possible. The ego was screaming at the top of its lungs. The ego screamed out into the void and was abruptly silenced. The ego was dissolved and transmuted into the chaos that had annihilated it and the immense pain was turned into infinite bliss that I had never felt before. Now that the ego was not going to be a factor anymore in this experience I was now the light in the void. However even after this there was still a witness of awareness. At this moment I felt as if I was everything in existence. Then the psilocybin said “ok, great, now we can continue.” As the experience went on my awareness/ consciousness began to traverse the multiverse with the psilocybin as my guide. I was shown the intricacies of our illusory concepts of space and time. I was shown that all is absolutely ONE. Next even more strange occurrences ensued. I was shown a massive psychedelic “city” made of pure light that existed outside of the multiverse, space and time. This “city” of light was large enough to make Earth look tiny in comparison. The psilocybin guided my awareness through this place. I saw technologies made of what I can only describe as light. I saw technologies so inconceivably advanced that they would make the greatest human technological marvels look like less than stone age tools. All throughout this “city” were beings of pure light. Some of them were humanoid in shape some of them were so alien in appearance that I can’t even begin to describe them. These beings could bring things into existence simply by thinking of it. They could travel anywhere in the multiverse by teleporting. They created worlds for fun. The psilocybin told me that I (awareness/consciousness) could do this as well. I saw many other things here that I can’t even begin to describe with language. All I can say is that this was a beautiful place of love and light. The most memorable thing that I saw in this place was a vast library of all of the knowledge in the multiverse. It was like a cathedral and a library made of pure light. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I lack the vocabulary to describe just how beautiful it was. After seeing this beautiful place of love and light at one point I was shown a nexus of information in which streams of information were pouring out at an extremely fast speed in all directions. This information consisted of every way that we humans use symbols to communicate information. This included but was not limited to all forms of language and all forms of mathematics. I felt at this time that I knew all languages, all modes of communication and all relays of information. Information was everywhere. From the sub atomic to the molecular all the way up to the multiverse. I saw information in DNA helixes, plants, animals, myself and everything else. I (consciousness/awareness) literally knew everything. At this point I experienced the most intense and breathtaking part of the experience. I felt like I experienced everything that had ever happened in all of existence simultaneously in less than a second. It was so powerful that the witnessing awareness/ consciousness was obliterated. The witness was the last vestige of anything resembling duality at all. Now there was only the happenings of existence and I (pure nothingness) was all of those happenings. It was as if I had created existence and decided to experience existence in every way possible. From bacteria to entire civilizations spanning light years, every life, every breath, every experience was one. And I was that one. It’s very hard to describe with the limits of human language, but I will continue. I felt like this experience lasted hundreds of millions of years. It was so vast and visceral. I lived as thousands of people, plants, fungi, bacteria and animals. I saw entire alien civilizations rise from the stone age to type three civilizations and fall. I lived as various men, women and children. In all of these experiences there were vast, various things constantly changed about them but one thing remained the same. The consciousness that was experiencing life remained. I don’t really know how to describe that. I experienced childbirth from both the perspective of the mother organism giving birth and from the perspective of the child organism being born. I experienced sex from both the male and female perspective simultaneously. I felt both masculine and feminine energies as ONE. I felt how integral sexuality was to existence and just how profoundly divine sexuality is. Sexuality is not simply a bond between a male and a female. Sexuality is a vector in which novelty can be introduced into the universe and existence as a whole. All of the millions of experiences and perspectives were happening so fast and it was impossible to keep up with the experience. It was moving so fast that it was overwhelming it was a sea of chaos and yet I was this sea of chaos. After all of this profound stimulation everything returned to the void. This void felt like infinity. I was in this experience for eons. It was unborn and undying. I was this void of absolute nothingness from which everything stemmed and I was that void. After experiencing eternity in the void of absolute nothingness standard reality began to form. Thus commenced the comedown phase of the experience. The witnessing consciousness reformed. I came back into my body. My body felt extremely heavy and difficult to control. My mind went from states of being conscious to unconscious. Slowly my perception of reality shifted from that of cosmic consciousness to that of human consciousness; however my perception was still nondual. I felt all of the information that I had witnessed being embedded into my nervous system. My whole body was vibrating as I began to come back. My head was ringing/buzzing for the entire rest of the day. This headache did not go away until the next day. As I slowly came back to physical reality all of my bodily senses were very sensitive. I felt everything so vividly. It was very intense to even feel my body lying on the bed. Feeling the air being pulled into and pushed out of my body was also very intense in a way that I can’t really describe. I was so immersed in tactile sensations that I began to feel the bed very gently. It felt like this was my first time touching something. As I tried to get up I fell several times over a dozen before I was even able to get to my knees. As I looked around my room I felt completely in shock. The best way I can describe how I felt at this time is I felt l how the character David did at the end of the movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, after he had come out of the stargate. My room looked like an alien environment to me. I felt like I was seeing it for the very first time. I had not felt like this since I was a baby. As I looked around I thought it was VERY strange that anything was happening at all. I thought that it was very strange that we humans could not simply do whatever we wanted whenever we wanted. I then looked at my hands and I was blown away. I saw the complexity and strangeness of the biological machine that I was looking at. It was very amazing. I struggled to get to my feet. After falling about 6 more times I finally managed to barely stand up. I was amazed at how my body was working. I was amazed that I even had a body. I looked at my bookshelf and I was almost in reverence for it. I nearly cried when I looked at it. Reason being, after seeing that library of light during my experience, I have a newfound respect for information. I had to use the bathroom afterwards so I slowly walked to the bathroom. Walking wasn’t easy after the trip. When I entered the bathroom and saw my reflection in the mirror the first thing I thought was WHAT THE FUCK?! It was so strange to see a body looking at me. It was so strange to see a body at all. Again it was like I had never seen a human body before. On my body I saw visuals like patterns and glyphs moving all over. However the visuals were the least of my concern. They were cool and interesting to observe but I was more mesmerized by the fact that I had a body at all. My body looked like an alien organism to me. After using the bathroom I asked my trip sitter what happened to my body. He said that for the most part after the contorting poses I was passed out. He said that at one point that I began flailing, grabbing things and swinging them around and making incoherent noises. It surprised me that I was not screaming at the top of my lungs at one point during the experience. This is because when the ego was being obliterated I could have sworn that I was screaming at the top of my lungs in complete agony. After learning from my trip sitter that most of my trip consisted of my body simply lying there I was ok with that. I walked around my home feeling like this was my first time seeing it. I decided to walk outside in the backyard and when I did it was a bit overwhelming. I marveled at all of the lifeforms outside. I simply sat in the grass in awe of the planet I had just returned to. All in all the psilocybin experience lasted for nearly six hours. It was the strangest, deepest, most profound and most beautiful experience of my life thus far. This experience forever changed the way I look at reality and it has supercharged my existing meditation practice. Psychedelics are really an amazing tool for learning, consciousness exploration and enlightenment work. They can lead to many beautiful things if the student is ready for the lesson. Here is a video explaining the positions that my body was contorting into. Skip to about 5:25 in. The grid visuals I experienced during the come up portion were very similar to this. https://nexusoflife.deviantart.com/art/Thermodynamic-Horizon-76214599 This is what the "city" of light was similar to. https://nexusoflife.deviantart.com/art/ET-Contact-676996115 This is what the visuals overlaid on my body looked similar to. https://nexusoflife.deviantart.com/art/Vitis-Animae-264377166