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Entry 83 | Death Theory: Death is the most severe form of adversity in this existence. Willingness to accept it and embrace it requires inner strength that comes from beyond the Ego. Applying it: When the news arises that a loved one has died or is facing death in the near future, remain present with your feelings. Rather than denying them, bring your emotions into your immediate awareness and feel their beauty. Today I made a trip home to visit my uncle who has cancer. A few days ago, he was suffering so badly that he had to be taken into a hospice to be cared for. But as of yesterday, he's been back at home and is feeling alright again. It is looking unlikely that he will be around for much longer. All I could do is to embrace his company for around an hour with my mum. We don't really talk to each other that much usually, but there is still a loving connection there. I didn't necessarily want to ask him lots of questions when I got to see him. Just being able to look at him and share the moment together was enough. As the present moment stands, he is relatively well and happy. Of course, there is that doubt in everybody's mind as to how long he will continue to be around. But as of right now, the matter is irrelevant. It will only become relevant when death does occur. For now, the most relevant thing for everyone to be doing in our family is to be appreciating the fact that he is still with us. It's interesting to think how easily we take other people for granted in our life. Only when the matter of death arises do we feel it necessary to appreciate that persons existence! Surely it would be a much better world if we could learn to appreciate the people who are alive right now? That doesn't mean to say we should forget about the legacy of the dead. But there should be no reason why we appreciate both the dead and the living as equally important. I remember when I discovered that the guitarist Michael Hedges died in a car accident in 1999. My whole perception of the guy changed. He wasn't just any old guitarist to me any more. He was a genius who was taken from this world too soon, as it were. Of course, that was my opinion at the time. I've since learned that everything happens the way it is supposed to and, hence, Michael's death was always meant to be. Especially in light of the words he speaks in the video below. Now I contemplate my own demise. One could say I'm in my prime as far as my whole life is concerned. My physical fitness is great, my guitar skills are the best they have ever been, my confidence is at an all-time high, and I've reached a point of self-acceptance where I can look in the mirror and love what I see. I've not felt that way in a LONG time. Whilst all of this is great because it's in the present moment, the inevitable crumbling of these things will happen. These things will eventually disappear into nothingness. On a deep level, I can appreciate that death is just the permanent passing from the conscious realm into the unconscious realm which is formless and timeless. Yet I still feel it to be a great shame that this conscious life can't last forever. Then on the other hand, I do not need life to last forever in order to feel fulfilled by it. If I can learn to truly appreciate what the present moment has to offer with each passing day, then I will reach my death bed knowing that not a day was wasted. Maybe my uncle has learned to accept this truth. Although he may not be the richest or most successful man in the world, he has created a wonderful family to have around him in the form of four daughters and 4 grandchildren. With each day that comes along, he can take solace in his contribution to the world in the form of his family. He can truly appreciate their existence and his own in light of the present circumstances. Maybe then, death can be used as a tool to focus on what the present moment has to offer. Perhaps every morning when arising out of bed, I should remind myself that I could've very easily died in my sleep and I could well do so when I return to sleep. There are moments throughout my day where I openly express to myself how much I love life right now. Everything about my body and my mental attitude just feels wonderful. It feels so good to look in the mirror and consider myself as being "good-looking." But so long as I don't start developing an attachment or an identity with what the present moment is now, I will be able to remain grounded throughout the duration of my life. Because ultimately, what I truly am is far beyond mind and body. Death is nothing to be afraid of. We all experience the unconsciousness of death when we fall asleep. There are no fiery pits of hell, but there are no heavens in the clouds either. It just is what it is: the yin to the yang. One cannot truly appreciate life without there being death. Pick of the day:

I would say that in my opinion a description of enlightenment is a perspective. But actual enlightenment which reveals what reality is is NOT a perspective. I have listened to dozens of videos and red many books on enlightenment and the existential fact that these sources point to in my experience is true. But the language that is used to communicate these spiritual truths such as reality is nothingness, you are god, god is nothing, thoughts are illusions. All this is observable and discoverable through enlightenment work. I have gotten taste of these experiences so from my little view, I can arrogantly say that what is communicated between the lines in enlightenment teachings are literal facts. But I just don't know if I'm in deep delusion or on to something. I can with 99,9% certainty say that the ego is false. But is that still a paradigm if that insight was realized based of an empirical investigation? Are metaphysicsal truths supposed to be placeres in a different category than paradigms? I don't know. Hope I'm making sense here, shit this stuff is nuanced.

I don't even feel like this is a special expirience. It's just so obvious. I think whenever I meditated previously, I was always trying to do something. Even when I was pretending not to want something, I simply was. It's like I was trying to focus in on awareness, not realizing that I have always been focused on awareness. I was so caught up with trying to find out what that "awareness" might be, that I couldn't simply expirience it, as I was all the time. It's so strange how the feeling of past and future is so fragile. Right now, it seems like there has been no past, everything that happened always happened in the now, and all that I thought the past to be was merely a feeling and memories, that all still happened (happen) in the now. Even describing now as now is kind of silly, because there is nothing else than now, so there is no word needed to describe it. It literally is everything that exists. Even using present tense is strange, as if there was something else than presence. I don't know how to describe this feeling, but it feels like the nothingness before death was just part of the moment right now, as everything else I have ever "expirienced". If I had to put it into words, it's like awareness is the moment, and the moment never, ever changed. And somehow, the content just became a resonance of that fact. So, even if the content changes, even if I go unconscious tomorrow, it will not matter at all, because I am part of content. The moment will not change no matter how much the content will change, even if tomorrow the content is death. I don't even feel like my own suffering is bad right now. It's strange, because I do care about my suffering when I am wanting to do something. But the condition I am in is giving me such a great certainity that suffering is completely irrelevant, that I don't even care about caring about suffering in the "future". Everything is the moment, every single thought I have, every single concept. I don't see a difference between being with the concepts and thought, and being purely with whatever else is there. Both are content, no matter how "chaotic" the content is, the moment is always completely still and calm. Having monkey mind is just as much of being "in the moment" as every other state is. Even the most unconscious state is "being in the moment", because there literally is nothing else than that. Not wanting monkey mind is the content trying to be a certain content. Wanting to be "enlightent" is a state of content. Whether the content aligns with the moment or not does not matter at all. The content will never have influence on the moment. Wether the ego exists within content or not does not matter either. Isn't it the ego itself that wants the ego to disappear? Because, what else is there to want anything? The moment itself doesn't want anything, it's just there. And if the moment is the only permanent thing there is, why even bother? The moment always has everything it wants, because it doesn't want anything. It is beyond wanting. Wanting to understand and become the moment is the contents desperate attempt to change itself, isn't it?

Religion is not ritual. It is not something that you do. It is something that you become. So there is always a possibility of a false religion existing somewhere in the society. False religion is when the inner transformation has been substituted by outer ritual. Then you go on doing things and those things will become a deep-rooted habit with you, but nothing is achieved. People go to the church and the temple, and they repeat the same prayers again and again. Nothing is happening to them. Somewhere on the way they have missed; somewhere on the way they have lost the real coin — and they have substituted it by a false coin. Remember this, that the real, authentic religion is concerned with the being, not with the doing. It has nothing to do with your outer way of life. It has something to do with your center. Of course, when the center changes, the periphery follows; your outer life also changes. But the reverse is not true: you can change the periphery — the center will not change. And you win live the life of a hypocrite, a life of hypocrisy. You will have a different periphery from the center, not only different but just the opposite, the very contrary. And you will be split in two. Religion is not ritual. Remember that. Religion is an inner consciousness, an inner awakening. Many things on the surface will change, but the change must occur within you first. The true religion is existential. Buddha lived it, Jesus lived it -- but remember, Jesus was not a Christian and Buddha was not a Buddhist, he had never heard of the word. The truly religious people have been simply religious, they have not been dogmatic. It has always happened to only a few people and then it disappears from the earth because the intellectuals immediately grab it and they start making beautiful ideologies out of it -- neat and clean, logical. In that very effort they destroy its beauty. They create philosophies, and religion disappears. ISIS talks about Jihad. It is very easy to die for religion but very difficult to live for it. Actually, it is always easy to die for some cause. All that is needed is a kind of madness. Dying happens in a moment, so even a single moment of insanity is quite enough. But to live, awareness and wakefulness are essential. Only those who live for religion know religion. Those who martyr themselves for religion do not know it at all. You cannot understand Jesus through a priest. He himself has not known. He has read, he has thought, he has contemplated, he has speculated, philosophized. Yes, he has a very cultivated mind, he knows the scripture; but to know the scripture is not to know Jesus. To know Jesus you will have to know your innermost nothingness. Without knowing it you cannot make anybody else acquainted with Jesus. Repressing your desires and destroying your desires is not the way of celibacy, because if you repress your desires you will remain hung-up with them. Repression can never bring freedom. Repression makes you a slave. Repress anything, and that will become your master. So the so-called celibates in the monasteries are continuously obsessed with sex.

I haven't had pure DMT in a long time almost a year now and i know 5-meo is different as they say but based on my experiences and all the things i have read as well as others experiences i believe its quite possible to reach the same states of consciousness (if you will). The description in that infinite state quite similar to what i experienced after all the visuals and when i came to the realization that all these visuals, fractals, vibrations, entities, higher selves ect.. is ultimately me guiding myself to reach my infinite/creator self or oneness again and in that moment they all just vanished and ceased to exist and i was put into this infinite void or space of nothingness yet experiencing everything in creation all at once 100% capacity. Pure presence, pure awareness nothing else. Its so strange that you can experience through everything in existence, every eyes, every sense that exists all at once even for a split second this will change you forever. What interests me is that they say the highest state of the universe is unconditional love, but i experienced that in the lower stages but when i was at this state it was beyond that. It was just pure consciousness, no feeling, no love, no fear, no thought, absolutely nothingness yet everything. Maybe i just cant remember it well but that experience when i entered that final infinite state lasted about 15-30 seconds real-time but it felt like in was always there forever and ever. So is 5-meo is a direct connection to that state? I feel N'N-DMT may be easier for some people because all the illusions and fractals/sacred geometry, visuals ect.. have a powerful hypnotizing effect and once you surrender and allow to what you are experiencing you go beyond all of that and into the heart of existence.

Yes, silence is always normal. If you are the calmest motherf* in the room, other's judgements just fall off you like dust. Judgements others make of you, as being not normal or crazy, they all just dissolve and burn in the fire of the eternal nothingness or Atman. Everything is so small and shallow it loses all significance.

Hi, Deep My personal experience is that spirituality, or stripping away the onion of Ego and roles, gives me a dimension of safety during daily life, because I can always centre myself in nothingness. It allows me to accept things with open arms and judge less a situation as good or bad and just try to instead "surf" the situation by observing my inner state and deep breathing. Remembering the Atman in daily living is like an amazing tool that lets you live through things in absolute peace, rather than make you incredibly stressed and unhappy, if you believed yourself to be the persona in the dream.

I @Visionary I like your point.it makes sense. Whatever we experience in this moment is through the realm of thought and experience. How else can we know anything. We may try hard but we may not be able to lose the true nature of our selves. I mean I understand there has to be something going on at the back of our minds. Whatever realizations we have they are ultimately the product our thought process and experience. It's all experiential. If there is absolutely nothing behind the scenes, even existence becomes purposeless. I get the idea that there can be nothingness. But we don't live in that paradigm. Then how can it apply to us. We live in the consciousness that makes us who we are. To be aligned to an alternative consciousness will be like committing a blunder. How can we blind ourselves from that which is real and essential. So in my opinion there is something going on behind the scenes and in fleeting moments we get to experience some tidbits of that consciousness that we are rarely aware of.

I want to stress that the entireroom turned to this transperancy, the colour of space became goldish in colour, I was expecting to actually trully dissolve into nothingness while fully conscious and looking at my Ego (body) in waking reality. Now that would have been like the most shocking thing that I can honestly say I have trouble believing is possible. I will definitely try this meditation more intensely next time and report

I was going to wait until completing my self-imposed retreat, but I'm high on insight right now and need to share before this leaves me. The following was realized from 12 hours of consciousness work, not even that intensely focused, mostly monkey mind, but still deeper than what I've done in the past. I'm amazed at the difference between 12 hours of isolated work and the sloppy 10 hour session I did a few months back. Holy shit. Holy shit. I've been asleep. I didn't even come close to realizing how quickly continuous practice would bring up my inner demons. I've been working hard on trying to create better external life-circumstances for myself while having consciousness work play second fiddle, but today I got a deep feeling that what I'm doing is TOTAL BULLSHIT. I'm just afraid of giving up the remaining materialistic tendencies because I AM SO FUCKING AFRAID OF THIS WORK. It was easy when I'd just do an hour or two per day while spending the rest of my life grasping for illusions, pretending like I was chasing anything worthwhile. I should have noticed that after months of letting go of my old ways, the ego was coming back even harder. I could outwardly acknowledge how superficial and unfulfilling such pursuits were, but that attitude was incongruent with my inner reality. I've become, in some ways, a shallow, shallow person who won't be pleased until he has better material conditions than anyone else. I became aware of the fact that I was just chasing this fantasy that would always demand more and more, subjugating myself to the hedonic treadmill while recognizing it's folly on a conceptual level. I wouldn't say I had a no-self experience, but I experienced my "self" my life story, that thing that I am trying to serve as just a series of sensations and thoughts (which are also just sensations). I wasn't quite able to identify as nothingness, but I at some level became aware of the ego not really being there in the obvious, undeniable way I thought it was. Everything I'm chasing in life is a lie. This work is important, and I'm afraid of the Truth. I just want to distract myself with fantasies of this body having it's ideal circumstances, and immortal body that instantly gratifies all of it's material desires. When I sit down and see them for what they are, I just find lies. All lies. I'm so, so terrified. I've kept using the excuse, that I'd be materialistic now and be a serious sage later, but when I do the work, I can see how stupid that is to serve the ego. I'm not sure what the alternative is (conceptually I do, but not in my direct experience), but I have to choose it. But I'm afraid. I'm so fucking afraid of what I'm going to find I don't even know how to express it. It's unfathomable that I could experience such terror by just sitting and doing nothing. Sorry if this comes across as melodramatic, but I really wanted to capture my state today while it was still fresh. I know I'm not even doing serious non-duality yet. That being said, I'm going to keep going and see where this takes me. Call it masochistic, but I'm sort of enjoying the mind-fuck. I'll update this thread as my consciousness work continues. Updates: Day 2: Was restless all day. Afraid of pushing farther. I see the benefit of being in a formal setting. Accountability is huge, but I'm doing the best with what I've got at the moment. The mind does weird things when it's isolated and without stimulus. I just need to keep at the work and have faith in the process. The benefits others have derived is clear. I need to remember that when I try to talk myself out of it by saying that I'm just some crazy person wasting my life on this stuff. Day 3: Super fidgety and unfocused. Tried making excuses but ultimately kept pulling myself back. Low quality work was done but I'm making progress in facing the fear of going deep. If this is my hero's journey, the existential terror is my threshold guardian. I became somewhat conscious of the ego's deepest desire: To be God. It wants to control everything and satiate all desire.

The colour white doesn't exist, white is just a really intense black, but black nothing is the only thing that is real - everything else is projecting movies on top of movies. Even our shallow as shit forum posts. Everything is so small compared to the nothingness, it's eye-opening, and it's always there, right behind your back

@Leo GuraWhat about watching yourself in the mirror, it can become pretty trippy experience of self reflection if one looks long enough. I think it raises my wakefulness level and I become more aware of the nothingness, which is everything we know.... Then I snap my fingers, and create sound and continue exploring existence, while with open eyes, because there is no outside us, which means extroverts are just as introverted as introverts like me . I guess what I'm saying is self enquiry in front of the mirror can be pretty intense experience of reality!

Well, now that my ego is dead, the glimpses I had were spot on. It feels strange and I never thought for one moment that ego death would, in effect, make me become nothingness and empty. In buildings, I see the objects and I'm not there, just pure awareness. I'm now this blank presence that goes here and there seemingly with some person. I look down and see the phenomenon of a body that I used to identify as Eric. Now its just sort of coming out of nothing. To summarize: its completely turned everything 180 degrees. Holy crap! By the way, if my words don't express it, I'm blown away and there's no turning back. Even though five days ago I wasn't where I am now... its orders of magnitude different.

So a brief disclaimer here I would have put in my signature but evidently you aren't allowed one without a significant number of topics under your belt. I am taking the role of Adam Watts here, there is nothing to say about enlightenment, there is nothing to say about spirituality or Zen, you have to be it not hear it in words. Thus anything I say should be taken for it's entertainment value only and any insight it grants should be considered but a bonus. I wish to point out an interesting insight for those who have witnessed source, or who understand that existentially the only thing that is real and permanent is nothing at all. This is not to poke fun at religion (Leo has done enough of that for all of us), but because this is a very useful insight into the existential nature of your godhood, and if you're going to ever truly control your perceptions (which I have found to be possible) it's a fun exercise to experience and an invaluable insight which will chop away your moral high horse a bit or at least make you realize you're absolutely completely full of shit and that is unavoidable. So take your favorite psychedelic, sit back and contemplate the following. (Kinda guided but you can skip to the end to just take the intellectual riddle) God or Lord God is generally accepted to be everything (every thing), so if you are able to perceive things tune your awareness to the point that all perceptions merge. Where you see that audio, visual, tactile are all converging on one sensory point, we will call this your present point of view. If your eyes are open it likely appears to be a room of some sort but try and get in touch with the oneness where the room ceases to be a room and simply is a perception of a single canvas or painting with no objects unless you choose to focus on one. Now get in touch with your humanity, with every concept you've ever learned, and all your rational memory and you get what Don Juan referred to as the Tonal point of view. The thing sitting in-front of you represent God or at least your present understanding of God as a human being. Basically the sum of everything you have ever experienced is God as there is nothing outside of your own experiences that you can say is real. Notice the change to the sensory input as you breathe, taking breaths in through your nose especially helps and you'll see that the whole scene changes it's tone as you breathe in and out. The monkey mind is likely hard at work donating thoughts, if you can or are sufficiently tripped out watch those thoughts rise and fall. Where do they come from? Where do they go? If you watch one slowly enough try and give it a coordinate, just like an object in the room. Should you give it focus a thought will feel like it is coming from a specific point in your awareness. Watch that point and you will see no thought-thought- no thought. Or No Thing - Some Thing - No Thing. Now close your eyes and take in the void, if you're sufficiently tripped out notice the colors and the beautiful gallery of infinity before you. Try and have a full experience of no self while still being in control (Ie don't leave for 2 hours, just experience ego death for a few minutes). Merge with the void and let the monkey mind talk a bit more, watch again as some random spacial coordinate goes from No thing -> Some Thing -> No Thing again. The No Thing is of special interest because it is the only constant, if you're enlightened you already know that. So here is where it gets really fun. The No Thingness is what Don Juan refers to as the Nagual. The opposite side to having a self it is your existential nature as nothing at all. Just an empty vessel with some random swirl of perceptions within you. Let me propose to you that the Nagual is NOT god, because it is not composed of everything (every thing) as god is, and has no construction whatsoever. The Nothingness is very unique in that it is existentially being without any conscious ability to guide or change what you are experiencing. In order to consciously guide yourself you must first lie to yourself. If you are sufficiently tripped out or simply far enough along in your consciousness work you will notice a distinct change from when you move from the void or ego-death back to consensus reality. Just reaching for a glass of water requires that subtle change. So I want you to do that, go to complete ego death, and then VERY SLOWLY force yourself to open your eyes and interact with anything in the environment. You will notice that any sort of interaction with the environment, even if you're just guiding your meditation requires an original very specific lie. You have to tell yourself that you in fact have a self and you're so used to that particular lie it may take you a few months to actually watch it happen. If you did not believe you had a self with the utmost faith you would not be able to reach for the glass of water or think a specific thought. You would very much be at the mercy of whatever perception played upon your being. Now you have found what I am getting at, the very first lie that God tells himself, is that he is God. Without the lie that he is God there can be no interaction and no creativity. In order to create you require a vessel and that vessel is your first lie, for you know in reality you have no vessel and no reality within which to create anything at all. Thus you are now confronted with a very stark and difficult truth. Lord God lies to himself first and tells himself that he is Lord God, the rest of his universe is made from that first lie for from the self comes the lie that I am the one in my experience and there are others to interact with me who I call the many. Thus Lord God is actually the Father of Lies himself. Why is this important? Because you believe yourself to be the one in your experience, but your goal should be to be God in your experience. They're your perceptions and even if you support the scientific model you should know your entire experience of the universe happens inside your brain, thus there is no reason you can't say to hell with it and leave consensus reality and mold your own perceptions. But you can't do that if you think you're telling the truth when you're not. My point is if God is really the Devil then you should realize that in your reality you are God, you choose where you go and what you do. If you have choice then the choice is yours. If you think you're being truthful when you're lying to yourself then that is a very large trap you have fallen into, the self element is a complete lie, there is nothing wrong with it, but accept that you are a lie and thus anything you say, do, or think, is also by extension a lie. It can be a contextual truth, but it will never be an existential truth. Only when you truly get in touch with that insight will you be free. So unleash your inner devil and enjoy freedom. On a side note it does make the idealization of God as a very honest figure full of truth and benevolence kind of amusing. As every church you see is in actuality a temple to the Devil. All hail the father of lies, for we are the very lies which he has spewed. Oooooops. By contrast you will also notice that God has a master, God is a concept, and bound by the laws that all concepts must follow. It is a thing. Only the Nagual, is truly free for the Nagual may be nothing at all whenever it so chooses or more aptly stops choosing to be. Yours Truly Lord God. Signature: I call myself Lord God because there is absolutely no reason to externalize such an entity. If there is a Lord God then in my experience I surely am him for who else would I leave the mastery of my destiny to? If I am not Lord God then show him to me that I might laugh at the perception before my eyes for I am the Nagual and serve none.

HI Actualized.org Family! I wanted your input on this recent experience I've been having. As many of you know on here I practice Reiki Energy Healing so when I meditate I usually send reiki to myself and to other people usually via a prayer journal that I've created. To experience Reiki energy healing you don't have to be physically present to experience it's benefits. It can be sent distance wise, and can also bypass space and time and be sent into the past and into the future. It can also be sent to words on a piece of paper and the spiritual consciousness of the reiki energy sends healing to whatever you would like to focus on. If there is no specific intent on sending the energy, it will go where it is need the most whether physically, mentally, or spiritually. I decided to try a new meditation technique. Something completely new. So instead of sending healing energy to certain specific people, I send energy to the Earth and the entire Universe! Usually when I send out energy I get what I give out, and feel really calm and relaxed. This time it felt incredibly different. I imagine the Earth literally sitting in the palm of my hands and send energy to the Earth, but I also imagine the energy emanating from my body and just stretching out every where to everything. When I started to send energy to everything, without bias I felt this overwhelming sense of calmness and peace. In fact it was so strong that I was feeling unconditional LOVE and a sense of awww. I could feel my roles and my identity dropping, and my mind was completely wiped and empty. I just felt like this nothingness, a sense of just being, but it felt really good and I wanted to be there. I just wanted to MERGE with God/absolute infinity. I wanted to be the sea foam on the ocean, and the rain drops in a cloud. I've done this about 3 times already. The more I do this, the stronger it gets. It got so strong this time, I started feeling like I would literally give my life up for it! Like I would die for the universe because I love God so much. I don't know what is happening to me but I LOVE it!

Leo, after all the psychedelics do you still feel trapped in monkey mind during the day? A lot of what you said resonginated with my personal expeirences, however after serious inquiry while tripping last year there was a serious release of energy it felt like getting hit by lightening after that day I've felt pure nothingness inside my heart space and my mind is silent unless I engage it to do practical things. when I walk I can feel me consciousness as space like awareness, the body is just apparent if I push the awareness outward in everyday life I can not find myself as an object, Is this how it is for you? The thing I would say is wether you engage in material life or denounce it the one reality is still the same, it's a beautiful dynamic expression, our true self uses this body as a way of experiencing its self and realizing our selfs through forms is its highest joy. Thank-you for your time namaste.

How about this life purpose: - To witness my grandchildren get enlightened. Which is why to reach the greatest heights requires shedding egoic material, or purification to the point of nothingness or spirit. The word "spirit" connotes lightness of mechanism, and this is a good pointer of what you should be working towards. To be conscious, it to be able to see how a mechanism truly works, and its backfire potential.

Can use other labels too, im only labeling for the sake of the conversation. Lets call it the nothingness out of which all arises.

Enlightenment is only the beginning. There is infinity…to go far. Enlightenment is only a door, and then there is an unending existence, an unending evolution, expansion. The people who are unconscious, for them enlightenment is the goal; but they are not aware of the fact that enlightenment is only a door. Once you have reached it, then a new kind of pilgrimage starts. Up to this door you were an entity; beyond this door you will not be an entity, you will be just pure consciousness without a body, without a mind. You will be just a fragrance which will go on spreading all over existence. And the fragrance is luminous. It is full of awareness. It knows itself and it knows the whole existence around it – not as separate but part, a kind of at-one-ment. It is the universe and the universe is it; there is no division, no duality. Now the observer becomes the observed, the seer becomes the seen. He is both. Just as you enter beyond enlightenment into nothingness, there must be a possibility of coming out of nothingness back into form, back into existence—renewed, refreshed, luminous—on a totally different plane. In the East we have a conception of circles of existence and non-existence, just like day and night. Creation is followed by de-creation, everything goes into nothingness, just as day is followed by night and everything goes into darkness. And the period is going to be the same: as long as the creation is, so is the resting period going to be; and again there will be a creation of a higher order. And this will go on from eternity to eternity — creation, de-creation, creation, again de-creation—but each time the morning is more beautiful. Each dawn is more colorful, more alive; the birds are singing better, the flowers are bigger, with more fragrance. And the East has a tremendous courage of accepting the idea that this will go on forever and forever. There has never been any beginning, and there will be no end. It can be out of body experience near death, death means connection between body and consciousness is broken, you can not enter in same body again after death, it no longer remains suitable.

the fabric that is everything including you, and that is nothing in its nature and so only perceivable when it stops its nothingness to be anything specific, which is everything.

@Siim Land you go it. Eventually you can more readily see your own nothingness from seeing how nothing is outside of the giant causation. Then you can see that you are everything, so there is never a 'thing' worth worrying about. Then the rebirth, then the causation is malible.

I can't seem to get past this confusion. So, let's say we fast-forward 1000 years into the future. And let's say that science has uncovered the entire functionality of the brain. Now, let's look at this from the spiritual perspective. The scientist, that does not exist, sets a subject, that does not exist, into a device, that does not exist, that can manipulate the brain, that doesn't exist, in any form it pleases. The device, that does not exist, is capable to deactive and alter any system of the mind, that doesn't exist. The device, that doesn't exist, can turn off the cognitive system, that doesn't exist, that is creating ego, that doesn't exist, within the mind. Once the non-existent device turned off the non-existent ego, suddently the non-existent subject feels like he is becoming absolute infinity. That non-existent subject reports of losing the sense of self completely, saying infact the self was an illusion. Let's say the non-existent device can alter the non-existent cognitive systems in a way where time and space ceases to exist for the non-existent subject. The non-existent subject loses all sense of reality, as perfectly predicted by the non-existent device. The non-existent device can manipulate the non-existent brain to alter the non-existent subjects reality in any shape of form it pleases. It can turn the non-existent subjects reality into that of a plant. It can alter the reality in such fundamental ways that the non-existent subject will get a sense of nothingness. But the non-existent device can once more alter the non-existent subjects non-existent mind in a way that the non-existent ego emerges once more out of nothingness. The non-existent device could do anything. It could alter any function of the non-existent subjects mind in ways that the non-existent subject could have impossibly even imagined before. The non-existent subject might lose all sense of outer world, it might lose the sense of location, or seperateness. The non-existent device can play with the non-existent subjects mind in whatever way it wants. One moment the non-existent subject is enlightened, and then the next the non-existent subject is once more egoic. How can a non-existent device do anything? How can it predict the behaviour and consciousness of the non-existent subject? It would know exactly when "enlightenment" would occur, yet the expirience of enlightenment reveals that the device cannot exist, and that it is just a illusion of the mind. But it's the non-existent device that has absolute control over the non-existent subject, not the other way around. Of course the reality of the subject will change, because the device is in control of it's reality. It can control wether or not the expirience of the subject is that of absolute emptiness, or of seperateness and ego. Ironically though, the subject, once it expiriences emptiness, will belief that it is reality, because it doesn't even have the cognitive functions to distinct between anything. So, it is merely left with emptiness, and once the structures of the mind reemerge, the subject will belief it expirienced reality, when infact it just expirienced a different expirience, and altered reality. The non-existent device is in absolute control of the consciousness of the subject. The subject will at any time be absolutely certain that it's reality is reality. The egoic reality is an illusion once the subject is put into a different kind of reality. But what if both realities are illusions, that of nothingness just as much as that of ego. What if, whatever the non-existent device really is, is reality. What if that reality is so inaccessable, that we cannot even imagine it's properties, because properties themselves are part of the limited reality of the mind? Why else could a non-existent device play with a non-existent subjects consciousness as it pleases. Why else would it be able to alter consciousness in any way it wants, creating an enlightened being within a split second. What if, when the device decides that it wants to get rid of the subject, true nothingness will emerge? A nothingness so empty that it is void of expirience and consciousness itself? An emptiness that is so empty, that there is nothing to witness it? Maybe the rational mind underrestimates how much the subjective reality can be altered? Maybe it cannot grasp that whatever it "feels" reality to be is nothing more than an illusion, and yet, it is everything it has? Because if it cannot recognize that, then it will never recognize that even the greatest truth there is, is nothing but a lie. Even the most real and unlimited expirience, nothing but a simple expirience that does not go beyond what the expirience itself is. And, maybe it cannot recognize that everything that is expirienced, is not actually everything there is? What if the mind is just too limited to actually become aware of that, ever? If one expiriences "everything", isn't it merely an expirience of everything that the mind is capable of expiriencing? And to the mind, it will be infinite, because by definition it will literally be infinite within the perspective of the expirience. But why would the mind fall into the belief that the expirience of infinity is actually everything there is? Or is by definition saying "everything there is", merely pointing to the contents of the mind, because after all, what is beyond might be so incomprehendable that even content itself would be a false desciption? Or is true enlightenment, or the expirience of nothingness, merely a recognition that reality is beyond words, so beyond words and concept that everything the mind can come up with is absolutely nothing?

@Harikrishnan I think that both of those religion have some pros & cons : On one way the Buddha gives a great direct path to get to enlightement without even being obligated to take in count all the basic principles. The method is already great by itself. On the other hand Hinduism is more profund to the cultivation of good feelings and chakras to get to that : "aha" and eventually enlightement. I'll say ( well that's for me ) that both religion are interesting because they deliver two way of understanding the reality but also two final "truths" to understand which for me are relevant for the two of them which are : God by loving yourself and the World with Hinduism And Nothingness and Oneness with Buddhism.

@PureExp Is everything actually this consciousness/nothingness? Are consciousness and nothingness one and the same?

Look closer. Do you see a forehead? Or is the "forehead" an mental image? And does the line then terminate at a mental image? Is that what you ACTUALLY experience? Or do you ACTUALLY experience a line terminating at nothingness? And in a kid's mind, it makes sense that Santa Claus organizes the distribution of Christmas presents. Yes, "in your mind" it makes sense because it's a fantasy. In reality it's false. Your mind is the enemy here. What makes sense to the mind doesn't matter. Reality is otherwise. You can take it as an axiom of this work that no sensation perceives another. Now your job is to verify this by finding the actual perceiver. Hint: the actual perciever (you) is non-existent. You're never going to find it as an object. Because you are emptiness itself. There's no logical reason why it would. You have to discover via direct experience what you are. Then you'll see that what you are is infinite and without location (hence omnipresent). Well, be careful not to get lost in terminology. Language is a poor vehicle for this work. You need to have the direct experience of reality. "Silence" and "nothing" might point to the same thing. "Nothing", "source", and "no source" might point to the same thing. And "nothing" might point to something very different than what you imagine. Absolute reality is that which is true all the time, without change, under all circumstances. What is the ONE thing which never changes? Nothingness. Every other experience is relative truth. Hopefully you're starting to notice that all experience is changing all the time. Hence experiences cannot be The Truth. Experiences are not Absolute. To use a scientific metaphor, you might think of the vacuum of empty space as being an absolute. Although in fact, not even it is absolute, since it's merely a concept/experience your mind is having.