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There is no "real" awakening that is not hallucinated. Everything is hallucinatory. We just say it is hallucinated when the means are chemical. Holding awakening through psychedelics as lesser than an awakening through other means seems to me be extremely dualistic, since due to nonduality there should be no reason why chemical (material) means would be less valid than some meditation techniques, since matter is mind anyways.

The key that you are just necessarily missing until you've awakened beyond nonduality: reality isn't in a certain way. As in the actual structure of reality is constantly shuffling; there is no solid background reality. Impermanent; transient, but absolutely so... and that's the stillness. The singular frame of reality (all of them, though there really is no continuity) is gone as it appears, since the stillness of a phenomenon is simultaneous with its dissolution -- in a way this is how the illusion of time is so robust. At the highest levels of insight, it's beyond-beyond (infinitely fundamental/subtle) the usual insights that are bound by consciousness itself. You don't understand this insight in the usual sense, because the reality more fundamental than context and even consciousness is revealed. You don't know it, it's beyond knowing, because there is only that. It might seem like consciousness can't not be fundamental, or that when I say beyond (more fundamental than) consciousness, what I really mean is some kind of ultimate consciousness... No... I really do mean literally more fundamental than consciousness. Absolute being unbound by the trio/tripod of time-subject-object.

This looked like a great share opportunity ❤ "I’ve found it interesting to notice and get curious about the undercurrent of restlessness or dissatisfaction that shows up sometimes in my experience and I suspect in that of most other human beings as well. We may find that this is sometimes quite strong and overt, and at other times, it is a very subtle, barely detectible undercurrent—a slight tension in the bodymind that is perhaps almost always there to some subtle degree, even in moments of pleasure. It often manifests as the attempt to manipulate, control, change or understand experience. It might show up for some as an effort to identify as awareness and not as a bodymind, or as an effort to be mindful (to “be here now”) all the time. It might be the sense that something needs to happen, shift, clarify, drop away or be found. It might be a feeling that we can’t stand being here in this mind or this body or this situation. It emerges from a sense of separation—a sense of fundamental lack, of not being okay, of something missing or something frightening or threatening. Nisargadatta described consciousness as an itching rash that comes upon us. Consciousness seemingly divides up the indivisible wholeness and freezes formlessness into apparently separate forms, giving rise to the sense of being an encapsulated separate self and the inevitable feelings of dissatisfaction, lack and endless seeking that follow from that. Buddha called it suffering, the delusion of being a persisting, separate somebody, driven by fear and desire. Adi Da, a controversial America guru (about whom I have very mixed feelings), often posed the question, “What are you always doing?” He was pointing to what he called the self-contraction. And he said, "Your suffering is your own activity. It is something that you are doing moment to moment....You will continue to pursue every kind of means until you realize that all you are doing is pinching yourself. When you realize that, you just take your hand away. There is nothing complicated about it. But previous to that, it is an immensely complicated problem.” He also said, “The self is just like this clenched fist. Relax the fist and there is nothing inside... We are never at any moment in the dilemma we fear ourselves to be." We often think so-called spiritual awakening is about getting something or finding the Truth. But it’s more about seeing the false as false, seeing through unnecessary mental activities, noticing and relaxing that metaphorical clenched fist in the bodymind. And we can’t actually “do” relaxing—that would be a contradiction in terms. In the seeing (i.e., awaring) of the tension, there is a natural relaxing that happens by itself—the storylines begin to lose their believability and their grip loosens. The clenched fist opens. It isn’t a willful efforting—it’s a relaxing, a letting go, an opening, a surrendering. It happens spontaneously. And it rarely, if ever, happens once and for all. It’s always about right now. And sometimes, relaxing doesn’t happen. And then, it may be possible to notice that even the contraction or the tension is never really a problem—it is simply an impersonal energetic movement of this aliveness, a momentary dance that presence is doing. Taking it personally, giving it meaning, viewing it as “The Obstruction Standing Between Me and My Awakening” and then trying really hard to get rid of it, is all only a new meta form of the very problem it is trying to cure—a problem about the problem. This efforting to get rid of effort, or trying to stop trying, is a common unintended side effect of otherwise potentially helpful pointers and practices such as recognizing ourselves as boundless awareness or impersonal presence, or “being here now,” or even attending talks by someone like Tony Parsons in which we are told that there is nothing to do and no one to do it. All of these things, when slightly misunderstood, can inadvertently feed into the very problem they are designed to expose or undermine. The medicine that we need to cure a physical illness often has unintended but unavoidable side effects. For example, radiation treatments successfully and blessedly dissolved a cancerous tumor in this body that would have killed me, but it also caused some secondary collateral damage that continues to unfold (as they knew it would, and as I was told about in advance, and which was a price I was willing to pay). In a similar way, spiritual practices and pointers can also have unintended collateral side effects or potential pitfalls. They can inadvertently reinforce the sense that “this isn’t it,” that “something needs to happen,” that there is someone here who needs to do something to finally be okay or complete or happy or enlightened. They can reinforce a dualistic sense of success and failure, okay and not-okay, a striving for future results, an endless evaluating of how we are doing, comparing ourselves to others, and believing that the speaker at the front of the room or the author of the book has something the rest of us don’t. As with the radiation that cured my cancer, this doesn’t mean these pointers and practices are terrible and should not be used. It seems to be part of the journey from Here to Here that we inevitably stumble into various misunderstandings and their associated pitfalls (or unintended side effects), and then eventually (with luck), we wake up from them—or we don’t, and that, too, is simply how this dance is dancing. Often different teachings serve as antidotes to the unintended pitfalls of other teachings. Thus, in my own journey, Toni Packer helped to dissolve some of the pitfalls inadvertently induced by Zen; radical nonduality helped to dissolve some of the pitfalls inadvertently induced by Toni’s approach; various Buddhist teachers and more encounters with Toni helped to dissolve some of the pitfalls induced by radical nonduality; and so on and on. In one moment we need mindfulness meditation, in another moment we need Rupert Spira or Gangaji or Adyashanti, in another moment we need Karl Renz or Jim Newman or Peter Brown, and in another moment we need Robert Saltzman or Shiv Sengupta. It’s not about one being right and the other being wrong. It’s about pulling the most recent rug we’re standing on out from under us again and again and waking us up to THIS, right here, right now. The mind is infinitely skilled at turning rug-pulling and rug-less-ness into an imaginary new apparently solid rug upon which we can stand. Thus, waking up is not once-and-for-all, but always NOW. So, you may find it interesting to give open nonjudgmental attention to the persistent sense of restlessness or dissatisfaction—feeling it in the body, that subtle or not so subtle tension, agitation or unease, and also seeing the thoughts and storylines that generate and sustain this unease. Not trying to fix or undo it or get rid of it, because that’s just more of the same efforting, but simply being aware of the whole thing—not thinking of it as a problem, but SEEING it as the neutral and only-possible expression of reality at this moment. This can be an interesting exploration, and if it invites you, I suggest approaching it lightly, with curiosity and interest, not in a goal or result oriented way. Allow it to do you, rather than you trying to do it—which is actually always how it is. And remember, we are never really in the dilemma we imagine ourselves being in. The whole story of being lost, bound, incomplete, etc. is all imagination. There is no separate, independent, persisting person to be any particular way for more than a nanosecond. There is ONLY flow and nothing IN the flow. And paradoxically, the ever-changing flow never departs from the immovable instantaneous timeless immediacy of HERE-NOW." - Joan Tollifson

You're correct, nonduality is not the end of the awakening process -- though it does have finality since separate identity is seen-through irreversibly. When enlightenment happens there's no one else who is unawake, so it's hard to talk about this, but anyway... Examples of not just fully enlightened, but also those who have abided here in this way long enough to be effective as a teacher: Bernadette Roberts, Rob Burbea, Jed McKenna (pseudonym; likely born Peder Sweeney) Currently accessible: Angelo Dilullo MD (Simply Always Awake), Adyashanti And plenty of Zen teachers. And I don't know if Leo has been awake long enough and in such a way for him to effectively do one-on-one guidance for liberation -- I certainly can't yet. I think it probably takes like 10 years but that's basically just a slightly educated guess. That's just off the top of my head, not wanting to make a mistake somehow by listing more. There are certainly many more -- especially for nonduality, but enlightenment on the other hand is really uncommon in relation... So to speak... But again when enlightenment happens it's obvious that truly, no one is really unenlightened anyway. And your intuition is correct, that there are no enlightened "people." Any one who relates to another one is not the enlightened one, but an after-image of the underlying enlightened truth -- the clothes (ego-suit) that the unbound-by-ego enlightened one wears. Something that I imagine very easily gets mistaken for enlightenment, but is actually not even nondual recognition, is a sort of state that can be brought about with self inquiry, concentration + insight practice, even psychedelics sometimes... Many, including Adyashanti, call it Witnessing. Or "The Witness." Akilesh (Sifting to the Truth; perhaps enlightened but has definitely at the very least reached nonduality) calls it the spacious mind. Rob Burbea called it the vastness of awareness. It's kind of like you're God looking in at experience rather than out (though it's not really describable so definitely don't take that literally; it's kind of a figure-ground-reversal), and seeking and self and objects are replaced with pure consciousness without conceptual activity; pure subjectivity. This is an incredibly blissful state, but it's not nondualty, and certainly isn't enlightenment... though it's very easily going to be virtually synonymous with what's called initial kensho... and as long as you don't think you've personally attained enlightenment, you'll definitely at least realize that enlightenment is real (truth exists). When the consciousness and the world disappears (often, but not necessarily, after spending a lot of time in this Witnessing state), that's nonduality -- identity is seen through; self falls away in a sense. When the perceptual filters responsible for constructing a self, themselves (the filters/layers of contracted energetic illusion) fall away though, via an ongoing automatic curiosity-desire-inquiry... that is associated with enlightenment.

@Leo Gura Just as a small nitpick, what Angelo can talk about, directly on the scene, is utterly beyond nonduality. I recognize it essentially as what you might term something like absolute impersonal solipsism. If you don’t see that, you pretty much just haven’t seen enough of his stuff. It’s definitely not set apart from God either it just has no need to be called as such.

You need a radical alteration of your state of consciousness. Intention isn't good enough. Mediation isn't good enough. Self-inquiry isn't good enough. Only a change in state is enough. Through a radical shift in state of consciousness. Because your state runs everything and you are contemplating and intending from within a certain limited state which will never be good enough. You can't break out of your state through sober contemplation alone. Nor even mediation. No! I am telling you that all of that is child's games compared to God-realization. You do not understand what God is, nor do any of the teachers you've been following. They are not God-realized. You will not understand this until you realize what God is. It's way beyond nonduality or any Buddhist bullshit. There is no way for me to explain it to you. You just have to awaken deeper. I am talking about the fact that you are imagining every spiritual thing. You are even imagining nonduality and all those nondual teachers and teachings. You are even hallucinating right now that you've ever meditated. Your meditation itself is a just a dream. God-realization is not transcendence of the present. It is full, 1000% presence. But you don't have that now. What you have is some weak-sauce neo-advaita idea of presence and God. Nobody is teaching what I am teaching. It's not all the same. And there is no way I can prove that to you. But I have awoken to levels that nobody teaches or talks about. You will never reach it via meditation. Never. You can fully master Buddhism and you will still not reach it. I have reached complete omniscience. And it has nothing to do with suffering or liberation. And it's the only thing you will ever want if you ever reach it. How can I possibly claim and know such things? You will never understand until you reach what I have reached. It cannot be communicated. It requires infinite bandwidth to get it.

I'm trying to get you to consider that it isn't BS. Have you considered that during the time you tried all the workshops and classic meditation that you just didn't get far enough to actually start to really get it? To get there requires a really really deep digging into super subtle stuff. You need to get really freaking good at sensing your perceptions, thoughts, and feelings. This is super hard, but it can be done. The result is seeing reality as it really IS right now, which has nothing to do with a state and everything to do with what is actually true. I'm talking about NONDUALITY, and you're talking about transcendent states. To truly realize nonduality, radical no-self is foundational and has to be because it's the fundamental illusory split between subject and object. This is not "no-mind", but literally the collapse of all dualities and all identities, leading to absolute ineffable groundless paradox and non-description, and it only ever is this here eternally now. When you go chasing transcendence, you miss the whole boat because you miss that the deepest truth isn't a state or about any kind of content. This is the truth that brings peace and love and happiness. The very seeking that drives you to desire understanding with psychedelics IS separation from real understanding, from Being. I just see your mind constructing this frame in which there is this "high realization", a Leo that should embody it, and a noble drive for understanding. Break this construction and free fall backwards. Radically accept absolutely everything, even your own resistance and craving, and do this until it melts. Accept every dark emotion and thought. Accept the deep powerful NO that reverberates through your being when you try to let go. And keep going. It is so obvious you are not free, and I wish you would stop being stubborn here because it's just ego, and it misleads people who are using you as their primary resource.

That's maybe what they'd say, but I wasn't coming from there. ( In a sense, enlightenment is further than nonduality, because while nonduality reveals there's just energy and no identity (and the seeker was the sought), there's a further deepening that reveals how that energy is still sort of a reflection of what can be revealed when the leftover perceptual filters strip away -- call it whatever; it's the infinite and infinitely efficient, beyond understanding, more logical than logic... And the way I see it, this is what Leo describes as being conscious of how you're imagining the entire reality as God. ) I understand @Consilience and what he said totally resonates. Basically what I meant is, while yes the jhanas and meditation/mindfulness are certainly valuable if not indispensable on the path (I probably was being misleading by not including the fact that it couldn't be any other way), there is an orthogonal or "backwards step" (happened with self inquiry + spiritual autolysis but not until I had done it for quite some time) that I was somehow able to avoid even while exploring jhanas with pretty good technique and even with lots of bliss in every day life. And that backwards step can open up glimpses into what's really going on, which is so intimate that it can be constantly overlooked even in the midst of very advanced practice. Maybe it isn't generally that way for everyone's path -- I can see that. I did not mean for it to come across that those practices were useless -- they were in fact crucial. In the grand scheme, there probably wasn't a single month where I wasn't "further along" by the end of the month relative to the beginning, even though in a sense there was something missing. But at least for me (again my practice could've had a subtle flaw so to speak, and actually, in a sense, in fact it did) it was possible to get really good at concentration and even mindfulness... all the while not taking what I now see to be a key step that I was somehow missing up until the point it began: Directly attending to the thought space (rather than raw sensations, as I had intuitively assumed until then was the right way -- and in a sense it was right for the time) in a discerning way, for the purpose of investigating which (and how) thoughts/fixations pull me back into illusory view, thought, and doership. Yeah, I actually managed to avoid that for quite some time! I would add that, intuitively, I think culprits may have been that I: 1. mainly just focused on jhanas and metta... and 2. didn't consult with a teacher. My practice was sort of well rounded, but in relation to how much metta and concentration practice I did, I was only really dipping my toe in what I now recognize to be at least a few of the prime movers of practice: 1. noting, 2. inquiry, and 3. in a way, "beyond practice," a very strong desire to wake up + the constant intention to break out of filtered reality and applying that passion to investigating the thought space and seeing everything discernible as a thought / thought layer / fixation / filter that creates the sense that I'm here and I'm separate from everything... or in other words clarifying enlightenment: what it actually is; how it truly isn't just another state... There's no it and yet at the same time it's an indescribably total shift in relating to experience. The process of waking up is kind of like this: you're leaving enlightenment, then once totally out, you're instantly back in again, but for real this time... Only now, instead of a separate you looking through the senses, something else is looking... and movement is absolute stillness.

You are seriously confusing Turquoise and Spiral Dynamics with mysticism and nonduality. That's not how the model works.

You shouldn't even bring up nonduality because its not relevant to this discussion. When we are talking about laws we are talking about some kind of morality that we are agreeing on even though we know that it is subjective. we shouldn't have even started talking about this morality issue, if you are not willing to biting some bullets. Of course in the grand scheme of things there is no distinction between anything but at the end of the day, you would have a problem if someone murdered your family. So you want some laws around it. Laws are coming from ethics, and ethics deeply correlates with politics and we are going back to morality. Its not practical to continue this "discussion" or this "debate" because you are not willing to engage with the points i make, and you are not willing to answer some essential questions that are revolving around this morality issue. But I will try it one last time. When you saying that i am immoral because i would allow abortion because i am actually allowing murdering humans thats a very serious claim. You need to back that claim with justifications and not with these arbitrary lines like :The line still exists within the potential range. You need to justify how am i allowing murdering humans, and that requires making a definition for humans. Because right now you are only saying that yes there is this potential and when i am allowing abortion in the first week for example i might kill a human or i might kill a human life ,"i don't know exactly because i didn't draw the line" You can't get away with being that hardly untangible. Also still waiting for arguments why should anyone value potentiality over my valuesystem. How your moralsystem better than mine. Make arguments around that. "Taking the whole conversation to the line is pointless" It is essential especially for you, when you make claims , that i allow murdering humans. This is another arbitrary line that you are making about how you decide what has enough potential and what doesn't have enough potential. Being this arbitrary with your morality will cause a lot of problem, because if we are talking about a law system you cannot just be this untangible with your arguments, because thats not how morality or justice system works. This is not just a 1v1 debate, this is about making justifications and figuring out which moral system would be better in regards to abortions. So your argument basically boils down to this: "I value potentiality, but i can't exactly define what i mean by sufficient potentiality" Be very very exact about what do you mean when you are talking about "Sufficient potential" potential without putting words like "and a few other factors". Be willing to take a position, and this one time don't be abstract.

Three distinct awakenings I can remember: God realization, nondual recognition, liberation. Nondual recognition will always come before liberation, but other than that any of those can happen without the others -- though again liberation won't happen until after nondual recognition; liberation isn't a one and done thing like nonduality (collapse of identity), but the additional stripping away of the layers that hide the indescribable intimacy that's really going on.

There is no difference between doing the work and trolling, hense nonduality A true master is both awake and an epic troll, here is a koan for us all

The word “believe” seems to imply more than its use in the traditional sense. They could either mean that reality is what you make of it, literally.. or they could mean the straightforward notion that belief = reality. The meaning of the latter being actuality. And the former meaning being more psychological than actual in its essence. Personally, I'd say they meant the former.. Belief = Reality.. simply because of my insight on nonduality.

First I will define awakening/enlightenment, so you know what I am talking about (and opposed to more general uses of the words). Enlightenment is a sudden, non-conceptual, and visceral insight or revelation that dispels ignorance and shatters illusion regarding who/what you are and the nature of reality. The insight instantly shatters the illusion of “me” and the illusion of separation or duality. The "me" can never be believed again. This is the same as Self-realization or God-realization...for in Advaita / non-duality the realization includes "Aham Brahmasmi" or I am Brahman. Did you lose/increase your interest in certain areas? Spirituality has been a favorite topic since I got into it, but after awakening, the interest has solely been drawn to nonduality. Dualistic traditions with a path and somewhere are no longer interesting. That is because those paths all involve a "me" and bettering the "me" or a "me" trying to get something. There is no "me", so talking about the "me" is not much interest anymore. All other aspects of life seem to remain the same in terms of interest. How did it affect your work/life purpose if at all? Awakening shattered the idea of purpose. Life does not inherently have a purpose, we imagine purposes for things. So I no longer need a purpose and am perfectly content without a purpose. But life goes on as play (and play is something not done for a purpose but simply for its own sake). I play going to work, I play paying the bills, I play married life, etc, etc. This is an inward attitude really, so outwardly there was no change. For example, awakening did not affect work life. How did it affect your relationships with "others"? From the perspective of this body-mind, awakening had little to no effect on my relationships with others. However, my wife tells me that this is the easiest relationship she has ever had. I make no demands on others...I expect nothing...and I know all relationships will end one day and so I am non-attached. Other changes would be that I don't take part or add to drama, others can not control or manipulate me, etc. So others who want to "test our relationship" or otherwise control/manipulate would not be satisfied. That being said...none of my relationships with others really changed. For example, non-attachment is not apparent to others and so they don't know I am non-attached. The inner attitude changed, but outwardly there was no change. What challenges do you face knowing your true nature whilst living "in the dream"? There are no problems. Enlightenment/awakening happened in 2005, so it has been over 15 years. I do not recall any challenges I faced due to knowing my true nature while living "in the dream". Enlightenment/awakening does not impede or make it difficult to live in the world. I am not other than the dream...it is all Self/Brahman. The dream/life game may have challenges, but challenges are what makes playing games fun.

We can't create a loving society with nonduality. For that, compassion is required, which comes from applying love in a relative way. Nondual love is not healthy for human society. Here is why: Fighting torture is evil? Worshipping torture is love? To create a loving society we actually need to do the opposite. Fighting part of "what is" (all the suffering in the world). And worshipping "what is not" (a potential future full of love and happiness for all). It's interesting, the definitions of evil from a practical vs a nondual perspective are basically opposite. @gettoeflI'm not addressing you specifically. What you wrote is just the perfect representation of hardcore nonduality.

^^^ Definitely. @iboughtleosbooklist Jim, Tony, Kenneth, Andreas, Ariana, Tim, Richard, etc do in fact transmit nondual realization. However, not only is that not as far as enlightenment goes, but for most seekers, actually hearing the message by just consuming (let’s call a spade a spade) nonduality meetings is like winning the lottery... and even if that happens it is frankly a long, long way from enlightenment. Don’t pretend the ball isn’t in your court. Whatever you think nonduality (and enlightenment) is about, it’s not about that — it is utterly beyond anything conceivable. Probably the most common mis-hearing (understandably) of the nondual message is “there’s nothing to do and nowhere to go” which is simply not true. When nonduality is recognized, identity is over (it has finality to it, unlike basically any other awakenings) — the experiencer apart from reality stops happening. It’s not that choices don’t happen anymore, it’s that there’s no chooser (or material universe) separate from choices. Saying anything about this is still just a story though. But waking up goes so far beyond nonduality, even though nonduality has finality to it. Paradoxically. As soon as you authentically want to wake up... you don’t need to read or watch or listen to anything ever again — you’ll have everything you need right here. Perhaps find a real teacher — one that you resonate with — such as Adyashanti or Angelo Dillulo MD.

soon good words here: https://www.reddit.com/r/nonduality/comments/uei7t4/using_intellectual_understanding_to_bypass/

@Thought Art heh. to answer your question, being is more than consciousness. Well, that depends on how you definie consciousness actually. god is and always will be a name. This makes it less than consciousness. Vocabulary has implicit meaning, and the meaning of god is... welll.... "That which is greater" .... and nonduality just isn't that. I see god as less than.... the indescribabeably, because god cannot escape its implicit meaning. I do not believe in any god, including this pointer nonduality thinkers use to point to what has better pointers to point to it. Leo basically worships god by self actualizing, and that is perfectly good for him. I do not pretend to know his experience or Truth; I only comment on my own, and compare it to his teachings so that you might see something you might not have realized on your own. Truth... Truth is as unknowable as it knowable. take that as you will. on infinity... it was one video, I'm pretty sure he said or implied that there was no more to experience than all of everything. And how exactly is any conscious being going to know that? they can't. Infinity is unbounded, and Leo definitely bounded it with his words. I stopped following him because of it. I had already been on the fence, for the words he used to talk about.... whatever..... just kept getting more and more namelike, and less and less a guidepost. But, that is only my opinion, again, take as you will. as foryour last question, I already answered it. oh wait, there's a hidden question after that. Yes of course I'm greater than Leo, but that does not mean he is not greater than I. Greatness is incomparable, really. Leo will never have what I have, and never have what you have, and you will never have what your brother has, everyone is greater in their, idk, truth, or whatever. actuality. it's just incomparable and uncombineable. it is seperated by our limitation as the experiencer of the present moment. Truth.... it is already gone as soon as we have it, idk, that kind of points to the possibility that we will never get it. sure, Truth can be described as.... thisness.... but Truth, it is... well... infinite, and to be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if Unkowable existed beyond Truth, or if Truth existed beyond Unknowable, or maybe they are synonymous... lol I feel like I'm naming things, but my naming things is fundamental to.... who I am. Leo naming things (which, I only know that he has named god) just.... doesn't really fit what he pursues. calling it god is arrogance in my oppinion. god is unknowable, not actuality. like, I can see how one can say that like, godliness is actuality, but by definition we cannot look upon the face of god. Or at least one definition of it. We cannot speak its name. This does not make god.... well... anything. God is unknowable. That's like "undefined" in coding language, lol. Naming something god quite ironically is as arrogant as it is ignorant. Wait, those things aren't opposites, heh. As long as Leo names it god, the religious folk will feel objection to his words. I truly believe this is one word he should abandon, one pointer that fundamentaly fails to accomplish what Leo pursues by creating Actualized.org. lol I meant to make a quick reply, but it ended up meandering all over the place. Again, take it as you will, it is only meant to show you an alternate understanding of thisness. fundamentally, thisness is the same thing, for any of us, or is it? how can we tell the difference between the two?

Then I shall expand in the form of a Q and A. You are welcome to ask me any question from what I've stated thus far regarding the instrument and the process of creation. Yes. Nonduality does not mean the absence of form/appearance and diversity. Nonduality simply means that all is one.

I am interested in hearing more. I guess for me, even if the "life is a dream" paradigm may raise more questions, that doesn't mean I have to reject that paradigm as being a potential possibility. I can see that the creation is slightly different. For the dreamer god, the creation is a dream and imagined with the physical world being dreamed. For the nonduality god, there could still technically be a physical world or it too could be all in the mind. Yes I see that with non-duality, we are the Earth and it really isn't death but rather transformation of the self with the self.

Now you have to understand that realising nonduality and realising the process of creation, literally what you're doing now as every moment is a moment of creation, that these are two different things: Nonduality and Creation. And your question seems to be leaning more on the latter - the process of creation. In discussing creation, I'm not particularly fond of the “Life is a literal Dream” explanation, simply because it overlooks and negates a lot for the person who is interested in learning of the process of creation which deals essentially with meaning, as you have slightly come to notice in your ASC. Yes, existence is something like a dream in relation to nonduality but this is simply because it hardly matters what and how you think of it, for in nonduality all is literally One. However, with regards to the process of creation, the “life is a dream” paradigm won't get you anywhere. In fact, all this paradigm does is make you care less in realising creation, especially if it is introduced to you as ‘the answer’ rather than a question of exploration. To me, with regards to creation, this is not even an answer because it just raises more and more questions like.. why is God asleep in the first place.. and just leads to a lot of mental masturbation rather than actual progress. In the process of creation, there is something called the mind/body/spirit instrument that I'd like to introduce to you should your interest hold. This instrument is the literal tool of creation. The part that is responsible for the “coming up with visuals” is the mind-instrumental, the mind is form-maker. I'll only continue here if you want me to. This is another reason why I am not so resonant with the dream paradigm because it only leads to confusion and potentially distress. How will the dream paradigm account for your awareness and my - the person who is responding to your thread - awareness? It cannot, for it has already negated the possibility/actuality of the other-self. The reason, in terms of the process of creation, there exists a other-self is because the bubble of consciousness, as most will put it, the sphere of consciousness is capable of crystallization to the point where the POV no longer appears to be one life perspective but several. So, instead of a perfectly smooth bubble, you can imagine here a diamond like structure to consciousness and each of us is particularly focused on of the many sites/sides of this crystallised unity. But, these sites/sides of POVs are not limitations, as the dream paradigm has led you to believe, they have never been limitations for as the psychics of this world have, and will continue to, prove to you.. these POVs can be breached. Even the word “breach” is peculiarly misleading since there has never been any boundaries in the first place - only focuses/foci - the words “cross over” are more appropriate. Me.. you.. we are all One. If you realise or awaken to a truth, the whole bubble has awakened and realised that same truth. When I give you advice, I am essentially giving myself advice.. what looks like a conversation in this material level is essentially but a thought in the crystallised sphere of consciousness.

Nothing is necessary because the question arises out of an illusory-like experience of separation where meaning, purpose & value seem real. Awakening reveals the questioner or individual within the body isn't real. Nonduality is already everything without a second. No real you or me....no real separation....boom nonduality! ❤

This question is entangled with false ideas. First off, this very existence is already a nondual one, no matter what or who you imagine to be “the observer”. Nonduality is the Knowledge Itself, all knowledge (of appearance; of existence; of all finitudes) is, in truth, but one Knowledge. Secondly, where there is appearance, there is life. The observer is only an idea produced by the life itself, it is not absolute. Knowledge is however Absolute, for it is timeless and limitless. So long as there is knowledge of anything, there is knowledge of everything, for all is one. Life/Existence is already nondual. So you see, the question of necessity is itself unnecessary here since all is already one.

In nonduality is the appearance/existence of life necessary or just what happens? Theoretically could there just be rocks, planets, light, heat etc. without an observer or the presence of intelligent life?

He's rather confused because he grasps solipsism intellectually from the human perspective. Notice how he says "A solipsist believes that my finite mind is all that exists", the truth is that there is no finite mind at all. There is only an infinite mind pretending to be finite, which is a possibility Spira seems to be unaware of as he hasn't realized solipsism. However, it seems that he does comprehend nonduality correctly at least to some degree. And as such, he understands that materialism is nonsense also.