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Let's be careful with how we state things like that...I think it is important that we do not connect these incidents with the forum or Leo's teachings (not saying you did, just making a statement). People are always constantly reminded to seek out professional help for those states when they are most vulnerable to their own doing. There are trained facilitators of help for people with the most critical conditions. This is not a place where suicidal depression will be healed quickly. Perhaps what Waveintheocean needed was short term pharmacological intervention followed by less aggressive medical support before even considering psychedelic and nonduality. It aches my heart to know that this has happened and I wish he has given the emergency services more chance. There are times when that is the best solution to be able to function again in society. We will never know what happened and what didn't but I just wanted to mention this.

Because it fits so good with nonduality teachings ( You are god taking different forms)

Like @Bazooka Jesus pointed out, we seem to get lost and wrapped up in ideas about ourselves existing in time, nonduality is the mind sort of catching up with the logical understanding of what it directly knows are true. I'd suggest reading The Power of Now and seeing if it resonates. It's a great place to start but also isn't nonduality. Have you ever experienced the future outside of a thought about it? How about the past? So all there is is now. It can seem on the surface like a dumb realization but the ramifications of living it totally changes eveeeerything.

Oh nice this went straight to nonduality! Love it

I see a lot of this “all is one” nondualism around these days, like it’s trendy, and I’m puzzled by it. My question is very simple: what's the upshot of nondualism? How does believing that "all is one" change anything about your reality? Monotheists tell us that eternity in heaven/hell are consequences of belief/non-belief in God; what are some consequences of belief/disbelief in “all is one”? I.e., how is this anything other than mental masturbation? (Note that I’m not trying to start a “nonduality war”; I’m genuinely curious and don’t have a position on the matter.)

Nonduality is not about happiness or peace. Nonduality is about Truth. The truth shall set you free, but it wont make you happy. Happiness and peace are emotions experienced by the self. self, happiness and peace only exist within duality. After happiness comes sadness, then happiness comes again. After peace comes war, then peace comes again. The best thing to do is to minimize your suffering, such that any future disturbances to your inner peace are mere scuffles, rather than full blown wars. I recommend studying the 4 nobles truths, eightfold path, and the 3 characteristics of Buddhism in addition to Non-Dualism to help bridge the gap.

@DavyTee Because it's not the concept behind nonduality that can make you at peace. The concept behind nonduality isn't nonduality - or should I rather say, it is nonduality, but you're confusing the concept for nonduality instead of seeing that nonduality is also the concept. What you think nonduality to be, is not nonduality, is what I'm trying to say. Or maybe you just think that. You think that in order to understand nonduality, there's some missing piece you still have to "get". No. Get rid! of the damn puzzle pieces. And when there's no puzzle left, nonduality will be plain. It doesn't!!

This guy is rapidly becoming my favorite spiritual teacher at this moment, precisely because he's not a teacher. He's not using that overly-present long-pause monotone nonduality-teacher voice. He's not sitting in half lotus pose, cloaked in robes, telling anecdotes in front of a crowd and subtly making them feel silly for their human weaknesses. No. He's just very matter-of-fact, telling it how it is. He's been to heaven. He's been to hell. This is why we're here guys. What else you wanna know?? No act is being put on. He's not appealing to any audience, he's not even really trying to convince anyone of anything. He just knows because he's telling this from his own memory. So refreshing.

Existence is synonymous with infinity. Dualistic words, which point to nonduality. There is no nonexistence, like there is no fear. But that is a pointing, and as such is instantly contextualized. The why though, when that is explored, there is actuality. (Also a word which can only point) ‘There’ is only linguistic. You’ve never been there. You’ll never be there. You = here, and as there isn’t a there, there can be no here. Same for past, future and now. But thought makes it seem so.

What is a tulpa, is it it's own being/soul/entity or is it a part of you/ your personality structure - in the sense... do you create it like a parent creates a child and then let it loose, or does it create itself?... or is it a spirit all unto itself that was at some point alive - or is it a completely different entity? I love this kind of stuff and I find it so fascinating. I work with two beings - Kali Ma, who is a goddess and an archetype, and "the Wolf" who is an archetype and a machine elf. He doesn't have a name and prefers to go by 'Wolf' and we have a long history - it would take away from your thread to write about what he is and I am much more interested in your tulpa - I have not gone through this thread yet so if you could give me a quick synopsis, that would be so cool. I love that other people here like you have these experiences as well, it normalizes them and brings something interesting to the otherwise sometimes stale normal nonduality nomenclature. These are my two guides: Kali and Wolf:

Yes, but you're being a bit of an idealist here. You're pretending that you aren't the prodigal son. If you are lifting weights and start to feel actual pain, like sharp pain, you know to stop lifting or decrease the weights. The difference between discomfort (it hurts so good) of pushing ones muscles and pain is one that someone has to tune in and feel and be present to tell. But it is a vast, vast difference between the two. Likewise I can feel "negative" emotions and have that kind of discomfort, or I can continue thinking and have that pain, that suffering. The pain is a calling to stop what you're doing. What you are doing, is thinking and interpreting. If you are used to finding all understanding and solutions and resolution in the realm of thought you will never "hear" that signal. You will be hell bent on continuing your feat. You will push through it as if it is simply discomfort and you will do damage. If you are not lifting weights at all, no need to care. if you aren't thinking at all, then no need for thoughts of notice of recognition. Of course it's a thought, in your direct experience, it's not gonna be like I say it is. It's still hookers and blow, or whatever it was that prodigal sons did in their day. When you are out there in thought and you start to feel and come home, there will often be thoughts of recognition because it's the recognition that you desire to go home and then you move there. Our desire is to feel good. The way home is to feel. We are already good. We didn't need to go out to prove it and find ourselves out "there". We already have a loving home. An insight is a thought of recognition. Insights and epiphanies FEEL amazing because they are aligned with awareness aligned with direct recognition. Then months later when you try to elicit the feeling from your insight from thinking the same thought, it's not going to happen. Because thought is the only thing that can make others, time and separation seem to be real. The direct feeling of it is the profoundly helpful tie to home. Why? Because feeling is always direct. It is now. If I stab myself in the arm, it's gonna hurt. Absolutely we can deny this, but that's numb. Numb is the best term for stupid anyone ever came up with. It's most direct. You know how diabetics have to be super careful of their feet because they can't feel them? You wouldn't want to be without that deeper intelligence, prior to your own thoughts. I can think against myself, I can create a self that awareness is aware of and say THAT has awareness. Then I can believe that THAT needs to suffer in order to secure peace and happiness by going out "there". It's self harm. There is no truth absolutely, Truth doesn't need to confirm itself to itself. How can it confirm itself? One way. Conform itself. By thinking it IS a form, separate from itself. Are there two of you, one that can confirm yourself to the other? Feeling is already guiding you. Why cause it's always HOME. It always knows right where home is. Again, if you're looking for understanding through thought, it's ultimately not gonna satisfy. Hookers and blow. As I said, even insight and epiphany is marked and known by a feeling of understanding. There is no logical understanding without feeling, feeling even marks it. Peace/love/happiness is a lack of thoughts trying to achieve and force into place. It is the direct acceptance of all. The father always accepts the son home. The son is free to squander his birthright of peace/love/happiness, all just to come home to another f-ing party. The father is always there waiting. ? Could we also say insanity is lifting those weights, hell bent on a future goal, hell bent on avoiding pain through suffering pain, numb to the damage we do to ourselves and others? Thought says it's dualistic, in that direct seeing, it never becomes separate. There's nothing I can do to make myself not dual. I'm already that. Duality is the indirect "how" of creation. Color is created by absorbing and rejecting different wavelengths. We have light and dark (absence of light). In the awareness OF creation, it is not dualistic. You are the light. There is no light, really, just Awareness, that's the light. Nonduality, does not exclude duality. Everything awareness is aware of is just its own light. Only ever now. When we hurt and do damage is when we say, "I am a color." "I am a color, not the light that makes color possible, and so YOU are a color I don't like or am afraid of." "I am the genetic code my expression is filtered through. I am intelligent, therefore I am numb to anything that does not fit in with want I think. I cut myself off from the flow of light ever now, the real brilliance, so I can think of myself as only what it shines upon, separate from it. Because you're Brilliant intelligence itself only ever now, your being, is only EVER that light, when you think thoughts that say you are anything lesser than or other than that feeling (now) says, "nah dude."

Meditation is relaxing and is not rigorous, and doing so each morning is choosing to put how you feel before what you think. ?? No “nonduality teacher” can be a supplement for meditation. This is aversion. When one gets tired enough of the ups & downs, one meditates each morning. This slows the thought activity, which is the “ups & downs”, the suffering. No thought about meditation is actually about meditation. It’s always a belief / projection or ‘pointing’.

I think you should take a brake from this nonsense spirituality phylosophy, escpesially nonduality ? Include meditation in your routine. It will keep you sober and grounded will rise your awareness, make you more inteligent. This way, through meditation one day you will achieve real recognition of no self instead of this nondual mental masturbation ? self inquiry used by nondual teachers is supposed to be a meditative practice btw not a mental intellectual gymnastics. ?

I am quite new to spirituality and I honestly don't have much experience on spirituality and meditation.. to give a personal account of what brought me to this place, for the past two years I was struck by an existential crisis as my stage orange / green dominant worldview broke down as I was pursuing personal development. then, I was drawn into new-agey side of personal development and started seeing the subjective nature of reality. with exposure stage green self dev stuff like manifestation , I wondered whether the hard science that I devotedly believed in was actually true? I used to condemn all sorta stuff like energy healing, spiritual stuff and religion as nonsense years ago! but, with directly experiencing various synchronicities and seeing how reality shifts as I change perspective took a massive blow on my materialist paradigm. after vying for answers from reading all the scientific research I consumed, I came to conclusion that there was more than what we perceived to be. that consciousness at least plays some role in reality after reading and applying the works of Maxwell Maltz, Joseph Murphy and many other philosophers. then I began heavily studying about various perspectives. I started learning Buddhism, Christianity , comparative religion ,history . I was seeing how different lives were across the globe ,time and how all this seems to be like a matrix. I was literally groundless and it came to a point where I was LOST! simultaneously, my work life became a mess that I was confused wondering what to do with my life? is life even meaningful? I gave up on my relationships. I was soo hungry for a worldview that I even thought of converting into Christianity and say that it was the ultimate truth. yet, as I tried to reconcile all the aspects of reality upon their teachings and models, they all seemed to fail leading me to depression. as my worldview was collapsed, I started getting intrusive thoughts in my mind . I had thoughts of the most horrible things I could think of like murdering my parents and driving over the pedestrians while driving. I thought of suicide as I did not wish to harm anyone . I was scared whenever I saw sharp objects like knives... I informed my parents and visited a shrink who said I was having depression, anxiety with OCD type intrusive thoughts. I was prescribed anti-depressants . my thoughts became coherent after several weeks of medication. therapist still recommended me to continue medication for another six months after recovery since I was feeling utterly nihilistic. I moved back to my parents and have been dependent on them since then. I quitted my work and decided to get my mind back and the sense of reality. this was when I found actualized.org and nonduality. as I found nonduality as the only way to reconcile and stand my questioning process, I was beginning to accept it as plausible to be the case. .so I spent majority of the day drawing parallels between concepts and questioning them . I had a ton of time for thinking as I was living like a parasite off my parents again. next, I started heavily researching into spirituality and listen to a ton of various teachers of various traditions to make sense of the shit ! I started reading books of Ekchart Tolle and other spiritual teachers for answers. this existential crisis made me to question every damn thing I thought I knew about reality. Everything is useless and meaningless in the grand scheme of things ! TLDR- but, here's my problem, as I began to see that what I call as self itself as an illusion and seeing how ego plays this game, I was beginning to lose myself. I mean, I no longer feel like a person anymore! I don't feel any fear whatsoever! I don't know if something is wrong with me ? I don't see any meaning! I feel super detached from myself to the point I don't care whether I live or not!? I don't feel any desire whatsoever! I used to be one of the most ambitious arrogant guys who had stupendous desires to be the best! now after all, I have no feelings of desire when I see the things I used to cling to! I almost feel like an emotionless zombie as I don't feel the urges of fear , anger, desire resentment ,jealousy. I feel a certain sense of peace though. IS THIS WHAT THEY CALL' BEING ' STATE? also please note that only techniques I used were long hours of contemplation and questioning. my questions are IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH ME? IS THIS NORMAL TO NOT FEEL LIKE A SELF AND TO BE DETACHED FROM MYSELF ? IS MY EMOTIONAL NUMBNESS and LACK OF DESIRE A PROBLEM? what are your advice and what should I do? # thanks in advance!❤?

Hmm difficult to say because we don't know him. But the goal for you must be not to convince him, but to make sure that taking psychedelics is because of his motivation to do so, you know what I mean? I don't mean that you should manipulate him into taking psychedelics, if he doesn't want to, then that's his choice and must be perfectly okay. But if he is interested in religion, philosophy etc. then that's a good thing and you should start from there. You could go about it by asking him whether he has ever wondered how these profound religious ideas came about and how it can be that all kinds of cultures and people all seem to have a notion of a God or something equivalent. And then slowly introduce him to mysticism as the origin of all religion and spirituality. If he isn't already, make him familiar with nonduality. And if he's open-minded to all these things, you can tell him that it is possible to reliably induce states of consciousness which are the origin of all spirituality, religion, mysticism, etc. And that it isn't just talk, but grounded in profound experiences, which can be brought about by the use of substances like LSD or mushrooms (I wouldn't give him 5-Meo). The important thing is to be patient, don't push it on him.

Lately I’ve been watching and reading Ramesh Balsekar’s teachings and work. For those who don’t know of him, he was a student/disciple of Nisargadatta Maharaj and a renowned teacher of nonduality in India while he was alive. Ramesh’s teachings are very simple to understand but can be difficult to accept. He basically taught that all that exists is the Source/Consciousness/God and that we as human body-mind organisms each have our own unique destiny from the moment of conception. In other words, humans are not the doer, we are simply instruments of the Divine Will. We are each individually programmed to think and act as we do by our environmental conditioning and genetics. Obviously this is not a new teaching, as Ramana Maharshi and many other sages throughout history have said similar things. Even the Bhagavad Gita says that man is not the doer. To me, it seems as though the ego/separate self is founded upon the concept of personal doership. If you get rid of the notion of personal doership, then the ego fades away. This is true from my own experience. What are your thoughts on this?

Evil is real of course. But remember-- the divine prophecy foretold that one of Jesus's apostles would betray him and get him killed. So you can think of the nonduality between good and evil through the articulation of this strange loop: did Judas Iscariot have to betray God in order to follow him? Remember though: you are not Judas Iscariot. If anything, you are Jesus. You should strive to be the one forgiving the Romans while you roast on the cross, not the one getting innocent people killed. This philosophy does not grant you permission to do evil yourself. But without evil, there would be no forgiveness. God sees the lotus that grows in the mud and loves both equally because you cannot have one without the other.

No one is saying everything is "One" in exclusion of something else that is not one. Nondual means it's NOT two. Another way to say this is that there's NO exclusion. Nonduality does not exclude duality. I'm not sure how you can have two models, but they seem to appear as two, just like duality seems to appear as numbers. All numbers are based on the integer of "one". Two is just two ones, three is three and so on. No one has been aware of three separate apples sitting on a table and counted them without also seeing the space around them, and being the light they appear as. All illusions have a reality to them, there is no conflict.

What do you mean? There's ultimately no point to anything ofc but you still do find people discussing it. Humans are naturally curious about reality. A teaching of the cardboard cutout type Solipsism, would simply be wrong unless I'm the only non-cutout... Which is possible... But I don't know why it would have to be. Actually there's much to say on the matter. Even though it is possible my mind is all there is, it does not have the ability to manipulate reality completely when I'd expect it would as per a lucid dream... An "unconscious" level of imagination, to me, is already proving some multiplicity. Acknowledging a capital "You" is to me already multiplicity. This is where I think of trees. Some say you are the whole tree, you mean "You" the capital. Or Mind with the capital. That is very different from little you or mind uncapitalized being the entire tree. The limited is an aspect of the unlimited, not vice versa. What in this would negate the possibility of varying perspectives? It is two views of nonduality. I never got the impression that the limited view, for example this sight of my screen, must be all there is. That was never an impression I got.

Love is unconditional & infinite (real). The knowing is what is illusory as love is not two. The knower of anything is illusory, as love is not two. Hence, Nonduality. There isn’t a separate self which knows, has, or understands anything about love. The ‘trap’ isn’t that there isn’t meaning, the ‘trap’ is believing thoughts, or, experiencing thought attachment, and being in denial / insisting you are the separate self which knows stuff about love. Meditation is “the answer” so to speak, because that “knower” is “the separate self”. There isn’t actually a separate self, there are only thoughts that there is, and the believing of, or ‘attachment to’ those thoughts, even though those thoughts all feel discordant. Self Inquiry. SELF INQUIRY This is a meditation technique of enlightenment, i.e. "self realization". By realizing ‘who’ you are, the bonds of suffering are broken. Besides realization, self-inquiry delivers many of the same benefits as other meditation techniques, such as relaxation, enhanced experience of life, greater openness to change, greater creativity, a sense of joy and fulfillment, and so forth. Focus on the feeling of being "me," to the exclusion of all arising thoughts. 1. Sit in any comfortable meditation posture. 2. Allow your mind and body to settle. 3. Let go of any thinking whatsoever. 4. Place your attention on the inner feeling of being "me." 5. If a thought does arise, ask yourself to whom this thought is occurring, as this returns your attention to the feeling of being "me." Continue this for as long as you like. This technique can also be done when going about any other activity. Many people misunderstand the self-inquiry technique to mean that the person should sit and ask themselves the question, "Who am I?" over and over. This is an incorrect understanding of the technique. The questions "Who am I" or "To whom is this thought occurring?" are only used when a thought arises, in order to direct attention back to the feeling of being "me." At other times the mind is held in silence. This practice of turning awareness back upon itself, prior to the ‘I’-thought, is a gentle technique, which bypasses the usual repressive methods of controlling the mind. It is not an exercise in concentration, nor does it aim at suppressing thoughts; it merely invokes awareness of the source from which the mind springs. The method and goal of self-enquiry is to abide in the source of the mind and to be aware of what one really is by withdrawing attention and interest from what one is not. In the early stages effort in the form of redirecting attention from the thoughts to the ‘thinker’ is essential, but once awareness of the ‘I’-feeling has been firmly established, further effort is counter-productive. From then on it is more a process of being than doing, of effortless being rather than an effort to be. If the info here doesn’t cheer ya up, the monster face will. I mean just look at it.

Mysticism is more explicit in eastern religions imo. Although my impression is that actual mystical practitioners are still rare over there, most people follow the rituals, believe in the Gods or Bodhisattvas etc and just want a regular life with money and family. Enlightenment is way off in the future after many reincarnations. But the far east was more tolerant of spiritual diversity, so mystics didn't need to hide away like they did in the west and middle east. Even now, nonduality and mysticism in monotheism is hidden in plain sight, and not really taught in mainstream seminaries. It would be too much of a shock to the churches to admit we're all prophets, christs, the kingdom of heaven is right here and now.

@SelfHelpGuy In a sense you will melt into Love, just like the raindrop melts into the ocean out of which it emerged. But the melting into Love will not be a new state, that you weren't in before. It will simply be the recognition that you are, were, will always be: boundless. And that when "you" die, it will be nothing but the dispelling of the illusory boundaries that define/are "you". You were never separated from Love, because it's impossible to be separated from Love. Because Love is non-separation. Not-Two-ness. Nonduality.

So yesterday evening I experienced, very unexpectedly, the highest state of consciousness I ever reached without psychedelics. It was the climax of an spiritually, erotically and emotionally intense weekend, I'll do my best to recount the events leading up to my samadhi in order to try and perhaps re-create it, maybe some of you can shed some light on how I was unconsciously working with powerful principles. I'll provide some graphic examples for your enjoyment. This got quite long so there's a TL;DR by the bottom. So, first off, I had remained sexually continent, ie not ejaculated, for almost 3 weeks. Then on Friday morning me and my wife did our sadhana morning practice which sometimes leads to sex. We started with sharing our emotions and feelings and planning some weekend activities, did movement / yogic warmup and then had sex in the bed. It was slow and beautiful, after some time I slowly built up to just about my point of no return and filled her with semen for the first time in weeks, she got some kind of emotional release and started to cry, I don't think that ever happened before for us during sex. She said it felt like she released some fear and anxiety. The day proceeded like normal. We hung out with our neighbours and had dinner with them in the evening. When we got home and put our kids to sleep, we smoked weed and improvised around the mantra Satanama for 20 mins or so, it was spectacular. Then she wanted to watch a movie but I was so happy to be out of my weeks of sexual continence I exclaimed that I wanted to cum in her mouth. She was really open for that, even though we don't do that too often, and she started to blow me. I fucked her face quite brutally and exploded in her mouth, it felt amazing. We watched a movie but I fell asleep almost immediately. The day after, we were going to visit a couple we've exchanged partners with three times prior to this and have dinner with them. First we needed to leave our kids at my mom's place. I made up a lie about how me and my wife was going to eat at a tapas-type restaurant, don't know where I got that idea from. When we arrived at the other couple's place, they had prepared tasty tapas-type food for us, a funny coincidence. After eating we again sang the mantra Satanama with them, then we did a tantric practice where one person would lie in the bed while three others simultaneously gave them loving touch with the elemental energies in this sequence: Earth, Water, Air and then Fire. We took turns and got five minutes each. After that, a foursome soon followed. Nothing too tantric about it, just fucking each other, spitroasting, the girls making out and going down on each other and so on. I found it hard to focus 'cause partner exchange is still quite new to me, every time my wife starts moaning and screaming I get very distracted and it's hard for me to focus at being with another woman in those moments. After the other guy came inside my wife he needed some recovery-time, and then he chatted with my wife while I proceeded to fuck the other woman. It was a lot easier and we got quite into it. After a while it made my wife feel uncomfortable and she expressed the need to have me by herself, so we ended our erotic intimate dance. The four of us proceeded to talk together for quite some time, it got late and we took a cab home. My wife was looking really tense and only answered anything I said with 1 word sentences in the cab so I knew something was wrong. When we got home she explained how she felt a lot of insecurity and that it was really painful and she was sure that I didn't care for her as much as for the other woman. It was a bit unexpected since we had been with them 3 times before, and no insecurities had arisen the past two times. The first time, however, almost ruined our life, but we worked through that. I was scared to experience the wrath and suffering from the aftermath after the first time we fucked that couple, but that period taught me many things and I knew how to work through this. I shared my passion for my wife with her and expressed with academy award-winning level delivery how our connection was the highest and most spiritually valuable thing in my life. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't acting, all I'm saying is I expressed it fully, with really strong emotions, trembling voice, tears in between, apologizing for making her feel this way, re-stating my original intention and my full commitment to the expansion of our love. We ended up hugging together and she felt a little better. It was almost 4am. We went to bed and since I was interrupted during the foursome I still hadn't ejaculated and was ready to go. Her pussy was sore but we went with touching ourselves and mixing dirtytalk with me telling her how beautiful and sexy she was and how much I loved her. Then we came together and I exploded all over her chest. The next day, the Sunday, we had a lot of deep talks in the morning about our emotions and things were fairly okay, but fragile. If I'd been clumsy I could've easily gotten into bad territory but it went all right, although she was almost trying to pick a fight a couple of times. I wanted to have sex with my wife in the morning to reconnect, she also kind of wanted it but in the end it didn't happen, we had coffee and cleaned the house instead. Then we picked up our kids who had been staying with grandma during the Saturday night and went home again, and we were then guested by my wife's parents who brought dinner with them to celebrate my mother in law's birthday. It was really tasty-tapas type food, again an interesting coincidence. My wife, her mom and our kids went to the sauna after dinner. Some time had passed and my stomach didn't feel very full so I decided to also go to the sauna. It felt nice to sauna. I usually don't drink much but both Friday and Saturday evening I had had a couple of glasses of wine and beer and that had given me some hangover-anxiety, combined with the emotional toll of having difficult discussions together with my wife. I find that sauna really helps against anxiety. I was horny and still kept having plenty of flashbacks from our night with the other couple so I masturbated and came by myself in the sauna. I then got the idea to fill the bathtub with ice water so I went out of the sauna, cleaned my hands and started filling the bathtub which takes about 7 minutes. I already felt kind of finished with the sauna and it was 70+ degrees celsius so seven more minutes wasn't totally easy. To endure, I started to massage my scalp to have something to focus on. I also started breathing more intentionally, almost like shamanic breathing / wim hof breathing. Deep quick breaths and an intention to relax and let go on the exhale. I did this in the hot sauna and it was very challenging, after a while I decided that the waterline had risen enough in the bathtub and I exited the sauna and went into the water. I stood with my feet in the water, it felt really cold even though I do this once a week, it was especially cold since Sweden has entered an extraordinarily cold period recently and the temperature outside my house affects the water temperature. I started doing what I usually do: sit down in the water, then blocking my nostrils and ears with my fingers and went underwater for about ten seconds. Then I put up my head above the water and relax. I take as relaxed, deep and slow breaths as possible, usually ten followed by dipping my head and then ten more breaths. This time I didn't do it as normal though. As I started breathing I felt WAY more relaxed then I usually do, my breaths were also waay slower than normal. After ten breaths I was so relaxed I didn't want to change what I was doing so I kept breathing, although my breath was now so slow that I almost didn't breathe at all. I've sometimes tried to attain "the breathless state" by doing spiritual energy circulation exercises and focusing at my third eye and pushing the tongue upwards, I can sometimes feel a shift in perception and a lowered breath and lower pulse, but this was on a whole other level. I felt like I was dying, like the water was consuming me, like I was freezing to death, but I was so relaxed and numbed that it felt pleasant. I surrendered to it and my eyes rolled upwards. More and more expansion. A numb tingling feeling in all of my body. Such bliss and expansion. Fear brought me out of it. First it was the fear that I was going to pass out in the bathtub and drown, so I sat up. And as I sat up, I realized that I was in a very unusual state of consciousness. I felt exactly like I do in ALL my psychedelic trips at the stage where I've just remembered that nothing exists / I am all that exists. The terror of insanity and solipsistic nonduality. It was extra frightening since I wasn't prepared at all for it, and it led me to think thoughts such as: "it's forever this time, since it wasn't induced by a psychedelic. FUCK, I'm enlightened for real this time and there's no going back. I can go to my family but they won't be able to comfort me out of this because I know they're an illusion." I stood up in the bathtub and went into the sauna again to recover some warmth. I took great care to move slowly and not fall over, my body felt a bit like a separate thing. My skin was very red from the cold water. I sat down in the sauna but the fear and loneliness wasn't endurable, I strongly felt the need to be close to my wife. I dried myself with a towel and put on a robe and went to her, walking like a partially functioning human. She was reading a bedtime story to our daughter in our bed and I lay down beside them. I was shivering a lot, but I sometimes do ice baths so they didn't think it was too weird. My wife asked me if I didn't want to go to the sauna again to get more warm but I was able to utter that something had happened and that I felt very scared and that I just wanted to be close to her. I slowly warmed up, started to feel like myself again and I was able to go downstairs to say good night to my in laws, take some vitamins, brush my teeth and go to bed. By that point, the fear had left and instead I marveled at what had happened. Somehow I'd reached a really powerful level of consciousness, some kind of energy activation, that I before only got to through psychedelics. More to come. TL;DR: I did sauna+breathing exercises for some time until I was really exhausted, went into icy water, expanded my consciousness WAY more than what normally happens somehow and remembered that nothing exists.

@silene This would be of the former stance I think, which is duality within nonduality? Dependent origination, Dzogchen, the Dao, I've seen quite a few philosophies which acknowledge the duality within nonduality. The opposing stance would be to experience the same thing but see there to only be somethingness. @Nahm It does completely shut down conversation to eradicate terms of duality, it is impossible to share any mystical experience without saying things like I, this, that, X, Y. You can see Leo say "I" smoked 5-MeO for 30 days, or "I" became infinity. It's just a fact you have to use this wording. If a randomer off Google were to read trip reports where things are explained as such, it would be easy to understand, which I think is of utmost importance... 99% of people are never going to smoke DMT etc (I insist on saying "other people"), so any part of the 1% who do decide to, should be incredibly concise and pay the most attention to using the most basic and human wording. I said to imagine the man because that is what triggered this within a trip. Which was that I was watching these jester things then they pointed at me as if to say "don't look here, see what's back there". And it intensified from there. It became such that all of "me" was also some form just like the jesters. Which means the word "I" is a thought and hence form and hence observed, my name is a thought, my emotions are observed, there was literally no me left of me, because me was observed and I was the observer. I is not what you'd think of as the accurate term but I think that's inconsequential... I became pure consciousness and it was nothing, because everything was removed from this so of course if literally every thing is removed, there's just nothing. But nothing could not be without something, so the something must appear to even be able to know the nothing. I am not adding re-interpretations, it's exactly as it happened. But I think the experience could be had where nothingness is there, or there is no nothingness. I've had both in fact, the experience mentioned, and also of the merging of all. I don't fully remember everything.

It's really unfair to use nondual phylosophy to dismiss reincarnation. Reincarnation is like going to sleep and waking up in the morning again. Going to sleep would be equivalent to death, and waking up in the morning would be equivalent to entering a new womb. Just because everything is one and there is no seperate self doesn't disprove the fact that there is such a thing as sleep and waking up in the morning. I'm not saying reincarnation is real or unreal. I'm saying nonduality is really a poor way of disproving reincarnation. Nonduality has nothing to do with this subject at all. Nonduality only points to the absolute truth there is no such thing as death. Because consciouness can't die and was never born. But consciouness also can’t fall asleep and can't wake up. And so? Does that mean sleep doesn't exist? A hardcore nondualist would say sleep doesn't exist because there is no self to fall asleep or to wake up (or smth like that). But from a normal human relative perspective sleep and waking up is very much real phenomena we all experience every day. To use nondual phylosophy to dismiss everything is really unfair. You can say there's no such thing as eating because consciouness doesn't have a stomach. And there is no self so who is eating? You can basicly prove any kind of bullshit with this nondual phylosophy. Nondual phylosophy has it's place and is beautiful but it should not be used in every area of life. Even ramana maharshi the god of advaita and nonduality says there is reincarnation...