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Yes absolutely nothing is neither finite nor infinite but no proof nor logic exist in the context of absolute nothingness. Logic is a sequence of statements and it implies time. My point is that we can't work from this relative context to prove infinity. The only nonduality is nonduality, there is no shortcut.

You can't have both nonduality and create a duality of you separate from an experience. But experience is not the duality you create about it. That duality exists purely for communication (I experienced this flower yesterday!), the experience itself is nondual and not separate from you.

@RMQualtrough YES, cessation and dissolution comes with a partial or total loss of memory, but nothingness doesn't, you're literally awake in the dream. Its not like being asleep or under anesthesia, you're fully there in eternity. That's the peace you're missing. You remember it also, there's no loss in memory. The key thing is you can't differentiate the waking stste from the dream state. That's the experience needed to realise that reality is not distinguishable from a dream. Which is 100% nonduality. No edging. I have no experience with psychedelics, so I couldn't tell you, I also don't advise taking psychedelics. Just know that cessation and dissolution is TOTALLY different from nothingness. There's more to "IT"

@Endangered-EGO Both, I've had a total dissolution of self when I smoked a breakthrough dose of DMT while tripping on 500ug of LSD. I recall afterwards, it occurred to me that no matter who gets there it won't matter anymore, because NO part of them is there. What is a lifelong Buddhist monk when everything Buddhist monk is gone? What is a junkie rapist when everything junkie rapist is gone? They are the same. Identical. Once "there" which ALL people will inevitably go to, everything and everyone is identical. I've had "cessation" I THINK (at least as far as we can tell, like general anaesthetic it's impossible to say if we just lost memory) from DMT also. On that occasion on the second pull doing the one hitter type method with the Glass Vaporgenie, the world exploded black, neon squiggles flew off into the black, then next thing I knew I was "coming to" some time after with no sense of anything between. Very odd. I have also been under general anaesthetic twice... It is possible the cessation is a loss of memory. That would be unproveable. But logically I think that is what nonduality really is. When I had dissolution experiences, it bothered me that there were visuals at all, because the fact there was a vision meant there was still observer and observed. Even if the subjective sense of separation vanished.

@Endangered-EGO I think the nondual experience we can have is Nirodhi Samapatti, hence I tagged @BipolarGrowth . I think cessation = total merger with the one. I think as long as there is observed, there is observer. Whether it's a blank white void or w.e. else that may be. That is an illusion of duality, but much much closer to apparent truth than we have ever been before. But still a perception of nonduality. I think one tiptoe step farther and you fall off that cliff. All localization ends and you just cease to be and come to some time later like Nirodhi Samapatti. Ironically the experience is actually non-experience... There is no experience of non-experience.

Ok, I get what you're saying. We are not the layers of the onion, whe are the dream/structure of the onion. If you think you can only edge nonduality but not enter it, then you haven't had a real full glimpse yet. Because once you are there there's just nothingness, the dream, divinity or oneness. You can be in 100% nonduality. I have had glimpses of it and I guarantee it. Ask enlightened people, they are going to tell you, you're all the way IT. Even the glimpses show you that it's no edge its IT. There no closeness or approximation to it. You can be full INTO it. It's absolute, I can't communicate it, it's absolute. Once you're close, merge with it, let it fill everything, surrender to it or whatever your spiritual practice tells you. I promise, ask enlightened people (I'm not I just had glimpses of a part of "IT")

@Moksha Indeed, otherwise I'd never have ended up here haha! But I think in total truth and reality, where we are venturing is basically onto the cliff edge. We are toeing the line but we never go over it. The user @BipolarGrowth has spoke of cessation experiences. I think that is what's over the cliff edge. ALL localization ceases, so then there is only nothing (actually everything, but that can't be experienced in nonduality because there is no observed to allow for observing).

We are there it's the ground. Experience always appears as duality. In deep mystical states you might be nothingness in a white void. There is experience of white, and hence something observing white. Still an appearance of duality even though the boundary of self is subjectively gone and the white is "you". Cessation is nonduality. That is where we reside always.

You never left nonduality. "Experience" only appears as duality so long as you insist on there being "experience". You don't need to enter general anesthetic or deep sleep or whatever. Here it is.

You can only get close to it. When duality stops existing, experience cannot occur. Consider a dream of a beach. The very moment you see the beach you are localized at some point within it, and there is an appearance of duality. If duality ceased, it would be impossible for you to see the beach at all because seeing is an experience, and experience creates experiencer and duality. When there is no appearance of duality there is only everythingness which = nothingness as above. That nothingness is the same state entered during general anaesthetic. We don't come "out of" nothingness and "go back" into it (there is nowhere to come out of or go to), we are all currently as we speak in a state of something like general anaesthetic. That is the ground, the foundation. We are always nothing, but something appears, and when that something appears duality appears and then it is possible for there to be an experience of something, and thus an experiencer. Who is looking through your eyes, hearing through your ears? The Absolute ("God") is. Not you AND God. Just God. You are an illusion, there's no such thing as a "you". There is only God. Where are your dead loved ones? Your dead loved ones are looking through your eyes. They are God, and so are "you". What you call "you" is merely something God experiences, God tastes with your tongue, feels your emotions, smells with your nose. God experiences your brain and hence your memories and body and so on. All of these things are inside of God and made of God... How could God possibly create something outside of itself or with anything but itself? There is no space so nowhere else to place anything. There is nothing else in existence so it can only craft something with itself. There is nothing else at all.

Yes, I have read a handful of amazing new books which I plan to do an update for (no ETA because of ongoing health issues). These days I mostly read books about how to build a conscious society. I have no more need or interest in books about nonduality or the like. These days when I read a book it's all about quality. I will only read really high quality books which add something new to my understanding. Which isn't so easy to find.

@Adamq8 Nice reference to Donald Hoffman. I enjoy his speeches. I think though that with many teachers, what makes the idea inaccessible to "hardnosed scientific" type people, is that they say experience only has correlation in physical matter in a way that makes it seem like they're implying physical matter has no bearing at all on experience. I don't think you need to deny the science of the external world or neuroscience etc. for nonduality to be true. In fact, because this "dream" (the universe) IS God, science is perhaps one of the most divine practices of all alongside meditation, as exploration of the science of this universe is very literally an exploration of God, since God IS it. I do not see any issue if the brain does in fact control what this "localized form" experiences. I do not see that it is any issue whatsoever or that it is contrary to nonduality in any way. Matter is made of consciousness, the brain is simply millions of years of evolution constructing a sort of superorganism where millions of points of experience work as one unit. There isn't a combination problem because the little points of experience don't vanish... The combination problem is like hypothesizing that animals like horses are just one single giant cell. In reality, it is millions of cells, none of the smaller cells vanish when they come together as that horse. Not only do I think it's possible, I think it is FACTUAL. I think most robots are conscious. Think of this... If there is a little robot vacuum cleaner, it moves around on wheels and has a laser sensor that detects when there is an object ahead so that it can turn. When that laser detects a wall and sends a signal to the robot's chip, it turns. Why? Because it is AWARE that there is a wall ahead. It has KNOWLEDGE that a wall is ahead. If there was zero awareness that a wall is ahead, it wouldn't turn it would just run straight into it because it doesn't know the wall is there. Because it is so alien to us this is almost impossible to understand, but I do not see how it could be any other way. By dictionary definition, that little robot is displaying an act of awareness. How could it not be? So inside that robot there is a localized form of consciousness. When the robot is turned off, the localization is no more, like a whirpool in a river (whirpools being localized in the stream) going away leaving just river. When our brains are turned off, the localization is no more. Consciousness and qualia all exist inside God which is "nothingness" and the "place" where things go when there is nothing to experience them like the example of red.

It can't be impossible to reconcile the two things. The relative experience of anaesthesia etc is cessation/nothingness. Cessation doesn't mean it stops existing. The states mentioned are still full of human things, not suddenly sonar vision like a bat and so on. I think the Absolute is nothingness. Pure infinite consciousness is totally nondual, no experience exists here, nor time, nor anything. Nothingness = everythingness. Go to the big bang. From say a void perspective there is no experience of anything. But this is happening. When experience happens the "experiencer" appears. I think someone very recently said, when experience stops the experiencer ceases too, and pure consciousness is something deeper than that. When there is experience then, is it just tapping into some of the infinite qualia already present? So possibly nothing in the entire universe rn can see an infinite myriad of colors which DO exist but can't currently be experienced... that we just see as a certain shade of blue or w.e. In a dream, as soon as you see anything you are localized somewhere in the dream. It is impossible to experience a dream without duality being created. With legit full nonduality there is cessation/nothingness/the void. What is the existence of things prior to subjective experience like. When consciousness is still 100% nondual. There is no way that these things are mutually exclusive.

Below is the third excerpt out of 12 about reification. Not to be confused with Californication. Just joking,,,, link at the bottom. Mind's Tendency to Reify As we look closer at these subtle ego activities, we discover the tendency to reify reification itself and make it a kind of object to reject. In our minds, we make it something from which we can push away and separate ourselves. The same process can happen as we reify doing, making it something to reject or judge. Even more subtle than that—we can reify nondoing, such that nondoing becomes an object, a thing we can value or cultivate. The truth is that nondoing is really nothing. No such thing exists that is called nondoing. Nondoing is the nonexistence of doing, but we make it something to aspire to, which can become a subtle obstacle. Something similar can happen to those who work exclusively with a nondual perspective about reality: at some point, they begin to reify nonduality, and it becomes for them an objective to aspire to and reach. So, as you see, the tendency of the mind to reify in order to create stability, a fixed center, or a particular orientation is unlimited. The mind, then, is a mixed blessing, a double-edged sword. And that is the condition of humanity: Our intelligence, our mind, can liberate us but it can also ensnare us. Our learning, our maturation, and even our realization and enlightenment, require the capacity for discernment, for clear discrimination, of what is true and what is not true. The Unfolding Now, pg. 188 Taken from: https://www.diamondapproach.org/glossary/refinery_phrases/reification

I called SOLIPSISM a belief. Read the thread. Even my original post I specifically called the fact that there is only you a truth. YOU are interpreting it as solipsism. I am not proposing solipsism, I am proposing nonduality. Truth = Zero, Nothingness, Consciousness, Magic.

@dflores321 There's nothing wrong with it, it just is. No, this community has shown itself to be clearly against such a thing. But honestly I expect this community (or rather, the wider nonduality community) to produce at least one offshoot which holds abandoning the dream via physical death to be the highest aim, and it wouldn't be the world's first death cult by a long shot.

That is, the explanation for qualia (the redness of red etc). Clearly this is a harder problem for materialism, but it is also the case with nonduality/idealism. Why does red look red and not blue for example? Why is green not yellow and yellow not green? How and why is our brain tapping into this world of colour? Are there infinite more colours available? I assume there must be. Why don't we see those? Does any living thing?

I believe every post or insight containing the word nothingness would help the collective consciousness more if replaced by the word "everythingness". Doesnt eveythingness have a better ring to it? If we are to awaken the world, I think everythingness is an easier bus to jump into for the masses or anyone inexperienced with nonduality. Do you believe the quality of the mystical teachings would be any lesser if I replace every instance in existence of the word nothingness to ----> everythingness? I may be wrong, so I welcome any discussion.

Disclaimer: All of the previous insights were just a shadow of what's possible. But, of course, the path was true. So, by investigating Dzogchen and practicing Trekcho and Togal, realizations came. The most fundamental and mind-bending ones are: - Suchness/Absolute Truth - Non-differentiation - Nonduality - Imaginary, dream-like nature of reality/Emptiness of phenomena - Reality being fully constructed by Divine force/Infinite Intelligence, right now - You are Alone Thanks to Leo's videos and conceptual framework built over watching them for couple of years, these facets have presented themselves as obvious aspects of Suchness and Emptiness. When this is realized, it is such a staggering amount of Freedom that you can do and are open to literally everything. Resistance fades away, leaving you Open and Free. Physical reality, fears, desires and egoic cravings fade away. Suchness permeates every experience, and by knowing it you no longer try to control everything, make everything as you wish, identify with thoughts as though they are you and they control what happens. The Aloneness insight has been the most difficult yet. It is utterly unbelievable and shocking. You are literally Alone, as God. Considering the process: - There is always something more, something deeper. Integrating the insights and deepening them is a work of lifetime. - By trying to grasp nonduality or trying to force it, you lose it. By letting go, relaxing and opening up, it reveals itself. - Insight into Absolute does not extinguish the Relative. In fact, Absolute contains Relative. The process of coalescing them is a work of lifetime. 30 Facets of Enlightenment are very relevant here, because this video shows that there is more to the work than merely realizing nonduality and Suchness. There is a whole bunch of facets which can be known after, and the whole process of integrating these insights into daily life. And, in a sense, Suchness has always been the case, so the goal of Enlightenment is to simply *being where you already are*. But you have to recognize that which is always present, regardless of the state you're in and what phenomena you are experiencing. Feelings: Frankly, this has been so radical that it blew my mind out of existence. Suddenly, it all made sense! This is the way things truly are. This has been the most real thing I've experienced yet. Next steps: - Integrating these insights into daily life, sustaining Presence and merging the Absolite with the Relative. I started to notice when the Presence is lost, and in these times ego takes over. The goal is to sustain presense in all circumstances. - Dream Yoga by means of WILD - Reading teachings and practicing to open up more of reality, deeper.

? agreed It's been said that a good clear understanding of Adviata or Nonduality firstly can lead to a better understanding of no creation, nothingness or Ajata in the latter. Robert Wolfe has some incredible essays in this area on his AjataSunyata Project website. ❤

There is no such thing as a conscious process at the deepest levels of this. You’re letting the continuity bias of the waking state/dreams give you a human body and feeling of a center of experience. Your interpretations label things as “conscious,” a “process,” etc. At the end of the day, even consciousness as a label must fall. This should typically be done once you have some true and deep no-mind and No-Self awakenings. You can literally run on autopilot without conscious control. Why would others require it? There’s no self here. Why would there be other selves? Now this is precisely where Leo makes his leap to solipsism based on having no direct conscious experience of something outside his consciousness. Leo is basically saying, or should be saying, that the mechanics of consciousness do not all for “two consciousnesses” to be experienced at once in one person’s consciousness — it’s a tautology. As soon as you become aware of an “other” consciousness, it has precisely been assimilated into your completely nondual and boundary-less existence at that very moment. The fact that nonduality is real — if you take this as a given, it’s up to you on that — means that anything to ever come into your consciousness is You. This is a problem of verification being shielded from possibility due to definitions and tautology of consciousness always being one “field.”

The subconscious is a conscious mind that the regular self can't access directly. The fact there are multiple conscious minds in their own mind proves that it's possible for there to be an inaccessible conscious process. Our selves to them are inaccessible conscious processes (they are not consciously controlling our words) just like what they call their subconscious. No space means the physical distance between our selves and their mind is 0 and equal to the distance between their conscious and subconscious (also 0). Dream characters have autonomy from the conscious dreamer unless the dreamer becomes lucid. The sub is acting autonomously and it is conscious and has knowledge. So do others. So the others have a conscious process and autonomy. This is the distinction between solipsism and nonduality because both propose one mind. Solipsists believe their own conscious relative self-mind is all that exists but because of the subconscious it evidently isn't. If you accept the subconscious exists you have to accept "other" minds.

I always thought that when nonduality speakers said stuff similar to this, it wasn't quite as simple as they describe -- I just thought they couldn't articulate the unspeakable. I can't remember exactly what I'm referring to, but in any case, as far as what I've said here? It is literally, exactly as simple as I describe. You simply don't want this liberation, and that itself, clearly is still liberation! So this is literally exactly what is most wanted (longed for but with no one longing), it's just that, if there is experience, there will necessarily be an experience of wanting something else -- you could say this is because what is wanted (or longed for)... is the experience of wanting something else! And even if that “something else” is simply a future that’s the same as the apparent present. It's that simple!

Nonduality is not a state. All states are relative. Sober or not itself is relative. No duality cannot nor will ever be an experience, much less a drug induced one.

Im not even saying he wasn't perfect, it is perfectly normal in my opinion, to feel forsaken if this happens to you. The thing is most of us are doing armchair philosophy which is easy. Oh yeah I am not the body etc etc., but if reality conspires to check that for real, you might be put in situation where you, from your direct experience as a human can be tortured... It wouldn't feel like all is good at that point, it would feel like there is some force there which is guided by dark/evil spirits. There are many different spirits that exist and we need to be conscious of which one we let work through us. We are all innocent, it is the spirits we let in that can mud things up... Here comes the importance of that mind dressage (ox herding) I guess. The oxes are going to be beast natured and wild, unless we apply spiritual wisdom on our ox but also on other oxes around us! If you make your ox "enlightened" or domesticated, and it is surrounded by wild oxes, the wild ones are likely to destroy the "domesticated" one... Unless most are domesticated and only few are wild, then we have a problem! That's why I think religion is a positive, as it usually anchors the spirit of Love in the reader/user and not evil-doing. But now if we dont even acknowledge there is Spirit of evil going around the world, how are we going to tackle it? There is so much qualitative difference between spirit of evil and spirit of Love. I believe its good to be mindful of that, and not just close our eyes for the injustices of the world and the preventable evil. Here is a poker analogy to support my post (even though I dont like playing it): In poker you can win or you can lose. Both whether you win or you lose, you are playing poker (nonduality) but there is a qualitative difference- a REAL difference between whether you are winning or you are losing. But either way, you're playing, right? That doesn't mean its all the same. The result , the fruit, is important. Not all trees bear good fruit. Some trees require help to produce better fruits. We cant do that if we say the rotten fruit is Good.