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Well there is no other way to point to it better lol. I always end up contradicting myself. I'll say "There is no such thing as enlightenment, the appreciation of this fact is itself enlightenment." For example I say there is no "you" and then I say that the "no you" is "you". For example to you I would reply with "That something beyond my words is not really a something." It's impossible to put nonduality into words.

Because he was indoctrined with a religious worldview. The mind cannot just surrender the operating system it was programmed with any more than your computer can. This would require a painful and long jailbreaking of one's mind, which virtually no one is prepared to pursue. The dude's who life hinges on duality. For JP nonduality would cause him a mental breakdown of epic proportions.

I could never understand why someone as intelligent as him doesn't understand that e.g. "evil" or "good" aren't actually real and just arbitrary attributions. You know how he's always out to "make things better". "You're wretched and horrible and useless and resentful, get your act together, bucko!" This sort of attitude. How come he never heard of nonduality? (or at least never talks about it?) He even took some Psilocybin for god sake, he knows about psychedelics, he knows about DMT and the entities, he knows that mystical experiences are real (although I think he's afraid of the implications they bear). He's so well-read and knows so much, his knowledge and his philosophical position are almost contradictory. He knows that there's something very fishy about materialism. He even knows that consciousness is fundamental to reality! So... Why is he not looking deeper into these topics? He's definitely smart enough to be a full-blown stage Yellow thinker, and yet he preaches that we are miserable worms who need to redeem themselves. Classic original sin guilt trip, why does he buy into this stuff? Or am I not seeing something?

Hello , I am a 16 year old explorer of conciousness/psychonaut and I wanted to basically just share my experience of discovering infinite Conciousness and absolute Truth at a very young age. My entire life I have been a deeply existential thinker, I have consistently questioned my reality ever since early childhood, My first memorys of ever questioning my existence was around 1st grade and on a minor level even earlier than that, I remember staring at a wall and my intent was to try and see the atoms in the wall of my room and as I was staring at it I was really focusing on looking through my eyes and being highly mindful of every detail in my visual field, All of my sense perceptions all felt empty and hollow after doing this often when I was bored, I would pay attention to my perceptions to the point where it would feel like I was a groundless bubble of conciousness that was simultaneously nowhere and everywhere at the same time yet completely void of physicality, I started to question whether my entire life was an elaborate scheme that everybody was playing in order to deceive me and trick me that they are real sort of like the Truman show, Fast forward a couple years and this self questioning and unintentional mindfulness turns into a full on existential crisis, I am in elementary school and I am having an existential crisis because nothing feels real and I can see that my entire life is a lie and I in fact do not exist, This lead to me basically losing all interest in school and being diagnosed with bipolar II and severe depression, When I finally got to middle school I stumbled upon astral projection on youtube and it sounded so cool to me that I had to try it, I had no clue that any of this would lead me to an awakening but while attempting to astral project I was also learning how to meditate at the same time, My meditations were as neurotic as you would imagine a "severely ADHD" kid would be, My meditations were very sloppy and I didn't really draw the connection between the existential experiences I was having and the meditation, But after a while I started to learn more and more about these types of mystical experiences, Also I was also a self proclaimed nihilist at this point because my depressive episodes were so existentially terrifying that I was mentally scarred at a young age and that type of trauma at a young age really damaged me, Those depressive episodes were so hopeless and soul wrenching that I wanted to kill myself in elementary school but I also didn't believe in death so I knew that there really was no escape and if I tried to kill myself It wouldn't work and I wouldn't actually die, It felt like I was already in hell for eternity. My parents and friends obviously didn't understand what I was going through at the time so I was pretty much alone with this brutal suffering that no one around me could understand, Fast forward to around 9th grade and I am having an stark awakening into nothingness and relativity, At this point I am really getting close to really feeling what nonduality truly is, I wasn't quite there yet but at around this time I discovered great teachers such as Eckhart Tolle, Ram Dass, Alan Watts and of course Leo, This was a very important part of my journey because this lead me to deeper and deeper states of understanding, I was really starting to have direct insights into the nature of reality and conciousness. In 10th grade I discovered LSD, This was an incredible experience that brought me in touch with the infinite love that also comes with emptiness, After a while of experimenting with LSD, Mushrooms and cannabis edibles I have the oh so incredible god awakening , I have been having some of the most indescribable and reality shattering experiences over the past year and I really have no words for them that could ever describe to , I still struggle with my sense of self and survival needs but I now recognize myself as life and conciousness itself, I see that it couldn't be any other way and that the universe is happening all at once, Right now as I type this I know that I have created everything and that this bubble of experience or incarnation I find myself in is the only one in existence, I know that my experience right now has all the love I could possibly dream of and infinitely more, I can also recognize that literally anything is possible and every possible moment that could ever happen is already in my experience of this moment, I realize now that every possible structure and moment in the universe is working every being to recognize itself as me. There is so much more I could tell you about experiences but words will never do justice to absolute truth, I am sure you all can understand the trouble trying to explain these sort of things without crazy ass strange loops and self reference problems occurring, That being said I love you all and I hope you recognize that as you read this post your life is already complete and by reading this post you are connected here for eternity with my essence and truth.

@levani Excellent advice from @Sagar Takker . I’d add so called fear is no more than thought attachment, you might say the mind ‘tricking’ itself into suppressing, avoiding...Self...no thing...”it’s”own source so to speak?. Bringing sense of humor to this can help cut the tension / thought discord of repeating attachments (beliefs). Many trips “to” no thing until there’s no one to ‘go to’ no thing anymore...and never the direct experience of another entity. However, apparently, some testify to what Leo said, that entities like demons etc are actual. Again, never encountered this, but just some suggestions that come to mind if you do...run the ‘filter’ of: thought, perception, feeling. ‘Break the experience down’ to what is actually, experience. If that still doesn’t cut it, demand that the “demon” tell you it’s name. Don’t accept any name. Repeatedly demand it say it’s true name, ‘who’ ‘it’ really is. ? Godspeed. Letting go of thoughts is ultimately (because nonduality is only surfaces, only appearances) the key.

@zeroISinfinity I think you're projecting some stuff on me. I wrote that in a "funny, cause it's true" tone. Since you're being serious though, I grew up in the patriarchy of a Baptist Christian church and it's somewhat funny to see the same exact thought patterns and the use of the archetype "God" carry over into enlightenment and nonduality here on the forum and elsewhere. It would be dishonest and avoidant of me to pretend that it's not a potential problem. I can identify an imbalance or problem and want a resolution without having to suffer for it. That's just like me telling you to suddenly stop getting turned on by hot women because you won't awaken that way or something.

This shit had me DYING. For those of you who haven't seen it, you've got to watch it.

If the fluid ego is what we have at the transpersonal stage and that it includes the realization of nonduality (transcending the separate individual), then how can it be called an ego, as in a separate individual? I call it fluid ego since the individual self will be transcended and included, in an integral way. Then how to explain that there still is a separate individual from a nondual perspective? My explanation is that the human soul is an eternal and changeless point within reality. So the human soul is a separate individual perspective! It's just that at the transpersonal stage the individual perspective will expand into a collective consciousness.

What's This All About? Starting at the beginning, what is advaita , Robert? "Advaita (Sankrit) means “not two”; it is the teaching we call nonduality. We all know what duality is—the idea that there are two or more things that exist, such as me and you. Nonduality is the realization, which occurs to some people, that beyond the appearance of separation all things are actually unified in an overarching actuality. This wholeness is called the Absolute, a condition which is infinite and eternal. All supposed separate things arise within it, because all things—not being eternal or infinite—are instead impermanent. So, the primal identity of both me and you is that our source is recognized to be the Absolute. When this realization is clearly held, our sense of being a separate individual dissolves into a deeper identity of Absolute wholeness. Getting to ajata, you’ve said that a person who’s had the realization of their identity as the Absolute is best in a position to understand ajata. What is ajata? Ajata (again Sanskrit) means “no origination,” or no creation. When something is said to have had no beginning (and thus no ending), we are getting into ajata. It is pointed to in a poem by Hui Neng: “When there is nothing from the start, where can dust alight?” It is a deeper look into advaita. In advaita, as a teaching tool, we speak of the relative (me and you) and the Absolute. Everyone knows what the relative is—me and you—but what exactly do we mean when we speak of the Absolute? Whatever we say about it boils down to concepts. These are appropriate for teaching Self-realization: but what actually goes beyond the concepts? Is this where sunyata comes in? Sunyata is another Sanskrit word; it means “emptiness.” Buddha’s teachings, over his lifetime, progressed from simple to sublime: the so-called wisdom teachings are principally the Heart Sutra and the Diamond Sutra. In the Heart Sutra are the six words, form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Emptiness is what ajata is talking about when it says that not anything has ever actually been created—or had existence—from the start. If not any thing has ever had actual existence, what do you have? Nothingness, or emptiness (though there would not be any thing to be empty of ). This is where ajata (there have been no real forms at all, from the beginning) and sunyata (emptiness is the only true or final condition, and even it does not “exist”) come together. In other words, as Nagarjuna has said, “Things do not arise, at any place, at any time.” Not even emptiness—which, being empty, is not a thing—exists alternative to forms: forms are emptiness; where there are no forms, emptiness is not something that “waits around.” Do forms arise in, or come from, emptiness? Forms generally are easy to understand. We are said to be forms. Because forms appear everywhere, our tendency is to think of emptiness as a form—another thing. Where the true condition is that emptiness is all there is, not anything exists as something called emptiness. In fact, since existence—“abiding” in some way—is not even in the equation, neither would the term nonexistence apply either. These—or any—designations are concepts about emptiness. But what is completely, utterly, totally empty is not the subject of description of any type. To emphasize the complete emptiness of emptiness, the writings on the subject point out that where emptiness is all that is, even emptiness would have to be empty of emptiness. So you must initially get that straight: emptiness is even empty of emptiness. Now, out of such a condition what could possibly come, or be arisen? Not anything can be generated by, or out of, 100% emptiness. Since emptiness is the “ultimate” condition, from the beginning, this is why it is said that there never has been origination or creation. So, the short answer is: forms are not forms, in reality: forms are emptiness. Forms do not exist, in truth. You said “we are forms.” Yes, to us creatures, forms do appear to exist. So, in the writings, forms are said to appear to exist, and in this case “exist” has a provisional meaning (emptiness does not appear to exist, because in truth it doesn’t). But every form is impermanent: every form is dependent on something—even forces such as “life” or “death”—for its existence. Not anything is a stand-alone, self-sufficient entity. If such a thing could come into existence, it would be permanent. It would not be subject to change: it would be immortal. So, in this sense, forms do not exist in any long-lasting, non-provisional way. This brings us to what appears: what appears to be real, or existent, is not the same as what is real or existent. A mirage appears to be real; a real source of quenching your thirst it is not. We appear (at least to ourselves) to be real. We are not: we are provisional—as are all other things—as mentioned previously. Our “existence” is in quotation marks: temporarily “real.” In fact, our true nature is emptiness—as are all things. When we as forms are not real, how real are any of the forms we perceive to be as real as we are? The world that we see only appears to be real? That is the point. In the writings, our existence, our world, is likened to a dream. You—whoever you think you are—are the dreamer of the dream. You are not outside of the dream, but within the dream. When the dream ends for you—when what you think of as “death” is present—the dream ends. “You” (which actually never was) disappear; everything you have thought existed disappears—the entire “universe,” with all its causes and forces. All forms are now purely emptiness, which they and the dreamer—despite appearances to the dreamer—have always been. Is it possible to awaken from, or to awaken to, the dream while still alive? Yes. That is what ajata and sunyata are telling us. When you recognize that this dream of life is your dream, and that dream and its dreamer have the same reality—that is, the lack of it—the “spell” has essentially been broken. What actually changes then? It’s simply a relaxed perspective on what’s apparently going on. In essence, we know that not anything is actually happening, in any unremedial or unredemptive sense. Life, suffering, joy and death appear to be happening (as the Bhagavad Gita says), cause and effect appear to be universal phenomena. But just as one does not wake up from a sleeping dream and take any of its events seriously, one no longer takes the supposed events of life as if they had any everlasting meaning. What about any meaning in understanding emptiness? That too does not matter. Whether one actually wakes up from the dream or not, the final ending of the dream for each of us will always be the same: the “presence” of sheer emptiness. None of us can ever make any “serious mistakes”: we, and all that we do or don’t do, are the same: empty of true reality or existence. I have only outlined some of the general points. If you believe that you exist and therefore have a mind, that mind will be bubbling with questions" -- Ajata Project Robert Wolfe

Also, exploring a collective consciousness is compatible with nonduality. So I can examine both. I will take a look at Jim Newman's new video and try to interpret it from a collective consciousness perspective.

Is it a mistake to describe a collective consciousness? It's a mistake if there is no such thing as a collective consciousness. But there could be! Another possible mistake is to aim for a collective consciousness instead of realizing nonduality. Even with the whole planet as a collective consciousness, that's tiny compared to nonduality. Realization of nonduality is the realization of infinity. But I still find it interesting to explore a collective consciousness as a step into the transpersonal stage.

In some ways, I can't put them into two different categories. I think my psychedelic experiences have influence my breathwork sessions. Last week after my second session, the facilitator said I was going places and asking questioning as if I had been doing breathwork for years. Most likely due to my psychedelic experience. Ime, I would say that psychedelics are more mind expanding and zoom out. I've gotten a lot of personal insights from psychedelics. And they can go into transpersonal / transhuman realms. Here, anything I write is a contextualization at a human level. Psychedelics are more expansive than anything I can write here. Psychedelics have led to an understanding of nonduality, infinity, god-consciousness, love, systemic thinking, holism, and empathic abilities. Yet at a human level, I return to a mind and body with clogged pipes. Psychedelics aren't the best personal plumber imo. Breathwork seems much more down to earth. It feels like "I" am present. Yet not the thinking-dominant me. The feeling, experience-of-now me. Breathwork is also far less intense. There is no body load and there are no anxiety issues. And it can be done every day for continuous healing, insights and restructuring of the mind. It can also be a great release of repressed emotions. During one session last week, I started screaming as loud as a possibly could. The body with rhymically breathing on it's own and I was taking in huge deep breaths so to scream louder on the out breath. My hands were tightly clenched and arms pumping with each breath. During the comedown, there was a wave of tears and relief. It felt like so much had been released. If this happened on psychedelics, it probably would have been a traumatic experience that kept me up all night. Yet with breathwork, it was an enormous release and relief. I had a peaceful night of sleep that night.

Thanks for introducing me to Robert Wolfe, he is pretty clear on what he has to say on nonduality. Although I think the experience he talks about is only the beginning of the enlightenment journey, it is a nice place of understanding from which to continue.

Okay, even if I don't feel right, this is still the absolute truth and exactly what should be, but I get your point there. And yes, right now I don't feel like I'm god, but does anyone ever get in a permanent state of being conscious that they are god? I was absolutely conscious that I was god on a 275ug ETH-LAD trip, and during this I was conscious of that for probably 6 to 8 hours where it felt like no one else besides me existed and I was the only being here. I was sure I will never forget that, but as the drug wore off, I was just really shocked but also back to normal. And you're right, I also thought about just having a bit fun during my 20s and also getting into relationships, I just hope I can find girls that interest me. On Spiral dynamics, I'm pretty much at yellow with a bit of tourquise (I took a test), so that might also be a reason why I isolate myself a lot lately, like I barely even text people. Not because of anxiety, I often just don't feel like it. My therapist suggested it might me signs of depression, but I'm certain I don't have depression, I feel alright pretty much all the time. I also hope I can travel next year (well now, this year). Disipline is the hardest part for me, it hinders me with finding my own apartment, studying for uni exams, and I'm embarressed to admit, I waste my free time watching youtube videos right now. I wanted to make somewhat abstract and crazy drawings about Nonduality and Love, I have such good pictures in mind, but I still didn't do it Anyway, thanks for your reply.

Contemplate the distinction between ‘only one can be true’ and nonduality, or, “not two”. Whatever you come up with, run it through the same ‘filter’. Spot a & b, 1 & 2. ‘Reduce’, so to speak, until there is truly not two.

For sure. Yet I try to be mindful about assuming psychosomatic causes to all physiological / neurological conditions. Telling someone “it’s all in your head” can be very empowering in one context, yet unfair in another context - and could create secondary psychosomatic conditions. Telling someone with two mutant alleles of the CFTR gene that their chest pain and breathing problems are psychosomatic and they can heal themself is unfair and unhelpful. That person is not going to have a normal chloride channel in their epithelial cells. It can put greater pressure on the person that they are creating their condition an heal themself. It would be like telling a dwarf that their height is psychosomatic. Yet there also seems to be lots of idiopathic conditions that are psychosomatic. And perhaps combinations of psychosomatic and physical. In this area, I’d say powers of self healing are underestimated. Many others have gone far deeper into this than I. Drawing cause and effect connections does seem tricky and there might not be direct cause and effect. I’d first get it checked out with a doctor to make sure it’s not an identifiable condition like an aneurism. If not, then I’d go into body wisdom - yet there are all sorts of directions. I imagine someone who has chronic headaches. This could be as simple as not drinking enough water or poor posture. Or something more complex with repressed emotions, muscle tension, energetics, diet, genetics or a combination of many things. I’d say disrupting patterns could be helpful. If the person is constantly engaged in activity that re-enforces the identity and condition, it’s going to be much more difficult to have insights and be ‘reborn. And I’ve found intellectual knowledge and awareness to be insufficient. One may go through therapy and develop an understanding of how toxic relations with blame and guilt have impacted them. This may help somewhat, yet is still at a surface level. And someone may develop an intellectual understanding of nonduality and have an awakening of no-self. Yet still carry baggage within the body. One might reach transpersonal omniscience with 5-meo and return to a body with clogged pipes. Perhaps the key is calling in a ‘plumber’. It seems we all have an inner plumber that is rarely accessed as it lies underneath the thinking ego. From a resistant ego’s perspective, this involves letting go, breaking through resistance and work. And even profound breakthroughs that take the mind-body into depths of insight, realization and awe can fade away into ingrained patterns. And I would say facilitators with embodiment and resonance can be helpful as a guide. A couple of the facilitators I do breathwork with are amazing. They can help relax the mind and body, going beneath thought control into experience and body-mind wisdom. What the facilitator said would have been intellectually discussed, had I not been beneath the hood. Even simple words infrequently spoken brought up new ‘scenery’.

@PepperBlossoms nonduality is only a belief system if you take it on faith without directly experiencing the insight. Truth can only be accessed from a state of not-knowing.

Hmm... Integral nonduality is too limited! Because I use the term transpersonal to mean a collective consciousness. So it's truly beyond personal consciousness. Integral nonduality can include that too, but it doesn't imply that, so integral nonduality generally still means only a personal consciousness even if it's a spiritually enlightened state. And who knows, spiritual teachers may be describing a collective consciousness too, such as J. Krishnamurti talking about "thinking together", but they usually keep silent about it because if they give us spiritual concepts about it the risk is that we remain trapped in personal consciousness and get stuck on the level of concepts. There are many traps in nonduality so one has to be careful. Leo talks about that in this video:

I now know how to plug my model of reality into integral nonduality. It's extremely simple, but it also gets rather technical, so instead I want to look at it from a higher level perspective. Evolution is an expansion of holons. And integral noduality includes the physical human body as a holon within the larger holon of planet Earth. And the human body and the planet are one unified whole! And my idea of the transpersonal stage is that we will include the whole planet as our identity of self and develop a collective consciousness that transcends and includes our personal consciousness.

I noticed that with integral nonduality I can also plug in the concept of evolution! That's often something I find missing in traditional nonduality teachings. And of course evolution from a nondual perspective is that all of manifestation, not just biological or technological evolution, is reality evolving as a wholeness. Actually, Ray Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns fits into integral nonduality.

I found this description of integral nonduality: My version of integral nonduality is that we are consciousness and that we are also the the manifested world. So it integrates instead of separates those two. Some other ordinary nonduality teachings may also integrate the two, but I want to use the term integral since I want to include Ken Wilber's transcend and include perspective.

"The enemy is fear. We think it is hate; but it is really fear." -Mahatma Gandhi Hate comes out of fear and it requires that there is others. Fear = Duality (opposites) Love = Nonduality (no opposites)

@Forestluv The nonrecontextability is kinda what I was pointing to / what he was pointing to. @Javfly33 Because nonduality.

You're in the stage where you're trying to grasp the truth with your mind, which is inherently confusing. You must instead ground yourself in experience, become the thing you're so confused about. It also doesn't hurt to learn the finer distinctions between the relative and The Absolute. Nihilism, as a result of learning about nonduality, only happens when you're trying to appropriate The Absolute (non-duality) within the relative (duality), by trying to fit an infinite object into your finite mind. I've tried to boil down this fallacy in another thread which I hope doesn't make things more confusing :

One idea I now got is that reality is the difference between something and nothing. It's all one nonduality. I will take a look at these videos by Leo again: