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You're just not getting what I'm asking. I get Nonduality, so I don't need that explained. I'm asking a specific question within Nonduality.

A really interesting episode. @Leo Gura You used similar terms borrowed from mathematical logic, such as tautology, to describe reality as Christopher Langan, who's the reputation for being smartest man in the America. Have you acquainted yourself with his work and his theory of everything (CTMU) that claims to prove existence of god with these kinds of tautological cognitive models? I think that based on his youtube interviews, he seems to be tier 2 stage yellow with ideas that resemble nonduality, but the idea that reality could be proven from logic and mathematics, i.e from the ruleset/content of this dream is his blind spot as a hyperlogical person.

Oh man that's one hell of a question. There's so much to say about it I don't even know wehere to start. Religion had and still has a multitude of functions. Those functions are (or are not) required depending on ones situation in life regarding various aspects such as psychological development/maturity, philosophical (i.e. metaphysical, epistemological and ontological) sophistication and perspective, morality (which is 1. probably the largest chunk of them all and 2. not only a distinction between good and bad but mostly a directive for action(which itself depends on many factors)), but also potential for abuse in order to gain power or money and so forth... All these functions and motivations are intricately connected and interdependent. Many people today say that religion is outdated, but that's waaay to simplistic. People who say such things a) don't know very much about religion and b) are in most cases dogmatic about their own philosophy (which is funny and ironic because their behavior basically resembles religious behavior structurally). So to answer your question - you're gonna have to look into it yourself. There's so much to learn about religion, really, it's such an enormous field of study. Check out the Biblical Series on YouTube, it's about the psychological significance of some of the stories from the bible, it's quite eyeopening. That can give you a hint of how deep this can go. And of course Peterson doesn't go as deep as he would have to go because he doesn't understand nonduality or mysticism. Alan Watts was a priest so he has also a lot of content on religion, but he of course understood nonduality and mysticism. Have fun going down the rabbit hole

It's not just Your Mate tom..almost everyone I've met on meditation retreats, ayahuasca circles, and doing bufo have no idea about nonduality.

Just had a thought that was relevant to this thread. All forms are an illusion and part of the ego because everything is one from a nondual perspective. However, nonduality still contains duality. Consciousness explores duality and separation through different forms. You can honor those forms without having the ego latch on to them. In fact, paradoxically, to honor these different forms also requires you to not latch on to any one of them because latching on to one thing prevents you from exploring other things. It's ok to have preferences so long you know they aren't absolute and applicable to everyone or thing.

Julian has no clue what enlightenment or nonduality is. And if you take him seriously, neither will you.

The mind has very serious limits as to what it is able to understand no matter how hard it works because the bottleneck ends up being one's state of consciousness. So releasing that bottleneck becomes the key after a certain point. And the more you invest in the mind the harder it can be to release that bottleneck. The mind ends up trapped in itself and digs its trap even deeper. That is the biggest trap for intellectual people. Daniel needs to hit a bunch of DMT, over and over again to break his entire mind open. He has intellectualized nonduality/awakening, but I sense he has no experience with what it really means to awaken. A very dangerous aspect of Ken Wilber's work -- which I feel Daniel has imbibed a lot of -- is the idea that 1st person phenomena and 3rd person phenomena are two equally valid domains. But this is not true. 1st person phenomena is the only real thing. All 3rd person phenomena is pure illusion, and I don't see Daniel recognizing that. There is still too much attachment to science in him. He does not understand how deeply wrong the science paradigm is. It's utterly, foundationally wrong to the point of not being fixable. You cannot use science to understand the core of reality. Something like evolution does not even exist. It's just a figment of his imagination. Idealism is not a mirror to materialism. Both these guys are profoundly misunderstanding idealism, nonduality, and spirituality. Materialism is hallucinated by Infinite Consciousness. This point is so simple and clear. There is no doubt about it whatsoever. Classic problem here of "So smart he's dumb". This is why I tell people to do psychedelics because you won't get it otherwise. Your consciousness will not allow you to get it no matter how smart you are. But I still admire his intellect. If you want to learn how to think clearly, he's a great role-model.

Frankly, I'd say you are sort of talking about the two axes of self-actualization and enlightenment... they are more like parallel and complementary. If you want to be a happy, whole, actualized, and effective person AND know the absolute truth, you'll need to do both. Neither axis have an "endpoint", though if you get through the Buddhist paths you will be "dwelling in perceptual nonduality," which I suppose is considered enlightenment or liberation or whatever. I think the meditative path is necessary to make this a permanent condition, as the separate self is incredibly entrenched in every aspect of our psyche and sensations, and doing the thousands of hours of work is necessary to really root this out at a physiological level. Ralston-style contemplation (or Kriya yoga) may offer glimpses of enlightenment, and 5-MeO may offer utterly deep peak experiences, but ultimately both fade into "memory" and therefore concept, and thus not the "real thing" per se. But, since it's a journey, obviously those things are very helpful as you progress and probably very necessary steps.

Nonduality is only surfaces, and not even. Each one is experiencing more of what each one focuses on. Comparison thinking can be a real joy (and friendships & relationships) zapper.

https://bgr.com/2021/02/17/life-after-death-proof-for-1-million-dollars-las-vegas-businessman-competition/ Robert Bigelow’s Institute for Consciousness Studies is awarding almost $1 million for an essay on life after death. Application deadline is (February 28) I know you can't prove to someone else what happens after death, as it has to be experienced from direct experience, but if anyone could explain Nonduality well enough, that's about as good as anyone could do.

Law of Attraction points to the experience of your "reality" being far stranger than you think. It goes beyond ideas of legit or not. It's more "true" than most things we consider true though. It deals with the truth we create for ourselves and shows us how to create it consciously. The law of attraction is about having greater awareness and focus, and recognizing that the core of every desire is the desire to feel better. This becomes your focus, over believing your thoughts blindly and continually noticing that you are now where you want to be. It is the basis for change. It is the realization that when we feel amazing, we notice amazing things, and good things and thoughts come to us. When we drop resistance and stop noticing what is thoughts we've never had can come in. An insight is a just a thought you've never had before. Law of attraction would teach you that this approach might be off, if you focus on your blockages and limiting beliefs thinking you need to get rid of them before you are free to create your life, your focus on your limitations is actually holding them in place. Making intentions or rather, allowing your desires, is what bring the blocks into light and is the power and momentum you need to blow through them. Awareness over your thoughts of control reveals your true power. "Purer" is a thought that limits and gets into judgement and good and bad and what other people thing territory. The better feeling your ideas the faster you will attract them into your experience. This is how you and only you measure the purity of them. It's beyond choice and not choice. Allowing desires is also like surrendering them. When you really, really know what you want, there's' no choice at all. For example if I offer you the choice between your favorite desert and your least favorite food, you'd say "it's no choice". It IS but you're just VERY clear about what you want. The awareness that the law of attraction "teaches" makes you very clear about you want in the same way, it's a choice but also at the same time it's not because you're so clear about it. If you're interested in learning more check out Abraham Hicks, she is AMAZING. It's also amazing to see how this all fits in with all this other consciousness work stuff, meditation and nonduality, etc. Not to mention the bliss and happiness, forgiveness, understanding and abundance of new possibility, creativity and ideas that floods in.

Nonduality is “not two”. The materialist paradigm is essentially “two”, “my (1) consciousness (2)”.

@Snt_lk Other people are as real as you are. There is no “concept of nonduality”. That would be two. Nonduality is not-two. (Non-dual)

I know how deeply frustrating this work can be. Here you are, trying your darndest to wrap your mind around Nonduality and Liberation; and so you read countless threads, watch countless videos and spend countless hours in silent meditation... but the more you try to grasp it, the more it seems to elude you. Instead of gaining clarity, you just seem to become more and more confused. It's like the fight against Hydra: For every head that you cut off, two new heads immediately take its place. The harder you try, the harder you fail! Did you recognize yourself in that description? If so, then I have some good news for you: Your growing confusion and frustration is actually a sign of progress, believe it or not. You are slowly waking up to the fact that none of this can ever be grasped by a thing called "you". But you need to go all the way. I have said in a recent thread that you are not going to understand THIS with your mind. But of course, me telling you this is not enough. You need to realize it for yourself. So by all means, keep on trying to understand. Keep trying and trying and trying and trying and trying and trying until you're blue in the face, until the confusion and frustration becomes so intolerable that you want to scream, until you feel completely powerless to improve your situation in any way, until you are completely at your wit's end and simply don't know what to do anymore... and BAM!, that's the moment where something inside you snaps. It's the moment where you finally let go of the need to understand, and you realize what is. My friend, I wish you all the best, and I sincerely hope that this post has managed to confuse the hell out of you. Have a great day!

Maybe this one https://www.actualized.org/insights/derrida-and-nonduality

I think the word is very useful for this work. I’ve used it as well. It just seemed like you were suggesting it was in some way superior to other words in the earlier posts. THIS has the advantage and disadvantage of making people pay attention only to the here and now. The problem is people probably will never experience THIS as God or infinite or any other counterintuitive things without being pointed in that direction first. Nondualists tend to forget that if all is One and that One is Truth the ego, thoughts, and imagination are also aspects of that One/Truth as much as anything else. Truth in nonduality does not have an opposite.

Of course, we always need to use labels when we talk about Nonduality; such is the nature of language. And every label is useful - until it's not. I assume that 90 percent of people on this forum have already heard a great deal about Infinity, Consciousness, God etc.; I simply try to move the goalpost and use the most neutral label I can think of - THIS - in order to get said people to detach from the mental images of Infinity etc. that they might have developed, so they don't get hung up on them and keep asking again and again futile questions like "buuuuuuuuuuuuuut if Reaity is infinite, then how come A B and C?!?!?!?!?!" But you're right, in the end it is just another label. If you don't find it useful, then don't use it. Simple!

After spending some time on this forum, I've found it quite comical to see arguments over the "correct" perspective of reality. It's especially comical when these arguments are coming from people who claim to be abiding in non-dual awareness. Usually this happens after a person sees beyond the materialist paradigm. Said person then gets attached to the idealist paradigm, yet fails to see their attachment to this new paradigm is the same attachment they had for the old one. Non-dual awareness is not a paradigm that you can attach yourself to. Non-dual awareness does not refer to any kind of content within a paradigm. Non-dual awareness is the Context of all paradigms. There is no "correct" perspective of reality. A "correct" perspective would be considered a ground. Reality is groundless. There is no absolute that stands alone. The absolute can only be known through the relative. The absolute is the relative. There is nothing that can stand alone. All is empty. There is nothing fundamental with inherent self nature. Even consciousness is not some foundational substrate that can stand alone. Consciousness dependently arises with objects within consciousness. With that being said: Here's a self exam designed to free you from any paradigm you're clinging to. 1. Do you ever seek to invalidate someone else's perspective? 2. Do you see certain perspectives as more "correct" than other perspectives. 3. Do you believe gaining another perspective means letting go of an old one? 4. Do you believe that to abide in non-dual awareness you must erase all dualities in your mind? 5. Do you believe that from the absolute perspective, reality is infinite? 6. Do you believe that from the absolute perspective, you are God? This is going to piss some people off, but if you answered only "Yes" to any of these questions, you're still abiding on a ground. Enlightenment is not the disposing of old perspectives and the collection of new ones. Enlightenment is the ultimate Perspective of perspectives. It's a meta perspective. It's the effortless fluidity between perspectives. No perspective is "correct." For a perspective to be "correct" would imply other perspectives are "wrong." You'll find that all perspectives dependently arise with each other. Not a single minutia of reality could exist without everything else. This is the essence of what non-duality points to. Enlightenment is seeing past the fabrication of perspective itself. Enlightenment is to see the dependence of everything on everything else. It would be unwise to say any perspective is "wrong" when your "right" perspective couldn't exist without that "wrong" perspective. That "wrong" perspective is actually part of your "right" perspective. To say a perspective is "wrong" is to say your "right" perspective is "wrong." For example, idealism couldn't exist without materialism just as up could not exist without down. Someone who claims materialism to be "wrong" and idealism to be "right" is like someone who claims up to be "wrong" and down to be "right." BUT, here's where is gets messy... The perspective that materialism is "wrong" and idealism is "right" is still a valid perspective. Issues arise when people cling to only that perspective. Also be aware that this is only an "issue" on the relative level. All issues are perfection from the absolute perspective. Just be aware that clinging to any one perspective will limit you in becoming more conscious. Two perspectives I commonly see people cling to here is the perspective that reality is infinite and the perspective that you are God. These are valid perspectives, but realize that being dogmatic about these perspectives will limit you. Understand that from certain perspectives reality is finite and you are simply a human. So many people get caught up in being God that they forget to enjoy their humanness. You are both human and God. You are not one more than you are the other. Abiding on the ground of God is like playing a video game and always having awareness on the screen. It takes away from the immersion of the video game. The bottom line is that reality is non-dual. But many people don't truly understand nonduality. Most people just turn nonduality into another ground. They create a duality by seeing the world as non-dual and opposed to dual. Non-duality cannot exist without dualities. The dualities you seek to invalidate are the essence of the non-dual paradigm you seek to validate. The key here is nonattachment. Become aware enough to realize when you become attached to any one perspective, even if that perspective seemingly comes from a higher level of consciousness. Also, recognize that I just gave you an awesome new perspective, but don't get attached to it haha.

It is all nothing, it is all emptiness. You are making the mistake of still distinguishing and being biased. You think nothing is somehow different and distinct from something. Which is a duality. Because duality is a part of nonduality. There is possibility for EVERYTHING because reality is unlimited. So what would stop it? A more conventional explanation would sound like this: nothing cannot stop something from appearing, since to stop a thing requires something to exist. Hence something must come into existence because nothing prevents it. But even this explanation is not correct because it still assumes a duality between nothing and something. As if something came out of nothing. NO! Something did not come out of nothing. Something has always been nothing. The only full explanation is that something = nothing. If you don't get it, it's because you haven't awoken to the fact that everything you see and hear is nothing. And no amount of logicking this will do it. You cannot substitute for lack of awakening by thinking some more.

Duality emerges from nonduality.

Ya. It doesn’t matter if it’s ‘your’ thought per se, or ‘your’ thought which is from hearing what someone says, about Nonduality. Every single thought about what is not two, without exception, is a step away from, not two. The thought is ‘itself’ the step away, the veil. The ‘path’ is not conceptual, the ‘path’ is a concept. Only deconstruction, uncovering assumptions and beliefs ‘works’. ‘Removing layers’, never adding more concepts.

Tom Campbell unites nonduality and simulation idea pretty well.

Lovely. Thanks everyone. I'm thinking; due to our interconnectedness, it is very possible to share certain information, plant seeds - if you will - that could trigger an awakening in others. One may not be able to awaken another directly, but inspiring them to look deeper within themselves can surely be done. I am at a point where duality and nonduality interplay constantly. I cannot deny the appearance and/or experience of individualism. Nor can I deny that it's all One, infinite and eternal. The boundaries are made out of the very same substance as all else is. Consciousness. But that does not mean that these boundaries are an error or serve no purpose. Imo; an individual - call it a 'dream character' - can gain access to Source and 'channel' information into the realm of many. He acts as a vessel - in that sense. A conductor. That is why I'd argue that spreading Light - from that standpoint - is indeed possible. One is forever complete and whole. But many may not know they're One. Ultimately; the only thing that can change is experience. And I don't see why we wouldn't want to experience Heaven - Together as One.

No, I am absolutely not kidding about this. This past week has been the strangest and spiritually most transformative of my life. I've had a rendezvous with the eternal timelessness of the present moment; it will be interesting to see how things unfold from here, but I feel like the gods have generously handed me a big, fat, very unexpected recompensation check that has more than rewarded me for all those (imagined) long years of self doubt, self hate, disorientation and depression which had made up such a big part of my adult life. As some of you might have noticed, I have not been active at all on this forum during the past four months; the reason being that, following a particularly profound LSD experience in early October of last year, I subsequently fell into a black hole of existential weariness that didn't quite feel like a run-of-the-mill depression but had many of the same characteristics. In retrospect I now realise that this was a sort of preparation phase for what was about to come, a time of emotional purging which paved the way for the strange rite of passage which I had no idea was awaiting me. During this time, I sometimes sat around on the beach all by myself holding my head between my hands, feeling sad and helpless like a little boy that has been deserted by all of his friends, quietly whimpering words like „Please, I don't know what to do anymore, please, I cannot go on anymore, please, I have no strenght left anymore, please, I just don't have the power to sustain myself anymore, please please please please...“ - Some time in late January, I had started to read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and the creature's description of itself as a poor and miserable wretch that knew nothing, had no skills and no friends, had no idea where it came from and never been taught how to look after itself made a big impression upon my mind; its words echoed my own woeful inner state, and I could deeply identify and empathize with this godforsaken creature. It is also worth mentioning that I kept up my meditation pratice during these months of silent desperation, but at this point much more out of habit than real conviction; calling my entire being into question, I had also begun to wonder if all this meditating that I had been doing continuously for four years now had any effect whatsoever -- after all, here I was, feeling more clueless and miserable than ever before. Wasn't I just completely wasting my time with all this sitting around on my bed and semi-successfully (at best!) trying to become present? Cut to last Saturday, one week ago from the time I am writing down these words. I had already felt a little dizzy for two days and kind of suspected that I might be getting sick; and when I went to bed in the evening, I had the feeling that I probably would be getting very little in the way of sleep... and sure enough, I didn't sleep a single second that night (I think I slept perhaps eight to ten hours during this entire week). The first 48-72 hours of my strange Covid trip have by now already blurred into a uniform cloud of cronologically unlocatable memory fragments, so I'll just describe them here in the form of a single stream of consciousness: I am lying in bed, tossing and turning. I lie on my left side, I lie on my back, I lie on my right side, fetal position, streched out, right arm tucked under my head, no posture seems to be tolerable for more than two minutes. I start to sense a pulsating pain in my neck that nearly kills me and makes my head spin everytime I lift my head from the pillow. A feverish surge begins to wash over me that somehow at the same time clouds and hightens my senses. --- Okay, try to go into meditation mode, maybe it will help you to calm down a bit and eventually fall asleep. Relax, breathe, become present, become aware of the sounds around you, feel your body. Am I ever going to become better at meditation? You're trying too hard, that's the problem. Meditation is not about trying, it's about letting go. But how? How do you let go? How how how how how? For god's sake, four years of regular meditation, and you still suck absolute balls at this! In fact, you don't know how to do anything, and you also don't know how to NOT do anything. It is truly sad. You are completely, totally, utterly worthless. A sheer waste of space. Come on, focus again, observe the breath. It is impossible, my thoughts are too loud. They're SO goddamn loud, they drown out everything else. It seems that instead of becoming quieter, my mind is on the contrary becoming louder and louder and louder with every passing week. Is this the way it's supposed to work? Oh my god, it's just always the same thought loops over and over and over again, welcome to hell. I think I will just quit meditation and spirituality altogether, just absolutely forget that I ever heard about this fucking nonsense. I'm no good at this shit. And even if I succeed, what then? Getting rid of your ego, is this really what you want? Are you crazy? Oh yeah, it sounds so goddamn nice on paper, but really think this through now. What else do you have besides your ego? Face it, it's the only thing you got in this lonely life, there's nothing else. It is literally my only friend. - Dude, are you going to meditate now or not?! The problem is that I don't know what I want. I don't know anything, I am good for nothing, I am totally useless. I am a little stupid child that is completely lost in the dark. I have no friends, I have no skills, I don't have anything at all. I have literally NOTHING to give to others! All I have is my wretched, whiny, miserable ego. It is my only friend, my only friend, my only friend! If I get rid of my ego, then I will be left with literally nothing, zero, zip. Please, don't leave me. Don't leave me. Don't leave me. Don't leave me. I don't want to be alone, no no no no, I DON'T WANT to be alone, the very thought of god's eternal loneliness horrifies the shit out of me! Oh god, this is all so terrible!! --- But wait. Wait. Wait a second. Am I not already all alone? Of course I am. I already am alone. Here I am, existing all by myself. All alone. All alone. I am the ego, and I am all alone. So the ego and God are one. Of course... God's aloneness is my aloneness . God's aloneness is my aloneness. God's aloneness is my aloneness. GOD'S ALONENESS IS MY ALONENESS! Oh Christ, why could I not see this before? That's it! I AM GOD! Of course, of course, of course, of course! I am alone because I am already God! Haaaaaahahahahaha, that's it! You hit the jackpot! You just recognized yourself as God! This is it! This is it! THIS IS IT!! THIS IS ENLIGHTENMENT!! ------- What you just read is a grossly simplified and condensed version of a very long and meandering psychological process that unfolded gradually over the course of several days; it involved me coming directly face to face with my wounded and scared inner child, and then healing that child by reuniting it with God. It also involved two glimpses into Nonduality that occurred during two different nights; both of these are imprinted in my memory as amorphous islands of timelessness somehow interrupting the linear stream of chronological time (which itself is of course nothing but a mental construction born out of the timeless here and now). I have absolutely no way of telling how long I was gone during these glimpses – maybe five seconds, maybe five hours (again, time isn't real anyhow and the past aka memory is nothing but what you make of it, so who the eff cares, right?). I also could not say if I was awake of asleep while they happened - of course, I was neither since „I“ was not there anymore -; I only remember lying awake in bed before and after in the same position. The first of those glimpses was not very unlike what I had previously experienced during N'N DMT trips, the characteristic feature being a sensation of existential dread in the face of God's absolute & eternal aloneness. The second glimpse came very close to pure Nirvana aka. the No-State of No-Self (I have yet to try 5-Meo Dmt, so I do not have any kind of reference for this); much has been written about this state, and all descriptions are true and yet utterly miss the mark, so I won't bore you with yet another futile attempt of describing the indescribable. Suffice to say that it was nothing like I had imagined it, that it is both profoundly ordinary and profoundly shocking, that it made me realise that „enlightenment“ as something to be somehow attained through effort is a total hoax and that the story of birth and death which we tell ourselves is nothing but a fiction. The day after I had this second non-dual glimpse, I could sense myself very gradually „coming back to Earth“ even though it still all felt slightly feverish and trippy. The mental chatter that was continuing just like it always had was now happening very prominently on the surface of consciousness, so to speak, and I perceived it like one would hear the obtrusive roar of a creaking 1920's jukebox that is standing somewhere in a corner, stubbornly refusing to shut up even after the guests of the dance party have long left. The next day however, things were quietening down; I had undeniably re-entered the stratosphere and was more or less my old self again when all of a sudden, in a moment of completely sober and „non-trippy“ clarity, I realised the very simple and utterly obvious fact that there exists nothing outside of the here and now, that past and future are nothing but mental constructs and that this very moment is in fact eternal. It was incredibly strange. Nothing at all had changed; I saw reality in just the same old way that I had seen it for all my life, except that I now saw that it is (and always "had been") eternal. That's all. The obvious finally becoming obvious. As I am writing this, I feel that there is still a strong remnant of egoic energy present; I can physically feel it in my throat. But I feel very calm, very light, very grounded and very present. My body energy, which seems to be slightly increased, is floating through my limbs in soft and warm waves. It is a nice sensation. My mental chatterbox is still continuing its same old monologue, its though patterns are still revolving around the same old "I" thought. But I let it ramble on; just get it off your chest, old friend, just let it all out until there is nothing left to say. - Will it stay this way? I have absolutely no idea. In fact, I feel like I don't know anything anymore, and I also really don't care. The one thing I do know is that existence is strange and wonderful, and that God truly works in mysterious ways. I guess you could say that I have died from Covid and found out that there is no death. Thank you so much for reading this. I love you. Peace.

If you recontectualize reality to Nonduality, then everything is You. There's no difference from a rock, a tree, or a person. It's all consciousness, dreamstuff. In Leo's video on Self Love, he talked about self love is learning to love all of the Self, meaning all of reality equally. Then you are full of love, as you are in love with everything. If you can reach that, you will never be lonely.