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This is true. Also, it is inevitable. The world of form demands duality. There is a necessary polarity in all things. It is not like God can choose only love, beauty, and order in the world of form. There must also be hatred, ugliness, and chaos. Each necessitates the other. Even at the polarities, God still infuses everything. The joining of nonduality with duality collapses into the incomprehensible reality that is God.

Wow. I'm still shaken by the sheer amount of narratives consciousness can create, fool itself in, immerse itself in. Rules for this thread: I've been on the forum since 2017. This will be the first thread that may seem conspiracy-like to some viewers (it's not), and I trust the mods and Leo will recognize that it isn't a sudden rush of shit to the brain nor a sudden 'let's join a forum and spread an ideology' thread, but merely a reflection of my direct experience; of what twisted stories God can lure itself into. I hope my somewhat long past here on the forum will carry a straw of trust. Here is my warning though: If the discussion gets out of hand or downright irrelevant, close the thread. If people start projecting their beliefs onto this post, close the thread. If people start blaming, victimizing, name-calling, close the thread. If people clearly start spreading conspiracy theories, close the thread. If there's anything related you'd like to say, there are DMs for that. But, please, note that I am not a conspiracy theorist but merely sharing a narrative that has shown me how insignificant and yet vast each narrative is... yet again. Don't even bother to send me theoretical explanations without an immediate practice, exercise, or technique to expand on & underlay any possible explanation you may have. Remember if this gets too crazy, I'll either ask the mods to close the thread or I'll hide it myself. The main arc: I went to sleep this afternoon and had the most vivid, physical, twisted dream. I remember bits and pieces in the time of writing this, which I managed to save in my notepad. I am certain the dream had started earlier, but the first flash I remember is that a bunch of friends and I were loafing around the outskirts of a town, minding our own activity. A helicopter came flying in. It was flying around in circles, observing us. We didn't know who these people were. Next thing I remember is learning that in that dream, relative to the narrative I was submerged in, humanity lived in a dream and was being controlled by strange entities, whose purpose was to keep them attached. I later discovered it was a lineage/clan who kept humanity prisoned. Jumping forward, I remember zipping it through air like a madman in a wholesale store. Everyone looked at me as if I was crazy, for I was literally jumping from wall to wall/levitating. Eventually, I made a lap around the store. Returning to the parking lot, I noticed a middle-aged women, whose head was shrouded in a hood, who had a symbolic tattoo on her face, and who kept away from other people and was leaving in a hurry as if she didn't wish to be seen. Suddenly, a knowledge popped to me that this woman was a part of some group called the Resistance or the Cause and was constantly being looked for. "Wait for me!" I shouted to her repeatedly, knowing she'd leave soon. She looked at me and stopped, prodding me to hurry. A big black van stopped in front of me, and I lost sight of the woman. The van's doors opened, and I found myself in front of the clan, the overlords, however we shall name them. A woman, who was definitely a mother of some sort, stepped out of the vehicle. She was wearing latex-like or tight black leather overall. At this point, I instantly knew what the context was. I was trapped in an artificially crafted dream by those entities and I couldn't trust nor them nor my senses. It was like a Matrix. The woman then did what I can only describe as an attempt to draw me back into the illusion. As she was passing by in a seductive fashion, she attempted to turn a 3D object - one of those translucent shelters for shopping carts you find in front of each wholesale building - into a 2D painting on the sidewalk, the one that creates the illusion of a 3D object under the right angle. However, as I became awake to the narrative, I couldn't be seduced anymore. I found a way to escape her control by 'reversing steps' in that reality. I made a full body turn and stretched my arm backwards, and I found myself touching the original object again. She couldn't bend my reality. Soon after, I was teleported into another dream, another environment; sort of to the next level (whether up or down the rabbit hole is questionable. If we measure how immersed I was in that narrative, then I was definitely going deeper.) Therein I found my good friend, too, seemingly 'realized' about the previous dream we had lived in. This is where it gets scary. God's an adventurous one. The friend reaffirmed me - and I knew by telling again myself - that we're in a dream. I cannot trust anyone, I cannot trust anything; everything is an illusion, and as soon as my senses lose presence with anything, it's gone, forever. "Don't lose touch with whatever is appearing in your senses," I told myself. Once you lost contact with that-which-appeared, it instantly stopped existing until it reappeared again. It had retracted back to the Void which it had come from. I consider this the truthful kernel of the entire dream, but here's where it got scary: The dream's limited narrative got mixed with Truth. It created an abomination which manifested in the form of a thought "Whatever comes back from that darkness, is no longer what it had used to be." My friend was walking behind me, and as I didn't have a sight of him, it meant that once I lost touch with his body, his voice, he'd disappear into the Void. The very next second he'd reappear, it wouldn't be him anymore. And here's the dangerous twist and the insight I've gained immediately upon waking up: Instead of surrendering and seeing everything as God, which is my normal waking tendency, I fragmented reality into an ultimate duality and fear in the 'grand holy search' for a relative truth about the narrative that was unfolding. The dream didn't end, though. Once the thing or the person came back, they were no longer themselves. They were illusory doppelgangers whose purpose was to lure me back in, who whispered and murmured behind my ears, yet my grand quest was to resist. I'm writing down the ego-chatters - as they were happening onstage - on purpose; for you to better see the mechanics of the dream and draw conclusions. Again, I'm aware of this, and this thread serves for educational purposes, not conspiracy theory spreading. Later I've realized how perfectly this remolded the structure of the story about Sodom and Gomorrah, wherein the man was encouraged to resist the temptation of looking back. In the dream, this wasn't the path I was willing to choose. I had to overcome the fear. As such - like when a scary invisible ghost is chasing you down the hall from the kitchen - I stopped. I didn't continue moving. I bore the piling up fear. I made it. Through following my heart, I reheard my original friend's voice behind my back, "You've made it. You didn't lose touch with me." When I turned around, he was standing there again. What a relief - but looking back at this whole narrative, quite the opposite had probably happened, as it was only a fear-based intuition prompting me to sigh a relief. The dream ended by waking up into another dream, wherein I found myself having aged back to a 13-year-old child. In my hands I held a fork/a pen. I was pointing it against one of those clan members. We were in a mansion together, along with my friend. We were both awake and ready to oppose his power. He told me that I had overcome the artificial Matrix's illusion, but that I was fucked anyway because this was still the Matrix. He said although I was back in my childhood, they still had control over me. That's where it all ended. This was by far one of the most tangible, physical, and therefore most immersive and ego-appealing dreams I have had. What caught me off-guard was how well the dream resembled almost every conspiracy theory out there. From time to time, we have a streak on the forum of someone posting far-out conspiracy theories, and I think as a consequence of reading some of those long-winded posts, some of it 'had subconsciously stuck' in my head and condensed back later in the form of a dream. I realize there's only the Mind. So, yes, God is a madman. I directly lived through one of those conspiracy-like narratives, and it was as real as a narrative gets. However, it had very little to do with searching for the ultimate truth and was actually powered by fully immersing myself and living in that paradigm of fear. In that dream, I felt absolutely separated from Myself & had no knowledge about nonduality or the concept of waking up. The dream has shown me that every paradigm is possible, but through actively engaging and immersing ourselves in those narratives, we're forgetting who we are... selling ourselves short. Post your answers, opinions, alike experiences below, but keep it down a notch. Remember we're a forum leaned on direct experience - and remember the rules I wish that are applied to this thread. Please, don't spread any ideologies or long-winded conspiracy-like truths here publically, or I'll ask the mods to close the thread or hide it myself. What a revealing experience.

I’m not into theoretical models of enlightenment. I’m not even into enlightenment. I’m much more interested in consciousness exploration and expansion. Most ideas of enlightenment are a turn off for me, because they are all limiting. Any definition or concept of enlightenment may have some interest, yet I wouldn’t want to be it because that would prevent me from being not that - and I’m more attracted to the freedom of everything. If someone told me enlightenment was a state of constant peace and joy, that would cut me off from non-peace and non-joy. Yet ime, models and concepts of nonduality and enlightenment have been beneficial in providing a scaffold for direct experience that was way out there. I’ve had many experiences that were so far out there, that I would have dismissed them as woo woo, imaginary or dreams. Yet then I’m like “So thaaaaat’s what Rupert Spira was trying to communicate”. Then I have a much better chance at catching the realization, integrating and expanding. I see SD as more of a model for cognitive development.

@Ivan Dimi I don’t disagree with you that consciousness work has value, This is obvious to you because you’ve already realized this. From my observations, some environments are more conducive for certain explorations. A lot of explorations are perceived as impractical and a waste of time. Environment and context has an effect on that. If I am working with a group of refugees that are filled with anxiety, discussing the value of quantum theory relative to personal transcendence is not practical and won’t go over very well. Helping them learn English, how to get around town, how to shop for food, where to buy the cheapest diapers etc. will resonate more strongly with them. And I’m talking about likelihoods. A person immersed in ISIS can have realizations, yet they are generally relative to their baseline conscious level. As well, the likelihood of big realizations would be lower. Your the odds of transmitting yellow-level realizations to an ISIS member is lower than than someone in a yoga group. Yet it’s also relative. I would consider a red-to-blue awakening as significant as an orange-to-green awakening. I see Maslow’s theory as an integrated whole, rather than distinct categories. No one is in one category 100% of the time. Yet life conditions do impact access. Last semester, a student’s father got gravely ill with kidney failure. The students family was in another country. The student was extremely worried about her father. It was the week before finals and the student wanted to take her finals before flying home. Her family got outraged and said as a woman she shouldn’t even be in college, she should be a homemaker. They told her she didn’t really love her father and not to come home. The student had a nervous breakdown and came to my office in tears, contemplating suicide. . . This is not a good environment to whip out some Rupert Spira videos on transpersonal nonduality. This was an environment to address situations at the personal level and problem solve.

@Moksha kind of. Anyone who thinks nonduality is a higher truth than duality and separation is missing the mark. There is an ego, there is an I, but we are still all one. Separation is true. Nonduality is true. Christ is me, but my mind/body/spirit complex could be more advanced than Christ’s is currently if I am actually a sixth density wanderer (it seems plausible to me, I have many of the signs of being a wanderer).

I am the glitch in the system. Still domt know what nonduality is, everything seems rather twosome to me. Balancing act between polarities

I was thinking about limits and the limit of the universe is nothingness. Nothingness limits itself because it is nothing. There is nothing beyond the limit. The ultimate limit of the universe is nothingness. And I was thinking about consciousness. When I investigate the self, I find emptiness, formlessness, silence. I look into myself and I find nothingness. So the limit of consciousness is also nothingness. And I was thinking about nothingness and realized that nothingness is not existence. Nothingness is nothing. Existence is isness. Nothingness is the absence of is. They are two! Yes? no? What are your thoughts on nothingness? I heard it said that in the occult they value duality as much as nonduality. I keep that in mind. I’m all about duality it’s petty rad even if it is illusion

@Adamq8 it’s all belief. All knowledge is belief, faith. The only truth is the present moment, the now. And you veil it in delusions! See that you believe in nonduality, you “know” it just like you used to “know” your fictitious self. All I’ve said here is belief. Can you not see that? There could be a separate reality. It’s possible nonduality is nothing but mental masturbation!

Nobody stopped nowhere.Your ideas of consciousness(es) are actually ideas, and that idea that an idea is other than an idea, is the illusion. Nonduality points to ‘not two’, you and consciousness, or consciousnesses. Precisely because there is only consciousness (not two) there is no such thing as a problem. If you say there is, you create that experience, as you are the creator of the reality you’re studying. When one finger of self-indulgence points, there are three pointing back, yet noticed. You haven’t yet recognized the distinction between your finite ideas and infinity, or, consciousness. This is like thinking about what hot chocolate tastes like, and in believing the thoughts, believing something is known about hot chocolate, when the thoughts are known, and the hot chocolate is not experienced. This is not the direct experience, or taste of, hot chocolate. A million pages on the hot chocolateses never amount to even a wiff of the actuality. Quantum mechanics, general & special relativity have always been unified btw. Only ignore-ance appears to separate.

it’s kind of silly to argue for distinction in a nonduality forum, I don’t know what to say. But boredom is not a response to a threat and neither is irritation, and that’s what fear is. A response to threat. A lack of engagement or satisfaction is not a threat to the ego. I suspect you’d argue it is, tho, which is why I don’t really want to argue. I guess I have tho, lol. You know, I could see my incentive to disagree comes from fear. And that makes me want to double down on my position. Fear is not present for me when I’m bored. Irritation and boredom are sisters, a response to dissatisfaction. A claim that fear is dissatisfaction would be a bastardizing off what fear is. But again this feels silly in a nonduality forum. Distinction is an illusion, in the end. Might as well say love is fear. Edit: boredom is like the incentive to play. boredom is a sister to playfulness, that’s not fear. Now that I’ve had my say, I’m curious rather than afraid. it’s additive. I’m afraid you’ll tell me I’m wrong, and I’m curious what your response will be. two different emotions. Edit2: ultimately I’m saying my desire to awaken stems from curiosity Edit3: one thing Leo said in another thread (I wrote it down) is this - “one thing you can bank on is this - all fear is illusion and falsehood “ and honestly this applies to emotions in general. Emotions are driving when we’re identified with them, and when we practice mindfulness emotions become fleeting and illusory. Perhaps the desire for enlightenment comes from suffering. You had that in your initial analysis. Ultimately suffering is the bigger picture of emotional experiences. There is suffering and there is bliss, two halves to the same coin. Practiced meditation leads to bliss and ego transcending. And an unpracticed mind is rife with emotion.

I got a lecture containing nonduality in one of my history elective classes in college. It involved the Mayans. Professor was woke as fuck though — actualized as all hell. He even talked to the fucking class about his cocaine and LSD experiences. I participated in that class a lot and almost regret not continuing my relationship with him, considering how much he seemed to like me as well. Value your relationships, folks — even with your professors.

@Leo Gura Leo, I think you forgot to mention entropy in your science videos. Leonard Susskind said that entropy is simply hidden information. And if we assume that reality as nonduality is perfect order, then what we believe to be disorder, decay, destruction and randomness actually also is order. This has profound consequences for how to perceive the universe. From a perspective of entropy as disorder we see the universe as a deteriorating machine while with entropy as order we would be able to see the universe as an intelligent system. You did mention that since humans have intelligence, the universe has intelligence, but I think that by examining entropy it can be made into a more general understanding of how the entire universe has vast intelligence. You have also mentioned that reality is infinite intelligence, and that's something that also may be possible to show by understanding entropy.

I checked his channel, he seems to be going balls deep in spirituality, doing retreats and shamanic breathing. Amazing!! This here shows the true power of psychedelics, to open your mind and make a paradigm shift. I myself remember being very attached to religion and doing spirituality from a religious stance and avoiding all Leo's talks about nonduality until I had my first experience with LSD. And although it was a micro dose it showed me something, how reality is actually weird. And from that day I opened up to nonduality.

@Vipassana Yes, and nonduality dreams all dualities ?

Infinite illusion is still illusion. How can anything unreal be important? Unless this is threatened by numbers, they cannot be significant. The only significance is the nonduality that cannot be threatened

Strange loops often involve self-reference, which is paradoxical. Eg statements about "everything", or God creating itself. Nonduality is self-reference because there's no split between doer and done. Or like if I told you that I am lying right now, would you believe me or not?

There's an inherent paradox within unity in which oneness becomes twoness. Nonduality becomes dual after becoming nondual from a different perspective...

@Moksha @cuteguy thanks! but is noself separate from self? I guess talking about it is dual. But if nonduality is true, duality is not separate from it. Separation is the same thing as god, no? God is everything, even separation and unconsciousness. Maybe this is a silly question; noself is ultimately not exclusive of self. Not this not that means transcending it. You are it but you also are not.

@Mikael89 You have to distinguish between Absolute and relative domains of knowledge. Nonduality is about the Absolute. In the relative you can still be very deluded or mistaken.

Aha! I found an interesting possibility, that confusion and the sense of free will go together. They are both a result of a mistaken perspective. If anything, confusion is the more correct perception since free will is completely wrong according to nonduality. And confusion is also a delusion since reality as a whole is never confused.

For contextualisation, it seems that the OPs comment is a response to some Rupert Spiras youtube talk. It seems that Rupert Spiras nonduality version and its "direct path" method has lot in common with ideas advocated on this forum about the nature of consciousness.

Appreciate your response, thanks. Would love more clarity on this. How is RASA (“Ramaji Advaita Shaktipat Attunement”) not Reiki (“light, love”). If there is no difference, what is the intention of ‘people knowing it is not reiki’ (as in not the true nature, love & light). Again, much appreciated. Wondering...do you find any difference in feeling when considering Spira’s models & metaphors which serve to deconstruct duality & demystify ‘states of consciousness’ in the vein of realization of nonduality, in comparison to the model Ramaji offers which states separate people have levels of consciousness? Do you feel this misleads & feeds into the materialist paradigm in any way? It seems to imply to consciousness is measurable as a property of a separate self, which (‘who’) can ‘increase it’. Why would a teacher ‘play along’ with such a falsity? Making a confession seems very different that making a model that be default is the confession. Seems so misleading, thoughts? Accurate of consciousness...or accurate to Ramaji’s interpretation of separate selves which have levels of consciousness? See what I’m saying here, or no? Isn’t the assumed basis incorrect and misleading? It is literally feeding beliefs “I can raise my consciousness”, no? Is there a benefit to encouraging these beliefs that I’m missing perhaps? No offense I hope, really, but isn’t the “my students” thinking misleading & divisive? If not, how so? Again, seems rooted in a separate selves model from the start. No? Is this not already the true nature of consciousness...? It seems like adding layers, measurements, identification, beliefs, and teaching models. No? Can you really ‘break it down’ for me...how is what I’m saying skeptical, vs common sense?

You can't focus on nothing, because there is no such thing, nonduality. There cannot be a substantial you, who is lacking something in some way. There just can't. Doesn't work out. It doesn't math. But we try to do it all the time. "I don't have what I want, I'm not the way I want, etc." An outright, explicit thought is already moving in the direction of what we want but most of these thoughts are just accepted and not even recognized, verbalized or intentionally, consciously thought. The only thing you can actually do is envision what you want, or appreciate what is there. LOA works the same way to find your favorite pair of socks that has been missing for two months, or in spiritual "progression". In fact, there's no real difference. Your missing/found socks are actually a profound mystical experience. But you think you and your socks are mundane, so you color over the magic that is there waiting to be noticed and invited in rather than felt as absence of. By the way, in the same way, there are no low quality teachings that you need someone else to help filter out for you. No one is teaching you anything you don't already know.

Hello, (I hope this is the right forum) I was diagnosed with breast cancer two months ago and I am currently undergoing chemotherapy. I am 29 years old. Spirituality and the teachings of Leo, Eckhart Tolle as well as the approaches of Nonduality as a whole enrich me a lot and give me stability. At the moment I am not working and use the time to get in touch with myself. I am very grateful to be able to do this (I live in Germany). For this I do a lot physically,too: every day I spend an hour in nature and I practice Qi Gong. Dealing with the situation spiritually lets me learn a lot about myself. I have been working on my shadows for years and meditation always helps me a lot. Even now. Unfortunately I often have problems because I want to do everything right. I am so afraid that I won't make it or that I might fall ill again. The risk is there, not few women experience that. Because of these fears (and obviously my pathological attachment to them) it is so difficult for me to visualise a positive vision of my future. Maybe I will never be able to have children. Never live without fear. When I think about it, so much sadness and helplessness fills me. I have the feeling that meditation and reading books or journaling only relieves me for a short time, but this fear always resonates. So often I fall into the victim mode and am not present and therefore suffering. And then I am hard on myself again because my life depends on healing my shadows and being confident about myself. And that the cause of the illness lies in these shadows and that I want to arrange my life in such a way that I always stay healthy puts me under so much pressure. I always felt so lost and overwhelmed growing up and i never had „real“ obstacles, they were always in my head. Now there is this existential crisis and I do not know where to start. Always the question "what if I don't make it?“ everything overwhelms me. Please help me. Thank you

Of course you can't understand what it means for you to not exist. You have to die first to understand that. It's obviously not true for you. Thats all that matters. If you believe them or come to some logical understanding of nonduality it still does you no good because your still not conscious of anything new. You've only created a nice intellectual model in your head. Models can be useful to a certain extent, but never confuse the model for the territory. For all you know, Nonduality is false. You don't know until you do the exercises to raise your own consciousness and see. Keep doing self inquiry, meditation, yoga, psychedelics, whatever works for you.