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First recognize that the so-called external world is actually inside your own head. This establishes the fact that everything is consciousness. Now, you're asking whether something can exist outside of consciousness, and that requires that we unpack the idea of non-duality. Imagine the universe and see if you can imagine there being an edge to the universe, a limit that keeps it from extending for forever. If the universe has an edge, is the edge a part of the universe? More importantly, if the universe is supposedly limited, it has to be limited by something else than itself, and that is what the edge is for. But then think about this very carefully: for something to be limited, there must be something else that limits it. The edge limits the universe, and therefore the universe is limited. But what limits the edge? Surely, something else must also limit the edge, or else that edge is just limitless. Hmm... isn't this a problem? Well, can't we just add another edge outside that edge? Well, not really, because that edge must also have another edge limiting it and so on etc.. Now we've run into the problem of infinite regression, and that is actually not a "problem" but instead an inherent quality of the universe. The universe is actually unlimited, infinite, and necessarily so, because if the universe is everything that can exist, then what can limit it other than itself? Now if consciousness is everything that exists, what can limit consciousness other than itself? And what can consciousness be other than unlimited, infinite, absolute, primary, prior to anything and everything? That is the truth of nonduality. Every limit, every distinction, every "two" is necessarily "one". Now, if everything is made out of consciousness, what is that edge of the universe made out of? The edge is an imaginary limit: Tada!

@Red-White-Light Give this a shot, Just stop thinking, you’re way too in your head, way too closed to suggestion, this whole post just seems like an excuse to complain rather than finding an actual solution. A good dose of humility and surrender is what u need my friend. The guide from Leo I linked above will help with that. Nonduality is void of all conceptual framings and ideas, it’s a purely intuitive primal “knowing” at the core of one’s very essence. Everything about your mindset screams over-intellectualisation and close-mindedness, none of such qualities is going to help you but only forever leave you separated from this understanding. I don’t wanna come off as a dick but it’s the truth, a certain kind of attitude is required for this understanding. If you want to understand nonduality in the same fashion as learning mathematics then fucking forget about it.

If reality is an automatic process, then why is it so difficult to notice that experientially? The ordinary everyday experience in ego consciousness is that we are separate doers and thinkers who need to make things happen, by volition and personal effort. What has been pointed out in spirituality (and maybe even in philosophy and psychology etc) is that reality as oneness cannot experience relationships with others without seemingly dividing itself into separate entities. And the primary role of the ego is to be a vehicle for oneness separating itself into individual beings. And for evolution to reach the level of experience where a human being can develop an ego and experience relationships with others is a huge process. So the sense of individual doership is enormous in the ego. But if time is only now as I propose, then reality appears instantly! So there is no actual past stretching back from the now. Then how to explain the vast history of the universe and the process of evolution leading up to present human life? A Course in Miracles says: My explanation of time is that reality manifests instantly in the now. And as ACIM says in the first section, time is set already. Time started now and goes on forever. And in the next section ACIM says that there is a plan that does not change and that the script is written. According to my interpretation that plan is the Word of God. And I interpret "from a point at which it ended" as infinity! Consciousness as infinity is observing God's plan unfolding. What needs to happen for us to experientially experience nonduality is that from our ego state we integrate back into oneness, not as undifferentiated oneness, but as individuals integrated as oneness. And in my view, evolution is exponential, meaning accelerating faster and faster, so what took billions of years of evolution in the past can be done within a few years today, and even faster than that. ACIM explains it as:

@James123 Not entirely impossible. MAPS is doing more and more research and this will lead to entheogen acceptance. In a past time there was acceptance but not 5-meo popularity and mckennia who wasnt going for nonduality. When the tabboo gets lesser and lesser, who knows what will happen!

Thanks I like your explanation of concepts and boundaries. Regarding "non-thing" isn't it a paradox? You can't have a non-thing because anything you name would be a thing? Wouldn't that make "thing" nondual? Sounds interesting and I'm willing to try to explore it. I just recently became stage orange and very materialist minded so struggle to understand nonduality, but open to new things.

Over the last year I've spent a huge amount of time researching nonduality, and everything I have gathered seems to necessitate a rather unfavorable outlook on life. My general estimation of the ultimate structure of reality is that we as human beings are experiencing a small portion of absolute infinity that is being manifested through a metaphysical infinite mind. The apparent reason why this metaphysical mind subjects itself to the unpleasant lives we live is because at a metaphysical level there is no difference between pain and pleasure, and any manifestation of anything at all is the result of a metaphysical embrace of consciousness, or what's referred to as "love" in spiritual circles. From an uninformed perspective this honestly seems like a horrible travesty. Basically what I've gathered is that the metaphysical mind is delusional, and believes itself to be immune from suffering because all pleasure and pain is supposedly an illusion. The only problem is that this illusion is so convincing that it may as be real. I imagine myself "waking up" from this reality to a metaphysical one, once this life has concluded, and saying to my true self, "what a great experience, now for a harder one". It seems that the true metaphysical self could not possibly be receptive to the actual suffering that it is subjecting itself to since it perceives suffering as illusory. I worry that the entirety of life as we know it is merely a poorly calculated manifestation of metaphysical willpower that has trapped itself into a system of cycling through rebirths that it mistakenly believes to be positive. When I hear talk about life being a "love simulator" it makes me think, "so this metaphysical mind is just training itself how to endure worse and worse situations, and it has mistakenly convinced itself that this process of horrific masochism is love?". I'm hoping that a more experienced perspective can provide a more positive interpretation of this reality, because from my perspective, this seems like an absurd way to design reality. It's so absurd it has me doubting whether or not my life is a computer simulation, and all this spirituality bullshit is just a mean trick being played on the person being simulated. Unfortunately I have watched Leo's video "Why Reality Cannot Be A Computer Simulation" 3 times and this was not able to sufficiently eliminate that possibility.

Teachings that say that "you are not the doer" might be useful at some point in spiritual development, but really it's an ego trap. It's like saying "don't think about a pink elephant." It fortifies the idea of being a separate doer. A better and the correct approach is to say: "you are the doer" and then go on explaining what the doer is. In nonduality the doer is the totality. And our past memories need to be seen from a true perspective which is that the "me" as a doer in personal memories in reality is the totality as the doer. Everything is the totality as a doer.

? Thank you, yes that's the intention. In my opinion it's generally more helpful to unravel "wrong knowing" than to "explain how it is" (except insofar as such explanations may help someone do their own unraveling). Not only is "explaining how it is" rather impossible, but it's also prone to becoming just another belief system. Explanations need a frame of reference, and generally speaking ones existing frame of reference tends to only get in the way. Because that's where the obstacles reside. And that's why straight-up explanations are often misunderstood, or not understood at all. So to me "the path" is always subtractive, hence Via Negativa, Neti Neti, etc. Even if that's ultimately just another device. No one ever needs to wake up, but everyone could always do with fewer obstacles. Development clarity and insight are automatic in the absence of obstacles, they are a natural consequence of being alive in the absence of unnatural barriers. Just like you don't need to pull on grass to make it grow. So addressing obstacles is usually the crux of what I try to do, for myself as well as anyone I talk to about this. To quote Jed McKenna, the only construction required is that which facilitates demolition. Or at least, that's one way of framing the approach. Until everything turns out to have always been nondual... ? Therefore reality can't exist in the way that it seems to exist, yes. Foundationlessness would be another equivalence of duality, relativity, finiteness, etc. In short, strange-loopy. But that is part of the illusion, in truth the foundation that's always been hidden in plain sight is consciousness. In other words when you go looking for the foundation of reality, the only possible candidate turns out to be consciousness. And to go one further, it's not even a foundation because there is nothing else apart from consciousness. Which is why all duality can only ever be apparent, not true. Nonduality appearing as duality without actually being duality. Hence illusory. Consciousness pretending to be not consciousness. Some people like to say that nonduality is so flippin' nondual that it includes duality. I think that's a misleading word game, although it may help against overly exclusionary tendencies, so sure fine why not. "Real" is subject to interpretation or redefinition. It's often said that reality is both real and unreal. Personally I'm not a big fan of those kinds of word games, I don't see the value in them except perhaps as cute little tests of comprehension. Tests of your ability to do "nondual thinking", I suppose. And also because it's equally false to stick to one side. Real and unreal is just another duality/mental category. Mental categories are false in the sense that they purport to refer to something pre-existing outside of itself, when they actually don't. So basically they are lies, albeit useful lies. They are how you create past, future, other, and indeed self. They are like a thin layer of narrative draped over an underlying structure, like a secondary layer of apparent duality. Together with the fuel of emotional energy, they form the "gestalts" that make your reality (including especially yourself) seem convincingly solid and objective, and differentiated. That emotional energy is what's refered to as attachment, and where the real work of disillusionment is done. The result being undifferentiated (nondual) consciousness. Even though of course differentiation is also illusory and consciousness has actually always been nondual.

@khalifa How’s everything other than psychedelics and nonduality going my man? How’s you’re life purpose, job, career, hobbies, relationships, etc?

Here I found a new scientific result done with actual experiments: With confirmation bias I pick ..... superdeterminism! In nonduality superdeterminism is a result of reality as a whole being the cause. So there are no separate causes, neither from the past nor from the future. And the new scientific experiment is consistent with this and even says that superdeterminism is a possible candidate.

This video is amazing. A great summary and documentary about the evolution of Advaita Vedanta and nonduality in India

I like to repeat explanations, because those can evolve and also for my own practice it helps me to recondition my mind. And by posting it in a journal like this makes it easy to make sure that my ideas become more solidified and coherent. So what is God? From a nondual perspective I think of God as the infinite intelligence of the process of reality. So God is not some separate being or even a process by itself. God is an aspect of the process of reality. And nonduality means changeless or there would be a duality where one thing controls another thing. So not even God has free will. God is not some boss separate from us. God is the only will. And thus even the ego is acting according to God's will. The ego is a necessary development in order to produce individual personalities. And the thinking mind is a higher state of development than animal existence without the intellect. The nasty thing with the ego is that its thinking is fueled by suffering. Therefore I will use Gurdjieff's intentional suffering practice and focus on the suffering instead of the thoughts! That is not going back into animal pre-intellectual consciousness. Instead it's a meta perspective above thinking. The purpose of which is to identify and resolve the conflict-ridden habit of the ego's thinking.

It seems like this maze is infinite.. And something about you is that there are no basics or certain facts That I can get from you.. You can deny anything.. And you can approve anything.. And then deny it again in a different context.. What is the criteria? Non at all. So if both me and you exist.. What is nonduality? "Not-two"? How is it that there is only one thing or absolute underlying oneness if you assert the separation and independence of me AND you?

Turquoise / nonduality...It’s fully realized (feeling / no mind) sex & orgasm is an appearance / experience created by the limitation of yourself, which you are / you’re being 24/7. At that stage-less ‘stage’ feeling = “orgasmic” 24/7. The bliss that appears as the intuition, or the calling home in thought, is actual you, feeling, which is why “you” can’t think what sex is like, at turquoise. Only direct experience, and at that point not even, will do.

Honouring separation. That's what the game is all about. Don't use nonduality to strengthen the underlying ego-structures (of self-judgement and judgement of the world). Oneness has absolutely zero value from the intellectual standpoint. But at the same time its incredibly practical. If you're distancing yourself from the world/people and become more bitter by the day. You might want to contemplate whether you really get the teachings. (Even though the distancing of oneself and self-denial can be an important step in the process to integrate..)

But the perspective of the Source, isn't that already obvious from a nonduality perspective? No! Because the ego deals with the level of thoughts and remains trapped there. So this is a for me new perspective I experience. And of course, it's not only my own thoughts being created by the Source. It's everybody's thoughts! So when we are running around in ego consciousness believing that we think independently from each other, that's a total illusion! It's Source, like a big projector projecting all our thoughts into existence along with the entire physical world.

Nonduality teacher Francis Lucille said that the mind doesn't create. It's the Source that creates the thoughts, he said. That made me able to recognize that my ego and my thoughts are created from Source! That's a kind of meta perspective, but it's more than that, because an ordinary meta perspective can still be on a conceptual level, meaning still the ego thinking at a meta level. The perspective of Source is to sense as an experience that all of one's thoughts, the sense of a personal self and the entire physical world are created by the Source.

Here I found a short Sufi presentation of nonduality. Very similar to what I have found in other spiritual traditions and very clear.

I had the same thought as Leo: tell them about Spiral Dynamics! I think most stage Green people sense that they're the most "progressed" one can be at the moment, except for maybe a handful of unobtainable enlightened masters living in ashrams somewhere. To teach them the spiral and open their eyes to the 2nd tier could be a game changer itself. I'm almost finished reading Wilbur's Integral Life Practice book. It does such a beautiful job of distilling all of Wilbur's complex concepts into a very practical and approachable book that I presume most stage Green people could resonate with. Thinking about life integrally could help one begin to shift. If they're spiritual and especially if they have Christian roots, I highly recommend Richard Rohr's book Falling Upward about the "two halves" of life. Rohr, who has taught Spiral Dynamics, nonduality and other integral maps, basically talks about the difference between 1st tier and 2nd tier but does so in his own words which are very approachable and inspiring. I read this book before I discovered Spiral Dynamics or any of Leo's work, and it was the book that made me understand why I suddenly felt so disconnected from Stage Green. It was a small miracle that it came to me at exactly the right time when I was transitioning into Yellow. Lastly, in additional to psychedelics, another consciousness-shifting transformational experience for me was a 4 day vision quest via Animas Valley. Bill Plotkin started Animas and has some amazing books about Soul Initiation, which doesn't entirely overlap with SD 2nd tier but is certainly heading in that direction. The Animas vision quest programs are incredibly powerful and life changing experiences. Good luck!

Suffering is a result of individual control, for the reality of the situation is that no separate control is possible so it inevitably leads to conflict, strife, friction and effort spent on an illusion. A Course in Miracles mentions several times that suffering including pain is an ego trait. Many nonduality teachers make a distinction between pain and suffering, and that's valid since suffering can be seen as the psychological reaction while pain is a physical sensation. With integral nonduality it's possible to add development, evolution and progress. Integral nonduality is a more complete model. Ordinary nonduality teachings I have found lack evolution and progress. The danger with that is that it can lead to a false kind of acceptance of pain. With integral nonduality it's possible to treat pain as a warning signal indicating that growth and development is needed.

I really like the things he talks about cinema. For example, how violence or tragedy can act as a character. also, how the things he’s going through in his life has to intertwine with the movie he’s making. And as far as LP is concerned, I can’t think of a better example of someone who is on the right track. This even has a nonduality touch to it lol

If nonduality could be explained, no one would believe it. You & a universe is two. Nothing is emerging to dismiss. I love creation, I’m not dismissing it. I’m saying there aren’t two. Dogma is the opposite of inspecting direct experience, or, nonduality. Yes, the idea of reincarnation is not the direct experience of it, just like everything else. Direct experience requires seeing through beliefs. Direct experience is ‘correct’, because it is direct experience. If direct experience is deception, then the direct experience is that of deception. There’s no direct experience of a brain, sans a thought, ‘brain’. The ‘brain’ appears to, but does not produce. What is can’t be predicted, it’s already what is. 100%. ?

Enlightenment will suprise you. What it really is. Ain't gonna shoot that video. Still didn't found dominas for that. What kind of nonduality genre is that. Stick to basics.

Ok thanks for idea for new nonduality video.

There’s no one to understand or define nonduality. That’d be two. Nonduality is a pointing, not a concept. The word doesn’t suggest what it is, only what it is not. If it is a concept, follow the pointing until it isn’t. Stop looking at the finger and see the moon, sts. An idea can not be perceived any more than perception can be thought. You can mistake reality for your ideas everywhere you look, yes. You don’t have to though. The universe is an appearance. There are no process, there is an idea that there are processes. It’d all be as it is, without the idea or label. Ideas aren’t wrong or right, that in and of itself is an idea. The universe has no processes. There are no humans. Start from what is actual, now. Notice evolution is a back story, not anything which can be pointed to. The actuality of anything pointed to, is now. That there is a past comes in as an idea, about now. There are not-two. We observing some thing, any thing, is twoness. All twoness is apparent. This is why moms & dads are called a-parent. You created yourself, and not even. Nonduality is not a concept. Your insistence that it is, is the point. Yes & yes there is. When all beliefs are seen through and as such disappear, only truth remains, and not even. Universe is a thought. A universe has never existed or been witness or observed. “Understanding itself”, is twoness. What is, simply is, itself. There is not that ‘me’ or that ‘universe experiencing through it’, not-two. Like this...there is nothing to get around.