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The first rule of the Dunning-Kruger club is you don't know you're in the Dunning-Kruger club. Then again, no matter what anyone says nor realizes, they have always been enlightened. Please, don't make a nonduality war of this thread. https://www.actualized.org/forum/topic/7461-nonduality-wars-not-allowed-here/

? awesome Glad to hear, thank you too. ? My crusade was in the "experience is never direct" thread, but it doesn't really explain the relativity thing. The best explanations that I know of are the buddhist "Emptiness" philosophy, and Jed McKenna's book "Theory of Everything". The buddhist philosophy is dry, boring, long-winded and contemplation-heavy, Jed's books are easy and funny. Also Buddhists generally think their philosophy is the truth, when in my view it's really just a corrective. Another bomb that destroys the universe. But I didn't realize that until after I had read Jed's ToE, chapter Agrippa's Trilemma (that's basically a no-nonsense approach to the same conclusion). Alan Watts is, among other things, an accessible introduction to emptiness and the interdependent origination of duality. David Quinn's version of causality is essentially the same thing, although he makes the same mistake as the buddhists: http://www.naturalthinker.net/dquinn/Books/Wisdom/WisdomContents.htm Greg Goode has books, articles and references about it if you really want to explore the literature and philosophy: https://greg-goode.com/topic/nonduality/ And of course my personal favorite, Jed, who skips all the extraneous mindgames and gets right down to brass tax: https://www.wisefoolpress.com/toe/ Another way of saying bottomless regression, is lack of foundation, or something from nothing. Perhaps the easiest way to get at the impossibility of strange loops (which extends to the impossibility of duality, finiteness, relativity, etc.), is to consider this image that someone else posted recently: When both hands are dependent upon eachother for their own existence, then it's a chicken/egg problem. That's bottomless regression, a.k.a. lack of foundation, a.k.a. something from nothing. And that's also at the core of buddhist emptiness and dependent origination. Neither one of those two hands in the picture could ever come into being without the other, which means that neither of them can exist at all. The key point here is that when you think about it, it's exactly the same with everything else. If you understand why those hands could never exist, then you understand why the universe could never exist. Hence the term "ground of being". When it becomes clear that being is groundless, and that this is an impossibility, you go looking for the ground, i.e. the foundation, i.e. the truth underlying all of reality without which it would be impossible. And the only possible candidate for that is consciousness.

@Member @dyslexicCnut Please go back to the topic, nonduality wars like this are not allowed here.

Everything from God-mode, becoming nonduality, to itching, to gas pain... is That. It is one, perfect, and beyond all comprehension.

Yes, but only everything that actually exists. Marlon Brando is not actually The Godfather. It's just Marlon Brando. There's no duality there, only Brando exists. Godfather is just Brando pretending. That doesn't validate the existence of The Godfather one iota, and it's not a duality or distinction that needs "collapsing" or reconciling one way or another. There never was a godfather, it was always just Marlon Brando pretending. Godfather is pure fabrication. The movie on a videotape is just videotape. There is no movie other than the videotape. No duality, no need to reconcile them. The videotape exists, the movie doesn't, except as a facade of the videotape. The movie is pure fabrication, can't possibly exist in its own right, and is thereby proof of the videotape even if nobody in the movie ever "experienced" the video tape. Nonduality refers to the videotape, not the movie. At most you could say that the movie is an expression of the videotape, and as such included in the nondual nature of the videotape. If appearance is anything, it's consciousness pretending. Sort of. Form is formless pretending. They are not identical in truth, one is a facade of the other, and only the other exists so no need to reconcile them. Relativity is the absolute pretending. Still no duality, still no actual relativity. It was always just the absolute pretending. Sort of. The absolute never actually does anything, it just imagines to be doing everything. Still no duality, still no need to reconcile. Only the absolute exists, relativity never did. Reality is not a strange loop, it only appears as a strange loop. Strange loop is the facade. Infinite regression is not the same as actual infinity. The former can't exist, the latter must exist. A strange loop is infinite regression. Relativity is infinite regression. Two hands drawing eachother is infinite regression. Escher's stairs are infinite regression. Duality is infinite regression. Infinite regression is not absolute, it is impossible. Infinity is absolute and necessary. Come on it's not that difficult... ?

Oh yeah I get this. In experience the I that unifies all forms of experience is not experienced as a space, I am just using the word for lack of a better one. Definitely I don't mean a physical space when i say this word. But yes there is one reality. It's definitely not dual. Waking dream, just as dream at night, only appears to be there, while it's only dreamlike /hallucinatory/nonexistory which makes it of the same substance as that nothingness that we start with! Just as a dream It only appears to be real while the dream state is happening. Amazing ?? nothing came out of nothing after all Maybe my flavour of nonduality is a bit different, and probably more escapist if I have to be honest. I say this because from what I heard you say the world is real and there is no self type of nonduality, but I say the self is real and there is no world... Which is probably the same thing in the end somehow ... ? lol

This "space" isn't space. It's nowhere and nothing. YES! But it's not a space. It is nowhere. Nowhere is the perciever/subject. But notice, this now creates a new duality: nowhere (space) vs the stuff in it. So this is not yet full nonduality. For full nonduality you must realize that all the form is itself identical to the "space" in which it occurs. If you are distinguishing space from its contents, that is still duality. In the final awakening you must realizing that absolute indifference between form and formlessness. If you distinguish the "space" from the ego, that is a duality. No-self = True Self When everything collapses into ONE, there are no more parts. Your mind is trying to grasp at parts but Unity cannot have any. That's why this is so confusing for you. You are trying to grasp Infinity using the mind but that cannot ever work because the mind itself is entangled with the question. There cannot even be 1) a mind, and 2) a thing which the mind grasps. Since that is still duality. Things ARE mind! The chair is not happening in the mind. The chair IS mind. The end.

I think I will ask Stephen Wolfram or look at their scientific papers about if their model explains consciousness. Their model is an abstract graph, a no-thing one might say, so it's already compatible with consciousness. One simple solution is to say that the graph is an appearance of consciousness. And that consciousness is the entire graph observing the manifestation of itself. That's nonduality! And consciousness is then infinite while the manifested world is always finite.

I read that Ashtavakra Gita is a very ancient text of Advaita Vedanta which is a nonduality philosophy. Here is one quote from that text: At first it appears that this verse describes how we are not the body. And then it gets tricky because, wait a minute, if the self is separate from the body, isn't that duality? Then the interpretation can go even one step further and examine, what is the body? And then it's recognized that the body is a concept! And concepts are empty. There is no body as a separate object. In this way there are (at least) three possible levels of interpreting that quote: 1) Consciousness is separate from the body and the text is correct, 2) Consciousness and the physical world including the body are one (nonduality) and the text is incorrect, and 3) there is no body as a separate object and therefore the self is distinct from that notion and the text is correct.

Words are concepts. And concepts are labels which by themselves are empty. And even when concepts describe objects, those objects are themselves empty. There are no actual separate objects. For example the word 'apple' applied to a particular apple existing in physical reality, that apple is not a separate object. Nonduality teacher Ramesh Balsekar used to say that what anyone has said at any time, whatever any guru has said at any time, is a concept.

Now you’re gettin somewhere. How is nonduality a paradigm? Where / what is the “psychological domain”? How is “the psychological domain” not a paradigm, and not an appearance? If there are just appearances, there’s no remaining question regarding authenticity. If one is in the materialist paradigm, identified as the body mind, there is suffering and therefore there are questions regarding authenticity.

working with deities, spirit, and magic ‎ before I start this post is not for beginners or people who don't believe in spirit and magic ‎‎please ignore this post if you don't have your own experience in this subject introduction, few years I ago started watching Leo, it started with self-help video to psychedelic experience and ‎after having few experiences lead me to nonduality so I disbelieved every religion and throw all shit about gods and demons to the trash ‎ I used to have a psychedelic trip every now and then and between I used to practiced kriya - meditation ‎everything was ‎great ‎ with yoga, I also started using a mantra. like aum and aum namashiva ya ‎ at that time I didn't know what is shiva why the fuck I’m saying his name however I could see the result ‎‎of saying the mantra how it affects my energy that bothers me a little, why saying some name has an ‎effect ‎on me! so I wanted to dive more into finding the truth I started working with energy and astral projection to ‎‎investigate and to have my own experience of the beyond ‎ after I had my few experiences with astral projection, I met a few spirits, and then it hit me that’ spirit exists!! ‎ and I started learning and reading about magic and how to invoke spirits and it opens a new doorway for me it just boosted everything in my spiritual practices ‎ once I had ( sex ) with one of the spirits and it just ignited my kundalini ( I already had few experiences with ‎‎kundalini ) but no as powerful. and with spirit, I realized deity may actuality exist !! ‎ so I start working with on that learning how to invoke them and it happens like wow ‎ all these years I disbelieved everything about religion and now I started to have my own experience with “god” and ‎demons ‎ like I worked with shiva, kali, Lilith, Beelzebub ‎( god and demons are not the correct words to use but I’m using it to explain my view ) ‎ it becomes reality in my day to day life and just having astral projection with the spirit or even ‎ for them to manifest themselves in our psychical word ‎ I came to understand that diety actually exist and they can help us to reach our goals if you give you them ‎the respect and offer them something deity just part of us, we are using part of us to help ourselves, it's not like a guy in the sky doing ‎what he wants! ‎ for example, when invoking shiva I go to this high state of consciousness like I’m on LSD or something ‎powerful ‎ I know at some point I need to overcome this, however, they can be a great help if you are stuck in one point one thing I realized even in magic they still have a lot of dogma! like this deity is better than this or don't deal ‎with x because he is a demon the duality between ( white magic, black (dark) magic ) ‎or ( gods and demons) ‎ deity and magic can boost everything to the point it may become overwhelming ‎ and it's not like psychedelic there's no going down after few hours it becomes your reality like endless trip and its really hard to go back when you open the gate ‎ I will not say you will not have a bad experience in terms of (your ego), however, usually like any bad trip you will learn from it, ‎ ‎ ‎ my point is if you do not believe in diety or magic it's okay you can approach the truth by many methods ‎ diety will not interfere in your life you don't want to, it's you who decide that, however, magic is a different subject I only heard Leo sometime talk about angels and witches before and the “ ultimate god” ‎never heard him talk about deities also in this forum why people avoid working with magic and diety as its some bullshit or taboo?‎ Why there is not a lot of people talk about this I had dig really deep to get my hand on some of the books or meet some people. ‎ also why people still have a problem dealing with “evil spirit “ for example lucifer or demons if ‎‎they can boost and help you as much as the deities? ‎ why all dogma even in magic? ‎ ‎ ‎I apologize for my English thank you ‎

First Class: Notes So in this entry, I'm going to be jotting down my notes I took in class. I'm going to meditate on this and then post my reactions later on because there is just so much to soak up. It's isn't so much in the sense there is a lot of content but so much in the sense that the few things I heard takes some time to really sink in to the psyche. "Your consciousness is located in your reality and it creates your reality." consciousness is not limited to your brain-> your reality is within your consciousness thought is a form of consciousness itself What are the distinctions of subjective and objective reality? we like to see the external as something out there and separate from us but what if your external world and internal world are one and the same? our external experiences have impacted out internal sense of self My additional thoughts: our internal sense of self shapes out perspective of external experiences and how we interact with those experiences therefore our internal selves become our external reality. (law of attraction, psychology etc.) Who you are flows into your external reality "Of course it is happening inside your head but why on earth should that mean it's not real?"- Dumbledore "There is a deep part of us we aren't aware of even though it is part of awareness itself." What is God?: God is consciousness Idealism: everything is made of consciousness idea is also preset in many Eastern traditions west: we all live in out own worlds, out own reality cognitive psych: out brain chemistry makes our reality-> what is that made of-> materialism says atom and molecules don't have consciousness-> then what makes the mind? We can't quantify it but we know its real -> We can't make sense of reality through materialism-> examine thoughts and feelings-> "I think, therefore, I am" (Descartes) Problem with Materialism/ "Hard Problem" east: there is one consciousness that flows through all of us, making a consistent reality avoids the "hard problem" I also thought of nonduality William James: father of psych, professor at Harvard, brother of Henry James, gave first psych class, American philosopher stream of consciousness Our experiences and lives have continuity. It's like a stream There was no time where we broke off and stopped being ourselves (gradual changes, flowing changes, again think of a stream) introspection as a tool to observe consciousness-> Meditation "we are always present but the present is always changing" We are always changing the present is all there is (reminds me of the notion of how both the past and future are imaginary) Distinction between knower and the known If you're your experiences, then who is the one experiencing? How do you know the knower? without the knower we don't know anything without consciousness, we don't know anything if the knower is consciousness itself "Consciousness is the purest form of the knower. The knower is the purest form of consciousness" it is not an it: once you put a label to it, it becomes something outside of you > very self evident, but also very elusive Ok so I'm done for today. I'm going to be right back and have an existential crisis lol

I feel suffering instead of feeling the Holy Spirit. Jesus ran around filled with the Holy Spirit. We too should be running around with the Holy Spirit. What is the Holy Spirit? A Course in Miracles defines it as: My own definition is that the Holy Spirit is the increase of complexity that is going on all the time in the present moment. I mentioned previously about the Holy Spirit being the same as dharma. Now I found another candidate: the Holy Spirit is the same as shakti! How can we connect with the Holy Spirit? We are already connected! The Holy Spirit is the whole force of the manifestation of the Word of God, which creates everything. It's "just" the ego that seemingly blocks the access. What I have been able to practice is to observe my own ego. My intent at the moment is to continue to observe my ego and see if the Holy Spirit can start flowing within me. (Actually the ego too is the result of the Holy Spirit in nonduality but the ego is a false belief system.)

A Course in Miracles seldom uses the term consciousness, but it does use the word mind a lot. ACIM expert David Hoffmeister said that Jesus is getting tougher and tougher in His teachings. And ultimately Jesus says that we are not body, mind and spirit. We are mind, Jesus says. Nonduality teacher Roger Castillo has also mentioned that ACIM gets more advanced in later lessons. That's accurate! To say body, mind and spirit, that's duality. And my definition of mind includes everything we experience in consciousness, so with that definition the body is a part of the mind, just as ACIM says. The only difference then is that I make a distinction between consciousness as the state of being aware and mind as the content experienced in consciousness. ACIM seems to include consciousness in the concept of mind, which is a more nondual description than I use (or at least have used).

It's an amazing technique. I do this on shamanic breathing. Give Beige a try. It loops to absolute nonduality.

It looks like the elites want the society to be confronted. Divide and conquer. right vs left zoomers vs boomers antifa vs patriots blacks vs whites democrats vs republicans I see it daily in twitter (the most cancerous social media ever), but also in news depending of the political trend of the newspaper or Tv. Whenever I see an unfair new or certain politician saying crazy things I get angry and this ruins my day. And the worst is the fake news created by each side to create more hate. It's easy to fall into their trap when the ego gets attached to an ideology and creates an identity from this. Even spiritual people like Leo I've seen falling into hatred towards Trump. Today pondering the situation I realized it's better for emotional wellbeing to ignore the news. I have my own moral principles and this will make me join one side If I fall in the confrontation trap. From a meta perspective it's a cognitive dissonance to understand nonduality and fall into the division traps whenever we are "off guard".

Wait a minute! What if the nonduality teachers are WRONG? The idea of nonduality seems correct to me, but the claim that the individual doesn't get liberated or enlightened might be a false perspective. Because consider integral transcend and include. Then the individual self gets included even in spiritual enlightenment. And I got an insight of how it might work. Just like how we can take a conscious breath it's I propose possible to from a liberated state to consciously take an individual perspective. And when doing so there is an individual self. Not as a separate entity but still as an experienced process. So I will experiment with consciously shifting perspectives. And this I think is possible even with reality being deterministic. If I choose to take a conscious breath for example that's a different experience than when my breathing goes on subconsciously. And that difference is still there even in a deterministic scenario.

This is not for anyone advanced but perhaps for those who are confused a bit about what this awareness "thing" is and where it resides. In any case I think this contemplation brings a certain clarity and helps with self inquiry. To be honest, they do say that having a beginner's mindset is very important, so perhaps this is for everyone. We all know we are humans in time, with different stories and whatnot.. With past and future. A materialist might say this. I agree from one perspective that is the case. But ok now, that's not interesting, let's go into another dimension now, rather than the horizontal dimension of time. Lets go further and deeper into this moment right now, the vertical dimension, to see what we actually are at this moment and not what we are in the story of time. Here, now, we can see that there are different sensations, perceptions, feelings, thoughts, sounds, sights, etc etc... All subjective objects of experience. All of those different objects have something in common, right? They might be completely different - sound and thought, sight and touch.. But they are all happening to you, correct? All happening in the field of your awareness, otherwise you wouldn't know about them, So the common thing in all objects of experience is you. You are that unifying thing. What could this be? Inquiring into that self which unifies all objects of experience now is what true self inquiry is. If you are doing self inquiry, but at the same time look at yourself as the human in time, your self inquiry will yield wrong results, since all stories and all time are just another one of those subjective objects that appear to you (as the unifying awareness) Now. Not sure this makes sense to others but I see in this a lot of clarity and I was able to get my friend who is fanatical about time and very egoic to see for the first time that I am not talking just crap when I speak about the true self, but there is really something interesting there to investigate. It was a real breakthrough, so it might help someone else who is stuck also. Ps: I noticed that acknowledging his worldview is correct in one perspective helped for him to be open to entertain something else. Perhaps this thread can also be about how best to share and present nonduality to people who are worshipping duality and wouldn't even hear it.

Richard Dawkins said in this video that he doesn't believe in free will. But he also said that he believes that things are determined by antecedent events. Antecedent means happened before, so that means cause and effect from past to future. Dawkins didn't say that he believes that all things are caused by antecedent events, but if that is what he meant then I think that's incorrect! And even the sense of free will may be a hint of causation not only from the past but also from the future. From a nondual perspective causation is a result of all of reality as a wholeness. And also, in nonduality there is no separate "me" being able to have free will and Leo also mentioned that in one of his videos.

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.