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Ok, I get what you're saying. We are not the layers of the onion, whe are the dream/structure of the onion. If you think you can only edge nonduality but not enter it, then you haven't had a real full glimpse yet. Because once you are there there's just nothingness, the dream, divinity or oneness. You can be in 100% nonduality. I have had glimpses of it and I guarantee it. Ask enlightened people, they are going to tell you, you're all the way IT. Even the glimpses show you that it's no edge its IT. There no closeness or approximation to it. You can be full INTO it. It's absolute, I can't communicate it, it's absolute. Once you're close, merge with it, let it fill everything, surrender to it or whatever your spiritual practice tells you. I promise, ask enlightened people (I'm not I just had glimpses of a part of "IT")

We are the one thing there is, there's no way we couldn't be. We always are. Everything is in fact... But when experience exists, the appearance of duality appears. Toad venom white void = white + something observing the white. When the white is gone there is nothing to observe and hence no observING, and there is the Absolute ground. That is the total return to the Absolute. We exist as localizations, when a localization ends, it is no longer localized but everywhere and everything. If seeing were not localized there'd be no seeing possible. Like the beach dream, as soon as you see any part of beach there is the observed (the beach) and an observer. When duality is gone, there is no observed, so no observer, hence Nothingness. When in that white void, the whiteness is the final bastion of this localization. White ends and it ends. And you are then Everything, but it's experienced as Nothing like a time gap while under general anaesthetic.

I'm an alcoholic. Take my word. I am kind of spiritually lucky. Experienced nothingness with 16 and remember infinity during feaver when I was a child. I drink 2-3 liters of beer every day. Even when you're sober you cannot meditate. You need abstinance to have your maximum level of concentration/consciousness. Alcohol makes you depressed. When you're drunk you can't be conscious, and thd day(s) after you're drunk you can't be conscious or meditate. Of course it depends on the quantity. But this only damages your "progress" tremendously. I have an EEG at home I can show you the difference in brainwaves when I am drunk, when I drank the day before and when I am sober for a few days. The difference is ENORMOUS. So take my advice alcohol will not bring you 1 millimeter further, in fact it will bring you miles away from consciousness. It's ridiculous how big of an impact it makes. If you need further proof I can document it with my EEG and my personal experience. But until I find the motivation to do it, you'll just have to trust me when I say that for enlightenment/awakening, alcohol is the biggest hindrance possible (unless you take other drugs I haven't tried)

We are there it's the ground. Experience always appears as duality. In deep mystical states you might be nothingness in a white void. There is experience of white, and hence something observing white. Still an appearance of duality even though the boundary of self is subjectively gone and the white is "you". Cessation is nonduality. That is where we reside always.

Why make it so complicated. Just call it an experience even though there is no experienceR. Is a change in perception not an experience? I kind of get what you're pointing to, but it probably doesn't help those who haven't had a significant awakening yet. Nothingness transcends time. So there's no going in and out because the dream structure transcends the dream time and dream causality. However, from the subjective perspective the dream starts and the dream ends once you're back into the dream. Knowing that you're dreaming transcends the content of a dream but it still happens within a dream. You know that you know within a dream. So it's still something you go through within the dream. You can't lucid dream without a dream. Call it a meta experience then... I don't mean to attack your hypothesis of god, but this is more confusing than useful. It's describing the moon instead of pointing the finger towards the moon. I also don't like refering to awakening as God, because people have misconstrued God and have underlying ideas about her. (I say "her" deliberately misleading to confuse people so that they get that God doesn't have any attributes [like gender].)

You can only get close to it. When duality stops existing, experience cannot occur. Consider a dream of a beach. The very moment you see the beach you are localized at some point within it, and there is an appearance of duality. If duality ceased, it would be impossible for you to see the beach at all because seeing is an experience, and experience creates experiencer and duality. When there is no appearance of duality there is only everythingness which = nothingness as above. That nothingness is the same state entered during general anaesthetic. We don't come "out of" nothingness and "go back" into it (there is nowhere to come out of or go to), we are all currently as we speak in a state of something like general anaesthetic. That is the ground, the foundation. We are always nothing, but something appears, and when that something appears duality appears and then it is possible for there to be an experience of something, and thus an experiencer. Who is looking through your eyes, hearing through your ears? The Absolute ("God") is. Not you AND God. Just God. You are an illusion, there's no such thing as a "you". There is only God. Where are your dead loved ones? Your dead loved ones are looking through your eyes. They are God, and so are "you". What you call "you" is merely something God experiences, God tastes with your tongue, feels your emotions, smells with your nose. God experiences your brain and hence your memories and body and so on. All of these things are inside of God and made of God... How could God possibly create something outside of itself or with anything but itself? There is no space so nowhere else to place anything. There is nothing else in existence so it can only craft something with itself. There is nothing else at all.

THE FEELING OF NOTHINGNESS “When the Work says that a man must come to realize his own nothingness before he can be re-born, it does not mean that he must humble himself and so on, but that he must by long self-observation actually begin to realize that he is nothing and that there is no such person as himself. The object of this is to get into a position, psycho- logically speaking, between the opposites...Why is it so important to get somewhere into the centre of the pendulum and not swing to and fro? Because here, between the opposites, lie all the possibilities of growth. Here influences from higher levels can reach us. Here, in this place where one can feel one’s own nothingness (and where one is therefore free from contradictions), influences and meanings com- ing from higher centres, which have no contradictions, can be felt. Not regarding yourself as good or bad, not priding yourself on being just or otherwise, not thinking you are well-treated or badly-treated, not being caught by either movement through identifying, you come into this mid-position. This is not easy! With personality active, it is impossible.” V. 1, p. 329 - Maurice Nicoll Taken from - https://inner-world-books.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Gems_of_Wisdom.pdf

Good looking out and that's actually a great thing to point out on a thread like this...❤ Yes absolutely, nothingness or emptiness can be turned into a concept or ideology to attach to, or into a form of detachment or denial. But that's not what's being pointed to here, what's being pointed to, transcends the idea of there even being an individual or a something that could cling or attach to a concept or belief. It's an attempt to slice through the illusion at its root. (identification as a separate individual)

@VeganAwake Yeah, saw this gem. Though 'emptiness'/'nothingness' may be an island to cling to, no writing on you.

That would be true if everything you do and happens depends on environment and conditions. You forget you can make new thoughts out of nothingness. We have unlimited imagination to work with. There is always free will when you can make a duck out of nothingness in your mind. We are definitely robots, what you are explaining is how a robot society would work.

Subjective truths are important IMO. I don't really care to purposefully use Absolutist terminology to describe things... The Absolute is nothingness anyway so describing anything in those terms is futile. You may as well consider yourself to be the brain because relatively speaking that is how it is. There is no conflict between this and non-duality, none whatsoever. Leo's best video IMO is where he said God is looking through your eyes. That hits home for me. What is seeing through my eyes and experiencing my brain is God. However, if I mentally reduced myself to God I'd be nothing (because God is nothing), so what is the point of that? While in a localized form, relative truths are all that matter unless you want to use Absolute truths to psychologically help you in some way. They're not actually really helpful lol, apart from when it comes to the "big questions" and dead loved ones etc.

It does make alot of sense when you put it that way and I cant say other then I mostly agree on what you are saying here. Like what can possibly exist without an awareness of its surrounding? Experiences ive had clearly points to the fact that it is conciousness that it is extremely empty/nothingness like space and everything in it is imagined in one way or another. It is like empty space but full of possibility. It has a certain order or structure to it. Atleast this dream universe has. I wonder what dreams might come next it is just "sad" that I wont know how this dream went when another one starts. Perhaps there is some sort of akashic record with all the memories from this dream and others which one can access, I certainly see it as a possibility. Either way conciousness is immortal and eternal no matter if its in pure nothingness or in "GOD" mode. Tat tvam asi ?

@Adamq8 Nice reference to Donald Hoffman. I enjoy his speeches. I think though that with many teachers, what makes the idea inaccessible to "hardnosed scientific" type people, is that they say experience only has correlation in physical matter in a way that makes it seem like they're implying physical matter has no bearing at all on experience. I don't think you need to deny the science of the external world or neuroscience etc. for nonduality to be true. In fact, because this "dream" (the universe) IS God, science is perhaps one of the most divine practices of all alongside meditation, as exploration of the science of this universe is very literally an exploration of God, since God IS it. I do not see any issue if the brain does in fact control what this "localized form" experiences. I do not see that it is any issue whatsoever or that it is contrary to nonduality in any way. Matter is made of consciousness, the brain is simply millions of years of evolution constructing a sort of superorganism where millions of points of experience work as one unit. There isn't a combination problem because the little points of experience don't vanish... The combination problem is like hypothesizing that animals like horses are just one single giant cell. In reality, it is millions of cells, none of the smaller cells vanish when they come together as that horse. Not only do I think it's possible, I think it is FACTUAL. I think most robots are conscious. Think of this... If there is a little robot vacuum cleaner, it moves around on wheels and has a laser sensor that detects when there is an object ahead so that it can turn. When that laser detects a wall and sends a signal to the robot's chip, it turns. Why? Because it is AWARE that there is a wall ahead. It has KNOWLEDGE that a wall is ahead. If there was zero awareness that a wall is ahead, it wouldn't turn it would just run straight into it because it doesn't know the wall is there. Because it is so alien to us this is almost impossible to understand, but I do not see how it could be any other way. By dictionary definition, that little robot is displaying an act of awareness. How could it not be? So inside that robot there is a localized form of consciousness. When the robot is turned off, the localization is no more, like a whirpool in a river (whirpools being localized in the stream) going away leaving just river. When our brains are turned off, the localization is no more. Consciousness and qualia all exist inside God which is "nothingness" and the "place" where things go when there is nothing to experience them like the example of red.

But then we have the other side of the coin and if we borrow a terminology from the hindus, a saguna brahman. That is brahman with infinite qualities, infinite being with infinite conciousness and infinite experiences. Which is an infinite mind as well. I really like the saguna/nirguna brahman teachings. Nirguna is more of a principle and saguna is the active part of brahman. Nirguna=non being perhaps Saguna = GOD as it is traditionally known. Perhaps you created the universe and this is a play since there is nothing to do. Either bliss forever within itself or create exciting dreams where there are others and you forgot your true nature. I think the both theories can be combined into one unified whole which can include Nothingness and everythingness. An infinite fractal and it is also a holon. That makes sense to me ? Infinite candy store with infinite possibilitys of horror,bliss,excitment,universes etc.

@RMQualtrough But the general anaesticia is a "jump" In concious awareness, there is no possibility to remain in an unconcious state since it is like time travel. What does that say about the nature of conciousness in my opinion? That conciousness can not experience unconciousness. But still there are people who has OBE's or remain as a silent witness through anesthesia as well so it is not really a valid argument for nothingness either, my GF was awake during surgery even tho she didnt feel anything and she was put to sleep. A more valid point would be the cessation in meditation, but that as well may last for an eternity but it is not possible to "experience" it in that manner. I like your theory btw. Some teachers/lineages talk about the Absolute prior to conciousness but they also claim that it is an awareness with infinite potential and that conciousness is its agent. Perhaps it is the case of a nothingness that exist or that it is being and non being at the same time and both and neither as it is said. Perhaps nothingness is the "ground", maybe it is more of a principle then a being. Like pure GOD in it self might not be a being but an creative principle that has no other choice then to actualize its infinite potential since it is not a being. If that is the case then it is safe to conclude imo that conciousness is reality and it has always been since the Absolute is outside of time and space and it does what it does since it is what it is haha if you get me. God is perhaps existence and non existence but transcend both. It is a radical thing which kinda is impossible to grab. But the Absolute produces dreams and different universes and it is not two and then you are IT always and forever since time is the dream. To paraphrase Donald Hoffmans statement : We are like kids in an infinite candy store ready to explore for all of eternity ?? There is no end to conciousness since there is no possibility to experience the absence of conciousness forever, then it is just experience happening to no one. I think that it is possible to experience without a body and brain, why wouldnt it? What would say that is not possible? You can experience yourself as a glass of orange juice lol. So experience is the only thing that can happen since the Absolute is more or less like non existence to us, it is a principle and a produces infinite dreams and universes. Nice conversation btw i really enjoy it. ?

I am theorizing it's deeper than experience. It's just "nothingness". It is consciousness by nature but without experience there isn't experiencer. Consciousness then exists but in a manner similar to how we experience general anaesthetic? Anyway consider this... Consider that humans are the ONLY things in the entire universe that can see red. If all humans stopped existing, the qualia of red can't be found anywhere anymore, it vanishes. If a human is magically born again, red reappears. In between those stages, the qualia of red "ceases". I am theorizing that in that period where there are no humans it returns to the Absolute/God where it """doesn't exist""". God contains ALL and infinite qualia whether they are being experienced or not. Right now you can envision there very literally are infinite colors but they are all in God and not being experienced. But they have the potential to be. In some other reality perhaps it is. But where red "goes to" when nothing experiences it is the default and the Absolute. It is where our localized forms come from and go to. This dream is a dream of the "science universe" and experience happening inside this dream is localized here so adheres to the rules of this dream. E.g. gravity etc. And brains are just one such thing that exists which has "experience". Where there is experience there must be "experiencer", and the qualia is pulled from "God" (nothingness). Kill the brain and localization of experience etc ends and it goes back to where that red goes when nothing perceives it. What do you think of that? Perhaps consciousness isn't fundamental. Perhaps consciousness is just a possible quality of "God". And God is nothing.

Dream is metaphorical here. From inside of the dream is duality. I saw Leo say in a video, that "God" is what is looking through our eyes. I get that. That thing is one and absolute. The eyes and human it is sensing is finite and localized. Like in a dream we humans have, how could you possibly experience anything without being localized somewhere? E.g. something Spira said, if there is a dream of a beach, the moment you see the beach you are somewhere localized inside that dream. The second you have any experience there is duality. Without duality when things return to a total nondual state, there is cessation. Call this universe the "science dream". This is a dream where math, matter, space and time exists. Experience that happens inside here conforms to the universe it is happening in. It just so happens that in here, matter came together to create forms. The matter IS consciousness but it has no experience so if we could experience an atom's relative view it would be permanently in "Nirvana" (void/nothingness). It does not mean it is not consciousness it just has no experience (I am assuming). When matter formed complex lifeforms and experience began to occur, consciousness is localized inside where that experience happens. Like the dream of a beach thing, say there is some disembodied sight receptacle floating around a mountain, as soon as that exists, consciousness is localized into that point where there is experiencer and experience (the experience being the vision of the mountain). Complex lifeforms are millions or perhaps billions of points of experience working together as a singular unit. As you destroy the brain you are wittling away elements of localized consciousness. When localized consciousness is destroyed it stops being localized and is immediately sent back to the One, Absolute, Infinite, "God". There is no issue I can see with brains literally causing localized experience. It is not creating the qualia or consciousness itself. Or is there an issue with that theory?

What if there is nothing but experiencing? Experience experiences experience ??? What if the universe is only experience and experience has always been forever and ever. What if nothingness is just a construction? Not saying that this is true. Have you ever in your entire life had something that is not an experience? What if prior to your birth you had a different experience but the memory is not clear on that? What if the universe is a field of phenomenal conciousness and there is naught else but experience? The universal mind, the unconcious in jungian terms, it is not unconcious as in not conciousness, but it is not a self reflective conciousness, "meta conciousness " but it is phenomenal conciousness, just like in a dream, you only know you are dreaming when you become lucid, exactly like in life when awakening occurs, then you become lucid also. There is nothing else but phenomenal conciousness and it is always moving and changing aka impermance. The universal field is a transpersonal infinity of phenomenal conciousness, that is obvious in psychedelic trips, dreams, NDE's etc. What if reality is experience and there is nothing else? Conciousness is the substratum of reality, it can go infinitely "low" and infinitely "high" There is no limit to what kind of experiences thats possible. Everything is brahman and that thou art.

YOU The brain IS consciousness. Consciousness changes itself. That's what consciousness ever does. It's more radical than that. With a deep enough awakening you will realize there never was a brain to destroy. And then you are Everythingness, yes. The "experiencer" is God/YOU, AKA Nothingness. It is made within YOU right now as you imagine it, yes. There is if you imagine it. A thing can only exist within consciousness. There is no such thing as non-existence. Only Existence. Existence is Absolute. It is already Nothing.

I was just doing a little thought experiment assuming that this waking world is literally a dream. All of it, all matter etc is part of the dream. All aspects of us apart from pure consciousness (the dreamer) are part of the dream. Seeing is part of the dream. Hearing is part of the dream. Physical matter can be responsible for causing our localized selves to see or hear because our localized selves are localized inside this dream. So for example, say we had a dream and in that "universe", there is a brain and the laws of the dream dictate that if you stimulate the left frontal lobe or something, the sensation of fear appears. Well because we are then localized selves inside that universe, that would be our experience if inside the dream we were to do that. The localized self adheres to the setup of the "dream" (universe) it is inside of. In this "dream", something called matter exists which form brains and brains cause seeing. Because we are ALSO inside this dream, we require a brain to see. Inside this dream is space and time, which we experience because it is part of the dream we're localized in. Sheer consciousness I am considering is literally void/nothingness (because without experience there is no longer an experiencer), and yet it's also everythingness at the same time. Everything exists inside nothingness. Nothingness is God. Nothingness is Absolute? When the localized form ceases to have experience, all that is left is that sheer consciousness/void/nothing. We came from "nothing" and still are nothing?

It can't be impossible to reconcile the two things. The relative experience of anaesthesia etc is cessation/nothingness. Cessation doesn't mean it stops existing. The states mentioned are still full of human things, not suddenly sonar vision like a bat and so on. I think the Absolute is nothingness. Pure infinite consciousness is totally nondual, no experience exists here, nor time, nor anything. Nothingness = everythingness. Go to the big bang. From say a void perspective there is no experience of anything. But this is happening. When experience happens the "experiencer" appears. I think someone very recently said, when experience stops the experiencer ceases too, and pure consciousness is something deeper than that. When there is experience then, is it just tapping into some of the infinite qualia already present? So possibly nothing in the entire universe rn can see an infinite myriad of colors which DO exist but can't currently be experienced... that we just see as a certain shade of blue or w.e. In a dream, as soon as you see anything you are localized somewhere in the dream. It is impossible to experience a dream without duality being created. With legit full nonduality there is cessation/nothingness/the void. What is the existence of things prior to subjective experience like. When consciousness is still 100% nondual. There is no way that these things are mutually exclusive.

just because you cant do nothing doesn't mean others cant D: There is a qualitative difference between sitting in meditation and when doing something. The magnitude of peacefulness is so much deeper when alone with the heart, no drama no mind. That is do nothing, and then I accept any movement because that is part of the nothingness. Uncreated, natural movement allowed. I don't sit like a statue, many tense up too much while meditating. It's the number 1 self help habit to have... Now Leo is on about other things, but for me he hit gold with the meditation habit.

Without experience is no experiencer. At the beginning of the universe there were no consciois minds to observe it. It would be a state of "cessation" like universal general anaesthesia. But still all of these existent things like light and matter were happening... Evidently living material things have evolved to have a conscious experience of the environment creating an experience and experiencer. People have issue with the fact that anaesthesia or destroying the brain causes cessation. But cessation/nothingness is the true nature of all reality. That is what we actually all are, it's the default and the Absolute. Rather than these sense organs creating the qualia of color and such, is it just revealing or tapping into it? Are there infinite colors? Infinite sounds? Infinite qualia including things we cannot ever access? When a bat uses sonar what is sonar like from the inside? We can see what it is like from the outside with electrical currents in the brain, and determine how far in terms of physical distance it functions, but nothing of what it is like from inside the bat. Is that just one example of infinite qualia that can exist whenever "experience" and hence then "experiencer" is created? Did humans used to see blue as some other color but it wasn't evolutionarily beneficial? How do you suppose the brain is tapping into these things? Without a physical brain there is no separation or experience from this PoV, just cessation (nothingness, the default and true nature of reality). If all brains cease to exist and all experience ceases to exist, there is still a big bang etc?

or if he does, it is not really gambling for God. If you have unlimited resources, you are not gambling. Only if your resources are finite can you lose or gain anything.. So it is not up to me whether God play dice or not, but if he does, its not equal to the human one. Its impossible made possible, whichever way we look at it, if we say that reality came out of nothingness. Here is a quote that my ex-girlfriend has given me, way before I even was into spirituality: "Remember that this world is not real! It is a battlefield of opposing forces, where we learn the practice of overcoming that which appears to be using that which we know is the true reality" (true reality aka Love, as mentioned by Leo). - Richard Bach If we try to understand how all of this works etc, we might become insane... There are so many little details that go way way deep. One can get lost simply in one area because it is infinite and always has more to understand... So it is better to just leave it to love and act as/in love so we are tuned with the force that moves all this.

First, let's use a different analogy. I don't like violence or condone it. We still all inhabit the same dreamspace. So, let's act as godly and christ-like as possible. The foundational block of all of existence, as cheesy as it sounds, is metaphysical love. All of existence is like, a ray of love suspended in nonexistence. Your premise is correct. If I make love to a woman, she is completely imaginary - she's a refraction of my own mind. I have imagined her into existence, therefore going back in time and creating the timeline that led up to her existing. HOW is this possible? MAGIC. Absolute power without opposite. In this case, you created a new square in this Zoom call, you are God (the host of the meeting) — once your current square ends, you will "awake" or pass the host to another square, and THERE YOU ARE — you awake as a newborn. The twisted part is that you will one day live the life of the woman you made love to. That's right, you made love to yourself. In this way, reality closes the strange-loop of both of the POVs and realizes the moment from all perspectives. Absolute consciousness is like a very pervy observer that wants to see each moment from every POV. Because it is every POV. As you live your life, you are continuously creating new characters. This way infinity branches out forever. The "zoom call" is happening absolutely nowhere, in the complete void. Inside nothingness, zero, you. But nothingness can play with sacred MATH and create waves of energy or vibration/frequency that appears as color (frequency), sound (frequency), touch(relay). Matter is sluggish mind/frequency. Not physical. Think of consciousness as a sentient, reactionary field / square in this zoom call that can experience color, sound, touch — all of these are frequency. These frequencies of sacred math create your "reality". Another analogy is that you are inside of a dream. When you dream, every character you encounter is a construction of your own mind. But you don't realize that those characters ALSO had their own internal monologue. That's right. Because you are infinity/consciousness, you also created all of your dream characters, and the timelines that led up to them encountering you in your dream. So even the characters of your dream had their own "lives" — but they were all you. It's the same when you are "awake" — everyone is you. The same mind dreaming. That mind is you. You went ahead and tricked yourself by giving yourself two POVs, your left eye and your right eye (you don't actually have eyes, as you don't actually have a face) but the POVs correspond to two eyes. This creates the illusion of 3D, therefore solidifying the illusion. Close one of your eyes, now your 3D vision is gone. Now ask yourself.... what is behind me? You turn, but the bubble of consciousness moves with you. You cannot see "behind" yourself, because there is no behind. It's not that your head is moving in space and that your eyes are receiving light from an outside world.... you are projecting the world FROM your "eyes". The light in your eyes is all there is. Just really digest what I am saying here. The light in your eyes is all there is. Other people / POV's - The light in their eyes, is all there is. You project them, and they project you. This creates the illusion of a physical universe, but in reality it is sacred math simulating a world for itself. Again, the ZOOM call analogy is the most fitting I could find. It's a stream... a giant cosmic drama. And you are the hero of it. So live the hero's path and you may transcend being human, to embodying love and magic.