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I wanted to copy and paste Butler’s 10 axioms so I could study them a little. Being that he was giving it away I thought it would be okay to post it. He gets the credit for it. This journal often shares his podcasts. Although I don’t agree with him on everything I feel I’ve profited quite a bit from his podcasts over the last couple years.. https://c10.patreonusercontent.com/3/eyJhIjoxLCJwIjoxfQ%3D%3D/patreon-media/p/post/55099220/a8b3553b041d4f248220042ac1731876/1?token-time=1630540800&token-hash=6hKxXJhCJfiVt0DS7pghuoh8XIOWxCgiLv4Reg6ViO8%3D Axiom One - Life is a Self-Optimizing Survival Machine Nature is not divine, but demon-like. - Aristotle Some religious movements, philosophers, and writers have seen life as nothing less than a demonic manifestation. The Cathars and Gnostics come to mind, as do philosophers such as Schopenhauer, Aristotle, Mainlander, and contemporary film makers and writers such as Lars von Trier and Thomas Ligotti. This is not a popular view of life in our optimistic, but very unhappy culture. Nonetheless this theme is probably as old as the human race and comes from some deep sense of the cruelty and futility of life. We can put a more modern spin on the dynamics of life by considering the forces at play. They are in essence very simple - creatures that are good at survival and procreation become dominant. Life is a ruthless self- optimizing survival machine. It has no morality, takes no account of cruelty and suffering, and efficiently weeds out the weak from the strong. The primary qualities needed by a species, if it is to become dominant, are strength and cunning. So, since these qualities promote the success of a species we might expect that they become exaggerated in the most successful species - and so it is. As far as cunning is concerned no species does it better than human beings. Some psychologists believe we have developed language so we can lie more effectively, allowing us to take cunning and deceit to a whole new level. The lie is ubiquitous in life, and indeed life would hardly function without it. Men and women could not seduce without the lie, children would find life too brutal to bear if they were not told lies, and business would grind to a halt without the lie. The ultimate purpose of all this lying is enhanced survival, for the individual and the species. Of course, it is not only homo sapiens that lies, angler fish, venus fly traps, stick insects, and pretty much every species employs the lie to further its survival prospects. Since human beings are not known for size and muscular strength (chimpanzees for example are several times stronger than the average person), it is obviously our cunning and ability to deceive that we have to thank for our dominant position on this planet. This dynamic also plays out within the species. Successful people are often those with the most cunning, using their skill to outwit and disadvantage others for their own advantage. In the mating game men will lie about their resources and resourcefulness to attract a female, and women will use cosmetics and dress to exaggerate their sexuality and reproductive potential. People will often say it's a dog-eat-dog life, but that is being way too kind. Human life is dominated by a level of deceit that no other animal is capable of. So, the self-optimizing survival machine grinds on leaving a trail of dead, deformed, and injured species and individuals behind it. At the head is the current winner in this race, although the lead is always tentative. At a personal level we need to wise up to these dynamics. This machine has molded our physiology and psychology for its own ends - not for ours. We are anxious, ever vigilant, stressed, forever striving, and used up in the process of trying to ensure our survival. This is how we have been shaped, but thanks to our reasoning capabilities we can moderate and modify the forces that drive us forward and have no regard for the suffering they create. After considerations of this nature it may not seem too far fetched to say that nature is demonic, and it's most demonic protege is the human being - you and me. But to be eaten up with desires, emotional passions, lies, and insatiable ambitions is to truly live in hell. Happily there is a way out provided we are prepared to pay the ferryman to take us to another shore. Axiom Two - Our daytime consciousness is concerned with survival fitness, not truth. Suppose the human race is the most successful species on Earth. In that case, it must finely tune its consciousness to the things that promote survival and procreation and similarly be highly sensitive to the things that threaten survival and procreation. Our daytime consciousness must be driven by survival utility and wholly shaped by it. Survival utility implies that this consciousness does not need to represent the world accurately but must provide a survival advantage. It seems to be true that the only world we know is a representation of the world that our mind creates for us. We cannot know anything other than as a mental representation. As such, it would follow that the nature of our representations is such that they are optimized for survival, since were it otherwise, we would not have survived and become the successful species we are. Nietzsche well describes this utility-driven consciousness: The measure of that of which we are at all conscious is so entirely dependent upon broad considerations of utility for consciousness ... This shaping of our consciousness by survival utility goes very deep. Even the framework for our experience of the world, namely time and space, is a product of our mind. This was stated by Kant over 200 years ago, and more recently by Donald Hoffman in his book The Case Against Reality where he says: Our perceptions of space, time, and objects were shaped by natural selection not to be veridical - not to reveal or reconstruct objective reality—but to let us live long enough to raise offspring. Perception is not about truth, it's about having kids. So, we come back to survival and procreation and the fact that these drives wholly shape the simulation of the world our mind produces. The net result of this is that we live inside a representation of the world that is wholly concerned with survival and procreation and little else. This is easily proved by the fact that the overwhelmingly dominant driver for activity is survival and the acquisition of resources to guarantee survival. In other words, the acquisition of money, healthcare, shelter, food, a social context, a mate, all occupy the main part of the waking day. Even our entertainment in movies and novels is again almost wholly concerned with stories of survival. Since our waking consciousness is not primarily concerned with an accurate representation of the world, but one that confers a survival benefit, it would be senseless to say that we human beings can know "the truth". We are just not equipped to know "the truth" but only the characteristics of our representations of the world, which are shaped by survival utility. We live inside our own survival consciousness "bubble" and there is no way to see outside the bubble. This survival consciousness can be seen as a kind of dream. Various traditions call this dream Maya, and Gurdjieff said our daytime waking consciousness had nothing of reality in it. The obvious question is, how does this affect the way we live? This is best answered through a child's nursery rhyme: Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream, Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream. We cannot know what the world is or what we are since we are trapped within our survival consciousness bubble. We can give up on the quest for "the truth" simply because we are not equipped to know the truth of our existence. This understanding of our entrapment in a survival consciousness is perhaps the most significant of all understandings. It allows us to consider our behavior from a single principle - that of the survival consciousness. We can then modify our lives so that this consciousness does not create the suffering that it might otherwise do. Rowing our boat gently downstream is not an inherent feature of the survival consciousness, but it is something we can learn. Axiom Three - Our emotional state is a measure of our survival status. All our emotional states are driven by one thing; the desire to exist. When our survival status is diminished, we experience the so-called negative emotions, and when it is enhanced, we experience the so-called positive emotions. A diminishing of our survival status, no matter how indirect, creates emotional pain in the form of anger, hatred, fear, depression, melancholy, and so on. Enhanced survival prospects create joy, confidence, excitement, love, enthusiasm, optimism. It's all entirely mechanical, and it is not uncommon for one type of emotion to pass into another: fear into hope or love into hatred, for example. Because we are so attuned to our survival status, our emotions change all the time. This volatility of the emotional states is unique to human beings because we have a highly developed sense of our survival status. We are aware of our current situation and can imagine any possible changes of status in the future. As a result of this volatility and the ability to imagine future events, we suffer a great deal. At the root of our emotional nature are pleasure and pain. When our desire to exist is fulfilled, we feel pleasure; when threatened, we feel pain. These are actual bodily states and are not just in the mind. Each emotion will comprise a physical condition; for example, clenched fists if angry, and ideas associated with the state; in the case of anger, maybe the idea of the person we want to destroy since anger is always a desire to destroy the thing that has given us pain. Our emotional nature is a property of our animal body, and the brain function developed in animals known as the limbic system. The curse placed explicitly on human beings is that we have a highly developed limbic system coupled with a very active conceptual mind. In this way, we tend to exaggerate existential threats and opportunities with resulting anxiety, stress, and intense emotional states. Perhaps the most unfortunate aspect of our psyche is the notion of a self. Not only do we respond to the environment via our immediate emotions, as indeed does an animal, but our conceptual mind creates the concept of a self, of being a definite psychological entity. This evolution of a sense of self is a master move on nature's part since it motivates us to strive even harder to maintain our existence. Animals seek enhanced survival status and avoid diminished status instinctively. We also do this, but the notion that we have a self causes us to strive to maintain this psychological mirage. The result, yet again, is even more anxiety, stress, and striving. The living proof that our striving for existence has become dysfunctional is the large number of people taking antidepressants and anxiety medications and the need to escape the very existence we crave through alcohol and drugs of various kinds. This inherent contradiction in our existence; that we desire it while often feeling the need to numb ourselves to it shows the conflict that is an integral part of our psychological makeup. This contradiction is quickly understood when we separate the instinctive and emotional aspects, which crave existence, and the conceptual mind that looks at our situation and can be less than enthusiastic about it. If our emotional life is to become tolerable, we need to manage it, and with the appropriate skills and application, this is indeed possible. Either our emotions dominate us, or we dominate them; one is mechanical and the other requires conscious effort. Axiom Four - Life is Decay Life has the name of life, but in reality it is death. - Heraclitus That life is decay is a blatantly obvious but eagerly avoided fact. From conception, every creature is sentenced to death and to a gradual unwinding of its integrity through ongoing decay. Generally speaking, we call such decay aging, but we tend to see aging as something that happens when a person reaches forty years of age or an age in that vicinity. In reality, the aging process begins at the point of conception. The fundamental mechanism of life is that it creates many generations of the same decaying individuals. It's such an irony that we call our physical existence life when it is a decay process. It looked at unsympathetically, we can say that life is an iterative process of generating decaying creatures. Since each generation undergoes decay, this iterative procedure is the only mechanism that will ensure the continuation of life. Life can be viewed as a fire that creates its own fuel. When it comes to human life, we find a strong dissonance between the life of the body and that of the mind. The body has a one-way ticket to eventual death, during which it will progressively decay. The mind, on the other hand, fully aware of but in denial of its ultimate fate, acts as though it were immortal. This dynamic is particularly true of young people with their plans and ambitions, never giving a thought to the inevitable endpoint. Despite the denial, the dissonance takes its toll. The illusion that life is going somewhere has to be maintained, or like a puppet with its strings cut, most people would lose all motivation. This illusion can become more exaggerated as people grow older and their decaying body signals more loudly that the end of their existence grows ever nearer. They try and cram as much into their life as possible, a kind of desperate attempt to deny the obvious. The solution to all of this is simple but challenging: we remind ourselves regularly that our life is a process of decay and that it leads exactly nowhere. Most people will find this way too difficult, and it will probably have a depressing effect. However, once our psyche gets over the initial shock, a practice of this nature makes it much easier to live, as our unrealistic expectations of life drop away. The Bible talks of the "valley of death", and this is precisely what life is: a place where everything around us is dying, and during that process all creatures strive with all their being to create the next generation of dying things, with an offset in time. In the case of human beings, the offset is typically around twenty or thirty years. If someone becomes a great-grandparent, they will see four generations with offsets of twenty years or so. A situation such as this is often a comfort. An older person can see his or her continuation through the younger generation. These dynamics are full of problems, and not least the pain encountered when offspring or grandchildren either create a lifestyle that meets with disapproval or die. This is very problematic ground, but not the topic here. It is much healthier to see the nature of life from a wholly egotistical perspective. Given the facts, how do I live a life with a minimum of pain and distress? Axiom Five - Nature is Indifferent and Amoral We find an indifferent universe so repugnant that we create fictitious entities such as a caring God. There is no shortage of evidence that nature is indifferent and yet many choose to ignore it. One hundred and twenty million people died in wars, revolutions, purges, and the like during the twentieth century, and each of them believed they were the center of the universe and most will have been loved by others. This is misery and suffering on a scale that is hard to imagine and yet the laws of our existence continue to grind along with no consideration of the hell they create. Individuals will turn a blind eye to the day-in and day-out carnage on this planet if they come to believe that some supernatural power has bestowed a favor, such as recovery from a serious illness. They will tell others, assume a special status, and totally ignore the millions of others who strive and suffer. Such is the human condition that we too are uncaring, but dare hardly admit it. And so we fluff up our egos with notions of being a caring and kind person while all the time ignoring the misery that is right on our doorstep. This indifference of nature, and particularly its indifference toward sentient beings demonstrates that existence as a whole is not cognizant of suffering. Consider animals and the way they treat each other; it is as if they do not recognize that the other is sentient. Animals will eat others, while still alive, and treat the distress and agony of the other with complete indifference. It would seem that only when we come to man do we see empathic behavior and a sense of the suffering of others. Why we should have this ability is something of a mystery since we are incapable of reducing the suffering of most other creatures and it causes us to suffer unnecessarily. There is a certain beauty to the cold, hard, laws that determine the way we exist. The indifference of the laws of the universe does at least leave no doubt as to what will happen in a given situation. Plunging a dagger into someone's heart will kill them every time. Closely related to this indifference is the fact that nature is amoral. Philosophers and religious folk have struggled for millennia to convince us and themselves that an objective moral code exists. The brutal fact of the matter is that most of us will steal, lie, enact violence and sexual abuse, if we feel we can get away with it. This is what we are: creatures like any other, that will do whatever is necessary to enhance our power and survival prospects. And so we create a state and laws to control human behavior, but these laws are not an appeal to our morality, they instead appeal to our fear of punishment. Without such laws we would make the violence in the animal kingdom look like child's play, and even with the laws we still periodically go to war and carry out the destruction of millions of our species. Spinoza has something to say on this: Nature does not frown on strife, or hatred, or anger, or deceit, or on anything at all urged by appetite. Nature will not allow us to walk through walls but it will permit the slaughter of millions of human beings in wars, and as Spinoza points out, lies and violence are just an accepted part of Nature. This amorality is linked very nicely with the indifference of Nature in another quote from Spinoza: Yet that which our reason declares to be evil is not evil in respect of the order and laws of universal Nature, but only in respect of the laws of our own nature. Nature runs according to its own laws, not ours, and if those laws spell misery and suffering for us then so be it. As always we need to understand these things so we can organize our life for our own best advantage. Denying these facts, that the universe is indifferent and amoral, will only lead to more misery through frustrated expectations. In any case the need for a caring and moral universe is nothing much more than the search for a cosmic mummy and daddy. So, let's grow up. Axiom Six - We are Automatons With no Free Will For many people, the notion we have no free will is perhaps the bitterest of all pills to swallow. It offends their sense of autonomy and belief that nothing and no one can dictate what they do. The understanding that we have no free will comes easily enough. The world we know operates strictly according to cause and effect. Every effect, such as a decision made, must have a cause. No one doubts this is how the universe operates, from the behavior of atoms through to that of galaxies. Yet when it comes to human behavior, we make an excuse; we make ourselves a special case. Even today, with mounting scientific evidence that we have no free will, and the greatest minds coming to a conclusion we have no free will, the topic is still hotly debated; such is the resistance to this blatantly obvious truth. So, let us state the precondition for a belief in free will and then move on to the implications. A belief in free will is a belief in causeless effects. If a person believes that things can happen with absolutely no cause, they can claim to believe in free will. Such a person would then have no right to accept the findings of science, psychology, sociology, economics, medicine, and so on since effects might not have causes. The madhouse might be the destination for a person who believes in causeless effects. Let's be clear about what is being said here. That you are reading this is not the result of some free act of will on your part; you were never going to do anything differently given the chain of cause and effect that preceded you reading these words. Put in its most devastating form, we can say that we are automatons responding to events both in the world around us and within ourselves. One of the principal implications of our being automatons is that there can be no praise or blame. If a machine does the only thing it is made to do; it seems ridiculous to praise it or blame it for its actions. The Buddhists are right when they say "no blame." Equally, we should not entertain feelings of guilt, remorse, regret, shame, or responsibility. How can a machine be responsible for its actions? It didn't make or program itself; it is simply carrying out the activities resulting from its construction. Similarly, remorse and guilt are futile emotions that rest on the notion that we had free will when we did something that we now regret. While the realization that we are automatons with no free will might be very damaging to the ego, ultimately, it is a very freeing realization. Of course, some people desperately need us to feel we have free will because then we can be blamed. Naturally, I'm talking about religious folk and the power brokers in society. Even the people around you will not be happy with you if you say that you no longer entertain feelings of responsibility, guilt, shame, remorse, regret, and so on. So, it's probably best to keep these realizations to oneself and wallow in the freedom that the realization that we have no free will brings. To put it another way, we can say that everything happens necessarily. All our decisions and actions were the only decisions and actions that were ever going to happen because of the necessary play of cause and effect. There is no contingency in the world; no should have, could have, would have, or any other sentiments that rest on the notion of a free act of will. Once again, this realization is very freeing The realization of the fallacy of free will can have deeper effects and particularly the feeling that we are not autonomous units but that we are deeply connected with the rest of the world through necessary chains of cause and effect. Axiom Seven - Existence has no purpose or meaning. The most beloved habit adopted by the human race is projecting its modes of operation onto the rest of existence. Perhaps the most common form of anthropomorphizing is assigning a purpose to things, even to existence itself. In our everyday life, we do things with a result in mind. This result is our purpose or final cause, as the philosophers might say. Animals seem to work the same way when they build nests and the like, but it would be a complete mistake to extend this notion of a purpose beyond the behavior of living things. Perhaps the first mistake we make is to assign purpose to our lives. We are not self-created and, as such, cannot possibly know whether our existence has a purpose or not. It's pointless to speculate, but nonetheless, people do speculate. Religious folk will buy books and listen to talks on topics such as "God's Purpose for You" - as if God has nothing better to do than plot out a course for our lives. This notion that we all have a purpose collapses when we consider the fifteen thousand or so children who die every day from malaria, polluted drinking water, water-borne diseases, and so on. Was their early, possibly agonizing death a fulfillment of God's purpose for them? If so, we might be better off without such purposes. Not only do we extend the notion of purpose to our existence, but we also do it for existence as a whole. Again, religious and spiritual folk are particularly adept at creating such theories, but in the end, it is just anthropomorphizing again. The notion that the universe and existence do not serve a purpose is quite distressing for some people. Closely related to the notion of purpose is that of meaning. The essence of meaning is that what we do should have some value. Assigning value is a bag of worms since how do we define value? Most people want an objective measure of value and will happily invent one or adopt one that suits their purpose. For many people, family might be the ultimate measure of value and particularly its flourishing. Nothing new here; this is fundamental survival dynamics and the propagation of genes. We serve the forces of life very well if we consider family to be the thing that is of most value and gives life meaning. Other examples of value include acquiring money, power, fame, or anything else that serves the survival drive. In reality, the fact our life has no meaning unless we invent one, and similarly with purpose, is the greatest of all gifts. If life had an "in the box" ready-made purpose or meaning, we would be constrained by those things. As it is, we are indeed free to invent our meanings and purposes if we so desire - but there is a twist. With one hundred percent certainty, our bodies know what their meaning and purposes are - to survive and procreate. It doesn't go any deeper than that. So, all the efforts that are made in life are usually directed toward achieving these things. On the other hand, our minds might not be wholly satisfied by these basic biological urges, and so it invents its meaning and purpose. These inventions are always trouble since they are of no interest to the body as long as it gets sex and food, and our mind always knows when it is duping itself - sooner or later anyway. The best but most challenging solution to all of this is to accept the meaning and purpose that comes with having a body, but not to fabricate some phony purpose such as "I want to help people." Leave the intellect out of it, and you give it freedom that most people cannot bear. Nature abhors a vacuum, and so most will invent purpose and meaning to satisfy their ego. Living with the vacuum is infinitely more rewarding than filling it with some phony nonsense. Ultimately we have to recognize that the very concepts of purpose and meaning are man-made ideas that give us a certain view of life. The universe knows nothing of meaning and purpose, how could it, it does not have a human mind. Axiom Eight - No Self When we look inside ourselves, what do we find? The overwhelming answer is thought. It might be objected that we find emotions and desires too, but in reality, these belong to the body. When angry, it is the chest that tightens, and maybe the fists clench. There may be some associated thought of the person you would like to harm, but make no mistake about it; the emotion is experienced in the body. It's the same with desires; salivation when presented with some delicious food being a good example. There are usually accompanying thoughts in both emotion and desire, and it is the thoughts that we consider to be activities of the mind. Our sense of self is founded on the illusion of some inner permanence. If nothing within us were permanent, we would be a stream of thought, but no self to experience the thought. But this statement begs the question as to whether there is anything within us other than thought. As Nietzsche says in his usual terse manner: "If I analyze the process expressed by the proposition "I think", I get a series of audacious assertions that would be difficult if not impossible to prove; for example, that I am the one who is thinking, that there has to be a something doing the thinking, that thinking is an activity and an effect on the part of a being who is thought of as a cause, that an "I" exists, and finally, that we by now understand clearly what is designated as thinking—that I know what thinking is." Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio believes that our sense of self is located in a small area in the brain stem. When this area becomes damaged, a person tragically loses their sense of self. Memory also fools us into thinking that there is something within us that is permanent. It is challenging to justify anything within us other than the stream of thoughts that pass through us. As Nietzsche indicates, we assume that there is a thinker, but the thinker is invisible at the end of the day and all we are left with is thought. That there is no little homunculus in our heads thinking was well appreciated by Spinoza. He says: "... in the mind there is no absolute faculty of understanding, desiring, loving, etc. Hence it follows that these and similar faculties are either entirely fictitious or nothing more than metaphysical entities or universals which we are wont to form from particulars." Our "faculty for understanding" is fiction, and all we ever have is particular thoughts about this and that. The Zen Buddhists appreciated this right from the start. A famous conversation between a zen master and his student in the classic work "The Ceasing of Notions" goes: Student: "What is called the mind? And how is the mind pacified?" Master: "You should not assume a mind, then there is no need to pacify ti. That is called pacifying the mind." The unsettling reality is that we find nothing within us other than thought, but there is no evidence of a thinker. Because we identify with our thoughts so heavily, so we believe that they are associated with something within us that is permanent, an "I", a thinker. But there is no such thing. As Plato and Heraclitus would say - we are a becoming, not a being. We do not exist, and all that does exist is the matrix of phenomena that form the objects of our experience. In any case, our "I" disappears every night during deep dreamless sleep, and as such can be seen as a product of our waking consciousness. I'll let Shakespeare have the last word: We are such stuff As dreams are made on; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep. Axiom Nine - No Truth In everyday life, we know two kinds of truth. Truths of fact confirm some relationship between concepts; for example, the concept sky and the concept blue might be related by the statement "the sky is blue." Logical truths express relationships between assertions. A simple example might be if A=B and B=C, then A=C. But we are not satisfied with these truths; for as long as people have thought, so they look for metaphysical truths that take us beyond the realm of experience. A list of such dearly sought metaphysical questions might include: Why is there something instead of nothing? Do I have a soul? Does God exist? What is consciousness? What is being? Is there an objective morality? Does an overall purpose drive life? Why do cows have four legs? (maybe not) As axiom two states, our daytime consciousness is not the least bit concerned with truth but has evolved to optimize our survival and procreation prospects. I any case, what kind of truths are we looking for? The metaphysical truths are simply beyond our reach, and it might be that the questions don't make much sense anyway. No shortage of spiritual and religious traditions claim they have the answer to some or all of the questions listed above, but all of them require that we abandon our reason and accept dogma. The philosophers have been equally profligate in their assertions about the truth. Most of them have created some kind of ontology, or proofs concerning the simple nature of the soul, and so on. There is a sad fact hiding in all of this. Religious, spiritual, and philosophical folk create their answers to our most pressing questions driven primarily by their own biases. Kant, a pietist, was desperate to show that there is a God, we have a soul, and that we can know freedom. Spinoza's central bias was that everything is one, and his philosophy was engineered around this central fact. Religious folk have usually swallowed some happy ever after story because they find life unsatisfactory. It took the genius of Nietzsche to point out what the purveyors of truth have been doing for millennia, namely weaving stories that comply with their own biases. In Beyond Good and Evil, he says: Little by little I came to understand what every great philosophy to date has been: the personal confession of its author, a kind of unintended and unwitting memoir We do need to ask ourselves why we are so addicted to "the truth", and particularly the truths that we have no access to at all. The very notion of truth may be a kind of madness. Again Nietzsche sees it all very clearly: Given that we want truth: why do we not prefer untruth? And uncertainty? Even ignorance? As humbling as it may be, the best way to approach all this is to realize that our world, and all that we can know, is limited by our sensibility. Experience is the bedrock of our thinking, and if we try to go beyond it, we end up with unverifiable stories about the absolute, God, spirit, fairies, and aliens. However, there is another side to this coin. When we acknowledge that the world we know is our mental representation of it, we realize that science, that which naught can be said against, is nothing more than the study of our representations, so there is no great truth here either. It looks like we are cornered, and indeed we are. But when we realize that our quest for metaphysical truth is a fool's game, we can drop it; and once dropped, life becomes so much sweeter. Axiom Ten - There is Experience. There are very few things that can be said with absolute certainty, but one of them is that we experience. By experience, I mean everything we experience - thoughts, physical sensations, emotions, desires. The notion that there has to be someone experiencing and an object experienced is also unnecessary, but I'll get to that later. To doubt that we experience would be even more radical than Descartes doubting that he doubted. Experience is synonymous with consciousness since when we are in deep, dreamless sleep, there is no experience. We are also not particularly concerned whether our experiences are "true". We know rail tracks don't meet in the distance, but it really doesn't matter as a visual experience. It is the fact of the experience that is important here. The traditional division between subject and object has caused a great deal of mischief. In the context of experience, the subject is the thing that experiences - typically you or me. On the other hand, the object is the thing experienced - a thought, emotion, desire, the body, or a physical object. This duality raises some awkward questions, such as; what is the subject? Schopenhauer would say that the subject is the thing that sees but is never seen. As we will shortly see, there is no need to philosophize around these issues. For most people, the nature of the object can also cause some confusion. While we would not consider a table or tree to be part of us, it is, in reality, no more minor part of us than an emotion or thought. The table that we perceive is a representation formed by our mind, and we can quite legitimately say that it is "part of me". Traditionally we think in terms of myself and other things; everything that is not connected via the nervous system is other, which creates a world of duality. So, here is a critical point. Perceptions, sensations, desires, emotions, thoughts all stand on an equal footing as experiences. There is no preference for experiences that we think are "internal" (an idea, for example) and those that we believe are "external" (the smell of a rose, say). The whole of our existence reduces down to "there is experience". The phrasing of this is crucial. We do not say "I experience", for to do so would introduce the subject-object duality. We say "there is experience" because phrasing it this way assumes neither subject nor object. Instead of dealing with the subject-object duality, we now have a unity - the world of experience. The experience becomes the starting point instead of being a bi-product of the interaction between the subject (you or I) and an object. Just in case you missed it, I need to emphasize a particularly weighty point. A thought is an experience in the same way as the taste of chocolate is an experience. Whether you decide to say they are both in your mind or the world is irrelevant - they have equal status as experiences. Unfortunately, our subject-oriented language doesn't help here. Words such as I, me, we, you, yours, reinforce the notion that our world is more than experience and that something experiencing exists. From a practical standpoint, this means we can say "there is anger" or "there is a thought about chocolate." in the same way we say there is a table. This practice is part of a more important topic concerned with forming the correct attitude toward our existence - namely to see all experience as self-supporting without a "self". This approach comes quite close to phenomenology, a philosophical tradition that took shape through Edmund Husserl, although Nietzsche was already on the scent with statements such as: I maintain the phenomenality of the inner world, too ... We experience phenomena, and as far as I am concerned, the words phenomena and experience can be used interchangeably. Sartre also expresses this move away from the subject-object duality, with its very undesirable side effect that the subject (you or I) feels isolated in the opening lines of his masterpiece Being and Nothingness. Modern thought has realized considerable progress by reducing the existent to the series of appearances which manifest it. Its aim was to overcome a certain number of dualisms which have embarrassed philosophy and to replace them by the monism of the phenomenon. To re-orientate our thinking to that of our existence being experience is challenging, mainly because of our subject-oriented language. But to say "there is anger" instead of saying "I am angry" creates a certain distance that means we do not get so tied up in the notion that we are something.

I have noticed this as well. Only twice– and one was teal swan haha– but there is something deep I can see in their eyes that I can't explain. If I were to explain it, I would call it nothingness. But this one guy I have seen it in is not consciously 'awake' or 'enlightened'– just has taken a shit ton of psychedelics. I tried to help him realize his essential nature because he is struggling, suffering even. Yet, I see nothingness deep within his eyes??? Btw, I love that you refer to it as the causal body. Oh, and this quote below is just perfect. Absolutely beautiful.

Is it really a pointer if the pointer makes no sense. Or to put it better: Is it the right pointer? How do you know if there's a right pointer in a certain situation. Does anyone feel ready to make a spiritual assessment for me? Ask me question or lead me towards the next "step". Also feel free to write "There's no I that needs to follow a path". And "The I that's following a path is not there etc." I'm going to answer everything. Feel free to continue the assessment, here's the student asking the teacher for help: ----------------------------------------------------- I had glimpses, or awakenings, I had DPDR nothingness in the past. I've lived from the dissociated dreamstate. Afterwards I still suffered and even more. It was the most terrifying, intense time of my life. How do I experience life now? Anhedonia. I don't feel anything really. It's depression with a lot of anhedonia. What am I? Fundamentally, I am in every percept and object, but I also have a sense of self. The combination of feeling my head, and seeing things. My head feels like the HQ of control. I also have memories and fantasies. Memories happened, because I can try to remember something, and I'll have memories about it, and until now bieving my memories always worked. When I just stop, or let go (during meditation) there's a deep knowing that consciousness exists. "I know that I am" even before I ask the question. However, I dont experience eternity anymore, I very very rarely merge with the object of perception, and I suffer, which is the worst thing I want to get rid of. Sometimes it's really bad, and I'm not even able to compare it or quantify it. My life is not about beauty or pleasure or curiosity, it's mainly about escape, finding a solution to suffering and freeing myself from the burden of existence/incarnation. It's all about preventing suffering for tomorrow and truth. If truth was we're in Hell I want to know that we're in hell. I sometimes even consciously inflict suffering with cold showers, sauna and SDS, just to inquiry about suffering and how to transcend it once and for all. ---------------------------–-------------------––--------- I've never had a spiritual assessment done to me, and I know that a 1on1 IS necessary, but I guess that if I start to do it here it could be useful for everybody.

First of all, 5-meo is not a neurotransmitter but a neuromodulator of similar tryptamine activity - you don't claim one needs to take heroin to truly understand what pleasure feels like, so why claim such for 5meo and insight? For all we know, it is an overload of serotonergic circuits that mediate feelings of affection, social bonding and insight. With our current limited understanding of neurology, to simply claim it is all imaginary is just as naive as Ancient Greeks assigining differential weather activity to Gods - hence the title of this topic 'admitting I don't know'. Leo doesn't claim to have a model, but an objective claim of Absolute Truth. That's a hell of a difference. Bro seriously? I see you're learning gaslighting already, it's not fear but only critical thinking of one's self accord instead of blind belief, which would in turn greatly influence the result of any psychedelic experience. Leo wholeheartedly believes his interpretation of experiences, conflating God with Infinity and love that could, for all one knows, be a result of an overactive brain activity. If you claim otherwise, please do back it up with your understanding of neuroscience, I do love me some discussion. None of the circular loop of 'you're imagining it', because that's not an explanation. For all one knows, it could be a psychotic break that us mere 'mortals' cannot comprehend. Enlightenment occurs only after cessation of attachment to a concept of enlightment - it's 'nothingness', as in there is nothing there to be found. No ultimate high, greatest awakenings - those are ironically the greatest obstacles in the pathway to enlightenment and peace. I don't see much of positive values of awakened masters in Leo, despite the mass of contribution in many fields on his channel. There's little compassion, respect, understanding. He parrots his own 'findings' as absolute truth, where the truth could be that all his experiences are subjective, particularly in the cause of nuclear bomb that is 5meo. He's self-absorbed to the point of not realizing so, anyone wiht a background in psychology can see so. And I say this with greatest love and respect for the guy, because he helped me loads and is a great guy and I wish him all the best. EDIT: Qualia Institute argues for an opposite perspective of Leo's, and overall psychedelic, experience. It seems far more likely and makes sense in a thorough, logical manner, attaching the link here: 5-MeO-DMT Awakenings: From Naïve Realism to Symmetrical Enlightenment | Qualia Computing And no, leo did not dismantle science. Leo has a very limited understanding of what Science actually entails, and masks it behind 'it's all very complicated and requires years of understanding and dying multiple times to grasp it'.

Assuming you speak of enlightenment meaning buddhahood, tathagatahood etc, well you generally can't tell if someone is enlightened in such a way at all because their mode of being will appear very ordinary, they have gone beyond personhood a long long time ago and are not even interested in using spirituality to gain or avoid something. They will just behave like humans. If they are not teaching spirituality in some form, you will totally overlook them. If you speak of lower levels of spiritual advancement, you can tell to an extent. For example, it is easy to tell if someone has realized what people like to describe as "nothingness" (it would be more accurate to call it the causal body but let's just roll with nothingness as it's a popular word haha). You can see it in their eyes, or perceive it in the way they say certain things, because you've been there and you know someone will not be making a certain point, in a nuanced way, unless one has realized this or that. And therefore who is a good teacher? A teacher is someone who appears to have valuable stuff to teach, regardless of their own journey.

It is literally impossible for me to not have the most developed understanding of Anakin that exists in any verifiable way, and unless absolute solipsism at face value is true, the same truth about Anakin’s nature is true for you. My understanding of True Nature runs through every sensate micron of consciousness/nothingness/māhāparinibbana you ever could not even be capable of imagining.

Imagine where you were before your conception. You've always been there. It never stopped existing. "But complete nothingness, darkness, void surely doesn't exist, does it?" YES IT DOES!!

Not quite. I'm aware of the Void. I'm a student of Taoism and so "objective reality" is fuzzy at best. The ego lives in the world of dualism and the "ten thousand things". I guess what I am looking to avoid is the nihilism that the ego generates in the face of nothingness. Because I recognize the paradox that from nothingness arrives the world. Yet the void of nothingness is absolute love. Impossible to describe with words of course. But experiencing it, it becomes self evident. Damn. Got me there. LOL

I would agree in this scenario. Knowledge is a very broad notion that can be used for understanding for survival reasons, for Truth's own sake, and only able becoming conscious of Nothingness because it's not an object of knowledge.

Psychedelics are helpful for spiritual process for regular human being. however, whatever you experience, or becoming infinite, love, infinite love or nothingness, after enlightenment realization happens that they were just all thoughts, there was no experiencer whatsoever, you are always what you are and where you are not even moved nor began. Thats how beyond the enlightenment is. Every psychedelic trip people experiences different stuff vsvs. However Truth can never change, which has nothing to do with words, thoughts, experience or becoming, those are variables.

I am really not concerned what Leo has, or has not. Nothingness cannot be an object of knowledge.

@tsuki Leo has said that using the mind to understand the mind doesn't work but don't just take his word for it either. There's probably something higher I'm unaware of. Using the mind to understand Nothingness also applies here. Btw, how do I use a box of text to respond to? I can even just use the part of what you said about the mind in which understanding occurs with. If Leo is against with just having beliefs, are you saying that he is deluded? He's still falable, but just as Tim R said, don't make such simple answers which applies with the relative and the Absolute (although you do have to start somewhere with phychadelics and make sure not to spend too much time with perfecting your personal development before taking them).

Nothingness is impossible to understand. Understanding is a process that occurs with the mind, which is relative. Nothingness is not relative. This is another name for the Absolute. Again: it is not possible to understand it. You can make beliefs about it, you can partially represent the experience of it, but it is not it.

I've recently been inspired to watch some Actualized.org content after several months away. I found myself today pondering the question of "how is reality even here?". I just watched the Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing? video. According to Leo, Nothingness is the substance of reality, so to speak. Reality is no when, no where, no how. Nothingness is God, Love, Consciousness, Infinity. They are one and the same. Now, I know it says right there that reality is "no how". Yet I find myself still asking HOW. How is it possible for Nothingness to manifest itself and interact with itself? In a world that's so obviously intelligently designed and constructed, no less. Why does Nothingness exist? Why is it not just nothing? What exists outside Nothingness? Nothing, I assume. It's just absolutely incredible. It's insane. Not actually insane but like shocking insane. It's completely bonkers. As I'm writing this I find all my questions being answered, and it's slightly maddening. I suppose it can be summed up as "it just is". I yearn for more than that though. How can it be that there is this infinite, formless, loving God running the show? And that's it! It begs the question "Well what came before this?" and that question is answered by God, Nothingness and Infinity being One. It's always been here and always will be. Manifesting itself again and again... All for a laugh? Fucking hell. Hilarious. Astounding. Wonderful. Today has been a massive headfuck.

I have been following Leo since 2015 and I have watched hundreds of his videos and got immense help from his videos. But I almost always misunderstand his spiritual teachings. For example the notion of “Nothingness” is not easy to understand. I don’t seem to understand it at all. At one point I thought it means total annihilation of existence and total black darkness of the physical world. And I know it’s not what I think. It can’t be anything I think. I have to experience it by actually doing the consciousness self-actualization work. How to not misunderstand Leo’s advanced spiritual teachings?

After many years of soaking in this spirituality stuff and what Leo and others teach in general, something is bubbling away beneath the surface. I'll spell it out, it's my unease at nihilism and talk of the void and nothingness and getting rid of the ego. I'll call it zeroism the sake of lumping it altogether. I understand at a tacit level what all this zeroism is about. Quickly: being attached to a something creates suffering, and a something is pure illusion or more accurately it is not at the root of reality. Firstly, suffering is the human condition, there is suffering and all the things associated with it at all levels, great and small, simple and complex. Pushing past suffering is one of the greatest means for actualising yourself. Secondly, there appears to be more to reality than meets the eye, the immediate sensation of a material world with objects and people is not to be trusted - it is a house of cards which can be toppled over and it should be toppled over - so that you can truly be spiritually actualised - enlightened or awakened. Non-dual speak frankly bores me. For every person that says something is occuring, there is someone that says nothing is occuring. I've even argued myself for nothing going on, using logical thought. It's like eating strawberry ice cream and then someone saying "you're wrong there is no strawberry ice cream, there's nothing there". This is just rubbish. I can't vouch for the experiences of others, because I'm not them (yes I am a separate sentient human being), but strawberry ice cream exists. If I go to my local shop and buy it, I can experience it any time I want. And that's my point. Consciousness or whatever this is exists in all its glory, it is here, right here, right now. To deny that existence or argue against it or to say it's anything different to what it is, is utter delusion. There is meaning to reality, there is something, there is movement and colour, there is ice cream - because reality is all of it, it's allowable, it's not illusion, it's not maya, it's not nothingness or whatever. I exist, because I experience myself existing. Stuff is happening because I experience it (I can feel you all cringing now). I can accept that reality is just experiencing itself and that an "I" is unnecessary, but the fact remains that there is an "I" right here at this moment. Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of delusion and ignorance but this is to all to do with the content of reality. However, reality itself is not delusion, illusion, nothingness, or anything else. Reality is exactly as it presents itself right now. If reality presents itself differently in ten minutes' time then that is reality. It's really very very simple. Why all the unnecessary misdirection of zeroism? Trying to overcome suffering is really about utility and actualisation. Actualisation is 99% about the content of reality and deconstructing everything, so it is all utility. You're actualising because it serves you. You are the one that wants to get enlightened, telling yourself otherwise is silly. After a while it should become blatantly obvious that everything is constructed in some way: it's made of parts, it has rules, it fits within a greater whole. Most of human drama stems from the inability to extricate itself from its constructions. But the fact remains that constructions are reality, they're not illusions, they are simply things that can be shown to be arbitrary - that being the greatest single realisation to have. Yes the content of reality is completely arbitrary, but it still exists, I'm here to witness it. You get me?

It´s interesting, how everyone is looking for something special for them before getting on the path of awakening. Some look for love, the others for happyness. For Leo it´s truth. Truth. What is truth? Something static and unchangeable. Never was ineterested in such a thing in a constantly changing world. Well you can apply truth on something like Nothingness/ Everything. Bit what is a point of it, if you can never embrace the truth? I knew this since I has been a kid and learned a concept of 0 and infinity. Like every child I wanted to be a math master by knowing the highest possible number. I can remember my mum not being able to answer this simple question. You can always add one and get the next number, even if there is no name for it , you can always add one. This is the moment when I lost interest in truth, philosophy, math.. Doesn´t make any sense - you can always add one.. I was also skeptical about love. What I knew from the books - love is blind. I wasn´t blind. Well I learned to understand the concept of love better when it got physical. It started to make sense for me. What I was always looking for was freedom. But I found love or let´s say a special kind of love. I met someone.. let´s say.. not the same understanding or development level, but.. the word "perception" would probably fit. With the same perception. I really had long dialogues with him sitting in his kitchen and drinking tea and me being elsewhere. Not sure if we were really speaking in astral or I sensed his nature so good that I knew all his responces. But anyways during our live meeting he repeated sometimes the whole passages of that conversations. It drove me crazy. Never experienced something like that - thi skind of closeness. I thought that it is it. The miracle of love. Fuck! He was my mirror but not of my chocolaty side. And then I met someone with whom I also shared a perception in the same miraculeous way but he was a mirror of my better side. I know, it´s a very simplified interpretation, but I have no other explanation at the moment. And you think you can experience something like that once in 10 lifes if at all, and then you have this shit just one after another. The other thing that I found was truth, or rather... lies. and illusions. Which I started to see more clearly. Not that I didn´t see them before. Just... the universe, in which you can always add one, needs to be filled with some shit, shouldn´t it? But what I started to see was, that it shouldn´t be necessarily filled with shit.. It is even stupid and absurd what we are doing.

Muted, distant, unrecognizable sounds... The city, the people, the kitchen, the bathroom Places I managed to recognize after several days But not by smell I can't smell anything It feels like I'm not breathing My sense of taste also ruthlessly vanished somewhere The last thing I had in my mouth left a metallic aftertaste But it was ages ago I see nothing Gravity is nonexistent Where the hell am I? And how did it happen? Nothingness Why can't I remember who I am, what I am? After a minute I realize I don't remember anything What was yesterday, what's today I'm suspended in a smudgy, fuzzy, vague... I'm swallowed, my world shrinked And keeps getting smaller like it's trying to devour me Then again I have a strong sense of assured safety

This is just my experience, I have felt like there are levels to the realization for no self... for myself, as ironic as that sounds. But if you have a full blown awakening to it, this is what it might feel like for you. I've personally not seen a definitive answer for this here, and it's something I was so curious about before awakening to it. What I will say, is there is no rush, the universe will guide you along your journey and when the time is right this radical truth and insight will reveal itself to you. For me personally, it was when I upped the dose (170ug), my ego completely died. You, your consciousness or what you imagined you were as a human will merge so much with external reality, that you literally fully awaken and understand that you are the external. It's as if for what will seem like the first time you look around the room and fully understand instantaneously you are looking at yourself. The ego will feel so entirely dead, for me it felt like wind was blowing through me but there was no one there. I literally became the breeze through the cracks in the window. The wave of the infinite ocean of Love. You will literally die, literally! And will be the most amazing experience of your entire life because you are still conscious and Aware. The thing that shocked me the most, was the divinity of how every moment that lead up to this moment was intelligently designed. Every single moment that lead up to that exact moment was all meant to be. Pure perfection. At the same 'time' when you realize you have no self, you ask yourself what am I? Then the true Self which is what you have always been. Infinity, nothingness, GOD reveals itself to you. This is how it happened for me. 170ug was alot for me and personally the most I have done. And I built upto this, so I would suggest starting low(half a tab). Wow. What a ride life has been. Leo, Nahm, Inlightened1 and everyone else who has guided me on this journey indirectly or directly. thank you all. You were all definitely a catalyst to enlightenment. Namaste and love to you all.

there is an individual, as a pattern, limited construction, temporary limitation of reality to perceive itself. this individual can perceived himself as unreal in the sense of seeing the limitation of all his experience, like a feeling of unreality, and therefore seeks the real, transcendence. the substance of this individual is the substance of reality, only that the individual has a temporary form and reality is formless. with practices and or psychedelics the individual can momentarily dissolve his form / limitation and become the whole. the whole is not an individual, but it is one, even being nothing. when this happens the individual realizes what it is. it is the whole reality, so the nothingness being. bottomless, so infinite. shapeless but with an unmistakably familiar quality, substance, identity: love. but the individual also exists as an individual, a very specific pattern that the totality creates in order to become limited and perceive (for example, especulating). it is unreal in terms of its projections, its idea of itself before to understand what is him, but it is real as a limited entity, a set of brackets in nothingness that creates a specific shape. So you could call it illusion since the absolute point of view, like only a shape, but since your point of view you are absolutely real

Get on it then, chop chop Notice that you are still creating a subtle duality between nothingness and somethingness, formlessness and form. Realize something is nothing. Notice there is no edge between something and nothing.

@Scholar Yes, excellent! And also one more thing: the contents of the visual field are all Nothingness too, such that there is no outside or inside.

Right now, simply try to find the edge to your visual field. In your peripheral, try to find where the colors and shapes truly come to an end. Try to actually really do this before you continue reading. You will have noticed that actually, there is no such thing as an edge to your visual perception. Because what an edge is, is actually two things contrasting each other. Human minds have a tendency to view the world through such edges and limitations, even their own visual field they probably thought for their entire life to have an edge to it, a limit to itself. Yet, where is this limit? People ask themselves, what is at the edge of the universe? This presupposes the nature of the universe to be that of limitation. And for limitation, what is required is contrast. An edge can only exist if there is something contrasting that edge. The very nature of an edge and limitation is two things opposing each other. Ask yourself, where is the limitation in that? You say when you are on one side, that this line is where things end, yet when you cross it, you have just found yourself on a different ground. I can tell you with certainty, that if you find what is the "edge" of your visual perception, you will come to know what is the "edge" of the universe. Again, sit down and truly focus on this right now and come back reading when you have made a great effort. Reality does not work through limitation, reality is nestled in nothingness. The edge of your visual field bleeds into true nothingness. It is coming from nothingness, and it is dissolving into nothingness. True nothingness has no edge. It is no thingness, and it is present right here, at the "edge" of your visual field. The mind views reality as a contrast between limitation and infinitude, but yet reality clearly works in a paradoxial and arational manner. See, your visual perception is not infinite, yet it is not limited either. How can this be? It can be because reality is not that which is possible, but that which is impossible. Study any aspect of your own existence, any one of it, and you will come to realize this undeniable truth. In it's own way, your visual perception is self-contained. It is not like a division of two things, but it is it's own complete circle. There is no visual perception and then the "beyond visual perception". Your visual perception is as grand as the entirety of this universe, you simply are not paying attention to that. The beyond is the Nothingness, and that is what self-containment is. It is Nothingness. This is the most obvious thing, yet our minds work day in day out to blind itself from this truth. It is so transparent and undeniable, that the ability to look past this actuality itself is a miracle, a miracle equally as impossible as anything else in existence. The Edge itself is Nothingness, which means that it is no Edge at all. Sense the presence of the Nothingness all around you, in which all of substance is nestled in and of which it is made of. Look with sober clarity at existence. If you are not grounded in clear seeing, this path will create nothing but delusion for you.

There is always something. Emptiness is a state of fullness. Nothingness is a state of being nothing in a wast space of omni presence. Soo you could say, that the emptiness is full of nothingness. Like the air, or gravitation, it is there, but not noticeable. however it is not a constant state, one fluctuate, and that is the baeuty of enlightenment, to always be in a dynamic state.

Everything Leo speaks in this video in regards to awakening and god i have personally encountered, the difference is I don't call it God or Love or Consciousness. And I stopped giving them importances. Awakening is the most extraordinary thing one can imagine yes it is absolutely mind blowing, so infinite that there is no more mind. No more levels consciousness. No more form or emptiness. Even Awakenings and Realizations and even enlightenment itself are perceived to be the stuff of the dream. Of course all these "experiences" will make you shit in your pants, physically dying, being so blown away you're no longer human, and they are all encountered on the Path. But eventually they are all absorbed and transcended. The more ordinary the more Divine. The better way to put IT is that it transcends even the notion of extraordinary vs. ordinary. On no Self being a "minor" Realization: Temporary experience of no Self on meditation or psychedelic is not the same as Realization of no Self. Realization is deeper than a transcendental experience and both are "minor" sure. But the permanent dropping away of self/Self is on another dimension altogether. After self/Self drops away there is nothing but God and Infinity 24 7. There is a quantum difference between a self perceiving God in the center vs. permanently dropping away of any center or vintage point, and there's only Godhead Comprehending and Creating Itself ad Infinite. Now I can only speak from personal experience but before self/Self permanently drops, even the most mind blowing experiences still comes from a self. If you had a Realization or an "experience", then you find yourself shifting back to separated state then it's a temporary experience of a self and not a Realization, let along the permanent dropping away of center, which is beyond any teachings of contemporary Neo Advida or most mainstream or new age spirituality teachings. In fact it's beyond spirituality altogether. There's absolutely no reference point to the "experience" of permanently dropping away of self/Self. There is no words to describe it. It robs everything away from you, even Consciousness itself and all of your previous Realization. There is no perceiver, no agency, no center at all times. The enlightened self sitting on his throne of Nirvana is the final layer of the dream. edit: Buddha didn't teach Absolute Self. He taught no-self AND No-Self, which is the middle way, the merging and transcendence of Being/Non-Being, Absolute Infinity and Absolute Nothingness. But No Self IS True Self, so let's not get bogged down to terminologies. But I see way too many people on the Path getting stuck in the identification to an Absolute Self. Cessation is 0 consciousness. Complete black out. Which makes this Insight extremely valuable because non existence is in a totally different order than existence. No consciousness is in a totally different order than levels of consciousness. YET they're also exactly the same because 2 sides of the extremes eventually cancel each other out and become 0 when they meet as death is Love/life. But I'm still on the fence whether it's necessary for awakening. In my direct experience it's the ultimate no experience that truly truly re-wires the brain permanently. It takes 5 to 10 years of meditation to get your first cessation. After awakening you can get 10 cessations in 30 mins of sitting. (What I'm more interested in is permanent shifts. It doesn't matter how many awakenings one's had, but if moment to moment perception isn't permanently altered, say shifting from 720 to 1080 to 4K 360 and 8k 360 or the self dissolving from solidity to liquid to air, then there is no Realization). Enlightenment is not a state of consciousness. It's 0 if you want to put a number on the dial, which also makes it Infinite and in-quantifiable. All "levels of consciousness" belongs to the dream and are the by products of "peeling away of separation/conditions". Enlightenment is deeper than consciousness or even awareness. As krishnamurti said "The moment you are aware of Awareness, you are not aware of Awareness" It's deeper than total unity and Oneness. As Adyshanti said, you eventually "wake up out of Oneness". You could say it's the _______ prior to unity and all states of consciousness. Prior to and it's what manifest the dial on the awakening scale. Shinzen young describes the path as going from surface level consciousness to Source. And many people on the Path got diverted from going directly to Source to sidetracking themselves to the content/manifestation of Source mid path (although Source is Appearance. Content IS context. But this cannot be Realized unless one's abiding in Source as Source). But what happens AFTER Source is Realized? Sure one can continue to explore. There is no end to the Infinitude of Reality. But as I've emphasized many times, there is a event horizon you cross before and after enlightenment. Ramana Maharishi and many other sages on that level all point to the fact that enlightenment itself has no levels. You're either there or you're not. And it's not a process happening anywhere. The question of whether or not it's a brain/mind State becomes completely irrelevant.