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Nothingness is limitless... there are no limits to what it can do (be). Infinite possibilities.

Yeah I agree that it is limitless, limitless in what it can experience. What I dont really "agree" upon is that this nothingness can do stuff that is not an experience if you get me? For it to be it has to be an experience, now I mean existence,even if it just a void with no content etc. If you mean otherwise you postulate a nothingness (non existence) we are trying to get behind conciousness and then report back about it. Like materialism claiming there is objects outside of our experience that produces our experience but there is no way to proof it or to experience it. Experience is here and now always. It is a thing tk become concious of infinity, sure some say it is even not conciousness it is being, but I use the word interchangebly. Non being/being/nothing/everything/conciousness/awareness etc. Infinity is the best explanation but how is it possible to be anything without awareness?

Infinity (nothingness) is limitless.. it's without limits. 'Experience' is one of the things infinity can be, because it can be literally anything. Consider: if you had a bag, that contained infinite different objects... if you began pulling objects out of this bag, and you did it for an infinite amount of time, eventually, one of the objects you would pull out would be the reality being experienced now.

@tatsumaru Enlightenment isn't important to me or a goal at all, but I was interested by: "You are contemplating the difference between existence and non-existence and how they are related to each other, that's as dual as duality gets." Is total and literal absolute nothingness dual if existence doesn't exist to be part of it?

@tatsumaru I don't think this question or premise has anything to do with duality or nonduality whatsoever. If no conventional logic or answer is plausible for the question, then perhaps it is something crazy. Lol. Can existence be non-existent? That's impossible? But in nothingness there's no such thing as impossibility or logic... So it's just absolutely topsy turvy. All things all at once because there is neither logic nor impossibility. Consider all the wild things that could be when there are zero logical laws. Cause causes effect? That's logical. How about effect causing cause? How about nothing being something. Existence being non-existent. A possibility branch of a thing which loops back and creates the nothing. Non-existence REQUIRING existence. Maybe a person says paradoxes don't exist. Non-existence doesn't exist either so they're on the same plane and can gladly interact.

Nothing IS something. Nothing is happening rn. Don't go about it by logic or making yourself BELIEVE that nothingness is somewhere hiding within this something. You have to literally see in your direct experience that there is absolutely nothing happening. I personally got it by meditating on the question "How is oneness even?" after realizing that "There is only oneness" in my direct experience. We often make ourselves believe all these statements and think we got it. But then we get it logically and we think we truly got it. But nah, you have to literally feel it in your bones.

From another thread, I was pleased with this: "Perhaps everything IS nothing. Maybe there ISN'T a something outside of nothing. Maybe nothing IS everythingness. Maybe that's what nothingness literally is, infinity. Not even infinite consciousness (although that would be part of it), just infinite potentiality or something. Though I fear infinite potentiality might be wrong too, maybe that too is just part of it. Perhaps it is LITERALLY nothing and this is some utterly insane paradoxical thing... The paradox being that Nothingness IS Somethingness. Such insane paradoxical answers satisfy me the most because of the oddity of the fact of existence itself even being a thing to begin with. I don't think it could exist via normal logic." ... What do you think? Something being literal nothing (literally nothing at all) seems illogical, but if nothing exists neither does logic so that might not matter.

Total cessation of God with zero experience ever could not be possible, because of the nature of infinity. If something can exist it will and evidently experience can exist. Because of the nature of time, that also means that experience is always happening now because the passage of time is an illusion. So although inside spacetime we could cease to be localized beings, that cessation is reliant upon time. From outside time, eternity is a block (or point). So the experience you are having right now is permanent, eternal, and imprinted into that block of infinite time. It is always being experienced... The book is already written you are just flicking through the pages... The big bang happend and at that moment where was the observer? Are atoms able to observe anything? Perhaps consciousness is more useful as a moniker because it can lie dormant. I read before Sir Roger Penrose say that for a photon of light in a vacuum, it would subjectively experience infinite time immediately. Which sounds a lot like cessation (there is no experience of passed time just like two parts of a movie reel pasted together). They are made of what we are calling consciousness but experientially they are dormant in "cessation". That might be of some importance. Perhaps it is not so much that the thing can be dormant or cease to be, but it can be set up in such a way that experience cannot happen because there is no appearance of duality. There is no experience of no-experience just a time gap. In that time gap, the substance itself, perhaps that has gone nowhere. There is just a gap because there is nothing to experience. Perhaps to contradict millenia of spiritual teachings, the fundamental nature of reality isn't consciousness it is GOD. And consciousness is simply the property OF God. That God nothingness can exist when experience ceases, because it is the ground below consciousness. God being simply the most apt term, lest I call it literally "__". The question of "why is there something rather than nothing" is very enduring. Perhaps everything IS nothing. Maybe there ISN'T a something outside of nothing. Maybe nothing IS everythingness. Maybe that's what nothingness literally is, infinity. Not even infinite consciousness (although that would be part of it), just infinite potentiality or something. Though I fear infinite potentiality might be wrong too, maybe that too is just part of it. Perhaps it is LITERALLY nothing and this is some utterly insane paradoxical thing... The paradox being that Nothingness IS Somethingness. Such insane paradoxical answers satisfy me the most because of the oddity of the fact of existence itself even being a thing to begin with. I don't think it could exist via normal logic.

I have a question for you If the ground is nothingness aka no experience whatsoever, no observer, no conciousness, then what makes the nothingness become somethingness. How does it become experience? Try to imagine non existence, if its the ground, how can anything be? Then somehow something makes "non duality" become "duality" I dont think that this pure cessation has anything to do with any ground of existence at all, it is just another experience in a form of a "non experience" Like Leo says, there is also infinite conciousness which is very different from the nothingness of cessation. Which is the one that tells you more about the nature of reality? Perhaps neither, only that conciousness has an infinite range of knowing itself. Here is where buddhism and hinduism often clash, new age buddhism is making a biased claim in that cessation is the most important. To me it feels like a spiritual suicide since sone buddhists just say that the psycho-physical is all that there is, Aka atomists/materialists. If GOD is nothingness etc, why does it become this? Why does it seemingly produce an infinite variety of experiences objects subjects etc. Maybe our ordinarie waking conciousness is the ground of existence? Just a contemplation exercise. Either we are GOD which is eternal/immortal/infinite. But it does feel off that GOD could kill itself with a cessation "forever" it is obviously not the case, I think cessation is a good night sleep sorta thing.

Yes absolutely nothing is neither finite nor infinite but no proof nor logic exist in the context of absolute nothingness. Logic is a sequence of statements and it implies time. My point is that we can't work from this relative context to prove infinity. The only nonduality is nonduality, there is no shortcut.

@VeganAwake Yeah that's an issue, if there are no laws or possibilities in literal nothingness. What then can exist? You can't make anything outside of 0 because there's nothing with which to turn it into a 1. So it does need to be inside of 0. But how and why would it not just REMAIN as 0?

@RMQualtrough YES, cessation and dissolution comes with a partial or total loss of memory, but nothingness doesn't, you're literally awake in the dream. Its not like being asleep or under anesthesia, you're fully there in eternity. That's the peace you're missing. You remember it also, there's no loss in memory. The key thing is you can't differentiate the waking stste from the dream state. That's the experience needed to realise that reality is not distinguishable from a dream. Which is 100% nonduality. No edging. I have no experience with psychedelics, so I couldn't tell you, I also don't advise taking psychedelics. Just know that cessation and dissolution is TOTALLY different from nothingness. There's more to "IT"

@RMQualtrough have you experienced the nothingness? Dissolution or cessation is very different imo.

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].)

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.

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 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 ?