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Whether or not superiority/inferiority makes sense depends on one’s perspective. Reality is reality, reality is Love, and reality is perspectival. One could also say it makes no sense that nothingness is less meaningful than infinity.

I'm aware that the title is broad, but I only started this thread after much reflection and not coming to real answers by myself, so I decided to seek any help I can find, knowing that no one I can reach to physically can help me, be it a therapist, friends, or even through deep meditation and some breakthrough psychedelic journeys (by help, I mean guidance, cues about where and how to look for answers). I'll try to give the maximum amount of detail in the coming phrases. I'm a 27y.o male, living somewhere in Africa, I grew up without a father and in a neglected family situation... never felt loved, appreciated or accepted for who I really am. And that made me turn inwards from a really young age, I was always quite, introspective, and I always saw through things, I came to some pretty deep insights about the nature of reality & God at a relatively young age (around 15 and even before) and that made me "immune" to the religious dogmas that existed around me. So in that sense, my "situation" was the catalyst that forged me. In that sense, I over developed in certain areas (mainly spirituality and artistic expression) but I could never put any of my talents into what I feel would be a real, tangible use, to put lightly, I always felt that I was psychologically fucked up from the get go, and no matter how much I try, I can't transform into who/what I wanna be, who I really am. About a year ago I had two massive LSD journeys in the span of one month, through these experiences I achieved a total non dual state, I was preparing for this (consciously) prior to that for the better part of the 2 years that preceeded those experiences, I knew exactly what I was doing since I saw how all the parts of the [meta-encompassing-system] worked, I HAVE FAITH, COURAGE, LOVE, (not to praise my ego, I have my share of flaws too obviously..) anyway, I feel like I had the answers I was looking for, I had them before, and they keep coming to me, but I can't bridge the infinite nature of consciousness, creation, expansion, with my everyday output, I know that there's no single answer that would act like a magical charm for me, but I feel limited, powerless, resentful and frustrated with my life. I have issues accepting certain parts of who I am, things I've been through, and sometimes I just go into total neglectedness (or self sabotage), like I just hope I would dissolve into nothingness, and I feel that would be the only REAL healing I can have. I lost faith in the ways of life, and I'm confused.. a lot. What I've been dealing with lately (and I don't know if this is a lie I keep telling myself, a game my ego is playing) is the fact that good & evil are seen in the same light through God, and that is making me uneasy to be around (even to myself). The way I see it is that integration of the dark side should be carried on with in the same way that light would be integrated. To avoid being misunderstood, I'm not thinking about commiting any violent acts or criminal activities. But sometimes I react in extreme ways.. And those feel totally justified. I know that many of things I said can be seen as serious psychological red flags, but it's not really, I can find my balance most of the time (by lowering my energies), but whenever I try to channel any sort of big energy to do anything "worthwhile" I crash. I don't believe in the zen way of simplicity either, I know what I want but I can't seem to get it. So my final question is, should I just totally give up? if so how can I do it? I know I am mainly fuelled by fantasies, but the way I see it is that reality permits everything as long one can and knows how to do it. Is this idea false? are we ultimately not free in deciding who we're becoming? Because the more time goes, the more this idea gets stuck in my mind that not only I should be COMPLETELY free to be who I always felt I am, and give my biggest contribution to the world, but that I should find a way to do it on my own terms, and only then shall I find peace, or atleast a semblance of it.. waiting for the real thing. I'm aware of the mash of words I just wrote (sorry for the confusion), it may would've been better to separate these issues into separate threads, but in my head it's really the same thing, all the issues I mentionned are related. In the end I just hope to get any insight I can have about any of the things I mentionned. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

@Onecirrus So far the best answer i've come across is that the substance of everything is undefined. I remember one time when i became conscious that the banana i was about to eat was made out of nothingness. I don't think it matters a lot what labels you attach to nothingness/god. I think the banane just IS, and you can't go below ISness.

???? Imagine this dude in front of the Tv totally tripping saying he is a television watching the television. I would laugh my ass off. Like I am now, with this comment. Sorry no offense man. EDIT: It does make sense tho if you realize your brain is just a television and signals are what attract your soul at the womb when you are born.. so in a sense you do watch television program of an inanimate energy/wavelenghts in entanglement with your brain (now in alpha state) like a computer/television... Reality is personal anyways not only made for humans to think and make a mark...but to affect it directly. At the end of it all..there is only nothingness and beyond nothingness is void and more void... with no end to it. Like an infinity void.. look inside. Yohmu might be impressed how much of a void you find in yourself like a tunnel... like Leo says... no end tunnel of void all your personal problems vamish the tunnel becomes void... i.e the tunnel is finite for some who still didnt see beyond it

Hehe it seems to me we actually kind of agree. Yes, you could say two opposites (i.e. hate, love, or consciousness, physical, nothingness, something, etc) are two aspects of the same thing, i.e. "IT"/Source/GOD/LOVE/The Dao That Can't Be Spoken!:-) What can I say: reality is 'dual-non-dual'. Words are just pointers ?, remember that. Not the Truth. Not the actual thing. Direct experience is needed. Pointers are fine tho. Reality is *smashes a gong* and we will not give it a name;)

Yes perhaps there is something to that ? So essentially we are the non experience, experiencing everything else. That which is changeless must experience change in order for there to be reality i guess, nothingness experiences everythingness

I am having a hard time understanding the philosophy of this group as semantics often get into the way but could someone please clarify some things for me? It seems like the "levels" one goes through, in the path to enlightenment are something along the lines of surrendering all concepts (the self, the body, thought, the mind) and eventually you will reach a state where you are experiencing "pure being" which some call "infinite love" - but then I have also heard that there is a step further, when even the observer is dissolved into nothingness, in which case, why is love the true self? isn't it nothingness? The reason why I ask is because I often hear enlightened ones speaking about things like "everything is love" or that "love is what binds the universe together", but it is difficult for me to understand why love has this position of superiority, as opposed to its opposite, which is hate and/or ego consciousness. I guess why I am asking is because I want to know how to better explain to others that the true self is "infinite love", rather than the true self being "Nothing" and love and ego/separation radiate equally from this point. How would you explain to someone that love is the real state, in a world filled equally with suffering, pain, hatred etc? (I understand that when you meditate, and clear your mind, you gravitate towards love, but that doesn't mean it is the "true self", it only means that it is another state of many. Plus, most people don't meditate so who is to say that infinite love is the natural or true state, when you could argue that ego consciousness is actually the true state, and infinite love is a heightened state gained through meditation). On a side note, Did Buddha ever speak about love? Because it seems to be absent from the mainstream doctrine at least. It seems more like that the true self is simply lack of attachment (even to the people around you) until you realize that all is nothing. He did speak about compassion, but Buddhist literature seems void of the concept of "dissolving the ego to unlock selfless love" while it seems to be the core message of say, Christianity.

@James123 Conciousness is experience. and there is no limit to what experience can be. You die every night and create a dream character and objects, there is no limit to experience hence infinite. Why reality is consistent is because of memory, for remembering the day before. Sure we are the unmoved being behind all experience but it is still conciousness nature, to dream. To experience. There is no limit to it. Not knowing vs knowing is a duality which is not valid. Deny knowing all you want but it is inherent in being. Reality = experience Conciousness = reality = experience. And according to your logic you are an infant and do not understand anything. You are knowing all the time without an effort. Just as you understand my words here without an effort. Nothingness avoids its own nothingness and void do you get it? Nothingness is infinite forms. There is no end to creation since Nothingness is endless. Everything we do is to avoid the void or else there would be no creation. We are kids in an infinite candy store. But ultimatly we are beyond experiences, changeless reality is what we are

What exactly does science say about reality? What does it say about consciousness? Matter? Time? Being and nothingness? It seems to me that you are actually bying the materialist paradigm, not "science". You are veiling your metaphysical assumptions as science and objectivity. There is philosophy beyond scientific method. For example, what is direct experience? This cannot be answered by scientific method, as science appears within direct experience. I believe the problem here is what you think spirituality is. Spirituality is not really just thinking and philosophizing. It's not about knowing and being right. At least for me, it would make a lot more sense to think of spirituality as a feeling-thing. What makes you connected to life & reality? What gives you that childlike wonder? What makes your body fill with joy and true depth? If it is science, so be it. The real center of spirituality is feeling, the connection to the depths of reality. Science is just the tool.

There are moments of oneness with the Beloved, absolutely ecstasy and bliss. That is nothingness. And this nothingness loves you, responds to you, fulfills you utterly and yet there is nothing there. You flow out like a river without diminishing. Irina Tweedie (Sufi Master)

Reality is Love. How could it be otherwise, when you think about it? I mean what IS *THIS* really? Why is there something? Why isn't everything just absolute pure nothingness/chaotic energy? Why did "The Big Bang" occur? Why did it occur in such a way -- with specifically fine-tuned natural laws/universal constants -- that allowed it to transform into galaxies with stars and planets and even planets spawning complex, sentient, intelligent, even fucking self-reflecting life? After all, you and I, from a material standpoint/realist-standpoint are just fucking atoms. Atoms. Dead matter. There exist no "life-matter". Your carbon atoms are the same carbon atoms found in stones and dirt. But yet, these carbon-atoms, these delicately arranged dance/patterns/structures of protons and electrons turned into something that is capable of self-awareness. How FUCKING AMAZING is that? WHY IS IT HAPPENING? And now that it is happening, don't you think it makes logically sense that it is optimized for Love? I mean why would it be optimized for anything other than Love? I mean I know athiests/rationalists/scientists likes to say that yes, it is interesting that the fundamental constants are what they are, cos even slight deviations would mean physical life isn't possible. But then they still say it's just random:D And yeah I get it, life is pretty brutal at times. Think about how brutal it was 5000 years ago when we lived in cages. Or how brutal it is right now for the african kids who starve every night. It's fucking brutal man. But it has to be. Brutal/at-ease is a duality that's ultimately just Love. Just like all other dualities. Hitler-Ghandi. Evil-Goodness. Hate-Love. It's all just Love man. All of it. It's a realization. Not a belief. And I can't communicate it to you, cos it cannot be communicated. Only felt/realized. But I still tried cos im a sick fuck

There is no physical death. Think about it, if you were to "physically die", where would you go? You'd be in the same place you've always been at but you just end your dream that you created for yourself. Enlightenment is the recognition that you don't need to die to die. Because there LITERALLY is no death. The ultimate goal is always to merge closer to god. More honestly, more truthfully, more lovingly. Once you recognize yourself as god and trace all the steps back to the beginning of the universe, you realize you imagined it all to keep yourself stuck in the illusion. You go so far that existence literally ceases to exist, just pure nothingness, pure god, pure love. Yet it's an infinite existence so it will keep dreaming for eternity, and there you have an infinite endless game of reality. So in a sense, there is no endgame other than to know god.

And yet, my shadow-denier-brother, you are indeed turning not-knowing into an ideology by being so stubborn/slightly narrow-minded in your views ? You see, "I" don't disagree with "you". I actually fully agree with you! And what a relief to find out the separate self is just an imaginary thought/idea. What a relief it is to find out that birth and death are illusory. What a gigantic relief it is to find out everything is just nothingness and that what I truly am is just 'isness", Nothingness, Love, God, The Dao That Can't Be Spoken! What a relief! Let's swim and bathe in this great sea of Nothingness, of not-knowing, of being completely at peace, completely free. Let us celebrate! Or just celebrate! There is no 'us', hell, there isn't even anything to celebrate! And "to celebrate" is just another thought! There is nothing to do, nowhere to get to. Everything just is. Perfection. Absolute Divine Perfection. No. Not even that. Words are just pointers. Let's not name it... "Reality is: ... *smashes a gong-gong* ... and we won't give it a name" said Alan Watts. (And yet, here we are on this forum. What da fuck are we doing? Oh yes, "I" forgot: I don't exist, neither does James, nothing is going on here!) __________ When you say that this dream, this life, this existence, this magical maya-fantasy -- full of dualities such as birth & death, love and hate, success and failure, music and silence -- is *just* a thought, you simultaneously seem to deny the insane amount of intelligence and absolute pure magic behind it all. All paths that doesn't lead to the Heart are illusory/falsehood/not-it. James, you are like the dude in this cartoon: ? Isn't it insanely profound to think about what all this is (even if it's seen as nothingness) ?? Isn't it insanely profound that it's possible to be completely unconsciously lost in all this? Like an actor getting so immersed in her role, she forgets she's acting. And what's even more magical is that it is possible to awaken from it all. To see it all for what it is: play, Leela, nothingness, God, Love, pure Infinite Consciousness. Isn't it mystical as fuck that it's even possible for this 'realization' to occur? You seem to try really hard to 'take the magic out of' // 'deny the magic of' REALiTY/EXiSTENCE ... why? I mean, why is there anything (even if it is nothing) ... Why? How does it work? What are the mechanics involved? Does it serve any purpose? "Camus said there is only really one serious philosophical question, which is whether or not to commit suicide. I think there are four or five serious philosophical questions: The first one is: Who started it? The second is: Are we going to make it? The third is: Where are we going to put it? The fourth is: Who's going to clean up? And the fifth: Is it serious?" - Alan Watts

"When there is not-knownng there is not not-knowing" , hehe, I like it. But when there is knowing, there id not knowing! ??? I have learned lots of things. I have for once learned to read and write in English, otherwise "We" couldn't have this discussion! But it's true: in a sense I have nothing learned, cos there is no I (except the God-Nothingness-I we could say), and all our words here are just meaningless banter! But if you ask me to imagine what is left, if I unlearn all my learning, then this is a mentally exercise, and what is left is some imaginary concept/idea of not having learned anything... and that isn't "it" ! But it's a fun and probably useful pointer/exercise to "get" to that which can't be attained, but what always IS. Peace ❤️

Hey brother ❤️ The point is When there is not knowing, there is no such a thing as knowing or not knowing, duality or non duality, nothingness or thingness, being or not being . As before so called birth. Just take an example as you never learn anything, including yourself, what is left?

@James123 whats up brother ? It's funny to see these discussions between you and Leo. It is like two people standing looking at a coin ('Truth'), and one saying "the coin is heads!" and the other: "the coin is tails!" ... But of course the coin is neither, but both! It seems like Leo's view is slightly more embracing of both sides of the coin. But anyway. All dualities must merge/collapse into one, including the dualities: nothingness-thingness being-notbeing notknowing-knowing It might be a mindfuck for ya, but it turns out, that ultimately, not-knowing and knowing are completely identical. What a relief! Oneness remains. God forbid separation ? *non* - *duality* you know! Or don't know. It doesn't matter --- yet it does!! ? But I get ya. For people stuck in "knowing things" (most ppl these days), they need to "learn to unlearn" & to appreciate and practice not-knowing, if they want to get anywhere spiritually/emotionally. Once you see the power and beauty of pure beingness, not-knowing, you can then once again incorporate 'knowing' into your "life", cos you now see that the two opposites are One. Not to worship Leo, but I think the guy understands the perspective (not-knowing), you're speaking from. After all Leo's favorite book to bring on a remote island is The Book of Not Knowing by Ralston... with some DMT crystals sprinkled inside the cover of course, preferably pluggable crystals ?

@CBDinfused I do not claim to speak for the philosophy of any group, but I can tell you of this from being a human Being. For starters, there are no "levels" and while various models of various things have their place, you would do well to transcend them. Next, very simply, hatred is divisive and love is unifying. True Love of course contains and loves all hatred which in this context then ceases to be. Ultimate Love is like that with all else, it surrounds and swallows up everything in Creation to the point of collapsing all in destruction by revealing unification. Powerful hatred is also a great, but far lesser, destroyer and is a dark unifier but through division and to the deluded extreme of only hatered of hatred remaining of an egoic identity. Because of this hatered can be used as an effective, although conventionally very dangerous and profoundly unhealthy, tool by the spiritual seeker. Ultimately though, hatred cannot overcome itself or Love, while Love can overcome hatred and all else by integration, unification, and beautiful creative destruction to the point of being an absolute unity of infinite Nothingness. A bit more practically speaking, a major defining aspect of being awake to/as Love is to be in love with Creation, to be selflessly in love with YourSelf. Have you ever loved a work of art? Has a work of art of any sort ever brought you tears of joy? Have you ever loved a human being as a work of art and more? Has the shape, the intricacies, the totality, the body-mind and spirit of another ever made you forget yourself and your world? Have you ever felt orgasmic-like bliss unrelated to sexual stimulation, but instead from deep bodily embraced love of any person, place, or thing? Has your sense of self ever dissolved in your love of another like a partner, a friend, your offspring, your sibling, or maybe even a pet? To be awake as/in/to Love is like these things. You are the Everything that is Nothing that is Love itself. In being a human being Love, all you encounter is like a beautiful living loving work of divine art. From flowers and sunsets to death and dung, all can bring tears of joy, ecstatic orgasmic transcendence, and self-dissolution to Nothing, to no personal subjects or objects, to only Self being Love. This is Your stateless state, as in not an altered state of seemingly human consciousness, but the Actual base state of formless Consciousness itself that plays at being your humanity and all else. It is the Meta-Subject that is You and there are no objects, only Everything that is Nothing that is Love as Absolute Unity. And all of this can seemingly take place in Being a human, but when aware of it One will know better, lol I hope this makes at least some sense?

I did not say that. I said that it is a bit odd if this nothingness can imagine conciousness/awareness and is not concious/aware itself, how does that work? Is it really possibly to imagine awareness? Try to think of awareness or imagine it. should be no easy task ?‍♂️

Hehe... Or maybe it's the other way around Find out for yourself which is which. But there is no contradiction between Truth, Love, God, and Nothingness. These are all facets of the same exact thing. All the greatest mystics teach about Love. Don't poo-poo that clue

@Adamq8 why would you assume nothingness is something separate from consciousness?

This is a misunderstanding, because by that definition simply having a body and living are also a form of ego. If somebody is fully enlightened but also tends to to the body in a particular way, there does not have to be an identity involved. If we are limiting ourselves to higher states of consciousness from the crown chakra, which is one dimension of experience, whether we refer to it through no-dual language as nothingness, reality, love and so on, then we won't necessarily selflessly embrace other modalities of life and energy and attend to them in a relative manner, as a multi-faceted energy form. Living as nothingness, reality, love and embodying higher levels of reality is not a practical solution for all of the world's problems on the outset, because like the world, our physical bodies comprise of pranic physiology and the five elements, lifetimes of karmic impurities on various levels which exist regardless of our state of consciousness. If we are in touch with things in this spiritually holistic and sober sense, the realistic pace at which we can help ourselves and other people, especially those outside of the spiritual community who are not willing to immediately transcend everything, will be more obvious. It is important to attain to non-dual states through ground up purification, so that energy can function from other dimensions without an identity. I agree with you that prana is a duality, masculine and feminine, the five elements, these are all dualities, but it is our purity in prana and the elements which determines how dualistic our experience of life is. Taking 5-MeO-DMT and transcending the karma existing in these physiological bodies is not a scientific approach, and we risk lopsiding our spiritual development. Look at the Dhyanalinga for example, it has no karma or identity, but it is reverberating as all of the 7 chakras and dimensions of life, it is a fully developed energetic form with the non-dual dimension of sahasrara at the highest possible peak Likewise, the energetic forms of the Divine Mother do not have an ego or identity, they exist as deities in the form of the pure five elements, so that people can surrender and make use of them to purify themselves. Language makes this difficult. Isha's practices work to strip you of your identity very early on, which is also what I meant when I said that they allow you to function from subtler energetic sheathes, to purify and transcend gross forms of karma in mind and body

Nothingness is Love. Absolute Love hardly ever looks like relative love, but sometimes it can.

That makes sense, the point that I was making and the point that Sadhguru makes in referring to Saints and Gurus is that Saints limit themselves to realization and awareness, transcending grosser dimensions of energy and in essence neglecting large segments of life, so to speak. It isn't that techniques which are taught in Hinduism or Sadhguru are not transcendental in nature or geared towards realization, any potent practice will cultivate the necessary awareness and energy to transcend the self and attain to realizations of nothingness, non-duality and so forth, and this is one powerful facet of Isha's practices In Hinduism duality exists up to Agna, or the third eye, the crown chakra and beyond it are where higher consciousness and states of selflessness take place, but it is approaching spiritual growth with only one end of the stick and exaggerating the importance of realization alone, and not coupling our conscious experience with a deeper purification of the energetic bodies, which causes us to restrict ourselves to relatively disconnected, higher modes of consciousness This is why Shakti Chalana Kriya in Isha is coupled with Shoonya, an experiential initiation into nothingness. Likewise, purifying the elements with Bhuta Shuddhi and balancing them within the system causes you to transcend them. And also, with Hatha yoga and practices which purify the pranic body, total balance and synchronicity with the rest of the solar system leads to an undifferentiated and neutral state in which the five elements are transcended. The spinal channel, Sushumna, is neutralizing and lacks all dualistic qualities, and people who attain to Sushumna are refrerred to as being in a state of nirguna (lacking all qualities). The Shambhavi Mahamudra initiation is intended to awaken Sushumna, and during the programme Sadhguru will quote the Shiva sutras in which Shiva describes the quality and importance of Sushumna So it isn't that realization, selflessness, transcending the senses and so on is neglected in Isha's practices, it is just seen as a rudimentary and necessary step for us to be able to purify the many dimensions of life and our Being, and that is where the real work lies Sadhguru adds to his description of Saints and Gurus by saying this -

Claiming that the practices which Sadhguru offers are 'weaksauce' or anything of the sort comes from misunderstanding spiritual sadhana and the nature of purification. Our Being consists of different sheathes of energy which are connected to reality from different dimensions, transcending those modalities with a psychedelic like 5-MeO-DMT is not a way to tend to or purify those aspects of reality, if anything we're likely to neglect them if we only focus on short-term alteration of consciousness through substances or practices The purpose of every Isha practice is to put present and past life karma on fast forward by purifying the energy physiology from the different sheathes, purification of the mind is only seen as a consequence of this and no importance is even placed upon the mind or higher states of consciousness in yoga because it is the purification of our gross and sober state which determines how free our consciousness becomes in any permanent regard. Substances, excluding a few which are more rooted in gross dimensions and the earth element such as Ayahuasca and mushrooms, only tend to higher consciousness and states of mind and it can be very easy to neglect the rest of reality through that approach. Purification through Ayahuasca and mushrooms is likewise quite unreliable and arbitrary, and that is why yogic practices which purify the energetic sheathes are important. Yoga is rooted in the purification of the five elements and purification of prana (solar and lunar energy). Our sober connection to the purity of the five elements determines how pure our body and mind are. Solar and lunar energy are represented as Father and Mother in yoga because those are the energy channels/intermediaries through which our actual Father and Mother transmit information to us to condition and create the body genetically. The five elements are the very basis of creation and without them we would not exist, on top of that it is solar and lunar energy which creates and encodes life to take a physical form, so both of these dimensions are extremely important in Hinduism. By purifying our connection to the solar system through Hatha yoga we are purifying our connection to the original Father and Mother, the original source of our physical manifestation, and this purifies grosser dimensions of information and conditioning in the mind and body It is our past (sanchita) and present (parabdha) karma which keeps our consciousness compulsive in a sober state, and to exhaust that backlog of gross information yoga incorporates the purification of elements and prana. Purifying the mind is the easiest thing that we can do, through substances or through intense kriya yoga, but purifying the mind does not tend to grosser dimensions of energy and that is what we need to purify to free our consciousness from the grips of karma in our sober state. It isn't for no reason at all that Hatha yoga exists, or that deities which represent the sun and moon as Surya and various forms of the Divine Mother exist. If we want deep and permanent spiritual progress which isn't restricted to exaggerated states of mind and consciousness, and which isn't disconnected from the gross problems in the world and the dimensions through which they exist, yoga becomes important. You will see that teachers like Leo and others who focus on transcendence, nothingness and so on are mentally masturbating over those states, and that is because they are neglecting real spiritual science in the name of substances which stimulate the gross bodies and exaggerate the application of higher mind and consciousness, without addressing the origins of these impurities which are being transcended Coming to Shambhavi, the purpose of Shambhavi is to purify the pranic channels (Ida/moon and Pingala/sun) and to awaken the central spinal channel known as Sushumna. The potency of Shambhavi lies in the fact that it causes the etheric body (the subtlest energetic sheathe) to become the most dominant sheathe in our experience, which in turn causes all other gross manifestations of karma in the energetic, mental and physical body to exhaust over time. Mahamudra means a seal, and it is the sealing aspect of Shambhavi which locks the physiological changes which the practice makes in place. This grosser purification allows you to attain to meditativeness in a holistic and organic way, exhausting the karmic impurities in the energetic physiology so that your entire system becomes meditative Yoga from Isha is different from kriya yoga because it aims to achieve higher states of consciousness through permanent purification of the elements and energy body, instead of transcending and neglecting them. A lot of people in the world will not take Leo's path of transcending those dimensions through substances, or the Buddhist path of transcending those dimensions through awareness alone, and that is why attaining to awareness and consciousness through these methods is a more holistic and purificatory approach. In Isha's most advanced practice, Shakti Chalana Kriya, you can attain to a state of non-duality by purifying and taking charge of the body's five Pancha Vayus. The practice causes the Pancha Vayus to recede from the body as they would at death, which is therefore more physiologically accurate and purifying than death through any transcendental mode of consciousness. Shambhavi is very intense if you are initiated, and it is a kind of intensity which needs to be understood from the right perspective

I@Alistair Kershaw I've had multiple ego backlashes for having spiritual epiphanies. Lately I've been having a string of them. I've had approximately 3 realizations. Very key ones. I've seen how we are all one. I've seen how we appear as one dream state and can switch dream states and wake up in the midst to another one and then see the alternate just dissolve into nothingness again. My conscious never disappeared or went anywhere while this was happening. But for my "progress" if you want to call it that I've had to endure some psychological and physical backlashes. Then I stumbled on an Alan Watts' youtube (he was a really fabulous philosophy and religion lecture and professor in the hippy era from England) and he talked about what some of the great sages from Buddism and Advaita religions said about rising on the scale of spiritual growth. A Buddist priest said that there was a problem with growth in empathy, kindness, love for humanity and that was that all progress naturally invites in it's opposite. There are opposites to everything. If you look at the Tao which is thought by some to be Budda's work possibly, it lists all the positive growth one can have and for each an opposite which comes from the creation of the positive. Light/Dark, goodness/evil, strength/weakness and on and on. The pinnacle means then that you are also bringing evil into consciousness along with the good. The trick is to balance on the edge of the pinnacle but rest at the point of both good and evil and keep that balance without allowing too much good while keeping a balance so not too much evil prevails. The ultimate creator will always keep the balance just as it does the stars and planets we observe as we live out our material life. He goes into much more detail as he speaks about this principle. The video and I believe the title is something like "Stop the Chasing." That is when I realized that when we think we are benefiting the world by improving on our own characters, we may be doing harm at the same time. This has been a puzzle to me and my assumptions. You can find the video by doing a search on Alan Watts lectures.