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It wasn't a discussion of Vedanta, it was framed as a nonduality war and devolved into that. Threads which split hairs over unspeakable truths are not helpful, they just get folks riled up and defensive as folks talk past one another. 5 blind men and the elephant syndrome. It's literally a debate about nothing.

@Inliytened1 the nondual nonduality

I believe so, faith itself is everything and continues to be everything the more you move into nonduality. The ego believes in its separate finite self, the religious person believes in a separate self and God that loves them and cares for their soul even after death. The next step is to inquire into the nature of oneself and merge with God.

I mentioned somewhere that the extreme form of nonduality techings such as that of Tony Parsons might seem nihilistic, but that I find it useful when combined with the idea that evolution leads to more and more progress. Evolution is a move towards more good. And good can be defined as something working in harmony. A holon is simultaneously a whole and a part, and evolution leads to the formation of larger and larger holons, such as from atoms to molecules to single cells to multicellular organisms and to planets as whole organisms and so on. Tony said in the video that the separate individual is duality. I think it still can be useful to do mindfulness practice, in the sense of: "Mindfulness means maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment, through a gentle, nurturing lens. Mindfulness also involves acceptance, meaning that we pay attention to our thoughts and feelings without judging them—without believing, for instance, that there’s a “right” or “wrong” way to think or feel in a given moment. When we practice mindfulness, our thoughts tune into what we’re sensing in the present moment rather than rehashing the past or imagining the future." - https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/topic/mindfulness/definition My idea is that mindfulness practice can be made compatible with Tony Parson's explanation by adding the possibility that the individual doing the practice will dissolve after a while. That's the opposite of detachment which is the depersonalization disorder described in an earlier post.

@Aakash So basically you are shouting as demand for silence. And you've made so much assumptions about enlightened people, winternight, pre and post enlightenment, Leo, vedanta etc and posted so much in so little time that I can't even quote them now due to page restrictions lol Anyway no one is saying here Vedanta is THE TRUTH. If that was the case, there would be no search for truth. A person would simply write a book about it and that would be the end of it. Vedanta is a thorn used to remove another thorn; and its a very effective thorn at that if understood properly There is a saying that after self-realization the Vedas(knowledge) becomes the Avedas(ignorance). The upanishads and all this nonduality and god talks are all part of Vedas.

No you are still misinterpreting Vedanta. Brahman is not in the world. Brahman never becomes or unbecomes anything. Brahman alone is. The world is not. If it's all ONE why are you still making a distinction between the world and Brahman. Your message seems to imply that there must be a world and Brahman- two things first- then they will be viewed as one - yeah that's panchychism or a version of Samkhya philosophy, not advaita vedanta. Like I said, if one is really Brahman then for him there is no misconception about what Brahman or the world is. He neither needs to talk or convince anyone about it. But before that, this precise discrimination is essential. Or else you get a half baked nonduality or whatever it is- but it's definitely not what advaita vedanta is talking about.

@ivankiss Thanks for the beautiful painting. @lostmedstudent Have you ever done any mild "fear setting" exercises? They can be something like pushing yourself to talk to someone you don't know, going for a walk outside in the dark if it's safe, anything that pushes your comfort zone. They almost always turn out to be exhilarating and fun. I would suggest reframing how you look at fear and also trying to push the boundaries, gently, when you are ready. Also do you follow any other nonduality teachers other than Leo? Abraham Hicks, Eckhart Tolle, Rupert Spira, and Pema Chodron are my favorites when I get spooked.

@Anna1 That is wrong. EVERYTHING is Brahman. Your nonduality is incomplete. If you have 2 things, that is duality! The distinction between Brahman and world is something Brahman (You) is imagining. All difference is God's imagination at work. So if you see a difference between things, you can be sure that you created that difference. It would be wise of you guys to listen to what is being said here.

@RendHeaven Stop your trolling or you will be banned. Your trying to start a nonduality conflict and he wants no parts of it. Neither do the forum guidlines.

@Shaun That’s just an opinion, and I sincerely apologize if I offended you. It seems like you and @Paul92 are blaming nonduality, or the forum, or some combination of them, for your suffering. That’s the very thing that you both stand to be liberated from, by letting your ideas about it go.

Funnily enough, I was thinking about you today and wondering if you are okay. Good to see that you're back. I'm still not right myself either, this nonduality stuff has hit me really hard.

@Paul92 Paul I think you are misunderstanding something here. This nondual spirituality does not shame or blame you for having a sense of self or for having human thoughts. This is not a Christian thing. I am sorry if anyone gave you that impression about nonduality. Nonduality says that you are not 'exclusively' Paul with that specifc body and personality. It says that there is in fact a deeper Truth of 'you' which can be directly discovered. And when that truth about 'you' becomes so clear and vivid, then in comparison to that, 'Paul' automatically feels like a fiction. Now you might feel discouraged hearing that, but its not really about believing it or trying hard to convince oneself. This shift naturally happens on its own. Wherever Reality/truth is, thats where our attention and orientation automatically aligns itself. Just like after waking up from a dream, we don't need to believe or convince ourself that the dream was imaginary and waking state is real. The sense of reality automatically adjusts itself. Same thing goes with your identity shift from fiction to Reality. In your particular case, I would suggest that you stop taking all this non duality talk seriously, take professional help if necessary. Then when you feel curious about truth again, start a systematic, logical study of non duality along with practices. Truly speaking, if understand properly, this non duality message is the greatest news you can ever come across. But in your case, it seems so life negative because of half baked non duality theories and misinterpretations over it. Take care.

Lol good luck Leo convincing people about your twisted, conflated nonduality theories. The ego as body mind basically wants nonduality served at its own level, for its own benefit, in its own language.

All these death, afterlife, reincarnation questions, theories and confusion arise from one deep rooted fundamental assumption ''This body along with it's current personality and memories is I''. With this false assumption, when a person listens to half baked nonduality fantastical theories and understands even half of that, all these weird confusions start to take place. The immortality, supremacy, absolute and nondual nature of the Self gets conceptually superimposed on 'I' this body-mind. After all, there is only one I. The idea of a solid, firm entity/soul with hardwired features travelling from life to life is ludicrous. If any person looks in his/her own life, they can't help but notice how one's own personality, knowledge graph and preferences changes so radically over just 4-5 years timeline if one contemplates about metaphysical stuff long enough. So even in this one life, we play multiple roles and wear multiple masks, only the current one grabs us by the throat and we forget about the rest of it mostly, thanks to our shortsightedness and forgetfulness. Only people living unquestioned mundane life over decades see themselves as same person for 50 years. And another very common and naive tendency is conflating the absolute with imaginary relative. This too stemming from the same assumption, I am the body-mind. It all goes like this: If Absolute Consciousness is all there is, then why.... If I am God, then why... If there is no real time and space, then why... If I am the immortal Self, then why... so on and so forth.. Basically whats going on is, a nonduality theory is heard or even a glimpse is had, but immediately the ego-mind arises as I and then tries hard to fit that absolute knowledge into how it can now serve 'ME' as this body-mind entity. Putting the Absolute on conditional sentences like ''if, when, why, how etc''. Dude just stop. Stop deluding yourself. As long as there is even the slightest idea of body-mind-location-causality-birth-death-memory-bondage-liberation, One is NOT God. There is no God along with those ideas. And after all those ideas vanish as non-existent, there is no point in proclaiming oneself as God. That which needs to proclaim itself as God with a bigass mic, is not the God. And that which is really God, doesn't need to proclaim it or make a big deal out of it. The real, wise, ancient traditions of nonduality understood this problem very well and thus they left no chance behind for any individual person, place, time or condition to co-opt and proclaim the supreme authority over Truth. That's why they stressed so much on complete negation, whatever one can think/believe/concoct, however grand or however 'real' it feels, is not the Truth.

Do not confuse absolute and relative matters. The context of this thread is a relative one about human societies, religion, etc. Within such a context, social science and developmental psychology (like Spiral Dynamics) is applicable and useful. The materialistic paradigm is a totally different context. The context there is the ultimate nature of reality, in which case it is incorrect. But the materialistic paradigm is great if you want to land a rover on Mars. Science isn't all wrong. It's just limited to certain contexts and it cannot address the ultimate metaphysical questions. Of course there is good science and bad science. Science which contradicts nonduality is bad science. Although even it can be useful in certain narrow situations like building a new iPhone. Who decide which science is good and which is bad? You do, of course! You are the ultimate arbiter of truth. Since you are God and you are imagining this whole game. Whatever you say is true and good will be true and good from your POV.

No Yes, that would be how. Extraordinary healing is definitely possible from everything I understand. There's an interesting possibility which people overlook about Jesus. Jesus may not have been a human being. So trying to replicate his results may simply be impossible for humans. It's probably THE most important factor. It matters a lot and will change your trips entirely. The person sitting next to you will cease to be person long before your hand turns into a tentacle. If you do large enough doses you could probably experience your hand as a tentacle, but then it will shift back. Like it could in a dream. Stop thinking of your dreams as unreal. They are as real as the physical world. So all that crazy stuff you are able to do in your dreams is God imagining new realities. God is all there ever is. Everything is God at all times, but you are not aware of this fact because you are so busy imagining being human. To be human is to imagine you are human. This conflicts with being the Godhead. It's hard to be both at once. Your whole life is just God experiencing humanness. God is relentless about it. Becoming conscious of God does not help your survival, and you are so wrapped up in survival that you cannot help yourself. You do not know how to stop and you are scared to death of God. So you actively avoid God, Truth, and Love. Because it's too good for your human mind to handle. That's the trick, it's hard to say how it will affect one's life. You have to be willing to surrender to it and let it take you wherever it takes you. You can't plan it out ahead of time. This whole path is a leap of faith. It's like jumping about of an airplane with no parachute. Later you discover: there isn't a ground. That model is not good for understanding psychedelic awakenings. There is a big difference between nonduality and all models/theories about reality. They are not even in the same ballpark. It's not about drawing conclusions. Nonduality is Absolutely Absolute. It is not a function of a mind explaining things. Explanation itself becomes impossible at such levels. Anyone who tries to advance a theory or model of reality is immediately wrong. It's obvious they do not understand that reality is Infinity and cannot be modeled in any way. They are not conscious of what God is. They are not conscious of how they are imagining all of reality, including all of their models. Those who have experienced the Absolute draw very similar conclusions to me. Be careful assuming that just because someone smoked some DMT and spoke to some aliens that they have experienced the Absolute. There are also many degrees of depth to the Absolute. Some people have only experienced the Absolute in a shallow way, without understanding its full ramifications for their worldview. It's not merely enough to take psychedelics, one has to deeply contemplate the right questions. Most DMT users are not contemplating anything because their trips are 5 minutes of utter chaos. For example, Joe Rogan talks about DMT a lot, but he does not understand the Absolute. Nor would I expect him to because he's not seriously investigating the substrate of reality. DMT is not a good substance for deep understanding because it's too fast acting. Spirituality has a lot of detours, astral realms, and other weird things to it. But Absolute Consciousness trumps them all. It is the ultimate source of all possible realities. It is the Groundless Ground. It is God. It is infinity. You are God, you are infinity. Yes, but it's got a high body load so I don't recommend taking it. Sounds right. 40mg of 5-MeO is a crazy dose. Remember, you can take many psychedelics at crazy high doses and experience crazy and impossible things. You just gotta be very careful. I deliberately do not take high doses. I take as much as I feel I can handle at the moment. This gradually grows me and allows me to handle more and more radical things. I proceed very cautiously. Where most people using psychedelics are like the rabbit, I am like the tortoise. I expect to discover many new things yet. The tortoise wins in the end

This is you doing purification for your ego. You constructed this ego... You destroy it If you are looking for real progress in nonduality, you must work on this shit. Your experience is very similar to mine. I have become very anxious a year ago and had the same idea that I must protect my worldview. I ended up in multiple mental diseases, self diagnosed, including paranoia, Generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder and few episodes of depression. I have been working on myself non-stop to heal myself and I have been making a lot of results. I think I will completely heal myself soon. It was not just one thought but like multiple recurring thoughts, like a theme in my brain and I knew I must stop them. This has been the most important thing preventing me from doing proper nondual practices and causing me a lot of suffering in my life. Peace is not forced through self agenda, peace is self existing. Peace equals love.

I don't know. And I haven't done a thorough research on it yet but so far it seems to me like this: There are 3 main positions: 1. Those people say that it is very dangerous. They also say Kriya yoga and kundalini yoga are very dangerous and should not be done. They also say that psychedelics are even more dangerous and don't bring you (true) enlightenment. They recommend techniques that seem very very indirect. I suppose they are just dogmatic and have no deep and broad understanding of nonduality 2. Those say that kundalini awakening can be dangerous if it doesnt happen the right way. They do recommend practicing kriya yoga to prepare the body for the kundalini awakening but ONLY with a guru. They take the traditional approach. They say it takes years or decades and should only be done with a guru and then it is possible that you have a kundalini awakening and then it will be not dangerous . 3. They say the kundalini awakening can be very tough if the body is not yet ready and one is not yet spiritually mature. So they recommend yoga to prepare the body. One definitely doesn't need a guru. And they say that the kundalini awakening is more certain to happen (than the others say) and can happen much more quickly. Now, what does dangerous mean? ln the handful of books I read related to the topic and little online research I have done so far, dangerous means that you can have very severe kundalini symptoms. But I haven't yet found one serious source which says it can kill you. In the internet are of course some horror stories, but as with psychedelics use, you must look at the context. When someone knows nothing about spirituality and nonduality and one's body hasn't been prepared whatsoever with yoga or something similar, and one has a spontaneous kundalini awakening or goes to someone who awakens it right away then this is similar to when a teenage takes a high dosage of 5me0-Dmt half drunk on a party with his friends. I am not totally sure yet, but what I would suggest is, that when you have the theoretical foundation, that is you are mentally mature and you prepare your body gradually with yoga, the chance of it killing you is under 0.01%. You will of course have kundalini symptoms nevertheless. And they are severe according to how unprepared your body is. But as long as it doesn't kill me, I would be fine with those symptoms. So when is your body ready? intuit it. Gradually adopt more and more powerful techniques but only if you feel ready. I have read Stevens book and Gamanas books. I would say kriya supreme fire is the most powerful technique. Gamana says you can do it after already some few months of kriya yoga and then over the months and years of practice you do it for longer and longer durations, up to an hour once you are very experineced and already had a kundalini awakening. I have been doing kriya yoga for 6 months but because I just want to be very very safe, I haven't yet added it to my routine. I will wait perhaps 2 more months and when I feel ready I will add it and very slowly increase the duration (number of rounds). You have been doing kriya yoga for 1 year so I guess, in case you feel ready, you can add it now. If I remember right, Leo added it much sooner, but he is also more spiritually advanced. Definitely buy Gamana's book on kundalini, even if his techniques seem too dangerous to you, it is still worth it because it includes interesting background knowledge on it. But if you want to be yet more safe, then do the approach which position 1 and 2 suggest. Does anyone of you think the kundalini awakening itself can kill you right away?

I have not experienced any darkness from it. Just pure God & Love. Interesting how that is. It seems to affect people very differently. It really unlocks the power of one's imagination, so whatever darkness exists in you may become manifest. Yeah, I read about it. Seems like a wacky cult-like organization. But they sure did pick a great chemical to start a religion around DPT will completely unlock one's imagination, so whatever religious imagery one believes in will become manifest. Or if you believe in pure nonduality, that will become manifest. On DPT I was actually able to integrate and understand all of the world's religious imagery simultaneously. It was an awesome degree of total integration which cannot be accomplished via ordinary thought. It was like a multi-dimensional integration and simultaneous understanding of all symbolic systems ever invented by mankind. All human symbolic understanding is relative and arbitrary. Yet all of it can also be meaningful to the one holding it.

@Tom T Sounds about right. But it can be useful to see that spirituality is more than just nonduality.

So this is a question directly for Leo, but I would definitely appreciate any input from people deep on the journey. So: after doing all of this enlightenment work and the back to back 5MeO awakening experiences along with this new psychadelic that you haven’t revealed yet, what are the effects on your day to day consciousness? What is your consciousness and experience of sober reality like compared to before your journey for enlightenment & spirituality? Also, If one wants to attempt to investigate reality and nonduality as deeply as you have, what should they expect in terms of perceptual (5 senses) experience in life?

@Sev How can you be sure that the pesticides in your salad aren't giving you cancer? Most psychedelics have been used by many thousands of people safely. In fact they are healing substances. Some research chems are known to be dangerous, but not the one I'm talking about. Of course if you want 100% guarantees then don't take anything ever, including your tap water. I would be more worried about the food you eat giving you cancer than that psychedelics will somehow poison you. When you take a substance you can generally feel if it is healthy or not. Some substances feel dirty and you don't even want to redo them. Alexander Shulgin personally synthesized and tested over 100 new psychedelics on himself. So it's not like I am the first person testing this stuff. It's all been tested long before me. I am merely picking out the cream of the crop for purposes of nonduality. Imagine inventing 100 new psychedelics and testing them all on yourself! The first human to ever try them! Now that's terrifying. Shulgin lived to 88.

This substance seems better suited for that goal. It tends to penetrate deeper than 5-MeO-DMT. 5-MeO-DMT it just a bit too fast, it tends to come and go. This new substance seems to rewire the brain more. Or at least I'm able to use my will/intention to tell it to rewire me. This requires more testing to see what could come of it. Seems like a promising tool so far. I can see this being a tool to purify a lot of baggage, thus leading to better embodiment in everyday life. I see a lot of potential in it if used properly with the right intentions by an experience student of nonduality/spirituality. Of course I don't know how well it works for other people. I just know it works great for me.

Yeah, although just because something isn't explicitly banned does not mean it's totally free and clear. Research chemicals are a sort of grey area. It activates more energy in the body than 5-MeO, causing a desire to vibrate parts of your body. The nonduality is so profound the body want to go into a sort of cosmic orgasm, shaking loose decades of egoic baggage. Yeah, it's tricky. The truth must always be denied by devils.

@Aakash Nonduality is the truth for you perhaps. Now I have had a couple nondual experiences. They have definitely changed my mind for good. But what is true for me in this moment? Does nonduality even exist for me now? Besides my memory and thoughts/ideas its not there. Whats true for me at this moment is nowhere close to nonduality. ? What a crooked life we live.