The map is actually the territory?

[Scholar]

There are a few things that confuse me, and I do not know how Leo got around them:

How do we know that the map is not the territory? How do we know that an idea cannot reflect reality? If it cannot reflect reality, then how can the idea "An idea cannot reflect reality!" reflect reality?

If all ideas are illusory then the idea of illusion is an illusion too and thus it is actually not correct. Concerning post modernism and the subjectivity of reality, how do we actually know that validity is non-existent? If validity is non-existent, then the claim that validity is non-existent is simply invalid.

 

It seems to me like this very assumption is what spawns all of spiritual beliefs. And the most fundamental belief is that experience can reveal absolute truth. So, when Leo does have the experience of God, he actually forms the belief that this experience confirms his prior beliefs, which were all attained not from direct experience, but from books. Not everyone who has spiritual experiences actually forms spiritual beliefs. Leo claims that it is the absolute truth though, and yet he claims you need to understand it before you have the experience so you can actually understand absolute truth? How the hell does that work?

Isn't all of what Leo is telling us nothing but information he himself has either read, heard or seen somewhere else? He claims that he has direct experience of the truth, but the truth he has attained was already formed before he was even close. He began self-inquiry because he was convinced that it would lead him to the truth, that through direct experience he could attain a notion of the true nature of reality. But before self-inquiry, and he cannot deny that, he already had formed all the notions he is now claiming that were revealed to him. The notion that enlightenment is beyond ideas, that it is nothingness, that reality is non-dual, and that ultimately everything is one. Every single of these notions was attained long before the experience followed.

Here is a claim that I cannot wrap my head around:

"Reality is beyond ideas, enlightenment is beyond ideas, beyond mind."

Now, that claim is made, and that claim is a claim about reality, it is an idea about reality. And from that idea then spawns the notion that direct experience can reveal ultimate truth. Why is Leo so absolutely convinced that the map is not the territory? What if the map actually is the territory? What if outside reality actually does exist, and what if ideas are truthful? How can he ever form an idea that informs him of ideas not being truthful, when that very idea MUST be truthful if he wants to belief it.

I don't see a way around this, and I see this very problem in post-modernism. It seems almost like we are using rationality to deconstruct rationality, without actually noticing that the deconstruction is happening with rationality. We use logic to deconstruct logic, and then we claim logic is not truthful, because that's the logical conclusion. But what if reality is partly logical? What if the idea of the brain is actually pointing towards truthfulness? And what if the notion of truthfulness is doing the same? What if the notion of pointing is actually reality? Why wouldn't it be? Because you can attain states in which that notion makes no sense? Because you can attain states that create an absolute notion of oneness? Because there is a state in which reality ceases to exist?

Yes, the logical conclusion from these states would be that they are reality, but notice that we need to use logic to even make that claim.

 

It seems to me that the Buddha is actually pointing towards this, the no mind, the not knowing, actually being NOT KNOWING anything at all. And this is not what Leo has attained, or what I would claim most spiritual people have attained. They walk around and make bold claims about reality like anyone else. And even if they don't the notions still exist within them, even if not formed as actual ideas. The experience of oneness creates the notion of oneness, otherwise the subject would not even notice, or there would be no experience of the oneness. The very fact that the "non-experience" of non-duality can be noticed by the mind is pointing towards the creation of notion from logic. The logic is "Experience is reality" and "truth is truth".

And we know that Leo does have  notions because he can dismiss notions. I think not knowing would actually not change anything at all. If you make the claim that the brain does not exist, and I am not saying that it does, but if you make that claim, you clearly know something.

 

Does anyone understand my problem? I know I should sit and meditate and not think about this, because that's what Leo says, but if I buy into that very notion, which is an idea like any other, I might end up just as deluded as Leo might be. I am not saying he is, but I cannot just assume that he isn't.

Edited February 20, 2018 by Scholar

[Nahm]

@Scholar What a great post. I don’t think anyone could think that through much more. Nice.  The resolve is, all of this is you. 

[Monkey-man]

You can be at ease with not knowing with enlightenment, but you are still driven to read, learn and gather info. Or you just process new knowledge by mere being coz everything around is information. As long as you alive you constantly learn, life is never-ending learning process, whether you do it on purpose or by mere being. It's not up to our will, it's because being and evolution always going on and that requires data gathering. Buddha talked about not knowing coz his teaching's goal was escaping life, not living life. 

Edited February 21, 2018 by Monkey-man

[aurum]

@Scholar

It's good you're contemplating, but you're making this harder than it is.

The map is not the territory because it's a map of the territory, not the territory itself. Get it?

When you look at a map, do you think you're actually look at trees, mountains, oceans etc? Or do you understand that it's just a model of the actual thing?

Well, that's what all your beliefs are. Models of reality, but never actually encapturing the full essence of reality

How could they? The only way to truly capture the essence of something is to BE that thing! Anything else creates a distortion.

[Adam M]

Have you been meditating good sir?

Why don't you look and see if the map is the territory? 

It's very effective to study the map closely and SEE if it is or is not the territory.

You don't have to believe Leo but what is the best way to disprove him?

By exploring more maps or by exploring the territory?

Meditation points you towards the territory, logical reasoning is the map.

[Saumaya]

@Scholar  Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. - Philip K Dick

3 hours ago, Scholar said:

There are a few things that confuse me, and I do not know how Leo got around them:

How do we know that the map is not the territory? How do we know that an idea cannot reflect reality? If it cannot reflect reality, then how can the idea "An idea cannot reflect reality!" reflect reality?

If all ideas are illusory then the idea of illusion is an illusion too and thus it is actually not correct. Concerning post modernism and the subjectivity of reality, how do we actually know that validity is non-existent? If validity is non-existent, then the claim that validity is non-existent is simply invalid.

 

It seems to me like this very assumption is what spawns all of spiritual beliefs. And the most fundamental belief is that experience can reveal absolute truth. So, when Leo does have the experience of God, he actually forms the belief that this experience confirms his prior beliefs, which were all attained not from direct experience, but from books. Not everyone who has spiritual experiences actually forms spiritual beliefs. Leo claims that it is the absolute truth though, and yet he claims you need to understand it before you have the experience so you can actually understand absolute truth? How the hell does that work?

Isn't all of what Leo is telling us nothing but information he himself has either read, heard or seen somewhere else? He claims that he has direct experience of the truth, but the truth he has attained was already formed before he was even close. He began self-inquiry because he was convinced that it would lead him to the truth, that through direct experience he could attain a notion of the true nature of reality. But before self-inquiry, and he cannot deny that, he already had formed all the notions he is now claiming that were revealed to him. The notion that enlightenment is beyond ideas, that it is nothingness, that reality is non-dual, and that ultimately everything is one. Every single of these notions was attained long before the experience followed.

Here is a claim that I cannot wrap my head around:

"Reality is beyond ideas, enlightenment is beyond ideas, beyond mind."

Now, that claim is made, and that claim is a claim about reality, it is an idea about reality. And from that idea then spawns the notion that direct experience can reveal ultimate truth. Why is Leo so absolutely convinced that the map is not the territory? What if the map actually is the territory? What if outside reality actually does exist, and what if ideas are truthful? How can he ever form an idea that informs him of ideas not being truthful, when that very idea MUST be truthful if he wants to belief it.

I don't see a way around this, and I see this very problem in post-modernism. It seems almost like we are using rationality to deconstruct rationality, without actually noticing that the deconstruction is happening with rationality. We use logic to deconstruct logic, and then we claim logic is not truthful, because that's the logical conclusion. But what if reality is partly logical? What if the idea of the brain is actually pointing towards truthfulness? And what if the notion of truthfulness is doing the same? What if the notion of pointing is actually reality? Why wouldn't it be? Because you can attain states in which that notion makes no sense? Because you can attain states that create an absolute notion of oneness? Because there is a state in which reality ceases to exist?

Yes, the logical conclusion from these states would be that they are reality, but notice that we need to use logic to even make that claim.

 

It seems to me that the Buddha is actually pointing towards this, the no mind, the not knowing, actually being NOT KNOWING anything at all. And this is not what Leo has attained, or what I would claim most spiritual people have attained. They walk around and make bold claims about reality like anyone else. And even if they don't the notions still exist within them, even if not formed as actual ideas. The experience of oneness creates the notion of oneness, otherwise the subject would not even notice, or there would be no experience of the oneness. The very fact that the "non-experience" of non-duality can be noticed by the mind is pointing towards the creation of notion from logic. The logic is "Experience is reality" and "truth is truth".

And we know that Leo does have  notions because he can dismiss notions. I think not knowing would actually not change anything at all. If you make the claim that the brain does not exist, and I am not saying that it does, but if you make that claim, you clearly know something.

 

Does anyone understand my problem? I know I should sit and meditate and not think about this, because that's what Leo says, but if I buy into that very notion, which is an idea like any other, I might end up just as deluded as Leo might be. I am not saying he is, but I cannot just assume that he isn't.

 

[Leo Gura]

6 hours ago, Scholar said:

Here is a claim that I cannot wrap my head around:

"Reality is beyond ideas, enlightenment is beyond ideas, beyond mind."

Now, that claim is made, and that claim is a claim about reality, it is an idea about reality. And from that idea then spawns the notion that direct experience can reveal ultimate truth.

Haha!

You are a tricky one!

You cannot wrap your head around it because the Absolute is prior to your head. It generates your head. So of course you cannot go there using your head.

Although, common sense should tell you that a picture of an apple is not an apple. An idea of NY city is not NY city. The map is not the territory because the map is itself part of the thing you're trying to understand. You can't use a map to get at the ultimate nature of reality because the map itself is but one subset of the reality you are trying to explain. And the subset cannot contain the superset. The map is entangled with the territory! There can be no map which sits outside the universe!

Of course the map is part of the actual territory, which is precisely why the map is not the whole territory. Get it?

You haven't really thought through what you are saying, otherwise you would realize that your model of reality makes no sense, collapsing into contradiction.

You assume that when I speak of the Absolute it is just an idea. Well, that is your projection. Of course you cannot know if I have actually experienced the Absolute. Only I can know that. From your perspective, I could be lying or deluded. But that is all just a distraction from your own inquiry.

If I told you I had been to a place called NY city and it is really cool, but your worldview is so limited that it must deny that NY city is even possible, you would say, "But Leo! That's just an idea! NY city is just something you read about in a book! It's just something you believe. How could you possibly know it exists? What if you're just deluded?"

Your line of reasoning would be right, but only if I hadn't actually visited NY city.

The bottom line here is: Empty you cup first, grasshopper. Your mind is not open enough yet for this work. You're underestimating just how radical reality is. Reality is non-Aristotelian and non-Newtonian. Even modern science has confirmed this. Your models are about 400 years out of date.

What you're misunderstanding about my work is that I am not telling you to believe what I say, but to investigate your direct experience of reality very deeply, so that you can discover some radical stuff. Your discoveries will mirror what I say if you actually do them. But if you just sit around playing an armchair skeptic, you will get nowhere. You will stay stuck in the labyrinth of your own mind.

Take your skepticism, and turn it inwards. Deconstruct your direct experience and see for yourself what is true and what is false.

My work is just a breadcrumb trail. It is useless if you refuse to contemplate reality for yourself.

P.S. The truth was NOT already formed and confirmed for me. I was a serious athiest my whole life. Then, in one moment, I died and found God. My entire worldview was so skullfucked that it physically scarred me. Nothing I can ever say can sufficently communicate to you how radical this was. So it is not how you think. It was not a validation of prior ideas. Nothing can prepare you for coming face-to-face with the Absolute. Because no idea is remotely close to it.

[Ether]

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Haha!

You are a tricky one!

You cannot wrap your head around it because the Absolute is prior to your head. It generates your head. So of course you cannot go there using your head.

Although, common sense should tell you that a picture of an apple is not an apple. An idea of NY city is not NY city. The map is not the territory because the map is itself part of the thing you're trying to understand. You can't use a map to get at the ultimate nature of reality because the map itself is but one subset of the reality you are trying to explain. And the subset cannot contain the superset. The map is entangled with the territory! There can be no map which sits outside the universe!

Of course the map is part of the actual territory, which is precisely why the map is not the whole territory. Get it?

You haven't really thought through what you are saying, otherwise you would realize that your model of reality makes no sense, collapsing into contradiction.

You assume that when I speak of the Absolute it is just an idea. Well, that is your projection. Of course you cannot know if I have actually experienced the Absolute. Only I can know that. From your perspective, I could be lying or deluded. But that is all just a distraction from your own inquiry.

If I told you I had been to a place called NY city and it is really cool, but your worldview is so limited that it must deny that NY city is even possible, you would say, "But Leo! That's just an idea! NY city is just something you read about in a book! It's just something you believe. How could you possibly know it exists? What if you're just deluded?"

Your line of reasoning would be right, but only if I hadn't actually visited NY city.

The bottom line here is: Empty you cup first, grasshopper. Your mind is not open enough yet for this work. You're underestimating just how radical reality is. Reality is non-Aristotelian and non-Newtonian. Even modern science has confirmed this. Your models are about 400 years out of date.

What you're misunderstanding about my work is that I am not telling you to believe what I say, but to investigate your direct experience of reality very deeply, so that you can discover some radical stuff. Your discoveries will mirror what I say if you actually do them. But if you just sit around playing an armchair skeptic, you will get nowhere. You will stay stuck in the labyrinth of your own mind.

Take your skepticism, and turn it inwards. Deconstruct your direct experience and see for yourself what is true and what is false.

My work is just a breadcrumb trail. It is useless if you refuse to contemplate reality for yourself.

P.S. The truth was NOT already formed and confirmed for me. I was a serious athiest my whole life. Then, in one moment, I died and found God. My entire worldview was so skullfucked that it physically scarred me. Nothing I can ever say can sufficently communicate to you how radical this was. So it is not how you think. It was not a validation of prior ideas. Nothing can prepare you for coming face-to-face with the Absolute. Because no idea is remotely close to it.

Is that a spiritual ego that I sense, Leo?

[SOUL]

@Scholar Now that you see the emperor has no clothes don't let the spin masters bamboozle you into believing their ass isn't exposed. There will be esoteric sounding word play and clever circling narratives used in an attempt to distract you.

Attaining a genuine clarity in awareness allows one to recognize that attributing as many characteristics to what is said to be inconceivable and unimaginable as some do is laughable. As they tell the story of their concepts about it they say it's not conceptual and if questioned it's turned on you who isn't open to it or trapped in 'maya'.

They declare the authority of directly knowing "absolute" as the only reality and truth dismissing all else as illusion and false. Cognitively priming you as they were primed as well in saying if you "search" for the truth it will be as they say it is so are suggesting if it's anything other than that it's not truth and you don't know the truth.

The demonizing of thoughts, ideas, beliefs and mind is herding the 'seekers' by corralling them into a dogmatic belief paradigms and chasing off anything that strays from it as unawakened and deluded sheep. Everyone else repeats the regurgitated rhetoric and all the gurus agree so it must be true!

So seek clarity, keep awakened and be at peace! Haha!

 

 

[Vingger]

@Ether Why spiritual ego? is very clear what he wrote for me

[tsuki]

9 hours ago, Scholar said:

If all ideas are illusory then the idea of illusion is an illusion too and thus it is actually not correct. Concerning post modernism and the subjectivity of reality, how do we actually know that validity is non-existent? If validity is non-existent, then the claim that validity is non-existent is simply invalid.

@ScholarYou are getting at something important. 
This circular reasoning is not present only here, but in every other assumption-conclusion, cause-effect reasoning.
Every conclusion you make have an assumption. Where did it come from? From the notion of something else being true.
Things are true only by the virtue of a "gut" feeling. Your reason tells you that they are. Why do you trust your reason? Is it because it is reasonable?

9 hours ago, Scholar said:

Here is a claim that I cannot wrap my head around:

"Reality is beyond ideas, enlightenment is beyond ideas, beyond mind."

Have you ever tried to assume a paradox and come to a conclusion?
Once you try, you get so-called "false" ideas about reality, but that's only true because you assume that you can't assume paradox.
Reason has its limits. You are approaching them. Keep going and you will become enlightened.

[Scholar]

7 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Haha!

You are a tricky one!

You cannot wrap your head around it because the Absolute is prior to your head. It generates your head. So of course you cannot go there using your head.

Although, common sense should tell you that a picture of an apple is not an apple. An idea of NY city is not NY city. The map is not the territory because the map is itself part of the thing you're trying to understand. You can't use a map to get at the ultimate nature of reality because the map itself is but one subset of the reality you are trying to explain. And the subset cannot contain the superset. The map is entangled with the territory! There can be no map which sits outside the universe!

Of course the map is part of the actual territory, which is precisely why the map is not the whole territory. Get it?

You haven't really thought through what you are saying, otherwise you would realize that your model of reality makes no sense, collapsing into contradiction.

You assume that when I speak of the Absolute it is just an idea. Well, that is your projection. Of course you cannot know if I have actually experienced the Absolute. Only I can know that. From your perspective, I could be lying or deluded. But that is all just a distraction from your own inquiry.

If I told you I had been to a place called NY city and it is really cool, but your worldview is so limited that it must deny that NY city is even possible, you would say, "But Leo! That's just an idea! NY city is just something you read about in a book! It's just something you believe. How could you possibly know it exists? What if you're just deluded?"

Your line of reasoning would be right, but only if I hadn't actually visited NY city.

The bottom line here is: Empty you cup first, grasshopper. Your mind is not open enough yet for this work. You're underestimating just how radical reality is. Reality is non-Aristotelian and non-Newtonian. Even modern science has confirmed this. Your models are about 400 years out of date.

What you're misunderstanding about my work is that I am not telling you to believe what I say, but to investigate your direct experience of reality very deeply, so that you can discover some radical stuff. Your discoveries will mirror what I say if you actually do them. But if you just sit around playing an armchair skeptic, you will get nowhere. You will stay stuck in the labyrinth of your own mind.

Take your skepticism, and turn it inwards. Deconstruct your direct experience and see for yourself what is true and what is false.

My work is just a breadcrumb trail. It is useless if you refuse to contemplate reality for yourself.

P.S. The truth was NOT already formed and confirmed for me. I was a serious athiest my whole life. Then, in one moment, I died and found God. My entire worldview was so skullfucked that it physically scarred me. Nothing I can ever say can sufficently communicate to you how radical this was. So it is not how you think. It was not a validation of prior ideas. Nothing can prepare you for coming face-to-face with the Absolute. Because no idea is remotely close to it.

But this is the very point I was trying to make. You are creating logical claims, and these logical claims produce the claim that logic is illusory. 

I know very well that "The map is not the territory" is a completely logical claim, but that claim IS a map, so by definition the statement itself cannot be true whatsoever, because the map is not truth, it is just a map. It cancels itself out, doesn't it?

And I do not think that the absolute is an idea, I think it is an experience, or whatever the idea of experience is pointing to. I know you will say it is beyond experience and it is nothingness, but by my definition of experience, anything you are aware of and can make claims about is an experience. You are making claims about the absolute, and you are aware of it, or you claim to have been aware of it, thus it was an experience. The problem I cannot wrap my head around is the claims that follow that experience. The saying "I am the absolute" or "Everything is me". To even have a notion like that requires logic and ideas, but aren't they illusory and ultimately false? Fundamentally, even non-spiritually, I know my entire reality is my mind, there is nothing beyond it from my perspective, and all notions of other perspectives is happening within my perspective. My reality is generated by myself, and all notions of other realities is generated by myself as well. Even the notion of "Me" is generated by "myself", or whatever is creating me. Is it though? It only is if I subscribe to logic, because without logic none of that would be even remotely true. I can only make these claims because I have a notion of casuality.

To even have a notion about any of this I need to accept logic, because without logic no claims whatsoever can be made. And the strange thing is that that is a logical claim too! So maybe claims can be make without logic, I mean, only logic is telling me that it is impossible. And who the hell says that logic is absolutely truthful? If it isn't, then dualism and non-dualism can exist both together. I could be generating reality and reality could be generating me. An apple could be a road and a road could be nothingness. 

 So is logic true or is it not? Any statement you will give me will probablybe logical, and that's the paradox. You cannot say anything without using language, so any statement about language is already using language. Thus, language itself is beyond the subject that is using language, and maybe that is something that we just don't consider? Maybe truth cannot be attained, and all is simply delusion? But then, even that statement is delusion and cancels itself again. But only if we subscribe to logic, because without it we can just go ahead and claim anything.

And then we claim that there are things beyond logic, beyond mind. Which is another logical claim! How is that not delusional?

I do not believe that the experience of the absolute does not exist, I am saying that any claims and notions resulting from that experience are just as invalid as any other claim about reality. Maybe they are more valid, but how could we possibly derive that? With logic? The acceptance of direct experience as truth is logical! 

To even call the experience anything seems silly to me because it is not an idea, as you would say yourself. But the irony is that you just created an IDEA about the absolute, and that idea is "The absolute is not an idea!". That by itself is an idea, a logical claim only made because you subscribe to logic, either consciously or not. I don't know, I am just utterly confused about this.

 

My line of reasoning is that reason and logic cannot be trusted at all. And if they can be trusted, what the hell does that mean? Even the notion of trust comes from logic!

3 hours ago, tsuki said:

@ScholarYou are getting at something important. 
This circular reasoning is not present only here, but in every other assumption-conclusion, cause-effect reasoning.
Every conclusion you make have an assumption. Where did it come from? From the notion of something else being true.
Things are true only by the virtue of a "gut" feeling. Your reason tells you that they are. Why do you trust your reason? Is it because it is reasonable?

Have you ever tried to assume a paradox and come to a conclusion?
Once you try, you get so-called "false" ideas about reality, but that's only true because you assume that you can't assume paradox.
Reason has its limits. You are approaching them. Keep going and you will become enlightened.

Exactly! So isn't Leo falling into this trap as well? Aren't we all falling into that trap? And isn't the only way to avoid it "not knowing" anything? But then again, all of this is just another logical claim!

Reason has its limits is a logical, reasonable claim too. If it is limited then how do we know whether it is actually limited? Limit is a notion itself.

 

3 hours ago, SOUL said:

@Scholar Now that you see the emperor has no clothes don't let the spin masters bamboozle you into believing their ass isn't exposed. There will be esoteric sounding word play and clever circling narratives used in an attempt to distract you.

Attaining a genuine clarity in awareness allows one to recognize that attributing as many characteristics to what is said to be inconceivable and unimaginable as some do is laughable. As they tell the story of their concepts about it they say it's not conceptual and if questioned it's turned on you who isn't open to it or trapped in 'maya'.

They declare the authority of directly knowing "absolute" as the only reality and truth dismissing all else as illusion and false. Cognitively priming you as they were primed as well in saying if you "search" for the truth it will be as they say it is so are suggesting if it's anything other than that it's not truth and you don't know the truth.

The demonizing of thoughts, ideas, beliefs and mind is herding the 'seekers' by corralling them into a dogmatic belief paradigms and chasing off anything that strays from it as unawakened and deluded sheep. Everyone else repeats the regurgitated rhetoric and all the gurus agree so it must be true!

So seek clarity, keep awakened and be at peace! Haha!

 

 

Yes, it does seem like Leo is creating a hierarchy of truths. He is saying that there is an absolute truth, and he derives that statement from internal logic. But what if there just are multiple truths? If we consider that, then it would mean that truth could just change. "The absolute" would be nothing but a different truth, one that was changed. What if the present moment is simply truthful? What if right now "I" do actually exist? I can call it an illusion, but it still exists! And then, once I make it disappear, and once the truth has changed, I now claim the new experience as truth? Why is there the assumption that there is depth to truth? That there are deeper truths?

What if they are just different truths, and one is attained taking a certain path and another is not? Why is there a truth beyond all truths?

Edited February 21, 2018 by Scholar

[Nahm]

Would you tell an astanaut who’s been to the moon, what the moon is like, and what it is not like, and that his sharing of the experience of the moon, is really just him using his logic? Just because you don’t go to the moon, doesn’t mean you can’t. You could. Until you do, everything said about it, to someone who has been, is transparent in it’s ridiculousness and absence of experience. There will never be a substitute for direct experience. You would never tell an astronaut who has walked on the moon, that no one could actually experience the moon. Maya says these things because her existence depends upon this line of logic. 

[Saumaya]

@Scholar

Logic can only describe the dream. Absolute can only be experienced. If u still dont get it.

Absolute cannot be experienced in words. Read Platos cave allegory.

[Saumaya]

@Nahm Similar to platos cave allegory yes

[Scholar]

6 minutes ago, Nahm said:

Would you tell an astanaut who’s been to the moon, what the moon is like, and what it is not like, and that his sharing of the experience of the moon, is really just him using his logic? Just because you don’t go to the moon, doesn’t mean you can’t. You could. Until you do, everything said about it, to someone who has been, is transparent in it’s ridiculousness and absence of experience. There will never be a substitute for direct experience. You would never tell an astronaut who has walked on the moon, that no one could actually experience the moon. Maya says these things because her existence depends upon this line of logic. 

You do not understand my point.

His claim that he even was on the moon is a logical claim. Once he is back on the planet, he only has a memory of having been on the moon. The memory exists, and from that memory he makes a claim. That requires logic. And it also requires logic to make the claim that experience equals reality. That notion itself is logical.

What I am saying is, aren't ALL notions, including ALL spiritual notions, maya? Aren't THEY ALL delusion? Thus no claim whatsoover can be trusted, no matter how much you spin this around. ANY claim about ANYTHING is still a claim, isn't it?

4 minutes ago, Saumaya said:

@Scholar

Logic can only describe the dream. Absolute can only be experienced. If u still dont get it.

Absolute cannot be experienced in words. Read Platos cave allegory.

I'm not new to spirituality and non-duality. I know everything you are talking about, but all of it is still derived from logic. "Absolute can only be experienced" is a logical claim, and you accept multiple delusions just so you can even make that claim. 

Edited February 21, 2018 by Scholar

[Saumaya]

@Scholar So what if Its a logical claim. Youre mental mastrubating. Logic can be relatively true not absolutely.

[Scholar]

6 minutes ago, Saumaya said:

@Scholar So what if Its a logical claim. Youre mental mastrubating. Logic can be relatively true not absolutely.

 That's another logical claim! You are saying it cannot be absolutely true, but that's a logical claim, and if that logical claim is not absolutely true you just cancelled your own statement. Can you not see how these kind of "truths" actually dissolve? They are destroying themselves, and maybe that is why they are actually not true? But then again, that would be logical...

How can you just accept these claims and accuse me of mental masturbation? Why do you simply trust Leo that mental masturbation actually exists? Because it was LOGICAL to you?

"Oh this whole mental masturbating thing makes complete sense... wait, did I just mentally masturbate??"

Edited February 21, 2018 by Scholar

[tsuki]

24 minutes ago, Scholar said:

Reason has its limits is a logical, reasonable claim too. If it is limited then how do we know whether it is actually limited? Limit is a notion itself.

You are almost seeing it, I can tell.
Are you seeing how this thing spins itself trying to produce a result that disproves itself?
This is the paradox of reality. This is why you see yourself as you stare at the text I'm writing.

There is one difference between someone insane and extremely intelligent. The answer is: you.
What is the difference between not understanding somebody because you're too stupid and him being incomprehensible lunatic? The answer is: you.
Is someone saying something to you, or are you producing the meaning out of thin air?

[tsuki]

@Scholar What I claim is that your whole life, every single story that you have about yourself is such a paradox. The only thing that prevents you from seeing it is the size of the circular reasoning applied. Every thought is a loop. A paradox.