How close can the theoretical get to direct experience of God?

[Yarco]

All spiritual teachers (including Leo) seem to insist that the Absolute Truth cannot be accurately put into words without distorting or perverting it.

Given everything that Leo has taught so far, how close can someone with a purely intellectual understanding of his teachings get to the Truth? (Basically, if it's just a religion or belief to them, but they have not become enlightened or awakened themselves.)

I feel like at least a few people here know all the right intellectual answers. They can give responses that give the impression that they've had direct experience of enlightenment.

How close can these people get to enlightenment from a purely intellectual place?

Are they 99% of the way there with just a minor click into place needed, 1% of the way there, or always infinitely far off?

I feel like I have a very accurate conceptual understanding of enlightenment. It feels very close to the truth, maybe just not tangible yet. But I know I must still be a ways off. Because while the truth is a bit of a mindfuck even from a purely intellectual level, it sounds like the realization still isnt nearly profound enough to be the full truth. I can be left questioning everything, but I'm not truly shaken to my core by this truth, left suicidal or not sure what is real or not real. There is no real shift in perspective when it's just theory.

I feel like I'm just a click away. Like I just need a minor spiritual chiropractic alignment for everything to snap into place and make it all real. But maybe it's more like I'm standing across the Grand Canyon from an unreachable goal, waiting for God (ultimately myself) to airlift me across when it feels ready and not a second before.

Edited March 7, 2022 by Yarco

[Leo Gura]

11 minutes ago, Yarco said:

Are they 99% of the way there with just a minor click into place needed, 1% of the way there, or always infinitely far off?

Infinitely far off from God-realization.

It only makes sense in retrospect, after some awakening. And even then, it still doesn't fully make sense to the logical mind. That's how radical it is.

You just can't get to awakening through thinking about it or puzzling it out logically. If you could then all the intellectuals would be awake and understand God. Yet none of them do.

[Yarco]

Okay, so no amount of reading or mental masturbation gets me even an inch closer. That's kind of what I was afraid of, and also probably what i already knew when I asked.

So it's literally waiting for the grace of god to strike you. A human is incapable of getting there on their own.

Aside from DMT and psychedelics, is there anything else we can do to increase the probability of that lightning strike? It sounds like any form of meditation is about 0.00001% as effective and that seems like the second-best option.

(For even an initial experience of enlightenment, not necessarily all the way.)

Do you have any theory on how DMT gets a person there? Does the psychedelic state just make someone radically more open to the truth?

I'm now thinking of it almost like some kind of "luck boost" potion in an RPG that increases your % chance of finding rare gear (or in this case, enlightenment) while it's active. Does anything besides DMT give even a measurable buff in this regard? Not even do nothing meditation, neti neti, etc?

[Yarco]

I guess if I was serious about it I'd just find a way to get and do DMT. Everything else is just trying to get a smoother, more gradual path there. But it sounds more like an on/off switch with no way to just dip your feet in.

If I'm scared of the DMT experience then I'm probably way too much of a pussy to handle God and I should just stay away I guess.

[Leo Gura]

@Yarco Just take some 5-MeO-DMT and you'll understand it within 15 minutes.

[yetineti]

40 minutes ago, Yarco said:

So it's literally waiting for the grace of god to strike you. A human is incapable of getting there on their own.

Having faith and waiting for God, with patience, so to speak, is a gift, certainly. 

So is intellectualizing, honestly. But, in that sense, they both have their limits.

The human is not incapable nor capable, on their own.

Its just not that you can by only doing a couple things (analyzing, waiting, etc.) and maybe somethings pull more weight than others.

Try and overvalue feeling, instead of thinking, for example.

As simple as it sounds, too, a lot of this is about expansion of the mind and personal consciousness. Not to play the endless contrarian but sometimes to do the opposite of your preference, when there’s no real harm, can loosen you up to new views.

If you like to think a lot, and you worried enlightenment can not come that way, try to operate without thinking at all.

 

Edited March 7, 2022 by mw711

[yetineti]

@Leo Gura What is Ignorance?

[Tim R]

1 hour ago, Yarco said:

How close can these people get to enlightenment from a purely intellectual place?

Absolutely 0%.

Thinking about enlightenment, conceptualizing and building gigantic and elaborate models of what it's like is like furiously flapping your arms trying to fly into outer space. It can't be done.

And just as a side note; psychedelics won't bring you enlightenment either, that's an illusion. But if you insist that they do, they (or rather: you) will get you deeper into the illusion of "if I do this, I will become enlightened" and it just doesn't work that way. "You" can't "become" enlightened, "you" can't "do" anything to become enlightened, and psychedelics won't "make you enlightened". 

So the best thing psychedelics can do for you is precisely to make you see that they won't make you enlightened, that there is no you to become enlightned and that you were enlightened all the time, and that psychedelics have absolutely zero to do with who/what you are, they will neither add nor subtract from the Truth that you are. And then if you're still after realizations and deepening your understanding etc., psychedelics are on hell of a booster to all that, to realizing Infinity, Love, etc. 

[Gesundheit2]

As close as porn is to sex.

[Yarco]

2 hours ago, Benton said:

He’s says he’s too scared

But yes, psychedelics are very effective. you can always dip your toes in the water with lower dosages at first. 

I know dosage is a thing with every other drug, I guess since 5-meo is measured in such tiny units, I assumed that it'd be basically impossible to take a small dose and it'd either be machine elves or nothing .

I had a bad experience with THC a couple weeks ago when I tried it for the first time, but maybe in a year or so I'll work up the courage to try psychedelics finally.

I might need to work on issues with control first because I had a terrible time with both THC and alcohol, basically the only two substances I've ever tried. I dont know if I can just let go and accept instead of trying to control, which might be a recipe for a hellish psychedelic trip.

On THC I felt like I was losing my mind and had bad depersonalization. So the idea that there is no "me" to lose my mind might go about 5 steps too far beyond what I can psychologically handle when it's no longer just theory 

1 hour ago, Tim R said:

So the best thing psychedelics can do for you is precisely to make you see that they won't make you enlightened, that there is no you to become enlightned and that you were enlightened all the time

Are we just talking about ego death as the goal then? Is ego death the cause of enlightenment, or just a prerequisite?

Edited March 7, 2022 by Yarco

[Gili Trawangan]

3 hours ago, Yarco said:

I guess if I was serious about it

This is the reason. It's not the method or lack of luck or grace.

On the other hand, you could say that God's grace is the desire - 100% commitment - for enlightenment. There's a few ways to look at it.

Anyway, the point is that when you get serious about it, it will happen.

[Vincent S]

“Enlightenment is an accident, but spiritual practice makes one accident prone.”

[Tim R]

1 hour ago, Yarco said:

Are we just talking about ego death as the goal then? Is ego death the cause of enlightenment, or just a prerequisite?

Ego death could be regarded as enlightenment. Depending on how one frames it, no-self can be regarded as the central aspect of enlightenement - but then again, it's the exact same as Infinity and Love. Seen from a different point of view, ego death doesn't happen because the ego was an illusion to begin with. There really is nothing that could die, you're smack in the middle of enlightenment right now.

But it's the recognition of this, that is what is generally considered as "enlightenment". 

Although even to speak of a "recognition" or "realization" or "becoming conscious of" is still not "full enlightenment" (which is the same as no-enlightenment) in my view and the big punchline still awaits those who think they're enlightened - or that they could ever have been un-enlightened.

You are enlightenment, period. No work and no realization will ever change anything about that. Spirituality is one big game, at the end of which you will find yourself in the exact same place where you started. It's a total, perfect mindfuck.

[RendHeaven]

20 hours ago, Yarco said:

I know dosage is a thing with every other drug, I guess since 5-meo is measured in such tiny units, I assumed that it'd be basically impossible to take a small dose and it'd either be machine elves or nothing .

I had a bad experience with THC a couple weeks ago when I tried it for the first time, but maybe in a year or so I'll work up the courage to try psychedelics finally.

I might need to work on issues with control first because I had a terrible time with both THC and alcohol, basically the only two substances I've ever tried. I dont know if I can just let go and accept instead of trying to control, which might be a recipe for a hellish psychedelic trip.

On THC I felt like I was losing my mind and had bad depersonalization. So the idea that there is no "me" to lose my mind might go about 5 steps too far beyond what I can psychologically handle when it's no longer just theory 

Are we just talking about ego death as the goal then? Is ego death the cause of enlightenment, or just a prerequisite?

In my humble opinion, THC is dogshit next to proper psychs. Not even in the same ballpark. Psychs are lord and master in their own league.

People claim THC is like a mini-psychedelic, but I've had purer sober realizations than the woozy disassociation that marijuana brings on.

The closest thing to psychs in my experience is shamanic breathing:

If you go hardcore warrior-mode with this breathing (hours per day - consistently) you will grow by leaps and bounds both emotionally, spiritually, and even in terms of physical health.

Done responsibly (i.e. have the awareness to know if you're pushing too hard - stay relaxed, and stop if anything feels physically damaging) the results will be as though you are hacking life.

But you have to actually do it.

Don't just sit there thinking about it, actually pull out a timer or a guiding video, lay the fuck down, and breathe!

Again and again. And again. And again.

Are you up to the task? Or will you archive this technique as neat information for "later" and move on?

Edited March 8, 2022 by RendHeaven

[lostingenosmaze]

On 3/6/2022 at 10:35 PM, Yarco said:

How close can these people get to enlightenment from a purely intellectual place?

Are they 99% of the way there with just a minor click into place needed, 1% of the way there, or always infinitely far off?

 

On 3/6/2022 at 10:44 PM, Leo Gura said:

Infinitely far off from God-realization.

...

You just can't get to awakening through thinking about it or puzzling it out logically. If you could then all the intellectuals would be awake and understand God. Yet none of them do.

I was reading Eternal Unity progress towards awakening and this interested me:

On 7/4/2021 at 3:26 AM, Eternal Unity said:

I started my spiritual path somewhere in 2007/2008 but i wasn't really serious about it until I started studying philosophy at university in late 2010. In December of 2010, after reading Spinoza's Ethics, I had my first mystical experience. I, of course, didn't know what it was. I had an extreme emotional upheaval. An existential crisis.

What would be the distinction here? If not awakening, would it be one of his enlightenment experiences? Maybe Eternal Unity could clarify this here but it at least shows an intellectual framework is not completely useless in one's spiritual work.

[Eternal Unity]

@lostingenosmaze 

First of all, thanks for reading 

I consider my mystical experiences over a decade ago my very early ones. I've mentioned The Seeing The Ox as a buddhist paraphrase. That experience, in its highest intensity lasted for three days.

Right, an intellectual framework contributes to the theoretical knowledge of awakening, and back then that was all I was interested: expanding my basic theoretical knowlegde. I didn't know it would lead to something. I didn't know what awakening was and I wasn't trying to induce a certain state by changing my diet or my sleeping patterns. It happend by itself. A number of other incidents that happened in my personal life during, say, the year prior to that experience had a hand in forming my state of consciousness, vicariously.

After reaching a critical mass of consciousness, thing started to happen. The crisis that led to my hospitalization and so on...

My understanding now is that awakening operates in a parallel multi-dimensional way. Those parallel lines or facets - body, mind, spirit, experience, time, love, compassion and all kinds of other facets Leo talks about in the 30 facets video and elsewhere - get closer and closer until, When a mystical stimulant... some kind of trigger pulls my being into a vortex of consciousness. It gets recontextualized there and I am fully conscious of that process as it happens.

After that, I have about 2 months after every awakening to register my reality and recover from the intensities. Then, I'm back to my normal self for about a year or two until I have another trigger.

It's harder to trigger me now becouse I know how to control it at quite advanced level. So, I don't just jump into awakening whenever I want to, but I know the process by which the mechanics of enlightenment work. For me, at least.

Greg

Edited March 8, 2022 by Eternal Unity

[gettoefl]

you cannot experience god

mind is what experiences, you aren't mind

even as god you cannot experience god

you would need to be mind

all experience of god is illusion

[gettoefl]

god does not know anything

even itself

god is god doesn't do any doing

[EyolfTheWolf]

@RendHeaven 100% agree with this. Just did the 3 guided rounds. And as always I feel fucking awesome. Its similar to Wim Hof, and you can just feel the surges of energy going through your body. And I also have so much innate belief in Breathwork that it will in turn supercharge my health. 

[BipolarGrowth]

There’s no way I could adequately communicate the states I get into on a daily basis and people actually get a good grasp of what I’m referring to. With even higher states than that, it’s essentially impossible.