I only need some tiny pointers...

[RMQualtrough]

Hypnotherapy doesn't work on me, meditating does literally nothing at all. I have bad genes for being in touch with anything like this... However I definitely broke through enough times thanks to DMT (of course) to have a rather large amount of insight.

I know that I am nothingness. I know that nothingness is exactly what all people essentially are. I know this, I experienced this many times. I of course had the out of body experience (which is not the NDE type, but rather the illusion of awareness having form and location disappearing).

I know other people are nothing but images. I know when I look in a mirror, my body just like that, is also nothing but an image. I completely grasp this, understand that... Of course nothingness can't be created or destroyed. Of course my entire life is an appearance happening in that, and that is what has the apparent beginning and end.

When I am walking with a friend, or perhaps family, I know that if something peers through their eyes it has to be nothingness doing so. I do not understand quite why I do not then have a sort of "PS1 game" split screen type view where their sights are available to me if you see what I mean? As nothingness is also what I am, and nothingness cannot itself be finite. In fact it is the only possinle infinite thing.

I only need very small pointers towards how this "others" thing works, as I already fully grasp much of it due to drugs (yay). But there is not any consistent pointers or teachings on this one single matter. It's very inconsistent. Has someone had genuine insight into this matter for real? Not just books or videos, or weird visions of Jesus proclaiming it to be a certain way, but something with the same self evident certainty as emptiness etc? I'm not doing drugs again, my genes are shit for achieving these states, I just need some tiny pointer........

[Kksd74628]

@RMQualtrough

If you would have split/multiple screen, you would ask why there must be many viewpoints, if there is only one player. There are no rules for what experiences can be had and that's the reason why your experience is what it is. It works like there is nothing, but present monent in your universe.

-joNi-

[Maka]

-

Edited May 29, 2022 by Maka

[Barna]

Because most humans (including you) chose to play the physical game. This means that your conscious experience is bound to physics, biology, and so on. You can't experience what other people experience because that's simply not how your brain works.

I think this is only a transitory phase in human development. A few hundred years ago, before the telephone, lovers had to choose a star in the sky. At nights, when they were at separate locations, they could look up on the chosen star and try to get a glimpse of how the other one is feeling who's also looking at the same star. 
But after the telephone, we didn't need this kind of a telepathy anymore because we could call each other anytime to ask "Yo, how are you today?". So our relationships became very concept-based because we use mostly words to connect.
The next chapter of human connections will start when most people will have brain implants and we can finally feel again other people's feelings. 

Right now your best way to feel into someone else's experience is simply to look at their face. Our brain is actually miraculously good at interpreting emotions from faces and reproducing them in ourselves.

[Barna]

To answer your question from a more metaphysical perspective: "other" means "not I". To understand other, you have to include them into the I. But then they are not other anymore, they become I. So the nature of the other is that it's fundamentally unknowable for the I. I can know only I.

[The0Self]

@RMQualtrough

Reality as it appears to you is nothing other than nor separate from pure knowing. But reality as it naturally is does not appear to anyone, and it's this, and it's in no specific way. What's really being pointed to can only be seen directly, and this isn't going to happen without letting go of one's life as one knows it. It's not at all conceptual.

The direct shift into unfiltered reality is the only way to see. How do you go about getting there? By seeing what's actually happening, and what's not actually happening -- with authenticity, vulnerability, surrender, and a relaxing of mental habits. Here's how:

You have to spend time in boundless consciousness, and then it's out of your hands. But here's how you get to boundless consciousness... You catch hold of... let's call it I AM, and let it take you inward to boundlessness. Finding this can sometimes be tricky, but only because it's so simple... though it's difficult to hold it steadily without both meditative concentration/stillness/openness/skill and insight. How do I know that I am? If the objects change, it's clearly not any object that's responsible for the confirmation of existence. It doesn't even require that pointing it's so close. Many would say to just ask yourself who am I or simply use every object as a springboard to look back and find the subject, until no object remains, and there's just boundless consciousness... That's not a bad instruction, but it occurs to me the following is what I needed to hear when I wasn't getting it: The thing you're looking for (which is already here but objects seemingly distract from it), which will take you to boundless consciousness, is pure knowing without any knowing of anything -- any thing; anything other than itself... Self-knowing without any need for an object to confirm it. Meditation skill will help you steadily abide in that, and probably help you find it as well. That's the thing that takes you to what I'd call boundless consciousness... But what you call it isn't as important as knowing that it's the place where, after some time, awakening happens. And then the path to liberation starts.

If you think you just aren't going to be skilled in meditation, this is a very fatalistic attitude. I would at least hold off on counting it all as lost until after you read The Mind Illuminated by Culadasa (the audiobook is fine but I highly recommend the physical book because the diagrams on how cessation/nirvana and the mind system works are crucial for someone who is not yet awake to even have a prayer of understanding the mind) and give it an authentic effort.

I remember you saying something like you never experience love in your "awakenings" -- because of this I would recommend Metta, first and foremost.

The illusory inner world you have actually overlays all of experience without your knowledge. Desire for freedom from delusion and authenticity is how you hack your way out of this illusion. All that's left is here without a center. Questions of why "their" "sights" are not available to "me" are seen to make absolutely no sense.

If you still have an aversion to sitting meditation later on down the road, I would suggest that if you can't get over this hang-up, then how the fuck are you going to awaken to ultimate reality? But if by some "miracle," meditation truly just doesn't work for you, then maybe just stick one-pointedly with one koan such as Mu or "Who (is carrying this corpse around)?" and eventually merge with it, or just do self inquiry.

Edited May 30, 2022 by The0Self

[RMQualtrough]

4 minutes ago, The0Self said:

@RMQualtrough

How do I know that I am? If the objects change, it's clearly not any object that's responsible for the confirmation of existence. It doesn't even require that pointing it's so close. Many would say to just ask yourself who am I or simply use every object as a springboard to look back and find the subject, until no object remains, and there's just boundless consciousness... That's not a bad instruction, but the following occurs to me to be what I needed to hear when I wasn't getting it: It's pure knowing without any knowing of anything -- any thing; anything other than itself. Meditation skill will help you steadily abide in that, and probably help you find it as well. That's the thing that takes you to what I'd call boundless consciousness... But what you call it isn't as important as knowing that it's the place where, after some time, awakening happens. And then the path to liberation starts.

Well I got this already courtesy of drug use, I think it's just an incoherence in apparent unity.

I know that I am nothing. I know everyone else must be seeing and thinking and so on with the same nothing that I do. Any worldview someone has, I would say this is irrefutable no matter the paradigm. The nothingness is indisputably true I think. And further the actual existence of a physical "substance" is completely impossible. Unless for example someone believes mathematics is made of physical math-particles etc. then it is an impossibility.

Now we have the conundrum of course of identity. When cleansed into pure beingness, with perhaps only some images remaining (before I truly am void), you can wonder why if we are all seeing via the same nothing I know that I actually am, I do not see like a CCTV control room with billions of TVs for each instance of an experience...

And if identifying as the character, you wonder what it is experientially like when there is no next instance of this character. I already know the nothingness I will be wiped to, and what I am already. I can only envision something else entirely appearing there immediately. Like the anaesthetic instantaneous skip into the vision of the recovery room from the nurse telling you to count down from 10. But no knowledge of this life or universe or me or whatever else, of course.

I am considering that Advaita may be more coherent than solipsism (on several grounds, including the implications of the appearance of forms at all). Infinity (synonym of nothing and awareness), fragmented into and within itself... Nothingness completely undivided is unstable, because it has no limit. Hence limit is created within it because in borderless infinity without any limitation, "things" are inevitable. Else you would need to place a limit upon nothingness that makes it stay as sheer nothing, which isn't possible because as soon as any limitation exists it's not infinite/nothing anymore.

I can get that.

[The0Self]

@RMQualtrough

In this context, the knowing that requires no object, that I referred to, is just a practice tool that can take you to boundless consciousness, which is where awakening happens, clarity dawns, and doubts and delusion are dispelled momentarily. Then the path to liberation starts. The conceptual knowledge of the way reality is will always be understood relatively and misleadingly. The mind cannot get it, because there isn't a mind.

Ignoring everything except for (really "including even" if it's anything discernible) the effortless, already-the-case knowing of being (or "knowing that knowing is possible"), and calling out anything discernible as merely thought (and therefore an outcropping of this pure knowing overlaying experience with a thought filter)... when done very steadily, will take you to boundless consciousness. Right before boundless consciousness opens up, generally what happens is a little maneuver where you just "wait for the next thought, without waiting," since waiting is another thought to be called out and ignored and seen as only the subject and therefore not seen objectively at all. The knowledge that you are is always present, but in order to see that it's not what you thought it was, it has to be abided in by no longer being distracted by anything else, so that it takes you to boundless consciousness, which sets the stage for awakening, which begins the path to liberation.

Edited May 31, 2022 by The0Self

[softlyblossoming]

Great thread, guys. Thank you especially for these instructions, @The0Self. Is 'The Witness' state from Advaita the same as the 6th jhana of 'Boundless Consciousness' from Buddhism?

[The0Self]

1 hour ago, softlyblossoming said:

Great thread, guys. Thank you especially for these instructions, @The0Self. Is 'The Witness' state from Advaita the same as the 6th jhana of 'Boundless Consciousness' from Buddhism?

 You're welcome.

The 6th jhana is a more intense mystical state than The Witness, which has other names -- boundless consciousness; watcher state; Witnessing; the vastness of awareness (Rob Burbea); the spacious mind (Akilesh) -- and is the culmination of self inquiry. The 6th jhana pretty much requires retreats and lots of careful samadhi and insight practice.

The Witness results from self inquiry: How do I know that I am? The thing you're looking for (which is already here but objects seemingly distract from it), which will take you to boundless consciousness (The Witness), is pure knowing without any knowing of anything -- any thing; anything other than itself... Self-knowing without any need for an object to confirm it. Though it can spontaneously appear in noting practice, as well as from steadily seeing everything through a kind of not-self lens.

You could say that self inquiry works by blasting the seeking energy with pure authenticity. How's that? Well, in self inquiry, you're looking for what is aware; the subject... so nothing that you see objectively is what you're looking for -- "If I'm aware of it, it's not what I'm looking for." Well, isn't that exactly what seeking itself is?.. If I'm aware of it, it's not what I'm looking for? By definition, that's how seeking works -- after all, if what you're aware of is what you're looking for, you wouldn't be seeking, right? The nature of seeking is often untruthful because it often hides the fact that its modus operandi is always "If I'm aware of it, it's not what I'm looking for" and so by exposing it by actually playing out its true nature vividly, it short circuits it, in a sense. Until awakening (or temporarily with The Witness), it is impossible to be without effort -- self inquiry (or surrender) just moves that effort away from where it's applied toward hiding itself, and toward a place where it doesn't affect anything, so to speak.

Edited May 31, 2022 by The0Self

[RMQualtrough]

@The0Self

Isn't the 6th Jhana just a hard DMT breakthrough? I don't know much about those, just some quick reading it sounds like that.

[WelcometoReality]

On 2022-05-30 at 6:12 PM, The0Self said:

The illusory inner world you have actually overlays all of experience without your knowledge. Desire for freedom from delusion and authenticity is how you hack your way out of this illusion. All that's left is here without a center. Questions of why "their" "sights" are not available to "me" are seen to make absolutely no sense.

?

[WelcometoReality]

5 hours ago, softlyblossoming said:

Great thread, guys. Thank you especially for these instructions, @The0Self. Is 'The Witness' state from Advaita the same as the 6th jhana of 'Boundless Consciousness' from Buddhism?

Certainly a great thread. Some very well pointed pointers here. ?

[VeganAwake]

@RMQualtrough You don't need any pointers because there isn't anything missing. Everything is already complete!

The point is, there isn't one!

The truth is, there isn't one!

The needy individual that constantly feels lacking is an illusion of self. 

You can't go wrong because there is no right & you can't go right because there is no wrong. Right & wrong are conditioned concepts within the dream story of being an individual.

Freedom is the clear recognition that this needy self construct called "ME" is completely unreal.

❤ 

 

[The0Self]

20 hours ago, RMQualtrough said:

@The0Self

Isn't the 6th Jhana just a hard DMT breakthrough? I don't know much about those, just some quick reading it sounds like that.

No.

https://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/dharma-wiki/-/wiki/Main/MCTB+Boundless+Consciousness,+The+Sixth+Jhana

[RMQualtrough]

40 minutes ago, The0Self said:

No.

https://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/dharma-wiki/-/wiki/Main/MCTB+Boundless+Consciousness,+The+Sixth+Jhana

Thanks for the link, I see all of this is very alien to psychedelic trips, as there is a lot of specific terminologies I don't understand, and specific pathways that are not in line with drug trips (since drug trips don't follow any specific order).

A DMT breakthrough will cause something that to me sounds like the result of what is described there. Leo's descriptors of his experiences are ofc more in line with what is familiar to me as he just does a bunch of drugs.

[The0Self]

1 hour ago, RMQualtrough said:

Thanks for the link, I see all of this is very alien to psychedelic trips, as there is a lot of specific terminologies I don't understand, and specific pathways that are not in line with drug trips (since drug trips don't follow any specific order).

A DMT breakthrough will cause something that to me sounds like the result of what is described there. Leo's descriptors of his experiences are ofc more in line with what is familiar to me as he just does a bunch of drugs.

They're kind of world's apart, in a way.

 

1st Jhana: attention gets so steady and mindfulness is so bright that the mind's opposing tasks are stilled, and so energetic bliss pervades, and the attention then gets absorbed in the bliss and breakneck exhilarating pleasure takes off with extreme intensity (1st Jhana begins)

2nd: mind moves away from the exhilaration and the underlying happiness is prominent, which can actually make the exhilaration even more intense, but with the higher level of samadhi relative to 1st Jhana, the focus is the happiness and not the exhilaration

3: the exhilaration/rapture is completely let go of and all that's left is happiness divested of rapture -- an extremely serene condition

4: the extremely fulfilling pleasant happiness is let go of, for the even more subtle and serene pure equanimity (which persists in the later jhanas)

5: materiality is let go of for the more subtle boundless space

6: space is let go of for the more subtle boundless consciousness

7: vast boundless consciousness is let go of for the more subtle perception of no-thing-ness

8: subtle perception of no-thing-ness is let go of for the most subtle -- the imaginary boundary between something and nothing; neither perception nor non-perception

Nirvana: cessation; the end of time

 

In the vast majority of cases, this is simply beyond the scope of psychedelics.

Edited June 1, 2022 by The0Self