How is life an “ultimate sandbox game” when there is an absence of free will?

[LfcCharlie4]

On 08/08/2022 at 9:42 PM, Nilsi said:

This seems to be en vogue somehow in certain circles. 

Just listen to this madness. These people are like a hord of braindead zombies.

 

Lol.

I can't remember who it was, but someone just said imagine your Child was ill and you went to the hospital and some doctor had adopted these Neo-Advaita teachings, yeah your child is dying but its all good because 'there's nobody there', 'nobody this is happening to'

Also, I'd look out for a lot of scandals from these kind of teachers (not saying Jim Newman but in general) where the whole nobody there, nothing happening to noone spiel will be used as the excuse- How can anything with 'no' be the final answer? 

Sure, there's a time and a place to expose someone to the neti neti approach & what not, but as a parrot answer to every question, I'd say that's the furthest thing from Skilled Teaching. 

Plus, they never go beyond the 'No' 'Not' 'Nobody' and the truth is far beyond the negatives

Imo, its quite a hollow, empty teaching, one you don't want to be stuck in

 

[tedens]

I usually did not understand what he meant, hard to digest reading. Once I even wrote how it would end for him.

[Breakingthewall]

17 minutes ago, Inliytened1 said:

Interesting - if true I did not know that.   But I find it hard to believe he would "promise" enlightenment.    Charging is one thing.  I don't charge but i have a diffeent job that takes care of my income.   if it's life purpose he has to survive somehow.  Its on the consumer to pay for teachings.   The promising enlightenment though and milking someone dry isnt right if true..  

you really don't remember? the guy repeats it 150 times, ask him, his nick here is raptorsin. They were between 10 and 15 thousand. He took 2000 from another. He was here capturing tits to get milk from. He also claimed to be the owner of 3 successful business and have a lot of meetings with millionaires. He has a long thread here where he explains his successful process to the enlightenment and the success in many business 

Edited August 10, 2022 by Breakingthewall

[Nilsi]

8 minutes ago, LfcCharlie4 said:

I can't remember who it was, but someone just said imagine your Child was ill and you went to the hospital and some doctor had adopted these Neo-Advaita teachings, yeah your child is dying but its all good because 'there's nobody there', 'nobody this is happening to'

Hahaha yeah I find that way of talking quite grotesque as well.

[undeather]

3 hours ago, LfcCharlie4 said:

 

Lol.

I can't remember who it was, but someone just said imagine your Child was ill and you went to the hospital and some doctor had adopted these Neo-Advaita teachings, yeah your child is dying but its all good because 'there's nobody there', 'nobody this is happening to'

Also, I'd look out for a lot of scandals from these kind of teachers (not saying Jim Newman but in general) where the whole nobody there, nothing happening to noone spiel will be used as the excuse- How can anything with 'no' be the final answer? 

Sure, there's a time and a place to expose someone to the neti neti approach & what not, but as a parrot answer to every question, I'd say that's the furthest thing from Skilled Teaching. 

Plus, they never go beyond the 'No' 'Not' 'Nobody' and the truth is far beyond the negatives

Imo, its quite a hollow, empty teaching, one you don't want to be stuck in

 

I know someone who volunteers for a spiritual emergency hotline and she once told us that a huge portion of their incomming requests are directly related to neo advaitan teachings and teachers. You get really angry when hear those stories and that's why I adopted a zero tolerance policy towards this ridicolous approach. 

There is this certain essence of being rhetorically disarming, a fundamentally built-in feature of the neo-advaitan paradigm -  which makes it almost impossible for a spiritual novice to find the dents and shortcommings of the teaching at large. It really takes a shitton of relentless study, deep inquiry and personal experiences in the liminal n0-self space to find the higher order truths the more integral traditions have always been talking about. For someone who comes to a spiritual teacher to seek help with their immense existential suffering, there is just no chance. You either are lucky and get through, or you will end up more fucked up after the process.

If you whole teaching can be summed up as:"You dont exist. There is no one experiecing anything. Nothing matters. Nothing to do. Nothing to know", then this should raise a red flag. And if someone comes around the corner with an actual, challenging question - then you can always came back with the good old "Who is asking the question?". It literally does not take more than this to become a teacher since EVERYTHING boils down to those "truths".

Obviously there is truth in the paradigm, this is not what my critique is about. Clearly, there are many teachers who had incredibly awakenings in their life and this is just the way it manifested in a teaching. The pathology gets baked in when there you use your insights as some form of absolute truth claim and can't accept that "enlightenment" seems to be a more heterogenous process after all. This is so painfully obvious, yet somehow there still seems to be so much ego and personal investment involved in those teachers when you tell them..  (I wonder why )

Neo advaita is for me the jungian shadow of the tantric path to enlightenment. 
Alright, daily rant over!  

Edited August 10, 2022 by undeather

[Artsu]

There is definitely free will.

Saying there isn't is retarded.

[VeganAwake]

@undeather @LfcCharlie4 Is it possible that maybe you both misunderstand key points of the so-called neo-advaitist communication and then create an entire story based off of those certain cherry picked misunderstandings?

Because one huge misunderstanding would be that the communication is some kind of teaching, approach, or way of life for an individual to use!

Rather the communication is simply pointing out that the very 'sense of self' that attempts to find the so-called correct spiritual approach and avoid the incorrect, is a spiritually conditioned 'illusion of self'.

It innocently reveals that there is no real right/wrong; should/shouldn't approach to life, because there isn't a real individual living it! 

The communication doesn't provide anything for the individual because it recognizes that the endlessly needy individual never was.

Nobody becomes enlightened!

 

"Awakening doesn't depend on anything. Liberation is beyond understanding; beyond all sense of individuality; beyond any requirement to change, to become something, or to have a still mind. In fact, awakening is the absence of individuality, the dropping of the illusion of separation. When seeking ends and the idea of separation falls away, indescribable oneness remains, which no one has ever been able to express in words. However, this can be said: "No one" becomes liberated or needs to become anything for liberation to take place.

Actually, liberation is a total change of perception, which is utterly simple but quite challenging because of the difficulty we have in dropping the idea that there's an individual who can experience it. We are so entrenched in the idea that effort brings about results that when we come to discover that which fulfills, that which is whole, and that which we long for, we still believe that we must work to attain it. And this is our difficulty".

-- Tony Parsons in Invitation to Awaken, pg 135

 

❤ 

 

 

 

[Nilsi]

11 minutes ago, VeganAwake said:

@undeather @LfcCharlie4 Is it possible that maybe you both misunderstand key points of the so-called neo-advaitist communication and then create an entire story based off of those certain cherry picked misunderstandings?

Because one huge misunderstanding would be that the communication is some kind of teaching, approach, or way of life for an individual to use!

Rather the communication is simply pointing out that the very 'sense of self' that attempts to find the so-called correct spiritual approach and avoid the incorrect, is a spiritually conditioned 'illusion of self'.

It innocently reveals that there is no real right/wrong; should/shouldn't approach to life, because there isn't a real individual living it! 

The communication doesn't provide anything for the individual because it recognizes that the endlessly needy individual never was.

Nobody becomes enlightened!

That's all good, but the problem is that this doesn't help anyone (no pun intended). I've seen Jim Newman talk to mentally ill people, that were clearly troubled and looking for guidance and he just gave his classic spiel of "you are already free," "there is no one experiencing trauma" etc. That's clearly not healthy nor helpful.

[Raptorsin7]

@Breakingthewall @Inliytened1 Yeah i've beat this drum a lot, at some point I'll have to bury the hatchet but not at this point.

I'd have to go through my email because paypal stopped keeping track at the end of last year, even then I have 1k of recorded donations. I'd say it was between 6-10k but i'm not sure the exact number.

And I would say he is very dangerous imo. I'm sure he believes his intentions are pure, but it's like when Michael Jackson had all those kids going to his ranch, I'm sure Michael Jackson never thought he was a bad guy either.

I am biased against him so whatever I say is going to be skewed, but the way I see it he's a predator/vampire that comes with smiles and "loving" posts but deep down there's something very twisted going on with his psyche/approach. There's no genuine compassion and understanding for the person, hence his posts never seem to land but always seem profound.

I was completely unhinged speaking with him, but he either didn't see that or didn't really care and was just happy to be "helping" in anyway he could. And when my life inevitably went to shit, he completely distanced himself from his role in what happened, and said I never listened to his advice so how could he be held responsible. We spoke for like 9 months and i don't think he ever addressed the fact that I wasn't applying his "advice". It was only when I stopped my cult like workship behavior that he pulled that card from his back pocket as if that somehow absolved him of any responsibility.

He always exceptionally cautious about liability as well, it's like he approached the calls as a spiritual business, not from an authentic place of enhancing well being and love. There's just so much off about his approach that it begs the question of what must be going on behind the scenes to drive that kind of behavior.

For me the sickening part was how he tried to dissavow and distance himself from me when things got bad and I got resentful. That was the moment the spell was broken, i felt sick reading his responses and then I was like wow so this is who I was talking too. There were also countless inconsistencies in his life story that I initially just dismissed, but now in hindsight those are an even bigger red flag.

He did have many admirable qualities, and I did learn a lot about charlatans etc so all in all it was a very valuable learning experience. But i still don't fully understand the extent of his madness tbh.

[Raptorsin7]

@Breakingthewall @Inliytened1 Okay I just checked my paypl. I think it was like 5-6k total.

My grievance about the money is his argument is that he said I never listened to what he said, so how could be held responsible if my life fell apart and I became suicidal. But my thought is why would you continue to accept donations from someone who doesn't listen to you, and why wouldn't you end the calls or refer the person to someone else who could help them.

Edited August 11, 2022 by Raptorsin7

[Breakingthewall]

@Raptorsin7 i think it's something simple . If you read a thread that is out there in which he explains in detail the story of his life and how he was an obese boy with severe depression who began to meditate and everything changed, he set up a business, and thanks to the balance that meditation brought him Triumph right away, relationships with his wife, wonderful, more meditation,  then came total enlightenment, even so he continued creating businesses, up to three, meeting with billionaires on a regular basis, while collaborating in this forum out of altruism... all invented, obviously. a guy, I guess very loser at work, interested in spirituality, with delusions of enlightenment, I imagine with some mental disorder, who wants to be a guru and earn money from it. if you analyze their publications it is obvious. he says some rather profound things and inserts deliberately incomprehensible paragraphs, so that people say: oh, it's so deep that I can't catch what he's saying. he is a buddha. I think I get something, the essence .... all scam. He seeks to have influence, and get money to pay the bills. If you are depressed, suicidal, lost, he will open his arms to you, and you will open your wallet.

he promised enlightenment by transference (paid of course), and all the time he is trying to appear on another level than the normal human. in his other forum, which is very weak, obviously, he act bit closer, but he continues to drop pearls. there are people who believe that he is a buddha. Okay...

In my opinion, anyone who lies is very far from truth. 

Edited August 11, 2022 by Breakingthewall

[Holykael]

Life is the ultimate sandbox for god who is controlling all of it and choosing which experiences to have but it is the ultimate prison and linear game for the ego who controls nothing and gets to choose nothing.

[Raptorsin7]

@Breakingthewall I wish I could see it clearly, but I still don't really know what his deal is.

But I definitely believe he has some kind of mental disorder, I know I have one. On my best LSD trip I could feel knots in my brain untangle and it completely changed me and my perception of the world. There's a screw loose in him that explains at least some of his erratic behavior.

I always believed he was independently rich and so money didn't mean anything to him. But what you're saying makes sense.

You know his nick name Nahm, I am almost 100% sure it means "Not A Happy Man". It's like when serial killers leave clues to their behavior. Someone once asked him what it means, but he said "honestly, nothing". 

He also lied a lot, or at least was misleading. He could never answer directly, and clearly. 

[undeather]

4 hours ago, VeganAwake said:

@undeather @LfcCharlie4 Is it possible that maybe you both misunderstand key points of the so-called neo-advaitist communication and then create an entire story based off of those certain cherry picked misunderstandings?

Because one huge misunderstanding would be that the communication is some kind of teaching, approach, or way of life for an individual to use!

Rather the communication is simply pointing out that the very 'sense of self' that attempts to find the so-called correct spiritual approach and avoid the incorrect, is a spiritually conditioned 'illusion of self'.

It innocently reveals that there is no real right/wrong; should/shouldn't approach to life, because there isn't a real individual living it! 

The communication doesn't provide anything for the individual because it recognizes that the endlessly needy individual never was.

Nobody becomes enlightened!

 

"Awakening doesn't depend on anything. Liberation is beyond understanding; beyond all sense of individuality; beyond any requirement to change, to become something, or to have a still mind. In fact, awakening is the absence of individuality, the dropping of the illusion of separation. When seeking ends and the idea of separation falls away, indescribable oneness remains, which no one has ever been able to express in words. However, this can be said: "No one" becomes liberated or needs to become anything for liberation to take place.

Actually, liberation is a total change of perception, which is utterly simple but quite challenging because of the difficulty we have in dropping the idea that there's an individual who can experience it. We are so entrenched in the idea that effort brings about results that when we come to discover that which fulfills, that which is whole, and that which we long for, we still believe that we must work to attain it. And this is our difficulty".

-- Tony Parsons in Invitation to Awaken, pg 135

 

❤ 

 

 

 

I am not going to write a lengthy response again because this discussion is hopeless anyway.-
Look, if you find peace in that teaching - then I feel sincerely happy for you. From what I have read so far, you seem like a person who went through enormous suffering in his life and I can empathize with that. As I already outlined before, neo-advaita and other hardcore no-self paradigms are of course valid in that particualr sense, but also lack the necessary nuance and anti-reductionistic element which is so crucial for a higher order persepective. Again, I already outlined this before so I wont repeat myself.

Peace brother 

Edited August 11, 2022 by undeather

[UpperMaster]

 

On 8/10/2022 at 8:00 PM, LfcCharlie4 said:

 

Lol.

I can't remember who it was, but someone just said imagine your Child was ill and you went to the hospital and some doctor had adopted these Neo-Advaita teachings, yeah your child is dying but its all good because 'there's nobody there', 'nobody this is happening to'

 

 lmao

[UpperMaster]

On 8/9/2022 at 4:16 AM, Breakingthewall said:

I don't know, looks like it is his realization after a life. But anyway, the comparison with nahm. Nahm didn't adopt any teaching. it was a very different case. nahm was looking to seduce.

 

 

 

 

Don't who this nahm guy is. Is he some spiritual teacher or smth?

[undeather]

9 minutes ago, UpperMaster said:

Don't who this nahm guy is. Is he some spiritual teacher or smth?

Former actualized.org admin and spiritual teacher who mainly focused on neo-advaita/no-self teachings
Leo demoted him because he lost touch with reality: https://imgur.com/3WKAELm
He then quit the forum and started his own

Edited August 11, 2022 by undeather

[tedens]

Did you pay him? omfg

What the hell is going on here....

[Raptorsin7]

@tedens Yeah I did. It was a few years ago.

[tedens]

@Raptorsin7 So it was out of a.o?

Edited August 12, 2022 by tedens