I Asked Peter Ralston About Psychedelics, Here Is His Response...

[UnbornTao]

Huh. You assume that a practice will get you there, even when there is actually here, is true now and is an unknown. It's absolute. Only direct will do, no matter what you want to believe.

Process doesn't apply when it comes to direct consciousness. What precedes an enlightenment experience is rather secondary. The mind may make up a story about what it did before the realization in an attempt to replicate such an experience, but that's not possible. You must come at each enlightenment anew, so to speak. That's the meaning of direct!

What is the possibility of direct consciousness? How many of us have actually experienced it? How can changes in state and "increased" consciousness be distinguished?

Edited August 6, 2023 by UnbornTao

[ValiantSalvatore]

43 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

What is the possibility of direct consciousness? How many have actually experienced it? Not many, I'd say. How to distinguish changes in state which are temporary with an increase in consciousness?

Most are True changes are permanent , a taste differs from permanent growth. Yet also horizontral growth can be experienced deeper love, bliss etc. 

That is what interests me also for example deeper spacious experiences and to do retreats there. I love expanding consciouness feelings etc. 

I'd love to experience a permanent structure change in that sense...!

Edited August 5, 2023 by ValiantSalvatore

[Javfly33]

6 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

The end of suffering or bliss is not the same thing as CONSCIOUSNESS.

Pursue whatever spiritual goals you want, it just doesn't mean you're deeply Conscious. It means you're very well trained. And maybe that's enough for you. That's up to you. But it's not the only game in town.

It´s not the only game in town, sure. But in my experience is the only game worth mastering.

What is the goal of the other game? Where does the understanding or being 'conscious' ends? 

@Leo Gura It doesn't make sense to me that you say that the end of suffering or bliss, doesn't mean you are Conscious. We are talking about states of Being, right? About Consciousness being on a certain level of activation, of entanglement vs of Liberation.

When you say 'one is deeply Conscious', we already then are talking about an individual holding information or data in their mind about something. I get this might be useful for any kind of material mastery, but what this have to do with Spirituality? 

Edited August 5, 2023 by Javfly33

[UnbornTao]

2 hours ago, ValiantSalvatore said:

Most are True changes are permanent , a taste differs from permanent growth. Yet also horizontral growth can be experienced deeper love, bliss etc. 

That is what interests me also for example deeper spacious experiences and to do retreats there. I love expanding consciouness feelings etc. 

I'd love to experience a permanent structure change in that sense...!

I'm not sure I get what you're saying, could you clarify?

[UnbornTao]

1 hour ago, Javfly33 said:

When you say 'one is deeply Conscious', we already then are talking about an individual holding information or data in their mind about something. 

No.

[Leo Gura]

3 hours ago, docs20 said:

What do you still find genius about his work to this day?

I don't know how to explain it. His work is of amazing quality.

1 hour ago, Javfly33 said:

It´s not the only game in town, sure. But in my experience is the only game worth mastering.

What is the goal of the other game? Where does the understanding or being 'conscious' ends? 

@Leo Gura It doesn't make sense to me that you say that the end of suffering or bliss, doesn't mean you are Conscious. We are talking about states of Being, right? About Consciousness being on a certain level of activation, of entanglement vs of Liberation.

When you say 'one is deeply Conscious', we already then are talking about an individual holding information or data in their mind about something. I get this might be useful for any kind of material mastery, but what this have to do with Spirituality? 

In the end, all I can say is that what Buddhists are pursuing and attaining, while beneficial and great in many ways, is not the same thing as the kinds of high awakenings I have had. And no amount of debate is going to change that. There exist levels of consciousness which cannot be reached through manual practice but only psychedelics. And this is the best kind of consciousness. Unfortunately I don't have a method for making such states permanent. I have been exploring this domain because I was hoping to find such a way, but I have been unsuccessful so far.

My ultimate hope was to develop a totally new kind of path. But there's no guarantee such a thing exists.

My work has been about finding new stuff. There is no point in my reinventing Buddhism. Anyone who wants Buddhism knows how to do it. I was hoping to discover something else.

Edited August 5, 2023 by Leo Gura

[Jodistrict]

People who say meditation doesn’t work aren’t really meditating.  They may be formally sitting for a period of time, but spend that time almost completely in their head absorbed in their thought trains.  If you are traumatized, the trauma can make concentration extremely difficult.  Before meditating, one should also work on detoxifying the body since the body and mind are one.   In the East, a guru may require that you practice morality for several years to stabilize the mind before entering a serious meditation practice.     

[Leo Gura]

6 minutes ago, DefinitelyNotARobot said:

What pains me is that I can't remember 99.999% of the insights I have during these states. I

Yes, this is the case because if the state is high enough it becomes more and more impossible to store it in memory. Some states are just so high that they are too far removed from human life and cannot make sense while in the human POV.

So unfortunately these awakenings are cool but not very useful. Which is why I mostly don't even talk about them. I regard them as nice little treats that I randomly get in my sleep. But I can't really do anything with them.

Edited August 5, 2023 by Leo Gura

[Bufo Alvarius]

7 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Well, I beg to differ.

 

7 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

No! Into Absolute Consciousness.

You DO NOT comprehend what Consciousness is.

Hey @Leo Gura, while @Water by the River has gone to extensive length in several posts to explain and clarify his position on what exactly Absolute Consciousness is from his pov, I see you either repeatedly refuse his take on the Absolute, or you say in general that nobody knows what Consciousness really is. 

Could you then please clarify and precicely state for all of us what Consciousness fundamentally is from your perspective and where this differs from saying that in full enlightenment one moves permanently from being a body/mind in an objective world to being impersonal, centerless, empty, boundless eternal infinite consciousness floating nowhere, nowhen, nohow, with all traces of seperate self arisings distinguished, with all distinctions/differences collapsed until there is only life left onto itself. 

In regards to the above statement, if you say to become 'more conscious', do you mean you become conscious of more/other fundamental aspects of God (like empty, eternal, boundless, centreless etc.), or do you mean with 'more conscious' that you become conscious of the exact workings/mechanics of reality itself, like for example becoming conscious how exactly you create/will the entire perceptual field into existence?

 

[Leo Gura]

19 minutes ago, Bufo Alvarius said:

Hey @Leo Gura, while @Water by the River has gone to extensive length in several posts to explain and clarify his position on what exactly Absolute Consciousness is from his pov, I see you either repeatedly refuse his take on the Absolute, or you say in general that nobody knows what Consciousness really is. 

That's the trick. It's very hard to put into words. I am developing a course to guide people to it.

Quote

Could you then please clarify and precicely state for all of us what Consciousness fundamentally is from your perspective and where this differs from saying that in full enlightenment one moves permanently from being a body/mind in an objective world to being impersonal, centerless, empty, boundless eternal infinite consciousness floating nowhere, nowhen, nohow, with all traces of seperate self arisings distinguished, with all distinctions/differences collapsed until there is only life left onto itself.

What I am talking about is so advanced and profound that I cannot put it into words and it is not enlightenment or centerlessness.

Sorry, I know that's not useful to hear.

Quote

In regards to the above statement, if you say to become 'more conscious', do you mean you become conscious of more/other fundamental aspects of God (like empty, eternal, boundless, centreless etc.), or do you mean with 'more conscious' that you become conscious of the exact workings/mechanics of reality itself, like for example becoming conscious how exactly you create/will the entire perceptual field into existence?

You become conscious of God as an Infinite Mind dreaming up reality.

The biggest difference between the consciousness I talk about and Buddhism or enlightenment is that enlightenment is reductionistic. It boils consciousness down to emptiness. Whereas what I am talking about is a top-down, non-reductionistic process of God comprehending itself. When you boil God down to emptiness is as Buddhist methoda do, that's a very different thing and inferior in my book.

I explained this in my video: An Advanced Explanation Of God-Realization where I made a distinction between Buddhism's reductionism vs top-down comprehension. Stop trying to boil consciousness down to some kind of empty substance. That is the wrong direction to go if you want to understand consciousness.

Really, the best way to explain it is: do 300 trips of 5-MeO-DMT and notice that that's not Buddhism. It's a totally different level of consciousness. The things I am pointing to can only be understood with massive psychedelic experience. A Buddhist will never understand it. It cannot be explained to him. And that's where this conversation ends. Words are not up to this task. You must actually do the technique, which is psychedelics. People keep expecting me to explain it to them without them doing the technique.

Edited August 5, 2023 by Leo Gura

[Unlimited]

6 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

I am developing a course to guide people to it.

I know something like this will take a lot of time but I hope it won't take too long.

I would literally buy it the moment it is available.

Edited August 5, 2023 by Unlimited

[Leo Gura]

12 minutes ago, DefinitelyNotARobot said:

What confuses me is that the human body can sometimes be capable of translating these awakenings into the world (people pointing towards awakening, you talking about how you're god), while at other times, these states seem to bare such little resemblance to the human state that there is nothing to take away from them. It's seems rather arbitrary to my sleeping eyes, but I know that there is a very elaborate design behind it being that way. How does god choose which things should be known by the human and which shouldn't?

My explanation of it is pretty simple. In order to be human you must reside within a very narrow and low state of consciousness. This is true even if you are a fully enlightenment Buddha. Your consciousnes is still less 1% of what is possible. And that is simply because that's what it means to be human. The highest levels of consciousness are so alien and non-human that a human can barely remember or think about them, nevermind access them at will, nevermind making such changes permenent. What the human can make permament is very very little. Which is why enlightenment teachers poo-poo the whole idea of "chasing states". They tell you not to do it because a human can't sustain them. That's what "human" IS. Human means being pretty much in the state you're currently in. But what a human can sustain is something like deep surrender and emptiness. Which is what they call enlightenment. And this has it's benefits for humans, but as far as consciousness goes it's still weak.

So it's sort of a sad situation because most of consciousness remains inacceesible and unsustainable for humans. Merely by the fact of being human. I guess after death that will change. Which is the point of death. Death finally frees you to explore higher domains because you are no longer attached to the human experience scheme.

Edited August 5, 2023 by Leo Gura

[seriousman24]

The only thing to give credit to for those more eastern like yogic Buddhism stuff is that some of them talk about how the universes as a whole are in a process of awakening themselves beyond humanity, we are on the 84th out of 114th and that even after that it will keep going but "fully realized" whatever that means, in other words the shareble experiences are temporarily limited until the whole universe reaches a certain level and of course certain individuals have supposedly penetrated into higher states which are of course by virtue of the grounding for them not being laid out those experiences can not be completely shared, probably because each super state universe beyond a certain level will require specific uniqueness from most beings to form a shareble experience which makes the current process and reality of sharing simply a beacon to reach the same level but of a different type to those who are not yet even close to let's say the 84th level or whatever level a human can jump into.

It might be possible to reach super states by "fusing" groups of humans at the energy level/psych whatever level, whatever combination of methods you can think of which of course goes into dangerous territory as usual, sadhguru himself said that in process of consecrating the dhyanalinga multiple human beings had to get together to make the process easier/less risky and each person would have a particular set of chakras assigned which of course corresponds to those same 114 chakras that the universes supposedly are on, I choose to put some faith in these things because they sound cool, fun and adventurous, it would be interesting to know which "chakras" people's trips can reach, maybe it even goes beyond 114th or something, it's obvious that everything is "imagination" and "solipsistic" but that's why I believe this is part of why this impossibility is being manifested, so that the impossibility of multiple selves become realer and the experiences deeper, more diverse and repeatable, I have no idea.

Any human knows what joy is and anyone is able to fully surrender to a perfect bliss/joy/love whatever it's just that only shareble love is allowed here, reality is going for multiple loves, multiple selves, the sustainability of something is dependent on it's sharebility/reproduction/survivability, we're going for a triple infinity of infinite bliss/infinite non suffering(both create specificity when together) and multiple selves, because now you have multiple types of infinity that can work together, this automatically implies the necessity of time+quantity+intelligence to "sort it out", I'll spare myself and you my autistic ideas about the fundamental reasons for the mechanics lol.

Edited August 5, 2023 by seriousman24

[ValiantSalvatore]

1 hour ago, UnbornTao said:

I'm not sure I get what you're saying, could you clarify?

I don't know how much you're into Wilber fundamentally when I interpret all of the stuff correctly everything even what Ralston & other "Buddhist", "Woke-Is~t" talk about is mapped out by Wilber, if I contrast the level of presence of some of the western guys & the deep presence and "Einstellung" of eastern teachers the level of depth is not found in many of the west. 

A true change in consciouness is permanent it differs from a peak experience, in that sense it's direct even a peak, is direct it absolutely shows you what is there, yet a capital T True change is fundamentally a permanent shift in consciouness it's there after the peak/realization experience, that is what I generally meant. Which is obvious, yet should be pointed out all of these peaks/realizations that exists are gateways into a permanent change of conscious experience. Otherwise it was mostly a glimps.

Still at a horiziontal level, for example I have now permanent realization X, I can go endlessly into expoloring the level of depth in that area, yet it's not the next lvl Y in that case, so there is no higher/later/deeper level yet realized, simply continous exploration of consciouness lvl X. That is the difference of exploring a structure-stage (vertical development in itself) horizontally!! which means that you gain more depth in this plane and leveling that structure stage is vertical development and practice, which is an important distinction. So you basically make a leap to the next level and can again explore horiziontally, that also causes the issue of transcending (leveling up) to aggresively where shadow elements can be forged.

You could simplify it to this conceptual train/equation.... Translating => Horizontal Development => Horizontal Depth != Transcending => Vertical Development => Vertical Depth ( => Exploring multiple levels early ones and later ones /higher&lower), of any consciouness plane. These concepts fundamentally make a very good distinction of what happens during consciouness exploration, the next important point would be interpretation! The center of gravity (current lvl & perspective taking abillity) allows you to explain and experience the experience at this exact level of possible interpretation a fundamentalist muslim & christian or jewish person can have a god-realized experience, yet will explain it at this level, an athetist/agonostic (generally higher/later development...) would explain and describe the experience differently at a more accurate/higher level of interpretation. If I am allowed to make up more categories you could make a distinction between Higher Interpretation abillity and lower as well as earlier and later, this is extremely fking important for context. For example a 17-14 year old rationalist atheist could comprehend the experience differently than a 26 year old multisystemic system thinker. I don't know how much morals & emotions matter in that case as a developmental line, yet it's definitely important to consider.

Also,  considering a classic path, Vipassana won't get you non-duality etc, yet could lead you to a strucuture-stage called Causal. This is mapped out by wilber, different paths lead to different permanent levels of realization. Vipassana ends at Causal structure-stage. I practice a mixture of it, so I don't know where I'll end and if there is a possible TIER 4, yet that is mere speculation, as archetypes do occure at early Causal state & at late you have the emptiness stuff, in that sense it's not consciouness simply Causal state.... & structure-state, if I recall correctly my readings. 

Edited August 5, 2023 by ValiantSalvatore

[ValiantSalvatore]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Which is why enlightenment teachers poo-poo the whole idea of "chasing states". They tell you not to do it because a human can't sustain them. That's what "human" IS. Human means being pretty much in the state you're currently in. But what a human can sustain is something like deep surrender and emptiness. Which is what they call enlightenment. And this has it's benefits for humans, but as far as consciousness goes it's still weak.

So it's sort of a sad situation because most of consciousness remains inacceesible and unsustainable for humans. Merely by the fact of being human.

I doubt a human body could handle some level of consciounesses, the existence of having a body might cause the issue I don't know. Shinzen definitely advocates setting goals and striving. If we merge with A.I maybe some other depths are possible and it will most likely happen, still different biological life forms and cells might be able to go into deeper states with a more life like body and existence, yet it all could simply be fantasy. 

imo who knows. Maybe the machine even drags you down, I really dunno or it's a reductionistic approach, but works I dunno. Difficult to explain what I mean, I hope the generally idea applies.

 

Edited August 5, 2023 by ValiantSalvatore

[Leo Gura]

54 minutes ago, DefinitelyNotARobot said:

Do the lessons of life translate back into whatever comes after death? Does the learning one does over their life time have any significance outside of the dream, or is the potential of mind so vast that all of these lessons become nothing but a droplet in the ocean?

I have no idea.

[How to be wise]

@Leo Gura I wouldn’t trust sadhguru too much if I were you.

[Leo Gura]

2 minutes ago, How to be wise said:

@Leo Gura I wouldn’t trust sadhguru too much if I were you.

Trust him for what?

[Adrian colby]

15 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

The biggest difference between the consciousness I talk about and Buddhism or enlightenment is that enlightenment is reductionistic. It boils consciousness down to emptiness. Whereas what I am talking about is a top-down, non-reductionistic process of God comprehending itself. When you boil God down to emptiness is as Buddhist methoda do, that's a very different thing and inferior in my book.

Would it help to be recognising or clarifying terms for example: the reductionist process is seeking to concentrate one’s experience back into a singularity which people describe as the empty space, void, bliss and nothingness which is one in the same as ‘awareness’ unto itself. As opposed to the expansionist process of awareness decentrating itself out into distinctions or attributes. Things that it ‘does’ but are not it itself. 

so we’re looking at a principal and attribute. Awareness or infinity and what it does to know itself ( consciousness). The word Consciousness means ‘with knowing’ so the godhead is somewhere between awareness and consciousness where an ability to split into two by making distinctions ( a single idea that becomes the dream of relativity that expands out into the stories that justify its existence through imagination.

while the relative or dream is made of consciousness, consciousness is also the projection of the awareness, through the godhead into the dream to have an immersive experience to know itself by becoming everything that it is not ( or by creating things in order to know itself by its attributes or what it is capable of doing) because it cannot and never will have the ability to see itself.

when a person chases enlightenment they find emptiness. They go back and forth from the state or sometimes get stuck in that cycle but getting over that means realising the exploration of the dream and all the possibilities because in the emptiness there are no possibilities only potential. Consciousness work is the exploration of infinite possibility and infinite states. Reaching beyond the human state is what some would refer to as raising consciousness, expanding consciousness or ascension? This is a further stage beyond realizing awareness as infinity or the Self. It’s moving on to the exploration of infinity as conscious states within the relative ( by relative im not condensing that to just the earth or our perception of physicality but I include all possible realms that can be explored)

 

so you’re exploring different states of knowing on a spectrum that concentrate back to the godhead? You’re exploring the godhead or the construction of the dream. You’ve already become infinity itself as the absolute so knowing that requires exploring its attributes ( consciousness) ?

[OBEler]

@Leo Gura @Leo Gura 

There was a thread a while ago about a forum member asking Ralston about solipsism. A part of his answer:

"Clearly, I am a function of your imagination because you've never even met me and so make up all sorts of things you imagine are me or true of me. But that is really about your experience, not a universal reality, and again it is not relevant, except for knowing that you are making stuff up.
Oh, by the way, either Leo is wrong or you misunderstood or misrepresented his communication. In either case, reducing such matters to a conclusion and a mythical story only serves to distract from any reality that might be true. Only direct consciousness makes a difference."

He has clearly a complete different standpoint than you,  or is here a misinterpretation? How could you see him on same level of awakening like you if you contradic each other so strong?