Leo Gura

Having read the criticisms in more depth, I want to underscore that many criticisms of Ken Wilber are foolish and that the bulk of his written work is as solid as can be. Minor criticisms like his support for Andrew Cohen, Adi Da, and his over-emphasis of the Mean Green Meme and his political prescriptions are all knit-picks compared to the bulk of his written work, which is solid, and which has little to do with those things. Don't get distracted by the politics surrounding the Integral Institute. Just focus on his written work, which is genius. And as always, don't expect any teacher to be perfect in their embodiment or conduct. The criticism's of Ken Wilber found on the following website, for example, are pure BS: http://www.integralworld.net

Bloomberg got no chance to win Dem nomination. He might as well burn that $150 mil.

@Maya_0 It is YOU! You are God.

It can be an act of selflessness. Think of Christ or Gandhi. You can basically sacrifice yourself for your life purpose. But this is still all part of the relative domain of life/death. From the Absolute perspective there is no one to die. But if you get it in your mind this idea of "I will sacrifice myself in the name of glory and I will go down in history as a good human being." << That's ego Be careful not to create a self-righteous fantasy about sacrificing yourself. Rather, act as though you are not important at all. There is no sense is committing suicide for a good cause. No good cause requires your suicide. Rather just do your work and if you happen to get killed in the process by some haters, so be it. But if you actively try to be a martyr, that's ego. A true martyr never tries to be martyr. He's just doing his work and others react to it. If your life becomes selfless and has great impact on others, you will naturally develop haters who wish you harm.

He was speaking of total nonduality, the Godhead. From that POV, there is no need to speak of souls.

The whole point of the notion of a soul is that it persists between lifetimes as an intermediate structure between the human self and the Godhead. If soul is just ego, the notion of soul isn't needed at all. The point is in its being prior to ego.

It is no different than it not existing. It has nowhere to go, so to speak, and nothing else to be. Anywhere it goes, it is nowhere and nothing. From the highest POV, there is no difference between the universe existing and it not.

Like I said, these are nuanced distinctions. Of course from the ultimate absolute level nothing can be distinct at all, at which point soul merges into the godhead.

No, soul is not the same as ego. These are naunced distinctions which require much spiritual experience to make. I wouldn't make too big of a deal about it. Just shoot for transcending all dualities.

Of course you cannot ever be totally independent of your sources and influences, but that is not really a problem. All that's important is that you don't follow others too closely and diversify your sources. Keep a healthy distance from your teachers/gurus. Learn from them but follow your own path. Don't go crawling up your teacher's butthole. Don't go live with them. Don't go work for them. Don't go sleep with them. This is just such obvious stuff. Yet people blindly do it and then act shocked when they get hurt. Yeah, if you let your guru stick his dick inside you, you will regret it. That was your fault really for letting things get that far. Learn to maintain healthy boundaries.

Depends on how you look at it. At the highest level of consciousness a soul is none other than God. So in this sense there is no soul. All souls are just partitions in the mind of God and made of nothing. The answer to this set of questions must of course be riddled with paradox since we are now talking about the Absolute using dualiatic language. If God is unlimited, it must be unlimited in its ability to limit itself, otherwise it would not be unlimited. If God could not constrain itself inside an illusion if its own making, that would be a limit, which contradicts its unlimitedness. This God is so all-powerful it can fool itself. Illusion is not superior to God because God wills the illusion into existence, and also because there is no difference between illusion and reality, superior and inferior. All of these differences only exist in the mind of God and nowhere else. God IS the power of infinite illusion. Illuison IS creation! Illusion IS God's greatest power. If you just imagine an infinite mind, you can easily see that this mind can easily imagine being a finite thing, like a table or a kangaroo or a human. Just as you as a human adult can imagine yourself to be a child. It's easy to imagine something less than you, hard to imagine something greater than you. It's hard for a donkey to imagine God, but easy for God to imagine a donkey.

My point is precisely: No! Blindly following even the best human being of all time will result in evil. Goodness is not a function of content, but structure. Conformity is the structure of evil. Blind following is what created mankind's greatest evils. The core problem is blindness. If you are blind, you will commit evil. Nothing can compensate for being blind. And no one can make you see but yourself.

Seems like fair criticism. What must be remembered is that self-bias, survival, self-deception, partialness, and incompleteness are unescapable aspects of the mind. The desire to follow Ken Wilber blindly rather than thinking independently for yourself is the crucial mistake. Trying to join and follow groups too closely is the key mistake. Why on Earth would anyone want to join some "integral institute" and follow the work of one man blindly? Everything must be thought through for yourself.

Certainly not the left.

The brain itself is a trap within consciousness. Be very careful with this idea that "the brain" anchors reality. This is the crucial knot that must be cut. Throw your brain out the window.

Every formulation whatsoever is dualistic and requires an opposite to hold it in your mind. If it has no opposite, you cannot think it or speak it.

Imagine death? Lol. Death has always been imaginary. Without imagination there cannot be a notion of death. If you're thinking "death", that's you imagining it. Even the notion of suicide is imaginary, since you must imagine yourself not existing. Which is an impossibility. You might as well imagine that you are a horse.

People have said no to heroin without being Buddhas. Just ordinary people. Of course this doesn't mean it will be pleasant.

The difference between self/other is imaginary. This means that you cannot even formulate solipsism vs its opposite. I mean, you can. But you're imagining that difference.

Just sit and enjoy what is true. Suffering arises when you want something to be different than what it is.

Of course! Not just language, all knowledge is relative. Infinity cannot ever be explained no matter how hard you try. The harder you try the more you fail. All knowledge is a house of cards.

You're still in it, so what are you complaining about?

See my video: What Is Perception? Sensation minus ego = Absolute Truth Just do the practices and experience the results. Why are you listening to a teacher talk about psychedelics when you can take a psychedelic and feel it for yourself? Why are you giving more credance to hearsay vs direct experience? You can't be sure until you acheive Absolute Infinite Consciousness. Once you are conscious of what Infinity is, there cannot be anything more or other. If you think there can be anything beyond Absolute Infinity, you don't understand Absolute Infinity. One/many is a distinction. All distinctions are imagined by consciousness. There is no difference between one thing and many things. The list is endless, making it ONE. You know via infinite consciousness. You are it. You are the one endless list. A list of all possible lists.

Again, all that is your own projection. Your mind serves up whatever you want to see/hear. So it's no surprise you get all your ideas validated. The fact is that all the US intelligence agencies agree that Russian was involved in the 2016 election and is still continuing it's manipulation. Roger Stone, Trump's contact with WikiLeaks was just sent to prison for lying to congress about his connections. Trump himself asked on live TV for Russia to hack and release Hillary's emails. Case closed. You think by having an edgy non-mainstream opinions that you're somehow being smart, but you're just being foolish. Just because your opinion differs from the mainstream doesn't make it true. When you challenge the mainstream you have to be grounded in something solid, not just being edgy. The US intelligence agencies are a lot smarter than you.

Science cannot ever tell you what anything is. Because science is relative. All it's doing is telling you relative differences between things, never what the thing actually is. For example, science cannot tell you want a cat is, it can only tell you how a cat is different from a non-cat.