Leo Gura

They are not at odds with one another. Those "crazy" spiritual experiences facilitate the ego's dissolution. Besides which, the ego's dissolution is not the only game in town. If you hold the "sober" state as more real than a "crazy" high state, that's an anchor point which needs deconstructing. The value of shifting states is that it helps to free oneself of states. But also keep in mind that whatever state you are in, that state is defining and limiting your understanding of reality. There are things you can understanding in a crazy high state which you cannot understand in a sober state. So to put a sober state as superior or more "natural" than a high state is incorrect. It's a bias. This is not to say one should get attached to high states either. The point is to be open to experiencing life from various kinds of states without demonizing them. People get trapped chasing states. But people also get trapped demonizing states and proclaiming that their state is the best and that other states are useless.

I don't think you get my point though If you can't let go of your ego, why are you upset that other people cannot let go of theirs? They are just doing what you're doing. And thus religion persists. So you are literally the very source of the evil you decry.

How ironic! You are fooling yourself out of a spiritual life RIGHT NOW with this judgment.

@Andreas Don't project your hate onto me. I am not here to hate you or judge you or tell you are wrong. You can hate religion all you want. I'm merely pointing out that you are not being spiritual. If you are cool with not being spiritual or truthful, by all means, knock yourself out. All criticism and judgment is delusion. You are failing to accept/love: bullshit, abuse, manipulation, indoctrination, lying, etc. This is being done out of a lack of holistic perspective. You're not realizing how bullshit, abuse, manipulation, indoctrination, lying, etc. are all necessary for the Absolute Good of the universe. You are trying to make reality conform to your fantasies of how it SHOULD be. This comes from arrogance. The arrogance of thinking you know better than God how reality should be. This is the textbook definition of devilry. The devil refuses to surrender to Truth/God/Love. It is okay to be a devil. I accept you as the devil that you are because it cannot be otherwise. Devils cannot help being devils. I will love you even if you decide to keep being a devil

That was said to contrast it with stage Green's mob/communal mentality. Stage Yellow is a more independent thinker. For example, stage Green might love the idea of living in a Hippie commune. Stage Yellow will not care much for that because stage Yellow has transcended that and would rather be more independent. Of course this is a gross-generalization. Nothing strictly prevents a stage Yellow person from being part of a commune for a while.

If you were skeptical and questioned yourself, you'd realize that you yourself are an irrational belief which was indoctrinated from an early age, and that "problems" are also a belief, are not real, but a fiction constructed by your mind. So you are like that kid believing in Santa Claus (problems) and we are telling you to let it go. Be skeptical of problems and question whether they are real. Question your judgment of religion and reality. Can you see how your judgment destroys true exploration, open-mindedness, and spirituality? How can you be truly spiritual when you hate religion? True spirituality is acceptance and love of whatever is. By hating on religion you block yourself from being able to explore it openmindedly. Your entire problem with religion is grounded in ego. See? And the whole point of spirituality is to become conscious of how your ego distorts reality. But you're overlooking all that because of your hatred for religion. You are falling into the trap of the lesser Jihad. Just like how Islamic terrorists do. So you have more in common with Islamic terrorists than with the Buddha. To become a Buddha you must drop all judgment.

You are the placing this expectation on science. You are also placing an expectation on models that they must be 100% accurate. The issue isn't whether science will express Absolute Truth. The issue is, how does Absolute Truth/Infinite Intelligence work through science to generate scientific discoveries and models. A model is not supposed to be 100% accurate. That's not the issue. The issue is, how come you can understand anything about nature at all? Even with only 50% accuracy. That is still an amazing feat. And it's deeply connected to Infinite Intelligence. Science is, after all, an expression of Absolute Truth. Constructions of the human mind are still God's handy-work. How is it possible that science can produce a chemical which induces enlightenment? (And it can). What more could you want from science?

@SriBhagwanYogi Not really. Since there is nothing but myself, I just sit and look around at myself. There is nothing to find since I exist anywhere I look. At a certain point you just sit in silence and enjoy yourself. This is the essence of meditation.

Your tax dollars go to funding a stage Orange education system which leads to the indoctrination and suicide of many teens every year.

@Andreas And secular schools/universities & businesses are not child abuse? Children are indoctrinated in every culture at stages Orange and Green too. The core issue here is that you resist loving child abuse. You hate child abuse. That's understandable, but it is a deluded and false position. Since child abuse is a part of reality, you are just denying what is true. All judgments of reality are delusion. No exceptions. Your job is to love reality without exceptions. Notice how this threatens your ego. You refuse to do it. Because you are a devil.

Green has several limiting features which are important to transcend: Mob mentality Over-emphasis of connection, feelings, and relationship to the exclusion of facts, higher realities, and results New Agey, air-fairy thinking; overly upotian and naive rather than realistic, grounded, pragmatic. Green arrogance (thinking that Green is the most evolved stage) Excessive relativism, to the point of denying the importance of hierarchies and higher values A naive sort of love and sense of justice/fairness which doesn't fully appreciate the complexity of government, life, war, politics, relationships, business, etc. Demonization of stage Orange Lots of judgment still Under-appreciation of the dangers of stage Red Shallow, flaky forms of spirituality Lack of awareness of and appreciation of the necessity of the entire Spiral Stage Yellow people have MORE capacity for love, not less. Their love is more grounded and realistic than the overly-idealistic love of Green.

@Andreas When you and the rest of the world stops hating itself. Can you see how your hatred for religion is really just hatred of reality, and therefore hatred of yourself? Which is precisely what you don't like about religion. So you're hating on haters. Adding evil on top of evil does not create Good, it only compounds the evil. You have turned religion into your shadow. If you really want to transcend this issue, apply love to religious people. Stop seeing them as separate from you. Stop judging them. It would be helpful if you studied religion more and developed a deep understanding of why religion exists. Let me reframe your question from a fundamentalist religious person's POV: Christian: How long will it take until all Muslims are dead? Nazi Aryan: How long will it take until all Jew are dead? Muslim: How long will it take until all infidels are dead? That is what you're doing. Rather than dreaming of destroying stuff, how about you learn to accept reality as it is?

@ajasatya No, no, no. The movement of your hand is not at all the same as understanding Einstein's General Relativity and being able to predict the existence of a black hole 100 years before it is photographed. You are underappreciating the degree of intelligence and understanding that goes into science. It is not so mechanical, and you cannot seperate it from truth in the way that you are trying to do. You are creating a duality between science and truth. There is a profound connection between metaphysics and epistemology. This issue is far more nuanced and profound, and no bit of forum explanation is going to do it justice. You take understanding for granted. Genuine understanding is possible. This is a very amazing thing! How is it that a dumb simplification can predict a black hole? All of this must be deeply contemplated, not replied to with dismissive answers. Without properly understanding this issue science and spirituality will not be integrated but fragmented from each other. In the future, mankind will integrate the two.

@AlwaysBeNice God-realization and consciousness.

Transcends and includes. Yellow is not a lone wolf in the way you imagine. Yellow can have many relationships.

What is it that makes a model work at all? How is it possible to understand anything in life? How it possible to know how a car works, for example?

@Nahm Nah, there's much more to it than that. What is the connection between science, truth, and understanding? You cannot just dismiss all science as delusion, since there is no fundamental division between science and spiritual inquiry. Spirituality is the science of spirit, you might say.

There's a pretty massive difference between 10ug of LSD and 125ug of LSD. Or 0.5g of mushrooms and 4g of mushrooms. Or 15mg of 5-MeO and 30mg of 5-MeO. Doubling a psychedelic dose more than quadruples the effects.

@Peter124 A whole series of books could be written on such a broad topic. If you want quality advice keep your questions narrow and concrete. "Give me some advice for doing personal development successfully" is very broad.

I try to go wide and teach to ordinary people. I don't see myself as the deepest. I see myself as a bridge-builder, helping people to interconnect various parts of reality. At least that's my role for now. It might change in the future. For example, Sadhguru does not give a fuck about helping you understand how science and spirituality interconnect. I do. What is the connection between Western science & spirituality? << That's a really good question to contemplate.

Of course! What is science? is a very profound question. I highly recommend everyone spend a few years or decades contemplating it, as I have.

No, surely not. Duality is a tricky beast. In this case they are getting close to Truth but they still haven't realized that self/other is a duality which must collapse. Despite that, they can still glean some nugget of truth from that experience, like the sense of Divine Love. That sense of Divine Love might then inspire the person to be more selfless and to practice more yoga until finally they realize one day that self = other and that self = God. Then their realization will be complete. My point is, you should allow people a path towards the Absolute without cutting them down at intermediate stages. It's very demotivating and confusing for a spiritual seeker to realize something like Divine Love only to have a callous person tell them something like, "That's all ego delusion." Imagine if your child came home from 1st grade and showed you the A+ he got on his homework and you responded with, "So what? That's all horse shit. Where is your college diploma? Talk to me when you get your diploma." It's not realistic to expect everyone to become a Buddha without a lengthy spiritual path. We should allow people to walk their paths, being patient with them and helping them out without cutting them down.

@Druid420 You said that you think those mystical experiences are purely confusion, emotions, and ego. What I'm telling you is that the situation is more nuanced than that. Mystical experiences -- even if they are not full-blown enlightenment -- are not pure ego or delusion. They can be valuable, truthful, and healing. So don't be so quick to dismiss them. Just because something is not 100% Absolute Truth does not mean it should be dismissed. Much of what we deal with in this work is various degrees of half-truths. That is okay. We shouldn't expect perfection from humans.

No, that would be me coming from the Absolute Truth, which is not a paradigm at all. Discover for yourself whether you are God.

I would say you're not deeply enlightened because if you were deeply enlightened you'd realize that you are God. But your experience of that old man, if it really occurred, really occurred, and it may contain some deep truth, such as that you are loved or that God is real. It's just a partial truth. Most truths are partial truths. Partial truths are still valuable. You can't always expect 100% unadulterated truth. Most people need to do a lot of work before they are ready for that.