Leo Gura

There is no formulaic answer. It's a delicate tight rope act. Following one's heart and intuition is a good rule of thumb. But that already assumes you've got a pure heart and good intuition, which not all people have. Mostly I keep myself safe by cross-referencing 100s of diverse sources and by understanding that my mind is self-deceptive.

There is some similarity but it is also not really a mystical or nondual experience at all. You are still deeply unconscious in a flow state. It is similar in the sense that the sense of I is gone and thoughts are gone. But awakening is much more radical. Flow state shows you how nice it feels to not have ego controlling your life. But it gives you no understanding of what reality, Self, or God is.

You are tricking yourself. All spiritual sayings require proper interpretation within the proper context. He is not necessarily saying what you think he is saying. No, almost the opposite. All that nonduality requires is to shut off the mind and sit in silence and concentrate for long periods of time. Concepts and thinking are the #1 obstacle. Sitting in silence and not thinking is not so easy if you are addicted to thinking (which everyone is).

Not just I understand it. Thousands of people do. But most mathematicians don't because they don't question metaphysics. Their entire pursuit is conceptual. Yes Mathematical skill has little to do with one's level of consciousness. If you don't care to know, then you will remain ignorant. Reality has no obligation to make itself known to lazy people. Yes, from your perspective I sound dangerous, deluded, and crazy. That is a relative truth.

It's too advanced for you. Move on to a more basic self-help video.

@Andreas These are tricky metaphysical questions which I don't want to waste my time explaining unless I sense that I am talking to a very openminded person who is going to be capable of thinking outside the box. These things cannot be argued at you. You must take responsibility to contemplate them on your own. If you want to understand what 2+2=4 means, start by contemplating: What is a number? What is equality? What is truth? These are questions which takes years to contemplate. The greatest mathematicians on the planet do not understand such things. It cannot be explained to you in a forum post. This is very serious stuff. Argument, proof, and reason count for virtually nothing here because all of those have been co-opted by ego. If you truly understood what a number is, or what truth is, it would collapse your entire reality.

If that is true, why did Sadhguru need 2 lifetimes of practice?

I did answer your questions but you are incapable of understanding what I am saying because you insist on maintaining your paradigm. What I am telling you is outside that paradigm. So this conversation cannot go any further. You are not appreciating how tricky the mind is. You cannot trust anything your mind says. It's all games and lies.

You can't understand that at your current stage of development and consciousness. At your stage of cognitive development you simply take objective reality for granted, as a given. But there actually isn't such a thing. Your MIND is constructing "physical" "reality". The reality you construct is precisely of the sort which allows you to survive as yourself. Everything you consider "real" is filtered through your ego to make sure it allows the illusion of a self to survive as the illusion that it is, without you realizing that it is an illusion. If you weren't doing this, you'd be dead and a physical world would not exist. 2+2=4 is a relative truth. It is true because you say it is and by how you situate it within your entire scheme of conceptual understanding. It is not an Absolute Truth.

This is why you cannot boil this work down to some stupid platitude like "be in the now". This work is much more complex and subtle than newbies imagine it to be. The ramifications of nondual awareness are enormous and they cannot be formalized. This is why post-awakening a lot of integration work is required. Your mind has to do work to figure out how to adopt Truth/Absolute to everyday life. And it is VERY EASY for your mind to distort the Truth and embody it incorrectly. Hitler could come to your house with a flamethrower and if you're naive, you might tell yourself something like, "Just be in the now" and that will be a huge mistake. It takes great intelligence to apply high spiritual teachings and principles. Newbies and fools will make terrible mistakes.

Mostly dangers of being too unfocused or too conceptual. Theory and practice must be delicately balanced. Few people know how to strike this balance. They mostly veer off too much in one direction or the other. If you like my work, being too conceptual will be one of your biggest obstacles. If you don't like my work, studying too little theory will be one of your greatest obstacles.

There is no right or wrong. It's all relative to survival. Hence there is conflict and disagreement, and it will always exist. Action is not achieved through total consensus. Power prevails. There are winners and losers. Don't blame this on self-actualization or transcendence. This is life. You cannot escape survival dynamics.

There are some dangers to that approach as well. There are dangers everywhere. But overall I am highly in favor of studying 100s of sources or you will become deluded. Then again, you will probably also become deluded if you study 100s of sources. It's hard to avoid delusion. Personally I study at least 100 sources and I know I would have been screwed by now if I hadn't.

Yes, of course. Haven't we stated this already? "Psychedelics don't work on stupid people." -- Terence McKenna Yeah, about the same.

It's because very few people understand the breadth of this work. It's not only deep, it's broad. Psychological and sociological aspects of it cannot be ignored the way that many narrow nondual teachings assume. An integral approach is not done by almost any teacher or school. Thus horrendous gaps result. A lot of spiritual folks are in denial about the work's breadth. They want it to be as simple as someone like Eckhart Tolle or Rupert Spira makes it seem. But it just isn't. I am what I am. My function is to teach people here.

Sure You could give yourself a panic attack without even taking psychedelics. It all depends on how your use your mind. To trip well you need to be relatively emotionally even-keeled. If your emotions and mind are all over the place, if your life is mess, you're not stable enough to trip, the ego is too fragile and insecure. You need more basic personal development work first in that case. Tripping requires maturity and self-control.

I'm not really familiar with what he does. But it's very easy to do years of Vipassana but not be awakened or really understand the depth of consciousness work. In fact I would say that most Westerners who practice Vipassana have no idea what awakening or nonduality really are. Because they are following a very narrow practice on blind faith. I have met people who have done Vipassana for 5-15 years but have no idea what the world enlightenment means. Not to mention many other aspects of spiritual work. This work goes so deep and has so many layers to it that you should NEVER assume that a person who does any kind of practice is awake or understands spirituality. It's all too easy to turn spiritual practices into narrow robotic habits and dogmas. Sam Harris supposedly also does meditation and has even had some degree of realization of no-self. But his worldview is still thoroughly materialistic and dualistic, and he is still missing 98% of spirituality. This is extremely common in the West especially. Westerners tend to dabble in spirituality while thinking to themselves that they've figured it all out. This is to be expected. As a general rule of thumb: When someone talks about spirituality, does spirituality, or teaches spirituality -- NEVER, EVER assume that they are at the highest stages of it. Always be skeptical. Especially with Westerners. True masters are very rare. Fully comprehensive teachings are very rare. Most people who do spirituality are doing it very poorly, pathologically, and half-assing it. This is to be expected given that almost no one understands the full scope of the mind's self-deceptiveness. Even awakening will NOT make you immune to self-deception. So watch out!

Yes, very clear. Sounds like you still haven't found the right sweet spot. Some substances are better/easier than others. Mushrooms can be twisted and hard to understand. Ayahausca can be overwhemling and very uncomfortable for newbies. What I recommend is tightening up your protocols and tripping in a very controlled manner. You could try the following routes: 1g of mushrooms >> 2g of mushrooms >> 3g of mushrooms >> until you hit your sweet spot 75ug of LSD >> 125ug of LSD >> 200ug of LSD >> 250ug of LSD >> until you hit your sweet spot This must be done in a good comfortable quiet setting, free of distractions, free of people, and other nonsense. You must do it on an empty stomach and you must sit still and contemplate about the nature of reality with your eyes open. Your intention must be pure & serious. If you did all that, I don't see how you wouldn't have some nice breakthroughs.

60 trips is not a lot. That's just the beginning. That's like saying that 60 days of meditation is a lot when people meditate for 1000s of days to get amazing results.

That of course is unknown. It could get worse, it could get better. We don't really know. Impeachment might not be the right move. Voting him out would probably be the best solution. All of this will get resolved in the future. Worrying too much about backlash is not a good general approach because it's fear-based. Rather than worrying about how a devil will react against your good action, just act in the highest good. Deal with the consequences as they arise. Devils will always bitch and moan against progress. This does not mean that we appease the devils and stop pushing for progress. Sometimes a battle is necessary. Seeking to maintain peace at all costs is too simplistic a strategy for navigating the complexity of life and politics. A very delicate balancing act is required. Don't be a doormat for devils. The highest spiritual teachers are NOT doormats. Jesus, Gandhi, MLK, etc were very vocal against devilry. Just be careful that when standing up against devils you yourself do not become a devil. That is the great trap. It's very hard to avoid.

Yes, that's right. But the question is, what are we gonna do about it? Hitler was also an ego backlash against the German loses in WWI. Be careful not to fall into a false fatalism here. Because you could easily make a fallacious argument like this: "Well, since Hitler was elected by the people, that must be the will of God, so I guess we should just let Hitler do whatever he wants." No! No! No! You get to decided every second what kind of reality you want to create. And deciding to let a Hitler run wild without limit would be a lack of responsibility. It was God's will that people elected Hitler. It was God's will that Hitler kill many Jews. But it was also God's will that Hitler was resisted, stopped, and killed. See? God's will is a very complex thing which waxes and wanes.

Yes, but what you're overlooking is that if we kick the tyrant out of power, that too SHOULD be happening. Reality is deciding itself in every moment. There is no fatalism in nonduality. You and we are all determining how we want reality to unfold. Do you want to sit by and let a tyrant run lose, or do you want to contain him? The choice is yours/ours. What kind of world do you want to create? This issue of will and choice is extremely subtle and sophisticated.

You'll understand when a tyrant locks you and your family in a cage. See, people are all cool with tyranny until they get on the receiving end of it. Then they hate tyranny with a passion. Most people are so myopic they never expect that their favorite tyrant would ever harm them. Not realizing that it is the modus operandi of tyrants to only care about themselves. Trump does not give a shit about you. He is like a rabid dog, which will bite its master.

Well, that's extremely rare. I would call that a spiritual gift of its own. Yes, some people literally sit down, do a few days of meditation or inquiry and BAM! -- they awaken. But this is very, very rare. Don't count on that happening. Obviously if that happens, great! Consider yourself very lucky. You won the spiritual lottery.

That's good progress! That's the trick! There isn't a "how". Formlessness cannot be reached through any method or process. Formlessness just is. You are it. You cannot reach it through any steps because it is the zero-th step. It is impossibly direct. Although psychedelics can put you there in minutes. The reaching of formlessness is a spontaneous occurrence, like a lightning strike. You cannot predict it or make it happen. But you can increase the odds by intensifying your inquiry & concentration. Of course they are a part of you -- because everything is a part of you. But they are not essential to you. For example, a thought or feeling can arise and then disappear. It's disappearance does not change your essence. So what you are -- your essence -- is independent of all arising phenomena. What you're missing is that you must distinguish yourself from all form. You have to separate the formlessness which right now is intermixed and confused with various forms. Then, later, you will realize that formlessness and form are in fact identical. But at the same time, they can be distinguished! It's a paradox. Your first awakening experience is you realizing that formlessness is distinct from all form. It's you realizing that Consciousness/You is distinct from any content that arises. It's sort of like a TV realizing that it is distinct from the images it displays. In the unenlightened state you are like a TV which is attached to the forms it displays, not realizing that in fact all forms could disappear without affecting the TV's existence. What you are looking for with self-inquiry is PURE CONSCIOUSNESS. Consciousness without any forms. But be careful, what I said above does not mean that any particular forms must be eliminated. So don't get some silly idea in your head that your sensory field will somehow turn off or go black. That's not what I mean. I mean you must realize that the sensory field is always occurring within formlessness. Like water is always occurring within some container. The True Self is the container. Find yourself as the empty container which holds the world. Right now you are so identified with the world that you cannot see the transparent container. Form = the material world Formlessness = the transparent container which holds it And ultimately, Form = Formlessness That's what "nonduality" means: not two.