Leo Gura

True, but think of the image from a PR perspective: CNN Breaking News: "Enlightened master beats follower with sharp stick and enjoys it. What a monster!" The whole point is, the enlightened master doesn't have a problem with his anger. It's the outside world that judges him. And unfortunately for him, the outside world ain't as enlightened as he is. Sadhguru has been accused of murder and holding followers hostage in his cult. I've been accused of being a pedophile. So yeah... if you're gonna be enlightened, you need to develop a stomach for being misunderstood.

@WildeChilde Except what they don't tell you is that drug companies lobby for this. It basically lets them use human beings as guinea pigs without repercussions. That bill prohibits the FDA from collecting any statistics on people who die from those trial treatments. So drug companies can feed sick patients experimental new drugs, and if those patients die or become even more sick, the government is legally prohibited from collecting and using that data against the drug companies. It's a very clever bit of law. Heads I win, tails you lose.

That's generally correct. Except, enlightened masters are also humans, and can also get triggered and get angered in an unconscious way. Just because you're enlightened does not mean you're in control of your emotions 24/7. Enlightened masters also get horny. So watch out If you poke someone with a sharp stick long enough -- even Sadhguru -- he will probably get angry and beat you with it.

In personal correspondences with Martin I have asked him about whether he thinks smoking 5-MeO can cause any kind of energetic or psychological damage. And he just flatly says No. I disagree about that. I think 5-MeO, especially smoked in large doses, if one is unprepared, can cause energetic and psychological damage. So I would be very cautious. Rectal administration is much safer, especially for newbies.

You also need to take into account that Octavio has done like 10,000 of these psychedelic ceremonies. So you have to reasonably ask yourself, if 1 out of 5,000 sessions going bad is really that bad of a ratio. With psychedelics as powerful as 5-MeO, I would expect 1 out of 1,000 people to have serious negative side effects. So it's complicated. 1/1,000 surgeries certainly goes really bad. Smoking 5-MeO for someone who isn't ready for it, is gonna be in for a wild ride. Hell, I don't even dare to smoke it.

Well... about that Martin clip... you see... no matter how enlightened you are, you can still get angry. In fact, Zen masters are famous for their fits of anger. Enlightened rage, they call it Newbies often confuse enlightenment for saintliness, and that just isn't the case. It is possible to be an enlightened prick. Of course, it's also possible to be an unenlightened prick. So how do you tell the difference? Corruption is common among even highly enlightened yogis and masters in all traditions. Of course if 5-MeO is being administered by these people in a forced or dangerous way, that is not good. They could be doing that whether they are enlightened or not. Of course I have no idea if any of these rumors are true. From my limited interactions with Martin, he seems legit and he has a good heart. Of course I have no idea how he behaves behind closed doors.

Well, a shaman isn't exactly Zen to begin with. Shamanism is its own thing.

Time is limited. And following too many various techniques becomes confusing.

@robdl Correct. Being is prior to doubt. Doubt is constructed out of being. Also, if you become conscious of Infinity, you simultaeously become everything that has ever existed, past, present, and future. Your being is so total that you realize you are every possible thing that could ever be. It is beyond all possible doubt. You realize that you exist as every doubt that every living creature in the entire universe has ever had, and infinitely more. Once you are God, this is no doubt you are God. Hence it's called awakening. You are 100% awake to the entire functioning of the universe. Nothing is hidden from your awareness. You realize there is no place for anything to hide. There is nothing behind the scenes. Everything is seen to be precisely what it is, without reliance on experience or knowledge. It is omniscience. But it is nonverbal, so you cannot speak it.

Yup, in San Diego. It was a growth experience for sure. But I still don't know which is better. I just know that I like spinal breathing, pulling prana up my spine. Sadhguru aparently doesn't teach that.

@Salvijus I've done his initiation. Then I replaced most of his techniques with Pranayama. Different strokes for different folks I guess. Yes, the question is not whether his yoga is good, but whether Kriya is better. I cannot say definitively, but I had to make a choice. I like Kriya more. But I have not done Sadhguru's advanced trainings, so I cannot speak to that. Maybe he has some killer advanced techniques? I dunno. Also, I interviewed one of his advanced students and when I asked him about enlightenment, he said, "I don't know what enlightenment is", which was a big red flag for me. I highly doubt most of his advanced students are enlightened. But I could be wrong. There is a big difference between doing yoga and being enlightened.

@onacloudynight All his books are good.

No, what I am trying to communicate to you is that Nothingness is existence. Nothingness is NOT non-existence. This is a very important point: Nothingness exists! You're still not realizing that non-existence is a concept, which is occurs within existence.

@Jed Vassallo Yes, it's not an easy thing to do. Which is why so few folks are enlightened. You should figure, if something is so rare that 1 in a million people have it, there must be a catch. And that's the catch. The good news is, there's nothing to fear about death. It's a marvelous thing. Your experiences of suffering were not death, they were life! Be careful not to project that onto enlightenment. Whatever suffering or fear you experienced, that was not enlightenment. Your entire post is an expression of fear. That is perfectly normal, but start to notice that it's just fear. You fear pursuing enlightenment, and you fear not pursuing enlightenment. Yes, that's normal. That will need to be resolved with time. Be patient. Allow yourself time. You are more powerful than you give yourself credit. The way out of your dilemma is to keep doing the practices and growing. As you grow, your fears will dissolve more and more, gradually. Do more trips and see that death is nothing to fear. Just because right now you feel that you are not strong enough to surrender, doesn't mean it will always be that way. Right now you are weak, but a month from today you might become strong. You don't know how strong you are yet. So don't worry about it too much. For now, just very practically, I would say: focus on your daily practices: yoga, meditation, self-inquiry. The beauty of yoga is that it will build up your strength and gradually dissolve your fears, so that surrender becomes easy.

@Jed Vassallo The Absolute is self-knowing. It's actually beyond knowledge or experience, you are it. You are the Absolute. You can't get any more direct than that. When you're at infinite consciousness, there is no doubt. Doubt is an activity of the mind. Yes, you can go to the Absolute and then fall back down into the relative. That's mostly what happens after a trip. But the Absolute was nevertheless the Absolute while you were in it. And really, it's still here. It hasn't gone anywhere. You're just disconnected from it. Like clouds temporary blotting out the sun. The sun is always there shining. Even on a cloudy day. Even if I achieved full Buddhahood, nothing for you would change. You would still not know if I was deluded or wrong. There is only one way for you to know the Truth, and that is to awaken for yourself. That is the only way. Yes, from your POV I could be wrong, mistaken, deluded. Then again, maybe it's you who are wrong, mistaken, deluded? I'll tell you what the rest of life is like after I live it. I am a work in progress and there is still much I have to discover about this whole process of awakening. But I can tell you for sure that the Absolute exists, and you can discover it for yourself, and it's more amazing than anything you could imagine.

Full lotus requires lots of stretching. Many probably not everyone can do it.

The books we're talking about. I think they can be life-changing, although personally, to me, I found his yoga not as potent as the Kriya we're discussing here. It probably gets more potent as you go to his advanced programs, but his introductory program didn't seem potent enough for my liking. It would make sense to me that he, being very responsible, would save the most potent techniques only for his most advanced students. And I don't like jumping through all those hoops to get the most potent techniques. I want something I can learn at home on my own. Hence I prefer Kriya. But this not to say you shouldn't do his programs or that his teachings are bad. He's knows what he's doing. He has to be very careful about taking his yoga to millions of people. At those scales, a lot of things can go wrong, so you have to teach very responsibly and focus on safety. Generally speaking, the more mainstream a teaching gets, the more watered down it gets.

Blog videos are only viewable as embeds via the Actualized.org domain. You cannot view them directly via URL or through some kind of behind-the-scenes redirection service. There are no region restrictions. Check your browser plugins for any kind of behind-the-scenes redirection or maybe if you're using a VPN it won't work. Not sure.

There is no such thing as non-existence, only existence. Non-existence is a concept existing in your mind. Consciousness, existence, and Nothingness are all the same thing, but this "Nothingness" is not non-existence, it is existence. Existence is, and it is empty. Then it can get filled with all kinds of forms, one of which is the concept of non-existence. Existence has no opposite. It only feels like it does because the ego-mind creates a conceptual "should", telling itself, "But why doesn't X exist?" But that is existence! "Non-existence" exists within existence.

@herghly Yes, that's usually what they do. I don't like that cause it's too drawn out and beating around the bush. I don't like watered down yoga. But hey, that's just me.

There is no such thing as non-being. Even after the body dies, you will still not escape being. Being is infinite and eternal. So you're stuck being whether you like it or not. So might as well surrender to it. By "Being" I don't mean "your life", or some way that you are, I mean the substance of reality. Experience - ego = Being It's not dumb. It's what is. Meaning and value are inventions -- and you are still obviously resisting this by playing these clever mind-games. You haven't yet become conscious of what Being or meaning are. Careful with that arrogance. It's keeping you from growing. You would greatly benefit from doing that exercise for a month or two. Yes, what we are talking about is switching orientation from living from the relative to the Absolute. Which requires becoming conscious that meaning is an invention of your mind.

@The Don Push yourself to socialize more. It's a skill that must be developed with practice. It's hard to solve this problem by sitting at home on your couch. Psychedelics can also be helpful. They will reveal to you how to be authentic. Then you can carry those lessons over into social life. I found mushrooms to be good for this issue. They make you more playful, uninhibited, and goofy.

Yes, it's a bit paradoxical. I like to experiment and tinker with stuff and do things my way. I accept the risks. For newbies I suggest you pick a book/school and stick with it. I don't think the differences between the two books is as great as it might seem. It's variations on the same basic thing. There are dozens of schools of yoga because in practice, people end up making tweaks and variations to suit themselves. Because most yoga is taught dogmatically, many schools sorta lie to their students that "You must do it perfectly the way I teach it, or it will not work". But this seems obviously false since there are many different masters from many different schools. So there's clearly some degree of leeway. The question is, when have you taken it too far? And that cannot be easily answered. You will only know by trail and error.

The key to happiness is awakening, the end of conceptualizing, and being fully present in the NOW with whatever happens.

Life is suffering from the ego-mind's POV. What the religious people meant when they said "Life is suffering" is "Ordinary materialistic life is suffering" and that this can be transcended with deep enlightenment. BEING is pointless, valueless, and meaningless. This is not an emotional statement. This is as factual as it gets. This is really not different from what physics would tell you: atoms do not have value or meaning. It's actually a very important milestone in the spiritual journey for you to realize that BEING is meaningless. The ego-mind creates meaning to enable self-preservation to happen. Suffering cannot end unless meaning is realized to be an illusion. Suffering comes from the mind's pursuit of meaning and value. Here's the 1st exercise from A Course In Miracles Workbook: Look around the room and notice that every object has no value or meaning. Like, you see a chair. What does a chair mean? Nothing. It's a very simple but powerful exercise. Keep doing it.