Leo Gura

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

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.

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

That's not a good characterization of Buddhism. Buddhism can be done for positive reasons. Becoming better at handling suffering is a very useful thing, not somthing negative. Don't poo-poo that.

@Danioover9000 I'm not sure what happened to that user's account. I placed a 5 days posting restriction on it.

@Bobby_2021 You've provided some top-notch analysis of this issue. Thank you. I feel sad for Tate now. Sex trafficking is bad, but 15 years in Romanian prison would be hell. I would not wish that on anyone. I guess what I really wanna know is how badly did he harm the girls in this case? Like in what ways did they suffer from this trafficking? It would be nice to hear their side of the story.

@Water by the River Thanks for the details. You mentioned Mahamudra/Dzogchen daily practice. In brief, what does that entail? I'm guessing Kriya yoga would be more effective than sitting meditation. Which is why I recommended it in the past. Personally I have found that sitting meditation is absurdly ineffective unless it's done for a week at a time like a non-stop retreat. If I meditate nonstop on a retreat for 7-10 days then some interesting shifts in consciousness start to become possible. But it's such a pain in the ass to do. The problem I have with daily non-sitting meditation is that it interferes with intellectual/creative work. I don't understand how anyone does that and achieves any kind of work but manual labor. And frankly even that seems challenging.

@StarStruck Have you actually watched Tate's videos where he admits to most of these crimes?

It seems more like a binary thing, where either the serious charges stick or they don't. And if they do then it's serious prison time.

@Bobby_2021 Thanks for all the raw data.

I think it's exactly the opposite. In India it is easy, but with modern technology is it virtually impossible. You need to quit all your technology to get the results Water By The River is selling.

I've heard of guys who just sit around and bliss out. But your "comprehension or realization of full enlightenment" will come from sitting still and shutting off your mind. So I don't see contradiction here. You're basically talking about insane amounts of meditation. This is a very reductionistic and misleading way to put it. Well, I beg to differ. You make a good point. However from the point of view of teaching, the classic path you suggest boils down to sitting for months on end in silence doing nothing. So I have nothing to teach on that matter. Anyone who is hardcore enough to undertake that path is welcome to do so. Realistically extremely few people will ever do this. And talking about it endlessly is not going to help people do it. I would say, either decide to do it or stop talking about it. From what I can see you basically got two ways to achieve this: 1) Insane amounts of full-time meditation. This requires you quit your job, drop your relationships, and meditate full-time for months. 2) Do years of pretty hardcore Kriya yoga. With no real guarantees. I'm not sure what kind of promises Kriya makes about the end of suffering. Doesn't seem realistic. What other way is there? The reason I don't talk much about these paths is because they are so hardcore I don't think anyone will do them. Those people who would do them are basically taking the path of the full-time monk. And if you're just going to meditate an hour or two per day, I would consider the end of suffering a pipe dream. There is a good reason why I've never talked much about this whole "end of suffering" business. And that is because this is such a near-impossible feat that only the hardest of the hardcore will achieve it. And even those who claim to achieve it, I have my doubt how true it is. So I say back to you, have mercy on my followers and don't fill their heads with pipe dreams. Many of them don't have the potential to end all suffering. And once you fill their heads with this expectation, you will multiply their suffering many fold. The reason I talk about psychedelics is because they are effective for ordinary people in one weekend. But of course this cannot produce the positive benefits from years of a full-time monk lifestyle.

Are you serious? Where is that info coming from? Does he not have tax evasion charges? Kinda strange since he admitted it on tape. Or maybe that's not a criminal charge?

I should clarify something for you guys so you don't fool yourselves: psychedelics will not produce a permanent high state of consciousness nor a permanent blissed out state. If that's something you expect or want, look for other means. You cannot use psychedelics to magically avoid training for those things which require training. For example, being a kind, gentle human being requires training. You can't get that behavior without training.

But is that really worth spending 10-20 years in prison? I would rather live in Africa than spend 15 years in a Romanian prison. That prison would destroy his whole life. Does anyone know what his sentence is likely to be if found guilty? It's gotta be steep.

No! Into Absolute Consciousness. You DO NOT comprehend what Consciousness is. No matter how well trained for bliss you are. You are blissing out but not comprehending consciousness seriously. Because you don't need to comprehend anything to bliss out. All you gotta do is shut off your mind and sit still. Again, that's just irrelevant to Consciousness. Consciousness does not care what the quality of your life is. These are human concerns and Consciousness is not limited to the human. I've never said you need to hold my priorities. Have whatever priorities you want. And I have mine. Different priorities get you to different places. There are trade-offs. The point is not to confuse the end of suffering (enlightenment as you call it) with Consciousness. Yes it may lead to more suffering. But also, nothing prevents me from also pursuing the end of suffering via traditional means. P.S. I don't believe anyone who says he has ended suffering. It is much more likely that these people are deluding themselves.

Some suffering is a clue that you're living your life wrong. But some suffering is just inescapable even if you live correctly. Most of us don't live life perfectly and therefore create a lot of needless suffering for ourselves. In which case that suffering is a good teacher to train you to become a better human. Of course your goal should be to try to minimize behavior which leads to great suffering. That is the process of your development. When handled properly suffering teaches you to stop doing foolish things. But even if you do all the above, there is still suffering which you will not be able to avoid. And then your job becomes to handle it gracefully.

Don't expect honor amount thieves.

@Abhishaik Thank you. Good to hear.

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.

Of course psychedelics do not produce that because that if a function of training. What psychedelics produce is: 1) insane levels of consciousness which you will never ever naturally reach, 2) and insight. I have never claimed that psychedelics result in the end of suffering. All traditional spiritual techniques are about training your body and mind. Psychedelics skip all of that to take you to insane levels of consciousness and back. You cannot get the benefits of training without training. HOWEVER, just because you do a lot of training does not mean that you have accessed very high consciousness nor understand what consciousness is. So we're talking about two independent axes here. People love to confuse the two, which leads to all sorts of problems and arguments. The thing that I am vocal about it that people who do lots of training assume that that's all there to this work. But there is a whole other dimension which no amount of training can reach. You can train yourself for 40 years and you will still never reach levels of consciousness which I have reached. This does not mean I'm better trained than you or whatever you value like bliss, siddhis, or the end of suffering. I have never claimed such things because I have not even tried to train them seriously.

Well, maybe that will motivate some folks here to get more serious about Kriya.

@mr_engineer Who insults and berates you? I've talked to thousands of girls and that's like almost never happened to me. And if it does then I would never take it seriously, I'd laugh it off like the girl is drunk or in a bad mood. When I'm out talking to girls I'm not using their words to tell me who I am, to define me. None of them could know me. That whole line of thinking is just too serious for a night out. A night out is shit-talking, cracking jokes, having fun, and flirting. Not a discussion about my worth as a man. If someone is talking shit about you, you can just tell them, "Why are you being so nasty?" And walk away to another girl. Don't play the game of trying to defend or prove yourself to anyone. If people are being disrespectful to you, just walk away. The way to be secure as a man is to never let the words of others affect your worth. Your worth lies completely in how hard you work on yourself and how much you love yourself.

My tastes are what they are and they have never changed since I was a teen, and it is inconceivable for me to have any other tastes.

No. This discussion has become absurd.