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At what point do you say that he was wrong about a given thing and it wasnt just memes? Because this is the blind-hermeneutics move that can be applied to any other thing - like apply it to the Bible "no dude, there is no contradiction in the Bible, you just need to reinterpret every single thing that you think is a contradiction and if you cant , well, then you arent conscious enough and or not open-minded enough" Just checking, because for instance, the video down below shows a vulnerable and desperate dude who is incredibly self-deceived and end up being dead wrong (while having high conviction in the delusion that was acquired through "high" consciousness). 1) Do you think the audience who watched this video ended up taking the message to focus on doing non-spiritual stuff or did they take a message that all their problems will be solved once they manage to awaken? 2) Do you think its good to be an infinite enabler and to infinitely reinforce delusions on the grounds of open-mindedness or just because Leo said so? Also what do you think, what kind of self-deception managing/correcting practices does Leo engage in? Because the casual knee-jerk reaction where he cant be wrong (you either have low consciousness or not open-minded enough) shouldnt fly in all cases , right? Because that means that he cant ever be wrong or self-deceived even though we have clear examples showing otherwise.

The other concept that sometimes comes up is 'faith' and even that is greatly mischaracterized by the west. The idea isnt to believe in something without evidence, faith goes much deeper than just an having attitude towards a given proposition (a statement that can be true or false). We are talking about 'Pistis' - Its a way of living life, its about how you orient yourself, its the thing that opens you up to have mystical experiences, and its the orientation that can make you virtuous. Under modern lense I think it could be roughly desribed as 'open-mindedness', but even that is too reductive. It can be also described as: A mystical union with God. A transformative relationship that involves the whole person: heart, mind, body, and soul. Something cultivated through ascetic practice, prayer, and the sacraments. Other concepts: Theosis (θέωσις) – the process of becoming united with God, or "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4). Faith (pistis) is the foundation for this journey. Noetic knowledge – knowledge not just of the mind but of the heart (the nous), its also known as direct knowledge, or knowledge beyond senses - which is central to Orthodox spirituality. But there are obviously other religions as well that even Leo knows about, but he still charaterize these things in a bad faith way and a good chunk of the actualizers just unironically take it as a belief without doing their research on them first.

Yep - a completely agnostic attitude towards a proposition dont make you use your time and rescources on things. "I have no clue or belief about what kind of God exist or whether God exist at all, but let me use my finite and precious resources on checking whether what Leo said is true or not and let me not prioritize checking any other claims over it"

All the arguments can be mirrored against individual , lone wolf approaches. You are cognitively put together to be much better at spotting biases in others and you have a trash ability to spot your own biases. All the self deception arguments are applicable to the individualist approach as well, but its not that cool to talk about that, because its much better to feel special and unique. The solution isnt to do everything alone, the solution is to first acknowledge the power of groups and then create corrective mechanisms that can help alleviating those group biases. One such a thing is to make different collective intelligences and groups to engage with each other.

Whats the argument for the "not in all domains" idea? You dont even need to defend that - just defend the claim that spirituality is such a domain.

This makes sense under how you described the two axis. Your model seems coherent.

Now bringing this all back to the enlightenment talk - him saying that enlightenment is an illusion can only be the case if he uses a different definition for enlightenment than how nondualists use the term (because under how nondualists use the term enlightenment, saying what Leo said would be incoherent). If Leo would have wanted to actually engage with how nondualists use the term (Like imagine actually engaging with the substance what someone says), then he wouldnt have given the responses he gave, but he was busy with projecting very uncharitably his own definition in mind. And btw projecting and assuming a particular meaning isn't necessarily an issue (thats how most communication works - qualified when you have good reason to think that the other person uses the same meaning behind the terms as well), but when thats clearly not the case, then its obviously uncharitable and an issue.

Its not that you use words differently, its that you dont engage with their intended meaning (how the other person uses the term) and hence you dont engage with what they are saying - you are talking about a completely different thing and not responding to what they are saying. Do you think it would make sense if I have a different meaning in mind for God realization like "God realization is when I shit in my toilet" and then tell Leo, that he is wrong about God realization being the highest awakening, because categorically its not even an awakening but a process where you shit in the toilet - do you think that would engage with what Leo is saying? It wouldnt engage and the issue isn't that I have a different definition for the term, the issue is that I project my own definition behind the term when Leo uses the term ,even though its super clear that he has a different definition in mind when he uses the term - so If I want to engage with what he is saying, the move isn't to project my definition behind the term, the move is to figure out what he means by the term. But in any case - I already gave a long breakdown on this here:

No, not even close.

I dont think you can reproduce the criticism in your own words. If a gun was put to your head, how would you describe my position and what do you think my issue is?

Fuck, Mike is triggering the fuck out of me with his stupid confident attitude and takes on the matter. Now im questioning the idea that Mike has general intelligence because his PhD isnt even remotely predictive at all how intelligent/capable he is in other domains. Mike is a fucking fine tuned LLM for training.

Let me try this one last time to demonstrate what one of my issue is. If by the term 'Leo' I mean a particular lion in Africa, and you mean Leo Gura, then we are obviously referring to two different things. And then if I made the sentence 'Leo managed to protect his group from a pack of hyenas yesterday' and you would respond to that with "But Leo Gura couldnt have done that, because we were hanging out yesterday and we were tripping balls and you just cant grasp the depth of what it is like to trip balls with Leo Gura" then thats just wouldnt be responsive to what I said, and hence wouldnt change the truth of what I said. If you want to change the truth value of my sentence in a scenario like this, you have to use the same meaning - so for example, it would be responsive to say, "no that particular Lion you referred to in your sentence couldnt have done that, because of x y z (where X could be something like "Because we were filming that lion all day, and we have video evidence that there was no hyena attack yesterday.") Now, all of this is compatible with me grasping and also compatible with me not grasping the depth of what it is like to trip balls with Leo Gura - 1 point is just that your inference doesnt make sense, you are concluding me not grasping whats it like to trip balls with Leo Gura based on a thing I said about a Lion in Africa. The second point is that if you insert my definition in your sentence then it becomes incoherent. You probably cant trip balls with an actual lion in Africa. And now add to this scenario the fact that you didnt clarify what you meant by the term 'Leo' (you dont clarify that you meant Leo gura) and all im left is your sentence that is completely incoherent under my semantics (under how I use the term Leo) and im also left with you seemingly have issue with the truth of my sentences (under my semantics). So Im there thinking - its either the case that he is trying to challenge my claim "Wait , is he trying to challenge the fact that the lion was actually attacked by a pack of hyenas yesterday?!?!" or it is the case that he engaged in equivocation and he was talking about something completely unrelated to what I said (tripping balls with Leo Gura). Now lets go further with a different analogy. A nondualist makes the statement that 'my pet named Ice cream is a cute dog' and then Leo Gura responds to that with saying "No, no ,no you are wrong, you have to understand how ingenius God is at making frozen desserts. God invented dogs just to hide a frozen dessert typically made from milk from you. Only the smartest will see through the Ice cream illusion." Do you think that would be responsive in any way to what the nondualist said? No it wouldnt be, and him concluding that a nondualist is wrong about frozen desserts is stupid, because the nondualist havent said anything related to frozen desserts hence his/her position is unclear on the matter. Its unresponsive for the fact that none of what Leo Gura said changes the fact, that the nondualist's dog is named Ice cream.

Thats cool, but then its not a response to whats being said, in that case you are talking about and pointing to a different thing. Which was our whole point in this whole thread and thats why I pushed for clarification of the term to get a sense how he uses these terms but then got shot down for being pedantic.

You're not able to yet grasp that if you use the definition nondualist have for enightenment then what Leo said in those statements is incoherent. The only way to make it coherent is to change the meaning behind the term and hence engage in equivocation. Drop the label 'enlightenment' and just insert in the intended meaning and the problem is solved.

I dont know why you would think that Im missing the point about that particular thing. Its not me who wants to fight for a label - its Leo. I never said that anyone can give an exhaustive account for any given term , especially not for enlightenment and for awakening. But the issue isn't that one cant give an exhaustive account, the issue is changing the meaning behind the term and not engaging with a meaning that was explicitly given to you.

So parse through his statements while inserting in the definition for enlightenment I gave and make it make sense. "Becoming conscious of the nature of Reality/Existence is imaginary. Humans invented becoming conscious of the nature of Reality/Existence to keep themselves from actually realizing God. You have to understand how ingenius God is at hiding. God invented becoming conscious of the nature of Reality/Existence just to hide itself from you. Only the smartest will see through the enlightenment illusion."

Does this sounds like someone who acknowledges the horizontal?

I dont think its even a coherent sentence that you made there - what does it even mean that having a particular definition behind a label is dogma? We have usually shared meaning behind the terms we utter and thats a good thing because thats what allows us to communicate. What you did there is precisely the move that doesnt engage with anything and this is the move that makes it about semantics. People tell you what they mean by a given the term - engage with that meaning if you want a substantive talk - suggesting what meaning should be put behind a given label is just not engaging with whats being said. If people tell you exactly what they mean by the term enlightenment - engage with that meaning - dont do the Leo move where you redefine the word and then start to engage in equivocation.

Tell that to Leo, who conflated the vertical dimension with the horizontal and who prioritized the vertical. If enlightenment is taken to be the whole horizontal dimension then it doesnt make sense to use the language he did "enlightenment is lower" or "enlightenment is an illusion" since enlightenement under how you phrased it would be the ever present truth and it also doesnt make sense to say that everything is depended on states because by definition that move would deny ever-present (the whole horizontal dimension) truth that is avalaible under all vertical dimensions. It would be a clear category error even under how you described this whole thing ,becuase it would be like saying the x axis is lower than the y axis. This is why we said that enlightenment (the horizontal dimension) isnt depended on any particular level or state of consciousness (vertical dimension), which is perfectly compatible with the whole model your described.

Thats not the point, the point is that its not dependent on any particular state. The idea is that enlightement is always "avalaible", no matter the state.

Similar issues come up with trying to solve RR with predefined rules. Every rule requires a specification in its application and every rule requires an interpretation. The number of ways you can interpret and apply any given rule is combinatorially explosive and context sensitive. A rule always conveys more than it explicitly says (You cannot specify all the condition of the application of the rule in the rule). "Okay lets try to make a rule for how to use this specific rule" - You are just pushing back the issue one more step, because now you have the exact same problem (you need to know all the specificity conditions how to apply that higher order rule), so your ability to follow rules is based on something other than rules. RR also goes deeper than representations (mental entity that stands for or refers towards an object in the world) , because representations doesnt explain RR, they presuppose it. Empirical evidence for this: "Things and Place - How the mind connects the world by Zenon W. Pylyshyn" - The multiple object tracking, where the more objects you need to track at the same time, the more you lose your ability to track the attributes of said objects - So for example, lets say there are 8 objects and one of them is a red X. After lots of momevent, you can still tell the location of that object, but you won't notice that its content has changed over time (the red X has become a blue circle). The only thing that was consistently tracked of that object is its here-ness and now-ness (or in other words adverbial qualia). So all the representational aspects of the object was changed, but the ability to track it still remained.

Its funny that you are the guy who talked about Gödel's incompleteness theorem and now you are here denying that relevance realization is even an issue and try to push for the computational solution. Even when you said your point about data and categorizing that data - categorization already entails relevance realization and one main reason why is because you dont differentiate objects based on logical differences (based on an object having at least one predicate that the other object doesnt have) - you do categorization based on relevant differences that you almost never able to fully formally explicate. It would be like trying to define desert by an exact number of grain of sand. Whats the difference between a dog and a cat? - if we start to sit down and collect all the predicates of dogs and cats, you immediately realize that there is basically an infinite number of shared predicates between them , therefore sitting down and checking predicates one by one with an algorithm isn't tenable and here we are just at the level of categorization (and btw, the very fact that you are able to compare two objects in the first place and you try to check for the predicates already presupposes that you can carve those two objects out from the world - without that carving first, you cant even begin to do your comparison and you cant run down your predicate list).

I still dont undertand how you reject "true by definition" statements. This is why I said that you redefining the term enlightenment isn't an honest engagement with what the nondualists are saying. The label is irrelevant the shared meaning is whats relevant (this is why Unborntao suggested that if you really want you can label that shared meaning as 'Godrealization' if you prefer that label over enlightenment). If you use the same definition for enlightenment as they do, then you cant say that enlightement is an illusion because by their definition it cant be an illusion, the correct way to object to that is to say that none of them are enlightened, given how they defined enlightenment.

If you replace the Absolute with Existence (which I think is less ambigous and more clear what it is pointing to) then it becomes clear why non-dualists object to things like "You can go beyond Existence" or "You can go beyond Reality". It does comes down to semantics, and the reason why is because if you apply the exact same meaning how nondualists use the words you are using, then your statements become incoherent, so if we want to be charitable towards you - the most charitable move is to say that what you are saying is probably coherent under your own semantics, and its just that you are using different meaning behind those same terms (and its completely fine to say that you cant convey the meaning behind your terms, what isnt fine is not granting that it comes down to semantics, because saying that it isn't about semantics, that implies that non-dualist use your terms with the exact same meaning as you (there is no equivocation), which would be silly, because that would mean that non-dualists think that their own statements are incoherent. If enlightenment is taken to mean something like "becoming conscious of the nature of reality", then the sentence "Going beyond being conscious of the nature of reality" doesnt make much sense or just like how making the statement that " enlightenment is an illusion" under this semantic wouldnt be coherent because it would be cashed out as "Being conscious of the nature of reality is an illusion" One other way to make sense of what you are saying - is suggesting that there is no such thing as enlightement, where one can become comprehensively conscious of the nature of reality in one go, because its an ongoing process where you can have ever deeper awakenings into what the nature of reality is. One other way to make sense of what you are saying is that enlightenment 'isnt becoming comprehensively conscious of the nature of reality' - but in this case again this is a semantic issue, because nondualists define enlightenment as 'comprehensively conscious of the nature of reality' and by saying that enlightenement is an illusion is just equivocation where you redefine the word 'enlightement' in order to make your objection. The way to correctly object to their statement would be like saying "Under how you guys use your semantics and under what you guys mean by enlightenment , none of you are enlightened". Applying normativity to awakenings and by that move creating a hierarchy of awakenings only make sense if the norm can be coherently applied to all of those awakenings. Its also the case, that you can arbitrarily create multiple different kind of hierarchies depending on what norm you want to apply/you are interested in. So for instance you can create a hierarchy of awakenings just on 'sense of self' and the less sense of self you have the "higher" your awakening is.

I dont know what it means to 'reduce Consciousness to my notion of Absolute Truth'. Again this goes back to what I said about the difference between uttering statements while being in a particular state of consciousness vs a particular state of consciousness is determining/making true a particular statement. So all im saying is that for instance "Consciousness is Absolute" that statement isn't true because it is made from God's level 9999 level of consciousness , that statement is true regardless what level of consciousness it is made from, because the truth value of that sentence isnt made true by any particular state of consciousness. Or in other words - 'not beind depended on a particular level of consciousness' just means that It is a truth which is true across all levels/states of consciousness. All of what Im saying is compatible with your leveled ontology. Levels can change certain truth, but necessarily not all truth, because the truth of the existence of the levels itself is depended on what im saying.