The0Self

Looking at the title had me a little worried , because I had a similar profound experience (and associated abiding insight) before a fuller, more complete awakening later down the road. But I was pleasantly reassured, especially after having seen most of it (haven't finished). This seems to be, even if nothing else, a skillful way to decrease the number of folks without a proper awakening (or even just enough genuine insight) taking solipsism and awakening down the wrong path.

Infinity holds infinite infinities.

Just checked out the vid. The way I see it he's not talking on that level. What you describe is reifying "other Gods" and expecting it to somehow be an existential error that isn't common to doing the same for reifying "typing on a screen on an internet forum with people other than this one" as we are doing now. It's obvious there aren't really other Gods in the ultimate sense, but obviously the opposite isn't true either -- in order for any distinct God to appear as distinct, it has to imagine itself to be separate from the whole. Whether it believes it and gets engrossed in it (by its own doing, so to speak) is what awakening is all about. It's not complicated at all, it's just extremely subtle. Though it's NOT subtle when separation is seen through -- it's no longer a conceptual understanding at all. Until dualistic consciousness is seen through this just isn't obvious. The appearances are totality; they're also a reflection of truth. Hallucinations nonetheless, in a sense. The consciousness of the appearances though... is not even a hallucination, it's an illusion.

You're correct, nonduality is not the end of the awakening process -- though it does have finality since separate identity is seen-through irreversibly. When enlightenment happens there's no one else who is unawake, so it's hard to talk about this, but anyway... Examples of not just fully enlightened, but also those who have abided here in this way long enough to be effective as a teacher: Bernadette Roberts, Rob Burbea, Jed McKenna (pseudonym; likely born Peder Sweeney) Currently accessible: Angelo Dilullo MD (Simply Always Awake), Adyashanti And plenty of Zen teachers. And I don't know if Leo has been awake long enough and in such a way for him to effectively do one-on-one guidance for liberation -- I certainly can't yet. I think it probably takes like 10 years but that's basically just a slightly educated guess. That's just off the top of my head, not wanting to make a mistake somehow by listing more. There are certainly many more -- especially for nonduality, but enlightenment on the other hand is really uncommon in relation... So to speak... But again when enlightenment happens it's obvious that truly, no one is really unenlightened anyway. And your intuition is correct, that there are no enlightened "people." Any one who relates to another one is not the enlightened one, but an after-image of the underlying enlightened truth -- the clothes (ego-suit) that the unbound-by-ego enlightened one wears. Something that I imagine very easily gets mistaken for enlightenment, but is actually not even nondual recognition, is a sort of state that can be brought about with self inquiry, concentration + insight practice, even psychedelics sometimes... Many, including Adyashanti, call it Witnessing. Or "The Witness." Akilesh (Sifting to the Truth; perhaps enlightened but has definitely at the very least reached nonduality) calls it the spacious mind. Rob Burbea called it the vastness of awareness. It's kind of like you're God looking in at experience rather than out (though it's not really describable so definitely don't take that literally; it's kind of a figure-ground-reversal), and seeking and self and objects are replaced with pure consciousness without conceptual activity; pure subjectivity. This is an incredibly blissful state, but it's not nondualty, and certainly isn't enlightenment... though it's very easily going to be virtually synonymous with what's called initial kensho... and as long as you don't think you've personally attained enlightenment, you'll definitely at least realize that enlightenment is real (truth exists). When the consciousness and the world disappears (often, but not necessarily, after spending a lot of time in this Witnessing state), that's nonduality -- identity is seen through; self falls away in a sense. When the perceptual filters responsible for constructing a self, themselves (the filters/layers of contracted energetic illusion) fall away though, via an ongoing automatic curiosity-desire-inquiry... that is associated with enlightenment.

For real like what the fuck... Interestingly I never really followed Peter Ralston's stuff anyway. Bernadette Roberts and Rob Burbea were far more clear imo, and now there's a new guy Angelo Dilullo MD who guides even more clearly and effectively than probably anyone I've heard of. Maybe Ralston meant abiding higher consciousness -- but even the idea of psychedelics not facilitating that...is dubious in my experience... it really is . I don't know how it is for others, but for me? Holy crap psychedelics were like one of (if not the most) important things. Same seemed to be the case for Michael Taft -- but interestingly he doesn't give any guidance whatsoever on psychedelics, so he also seems to think meditation is where it's at... even though his awakening literally happened on a huge dose of LSD (pretty common theme, huh? )... though he (Taft) did attribute the awakening to situations being perfect that day -- he had just moved to Japan, he was with a like-minded friend, he'd had a perfect day or something, and he ended up deciding he could die right there, and so he did, and never came back... But of course, it is still the case that it happened on LSD... for fuck's sake... (On the other hand, while Michael Taft speaks very highly of what >>700 psychedelic trips did for him, he also says that he noticed negative effects in many others who used it, so he probably sees it as very clearly not a one size fits all approach -- but then again, probably just about nothing is foolproof.) Although I will relent that there is a different axis of development -- doubtless abidance in truth, or whatever you want to call abiding absence of separation and subject-object filters -- which depends far more on immediate desire for alignment with absolute truth here and now, than one's ability to let go into psychedelic ego death. While essentially nothing is more powerful than psychedelics... also there is nothing is more powerful than self inquiry done right, with steady unshakable passion to wake up to absolute truth come heaven or hell, life or death, right then and there. But even so, Ralston just completely does not resonate here on this one.

I never ran into nausea with it. In fact as far as I remember the only compounds that have ever made me nauseous were alcohol and opioids. No standard psychedelic or dissociative has ever given me nausea. I can however suggest a palliative: 1-4g of high quality ground ginger, 30-45 minutes prior to dosing the compound.

tl/dr: when the self / separation filter is gone, it's the most obvious thing in the world -- it's not mistakable and it's not subtle.

Just make damn sure you are doing bare minimum 72 hour rounds, as that it the point after which the healing/damage ratio rises above break-even. Every time blood levels fall, there is some damage -- reduce the amount of time spent in this mode relative to time spent with steadily elevated levels. Minimum frequency is every 4 hours for DMSA, every 3 for ALA, every 8 for DMPS.

Yeah it’s the type of thing where, when it happens, you might have absolutely no thought of telling anyone about it or even discussing it on here — because it’s just so obvious and absolutely the case, that you might not even be bothered to describe it... (and just so you understand the profundity of that: you could be a monk and this could happen and you might not even tell your teacher...because it’d be as if you no longer care whether he’s awake because all you know is that you are awake, except it’s a knowing even beyond that since there’s no one separate from everything to be awake, and no one else.)... Because if people actually want it, they have everything they need to wake up, and you’re not going to wake anyone up, because no one is asleep. When you wake up, so does the entire world, so to speak — everything is helplessly perfect. With no self anywhere. Mind reflects truth as separation, solidity, and doership. When all mind-based activity ceases (once you sort of short-circuit thought/perception with self inquiry to make it see itself as completely futile) it becomes clear these reflections are inaccurate. Even with nondual recognition (not enlightenment) it will be seen in an absolute direct flash of reality/naturalness, that it’s actually impossible for anything to act on anything else, because that’s simply not the way reality actually is. And it’s in plain view; there’s no separation. Though one could say the illusion always has a leg up as long as ANY thoughts have the possibility of being believed or identified-with on ANY level, since delusion happens prior to objects / ideas / perception / view. The thought space pulls one into illusory view and doership constantly. The only way to short circuit it is a maximal (as in no alternative; very last avenue) desire to wake up to absolute unfiltered truth, and inquiring into the one who is trying to wake up, noticing that it’s an energy that simply seeks and it can’t do otherwise, but every claim it has about reality on the absolute/direct/subtle level is false. So whatever seems to actually happen to you, even noticing colors on a screen — that’s a thought. There’s no noticing (awareness OF) the screen, there’s just seeing a screen, hearing, this, all there is. This singular timeless frame of absolute reality. There’s no “behind the scenes” code. This is not complicated at all either, it’s the simplest possible thing — too simple to see though. And even though it’s not complicated, it is limitless and indescribably intimate. All untruth is based in thought / subject-object perception. So you won’t find truth in thought — this is very liberating to realize, because then we can instead just attend to what isn’t a thought... What is that? Whatever can’t be thought. Or described. Again for waking up, it’s less about energetic work than it’s about inquiry and directly attending to thought and self (not just raw objective sensations) in a discerning way, for the purpose of investigating which (and how) thoughts/fixations pull us back into illusory view, thought, and doership. And tackling the problem at its actual root, going into it knowing full well what your main obstacle will be: that the seeking setup will at all times try to co opt the bid for freedom, for its own purposes... you starve that at its root. It exposes the characteristics of the illusion — solidity, separation, doership — as being unreal. Sort of corresponds with anicca, dukkha, and anatta.

Yeah that just comes with the territory. I think it could be possible to get around this, but I don't think anyone has found the way -- at least not to a clear enough extent to start putting it in practice to the point where it's commonplace.

Same here. But in Angelo's case: when that was what you saw, it's almost certainly the case that he just wasn't, right then and there, in the process of coaxing someone to their next step in deconstructing the illusion of separation. You've read Jed McKenna right? This fellow Angelo is basically a real-life, present-day, active-online (and anesthesiologist) version of the Jed character in those three enlightenment books. And if you think Jed was missing God, while I wouldn't strongly disagree, because I can't know that absolutely... all I do know absolutely is that I'm not. And I see the same in both you and Jed, and Angelo. With Jed it'd just be plainly obvious there's no God outside of what I am -- he even describes this (his state, though sometimes that has to be implied) multiple times as "seeing everything forever in all directions" -- and if he's referring to what I'm certain he is, then that's effectively enlightenment or God realization (though it doesn't need a name, it's simply absolute truth) and there's nothing else beyond it... To be clear I'm not saying enlightenment reaches a point where nothing more develops and expands relatively speaking. And the quoted description of Jed's is obviously not merely metaphorical but also obviously not merely referring to the visual sense. And for some, that of course would beg another question... Jed wasn't missing Love, either. In his body of work he just calls it agape, and uses the word "love" to describe personal love, which seems to be why it's possible for one to think Jed has missed the facet of Love.

No problem, thanks! And yep. Yeah thanks @ardacigin that's really good guidance.

Have you by chance ever used meth? I ask because I once had a massive psychotic break on it -- thought I was starring on an alien TV show and the producers were framing me for murder for good TV, and later I was convinced that I was the world's first AGI and the hospital and the psychosis were just a ruse to get me to come in for updates... But the reason I'm telling you this is because I didn't fully recover until after having gone 5-6 months with no meth. For months I couldn't shake the suspicion that a government agency was following me and doing experiments and surveillance etc... And I was hallucinating evidence for this too -- but I had a hunch they were hallucinations (considering the alien thing was later seen as obviously a hallucination, I figured the at-the-time-current surveillance/etc hallucinations probably were too), so I was able to stay somewhat tethered to reality. But it wasn't until I totally healed that I could see through it 100% as nonsense (and the hallucinations disappeared completely). So if you've ever used meth, fwiw it took me 6 months before I healed from its mind scrambling lingering psychosis, so you could maybe reassess whether you need medication at the 6 month mark since last use (again IF you've ever used it; I wouldn't be surprised if you never have). Or if you (or whoever sees this) haven't ever used it, hopefully this still helped somehow -- if nothing else, maybe it shows someone that delusional thoughts can go away completely.

It's not like a peak experience. That would be like a kid discovering masturbation and then thinking "holy crap, nobody else knows about this, and if they do, they're probably few and far between and we know something almost no one knows!" No... This is literally 100% doubtless. What you're describing is still in the realm of doubt and certainty. This is beyond doubt and certainty. Certainty is a mere concept you're imagining.

Yeah it’s exactly that simple.

Makes sense. Fair enough.

There is no knowing. The only doubtless knowing is no knowing at all, it’s just absolute truth. And all untruth is thought based. So a huge amount of doubts and false beliefs can be resolved by just ignoring all thought — ignoring anything that can be thought or described. As soon as a thought is seen as such, that’s all that needs to be done... and if one does not complete the thought, and they do that with all subsequent thoughts, the absolute doubtless shines, and it’s so obvious it needs no defense.

@Leo Gura Just as a small nitpick, what Angelo can talk about, directly on the scene, is utterly beyond nonduality. I recognize it essentially as what you might term something like absolute impersonal solipsism. If you don’t see that, you pretty much just haven’t seen enough of his stuff. It’s definitely not set apart from God either it just has no need to be called as such.

Yeah the appearance is so intimate, a self separate from everything is amazingly somehow believable -- it's just so damn engrossing. And yep, the seeking setup will constantly use the practices to survive (it will incessantly co opt any technique and assume a reason for it that is valuable to itself), but after this is seen directly (and in real time), and especially if there are glimpses or flashes of what's really going on, a motivated (by desire rather than choice) one-pointed inquiry can then work to short-circuit it.

Keep in mind, the mindfuck effect seems to be much heavier when psychedelics are combined with cannabis. It's not necessarily a waste to combine them from time to time. After all, cannabis makes psychedelic ego death more likely -- because of its memory suppression effect -- but this does seem to come with a more intense mindfuck effect.

If this is for just for generally higher consciousness, check out techniques and literature such as TMI and Seeing That Frees. Practice gratitude, Metta, TMI, maybe noting, or maybe do some targeted psychedelic work. But if this is all for enlightenment, honestly I would just get in contact with Angelo Dilullo — there are others available in this effective capacity, but he’s new and less encumbered by his popularity decreasing the ease of one-on-one conversations. Why I don’t teach — I’m not sure exactly what it is (and ultimately there’s no reason) but it might be that at least right now I don’t have the extraordinary humility that he has to actually be an effective teacher to a degree that I’d find worthwhile (seems weird, but it seems this, probably among other things, really does somehow directly prevent me from being able to effectively teach), but he is absolutely willing to teach without hesitation. I think for like 5-10 years (or it could have been 20, I can’t remember) after awakening he didn’t (and perhaps couldn’t) teach as well, though he occasionally talked about it with a few people or something. Not that he’s the only one, but anyway. Just think, if in literally every moment your only intention was to wake up to ultimate truth and unfiltered reality right then and there, even if it’s going to kill your identity / what you are (or rather what you take yourself to be)... and no other option exists or is even conceivable. <— I’ll say one thing, once you have that, you actually have everything you need to wake up. As in you don’t need any more spiritual information, or really even practice. It’ll just play out how it plays out, with forces utterly beyond your power to influence, understand, or relate to. For waking up, it’s less about energetic work than it’s about inquiry and directly attending to thought and self (not just raw objective sensations) in a discerning way, for the purpose of investigating which (and how) thoughts/fixations pull us back into illusory view, thought, and doership. And tackling the problem at its actual root, going into it knowing full well what your main obstacle will be: that the seeking setup will at all times try to co opt the bid for freedom, for its own purposes... you starve that at its root. I do hope this opens whatever door you’re at, if one needs opening.

But it’s not like in the story there isn’t basically a hack that can open the sense of separation up to the boundlessness. Self inquiry when done very simply and skillfully, simply can, in the story, lead to a shift out of identity. Ultimately it’s an airtight illusion, because it’s not there, yet nonetheless, this hack is available. Better to know about what awakening really is and yet not be there, than to be unaware of the possibility at all.

That's maybe what they'd say, but I wasn't coming from there. ( In a sense, enlightenment is further than nonduality, because while nonduality reveals there's just energy and no identity (and the seeker was the sought), there's a further deepening that reveals how that energy is still sort of a reflection of what can be revealed when the leftover perceptual filters strip away -- call it whatever; it's the infinite and infinitely efficient, beyond understanding, more logical than logic... And the way I see it, this is what Leo describes as being conscious of how you're imagining the entire reality as God. ) I understand @Consilience and what he said totally resonates. Basically what I meant is, while yes the jhanas and meditation/mindfulness are certainly valuable if not indispensable on the path (I probably was being misleading by not including the fact that it couldn't be any other way), there is an orthogonal or "backwards step" (happened with self inquiry + spiritual autolysis but not until I had done it for quite some time) that I was somehow able to avoid even while exploring jhanas with pretty good technique and even with lots of bliss in every day life. And that backwards step can open up glimpses into what's really going on, which is so intimate that it can be constantly overlooked even in the midst of very advanced practice. Maybe it isn't generally that way for everyone's path -- I can see that. I did not mean for it to come across that those practices were useless -- they were in fact crucial. In the grand scheme, there probably wasn't a single month where I wasn't "further along" by the end of the month relative to the beginning, even though in a sense there was something missing. But at least for me (again my practice could've had a subtle flaw so to speak, and actually, in a sense, in fact it did) it was possible to get really good at concentration and even mindfulness... all the while not taking what I now see to be a key step that I was somehow missing up until the point it began: Directly attending to the thought space (rather than raw sensations, as I had intuitively assumed until then was the right way -- and in a sense it was right for the time) in a discerning way, for the purpose of investigating which (and how) thoughts/fixations pull me back into illusory view, thought, and doership. Yeah, I actually managed to avoid that for quite some time! I would add that, intuitively, I think culprits may have been that I: 1. mainly just focused on jhanas and metta... and 2. didn't consult with a teacher. My practice was sort of well rounded, but in relation to how much metta and concentration practice I did, I was only really dipping my toe in what I now recognize to be at least a few of the prime movers of practice: 1. noting, 2. inquiry, and 3. in a way, "beyond practice," a very strong desire to wake up + the constant intention to break out of filtered reality and applying that passion to investigating the thought space and seeing everything discernible as a thought / thought layer / fixation / filter that creates the sense that I'm here and I'm separate from everything... or in other words clarifying enlightenment: what it actually is; how it truly isn't just another state... There's no it and yet at the same time it's an indescribably total shift in relating to experience. The process of waking up is kind of like this: you're leaving enlightenment, then once totally out, you're instantly back in again, but for real this time... Only now, instead of a separate you looking through the senses, something else is looking... and movement is absolute stillness.

^^ This is exactly where I was for years. One would think getting better at jhanas, and doing not just similar practices but a variety of practices even including some experience going up and down ñanas in noting practice, would necessarily result in at least some degree of progress along the path of awakening. But it apparently turns out it’s not impossible for the two to be more like almost if not exactly, totally parallel... Which is funny because I was aware of the potentiality of that being the case... the entire time ? — turned out to actually be the case, at least for me.

Check Leo's blog. He definitely posted about a university that does this. It's there on his blog. Maybe he can chime in and tell you how far back it was. I think it was around a year ago.