OneHandClap

That's a great start! The most crucial thing is that understanding—that the brain and egoic consciousness literally cannot grasp reality, because reality is concepts and language applied onto reality. It would be like a software program trying to understand the room the computer is located in. Different levels of existence, different frameworks for perception. Meditation is more or less just giving the mind a boring task to make it... eventually... realize that there the end of the rainbow is already there. There's no greater or better state than you're currently in. Believing otherwise is what runs the survival programming to convince you that your life is, in fact, in need of something new to make you happy. Spoiler: the happiness never left, and it's beneath all the noise

Conflate means to, on a basic level, muddy two concepts to the point where they are useless as individual terms. If someone conflates happiness with success, they have entangled the two definitions to the point where we can't use them properly in a rational discussion. Bear in mind that at this point in your path (you are just getting into it, yes?) you do not have to take anything on belief alone. If you have not verified that consciousness is the only thing that exists (it is apparent with a little bit of contemplation, yes, but we have not been taught that in school and culture), then don't worry about believing it on faith right now. What matters is your moment-to-moment investigation of what is always true for you. Stay with that. Don't worry about what any religion, teacher, doctrine, book, or video tells you. You are your own best detective in the matter of reality. If you can keep returning to stillness over... and over... and over... again, the words will fall away. The truth will be made evident on its own. Remember—the human brain is wired to try to understand reality in a neat, prepackaged way that it can use to help your body persist. Its only job is to keep you alive, not happy. Let the brain veg out for a while. Let it relax, unwind, get away from the searching. Then the whole notion of enlightenment will seem silly, because it will become clear that you have always been what you are, which is awake. Enlightenment is merely the recognition of this awakened nature. Edit: I am aware that my use of brain here is provisional. Yes, there is no such thing as a brain, it is a concept. We get that. I'm merely using this language since it will resonate with most of our materialist upbringings and preconceived frames of reality The map isn't the territory!

Great way to put it. To be honest, times like this are when I take a brief page from the materialist handbook, not as truth but merely as a conceptual framework to get away from the labeling tendency. If we can just, if only for a moment, imagine that our brain's only job is to keep this human body alive, we can begin to understand that the only way off the wild rollercoaster is to accept that the brain will never be happy by choice. Thus, it falls to us to tell the brain, over and over, that everything is okay. That it is arising from the same quantum field as every other object. That you are already quite fine as you are, and there is nothing to do, fear, fight, or run from. After sufficient time with this basic "massaging the brain," all is revealed to be perfect in itself. This state, of course, is what we call "God," or infinite consciousness, or even oneness. But what Consilience is pointing to, @Javfly33, is that this state is something the mind literally cannot grasp. It is a dog chasing its tail. Setting aside the seeking, the sought is revealed to have been here all along. Tada.

You would really like Nagarjuna. He does a very thorough breakdown of time, space, and the appearance of objects. A bit dense at times, but really one of the cornerstones of mind-only philosophy.

This is a good summary. The end of the "path of awakening" comes when the human brain stops trying to process and twist reality to make "you" survive better. When that happens, reality itself becomes manifest. There is no longer a need for the body-mind to distinguish between self and other, because the brain has relaxed enough to understand that there is no real danger. There is no need for boundaries or false beliefs to survive. This, of course, is an explanation of the path with some physicalist elements thrown in (in case OP is of that perspective). In full honesty, the words don't matter. Whether one believes in a brain or a mind or God or nothing or oneness, it all comes to the same place of peace.

Taking psychedelics to avoid the ego is an oxymoron Especially because the ego is the very thing that told you it could be destroyed or avoided via psychs. Your only goal should be to know what is true. Forget the words ego, God, self, other, and world for a moment. Psychedelics are not useless, but they are not a magic bullet to full understanding of reality unless you can actually drop the labels. Otherwise it's just a playground for an egoic mind with some powerful rides to go on.

I suppose it's the best a materialist can get in their paradigm. The limiting issue is that unless Sam acknowledges absolute love is a possibility, he will not seek it, let alone discover it.

Mic drop. The fortress of comforting beliefs must be defended at all costs.

I'm not Leo (obviously), but I consider myself average, verging toward above average (28 years old), and the most women I pulled in one year came while I was living abroad. I'd completely stopped giving any fucks about rejection or even scoring. All I did was go out, talk with plenty of people, and enjoy myself. That "aura" seems to attract more people in the process. In the end, it is a paradox. The less you actually care about succeeding with sleeping with someone, the higher the likelihood. Women (and to some degree, men) enjoy confidence and a mood-boosting presence. They don't want to spend time with people who are anxious, needy, and self-conscious to the point of being unnatural.

Anytime! It is a long road, so don't worry about missing something. It all comes together naturally. For now, just enjoy your meditation sessions and focus on the pleasant feelings. Cultivate them gradually and hold onto that not-knowing; it's the space in which knowing arises Well, if you go by the Buddhist model, you remove the causes of suffering. In other words, the grasping tendencies of the mind. The need to control, to be right, to indulge desires, to stoke hatred. Once you've seen past the desires of the mind and purified it, there is no ground for suffering to arise. Pain, and even displeasure, yes, but not suffering in response to those things.

I'll look around for it Cheers. Excellent! A good friend of mine went to WPI. I'm originally from the area around Lowell, but have spent a lot of time in Maine. Peaceful up here - check it out if you get the chance!

Yes, pretty much, though you might go a step further in your analogy by saying that Sam's assertion is "We don't understand if there is something that is not clay causing the clay to exist." Sam is very on the fence about matters of metaphysics, in that he takes no real stance about whether consciousness is the fundamental property (or substrate) of reality. Sam has certainly taught no-self stuff, and even unconditional love (the two go hand in hand), but he does not dabble in metaphysics. And truth be told, I don't think it is required for most of the path. The Buddha himself counseled seekers to not waste time wondering about the origins of reality, whether the self is extinguished or eternally present, etc. His only goal was the eradication of suffering. Once suffering is removed, wisdom arises spontaneously. I don't know if you find this helpful, but I think it's good advice. By the time you get into contemplating what reality "is," you have already moved beyond the vast majority of personal suffering.

AFAIK, he said his first experience of unconditional love arrived via MDMA. Nice way to get a foot in the door... now he just has to cultivate it

Correct. Hence why I said I do not share Sam's views. That being said, I think he has had some valuable no-self experiences and insights of various sorts. He just has yet to take the leap of acknowledging that there is nothing beyond consciousness.

I think he's extremely open to any possibilities. He is a skeptical guy by nature, and in times like today, that quality is useful IMO. People are quick to believe in anything because they have heard about it, and it sounds nice. You more or less have the right idea, though, when it comes to dualism. Materialists assert that there is a world we are perceiving via sensory faculties in the form of conscious input.

Bambam sauce!? Enlighten me... I'm a sauce addict. Btw, I saw you're from Boston on your page. Fellow Masshole here

I have listened to several interviews, and Sam is a through-and-through agnostic. He makes no claims on this topic, because he insists we do not, and cannot, know the fundamental "stuff" that underlies our consciousness. He has one talk with Rupert Spira where he basically says "Show me the evidence." Again, I don't share his position, but I do think he's not just saying it to be coy. He says "appear in consciousness" because he is more or less a Cartesian dualist, i.e. believing in a divide of consciousness and the reality "out there." He is a scientist first and foremost, and holds to those beliefs rather closely. I think it's fine to entertain all possible notions. From a first-person POV, all I can verify is that consciousness is my sole experience of reality. I do not, however, rule out the possibility that there may be some "actual world" we cannot in any way access at the present moment. It seems increasingly unlikely, given the experiences and insights I've undergone, but I am not an absolutist. I am open to any possible proof that Mr. Harris is willing to extend. Edit: Perhaps "Cartesian dualist" is too uncharitable to Sam. I have also seen recently that he's open to possibilities such as panpsychism and quantum consciousness models, in which reality itself possesses consciousness as a fundamental property. This lines up fairly well with my observations.

Maybe, maybe not. I'm a salt-and-vinegar chip guy. Many find my tastes distasteful

Consider, just for a moment, that all of this is just word games with yourself. Consider the possibility that you are real... others are real... the world is real. The purpose of calling things illusory and imagination-originated is to point away from materialism and toward the reality that consciousness, not matter, is the bedrock of existence. Okay, cool. But to use the ocean metaphor... if the entire ocean is water, then there's really no point in a wave fixating its identity as water. If everything you know is water, then drop the name "water." Drop the name consciousness, or God, or infinity. Everything is exactly what it is. Nothing more, nothing less. There is a damn good reason you don't see Zen masters stewing over being God out loud. There is a deeper, more silent truth than listening to the ego's thoughts about reality... and that truth is reality. Get past the labels.

This seems like a lot of mental gymnastics, lol. Dinosaurs were real from our relative, dualistic perception of reality, which is how we are currently living and communicating. Sure, in the Absolute there were no dinosaurs, but there are also no humans, no time, and no space, so there's not much to say about it.

Because oneness and manyness are identical It's a paradox. It cannot be known or conceptualized, only experienced. Turn off the thinking and simply abide as reality... you will soon see how the one could be many, and vice versa.

Well, to begin with, your insights are definitely valid on at least some level. Yes, reality (which I called pure consciousness here) is all one. What I mean is, before the Big Bang, there was no time, no space, no matter, no energy. We all existed as one indivisible whole. But as of this moment, you and I are operating from individual parts of the whole. You are Javfly, I am OneHandClap. We are two pieces of the puzzle. What I mean to say is, although you are stating you are God and that you imagined everything... you have no memory of it, because there was nobody making any of it. Everything was made by this indescribable reality, but it was not you as you exist right now. And as we are human beings talking through human languages on the internet, from this level of reality, we're just human beings. We aren't God. We aren't the creator of everything that exists. At the level of absolute consciousness/reality/God-consciousness, whatever term you prefer, yes, "we" did make everything. But again, keep in mind relativity. It's two sides of a coin. When you say "you are imaginary," you are negating the fact that everything is also extremely real. If the only reality we will ever experience is imaginary, there is no such thing as imaginary, since there's no other form of reality. Does that make sense?

You are one manifestation of infinite reality, as is every single "thing" we designate through language. At the level of the Absolute, we are just reality-as-it-is, which you may call God, Being, It, the Absolute. But we don't exist as that. We exist as human beings who are talking on a message board to share information. If you were infinite reality all alone right now, you wouldn't be able to speak, let alone think. There would be no forms to refer to.

I can speak on this, specifically for cannabis and psychedelics. While they are great as a coming-down combo, during the peak phase they can create delusional experiences that are hellish to say the least. Be careful with this combo especially.

A few things. Cessation of breath typically precedes the jhanic states in Buddhism. Look up jhanas for more info. The most crucial aspect of them is abandoning desire to reach any specific state. You must surrender your aspiration to surrender Second, pressure in the head typically means you are consciously holding your breath, not letting it stop on its own. You are creating pressure there by withholding the respiratory process. Third, you do not need an OBE to realize your true nature. Stillness is enough.