genandnic

On these forums, it all starts with a simple, elegant premise, often borrowed from the highest teachings of non-duality: All is One. Consciousness is fundamental. There is no intrinsic, separate self, meaning everything is absolutely and fundamentally connected by virtue of its very Being. A premise on which we can all agree. It feels true, liberating. But then, someone takes that beautiful, boundless idea and follows its thread of logic to a stark and desolate conclusion. Then all hell breaks loose. The argument is always the same. It is presented with the cold, irrefutable clarity of a mathematical proof. If there is only one indivisible substance—Consciousness—and everything else is merely an appearance within it, then the concept of an "other" conscious being is a logical impossibility. Everyone else then must be an appearance in my own mind, says the lonely solipsist. You, reduced to nothing but a complex, yet convincing puppet, but a puppet nonetheless. Your joys, your sorrows, your inner world—they are all just images playing on the single screen of the speaker's mind. I have seen this play out over a hundred times. It’s a profound and often painful drama, and it’s almost never about the logic itself. It’s about what happens when the intellectual mind tries to build a fortress around a truth that was meant to be boundless. The conversation always splits into two camps, two archetypes of the spiritual seeker. First, there is The Solipsist. It's crucial to understand that they are not usually driven by ego or malice. In fact, it's often the opposite. They are driven by a fierce devotion to intellectual honesty. They have glimpsed the truth of Oneness and feel a sacred duty to protect it from the contamination of duality. To them, admitting the existence of another independent consciousness feels like a betrayal of the ultimate truth, a step backward into the illusion of separation. They stand on the razor's edge of their logic, and from that vantage point, everything is perfectly clear. The universe is tidy. There are no messy paradoxes, no truly unpredictable others. There is only the Self and its projections. It is an airtight explanation, a complete picture. But it is a picture of a universe with only one inhabitant. They become a ghost in the machine of their own making, rattling the chains of their perfect logic, asking why no one else can see how simple it all is. They are not trying to erase you; they are trying, desperately, to convince themselves. On the other side, you have The Mediator. This person feels the truth of Oneness just as deeply, but they cannot and will not abandon the truth of their lived experience. Their truth is found not just in silent meditation, but in the eyes of a loved one, in the shared laughter with a friend, in the sting of being misunderstood. They hear the Solipsist’s logic and recognize its power, but they also feel its profound error in their bones. The Mediator’s task is much harder. They must use the clumsy, dualistic tools of language to describe a reality that is both one and many. They offer analogies—the ocean and its waves, the tree and its branches, the single light shining through countless windows. They speak of dreams, where our one mind creates a multitude of seemingly separate selves. They are trying to build a bridge between the absolute and the relative, to show that Oneness doesn't negate multiplicity, but rather expresses itself through it. They are defending not just their own existence, but the sacredness of relationship itself. I’ve been in both positions. I know the allure of the Solipsist’s fortress. There was a time when I, too, quantumly tunneled into that solipsistic bubble. It is a dark and lonely place, but it is also strangely safe. Nothing can truly hurt you if it isn't real. No one can truly abandon you if they were never there. I was there of my own will, choosing to dream the world in that way. What I eventually realized is that the entire debate is a category error. It’s a symptom of believing that Truth is something outside of us that we must capture with the right set of words, the right logical formula. But Truth isn't a destination you arrive at through argument. It's the water we're already swimming in. The way out of the fortress isn't to build a better argument against it. The way out is to willingly open the door. It is to make a choice. It is an act of faith. My philosophy now is simple: other people exist and experience because I choose to believe they exist and have experiences by assuming it to be so. This is what it means to be A Creator. I grant them their reality in my perception of the world. I choose to believe in the sanctity of their inner world, not because they can prove it to me—they can’t, just as I can’t prove mine to them—but because a universe with other conscious beings is an infinitely richer, more creative, and more compassionate place. A place where we can be Co-Creators. This choice doesn't violate the principle of Oneness. It fulfills it. When I see this debate unfold now, I don't see a logical disagreement. I see a deep human need being expressed. The Solipsist is crying out to be seen and understood in their profound, isolating insight. The Mediator is crying out for their connections to be honored as real and meaningful. Both are trying to say something true. The real non-dual understanding is holding both truths at once. Yes, on an absolute level, we are all expressions of one Being. Your consciousness and my consciousness are not two different things. And because of that, I must honor your perspective as being as real and valid as my own. To cause you suffering is, quite literally, to cause myself suffering. To deny your inner world is to impoverish my own. We are all cells in one larger organism, learning to communicate. Sometimes, a cell might forget it's part of a body and believe it is the entire body. It’s a phase of its development. The role of the other cells isn't to attack it, but to gently keep sending their signals, to keep participating in the shared life of the whole, until that isolated cell remembers where it belongs. The argument is just part of the process. It’s the sound of us learning to be one, together. What I’ve also come to see is that this debate is rarely about what we think it’s about. On the surface, it’s a clash of metaphysical models. But underneath, it’s a drama about fear and control. The world of "others" is messy, unpredictable, and often painful. Other people have their own wills, their own desires, their own mysterious inner lives that we can never fully access or control. They can misunderstand us, reject us, or leave us. This fundamental otherness is the source of both our greatest joy and our deepest suffering. The solipsistic conclusion, in its cold and lonely way, offers a perfect solution to this problem. It’s the ultimate defense mechanism. If no one else is real, no one can truly hurt you. The chaos of the world is tamed, reduced to a predictable script playing out in the theater of your own mind. It is the ego’s final, most brilliant trick: to co-opt the ultimate truth of Oneness and turn it into a fortress for the individual self. The "I" that claims to be the one and only consciousness is not the boundless, universal Self of the mystics. It is the small, frightened self, cloaking itself in the robes of the Absolute. And this is where language fails us so profoundly. We are trying to describe the ocean with a thimble. The words themselves—"one," "many," "I," "you," "self," "other"—are the very tools of separation. Every time we speak, we carve the seamless reality into pieces. The Solipsist takes the word "One" and wields it like a sword, cutting away everything that doesn't fit. The Mediator tries to glue the pieces back together with phrases like "many perspectives of the one," but the seams always show. We get stuck in the grammar of illusion. We argue over whether the waves are separate from the ocean, forgetting that we are the water itself, trying to describe its own wetness. The argument becomes a feedback loop, a hall of mirrors where the mind can see nothing but its own reflections. So, how do we break the spell? Not with a better argument. Not with a more clever analogy. The spell is broken by shifting our attention from the mind to the heart. The real question is not, "What is the most logically consistent model of reality?" The real question is, "Which view makes me more loving? Which view expands my capacity for compassion?" This is the ultimate test. When you encounter suffering in another being—a friend in tears, a stranger in pain—what does your philosophy do? The purely logical solipsist is forced into a corner. They must conclude that this suffering is an illusion, a phantom pain in a phantom being. It is a drama on the screen, and while it might be sad, it isn't real. This path, followed to its end, leads to a profound disassociation, a cold and sterile existence. It is the peace of the void, not the peace of a full and open heart. The other path, the path of the Mediator, leads to a radical empathy. When you see suffering in another, you recognize it as your own. Not metaphorically, but literally. The One Being is experiencing pain through that particular focal point. Their tears are your tears. Their struggle is your struggle. This understanding doesn't erase the boundaries between you and them; it makes those boundaries sacred meeting places. It transforms every interaction into an opportunity for the universe to care for itself. This is why I no longer engage in the debate on its own terms. I don't deny the solipsist's logic; I simply don't find it to be the most useful or beautiful or life-affirming map of the territory. I choose the map that leads to connection. The way forward, for all of us caught in these loops, is to practice a kind of gentle humility. It is to admit that the mystery is larger than our minds. It is to listen more than we assert. It is to look at the person arguing for solipsism and see not an opponent, but a reflection of our own capacity for fear and isolation. And it is to look at the person arguing for connection and see a reflection of our own deep yearning to love and be loved. They are both us. The fortress and the bridge are both structures we build within ourselves. The real spiritual work is not to prove one is right and the other is wrong, but to learn to live in the open field between them, where we can be both unique and united, both an individual and the whole. It’s a paradox, yes. But maybe the truth isn’t a solution to a problem. Maybe it’s a paradox we’re meant to live inside of, with grace.

Quick, do something spontaneous! Take that determinism!

This is adorable. I love both of them so much. They've both had a profound impact on my life in the past.

The Gospel of Thomas is an incredible resource for those who take the nondual path. Many of these sayings are spot on and provide profound insight into his teachings and the religion that spawned around his teachings, how they have become distorted, and how they can possibly be reintroduced. Back in 2017 there was a user on the Actualized forum who wrote a dissection on the various sayings of Jesus as recorded in the Gospel of Thomas.

Could you clip the each of the stages of enlightenment from your video on the ten stages of Enlightenment?