axiom

There is no you. There is simply arrogance appearing This was a joke btw - there is no actual value to your posts at all. Nor mine. They are just appearances like everything else.

I'm not sure about that. Realising 'I am' seems to come relatively quickly. So long as there is a self, awakening will still feel incomplete (hence the striving for still deeper states of awakening). Wholeness is never found. Directly recognising this for what it is (infinity, without a self) seems to be final, as no self is left to seek.

Arrogance is appearing "you" would not be torturing anyone. Torture would be appearing. Pain would be appearing. This is nothing to do with denying pain. It is simply to state that pain, as it appears, does not belong to a self.

@SOUL His point is that there is no awareness and no observation. The word 'I' is almost always pointedly used to describe subject-object relationships. So in the context of infinity it is potentially quite misleading. It's possible it's just a semantic issue, but equally it may be a sign that there is still an apparent 'I' there that thinks it is aware of things and observing things. Infinity is fine as it is. It needs no 'I' to stake claim to it.

Now you’re getting somewhere It is not experience. It is appearance.

Then why call it an 'I' ? Might as well call it "Chicken Royale with cheese"

It's so absurdly sneaky - you've got to admit it's very funny when it's seen. The sheer obviousness of it. Obviously it's impossible to explain it though. It has to be seen. Contrary to what some seem to think here, the loss of the 'I' or the 'you' is not some rookie interim stage. It is final and absolute. It's not that you are the absolute. It's that the absolute is the absolute. There is really no need to shoehorn the 'I' into things. The 'I' is not the substrate any more than 'pizza' is the substrate. Both are appearances.

Very nice summation And here is a recent scientific effort to "prove" it: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.704270/full (I prefer yours)

If you're saying that the illusion is real, then well - yes I suppose that's one way of looking at it. Like how a lenticular cloud is not a flying saucer. Just a cloud. It can certainly appear to be something else until the illusion breaks apart, sure. Once seen it can't be unseen though.

There is no such thing as experience, even if the self likes to think so.

When the Buddha said that everyone is already enlightened, he meant that when the illusion of the self apparently dissolves, it is very, VERY obvious that there was never actually a self there in the first place. In other words, enlightenment is the natural and only state.

@Rasheed Meditation can strongly reinforce the self. All seeking is a veiling of the truth. This is a gateless gate.

Join the club!

For clarity: God realisation and Nibbana point to the same truth. However, since infinity cannot be circumscribed, taken literally “God Realisation” is an egoic misapprehension which will perpetuate the illusion infinitely - like being drawn into a Mandelbrot Zoom and expecting to reach the end.

Of course. No one here knows. It’s not possible to know. It is the same with Nibbana / Nirvana.

It is exactly the same as God Reslisation. It just uses more metaphor.

A therapist believes in the epic, full of twists and turns. A guru may believe in himself, but that’s as far as he’ll believe in anything.

@BenG Nicely put

@Godishere The fastest way to wake up is to simply stop seeking. Unfortunately for the "you" that thinks it can get there, there is actually no you to do it... so it cannot actually be done. It can only seem to happen on its own - and without any input from "you" whatsoever. Here's the thing. You don't have any free will - not one iota - to make any decision about it, to get any closer to it, or to strive for it in any way at all. Try to predict your next thought. Impossible. Thoughts simply arise. All of the apparent actions you've ever taken in your entire apparent life... these also simply appeared. There was never a you behind them. All is not lost though. The seeking energy - the energy that stakes claim to the appearance as its own, as somehow belonging to it... this energy eventually seems to wear itself out, over what seems to be a lifetime or even lifetimes. This ongoing seeking, attachment and reattachment to forms, to thoughts, to new apparent bodies has been called "reincarnation". So. All of "your" thoughts are simply appearances arising, being claimed by the self as its own. You do not exist. These words - "you do not exist" - are used so often by Neo-Advaita speakers and writers so as to feel like platitudes. But as Leonard Cohen might have said, these words are the crack where the light gets in. When looked upon afresh, without bias, sometimes - albeit rarely - what they are pointing to can be clearly and suddenly seen. Everything you think you are - all of it - was always just thoughts. And these appeared without any input from you whatsoever, and they were moulded into some storyline of a self over the course of your apparent life. It's all a misapprehension. None of it actually happened. There never was a you. You were never there. Awakening thus cannot be recommended by anyone or even wanted by anyone. There's just noone there to recommend it or want it. Life seems to change insofar as there is obviously noone left to stake a claim to the appearance anymore. The appearance is thus completely free and unfiltered - more magical, more alive, more mysterious. Like an impossible miracle. There is no rhyme or reason to awakening. When the seeking stops, it stops. And then it can be seen that nothing at all actually caused it. It happened whenever it happened, on its own terms. Without a person being there - ever - to be involved in it.

The past is a memory which is only apparently in the present. Using the quantum mechanics paradigm, John Wheeler‘s Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser proves that the past doesn’t exist until it is measured / observed right now. MIT substantiated the original 1980s theory with reproducible experiments a couple of years ago.

The you is the claim-staking energy. “You” just has so much baggage as a term that it seems about as accurate as “pizza”

@Breakingthewall The appearance remains, but it is unencumbered by a you. This is actually already the case, since the self is only an illusion. Whatever the you is currently imagining to be its own experience continues… just more beautiful, more alive… no filter.

A powerful and persistent illusion of ownership, authorship and meaning which veils infinity, hiding its beauty and immediacy.

Infinity is singular. The plurality of infinity only exists insofar as the small self runs the show and carries on its conceptualisations. The final layer here is not abiding in infinite awareness or consciousness. Psychedelics can be useful, but they can also set you back to the extent they expand the sense of self, of story, etc. Infinity has no self. A self is a thing that can be pointed to. It is a conceptualisation which attempts to circumscribe that which can never be circumscribed. “Here! There’s a self here!” claimed the frightened thought, dissolving as it vainly tried to arrive. If you’re getting triggered in any way by the denial of consciousness, awareness, or the self… there may be a lesson there. There is no you in infinity. What remains is an appearance which was formerly mislabelled as a self. It’s a beautiful shock. Persistence of the self is almost inevitable. It carries with it the fear of death. It’s the toughest parasite imaginable, and it will always find a place to hide - even in infinity.

@Someone here Time and space only seem to exist relative to the perceptions of a fixed point, i.e. "That seems to be over there, so I must be right here". The fixed point is illusory. All apparent causes are simply memories / appearances "happening" now. The past manifestly is nowhere to be found. Ever. It could be said that nothing is actually happening since it all becomes nothing instantaneously... actually in less than an instant.