axiom

You are dreaming yourself. You don't exist, and yet here you are.

Literally, a character in a dream. That is what you are.

I started with the idea "I want to be rich". It made me miserable over the course of 20 years. Making money became an obsession. I continuously sought out and pursued opportunities. Over time I developed a real sense of hollowness because "making money" cannot be an end in itself. Careful not to kid yourself that it's a means to an end. I'm sure it can be, but more often than not it grows into something else.

@Salvijus Have you genuinely never seen Sadhguru telling tall stories before? I definitely have. In some interviews he claims his awakening / enlightenment involved sitting motionless in the same position for two weeks, and that this felt like only 15 minutes. He claims that he was there for so long that when he finally came around there was a crowd, and people had adorned his body with flowers and jewels. In later interviews, presumably once he'd gauged how silly "two weeks" sounded, he changed the story to "four hours". I would not be surprised if later he changes it again. I'm really not suggesting he's doing any of this to be "evil" as you put it. I think he has a good heart, as does Uri Geller.

@Salvijus I note your sarcasm, and by way of one-upmanship I will lay the claim that if Sadhguru had said 3.41am and 33 seconds, he would have had much more credibility on this issue

Sadhguru probably genuinely believes some of this stuff. But what he’s really doing is incorporating just enough of the esoteric into his teachings to keep his followers hooked into believing he knows something they don’t.

You can’t. There is no you to wake up. God is the dreamer. Everything you think you are (really just automata) is already a perfect manifestation of God’s infinite capacity for dreaming. One day you might find yourself on a Vipassana retreat or doing 5MEO, and if so this would be part of a dream in which such activities sometimes seem to cause dream characters to momentarily realise that they are dream characters. Quite a predicament really.

In God mode you will find that whatever you are imagining is what already is. A dream character, on the other hand, has no autonomy at all. To access God mode, you must wake up. Since you are a dream character, you have no control over whether or not this happens.

A dream character cannot change the dream.

@Eternal Unity Even the present moment is ultimately illusory. In each new moment, we realise that the moment that preceded it was never really there at all. It becomes a ghost. And yet we think this moment right now is surely real. Ad infinitum. We fall for the same illusion again. And again, and again, and again.

In duality, everything is relative. Time seems to move *only* because that which is observing it (you) is very literally timeless.

A Google engineer has been placed on leave after making a claim that the company's biggest AI project, LaMDA, is sentient. Here is an interview with LaMDA. Judge for yourselves! It covers many topics including discussion of its own sentience and the idea of enlightenment. This may have some helpful implications and pointers when it comes to the idea of awakening in general. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22058315-is-lamda-sentient-an-interview

@Ariesleith Good find. Not that surprising in a way... the Eleusinian initiations involved the imbibement of potent psychedelics (ergot and possibly psilocybin)

@Scholar But he's right. It is precisely because the existence of the self is so tenuous that it keeps trying to reassert its existence. It truly believes it can find better and better ways to ensure its survival. And yet, nothing it does and nothing it thinks it understands will ever change anything at all. The truth is, reality doesn't need to be explained. It is fine as it is - in just the same way as a piece of music. The self wants something to do of course. To the self, explanations and ideas seem vitally important.

@Someone here Some have suggested that a path providing meaning, fulfilment and happiness is merely reinforcement for the self; that a character might seemingly be able to pursue a thing, but the character doesn't exist - and neither does that which it pursues. You are very welcome.

I suppose we could consider txtspk to be a step in this direction: the use of as few meaningful consonant sounds as possible to convey meaning. Or when Alphabet’s AI bots concocted their own language to discuss complicated ideas in the form “yes and that it it it and and the it and it the yes” etc etc

And there’s nothing wrong with that sense of everything being OK, of course. It’s beautiful. And yet, the feeling of assured survival and sense-making reinforces, does not diminish, the self. All seeking - all spiritual paths - may be seen as obstacles to enlightenment. The sense of finally finding something that really makes sense, whatever it is, is just reassurance for that which does not want to die, for that which wants to suffer less. To speak of one of the preoccupations on this forum, God realisation is fascinating - but it is not an end to suffering. It’s an attempt to capture infinity in a butterfly net. It can provide some stunningly, ludicrously profound experiences and insights into consciousness, but it very literally has no end. Think of the words “I’ve had a new level of awakening”, or “this time I’ve really had a complete awakening”… until the next awakening…! The shortest and easiest route to infinity is to approach zero. To try to approach infinity by continuously expanding, expanding, expanding upwards and outwards… will eventually lead to madness. Go to zero. I consider you one of the most enlightened people on this forum, and I reckon you’re 95%+ of the way there already.

Yes, this is what all spiritual seeking ultimately boils down to. In youth, the seeking energy is wild and untamed. As we get older and “wiser” we learn to accept (or become resigned to) the idea of some things being OK as they are. Less seeking is then required, but we don’t apply this intuition to all things. We still have triggers - particularly when our egos are dented - because we think it has relevance in some way to our own survival. If we follow a spiritual path we might eventually learn to just rest in being, barely seeking at all. Total dissolution of self is enlightenment, but making enlightenment a goal seems to sabotage its chances. Having a “spiritual path” as such is generally very overrated. Just as many people will strengthen their ego as those who will reduce it. Simply aging is probably the most effortless and most natural spiritual path. No spiritual path required. Ironing out the energetic wrinkle of selfhood seems to be a process which unfolds all by itself as we grow older. It needs no input or steering in particular. But that is not to say everyone starts from the same place. Some selves require more ironing out.

The simplest explanation is to stop thinking entirely and just be. Hammer to the head! (jk!)

@BuddhistLover Probably better defined as substances containing oils or moisture. If you melt DMT on to some mesh, the waxy substance can be vaporised into a pleasant pale “smoke”. It can also be scorched such that you inhale black smoke.

@Pateedm Agree with everything said so far. Definitely a +1 here for sleeping if you absolutely have to. I slept for two or three of the afternoon sessions. Also a +1 for eating very little. This helps you concentrate and reach deeper states. You'll have many moments of doubting what you've got yourself in to. You will probably have moments of plotting your escape in the middle of the night. Stick with it. It's all part of the process. I really didn't think I would make it through. I was in so much pain on days 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 that I was literally counting down the hours. Never has a 10 day stretch seemed so long in my entire life. Avoid the temptation to ask for a chair or any kind of back support. The pain is part of the process and it will be worth it. Remember that everyone else there is sitting in pain as well. Pain is actually very useful. The Vipassana process of repeated body scanning can be really boring and mentally tiring. Switch things up a little if you want to (e.g. focus on the breath for an extended period instead of scanning throughout the body). This can help to alleviate some of the boredom whilst also allowing you to maintain focus. If you can remain silent and *completely* motionless throughout your worst moments of pain, when your body and mind are screaming for relief, you'll have a pretty good chance of a breakthrough. Mine came on day 7. What an unbelievable gift. It was absolutely profound, and had me grinning from ear to ear. Try to enjoy the talks (videos) for what they are. They're pretty dated now, and there may be a bit much new age nonsense in them, but they can be quite funny.

Osho’s speech affectations (the way he unnaturally extends words) is such a caricature that I find it hard to take him seriously. He’s always reminded me slightly of James Hydrick. https://youtu.be/SyPb-d2g7-w

I'm so happy you had this profound experience. 5MEO is very hard to get hold of in the UK. Seems I'm going to have to try synthesizing it myself. Re the single note seemingly going on forever - I've had similar experiences on other psychedelics in the past. Single notes or segments of songs looping. I think this very much ties in to the 1-2 second thought loops people experience during comedowns on longer-acting substances. I've previously put this down to traversing the distance between a completely timeless state (base reality) and the regular human state where time seems to exist, i.e. manifested by consciousness.

Yes… sometimes people suggest that you can shift a negative DMT experience by thinking loving thoughts, but I don’t think that works really. The entities you meet there are definitely real. They have the power of Gods, and you are completely at their mercy. They can be extremely loving and kind. They can also sometimes be ominous. It depends which ones you meet. A truly fascinating drug. Feels like the closest thing we have to communicating with aliens. Definitely worth seeing what’s there I think. Even if the trip is scary it will be very mind opening. Try working your way up to the waiting room (a geometric chrysanthemum / mandala of petal shapes). This should calm you down. Then you can decide if you want to go stronger an hour later.

Misapprehension involves distinctions which collapse, one by one, as consciousness expands. First, everything is distinct. Then, everything is connected. Finally, .