Deep

The mind is metaphysical and the body is physical. The mind is a limitation on consciousness. Once the mind is destroyed you realize you were never in the body to begin with. It's a real experience that we can have. Imagine how much freedom you feel when you realize you aren't the body or mind.

No, there is lot more to it than that. The enlightenment I'm talking about is almost impossible without 5-MeO. There are a lot of false realizations along the way that can be confused as enlightenment. What you're talking about is still in the dream state, it's not experiencing God.

@Prabhaker How rare is full enlightenment in your opinion?

Everything has to be understood in the proper context. If I had a gun and someone attacked me with a knife, I would shoot them. It doesn't determine if I'm enlightened or not. People looking on the outside can judge me as a horrible person but they didn't know my intentions. It's unlikely that a master would kill for no reason or rape.

I don't know. They're free to accept whoever they want as enlightened.

I love Krishna and I also love everyone else. I don't think there is anything wrong with people practicing Bhakti yoga for Krishna. I love the idea of Virat swaroop, in which Krishna shows that he is Brahman. God can be thought of in infinite ways.

@Loreena Be patient.

What Leo is saying is correct from God's perspective, but it's not exactly what enlightenment is. Enlightenment is simply realizing there is no "you", there is only God. When God incarnates as humans, it has to appear ignorant. It can't be any other way. It's pretending to be finite. Their is no fool proof way of knowing if someone is enlightened. You can study their life and see if you agree with their teaching.

@Alii This is a good a discussion. I'll share my opinion with you. Enlightenment is realizing you are God after experiencing yourself as God. It's literally mind blowing! It's called liberation because you are free from the body/mind complex you are identified with. It's hard to tell who is enlightened and who isn't because an enlightened master would seem like a weirdo to many. Some enlightened people can help others to attain enlightenment. Some of them don't. In the Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna to kill all of his relatives before the Kurukshetra war because they were a menace to society. For a person who is trapped in the mind that would seem crazy. Krishna also says to follow your dharma without worrying about the body. It means following your purpose or what God is doing through you (since you aren't who you think you are), even if your body dies.

@The Universe There is no such thing as chakras. When you succeed in Raja yoga, the kundalini automatically rises. You can feel something moving up your spine. At the end you get to experience yourself as God. It's not easy.

@alyra Non-duality and duality are intertwined. It's impossible to understand; it can only be experienced.

@Shin No beliefs can prevent enlightenment from happening. You can only realize your true self when the mind holds still, not any time before that. I've had the good fortune of experiencing that and it was the most intense thing I've ever experienced. You only feel like you're in the body because your mind is telling you that. You were never in the body to begin with. You'll know when it happens to you. During the no mind state you realize what you are (which is everything and no-thing at the same time).

@Prabhaker I wouldn't say they are "false gurus." A high school basketball player might be the best in his school but he isn't Michael Jordan. The high school player doesn't experience or play basketball in the same manner because God is expressing differently through him than M.J. The high school player can't teach you to play the game, the way Michael can. Same with spirituality, Buddha played the game of life differently from us. LMAO

In the past, one had to experience themselves as God before they were considered to be enlightened. A sage was someone who can experience God through their own discipline. Most modern teachers haven't experienced God. I can tell by listening to them. It's like a virgin talking about sex. They have concepts about it but no experience. There are many teachers in India like that as well. There are a couple reasons why I don't think modern teachers have experienced God. They are: 1. If they experienced God, they wouldn't be able to talk about it. It's so intense there are no words to describe it. 2. They wouldn't need to save the world. If everything and everyone is God, who needs to be saved? Patanjali had done the hard work necessary to experience God. Krishna only spoke the Gita because Arjuna needed it before the war. This doesn't mean they had more access to enlightenment than anyone else. It doesn't mean they were more "godly" than anyone else.

No, that's not what the ego is. The ego is the inauthentic part of us. Why do you think people have an ego in the first place? They aren't being honest. The ego comes from social conditioning. I was just saying if someone is practicing Raj yoga and they genuinely felt like saying that, they would have to. It simply says what one thinks, says, and does have to be aligned that's all. Most people's lives are hypocritical. Raj yoga is about experiencing samadhi which is different from what Rupert is talking about. I like Raj yoga because the techniques have worked better for me than what Rupert teaches.

One has to "die" for God to realize God. Patanjali makes the 10 commandments look like a joke. For example, it says you can never lie not even by mistake. If you feel like telling your boss to, "fuck off" you have to do that. It requires being rigorously truthful. You can end up getting killed for it like Jesus. Jesus did succeed in Raj yoga unknowingly. Who wants to be that honest? lol

@Prabhaker Yes because acquiring siddhis is very rare and it sounds woo-woo to rationally minded people. They shouldn't believe in anything they haven't experienced. I think Ramakrishna was a fully enlightened master. Two people came to him who had siddhis. He took their siddhis away because they were misusing them.

@Natasha I agree with you. I think the process goes like this: enlightenment>samadhi>full liberation. In the Indian scriptures there was no word for enlightenment. They only talk of samadhi because that's what the sages experienced. They were enlightened well before experiencing samadhi, but samadhi is icing on the cake.

@Natasha Enlightenment might not be extraordinary but there are definitely higher states of consciousness. In my opinion it's necessary for people to experience higher consciousness before declaring they are enlightened because it can become a spiritual ego. The ego can delude them into thinking they are enlightened when they truly aren't. For example, if the intensity of our experience is the same it would be suspect. We cannot say we are God if we haven't experienced anything more intense than this normal state of being. Enlightenment is the realization that comes after having a transcendental experience. I understand that Rupert is just trying to help people and it's a good start.

@Dharam Your problem is low self-esteem. There are two types of egos: healthy and unhealthy. The healthy ego loves itself and is confident. The unhealthy ego is low in confidence and self-esteem. The healthy ego is easier to dissolve. You have a long way to go before dissolving your ego. How can you love God if you don't love yourself? You can't.

@sgn "Life is a dream" means, all the things you believe to be true are not Absolute Truth. Race, culture, society, religion, who you think you are, etc. Those things are not true because they are temporary and changing. God is the only Truth because it never changes. God appears as everything we see but everything is not God. Our body and mind are not God because they are constantly changing. Being in the dream state means you believe all the finite things are Truth even though they aren't.

@JCShannon88 I agree with what the others have said. I think you've been in your comfort zone for too long. Maybe you can do something drastic to get yourself outside your comfort zone. You've been a slave to other people's ideas, that's why you're a nice guy. You need to embrace your sexuality and masculinity. My advice to you is hire an escort and fuck her a few times. You have a lot of concepts about sex and relationships that hold you back from attracting women. It would be good if you break free from all of that shit. Yes, they only like you for your money, but who cares? At least you get to have sex. People will tell you it's not respectable and bla bla bla but those are all just fucking stories. It might be easier for you to hit on women afterwards.

@The Universe You can't become God because you've been God for all of eternity. You can become aware that you are God by destroying your mind. It's counter-intuitive to everything we've ever been taught.

Many of them need to embrace the materialistic side for a while to develop themselves. They can go back to spirituality after economic development, but I doubt that will happen. As technology increases human consciousness decreases so it's only going to get worse. Most people never question their existence until the maturity arises within them.

Energy is always in our body. Chakras are not a concrete thing in our body. It's kind of like a figure of speech. The root chakra represents lower consciousness and the crown represents the highest consciousness. Kundalini feels like a tingling or burning sensation in the spine. I can feel my kundalini burning at the base of my spine. It hasn't gone all the way up yet and I don't want it to. It requires a lot of discipline to make it go all the way up. I don't want to impose that kind of discipline on myself. It's also not necessary for God-realization.