Search the Community

If you haven't seen 'Midnight Mass' on Netflix I highly recommend it. Starts slow, but it all comes together masterfully. This is a conversation that happens at the end (spoilers obviously). For a show about fanatical Christianity, this powerful speech at the end is quite on-the-nose Nonduality. Just goes to show that Nonduality is truly becoming mainstream and part of the collective-consciousness. As the character is dying: ‘What do I think happens when we die? Speaking for myself...myself...myself. That's the problem, that's the whole problem with the whole thing, that word, “self”. That's not the word, that's not right. How did I forget that? I thought I'd despair or feel afraid, but I don't feel any of that. Because I'm too busy in this moment remembering. This body is mostly just empty space after all and solid matter, it's just energy vibrating very slowly. And there is no me. There never was. I'm no longer breathing and I remember. There is no point where any of that ends and I begin. I remember I am energy, not memory, not self. My name, my personality, my choices, all came after me. I was before them and I will be after. And everything else is pictures picked up along the way. Fleeting little dreamlets. And I am the lightning that jumps between. I am the energy. And I am returning, just by remembering. I am returning home. It's like a drop of water falling back into the ocean, of which it's always been a part. All things, everyone who's ever been, every plant, every animal, every atom, every star, every galaxy, all of it, that's what we're talking about when we say God. The One. The cosmos, and its infinite dreams. We are the cosmos dreaming of itself. It's simply a dream that I think is my life every time. But I'll forget this. I always do. I always forget my dreams. But now, in this moment, I remember. The instant I remember, I comprehend everything at once. There is no time, there is no death, life is a dream. It's a wish, again and again and again, and on into Eternity. And I am all of it. I am everything. I am all. I am that. I am you.'

I feel like this video does not get enough love and attention - It's by far the best nonduality video of Le's (for me). I've watched it 3 times now. Does anyone have any book recommendations on the topic of Aztec Nonduality?

I reject this whole nonduality frame. Serious Consciousness is beyond all that. If you wanna keep swimming around in circles at this plane of consciousness, go ahead. I will not argue with you further.

Because he obviously has a very deep and exceptional level of consciousness. But as I have said, there are many degrees and even different kinds of awakening. I gave him a privileged position back before I had my own intense awakenings in which I realized the limitations in his teachings. It took me 200+ awakenings to deconstruct all the elaborate illusions of nonduality, Buddhism, and self-inquiry. That was when I was saying crazy sounding-shit and people were calling me out as arrogant and delusional. After which point I stopped pushing my views on matters since it becomes counter-productive. Well, I am still saying that there is even deeper consciousness than that. It took me something like 200+ awakenings to break free of all human spirituality and gain total soverienty over my own mind. Until that is achieved the mind will be bogged down by very sneaky human spiritual constructs.

It's is kinda shocking that he didn't understand this sooner. If he listened to me and took some "frog juice" he would have realized it, and stuff even beyond that which is still missing from his teachings. As I said, self-inquiry and contemplation will not be enough to fully awaken. That's the real lesson here. I have underscored this trap that nonduality people commonly make, where they identify Truth/Absolute as formlessness while marginalizing form. And Ralston is still missing that Truth = Love.

most people think that professionals and high level people have some extremely complex understanding of some area of reality...which can often be true, but also...high level masters in any area of life will tell you that the case is often far, far simpler than you actually make it in your mind. Think about nonduality for example, esteemed to be the highest and most powerful and greatest teaching...and yet what it actually teaches is the most basic, simplest thing imaginable: that one thing exists. notice the common ground simplicity and profundity share at times. in practical, every day life, dont try to be more skilled than you are. you do better to admit that you know nothing and start at level 1 again but correctly and just learn the basics. dont overcomplicate it, as this is often the source of confusion. I took leos entire life purpose course just to realise that what i wanted to do was starring me in the face since i was a teenager. be mindful that things that are blindingly obvious, can sometimes be missed on account of the fact that they are the only thing there (theres nothing to contrast them against) like this image...somewhere in this image there is a wall, study the image carefully until you have a breakthrough and see the wall:

Working with 5meo takes time, like at least 10-20 times to see the glimpse of nonduality and integrating it. You are good, meditation is good prior 5meo, it helps one to not freak out much Personally I started with 5meo alone, nasal And i continued to explore it on my own in rectal, it's been 81 times now

I have not been active in the forum for quite some time, but just wanted to drop by and share my experience. For +12 years I have been searching for SOMETHING missing, something not quite clicking, and explanation into why I find life so difficult and full of suffering. I made a huge bet into nonduality and was 100% convinced all my problems can be boiled down to ego related integration issues and lack of seeing clearly in metaphysical terms. I even achieved a few incredible transcendent experiences along the way, but they of course were short lived and ultimately did not help me. Eventually through taking time of and travelling for 6 months in nepal and india, giving me time to reflect and really look into my experience and connect the dots I realised: I’m a high masking/low support needs AuDHD (mix of autism and adhd) I wont do an exhaustive explanation on the aspects of what my life has looked like in the past, but I can tell you that EVERYTHING makes sense now. I really have so few questions left to ask. Only thing left is to try my best o align my life according to my fixation/special interest (electronic music and sound design) and thats pretty much it, my life is done. I will eventually get back to nonduality seeiously again (because of course there is an infinity yet unrealised) but right now embrasing my fixation gives me way more joy than the metaphysical. Its quite overwhelming (and sad at the same time, as I must embrace that my life will forever will be quite difficult in day to day basis). But im not looking for a fix/medicine anymore, there never was an illness or really a problem or fault, its just me. The amount of relief is incredible, i feel like bursting to tears all the time. The more i research the more seamless and fully explanatory everything is. Holy FUCK folks! All the best guis, good luck out there <3

Which video series of Leo's will give me a deeper understanding of nonduality? Would it be the 'Understanding duality' series? Also anyone got any good book recommendations for better understanding?

Any ideas? Was it because he was so stuck in his mind and so attached to theorizing? Or what? Surely he must've known about it, he has studied (whatever that meant to him) all kinds of spiritual traditions. But he said they didn't show him what he was looking for, until he found psychedelics. But why is it then that I can't even find a single talk where he speaks of nonduality? And trust me, I've listened to everything...? I know that he wasn't very interested in spirituality as such to begin with, but still - you can't tell me that in 30 years of doing high doses of psychedelics he never experienced oneness/nonduality. I remember in one of his talks he spoke of enlightenment as "an act of rational apprehension"... So yeah. Guess he didn't study spirituality very deeply. Side question for @Leo Gura how much influence did Terence McKenna have on your relationship with psychedelics?

There’s a certain practicality of skepticism and surety in one’s own worldview to ever progress on the path really as these are all normal, sensate and transient bundles of sensations pointing to something more primary than sensations which is the nature of what the holon of human vs. god vs. nonexistence vs. not thinking about a moonwalking bear vs. you reading this right now… we’ll forget everything I just said. It’s all gone. The aspect of fresh present ness is now ruined by the CONTINUITY of it in a formless mind state. You are so much desire and aversion that the friction created by your most fundamental investigation creates an illusion harder than any truth that does or doesn’t last in time as a defined thing. Haha. Wtf.

Ive gotten into Sri ramana maharshi and h9s teachings lately. nto I can quote the greates yogis and could explain it well with pretty words to others if I wanted to. Ive read the books. Blah blah it all does me no good really. How can reality not be a subject-object reality? I am thinking to much I know but I havent been able to think about anything else for a few days. What is my sense of self than? My sense of self doesnt fit in with this at all. And this sense of seld is undeniable even when deep in meditation... On the bright side, I am motivated to start a kriya yoga practice now which i have been procrastinating about for months.

Insights seemingly appear almost everyday. Most are not very important. And about beliefs and such. Or trying to untangle from beliefs. I mean on psychedelics "experienced" so much weird stuff (mostly visions) jesus, hindu, space, hell, god, enlightenment etc. stuff but it’s hard to grasp so i don’t know how important it is. Getting addicted to nonduality talks it resonated that there’s no one and no free will/doer. But i also don’t know if that’s important. If there’s no one how can anything be important? Important to whom? How can anything be more important than anything else if let’s say all is kind of one.

I just truly discovered this notion of "wholeness", "unity" or "oneness" from non-duality. This idea is very frightening for me.. because it collapses my experience of reality. Awareness is all that there is.. every other thing is a mind-created concept So, Non-Duality is awareness itself. There is no separation of ego/thought or object/subject. Precisely because experience is all it Is.. and experience IS consciousness. There is no experiential state if there is no awareness, therefore "being" is all there truly is. This is without having this "I" that is assumed to be doing the experiencing. For some this mystical ego-transcendence is beautiful, because of the divine nature of it(How this pure state of awareness feels). And also because it is the ultimate truth. It is the true nature of nature. Duality is the greatest enemy to non-duality (Obviously). But get this, in order to reach non-duality you MUST purge the duality of the mind. So, having a firmly dualistic mind will not comprehend this in any way. Because non-duality is experienced, it is not known by a rational explanation. For the explanation of it is dualistic in nature, because language is dualistic and always implies separation. People engage in meditation to reach this perceptual change of awareness. My biggest fear is knowing that everything I have experienced up until now has been an illusion. A product of the mind's intrinsic tendency to dualism. Everything seems false, nothing is real. Truth is just one. Up until now my philosophical "truths"(Or any thought of that matter) have been dualistic. So, I reach some sort of existential crisis or nihilistic crisis in nature. Not only that, but all of my dreams, hopes, my personal realizations are far from truth. Any meaning becomes meaningless. It is not worth living for something at it is just a concept, a construct of the mind that separates me and true reality. In a crude way, it is all fake. I can't even think without separation so it troubles me more. I think the most terrifying thing is looking out into space and realising that that for the most part.. is reality - this yawning near-void filled with things that would kill you. Here we are.. little fragile Flatlanders hugging the increasingly disordered surface of one planet.. with the yawning hungry cosmos poised to take us all back.

@Carl-Richard it's a waste of time arguing with Razard86. He just can't be wrong . Can there be two infinities? In math classes in high-school..did you study that infinity +infinity =infinity ? And infinity × infinity = infinity ? What is oneness ? What is nonduality ? What does it mean to say reality is made of the same substance? Is the thing that is aware of this present moment within me different from the thing that is present within you ?

what is non duality? and what is it's use in Sprituality? is non dual means good and evil are one? what non dual teaching conclude? and how non dual is non dual? we know we are one with the soul but we are different in sprit too. so which positions we take? dual or non dual?

There's also the opposite effect, thrashing around like an animal in the cage of your mind when you realize that's the only thing there is. Being 'somewhere' isn't quite the end of nonduality, more like a dissociative hole.

The Awareness, of being always aware of the nonduality at all times, that cannot be manifested or brought about directly, it has to be the residual result or consequence of setting up the "playing field" per say, you set the atmosphere up in your own system so that Awareness is naturally arising, for eg if You truly Realize we are all one, individual Bodies and Minds yes, but that is not what we are, in what we are we are all One, if that is truly realized then Awareness comes naturally..Once that is in place, no War is possible...

Why does practically no one care about the intersection between physics and spirituality? Leo, of course, has a very well prepared answer to this. The answer is that the modern scientific establishment, which is a giant mass of self validating authority, cannot move beyond its materialist paradigm and start to consider the importance of the observer as part of the physical systems they are studying. (Someone correct me if I didn't get this right). The trouble for me is that even given this explanation, there are no "wackos", no "fringe" or "pseudo" scientist, no internet conspiracy theorists, NO ONE who have both a deep understanding of spirituality and physics, and also have a humble respect for truth and epistemology. Of course, you have to exert zero effort to find someone who claims to be studying, or has found some theory of everything which ties together biology, consciousness, the standard model, GR, and God into one self consistent theory with a nice little bow on top. Whenever I find someone with this type of claim though, the theory will be either utter speculation (neither based on direct experience nor experimental observations), supper narrow in scope (for example, a mathematical framework to tie together QFT and GR), or a leap from some physical phenomenon to consciousness with absolutely no logic or critical thinking in between (for example, Roger Penrose positing that consciousness arises from quantum effects in the brain. Anyone who has perused spirituality deeply will know that this is definitely wrong, because consciousness does not arise from physical phenomena but instead is responsible for those phenomena. Penrose is about as academic establishment scientist as you can get though). So like, can we please find one person who for example: 1. Knows that they are god, and all of reality is part of their mind. In other words they have discovered absolute truth. 2. Understands the mathematics and logic behind physical theories like general relativity and quantum field theory. 3. Seeks to use their understanding of these two fields to build a cohesive model of the universe. Starting from the one absolute truth and from there deriving all the relative truths that we know and love today. I mean, this is definitely a big ask, but at the same time you would expect to see a couple people working on this. In reality though, there are NONE. I think someone might be able to to point out a couple contenders for people trying to work on this, such as Christopher Lanigan or maybe Joseph Campbell. But their theories are unsatisfactory to me. So I'm going to try to be as clear as possible as to what I'm looking for: I want an explanation of everything, nothing less. I want someone to be able to take the unopinionated ground truth of all of reality, which is nonduality, god, consciousness itself, or whatever you want to call it. I want the theory to start from 0. From nothing. From the point of total nothingness and ending in the exact nature of the reality which we see before our eyes today. A theory like this would be totally logical and be based on subjective experience of absolute truth at the most basic level. From this point, I want to be able to describe the nature of our conscious experience, and the objective reality which we seem to be experiencing living in. I want U(1)xSU(2)xSU(3) symmetry to be explained, and I want every physical phenomenon in the whole universe to be able to be explained. I don't really see anyone who has a really good understanding of the foundations of physics right now and at the same time has a really good understand of consciousness and absolute truth. Personally, I have what I would consider a surface level understanding of both of these things. I'm working on it myself, but I don't see anyone else who I would consider to be like me. I have spent some time at a Buddhist monastery so far, and I have bachelors in mathematics and physics, but I have waaay more work to do before I really even know the exact questions to ask. Anyway, all the theoretical physicists today are materialists and if they are talking about consciousness it's because they want to be trendy, but really they have no idea what they are talking about once they get away from physics. All mystics I know of who know about direct experience of absolute truth seem to not really care about physics, or have a very lazy understanding of it. So yeah this was just a rant let me know what you think.

I really like the back and forth of whether or not he loves "war" when he claims to want peace. Peace would require consciously knowing "every individual is only a version of you", and as we all know, fully consciously being aware of nonduality at all times is not exactly easy. Therefore, even if you do claim to want peace, it really will always be a surface level understanding of it. Being in duality will always technically mean being in love of war since others are separate from you, whether or not you like it.

You can only get close to it. When duality stops existing, experience cannot occur. Consider a dream of a beach. The very moment you see the beach you are localized at some point within it, and there is an appearance of duality. If duality ceased, it would be impossible for you to see the beach at all because seeing is an experience, and experience creates experiencer and duality. When there is no appearance of duality there is only everythingness which = nothingness as above. That nothingness is the same state entered during general anaesthetic. We don't come "out of" nothingness and "go back" into it (there is nowhere to come out of or go to), we are all currently as we speak in a state of something like general anaesthetic. That is the ground, the foundation. We are always nothing, but something appears, and when that something appears duality appears and then it is possible for there to be an experience of something, and thus an experiencer. Who is looking through your eyes, hearing through your ears? The Absolute ("God") is. Not you AND God. Just God. You are an illusion, there's no such thing as a "you". There is only God. Where are your dead loved ones? Your dead loved ones are looking through your eyes. They are God, and so are "you". What you call "you" is merely something God experiences, God tastes with your tongue, feels your emotions, smells with your nose. God experiences your brain and hence your memories and body and so on. All of these things are inside of God and made of God... How could God possibly create something outside of itself or with anything but itself? There is no space so nowhere else to place anything. There is nothing else in existence so it can only craft something with itself. There is nothing else at all.

I remember Leo talking about how meditation and nonduality is not awakening. But I am wondering if this is one of the 10% of the false teachings? I mean think about it, what is the alternative? Just scrolling on TikTok and YouTube!!? That will never get you awake. Or is the alternative to plug DMT every day? That's not realistic either. What I have come to conclusion of is that meditation is all about increasing your awareness to the actuality of reality. You can take all the DMT you want, but if you aren't grounded in the actuality of the present moment, no amount of psychedelics will awaken you. There are plenty of people who take psychedelics more than me and maybe more than Leo but who are not awake. I think maybe Leo made a nuanced point in that no method is the awakening in the same way that the map is not the territory. Meditation is not awakening. Psychedelics is not a awakening. Contemplation is not awakening. Because all of these are activities and is not the same as state. It is confusing doing with being. Awakening is a state of BEING in which certain things that you can DO may bring about that state of BEING/REALIZATION. But the activities of meditation and psychedelics are not realization/being themselves. I think this may be the point he was making. I don't think Leo is discouraging people from meditating, but rather he is challenging people who are engaging in meditation filled with human Buddhist ideological nonsense. I get it. Chanting the Hare Krishna mantra over and over again probably won't get you to awakening. Awakening is too profound for such a simple dumb method like chanting Hare Krishna (no offense). There can be many deluded methods of meditation and psychedelics (i.e., such as chanting a religious mantra). But there can be more profound ways of meditation that can bring about mystical experiences and maybe even enlightenment. But the effectiveness of such a method would vary across different individuals. I am convinced though that there is no awakening/enlightenment without serious contemplation. You can quiet your mind, but if you don't know how to use your mind to think in nuanced ways, to avoid bias, then how could you be awake? How can you be awake if you would still vote for Trump and hold a lot of deluded stuff in your mind? So my point is that the method is not awakening, but this does not mean to stop meditating. It means to examine closely what you are doing and to make sure that you are meditating in ways that actually transform your consciousness. There may be limits on what meditation can do for some people, but what is the alternative? We just gonna scroll on social media!? No! We still engage in meditation and contemplation, but we aim to improve at it little by little. Meditation may not lead to the deepest levels of reality, but it is a practice that will transform your life for the better if done correctly. Meditation is a better alternative than chasing after money, fame, sex even if it doesn't ultimately lead to the highest levels. But that is still a big question mark of whether meditation can lead to the deepest levels or not. I think it all depends on how effective you are. You cannot be effective if your mind still clings to Buddhist, Spiritual nondual beliefs/ideology. If one thing Buddhism teaches you, it is that clinging is the root of all ignorance/suffering. Buddhism taken to the extreme deconstructs itself.

In Leo's latest video he says God realization is much deeper than nonduality. Leo, I watched the whole video, thank you, but please can you or someone else that knows, say a bit more about the difference between realizing God and fully realizing nonduality. Are people like Adyashanti or Spira not God realized ?

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.

Its not duality, but its also not solipsism. Its nonduality. Its only duality if you still take awareness for an object, if you are awareness on intellectual level. Awareness is merged with all, no separation, no duality. A way I like to put it, awareness is nothing but is real, objects are something, but illusory. Something that is illusory really is nothing, in another aggregate form, if you think about it. Ice is water.