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I think this is one of the final frontiers before complete liberation beyond the dream. When I do yoga bandhas which you are supposed to hold the breathing, I go back to source, I stay that void nothingness trying to overpower any thought that might arise about 'needing to breath', until.... an explosion of fear-burning sensation in my chest happens and I automatically breath again. Is not a physical sensation, is literally the feeling of FEAR and Terror the body has. Is an automatic response built into the system.

Why do you think that nothingness is just a void, or a pure black space with nothing in there? This is how a human being imagines “nothing”. This is not the case. Notice, it’s still something. You are not a human being; this is how it your “understanding” starts. I will use the language here just to explain the concept. However, you cannot fathom it by the means of language. When the observer takes a back seat in consciousness, and just observes the reality, the self of sense drowns in void, disappears. Try not to put labels and describe what you see. Language is not needed. What you will discover soon is that the stencil, or what you call individualized personality, will cease to exist. When there is no self, there is no one to register the reality. That’s a key moment. There is no cognition and description of what you see, smell, or hear. You do not need to close your eyes to think yourself out of reality, you actually do not even need to meditate for this. All you need to do is to stop naming the objects and phenomena you see, stop creating the meaning of the experience. When this happens, experience is still there without the description, but at the same time it is not there either. So, we cannot call it “experience”. However, when there is no observer, you cannot register the reality. Drop the observer that your mind creates to lurk you into so-called Enlightenment! This is a trick it plays with itself to never let "you" go. This is how the illusion (maya) of the solid world has been creating “you” for a long time. It’s been creating “you” through the stencil of the perceiver and the perception. By returning back into the seat of consciousness, when you drop all the notions, language, descriptions, you are disappearing. You do not need to close your eyes for this to happen, because even with the eyes closed, you mind still separates and divides between inner and outer, thoughts and void, cognition, feelings, and emotions. “You” are still there! Don’t stop your thought process, no need even for that, let it be there. You do not know yet the true meaning behind the objects that you see. You really do not know who you are, everything that you know comes from language (reasoning, prior knowledge, and beliefs). What if you do not have language, are you still your body or the holistic experience? Are you still separating and dividing between “mine” and “not mine”? No, when you drop the language and knowledge, all you’ll get left with is a holistic experience, One, picture that contains everything, and your body is just another object on that canvas. You are not in your body. By slowly putting your attention back on awareness, by dropping even that!!! you begin to experience nothingness. Who said that nothing is empty? Actually, nothingness can contain all the elements of perceptions: sound and color, tactile senses. This is how illusion has been created, illusion that there is something there, when in fact there is not. You are walking on the bridge between dualities without realizing that wholeness is couched within nothingness, and nothingness contains and gives birth to everything. How? By giving experience some description. It is very simple, by reasoning… It does not mean that everything appears into Being from void, it’s already there: nothing and everything, non-dual infinite potential. What it means that by changing the perception, you can realize, but only post factum, that everything is nothing. It only appears as is colors, sounds, senses, but everything is nothing in its core, and vice versa. When you drop the stencil of the perceiver and start having the experience of Being/Totality, without any cognition and linguistic recognitions. Who is there to acknowledge the factuality? Nobody right, nobody could say there is a tree, because “you” as the perceiver is NOT there. What is there then? It cannot be communicated, that is the trick… Does it mean that the light was off, and everything zoomed in into the black dot? No. We do not need to switch the light off for existence to become nothing. All you need to do is to “think your way out” of existence as a human being. When there is no you, there is no world. Because “world” is just the linguistic description of your mind. There is no such thing as world, it is all mental construct for you to see the plausible reality. Once you break the meaning of everything, and drop all the notions, reality as know you, will cease to exist because you will take your illusory self out of the equation. Death is not real; this is literally how you die. Time only exists as a descriptive mechanism to make sense of the continuum from moment to moment, or a motion. Again, when you do not describe the motion, you do not have time. Contraction and dilation of time only happens in your mind. Hope the reader will understand my point. Thanks for your time and attention.

I did about 6g's of shrooms yesterday. As I was peaking, I meditated deeply. As I focused inward, I was able to go very deep in meditation. Thoughts would come, I would acknowledge them, and let them go easily. Much more easily than my sober mind is usually capable. I have been listening to Shunyamurti a lot recently, who has helped me in that practice of not clinging. I entered into an incredibly blissful state. I forgot who I was in this state, and where I was physically. No ego death, maybe a sort of ego dissolution. Ego-death I have experienced in the past was much more intense, scary, and challenging, truly dying. In those states, there was no sense of ego or self whatsoever, complete non-duality. This wasn't quite that. It wasn't like 5meo-Dmt. It was more like I could bring myself in and out of this state. In this deep place of surrender, my mind would take me places, and I allowed it to go where it wanted. I just watched where my mind would go. It felt as if I was being shown certain things, and certain stuff was being communicated to me through a deep intuitive sense. This happens during regular meditation for me, but it felt so much easier now. For example, I felt intuitively that I could astral project very easily from this state. Then, I remembered my physical body sitting cross-legged in meditation in my living room. I got up from this position and walk around my living room. Then, I remembered I didn't actually get up, and found myself back in the nothingness of my mind, astonished and slightly scared that I was able to do this so easily. Again, same thing, I would convince myself I had gotten up, but then I would feel a sort of fear of this exploration, and return to my body. Like "Did I just get up? I'm supposed to be meditating cross-legged, not getting up. Oh wait, I didn't get up, I'm still sitting cross-legged." I have practiced a bit of astral projection before, but was never able to do it so easily. Also, I was able to explore other realms similar to n,n-DMT. I could enter this place upon surrender. Then, some thought would bring me back to my body. There was a bit of internal resistance and fear in letting go of course. As I would try to conceptualize the realm I was in, or even think about the realm, I was brought out of the realm. There were many patterns and there was an entity, but this realm is now hard to recall, sort of like a dream. I had been there before. I was aware that if I were to take higher doses, and do the same practice, I could explore these other realms very easily. Lastly, I felt intuitively that I could manifest objects into reality. Not just manifest good outcomes for myself in this material life, but literally manifest objects out of thin air, and will them into existence. That's where the strawberry came into my mind. For about an hour, I kept getting visions of a single strawberry intermittently. In my blissful state, I would leave my body through astral projection, have a thought which brought me back, dismiss the thought, drift away to some other realm for some amount of time, have a thought bringing me back, dismiss it, etc. Sometimes when I came back, there was a strawberry in my mind's eye. I dismissed it. Again, I drifted away, and back again I came, just to visualize a strawberry in my mind. This went on for quite some time. I wondered if I could will a strawberry into existence, right then and there. I knew I could wake up from this meditation with a strawberry in my hand. Intuitively, I knew this was possible. If only I could master this state of mind, this deep place, I could manifest a strawberry. After awhile, I felt like the effects were starting to wear off just a bit. Unfortunately, I didn't have a strawberry in my hand after coming out of the trance. I got up and looked around the living room. No sign of a strawberry. I checked my fridge for any strawberries. There were no strawberries, but there was an Arizona Iced Tea strawberry lemonade. I thought "Not good enough." I walked into the other room where my girlfriend was. She had taken a baby dose of the shrooms. She was having fun, but wasn't as high as me. I asked her what fruit I'm thinking of. I told her "Do not guess, think about it for a second. But don't think about it, just intuitively say what fruit I'm thinking of." She sat for about 30 seconds, smiled at me, and confidently said "a strawberry". Did she guess correctly? She said she kept thinking about different fruits, but kept coming back to the strawberry. She knew.

As you probably know, buddhists are against the idea that there are a permanent Ultimate Reality. The ultimate test for them is the state of cessation (nirodha samapatti) where everything disappears into nothingness. However, for Stephen Snyder, both cessation (unmanifested) and manifested reality are expressions of the Absolute. 01:18:40

So quick story short, Summary - Had so much stomach pain,decided to take 100mcg lsd p1 to stop the pain, because i knew in higher states of mind there is no pain. - Fell asleep - Deconstructed reality in my mind in nothingness, with this realization/knowing i woke up - Reality was different, my mind was controlling a lot of things. -feet, hands are perfect/devine , on every thing that i stepped changed with some energy patterns - Reality was changed and stable, for example my neighbours house had a white big teddybear hanging out of the window, when they (can't ) even open this window. It was built perfectly, no difference between real/unreal. - Decided to take my phone to make a picture, for some reason it was saying battery is low. - DECIDED TO PLUG IT IN TO RECHARGE, SAYS "YOUR PHONE IS TOO WET" CAN'T RECHARGE. And i never have had this error message before. So my request on behalf of all members is for @Leo Gura , to pin this thread. So we can research this topic further, and for members to try to make a "picture" in higher states of mind/consciousness. You can make a picture from your new realiy for example when you have noticed, that it is not actually in your reality like with the window thing.

That’s a straw man. Anyone can conceive of much worse fates. But suffering is a spectrum and that happens to be the worst I’ve got going on right now. It’s worse because it’s chronic and ruthless, unlike temporarily feeling hurt by some douchebag player who promised a relationship only to use you for a night.. Not only that but the game is rigged against us in such a way that we’re automatically assumed to be a threat until proven otherwise. Then there’s the valid worry of making one wrong move when it comes to physical escalation because it can cause legal consequences, pickup is supposed to be an act of flirting with women, not with sexual harassment lawsuits. When mistakes do cause us big trouble, we get fully blamed and told to improve instead of any attention getting placed on the sexist system itself. The issue goes far deeper than just not getting laid. No. Nothing at all. Same with everyone. What we call our “self” is just an outer projection of what we think we are, such as thoughts, feelings, preferences etc. But at the deepest level we’re nothingness, right? That’s what everyone who masters meditation says

The chicken, the road, and the crossing are all imaginary manifestations within infinite consciousness. There is no separate chicken, no actual road, and no real crossing - just consciousness imagining itself as this entire scenario. Leo Gura's Ontology: The Chicken Crossing the Road According to Leo Gura's perspective on reality, we could interpret the chicken crossing the road scenario as follows: 1. Everything is Consciousness: The chicken, the road, the act of crossing, and even the concept of "crossing" are all manifestations of consciousness. They are not separate physical entities but aspects of a unified, infinite consciousness. 2. Reality as Imagination: The entire scenario is imaginary. Not just in the sense of being a thought experiment, but in the deeper sense that all of reality, including what we perceive as physical, is an act of imagination by infinite consciousness. 3. No Separate Self: The chicken doesn't have a separate self that decides to cross the road. The chicken, as we conceive it, is part of the imagination of infinite consciousness. 4. Illusory Nature of Time and Space: The road, representing space, and the act of crossing, representing time, are both illusions created by consciousness. There is no actual movement happening, as everything exists within timeless, spaceless consciousness. 5. Radical Non-Dualit*: There is no real distinction between the chicken and the road. The apparent separation is part of the imaginary scenario created by consciousness. 6. Emptiness as the Ground of Being: The chicken and the road are manifestations appearing in the "emptiness" or "nothingness" of pure consciousness, much like images projected on a blank screen. 7. Infinite Possibilities: The chicken could potentially do anything, not just cross the road, because within infinite imagination, all possibilities exist simultaneously. 8. The Unborn and Undying Nature: The chicken was never really "born" and doesn't really "die". These are just concepts within the greater imagination of consciousness. In this view, asking "Why did the chicken cross the road?" is based on several misunderstandings: 1. That there is a separate chicken 2. That there is a separate road 3. That there is an act of crossing 4. That there is a "why" or reason within ultimate reality Instead, we might say: The chicken crossing the road is one of infinite scenarios being imagined by consciousness, which is what you truly are. You are not observing a chicken crossing a road; you are the infinite consciousness imagining itself as a chicken, a road, and the act of crossing, all simultaneously. This perspective radically challenges our conventional understanding of reality and identity, suggesting that the humor in the chicken joke arises from our misunderstanding of the true nature of reality. -- * Edit: Because the AI made a distinction between real and imaginary I emphasized that there is no distinction and this is what it gave: The chicken, the road, and the crossing are consciousness. The distinction between real and imaginary dissolves - all is equally real and equally imaginary within infinite consciousness exploring itself.

Anger? Compassion! Sadness? Empathy! Supine? Calmness! Fear? Caution! Disgust? Relation! Anxiety? Faith! Embarrassment? Humbleness! Love? Detachment! Detachment? Love! Confusion? Openness! Falsehood? Honesty! Fakeness? Authenticity! Masquerade? Playfulness! ADHD? Breath! Autism? Awareness! Bipolar? Integration MPD? Harmony! Spiral Dynamics: Beige? Community! Purple? Confidence! Red? Faith! Blue? Freedom! Orange? Awareness! Green? Effectiveness! Yellow? Holism! Turquoise? Peace! Paradox? Transcendence! Limitation? Dissolution! Matter? Mind! Mind? MIND! Duality? Non-Duality! Non-Duality? Duality! Trinity? Unity? Infinity? Nothingness? Infinity! Infinity? Nothingness! God? _! _? God! God? God! God God | GodGod | Goddog | Godog | GooG | GG | | God | God Integrate the opposite, transcend and include, raise awareness, I am a robot, now I became conscious of that, what's the next stage? Experiential integration and harmony!

😂 lol. Well..everything is literally liberation..everything is absolute perfection and it will never be anything else. But does that mean that from the perspective of a human everything is equal ? Hell no . Yes you can spend your whole life going to the pub and fucking bitches and sniffing Cocaine etc but that's only gonna create negative karma and when you die you will be pulled back into a new body via reincarnation. And there is never gonna be an end to suffering for you. You will probably say it doesn't matter either ..but in fact it does matter to you as a human . If you are in god-mode 24/7 high on nothingness then you can speak of everything being already liberation 👍.

Jung didn't understand what is happening here. He uncovered that we have a shadow, but he didn't understand that the whole human mind is a shadow. The good part of the human mind is a mask the shadow puts on, not the other way around. He also didn't understand that it's unreal, a figment of the imagination, a shadowy identity, made out of nothing and doomed to return to nothingness. You can analyze the ego for all of your life and you will find infinite quirks, because it was born out of error and doesn't have a source. It's a bastard child.

It’s impossible to desribe a formless experience outside of all experience. Cessation as a word is accurate. Talking more about it would just remove us further from that non-experience. Cessation is a dead-end anyway. It’s a trap Buddha fell into and all those who follow his path. It’s just an “experience” of nothingness. Sure it feels like the mind and all the universe reset - so what? You will have to reincarnate again with this level of atainment. clowns like Frank Yang, Shinzen, Spira and most other teachers reach it and then preach it as enlightenment. Lol. read ACIM and start to learn true wisdom what enlightenment is. All other teachers are the messengers sent by the ego and will lead you only to death, a thousandth time.

Is the part of the worldwide game they live in, there are complex causation chains that create that particular vortex and lets not assume we can ever know all the threads of events that took and take to that situation maintain itself as I is. In maybe 400 years from now all that an many other aberations of human nature will vanish. Do you remember the dark ages in England? People cutting each other heads and dirty cities? Jack the Striper?Dark Alleys? No, none of us will ever see even if that lifes were so dark as history paint it. So, this is what will happen with all that suffering life stories, vanish into nothingness, like a bad dream you have at nigth.

Trip report: I smoked a pinch of salvia extract 10x, the trip started 20 second after, and i've realized it because my tripsitter was counting the seconds and slowly his voice and the reality were trasforming into a spinning white carousel, going faster and faster. Then i've realized that i was about to die, i felt fear because i was slowly loosing all my body sensations, then my sense of time, then my memory, and the memory that i've smoked salvia. Then after this unconfortable and disorienting situation i started to laugh very very loudly, for a long time. My true self was laughing of the beauty of TRUE reality, and because it was fooling around my diying ego, and also because i've always imagined space and time, like a poor little, stupid, ego creature. I felt into an orgasmic state of mind when everything is perfect, and is useless to explain to others, because other is imagination. After a time of silent i could speak, then the visual became half normal half spinning carousel, i could move some parts of my body. I became convinced that my 'real normal life' was endend, because when i could see reality: the room, my sitter, i was sure that it is pure hallucination and then i was about to dissolve into nothingness. I've realized that nothing exist and the perfection and the cosmic orgasm in in the nothingness. When the effect ended i cannot believe what just happened to my ego, to me. And i cannot believe that my tripsitter was real. This pleasant trip is absurd to me because i haven't got a lot of experience with psichedelics. (I've done just shrooms one time, one month ago) I was expecting a very unconfortable and fearful situation, i've set my mind in a profound state of surrender before smoking. Maybe i've had something good because it was a small pinch of salvia...i don't know, but i will do it again for sure.

@Zeroguy Very good! Altough i would say, More than nothingness tricking us, is just that we trick ourselves. 😊 But dont worry, There is indeed a clarity to arrive.

God is Infinite Love amongst other infinite things.I experienced God/Infinite Love but I died from experience now I transcended all facets of awakening by realising it's just product of Nothingness.Nothignrss tricks us into becoming all these things and creates intense euphoria just so that we keep getting invested in dreaming forever.

nothingness

It literally does come from a vacuum. Reality manifests it's infinite expressions through extracting it from nothingness (which is pure infinity). This is the only way you can explain higher complexity and novel information generation as demonstrated by evolution and the human mind. Now, novel information is of course necessarily contextualized within the given system in which it expresses itself. Given a physical system, any form of complexity naturally will be physical. But that does not mean that novel information was not created. Each limited set of existence contains a near infinite amount of possible configurations. How to arrive at particular complexities is achieved through interfacing with nothingness through free will. To ask something like "Can you create something truly outside of this world?" would be like asking if you can find a physical expression which is not physical. The question makes no sense and demonstrates a misunderstanding of the nature of infinity and creation.

@Dodo In my eyes crypto is bullshit. You’re not creating value in the world just making bets on artificial nothingness I would extend that to stock trading more generally which is mostly bs too. I have a very low approval of the whole trading game. It’s all bullshit. Share prices are at an all time high and it has nothing to do with the actual real world economy but the people fawn over it

I was smoking weed.I experienced cessation with Infinite Love.Then I experienced complete cessation and realised Infinite Love is product of cessation state.When this dreams ends I will experience Infinite Love and new dream will appear.I am nothingness before all facets .I was a bit sad but I am ok now with cessation.

It's a nothingness that is no-thing.

If nothingness produces something, then it's not nothingness

Niroda-style cessations going blank from concentrative meditation in the waking state and then "rebooting": No. I didn't push the concentrative path/Jhanas path much, Mahamudra & Dzogchen -practice is different. On that path, these states don't need to happen, nor are they considered that important as in Theravada. I have experienced the causal states from the states & transitions during the sleep cycle. "Seeing" the rotation of waking/sleep/dream, the causal states that can show along that rotation, lucid dreams, and also the "Reality" of deep sleep. Which is exactly what is supposed to happen according to the tradition when Awareness has become strong/trained enough in the waking state that it continues in some forms into the sleep-phase, and stays during the state-changes in sleep/dream/waking which then "roll by" "before" ones True eternal unchanging Infinite Being. As a sidenote: In the Mahamudra-system there is the so called Nondissolution-Experience that opens up the boundless and eternal/timeless/always here/impersonal nature of Infinite Mind/Infinite Being and how everything emerges from "THAT", including all thought/feeling-arisings, which arise in an impersonal clockwork-like process ripening/arising from the groundless ground of Being, emerging fully formed and then being elaborated as a second step so slowly that one wonders at some point how that could have hypnotized earlier. And how time is constructed. Which I experienced as predicted in this system at the point where its supposed to happen. Which is a very valueable experience, since it shows how the separate-self, time, basically everything is constructed and emerging. Not only when "rebooting" from cessation, but in real/daily life. And that then gets stabilized with further practice. Brown, PotgW: "Though comparable in profundity to the Theravada dissolution experience, the Mahayana experience of nondissolution or unelaboration is very different, both experientially and philosophically, which is why the commentators are careful to refute the nihilistic dissolution position" "Once the practitioner gets some sense of emptiness (mere appearance,WbtR) pervading the interconnectedness of all times and realms, it becomes easier to persist with a continuous focus on emptiness when leaving the samadhi state and reentering ordinary daily experience.'" I assume that if I trained for some time in hardcore concentrative meditation that cessation-states become accessible in the waking state. I know the techniques that have to be practiced to achieve that. Yet, there seems to be a genetic/karmic/whatever factor if the long form of cessations is accessible (Niroda) or not. But I don't need these states since I have accessed the experiences/states and insights they give from other ways, as described above. And I don't need concentrative meditation to keep/access Infinite Nondual Being. Jhanas 1-7 are given anyways at that point, since its hard to "get" Infinite Space or Infinite Consciousness or Nothingness when that is already the case before any meditation during daily life. Jhana 8 (neither perception nor non-perception) / 9 (Cessation and/or Niroda) need "induction" via concentrative meditation.

Mostly. There are different versions of what Wilber calls Causal States. Cessation/Nirodha: Totally appearanceless "film-break" like cessation. Timeless/always here/Nothingness nature emphasized. Time needs appearance/objects/"movement"/change, no appearance/objects is timeless/always here. These states also clearly show that if nothing arises there is no self-consciousness. ( https://www.actualized.org/forum/search/?&q=pistol&author=Water by the River , thx Benthino for the water pistol). Pure Infinite Awareness/Being with the potential of sentience, but not self-consciousness. That comes later. Which is pretty much a shocker, since it shows that any form of self-consciousness ego/separate-self is a) arising/appearing b) temporary c) True YOU is always "there", existence itself. Even if nothing arises/appears. That empties out the remnants of the separate-self/ego as appearing/constructed and removes the remaining separate-self-identity pretty effectively when coming out of cessation. Nirodha is the big/longer brother of cessation. Causal states with awareness (Infinite (timeless) Darkness suffused with light): Then there are causal states that are infinite/timeless, but self-aware. For example what Tibetan called the Clear Light state (Tummo, Bardo, Near Death). For example something a Neurologist (who had an NDE) for example described as "Infinite Darkness suffused with light". These states can also be experienced passing from dreaming to causal states to dreaming to waking up. One can have these states also with psychedelics, see Chris Bache Diamonds from Heaven. Aware Deep Sleep: Then there is Deep Sleep as not loosing awareness (and hence timeless, no duration experienced) as described by Thisdell, above. Causal States eyes open. And then you have totally empty impersonal states with no separate self arising WHILE the visual field appears. These are also linked by some to Nirvikalpa since there is no separate-ego-anything left, its the totally impersonal Totality/Reality arising by Itself. That is why Ken Wilber called the total empty/flat-lining state (EEG) some kind of Nirvikalpa "eyes-open". These are the true nondual IMPERSONAL states of Enlightenment. Only when having passed these causal states is it truly nondual impersonal Enlightenment/Infinite Impersonal Being. Before that, it is a Unity with the Infinite Nondual Field, and the character/ego hijacking that experience and interpreting it. Very common with certain substances, and easily confused with the final outcome of the total transcendence of the ego/separate-self purified by the experience of these totally empty states (hey, "I" wasn't there, what am I really? For sure not that temporarily appearing character-gig, because that wasn't there. And what I really am has to be the case always, even if there is no self-consciousness or consciousness OF anything at all, aka cessation or deep unaware sleep. That paves the way to true impersonal Enlightenment, realizing ones identity truly is this Infinite Nothingness which can never be any arising/appearance at all. The Infinite Absolute Being/Reality beyond any expierence/arising, timeless and eternal). And the Awareness of that Infinite Reality/Being can also be kept alive if the character reappears, the EEG shows something again. But then, this character/personality has a similiar status as for example your car: It appears in your Infinite Being/visual field, you look "out from it" while driving, but most definitely you are not (only) your car, but the whole appearing show/Infinite Being/Infinite Existing, the screen and the appearing show. Wilber Nirvikalpa eyes open/eyes closed: But the term Nirvikalpa has been used for millenia, so you can for sure find cases where its used for cessation/Nirodha and eyes open causal impersonal states, deep sleep, and anything in between. What is more important is what these causal states really can do: Kill the ego/separate-self-arising-illusions for good, because they show that these are temporary arising illusion-clouds, nothing more. Not by having these a few times, aber after experiencing them often and coming out of them and seeing the ego reassemble itself in real-time often enough can even get the hardest ego-illusions to wonder about their "reality". See below. When training via concentration meditation, it is easier to reach Cessation than reaching True Nondual Enlightenment while the visual field still appears. Because the mechanism of the ego-cloud-separation-arisings is not yet fully transcended. The mere appearance character, the Infinite impersonal field, the eternal/timeless background-nature of True Being is not yet reached while the visual field is there/daily life. That comes later. Later developed forms of Buddhism (Zen, Mahayana, Tibetan Buddhism, aka Mahamudra/Dzogchen) directly aim for the Nondual Realization. They know cessation states and achieve them, but don't value these as ultimate goal. Which makes sense, because if one can enter Nirvana/Nirvikalpha on command, its nice then, and later on the still well and alive ego and its cycles of contraction/suffering kill all the oh so nice Nirvana again. But shutting the whole enchilada including the ego down in causal states is a very good tool. Not necessary, but very useful. These statements are in line with the statements and experiences of modern Theravada-teachers and realizers like Ingram, Yang, Burbea, Taft, Thisdell and so on. And that is why I prefer Mahamudra/Dzogchen (for example Pointing out the Great Way, Brown). More on that below in the footnote 1. The relations of these states get clear once the timless Absolute Reality/Being is intuited as always here. Deep Sleep is so to say is always right here. Since what you really are is always right here, as it is in deep sleep. Infinite eternal Consciousness/Being which is totally empty and impersonal if no separate-self illusion arises. The tree watching itself, fully aware of its temporaray/passing/illusory nature. And that which is always the case, eternally so, True Being, fully understands itself then. Because there exists nothing else that could understand itself besides THIS of which nothing can be said, only pointed towards. So what is it that reads these words right here, right now? What is IT/You truly? Starting out to write a short answer answer, ending up with a Filibustero. Oh well, maybe its helpful for some. Selling Causal States as the final coup de grace for the separate self-character-gig/ego by The River Ok, it had to be coming: WtbtR now with footnotes. Guess not for the faint of hearted. Footnote 1: The original "Buddhas" Enlightenment-doctrine was Cessation/Causal-based, not Full Nondual (impersonal) Enlightenment in daily life. The original Buddhas Enlightenment was Cessation/Causal-based (Nirvana-based, "Nirvana separate from Samsara"). Which is still a conditioned state, bringing a lot of liberation from grasping, but not fully and in daily life. Separate-Self/Ego not fully transcended/dead in daily life. The breakthrough to True (impersonal) Nondual Realization in official doctrine came later with Nagarjuna and Madhymaka/Middle Path: True Nondual impersonal Enlightenment which could be sustained in daily life/with visual field. And while Madhyamaka tended to not say anything at all about the Absolute (neti neti, no concepts can be applied for the Absolute, which technically is correct), later forms of Buddhisms like Yogachara said that (in truly enlightened impersonal nondual states) Infinite Consciousness/Infinite Being IS an expression of the true state of things, and everything appearing is mere appearance (or "imagined"). See for example "Consciousness only school", for example Huang Po's Universal Mind, or the (very humble) Supreme Source "I am the teacher, pure and total consciousness, whence everything manifests. Pure and total consciousness is the supreme source, it has created the Buddhas of the three times, from it have arisen the beings of the three worlds and the whole animate and inanimate universe". God-Realization (TM) approved. Forms of Buddhism stemming from the original buddhist teachings (causal teachings, sometimes called Hinayana school, which doesn't exist anymore), like for example Theravada/Thai Buddhism Forest Tradition (and Ingram/Yang/Burbea/Taft) mainly trace themselves from these forms (although all are adding some form of Dzogchen and similiar stuff), don't stem from the the Mahayana Revolution of Middle Way/Madhyamaka/Nagarjuna), and YET end up at Nondual Enlightenment and not only cessation. And for sure in the original Buddhism some realized Nondual Enlightenment and not only cessation, but that didn't find its way into the official doctrine until much later. And that (besides that the original Buddha probably didn't exist because its the same story Jainism tells about its founder) makes me smile when there "Buddhism"-trashing. Its like trashing "religion". Which kind of religion? Polytheism? Ancestor-cult? Monotheism? Polytheism? Who cares, lets trash the rodents... So, now WbtR made it: Neither "Buddhist" like him anymore, nor the no-rodent crowd. Guess its "Viel Feind, viel Ehr!". Something we Germans are quite talented in. Oh well...

https://www.rogerthisdell.com/post/let-s-talk-nirodha-samapatti-insights-into-valance-and-the-supposed-ontic-primacy-of-consciousness https://www.rogerthisdell.com/post/throwing-my-hat-in-the-jhana-ring and some more stuff from Roger Thisdell: https://www.rogerthisdell.com/post/centrelessness-boundarylessness-phenomenology-and-freedom-from-the-cage-of-the-mind https://www.rogerthisdell.com/post/maintaining-awareness-during-deep-sleep-how-to and: Cessation is a large focus of Theravada/Early Buddhism, helping on the path to Enligthenment. But it is not (yet) Full Enlightenment, see for example modern voices of Theravada like Ingram (Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha)/Frank Yang/Thisdell.They state the same. In Mahayana Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism/Vajrayana, this dissolution/cessation experience is considered valueable, but not more. Not the final goal. Experiencing Absolute Reality/Infinite Impersonal Being WHILE visual appearances and the mindstream arises as Infinite Impersonal Being/Reality is considered the Final Enlightenment. Because Ultimate Reality has to be constant, always right here. If its not accessible, clouds of separation are still arising which are not seen through. Cessation= Absolute Reality with no arising/appearance/anything at all, hence timeless, but also not self-consciousness (since that is an arising too). Helps seeing the illusion/separation-layers arising on the "reboot" while getting out of the cessation/Pure Nothingness, but does not necessarily destroy all the clouds causing duality. Normally it doesn't do that, that is why it takes lots of cessations on the Theravada path. No cessations are necessary for Enlightenment, it can also happen without them. In Mahamudra, instead of the Dissolution experience of cessation, the so-called "Non-dissolution" experience, or the insight the Infinite Mind/Being is timeless/eternal and boundless (but not yet fully impersonal) is considered of equal or even higher importance. Since that paves the way for the constant realization of Infinite Impersonal Being/Reality while the visual field arises, or Full Enlightenment. It is a difficult topic, needing a lot of reference meditation-experiences in order to start to intuit the differences. Maybe this is helpful for some.

Imagine you're the surface of the ocean, from outside the ocean, one can observe waves, but from the perspective of the ocean, there is only one surface, no matter the local shape, from the absolute point of view, it's perfectly level. It's kinda strange, cause the surface of a sphere is really level from its own point of view and dimension, it takes a whole other dimension to loop it around and see a distortion. All this to say, when you are everything and everyone and your ego also, you are not alone, even though you're a singular thing overall, but nothingness has no room for judgements and infinity has room for all contradictory judgements simultaneously rendering them arbitrary. Now on another layer, you might imply that you're the singular source of your experience, that you are an entity who creates others but is itself objective, but that doesn't really make sense since you are a creation of yourself also, including the distinction, including your mental ideas, including the notion of individuality and collective, to even say you are 1 is really an arbitrary focus since you are 0 and ∞ also, you are whole. And as long as you believe yourself to be an absolute entity simulating reality, you hold that distinction, but its an arbitrary one, you dissolved the notion of others but not that of self, now you believe that there are others and simultaneously that they don't exist, but if you actually believed there were no others, then you couldn't access that as a concept to feel lonely through.