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@Rocky What you're talking about is sentience, not consciousness.

The distinction between Self & other arise together. When you make the distinction of yourself, you are already Creating the distinction of other. Do you notice that? When you were young the distinction of you as a separate entity was created, and from that other as a separate entity was created also. See? Do you ever notice that the conceptual image of "you" arises more often around "others" There is a particular feeling that you get around others, something that indicates there is another entity that has sentience here. When you are walking down a road by yourself and then you suddenly see another person, the vibe of the moment changes doesn't it. This relationship that you have with other is created by thought and feeling. And is illusory. It is something you can only become directly conscious of. The whole social world that you live in pretty much 24/7 is all created by conceptual add ons over what's really occurring. For example when you are talking on this forum, in your experience you are not merely writing words on a screen. You are talking to other people. A whole community. But can you notice that this isn't really the case, this apparent whole social community is only thought, is only a concept layered over words and profile pictures. That might be difficult for some of you to understand for the moment. Do you notice that when you are around other people, what's really there is a animation, of somebody, with shape and colour ect. But we perceive through us as a self concept and image first and that self then interprets others self concept and image. Tricky stuff. you baffled yet? Let me try to explain further. If there was no thought there would be no sense of self or other, there would only be what is. See? The reason it can be so hard to get away from the sense of self you have is because there is a constant stream of thoughts showing you different right? Showing you that you do exist. But if its appearing for you, its not you. You don't have to silence the mind, its the belief in the mind that obscures you from seeing your true nature. if the image of you comes & goes, it can't be what you are. When you are watching TV you may forget about yourself and image and yet you don't disappear! hmm interesting All this stuff might not make sense at all right now, but that's the nature of this work. Its not like finding a answer and concluding from that. This stuff takes serious investigation. Peace.

Mindfulness: the Watcher state. Awareness: where your sentience is focused. Consciousness: the state and expanse of the mind. Yeah, that probably doesn't help without practice. ?

No, but perhaps they could become sentient if the mechanics of the design were correct. You probably wouldn't think of a virus as sentient, but you (mankind) supposedly evolved from something like a virus. It's not fair to compare 100 years of computer evolution with 2 billion years of human evolution. My current theory is that given that everything is one substance -- consciousness -- this one substance, if enfolded in on itself in the right ways, will create sentience. The question then would be, what is the correct type of enfoldment? One enfoldment creates a rock, another enfoldment creates a virus, another enfoldment creates a tree, another enfoldement creates a human baby, another enfoldment creates Skynet, another enfoldment creates a demigod, etc.

Even if that's the case, that doesn't mean a computer cannot develop sentience just as biological machines (humans) have. Don't create it artificially. Create it genuinely

All I see is circles!... Is it normal that all I can see now is circles? I feel the wind, I think of the hot and cold air streams making their circle around earth... I see the water, I think of the circle of water becoming steam and clouds and rain... I see the soil, I think of the soil becoming plants and the plants being food, becoming us or crap or a dead body and then soil again... I see the energy going along with the circles, making its own... I see sentience and life making one... It´s causality that goes along with humanitys fate and the more causality I see, the more I see how I influence that. Even though I am so small and just one person. You know... It´s not just that I am facing the questions of who and more fundamentally what I am but also what I want to be. And I know that we humans are creators. I´ve come to the point that I understood that what I have to create is not something outside of me but something inside me. Without saying that creating anything else is wrong but that within is the real deal. I remember at school there was this girl who had really artistically painted nails and I said: Some people like to make art and others like to make art of themselves. Here I am years later having stopped being addicted to HAVING things like most, but becoming, BEING things instead. When you ARE, when you embody something you can share that with people, rather effortlessly by interacting with them and that will make its circle like everything else. Only problem here is that the process of becoming something is harder than the process of getting to have. I have a fascination with ammonoids, in fact I have a necklace with one which my uncle bought me at a dinosaur exhibition, it broke some years ago but I still keep it. It´s an extinct group of marine animals. Ammonoids lived before 415 million years for around 350 million years and died out 65 million years ago. I find these fascinating numbers but much more fascinating is the fact that my brothers first word was "Stein" which means stone. NO I AM KIDDING, just testing your attention... What is fascinating about fossilization is that it is a breaking of a circle. (Even though the possibility that the last thing my bro saw in his last life was a stone is too ).The biological and chemical properties changed. A once living thing literarly turned to f****** stone! Nothing remained but... Minerals. Of course if we pulverize the stone and add it to the soil it´s all back in the circle but I want to stress here that with enough time and under the right conditions crazy things can happen. Millions of years are millions of years but a human lifespan... Is a human lifespan. We might not be able to turn to stone (and I guess I consider that a good thing?) but we should be able to change a couple of neuronal... Circles... Circiuts... Hff... You get the point.

Logic doesn't tump emotion with regard to transcending/dissolving the ego. Emotion is real and tangible and logic is abstract and idea-based. The thoughts are real, but what you're thinking about is not that important, unless it distracts you from actual reality. So, ignoring/repressing emotional awareness is a resistance to reality as it is. Many people who seek enlightenment begin valuing an intellectual understanding of Truth as opposed to their subjective experience of reality (which includes emotions), and this always results in simply spiritual bypassing. There is a great quote from Marion Woodman that describes what happens, "Spirit without matter is a ghost, matter without spirit is a corpse." Both, are dead. I believe what you think I'm doing is advocating matter without spirit/intellect, this is not the case. So, you're leaning more toward spirit without regard to matter, and valuing the intellect/logic more than what's real. That is a mistake to think it will yield you results toward enlightenment. Plus, what would be the point in reaching enlightenment if it didn't have some positive emotional payoff? There is no escaping the fact that emotions are what motivates you. Either you want to feel good about yourself because you reached some special spiritual state. Or you want to feel the clarity, wisdom, and fulfillment that comes from the transcendence/dissolution of ego. Or you want to get away from the suffering that comes from identification with ego. Or you seek simply because it feels good to seek. There is no pursuing anything without an emotional motivator... to gloss over this fact will create so many blindspots. You will fail to understand yourself at every turn, if you don't understand this fact of sentience: emotions motivate. Also, we will never not be animals. So, we must live as an animal. We cannot take the animal out of ourselves. It is not as though, in transcending the ego, we cease to be animals. So, it's important to accept this fact of reality. We have a body and our body makes us an animal. The problem is to balk at and resist our animalistic nature while holding up our higher/spiritual nature as the more desirable part of our reality. This aspect is incredibly important, of course. It's like a tree. The higher nature is where the fruit grows and the higher the branches grow the more fruit that can grow from the tree. But our animal nature is the roots of the tree and all the dirty dirt that surrounds it. If we believe we can somehow uproot the tree to make it grow higher, this is a mistake. The deeper you are aware of your animal (emotional) nature, the more you can expand your higher nature, the more fruits that will grow.

this is what i've sort of always believed. which has been the reason why i don't like the word God because i assume sentience or intelligence when i hear that word. i also don't like calling it a "he" because i just assume it would be of more of a being essence so it'd be feminine. That and i also just like the term "Mother Infinity"

I'd like to hear your thoughts on the subject I'm choosing to call Highest Dynamic Sentient Intelligence. The idea is that there is an intelligence permeating all reality. I'm talking about a kind of highest supreme intelligence that has its own volition, creative ability and responsiveness. This is how I choose to interpret this intelligence, your view may differ: The intelligence would be the summation of at least all the information available aka all creation, and possibly even the summation of all infinite potential. It is the natural spontaneous collective creativity that is the result of its own propensity or whim to exist at all. I am not talking about intelligence in an abstract sense, like we might sometimes vaguely refer to as the wisdom of stillness. I'm talking about real, impacting, dynamic intelligence. If we could use the metaphor of a garden, then we can see that plants have their own sentience and their own kind of intelligence. We could also argue that their intelligence is dynamic as they have their own form of decision space, albeit limited (how to respond to certain stimuli). This intelligence and volition has its effect on how the garden looks. One step higher is the gardener. He is a higher level of dynamic sentient intelligence and really designs the garden. The higher the level of dynamic sentient intelligence, the more creativity and wider decision space, and therefore greatest ability for further creation. So take your mind up many, many levels, to the highest level of intelligence available given your understanding of reality. Those who follow a more empirical mindset may say they have no reason to believe that they have experienced any level of dynamic sentient intelligence higher than that of their own, and that beyond personalized consciousness, the world seems to be a mechanistic runoff biding its time. Others believe that the Highest Dynamic Sentient Intelligence is governing all aspects of creation in a very calculated, precise and effective way, and that this intelligence is accessible, either as a source of power to be petitioned, or as an extension of oneself: ones birthright. So I'd like to hear what perspectives you subscribe to: Do you believe there to be a dynamic intelligence beyond yourself, permeating all of reality, or perhaps at least your physical reality? Why/Why not? Do you believe this dynamic intelligence has an aim, a goal, a volition? Why/Why not? Can this dynamic intelligence be accessed? If so, how can one leverage this dynamic force for their own journey? Thanks for reading. EDIT: In timely fashion, from the thread Hypnotized by Infinity, Leo offers an interesting alternative perspective that I think should be perfectly stimulating for this thread. Leo's proposal here initially creates resistance inside myself, which indicates it's probably a direction I should start to face. Honestly, intuitively it seems to make more sense that this kind of 'indiscriminate - brute-force-of-love' would be its nature, and looking at Highest Dynamic Sentient Intelligence as the 'commander in chief' perspective feels naive. Maybe the truth lies somewhere in between. I just don't know. Here's some music to play while you think.

I don't know what he is talking about regarding this. It could have a number of meanings. But to answer your questions, when you know that you are awareness and not the person, you understand that everything else that is sentient is also the same awareness as you. They are awareness with body. How can the sentience in them not also be the same sentience in you? There is only one sentience, and that is awareness. Some people call it nothingness, whatever you wish to call it, its you. Its not even an it, is it? Its the subject, the witness. Look into your experience. Are you sat in a chair at the moment? If so, think about how the chair feels on your butt. Are you actually experiencing a chair at all? Or are you just experiencing the thought of "chair" as your sense organs present a feeling to you? What you actually experience all the time is yourself taking the form of an experience. Your mind is formless and can take the form of anything because there is only one awareness with the same functions appearing as relative phenomena. It certainly seems like there are many individuals here, but there is not, because all these apparent individuals are only awareness (you) with gross and subtle bodies that function exactly the same in everyone. So where are the real differences? Can you find any?

Not sure why it's necessary to restart it. Just finish it from beginning to end. And if you leave off half-way, pick it up where you left it. Sure, you could re-visit again next year, just to refresh your memory. But I would rather you focus that energy on reading the books, for example. They will keep taking you deeper, and should remind you of many of the things I said in the course. Actually, right now I'm finding my growth is so fast, I cannot predict where it will go. Maybe I'll go live in a cave next month. Maybe I'll create a new course. Maybe I'll decide to kill myself. I'm open to all of it. Cause the illusion of control is becoming pretty obvious now. I'm not in control of Leo. I'm becoming less plan-oriented as I grow. I listed the books in rough order of importance. If you haven't read Mastery cover to cover at least twice, you definitely should. Thanks, hug back at ya We'll see. I don't know where this path will take me. How can I quantify my happiness for you? No, you cannot be happy without Truth. If you ever awaken, you will instantly understand why. The mechanism is much deeper than merely "my model of happiness" vs "your model of happiness". True happiness is outside all models. Yes, there is such a thing as True happiness. It's the annihilation of YOU. My life purpose has evolved into embodying Truth. My grail is literally HOLY! It's not really a "thing" that one can quit. It's interwoven in my consciousness and understanding of reality. I'm definitely past the point of no return as far as enlightenment goes. There's no way I will give up on mastery of enlightenment. No, I took no coaching. I have done a bit of improv. It's great. Although its not like it will teach you have to shoot great Youtube videos. Those are separate skills. You basically just gotta spend 100s of hours speaking in front of a camera. I take a lot less than I used to. These days I take specific supplements that I've identified I'm lacking, or that I need for detox purposes. The most useful ones are the ones your body needs. Get comprehensive bloodwork done, and then you'll know. And you need to experiment with your own body. My body ain't your body. Very rarely. It's hard to do that when you run a business of any kind. You don't need any prep to do a retreat. Just go with an open mind. I've found that $2000 for a retreat -- any quality retreat -- is worth it. But that's me. I probably have more money to spend than you. No, seems silly to me. About 2 hours. Not yet It's really not an important goal for me. It will happen on its own. Yeah, I've been thinking along those lines. I will be releasing a resource list which will scratch that itch. As far as shooting more videos, that's a tricky commitment to make. If they're being manipulative spammers or self-promoting, I will ban them. But that's quite rare. Very tricky issue. It's probably possible, but we're nowhere close to that I would guess. And it's not that they would acquire consciousness. Reality IS consciousness. Consciousness is not something one acquires. It's what reality is. The question you're asking is whether robots can acquire sentience or ego. Yes, it's hard. Then again, sustaining a relationship without doing this work is even harder! Think about scaling back how much time you waste in your relationships. Perhaps try to keep your interactions shorter and less often, but higher quality. For example, don't be sleeping every day together. Maybe once or twice per week tops. That's good. That means Leo is changing. In a few years, you will not recognize me at all. And many of you will of course justify that as "Finally, Leo has lost it." That's how it must be. High consciousness doesn't look like high consciousness from the low consciousness perspective, it looks like lower consciousness! OF COURSE! That's the only way low consciousness can persist! So I will be demonized more and more as I develop. That's part of my lot. You'll be demonized too if you make any drastic enough leap in consciousness. The old Leo couldn't even fathom what God is. Neither do you. You can come to a complete understanding. But the cost is a total annihilation of yourself. If you are squeamish about doing psychedelics, you're not nearly openminded enough to achieve this annihilation on your own. The degree of openmindedness required is ABSOLUTE! If you ever awaken from life, you will understand why there is no hesitation. Everything you think of as "life" and everything you value as highest "knowledge" is but a dream.

Ego is a name we call the thought that claims sentience, control and identity. Ego = I am Jeffery, that is my name, I have a body with which I control, I walk, talk, touch and see everything around me, I live in this objective world that is seperate from me, better yet there's a whole universe around us! all experiences that happen to me really happened, I have memories, thoughts, facts, pictures, videos and people to prove it all, I am real, how could you say otherwise, this is the most obvious thing, are you an idiot? look at me, I'm right here, looking at you with these eyes, using sound to speak with my mouth, were sitting across from each other on the ground for gods sake! Look at the sky above us and the grass below, I think of moving my hand through the grass and my hand obeys, I'm in control, I'm right here, I am real. Now what is the Truth of that, is there really a person sitting in the grass? maybe, or is it thoughts appearing within experience claiming to be sitting there, controlling the body with which "it" inhabits, better yet what do we define illusion as? It's a misinterpretation of an event, so the thoughts that appear are real as they appear, but they misrepresent the experience because it claims to be more than a thought, thought claims the body, the experience, control & indivduality, but they're nothing but empty claims. ^ sorry if that's a mess to read had to make it quick, hope it clears anything up

Im sorry if you never felt what i am talking about, because if.you did, you wouldnt be saying this. There are infinite infinities in infinity. Believing you have the ultimate and only truth is disturbing my sentience Ps: i am already aware they are experiences. I am not referimg to the labels but to actual experience, which is real. And if its an experience that doesnt make it meaningless. Thats the entire meaning. Its a song. Every note matters, but you'd prefer if the melody is nice. You cant say you would choose to be painfully tortured rather than be massaged by beautiful naked ladies with a happy finish. Or would you? Weird.

@Joe Schmoe Imagine for a moment that you are the number Zero. Zero is ground-zero reality: undifferentiated, untethered, just itself, not even an "it". Just the fabric of reality, eternal and unchanging. Synonyms for Zero: the void, Self, Brahman, Infinity, Truth, Pure awareness, nothingness, no-thing. Zero is sad because it can't be aware of itself. It is totally void of sentience and objects. So what does it do? It creates the finite illusions of One and Two. Zero inhabits One, the human I-perspective. This is where things get tricky. Zero wants to spice things up, so it inhabits many "One's" and tricks itself into believing in the illusion of Two. Another common word for Two is Maya. Two is the illusion of duality, particularly that there is a "perceiver" and there is the "perceived," as opposed to the One perspective which is just "perceiving." In that way, Zero can ride along in the One perspective and dream as Two: that it is a separate entity called a "self" or "ego." Two inevitably obstructs Zero due to identification. So enlightenment is like hide-and-seek. It's the realization and cultivation of your Zero nature. By creating the illusion of finiteness with One and Two, Zero can then use finiteness as a reference point to become aware of itself. Have you ever heard the teachers say that enlightenment is "Awareness being aware of itself?" Without One and Two, Zero can't be aware of anything (e.g. deep sleep). With One and Two, Zero can be aware of One and Two and itself. The path to enlightenment mainly consists of seeing through the illusion of Two. Seeing through your illusions is synonymous with disidentification, and it's often quite painful. But that's another topic. Many people see enlightenment as a good thing, some see it as a bad thing. Fundamentally, it's neutral. If it happens, it happens. Hope that clears things up a bit. If you're more confused, that may be a good thing. Cheers!

First of all, please understand - I started out this spiritual journey with basic assumption that materialistic science give us very precise answers on, generally-speaking, questions: how? I just thought that it failed to give answers when we ask: why? In fact, also philosophy and all faith-based religions that I've been exposed to failed in it. So then I took the attitude of agnostic towards mystery of existence. How does it work - mechanical laws, electromagnetic, chemical reactions and so on, all this fields of science. Then, you have BIOLOGY. In terms of biology, each of us is just "carnal machine" (so to speak), programmed by DNA code for survival and reproduction. Then we got medical sciences based on biology, that gives us in very real way answers on question: how does works organism? how we can heal it when it's sick? Also technical sciences on which based is our whole technology and civilization. What is common feature of all this fields of knowledge? Each one of them is objectively real. Phenomenon explained by it doesn't need awareness at all to exist. What about existing Cosmos and Earth before any organic forms of life emerged? According to scientific explanation of history of Earth - There was for long period of no organic beings. But there existed mass of matter and there also existed natural laws of physics. "However we propose to explain the emergence of consciousness—be it in biological, functional, computational, or any other terms—we have committed ourselves to this much: First there is a physical world, unconscious and seething with unperceived events; then, by virtue of some physical property or process, consciousness itself springs, or staggers, into being. This idea seems to me not merely strange but perfectly mysterious. That doesn’t mean it isn’t true. When we linger over the details, however, this notion of emergence seems merely a placeholder for a miracle. Consciousness—the sheer fact that this universe is illuminated by sentience—is precisely what unconsciousness is not. And I believe that no description of unconscious complexity will fully account for it. To simply assert that consciousness arose at some point in the evolution of life, and that it results from a specific arrangement of neurons firing in concert within an individual brain, doesn’t give us any inkling of how it could emerge from unconscious processes, even in principle." This physical principles is universal - you can make now the same experience as they did 200 or 2000 years ago and receive the same results as they did. Moreover, there is no need for conscious being to perceive results, because the same physical cause-effect phenomena was in game before even consciousness occurred. Of course, still, one could say that "Everything is awareness." or "Everything appeared from one single idea. (This echoes Plato's concept of Forms or First Principles)". It may be so. But does it deny existence of objective, physical realm of being? Sometimes I explain it to myself this way: Our basic realm of existence is biological, animal. But beyond that exist also possibility of attaining higher meaning - becoming aware of itself and then reach out towards the limitlessness of its conscious existence. I'm still carefully agnostic in case of our polemics. Does, as you say, physical objects are just "game" or Maya, that is secondary to awareness? Or maybe consciousness Is simply a freakish by-product of the brain’s natural functioning - an illusion or delusion incidentally caused by interactions of electrochemical energy? Is awareness prior to the physical realm or vice versa? Or maybe it's something like in-between: self-awareness is the most powerful tool in the game titled: Survival of the fittest. I don't know. I know that all these assumptions and concepts I wrote about counts for nothing in terms of non-dual practices. I've seen most of your videos on the subject of spiritual enlightenment and I agree that penetrating illusion of self demands stripping away all this layers of concepts. Let's face it - Thinking is indispensable. I won't abandon my rational mind. I need critical thinking (reasoning) as a tool. But our habitual identification with thought—that is, our failure to recognize thoughts as thoughts, as appearances in consciousness—is a primary source of human suffering. It also gives rise to the illusion that a separate self is living inside one’s head. And certainly I can't agree with you on the subject of non-realness of physical objects. But thank God that at the very end of my exploration, I found meditation - the non-conceptual way of knowing. Non-dual, experiential awareness is like oracle that never speaks. It doesn't seem to have need to know all the right answers. Indeed, it doesn't need any answers to know.

There is no "Mom" for you to kill. Surely there's an animated body that is labelled as "Mom," but "Mom" herself doesn't exist. Just as I can say that there are fingers typing these words right now, but nobody's typing them. All there is in "my" experience are sense perceptions and sentience. Any "I" entity comes from thought, but that's just a sense perception, so in reality there is no "I" entity. There's only a puppet without a puppeteer. I won't even bother saying that you can confirm that in your direct experience...

Matter is a concept we use in tandem with atoms, molecules, and space. What's actually there is just sense perceptions and sentience...but even those are concepts. A concept is essentially an invention that comes from the mind. Concepts are illusions, for they appear to exist when they actually do not. Another word for concept is story. When you watch a movie, does the story or content of the movie actually exist? No; it's just sounds and some light projected onto a screen. Enlightenment is the realization of Absolute Truth. Absolute Truth is Absolute, meaning that it's True for eternity: True before you were born, True now, and True after you die. It's not that Absolute Truth is "possible"; it's that it never left. It's always been here. Enlightenment is a direct encounter with that fact. You can't comprehend the Absolute Truth by mind, nor is it an experience; but you can become aware or conscious that Truth is. That's really the only way I can describe it. It's like how you know when you've orgasmed during sex: you just know.

I was stuck on this one for a long time. Yes, ego death is an illusion, since ego never existed in the first place. But in the realm of the phenomenal world (i.e 'reality' as we know it, our sense perceptions) there's a body and a sentience ("I Am"). That body + sentience was birthed, and eventually, it will cease to function and dissolve. That's what most people refer to as physical death, and it's most definitely real in regards to the phenomenal world. Your sense perceptions and sentience will cease at some point. So, yes, the sentient focal point you call "I" will cease to be. The way to confirm this is to examine what happens when you go to sleep. In deep sleep, there is no awareness of being alive, no sentience, no thoughts to confirm your existence. The focal point you call "I" is not the Truth due to its ephemeral nature. How does the transition happen from one state of consciousness to another? Nobody knows, and nobody can know. We don't even know if reincarnation exists; that's just a baseless assumption. How does physical death happen? It just does. Why? Because. At this point, you're probably pretty down in the dumps reading what I just wrote. Fortunately, you're not any of these ephemeral things. Even when the body and the "I Am" dissolves, there is still something there...but it's not a thing at all. That, whatever that is, is Truth. Truth was never born and hence can never die. It's always been. Here's a quote that helped me contemplate Truth: "Imagine that an ultimate Big Bang in reverse, a sort of anti-Big Bang, suddenly blows up all existence. Absolutely everything that could possibly be experienced is gone. Add to that: time has also been blown away, and space is non-existent. So there is really nothing at all left. Has Being ceased to be? Has existence disappeared or diminished in any way? No. Not at all. We confuse being some thing with Being. We confuse experience with what is. Notice that with nothing at all, existence still is. It just isn’t any thing. It doesn’t exist in or as space or time, and so not as process or experience. In other words, is can’t come or go, it can only is." -Peter Ralston Ultimately, even if the sun explodes and everything gets destroyed and nobody is sentient to experience it... Truth still is. It's just not in the form of anything. To acquire a grounded consciousness of that is another story.