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the indivisable is being this is where my self-inquiry has led me. at all times you are nothingness itself. its like the whole point of enlightenment is to reliquish your doership or seperate self true or false? i'm not actually looking for an answer, there is nobody who is asking the question. i just wanted to express my excitement and so i hope you can engage in a brace the question with the full might of your being. and express it in which ever way you feel like you can express it, with your being. like the jello lol, it was a good expression of it. you are inside the jello, but you can not see how you are it.

@TheAvatarState i just came to the realisation that we may this all backwards, everything is nothingness and nothingness is everything its hard to hold both statements in your end at one time, but when you realise they collapse on eachother, it always leaves you with the same thing being.

@Joseph Maynor bare with me, i just had a realisation, about exactly what you just wrote before i came online, its so weird that i can't express it fully, its just that isn't being enough, we are all trying to find lofty ideologies and meaning behind the word enlightenment but at its purest levels, you are nothingness and therefore being itself, when you are sad, you are being sad, when you are happy you are just being happy. what need to write a whole book on enlightenment when the simple truth is that all there is is being. whether some people find the pill to swallow that it may not be your life that you are living- it doesn't change the fact that you are being. relaxing and being is all that there is. its like the whole point of enlightenment is to give up your sense of doership and relish in your true self, which is all but fancy terms, you are still going to be the present moment itself. no attachment to anything is fine, everything is fine. its like the more you do this, the happier and peaceful your meant to become, thats fair to say, but it doesn't matter if your experience was positive or negative, you were still the same thing always being.

@Leo Gura in the book god is nothingness what chapter are you on, i am on chapter 10-12 for sure. I am curious to understand the depth at which you understand nothingness currently. preferably not the answer: its difficult to put my own experience into this linear sequence, just a guestimate is fine, its a rather accurate book you have found

Consciousness = Nothingness = Everything But the question is, how conscious are you?

@ajasatya @TheAvatarState I have relapsed and am finding it quite peaceful, but ultimately the single enlightened state is what the pointers are towards yes, but the scriptures and the duality bought about from different traditions can not lead you to enlightenment directly, they are all teoltlizing so to speak . the simplicity is: that everything is nothingness there is also no depth to it either, it may seem like it from the perspective of going from not knowing to knowing. just a friendly reminder hence the reason buddah reached perfect enlightenment. but what your speaking is true all religions start from the need to express the nothingness and hence end up creating fluff in different manners

@Leo Gura On one end some people say that everything there is is consciousness, on the other end some say the only thing there is is Nothingness. I'm a bit confused here, can you give a quick explanation?

That makes more sense to me. But it's still a weird situation. Things existing or not existing blows my mind. No matter how you slice it reality is a magical thing.

Explanation for those who might have trouble grasping what I'm trying to get across with this 0 / ∞! = X As a partial manifestation of Absolute Infinity, out of total formlessness and no-thing-ness, the finite self (you) emerges (along everything else that is perceivable). X + (1 * ∞) = 1^n = ∞! You as the finite self, thinking that you are separate to everything else "around you", interact with all kinds of "other things" of infinite variety throughout your life. 1^n represents that the entirety of all those interactions and of all this interplay is fundamentally all finite - and, because it's 1 to the n'th power, all of the exact same nature, meaning that everything is ultimately just consciousness interacting with itself in all kinds of differnt ways, even though in the end, it all comes back to 1, no matter how large the number of the power may be. Thus, this is equal to Absolute Infinity, or more precisely Absolute Infinity at play, expressing itself. X - 1^n = 0 Once you, as the finite self, lose all finitudes you're attached to, i.e. your body primarily or all other finite material or non-material acquisitions, you then go back to Source, or Nothingness respectively. Now, if we want to throw karma in the mix, that's debatable, but essentially that's how it goes/ends and finally starts all over again. X + √ X = X ↯ ∴ X = 1^n As the finite self discovers, or gets in touch with its root(s) and its origin, it realises that its total finitude, which it was certain of prior to self-realisation, is an illsuion. Therefore, it is now clear that the finite self is just another emergence of consciousness, which will pass away just like everything else that is finite, but that the real Self is concsiousness itself, which never ceases or fades away.

@Yoshy Wonderful:) Well, you see, there's really no differnece between life as it is now and a so-called "afterlife". As you can see in the first equation, that which you emerge from is Nothingness - and in the end, to Nothingness you will return. This is a ceaceless cycle. Enlightenment, then, is more or less the realisation that you who expects to be reborn, in the exact same way as you are right now perhaps, is an illusion because you are not differnt from 1^n - not different from anything else that is finite. But, the good news is that the real you which lies underneath all finiteness will remain exactly where it is, what it is, and how it is for eternity. So in the end there is nowhere to go or to come from. This is obviously just a partial fragment of the "whole" explanation but I obviously can't sit here for forever to "explain" enlightenment to you. That's your job to fully grasp and experience.

∞! -> Absolute Infinity 0 -> Nothingness 1 -> thingness / finiteness X -> every finite self ∴ -> therefore Chapter 1: Birth 0 / ∞! = X Chapter 2: Everything In Between X + (1 * ∞) = 1^n = ∞! Chapter 3: Death X - 1^n = 0 BONUS CHAPTER: Enlightenment X + √ X = X ↯ ∴ X = 1^n (Please note: this is all just meant figuratively and is not properly mathematical at all)

Gurdjieff on Conscience, as recounted to P.D. Ouspensky in “In Search of the Miraculous,” taken from the edition published by by Paul H. Crompton Ltd 2004, Pages 155-156. “‘Conscience’ is again a term that needs explanation. “In ordinary life the concept ‘conscience’ is taken too simply. As if we had a conscience. Actually the concept ‘conscience’ in the sphere of the emotions is equivalent to the concept ‘consciousness’ in the sphere of the intellect. And as we have no consciousness we have no conscience. “Consciousness is a state in which a man knows all at once everything that he in general knows and in which he can see how little he does know and how many contradictions there are in what he knows. “Conscience is a state in which a man feels all at once everything that he in general feels, or can feel. And as everyone has within him thousands of contradictory feelings which vary from a deeply hidden realization of his own nothingness and fears of all kinds to the most stupid kind of self-conceit, self-confidence, self-satisfaction, and self-praise, to feel all this together would not only be painful but literally unbearable. “If a man whose entire inner world is composed of contradictions were suddenly to feel all these contradictions simultaneously within himself, if he were to feel all at once that he loves everything he hates and hates everything he loves, that he lies when he tells the truth and that he tells the truth when he lies; and if he could feel the shame and horror of it all, this would be the state which is called ‘conscience.’ A man cannot live in this state; he must either destroy contradictions or destroy conscience. He cannot destroy conscience, but if he cannot destroy it he can put it to sleep, that is, he can separate by impenetrable barriers one feeling of self from another, never see them together, never feel their incompatibility, the absurdity of one existing alongside another. “But fortunately for man, that is, for his peace and for his sleep, this state of conscience is very rare. From early childhood ‘buffers’ begin to grow and strengthen in him, taking from him the possibility of seeing his inner contradictions and therefore, for him, there is no danger whatever of a sudden awakening. Awakening is possible only for those who seek it and want it, for those who are ready to struggle with themselves and work on themselves for a very long time and very persistently in order to attain it. For this it is necessary to destroy ‘buffers,’ that is, to go out to meet all those inner sufferings which are connected with the sensations of contradictions. Moreover the destruction of ‘buffers’ in itself requires very long work and a man must agree to this work realizing that the result of his work will be every possible discomfort and suffering from the awakening of his conscience. “But conscience is the fire which alone can fuse all the powders in the glass retort which was mentioned before and create the unity which a man lacks in that state in which he begins to study himself. “The concept ‘conscience’ has nothing in common with the concept ‘morality.’ “Conscience is a general and a permanent phenomenon. Conscience is the same for all men and conscience is possible only in the absence of ‘buffers.’ From the point of view of understanding the different categories of man we may say that there exists the conscience of a man in whom there are no contradictions. This conscience is not suffering; on the contrary it is joy of a totally new character which we are unable to understand. But even a momentary awakening of conscience in a man who has thousands of different I’s is bound to involve suffering. And if these moments of conscience become longer and if a man does not fear them but on the contrary co-operates with them and tries to keep and prolong them, an element of very subtle joy, a foretaste of the future ‘clear consciousness’ will gradually enter into these moments.

"The true perceiver is Nothingness" - many on this Forum How about: the true perceiver is Anythingness. Infinity can experience being fully in your perception without any sense of being in another's perception. Hence, why you may feel like you're only having a finite experience as one human person, despite being infinite. For infinity to be truly infinite, it must experience just your perception, just that other dude's perception, and also both simultaneously. So infinity is experiencing any and every perception. Which is why I call it Anythingness. This is just another viewpoint to give more clarity to the new Truth-seekers in this forum. I feel that talking about infinity as identical to Anythingness is easier to understand than referring to it as Nothingness. Just my opinion

So it’s been a month since my last post on here and felt like giving an update. After getting off I actually started feeling a tiny bit better. I was starting to do some self acceptance and it came along actually in the beginning. I was walking on some old trails I used to run on in Marin County over the Golden Gate Bridge. That was kinda where it ended. After about less than a week in I started falling into a worsening depression I haven’t fallen in in years. Mental breakdowns have become basically a daily thing. My only friend who lives next to me isn’t a available for me to talk to him just to have someone to talk to so I’m alone everyday. My dad has been going off on me on how I’m a loser because my suffering “doesn’t make sense” and how I just need to “man up.” I wake up everyday feeling too numb to get out of bed. I’ve had to leave work early a couple times now because I’m barely able to hold back tears. My mind won’t stop. It. Just. Won’t. Fucking. Stop. I can feel even in my body that this entire self is something I’m holding onto in yet trying to drop even a single belief like “ I CAN’T” (my bottommost core belief) because my entire sense of self is revolves around this addiction to holding this belief. This entire self is just a giant lie. Everything I say is a lie. Everything I think is a lie. The way I hold my body is a lie. I don’t feel suicidal per say as I don’t want to resort to that. I honestly just want help. I feel like I’m truly not good enough and that I can’t. I just fucking cant. Relative to what isn’t the belief. It’s that I can’t. Affirmations and such have been a disaster. I’ll be on a run (and now I’m hurt) and when I start feeling that core “I CAN’T” and I affirm “I CAN”, so long as I affirm “I can” there has to be the underlying belief that “I can’t.” Ralston talks about this in his book Pursuing Consciousness when it comes to beliefs, self-images, ideals, etc. I feel like I’m going crazy right now and this is getting worse every single day. This is exhausting. I want this to stop and I deeply want help. I don’t want “just accept yourself more” as I live in a house and an environment that is driving me mad. Self acceptance doesn’t help me move out. I tried learning programming, following the advice of @Bluebird who kindly helped give me some tips, after about a week of not being able to focus (struggling still now being off adderall and with ADHD) and feeling totally confused and still frustrated because the thought of being another programmer just eats at me and also because it’s so hard because of my ADHD, I had to stop. I have a life purpose but honestly it’s so demoralizing because it feels so beyond me. I’m tired of this man I just want help. I’m tired of feeling so dead and numb. Depression feels like nothingness and pain. It’s a hollowness that literally eats you away. I can’t afford therapy, I can’t afford neurofeedback, I can’t afford a life coach. Why did I have to grow up with a mom who tried killing herself every week? Why does my dad have to moralize to me? Why did I have to put on meds to that hurt me more in the long run and didn’t help anything? Why can’t I drop this addiction to suffering and this goddamn identity? Why can’t I just stop my mind for just 5 seconds? I don’t want anything other than help.

Enough of your egoistical antics. Nothingness is not what you think it is. Nothingness, consciousness, and infinity are identical.

Robert lanza: “If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody is there, does it make a sound?” Now if a person is nearby, the air puffs cause the ear drum to vibrate, which then stimulates nerves only if the air is pulsing between 20 and 20,000 times a second , nerves stimulated by the moving eardrum send signals to the brain resulting in the cognition of a noise. Only then does human consciousness conjure the noise experience. What is experiencing the absolute without nerve receptors, without brain, without the byproduct of the mind we know as the witness, the receptor of the sound or phenomena? Its easy to take some psychedellic and get to the conclusion that this is truth. But, how is experiencing enlightenment without brains? Who is the perciever, the witness of the absolute nothingness and everythiness where there isnt a neuronal system that makes a composition,a image of whats being percieved?

So saying that we are everything and we are infinite is just a cruel trick to make the people happy and unafraid of death. The trick is reduce the self to nothingness, of course nothingness i absolute and infinite. But if we are nothingness we arent "infinite consciousness living a human experience", no afterlife, or reincarnation, no quantum consciousness, not even return to the source. You smashed my hopes to hang on

Whenever I've had philosophical problems (I don't know what to call them exactly.), I've turned to this forum because most other people will look at me like a nutcase or just say "Get over it!" or something like that. Don't think that will solve this though... After contemplating a lot of things deeply I've come to these conclusions/questions/problems: How can I be certain of anything? I exist and no one else exists. The first problem How can I be certain of gravity? How can I be certain the cup of water exists? How can I be certain I am not in a simulation? How can I be certain I am not in some sort of Truman show (google it)? How can I be certain I can sleep? How can I be certain I live in a world where logic works and exists? How can I be certain I am in world where Nothingness exists? How can I be certain than ANYTHING exists? How can I be certain that I can doubt stuff? Now I am almost in constant anticipation of anything that might happen. I feel like I might lose it. Don't know what to do. The second problem I have started to deconstruct the notion of "other people". All that exists is my subjective experience. I intellectually know that even I "don't really exist". All that exists is "my subjective" experience. Nothing else. This problem by itself isn't a problem. It feeds into the first problem. Being doubtful of almost everything, and having a hard time treating others as "others" makes it very difficult to actually reach out and talk with people or do anything with them. Even asking for help about this issue seems pointless in a sense. .............................................................. The first problem I would relate with skepticism and the second problem I would relate with solipsism. Both are philosophical terms. Google them if you're not sure what they mean exactly. .............................................................. I honestly feel like I might go nuts. I have an almost constant tingling sensation on my head (from stress/anxiety). I have a hard time going to sleep because of this. Sometimes I panic and don't know what to do. Plus I feel like I'm effectively stuck in a loop. Can't really get on with my life. What can I do? Please help if you can. P.S. I tried to keep this post concise. I could divulge and explain more if you didn't quite understand what my predicament is.

In a sense, every step taken as body/mind towards nothingness/emptiness or away from body/mind remains a divisive action (desire/control based) of or as body/mind. Action of INSGHT sees so entirely/holistically that all action ceases. No forward/backwards movement at all. As Body/mind is movement. INSIGHT sees the totality of itself and ceases all movement/action in any direction. As movement in any direction is an expression of awareness’s over fascination with objective experience.

Only thing I can tell you is that when you can experience true being, everything will come , it does not come like thunder and strike you with everything it got right away, answers will come them self. Experience of nothingness could be helpful to know your true self better I guess, to find I you are looking for to tap into being, but I do not think that there is any need for it, when I first got to know nothingness I had no clue what it is about , except the fact that it is the place where everything comes from and it was from mediation, not non dual state , or anything like that, besides non dual state is still not what you are looking for if you can no locate your true self, some people might think that non dual state is just being, but you might as well still not know who you are in all of that mess, making it in completely something else.

@purerogue but doesn't one need to experience the breakthrough of emptiness/nothingness to understand the very nature of being, isn't letting go of control only second best to this, your moves will become in sync i agree, however, you will still not know of the emptiness/nothingness that is actually present @Ethankahn i am not talking about the perspective or percieving a void, when you reach emptiness in your journey, there will be no perspective, but being itself. i don't think leo has had a direct experience of the void, even if he did, he wouldn't be able to talk about it or mention it. there is not the possibility of experiencing it in your direct experience.

no concept matches the true depths of emptiness and basically killing yourself to sacrifice the subjective experience is the goal. therefore, if its true that the self only reveals itself to the true self itself, then its simple there's no way to get there all that can happen is a staged breakthrough which you don't have any control of. therefore you must give up control does that mean that the breakthrough is dependant on pure luck and the choice of god itself, or will it definately happen if i do self-inquiry for 50 years?

i read some pages of a book and understand the difference, the unitary movement is the awareness moving as a whole movement. but the knower is the underlying nothingness that exsist. so they are different but at the same time, the same thing!

Ego just hangs there suspended in the nothingness supported only by it's own illusion.

I have been thinking about what it means for existence to be infinite for a long time and it seems like I keep getting stuck. I am aware that one cannot contemplate oneself into true understanding about infinitude, but still I cannot let go the concept of it. If reality is absolutely boundless, does that not mean that everything we are doing is in an absolute and total way fully meaningless? It confuses me that Leo keeps talking about the importance of enlightenment, or of any other thing in life. Is it not inevitable that god manifests all possible and impossible realities no matter what will happen in this reality? Even if Leo gets enlightened now, has the best life he could possibly have, won't god experience a life in which Leo did fail? A life in which Leo never lost his weight and eventually got a heart attack? A life in which Leo keeps little children in his basement who he rapes every day? A life in which Leo, after reading this very sentence, is going to kill himself for no reason whatsoever? And if that is not the case, then how can god be limitless and infinite? And if it indeed is the case, it means that god will experience Leo in every possible form there can be for eternity, and already has experienced all of Leo's possible and impossible life's. Is everything Leo doing not a reaction of his ego, an inability to surrender to the truth? And even if it is not the case, does there not have to exist a reality in which that necessarily is the case? Either way that would mean that no matter what Leo does he cannot avoid not experiencing all the possibilities, one day he will suffer, as an unsuccessful and miserable Leo. I was thinking along these lines and then I remember something I have contemplated when I was a teenager. I had the intellectual recognition that reality had to be boundless a long time ago, by contemplating why reality would be the way it is and why it is not any other way. It seemed very obvious that there could not be anything that would limit reality, as anything that would limit it would itself have to be limited by something else so that it would limit reality in that particular way. But that begged a few very paradoxical questions: If reality is truly boundless, then does there not have to exist a reality which cancels all other realities? A reality which stretches it's tentacles into all of the infinitude of reality to root it back into nothingness? And does there not have to exist a reality outside of ALL realities? It has to exist, after all reality cannot be limited, it cannot be bound whatsoever. If this was the case though reality would be absolutely chaotic, nothing could exist because everything would immediately be taken apart by infinite destructive power, infinite death. There would be infinite realities popping into existence while immediately disappearing. It seems like these two elements would nullify each other, but then there would have to exist a reality in which they don't nullify each other. And then today, when I remembered this, I suddenly had the idea that out of that process would have to evolve intelligence, much in the same way it does in our universe. There is a force of chaos and a force of order, and because all realities which do not have strong order would be ripped apart by chaos, there would only be those realities left which had a mechanism against this chaotic power. And because this chaotic power is infinite, the realities would have to construct themselves in an infinitely intelligent way. In other words, intelligence is and unlimited limit, a limit upon Chaos with a capital C. It would be like survival and evolution were not mechanisms of nature, but rather metaphysical aspects that are unavoidable, and these aspects would then resonate into the realities which prevailed. And now it is obvious for why reality has to be love. The only reality that could manifest and not be destroyed by infinite chaos would have to be a reality which infinitely loves it's manifestation, it's own existence. If it wasn't infinitely loving it's intelligence would not be concerned for the manifestation whatsoever. In a very real sense that would mean that love is a prerequisite for existence, for only that which loves itself will preserve itself. These aspects seem to reflect in some shape or form our ordinary consciousness, as we strive to survive because of our selfish love, and that reminds me of the saying that god created us in his own image. It almost seems like for structure to exist at all there needs to be a fundamental force which keeps it from dissolving, and that force simply is love. But then the question is, would the infinite destructive power not evolve too, being put under the same evolutionary pressures, to then destroy the infinitely loving reality? Would there not be a reality which infinitely loves destruction, death and suffering? And maybe that is what our reality is, a fight between these two forces? It all just confuses me more and more, there is so much I have not even began to think about and it seems like this would go on and on for infinity. But then what is infinite intelligence, why does it exist? Does it exist precisely because this process goes on for infinity? I have no idea anymore. I guess what I would like to know is what infinite intelligence is, why it exists and whether it's existence means that not all realities will manifest, but only particular ones?