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This claim is unfalsifiable. I agree that decreasing activity in certain parts of the brain via meditation/drugs/surgery/disease will give you the feeling that you are the world and not the self but there is no way you can say anything further. If you are saying the brain is a filter then damaging it or committing suicide should be the fastest way to enlightenment, yet people aren't doing that. It seems to me that a feeling of nothingness requires an active brain with a specific part deactivated. The gain from understanding no-self is still as great as ever. You get the benefit of knowing there's no self to die, I just don't think you can claim that without a brain enlightenment exists. The room and actor exist only when the projector exists.

This is mostly a theoretical one, but probably has applications within meditation, consciousness work and our idea of the self. I'm 100% certain that I'm wrong about SOMETHING here, so any corrections are appreciated. When people first encounter the Doomsday Argument, it's basically the most world-altering thing they've ever heard of. It goes like this: why were we born RIGHT when technology started developing? The answer usually being: because there won't be a future to be born into, because technology will cause the world to collapse. Except... that's total bullshit, because that would imply a weak form of time travel exists. It wouldn't be a form of time travel that could change the future, though, because regardless of whether the apocalypse is coming, the "You" would always be there, experiencing this supposed "time travel". Even so, it's applicable from your point of view, and it would make logical sense for the experiencer to assume that this Doomsday is coming. Except, no. Ultimately, with regard to consciousness, it is just as likely for you to be born in America as it is to be born Elvis Presley. It's non-accumulative. The entire concept of "likelihood of being born as ___" doesn't make sense and stems from our need to explain everything based on 4-dimensional Platonic spacetime mechanics. This flaw makes it hard for us to understand things outside of said 4-dimensional spacetime, like quantum mechanics, the lack of a need for an outside creator or source for the Big Bang (conservation of matter/energy only applies in our 4D understanding), the self being nothingness itself, countable infinity vs. non-countable infinity, the idea that infinity*2 = infinity, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of our belief systems are based on this idea that "group A is bigger than group B, so it's more likely to be born into group A". In truth, you weren't born as either. You were born as all of them at all times, or alternatively, none of them. The implications this has for ethics is unknown. Does it mean that making one person happy is the same as making a group of people happy? Probably not, since itseems like subjective well-being is accumulative (two dopamines > one dopamine), in contrast with consciousness itself which is not. I could be mistaken about all this, and I may be thinking about it in the wrong way. But it would seem that the notion that there is a coming Doomsday makes no sense, and it's nothing worth worrying about. (Also, side note: I'm not a believer, but there's an atheist argument that goes like this: "it's impossible that an eternal afterlife exists, since it's infinitely more likely to be experiencing IT at any given time than THIS infinitesimally-short life". But the whole concept of consciousness being non-accumulative puts this argument out the window.)

I feel like all this talk of nothingness taht Tony Parsons and the other people are talking about is missing something. Why do they never talk about love? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vO83S-dptiE

@werlight Yes, totally. "Everything is exactly as it should be in this very moment". That has become my mantra. I also became aware that nothingness surrounds the space of existence at all times. Whatever happens within this space is absorbed directly into that surrounding space. I talk about it in a dualistic way but in truth they are one seamless space. Sometimes after meditation the presence of nothingness is so obvious that it feels like I could almost scoop it out of the surrounding environment. Yesterday morning when a had the experience of pure love, It felt like the top of my head was buzzing it was so strong. Very powerful! I I must have tapped directly into the love frequency. Amazing!

I'm not sure what to believe about reincarnation. Who really knows. One the one hand, maybe consciousness returns to it's original source and just recycles back as pure consciousness into some other life form. There is a lot out there to this universe for consciousness to occupy. Or maybe consciousness is just a product of existence and when the body dies, consciousness is finished also and it all ends there. But on the other hand, maybe there is an essence or spirit self or soul, or divine self that returns to the manifest realm to do more work. Some believe that enlightened teachers are very old souls that have reincarnated many times before. When we pass on could that divine self enter into a higher realm, and from there decide to either move into infinite bliss and vanish, or return to existence to do more work? Why do I have a feeling if that is the case, my divinity would choose to return to this raw existence instead of moving into the infinite bliss of nothingness? I'm experiencing something very deeply at this very moment, something that I know extends much farther than this existence, divinity. Tears are suddenly pouring from my eyes for all of humanity. I love you all

You know... The creation of death doesnt sound too godly Nor does rape or murder, hurting eachother Stomach aches or pussy farts.. decaying flesh The abonimation of a thought which was hitler? Do you really think the true god would create such a universe where pain and suffering is even just an illusion? This universe with words to me would be more closely related to Satan if anything. Who else would create such a hell hole that has endless possibilities of illusionary torment? God the nothingness you say? What if enlightenment is just another trap of Satan??? What if the darkness around us is just a bottle were trapped in contained by Satan? I do not think the true god would contain any kind of illusionary suffering in his realm, but than again... I might be wrong.

"The "Nothingness/You" was there before even the time you were not born and will be forever." How do you know that? Do you have any evidence of your statement? "it's called "awareness" that is true self and cannot be changed because it's "nothingness"" Define "Nothingness" "The brain should be firing trillions of signals to make sense of self and everything you currently experiencing that makes "you" unreal and just a mind activity" Are you really trying to solve the "consciousness problem'? lmao, How you gain consciousness and how you are always being you in the same body? can you explain this? There is a big nobel prize waiting for you.

@Grasshopper you explained it well dude, it's called "awareness" that is true self and cannot be changed because it's "nothingness". The brain should be firing trillions of signals to make sense of self and everything you currently experiencing that makes "you" unreal and just a mind activity. The "Nothingness/You" was there before even the time you were not born and will be forever.

+ What about trying 1h meditation on sunday? I can´t stress enough how important the lenght of the meditation is sometimes. Eventhou everyone also leo in his videos says it is ok to do 10min / 20min for beginners , which is better than nothing , 20min is also nothing compared to say a 2h meditation...Inrease Lenght is Strongly advised for the "next step" +also try different meditations to spice it up and learn about the different inner "channels". Try Mindfullness / Try "Do nothing" or "nothingness" / Try body Scanns/ Try mantra-meditation ...and if you are adventurous Try "Strong Determination Sitting" to really step it up !! Here again 20min are NOT enough!! On my first SDSitting the first 20min-30 happend nothing i was only bored and my back hurt .... only after that i had an experience i wouldnt want to miss to say the least... Cheers

In my journey trough this topic for now, I have discovered that you can experience nothingness and that a good thing to know in your daily life. But you have to take some role to be effective in this reallity and its okay as long as you don't consider it that this role is the only one you have. You can change it or revert back in to the nothingness to reboot your believe system.

My simplest understanding is that they are not at all the same thing, they actually seem to be on entirely different fields: Enlightenment = Being one with the "true" self, understanding our nothingness, oneness, and wholeness that is a part of being. Spiral/Graves = Our understanding and empathy, toward aspects of our lives/society/community.

No, thoughts and senses ARE the only reality. They literally ARE what reality is composed of. The idea of an external reality outside of immediate perception is just that, an idea. Thoughts are real, but the stories they tell are not. The existence of an external reality is one such story and should be treated with much skepticism. Maps are the stories thoughts tell. The territory is raw sensory perceptions, including the sensation of thoughts (but excluding their stories). In addition to the above, the territory is also your true existential nature: consciousness, pure empty awareness, Nothingness, and/or Absolute Truth. There are many labels we can use for it. But this awareness is not a sensory perception or a thought or an object at all.

And pure being and duality and enlightenment are all coupled to the ground state of nothingness? Is that the Oneness? The singularity?

That's interesting! The reason I asked about the void was, Once when I was meditating I experienced pure being. There was just a silent essence of myself. Just floating in infinite silence. Very peacefully. Blissfully. I had a whisper of a thought to totally let go and merge into that blissful silence. Than I disappeared into nothingness. I became non-existent. I only realized that after I returned to that state of pure being and silent bliss. After that experience happened I thought to myself, becoming the void is nothing to be afraid of because you don't exist when it happens. When I referred to other perceptions, I was eluding to perceiving higher realms. I wonder if those higher realms surround us always and we are actually occupying then now. And during sleep we sometimes directly access them. Also when we pass on we go back into the higher realm. From there we chose (as pure being) to come back again to the manifest realm (reincarnation) to work on ourselves and to help others in their journey. It's all or none, so to speak. Have we all decided to be here by choice? Do we all know in our hearts what we truly are, even though we may not be obvious from this point of view (the manifest realm). But everyone here is trying to remember what we truly are. Something bigger is driving all of us on this search. Who knows? Whatever it is it's way beyond the thinking mind.

So ive come to the realization internally that i cant find michael, michael is just a thought, and even writing in this context is weirding me the fuck out! Or rather the feeling of weirding the fuck out is arising, totally becoming disidentified with.. well.. who "I" thought was me. Having a hard time going to bed, each time "me" comes back to the foundation of nothingness or the realization michael doesnt exist.. eerie as shit might one say. A sudden gasp of air or shock arises within the body, like "michael" is dying the emotional reaction now while writing is sadness and depression but no identity is experiencing it.. wwwweeeiirdd..and the realization that.. uhh michael was never there ever.. sad hurt pain cry anger .. hate ... go away This one is trying not to wig out.. sleeping next to whatever my daughter is.. a thought perhapps.. deep deep pain Anyways... will one wake up tomorrow? Am.. "I" dying? Scared ..if not than.. wtf is this shock and gasps for? Realization of non existance but was just illusion? Tripping?

I have tried probably every drug available except heroin because I don't like needles. I think that drugs has nothing to do with enlightenment. Enlightenment is all about getting rid of the ego, connect with your inner body and with the timeless spaceless Being. Nothingness, etc. All psychedelic drugs enforce your permanence in the world of Form, it's superficial, it's visual, it's artificial. Drugs are at the lower scale of the happiness spectrum, it's a shallow experience that if the source is good last for 12 hrs. My longest trip was with LSD for 12 hours. I have also been doing coke and alcohol for 3 days without sleeping. Coke is Ego food. Weed makes you think a LOT as well. Nothing could be more far away of enlightenment than thinking. That being said I don't regret have trying them, i had very very fun moments with them, and also helped me realize how a waste of time money and brain cells they can be. Also very easy to get addicted. And addiction is the exact opposite of Willpower and self control. On the other hand, some ppl need to hit rock bottom in order to straighten their life. The Buddha was an addict and he was tempted by his own demons during his enlightenment journey. So maybe there is some relationship between drugs and enlightenment. That could be an interesting video haha cheers

I just want to share this, it was a very brief moment of "consciousness" but it was real... or at least it was and is a memory now. But it happened just today and well, the experience was astonishing, for i took a nice warm cup of coffee, and the energy it enabled me was honestly unlike any! I felt like i got out of the script of life and really truly experienced and expanded NOTHINGNESS. I was feeling so good, so great, the vibe was similar to a euphoric moment in life. I do have to say, words can only scratch the surface, and for the gut feeling was pure excitement! I didn't know what to do, or how to react, so i just simply enjoyed my moment. It was a really awesome high, and the low was not to bad for it's still very nice. I highly recommended coffee!

Just the other day I watched this video from Matt Khan, in which he discusses the breath as a pointer to your real nature. Along my spiritual journey I find myself working a lot with pointers to dig very deep in my own existential nature. They seem to be like constant holes that are completely ignored by most people because of their seeming simplicity. However, I found that they can be your greatest teachers if you spend some effort checking them out. So, I want you to shift the way of seeing yourself with this post. For real. When watching Matt's video he just did that for me and it brought me within two days to some new realizations + a lot of silence and peace, so I have to let you in on this. Decide for yourself. Basically, as we ask "Who am I?", "What am I?" we are looking for a constant notion of ourself. For something that was and is there all the time. So we start with thoughts, feelings, emotions, the body etc. and seem to not come too far with that. Even if we have some realizations we are still stuck inside our head. So what is actually constant about ourselves? Maybe listening, the essence or nature of perceptions, probably a few other things but something that defines our life from birth to death is simply Breath. We start with breathing as our first move in life and we will end it with the last one - poetically saying. Have you noticed the way you breathe is directly correlated with how you feel, how and how much you think, whether you are in flow or not, whether you are in a deep stage of samadhi or hyperventilating in the name of fear and anxiety? Stop for a second and check yourself out. Isn't that strange? So Matt illustrates in his video kinda artfully that we are our breath. Not existentially of course, but as I pointer to who we really are. Kind of like a door to nothingness - an entry point to your real nature. He also makes the point that you - as your breath - are perfectly awake, enlightened - complete by nature. You go in and out whatever happens. From the day all of this starts to the day you die. And so he gives the picture that every thought, all perceptions, all feelings, every kind of form that we sense is nothing but a whim of the breath. As if you are the breath and everything that comes up is just another incarnation, another form, another anything that lives from breathing in until breathing out. And so the world you see, live in and perceive is just "the game of the breath", "the colorful illustration of the breath". Now - and I invite you to invest one hour to get this realization from Matt personally in his video - I was struck by this so much that I had this sudden change of mind that if I'm actually just the breath everything is just fine. Because I'm complete and all the thoughts and perceptions are just the breath' whim of entertaining itself and the world. Yesterday and today I tended to consciously breath a lot and so deepened and slowed the pace of my breath and I felt such a great harmony and peace inside of me. Because I always had in mind that everything I think is just another whim of my breath. And my breath just lets it live for another 2-3 seconds. Well, don't get me wrong here. You are existentially a lot more then your breath of course. But the breath seems to be a direct door to what you really are because it was there even before you became conscious and it will be there until you die. So, maybe it is not such a bad idea to stick yourself to your breath and get real close with it, because it seems that this is the regulator, the point that from breath to breath brings everything - you currently think you are - up to existence and lets it die a few seconds later. Maybe there is some wisdom to find at that door, don't you think? I hope I could inspire you guys. Let me know what you think about it and do yourself a favor and watch Matt's video about this, it brought me to a new place I couldn't see before. Also, think about how your life would change if you'd be every breath consciously. You can still think, do everything as you want but you are every breath. What would change? How would you feel? What would be the pace of your breath? How much tension would be left inside your body? How complete would you feel? Let me know. And don't forget. Everything I just pointed out is just an idea. Nothing more. But as you tend to identify yourself with more and more ideas, maybe you want to chose one that sits a little nearer to the door of Truth then being fed up in never ending thoughts. Cheers to you,

How to access the World of the unmanifested and why should we attempt to do it? If we were born in the world of Form and time why should we escape to the world of the Unmanifested, the silence, nothingness and the timeless space. What's in it for us? Also how to connect with the inner body and Why (again). What happens with the inner body after the physical body dies?

When i was started education on college,i also started to watch self Actualization,and i was really motivated to do stuff. My fitness improves,grades , level of happiness are pretty good,and i was pleased.Also i was excited about life purpose ,and i was planing to do lot of work about that part,but also to enjoy life, learn about sexuality and approach lot of girls(maybe find one girlfriend that i can fall in love with),travel ,socialize more(party, going out, or some other activities) and dont have any regrets ,because im young now,now or never...But.... Leo started videos about enlightenment,and talking about no-self,and that sex,party,etc..-isnt good ,and havent value(but that is for my age 21, really important, but that isnt my main focus)... Why also have life purpose ,because i dont exist, how can i know what it is because i dont know who am I( that empty space)... and,Buddha sad that you dont need any wishes ,or something that you want,just enjoy...... Now , im demotivated ,deppressed, cant do anything, dont have girlfriend, everything is pointles, i have no ego and when i die,no one will die(how can i contemplate death,to motivate my self)...for example ,I was training soccer,and that was really important to me, i loved soccer so much... but that is extreme hard,if you want to be good at it, sometimes you just want to give up but i always talked to myself that Im the best,and my ego wanted to be best ,that was my will power ,not things like im nothingness ,never mind, just enjoy ,... Please help,maybe im wrong, but im in tuff situation,i dont want to waste my time,that thought that im nothing really demotivates me,and i think that you cant kill ego,it is nice to be less egoist,but without ego i dont have real motivation. Sorry for my english,not good at it .

Don't forget that: The emotion that motivated you to start this thread - is the activity of mind (of human). Thoughts that you wrote here - are the activity of mind. Your relief - activity of mind. Your conclusion that some kind of "problem" is "solved" - activity of mind. Your search - activity of mind. Confusion - activity of mind. Any ideas of "external" or "internal" or the abscence of both or whatever, any kind of ideas, conclusions, memories, thoughts, feelings - mind. What reads this and understands these symbols - mind. Even the thought about "mind" is just another idea, another object. Knowing and not knowing - mind. Thought that "you are nothingness" - it is just another thought, another object, mind again. It is human who is thinking. What is the most real right now, right here? Not an object. But the most real in the most now? Riiight now. Not a thought, not an experience, not a vision, not a feeling. I don't know, this is the question that I ask myself.

This sounds very philosophical, not my strong spot but this is interesting. A thought is energy, its energy in your mind and body that you put into language and becomes a thought. If you hold a certain type of energy for long you will have thoughts that come one after the other that are on the same energy level. I like what you said. From my perspective - if thoughts are energy (like anything else that is physical) then when it fades (or there isnt too much energy to distract you from who you really are) then there is nothingness. But then again, energy never really dies, it just takes on another form. So are we energy or nothingness? I'm confusing myself now

@DizIzMikey Nothingness. The boundary between the internal and external is an illusion. We just say those things because of the limitations of language. There is only one being.

Empirically, I do not exist because I cannot be a thought, if you notice each thought fades into the oblivion, than another thought pops up, and than another, but at no time do all the thoughts exist at the same time, just a thought after another thought, so where am I? Am I a thought? I cannot be a thought because it fades away, anything that fades empirically cannot exist, because I am looking at the evidence at hand from within, nothing else nothing more. What I'm wondering is if a thought exists for a moment because it does appear, but than does it die? Yes.. I have concluded that a thought exists, than it dies, but it does not mean it has to poise truth, because it doesn't, the foundation empirically from within, when a thought fades is... nothingness, now to only stay with the nothingness.

A self is just a label, a concept. No external factor can change that you don't exist. As for proving this is the case, I say just keep doing the enlightenment work. I'm not enlightened, but on good faith, I'll go ahead and say it will make sense when you are truly awakened. After all, nothing exists besides nothingness.