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@Mason Riggle The problem here is you are having an investigation over yourself and then project the same qualities and attributes to the entire universe. It is a common problem in nonduality - you just assume it is you, because you have no other point of reference .

Hey, I was hoping for your feedback regarding experience of cessation. I believe cessation is the only "true" experience of sheer nonduality (AKA literal escape from duality), though a "person" cannot subjectively actually experience the cessation in the sense that instead you seem to just skip forward in time. Everything before cessation toes only up to the edge of the cliff face. As long as there is an appearance of ANYTHING there is still localization and hence an appearance of duality, regardless of how whatever is left interprets it.

Cause and effect is a duality, it is two things. There is a cause + an effect. In nonduality there would only be "effect". Cause has no meaning without an effect: If something happens but nothing else happens as a result, it's not a cause. Something is only a cause when something else happens as a result of it. The most fundamental thing must just be "effect", arising without cause. Everything which arises from "effect" then makes the effect a cause...

Soz to hear. I'm in the UK so to hear of people being near bankrupted to receive medical care seems insane. Surely being able to actually live is the most basic human right? What sort of Darwinian nightmare is it where we just throw the sick to the wolves to die? It seems a simple step away from eugenics. Anyway. I mentioned you a few times in my thread about the impossibility of experiencing nonduality (due to your experience with cessation). I know this site doesn't notify for such things but I'd be much obliged if you could give your input on the matter. As I see it, cessation is the only direct "experience" of nonduality, though ironically it's a non-experience.

@gettoefl Nice. Thanks for adding that. Duality, Nonduality... It's all the same juice. Who's to tell the difference..?

yea but when you stub your toe, where does nonduality go. Is there really no one who stubbed their toe? Who goes to the toilet? Awareness does not go !

@tatsumaru I don't think this question or premise has anything to do with duality or nonduality whatsoever. If no conventional logic or answer is plausible for the question, then perhaps it is something crazy. Lol. Can existence be non-existent? That's impossible? But in nothingness there's no such thing as impossibility or logic... So it's just absolutely topsy turvy. All things all at once because there is neither logic nor impossibility. Consider all the wild things that could be when there are zero logical laws. Cause causes effect? That's logical. How about effect causing cause? How about nothing being something. Existence being non-existent. A possibility branch of a thing which loops back and creates the nothing. Non-existence REQUIRING existence. Maybe a person says paradoxes don't exist. Non-existence doesn't exist either so they're on the same plane and can gladly interact.

Yes absolutely nothing is neither finite nor infinite but no proof nor logic exist in the context of absolute nothingness. Logic is a sequence of statements and it implies time. My point is that we can't work from this relative context to prove infinity. The only nonduality is nonduality, there is no shortcut.

You can't have both nonduality and create a duality of you separate from an experience. But experience is not the duality you create about it. That duality exists purely for communication (I experienced this flower yesterday!), the experience itself is nondual and not separate from you.

@RMQualtrough YES, cessation and dissolution comes with a partial or total loss of memory, but nothingness doesn't, you're literally awake in the dream. Its not like being asleep or under anesthesia, you're fully there in eternity. That's the peace you're missing. You remember it also, there's no loss in memory. The key thing is you can't differentiate the waking stste from the dream state. That's the experience needed to realise that reality is not distinguishable from a dream. Which is 100% nonduality. No edging. I have no experience with psychedelics, so I couldn't tell you, I also don't advise taking psychedelics. Just know that cessation and dissolution is TOTALLY different from nothingness. There's more to "IT"

@Endangered-EGO Both, I've had a total dissolution of self when I smoked a breakthrough dose of DMT while tripping on 500ug of LSD. I recall afterwards, it occurred to me that no matter who gets there it won't matter anymore, because NO part of them is there. What is a lifelong Buddhist monk when everything Buddhist monk is gone? What is a junkie rapist when everything junkie rapist is gone? They are the same. Identical. Once "there" which ALL people will inevitably go to, everything and everyone is identical. I've had "cessation" I THINK (at least as far as we can tell, like general anaesthetic it's impossible to say if we just lost memory) from DMT also. On that occasion on the second pull doing the one hitter type method with the Glass Vaporgenie, the world exploded black, neon squiggles flew off into the black, then next thing I knew I was "coming to" some time after with no sense of anything between. Very odd. I have also been under general anaesthetic twice... It is possible the cessation is a loss of memory. That would be unproveable. But logically I think that is what nonduality really is. When I had dissolution experiences, it bothered me that there were visuals at all, because the fact there was a vision meant there was still observer and observed. Even if the subjective sense of separation vanished.

@Endangered-EGO I think the nondual experience we can have is Nirodhi Samapatti, hence I tagged @BipolarGrowth . I think cessation = total merger with the one. I think as long as there is observed, there is observer. Whether it's a blank white void or w.e. else that may be. That is an illusion of duality, but much much closer to apparent truth than we have ever been before. But still a perception of nonduality. I think one tiptoe step farther and you fall off that cliff. All localization ends and you just cease to be and come to some time later like Nirodhi Samapatti. Ironically the experience is actually non-experience... There is no experience of non-experience.

Ok, I get what you're saying. We are not the layers of the onion, whe are the dream/structure of the onion. If you think you can only edge nonduality but not enter it, then you haven't had a real full glimpse yet. Because once you are there there's just nothingness, the dream, divinity or oneness. You can be in 100% nonduality. I have had glimpses of it and I guarantee it. Ask enlightened people, they are going to tell you, you're all the way IT. Even the glimpses show you that it's no edge its IT. There no closeness or approximation to it. You can be full INTO it. It's absolute, I can't communicate it, it's absolute. Once you're close, merge with it, let it fill everything, surrender to it or whatever your spiritual practice tells you. I promise, ask enlightened people (I'm not I just had glimpses of a part of "IT")

@Moksha Indeed, otherwise I'd never have ended up here haha! But I think in total truth and reality, where we are venturing is basically onto the cliff edge. We are toeing the line but we never go over it. The user @BipolarGrowth has spoke of cessation experiences. I think that is what's over the cliff edge. ALL localization ceases, so then there is only nothing (actually everything, but that can't be experienced in nonduality because there is no observed to allow for observing).

We are there it's the ground. Experience always appears as duality. In deep mystical states you might be nothingness in a white void. There is experience of white, and hence something observing white. Still an appearance of duality even though the boundary of self is subjectively gone and the white is "you". Cessation is nonduality. That is where we reside always.

You never left nonduality. "Experience" only appears as duality so long as you insist on there being "experience". You don't need to enter general anesthetic or deep sleep or whatever. Here it is.

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

Yes, I have read a handful of amazing new books which I plan to do an update for (no ETA because of ongoing health issues). These days I mostly read books about how to build a conscious society. I have no more need or interest in books about nonduality or the like. These days when I read a book it's all about quality. I will only read really high quality books which add something new to my understanding. Which isn't so easy to find.

@Adamq8 Nice reference to Donald Hoffman. I enjoy his speeches. I think though that with many teachers, what makes the idea inaccessible to "hardnosed scientific" type people, is that they say experience only has correlation in physical matter in a way that makes it seem like they're implying physical matter has no bearing at all on experience. I don't think you need to deny the science of the external world or neuroscience etc. for nonduality to be true. In fact, because this "dream" (the universe) IS God, science is perhaps one of the most divine practices of all alongside meditation, as exploration of the science of this universe is very literally an exploration of God, since God IS it. I do not see any issue if the brain does in fact control what this "localized form" experiences. I do not see that it is any issue whatsoever or that it is contrary to nonduality in any way. Matter is made of consciousness, the brain is simply millions of years of evolution constructing a sort of superorganism where millions of points of experience work as one unit. There isn't a combination problem because the little points of experience don't vanish... The combination problem is like hypothesizing that animals like horses are just one single giant cell. In reality, it is millions of cells, none of the smaller cells vanish when they come together as that horse. Not only do I think it's possible, I think it is FACTUAL. I think most robots are conscious. Think of this... If there is a little robot vacuum cleaner, it moves around on wheels and has a laser sensor that detects when there is an object ahead so that it can turn. When that laser detects a wall and sends a signal to the robot's chip, it turns. Why? Because it is AWARE that there is a wall ahead. It has KNOWLEDGE that a wall is ahead. If there was zero awareness that a wall is ahead, it wouldn't turn it would just run straight into it because it doesn't know the wall is there. Because it is so alien to us this is almost impossible to understand, but I do not see how it could be any other way. By dictionary definition, that little robot is displaying an act of awareness. How could it not be? So inside that robot there is a localized form of consciousness. When the robot is turned off, the localization is no more, like a whirpool in a river (whirpools being localized in the stream) going away leaving just river. When our brains are turned off, the localization is no more. Consciousness and qualia all exist inside God which is "nothingness" and the "place" where things go when there is nothing to experience them like the example of red.

It can't be impossible to reconcile the two things. The relative experience of anaesthesia etc is cessation/nothingness. Cessation doesn't mean it stops existing. The states mentioned are still full of human things, not suddenly sonar vision like a bat and so on. I think the Absolute is nothingness. Pure infinite consciousness is totally nondual, no experience exists here, nor time, nor anything. Nothingness = everythingness. Go to the big bang. From say a void perspective there is no experience of anything. But this is happening. When experience happens the "experiencer" appears. I think someone very recently said, when experience stops the experiencer ceases too, and pure consciousness is something deeper than that. When there is experience then, is it just tapping into some of the infinite qualia already present? So possibly nothing in the entire universe rn can see an infinite myriad of colors which DO exist but can't currently be experienced... that we just see as a certain shade of blue or w.e. In a dream, as soon as you see anything you are localized somewhere in the dream. It is impossible to experience a dream without duality being created. With legit full nonduality there is cessation/nothingness/the void. What is the existence of things prior to subjective experience like. When consciousness is still 100% nondual. There is no way that these things are mutually exclusive.

Below is the third excerpt out of 12 about reification. Not to be confused with Californication. Just joking,,,, link at the bottom. Mind's Tendency to Reify As we look closer at these subtle ego activities, we discover the tendency to reify reification itself and make it a kind of object to reject. In our minds, we make it something from which we can push away and separate ourselves. The same process can happen as we reify doing, making it something to reject or judge. Even more subtle than that—we can reify nondoing, such that nondoing becomes an object, a thing we can value or cultivate. The truth is that nondoing is really nothing. No such thing exists that is called nondoing. Nondoing is the nonexistence of doing, but we make it something to aspire to, which can become a subtle obstacle. Something similar can happen to those who work exclusively with a nondual perspective about reality: at some point, they begin to reify nonduality, and it becomes for them an objective to aspire to and reach. So, as you see, the tendency of the mind to reify in order to create stability, a fixed center, or a particular orientation is unlimited. The mind, then, is a mixed blessing, a double-edged sword. And that is the condition of humanity: Our intelligence, our mind, can liberate us but it can also ensnare us. Our learning, our maturation, and even our realization and enlightenment, require the capacity for discernment, for clear discrimination, of what is true and what is not true. The Unfolding Now, pg. 188 Taken from: https://www.diamondapproach.org/glossary/refinery_phrases/reification

I called SOLIPSISM a belief. Read the thread. Even my original post I specifically called the fact that there is only you a truth. YOU are interpreting it as solipsism. I am not proposing solipsism, I am proposing nonduality. Truth = Zero, Nothingness, Consciousness, Magic.

@dflores321 There's nothing wrong with it, it just is. No, this community has shown itself to be clearly against such a thing. But honestly I expect this community (or rather, the wider nonduality community) to produce at least one offshoot which holds abandoning the dream via physical death to be the highest aim, and it wouldn't be the world's first death cult by a long shot.

That is, the explanation for qualia (the redness of red etc). Clearly this is a harder problem for materialism, but it is also the case with nonduality/idealism. Why does red look red and not blue for example? Why is green not yellow and yellow not green? How and why is our brain tapping into this world of colour? Are there infinite more colours available? I assume there must be. Why don't we see those? Does any living thing?

I believe every post or insight containing the word nothingness would help the collective consciousness more if replaced by the word "everythingness". Doesnt eveythingness have a better ring to it? If we are to awaken the world, I think everythingness is an easier bus to jump into for the masses or anyone inexperienced with nonduality. Do you believe the quality of the mystical teachings would be any lesser if I replace every instance in existence of the word nothingness to ----> everythingness? I may be wrong, so I welcome any discussion.