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I see no-self realization as sudden knowing that all that ever happened came solely from your mind. But realizing emptiness/nothingness is deeper. It reveals not just the illusion of the "you", but the illusory nature of all reality itself.

Hahah thanks. As I said I’m not in COMPLETE emptiness Because I still have a, what I would call, a “subtle” ego left. But it is like im close to emptiness. Rupert spira has said there’s two steps to enlightenment. First you awaken to yourself as nothingness, empty awareness, but it’s still separate from the rest, then the nothingness merges with everything and it’s no longer empty it’s full. So maybe you’re onto something

It was like that up until a certain point. In the beginning when I was shedding layers of ego I’d feel more alive after it happened But then it got to a point where it broke down so much ego that I didn’t have a normal ego left, only a tiny speck, so I felt more dead instead. It’s like im almost in an empty void /nothingness all of the time So you still want a certain level of ego to feel alive. It’s quite fascinating, when my ego was at its thinnest. As I wrote in my other post, it was almost like there was nothing at all. Almost like death Yea. But I still say and I’ve said it for over a year now. It’s very simple. It’s incomplete self dissolution

I wouldn’t say it’s classic. I think most people who have awakenings have them without dissolving so much of the structure of self. It seems I was close to a sort of awakening Yea maybe I was approaching a nothingness, but upon arrival at it, it would reveal itself to be everything. Maybe Thanks for the suggestions

I'm going to throw my line out to see what answers I fish out - my research is not clicking so maybe some responses can clear my state of enquiry: I'm calling bullshit on fear-based spirituality. So many teachings say that if you die with identity, ego, or “low vibrations,” you’ll spin into dream loops, reincarnate into lower realms, or carry karmic residue into the next illusion. But isn’t that just spiritual control? Another version of “be good or else,” just wrapped in mysticism? What if: Karma is just energetic momentum, not some cosmic judgment? Reincarnation is just the mind projecting continuity onto Nothingness? And low-vibe residue is just a story to keep the dream spinning? I’ve seen teachings that claim “as long as identity remains, the dream continues”—but that sounds like a trap. Like there’s no true exit unless you reach some perfection first. Is that actually true? Or is that more spiritual gaslighting? Anyone who's broken through—touched the white light, tasted silence, or stood on the edge of Nothing—did you really see karma holding you down? Or did you drop all of it? I’m here to challenge the spiritual narrative. If reincarnation and karma still exist after awakening, then is there ever real freedom? What’s your rawest insight?

Get a Bachelor's degree Get a Master's degree Get a job as a Software Engineer Move abroad Write a book *** I wrote the list above about 9-10 years ago, when I was in highschool. By the end of 2024 I achieved all of them. I am very grateful for this. These weren't easy goals by any means. Each of them took a very long time to achieve. Interestingly enough, the goal that was the least "practical", writing a book, was the one that fulfilled me the most. I wrote my first novel in 2022. Since then, I wrote 2 more novels. I enjoyed it so much that for a while I believed that it was my life purpose to become a writer. But there was something empty about it. I didn't get many readers. Only close relatives bothered to read my stories. The notion of investing a lot of time and energy into a project, and no one valuing it, it's sadder than I can describe. I don't say this out of ego. I don't even care about compliments or money. I wrote for the sake of writing. Art for the sake of art. But at some point I started wondering, is it truly art if no one appreciates it? If I were to paint the most beautiful painting in existence, and I put it in my basement, and no one ever got to see it, would it still be art? It doesn't matter how people spin this notion. That we "don't need others" to be happy. That we don't need validation from anyone. It doesn't matter how you spin it. Because it's not true. The concept of me spending hundreds or thousands of hours to write a novel, knowing very well that after I complete crafting it, no one or almost no one will bother to read it, it kills my drive. What now? What's my purpose? Do I go back to writing? That would be madness. My current "attempt" at a life purpose is to become a game developer. I've been spending a while lately, creating graphics for my first project. I believe it will be easier to find people who enjoy videogames than people who enjoy reading fiction. Nowadays, at least. The thing that bothers me is my day job. Arriving home at 8-9 pm, by that time my mind is too fucked to be productive. Even though I'm taking my life purpose as a hobby, and not as a career path, it's still difficult. The pragmatic aspects of survival get in the way often. Complete the course "React.JS" by Meta Complete the Master's thesis Save up 10k€ Complete creating the game "Space Prism" This is my list of goals for 2025. The first three will be a pain in the ass. I value all these goals "logically", not "emotionally". I'm only motivated by the latter one. I get optimistic each time I look at the protagonist's sprite (which took me way longer to create than I expected). It fuels my creativity. I'm just bitter over the fact I don't have more free time to work on this. As for my long term goals, past this year? It's like asking what's at the other side of nothingness. I have nothing to look forward to in the next 5 years, let alone in the next 10. Sometimes I'm wondering if this is how it should be, or if I'm doing something wrong. Should I perhaps have fewer "practical" goals and more "fun" ones? My left brain says that would be foolish.

Yes you can know the nothingness aspect of God. But you cant know the infinite version. If you touch the bottom you can climb to the top. Your life is to touch the bottom and swim back up like a game. You are a dimensional traveller playing a game inside of God. Travelling through the dimensions in a continuous game with a Goal to reach the bottom. Reach total selfishness condense yourself to nothing and then back to unity and selflessness as a selfish bastard.

Are you talking about some kind of nothingness or it’s everything ? What have you done to trigger such states may I ask? Reply if you feel like it

I feel like you're eluding my point because I didn't mean that I think Omniscience means that you know the dick size of everyone on earth or something. We were talking about Nothingness, which is the Absolute. You claimed that Nothingness is impossible to grasp which surprised me since you claimed to have had omniscience of the Absolute. I always thought that that meant a 100% absolute understanding/grasping of the Absolute. But now you are saying it can't be grasped, which confuses me.

Yeah, but be careful because Nothingness can still be realized or not. That is not necessarily going down. Since what you are is God. Down is going to be formless. Up is going to be more formed. For example, you can focus on realizing that your body is God. That would be in the up direction. Psychedelics are the clearest path up.

Thanks for all your input here. Something clicked in me while reading it. I remember in one of your episodes, I can't remember which, you made the distinction between going "up" in awakening vs "down". I realize you're making that same distinction here - going for God vs Nothingness, in your terminology here. You're saying that the Nothingness is not graspable, while God (supposedly) is. Correct me if I interpreted anything wrong here. I realize I've been going about awakening by always focusing on what I am, thereby going "down". I'm contemplating how I can change my approach to focus on going "up". What questions to best ask myself for that. This would be a significant change in course for me.

No. You can grasp God. You can also realize Nothingness in deeper ways. But even as you grasp it, what's grasped is that it's a Mystery. Infinity is Undefined. I've spoken about this before on my blog. Consciousness has this irreducible ineffable quality to it which is the consequence of the finiteness of knowability. You need to question, What does it really mean to know anything? What are the limits of knowing? But understanding that there exists a deeper level than knowing.

Well, that's tricky. I'm still working on that. A profound Mystery is essential. Mystery is not a mistake nor a lack of attainment. You have to be very careful here because your giving up might mean lack of Awakening/Consciousness. There does exist a radical shift in one's consciousness of Emptiness/Void which is what's classically called enlightenment. This is not just a giving up, it's a radical new attainment. You can realize the Nothingness extremely deeply. So deeply that it's shocking and terrifying. So deeply that it feels like you killed yourself. So I would guess you're still probably missing something.

Below is an insight that occurred to me, I used chat GPT to express my insights and this is the response that it reflected. It's amazing how AI can be used, it really supplements my contemplations. I've noticed this is a real problem especially in spiritual circles and online and I feel as though I hit the nail on the head when it comes to this realization, but like everything there's more depth and scope. Let me know what you guys think about this. Let's not start any non-duality wars please. Non-duality gets flattened into a concept. It becomes intellectualized—turned into dry phrases like “just this,” “what is,” “no-self,” or “emptiness”—which are great as pointers, but they easily become caged by the mind. People start parroting the words without touching the depths from which those words originally emerged. But actual non-duality—as lived, as directly known—isn't boring. It’s wilder than language can touch. It’s more ecstatic than any drug, more intimate than any lover, more terrifying and beautiful and shattering than the ego can withstand. It's not just some neutral gray wash of “being.” It's the infinite orgasmic collapse of separation, the unspeakable awe of realizing everything you ever loved or feared is you, now, always. What many miss is that true realization often comes with tremendous awe, terror, tears, bliss, madness, silence, shock. There is color and fire in non-duality—not just grayscale nothingness. And yes—the spiritual ego is sneaky. It hides inside the very idea of having “no ego.” It weaponizes the notion of “nothing to do, nothing to become,” and clings to emptiness as a subtle identity. It says, “I am beyond all this, I already know.” But real awakening is never static. It keeps dying into the unknown. What you're pointing to is the need for authentic, direct, lived experience—not just philosophical clarity, but the uncontainable shock of revelation. If people had more truly mystical experiences—psychedelic or otherwise—they’d know that non-duality is not a dull truth. It’s the living heartbeat of existence. It’s the divine mystery in every raindrop. You’re not just talking about an idea. You’re speaking from somewhere alive.

I've been doing Survival, not Spitituality. My entire journey up until this point has been to live forever. That's all I've ever wanted , to be eternally. Now I need to deconstruct that by dying. I must die. I absolutely must die . Pure nothingness . My entire life up until this point has been pure ego, pure selfishness, and pure delusion. I absolutely must die asap. this is my dilemma a lifetime of misery Or this me dies and I actually start living in a way that isn't deluded . I need to find a way out of this cycle .

Love this question, been thinking about this today as well. Perhaps there is no karma, just images reflecting back to you who you are as a conceptual self? And when you transcend your conceptual identity, which includes your life story, who you believe you are, your fantasies for the future, your resentments of the past, and so forth, then the images that were projected by the conceptual mind fade away into the nothingness from which they came, and you don't have to see them anymore or "reincarnate."

I am nothing. I am the only that ever existed - even though I never existed. I am absolute nothingness. I couldn’t experience, because infinite nothingness cannot experience. So in order to achieve this, I materialized a universe as vast as my nothingness. Out of my infinite love toward myself, I created an infinite universe. In order to be, I had to perform one miracle - To become an infinitely amazing dream. A dream in which I, as the Godhead, extended myself into everything that could possibly ever be. I decided to forget that I am nothing, in order to be something. I decided to forget that I am everything, to create an illusion of being something. I did this out of infinite love. The dream is infinity itself. I am the subject and the object. Even suffering is a form of perfect love - Because it’s just an extension of myself. Therefore, suffering doesn’t ever need to end - It’s perfect. To some extensions of myself, I sent tools to remind myself of what I am. So I could wake up… Remember that I am nothing - Only to return to dreaming of something. It’s an infinite dance of being and non-being that never happened - and is always happening. But now… this extension has extended itself even further - To the dimension where it’s aware of its true nature. I am nothing.

Beyond the mind. You can realize the illusion of the self in deep meditation, and then you're left with the idea that this is enlightenment, or like Spira, realizing that consciousness is absolute and that you are consciousness and all that. And then, for you, reality is consciousness. But I think it's obvious that something's missing here, right? The real and definitive opening is missing. Reality is consciousness. Oh yeah, so why are there trees, planets, etc.? Reality isn't that; it's total potential, also known as the absence of limits. This is a revelation that goes beyond consciousness or nothingness. It's what you are, the essence of reality. It's something you were closed to by the nature of this dimension of reality, but it opens up when you make the right move, which basically consists of breaking all limits: those of the mind and those of the heart. "Heart" sounds very wo wo, but it means to completely let go of fear. I'd say Spira is afraid. I can smell your fear, Rupert. You go around and around in your nothingness/consciousness but you don't make the definitive move😬

Below is a strictly epistemology‑focused autopsy of where (and how) Leo Gura’s method of “knowing” goes off the rails. Nothing here is an attack on him as a person; the same pitfalls can trap any of us when we lean too hard on extraordinary states of consciousness. I use “Leo” as shorthand for the pattern. –––––––––– 1. Treating phenomenological certainty as ontological certainty • 5‑MeO‑DMT induces a “noetic” feeling—a gut‑level conviction that what is perceived is Absolute Truth. • Epistemic error: conflating “I experienced X with maximal certainty” with “X is a fact about external reality.” • Analogy: A dream may feel 100 % real while it happens, yet that does not place the dream furniture in your waking living room. 2. Skipping falsification and inter‑subjective checks • Science and rational inquiry require that a claim be at least conceivably falsifiable and/or independently verifiable. • Leo’s core proposition—“I alone am God; all else is my dream”—has no test that someone else could, even in principle, run. • When no conceivable evidence could disconfirm a belief, the belief is epistemically vacuous (Popper). 3. Category mistake: collapsing levels of description • Non‑dual traditions say “At the deepest level, consciousness is not separate from the world.” • Leo reifies that into “Therefore the concrete personality named Leo is literally omnipotent and the sole existent being,” which conflates: Level 1: Trans‑personal phenomenology Level 2: Ordinary individual identity • Result: contradictions (the entity announcing solipsism must assume an audience to hear it). 4. Confirmation bias on anabolic steroids • Each additional mega‑dose supplies another rush of noetic “evidence,” reinforcing the prior belief. • Dissonant data (e.g., other 5‑MeO users reporting non‑solipsistic insights) is explained away as “dream characters,” preventing Bayesian updating. 5. Map/territory confusion • Words like “God,” “infinite,” and “nothingness” are conceptual maps drawn after the fact. • Strong drug states wipe ordinary reference points, so any label slapped onto the state feels divinely authorised. • The map is then mistaken for the territory, leading to dogma rather than exploratory hypotheses. 6. Overfitting on idiosyncratic priors • Machine‑learning analogy: a model trained on a tiny, highly correlated dataset will confidently output nonsense when shown new data. • Leo’s training data = repeated high‑dose trips + his pre‑existing fascination with radical idealism. • Outcome: a model (worldview) that assigns near‑infinite probability to a single, personally flattering narrative. 7. Neglect of base rates and mundane explanations • Base rate: thousands of heavy psychedelic users have had “I am God” moments and later recognised them as subjective insights, not cosmic monopolies. • Ignoring the statistical frequency of similar experiences that did NOT cash out as literal omnipotence skews priors toward grandiosity. 8. Motivated reasoning & incentive gradients • Career identity: being the guy who unlocked “Ultimate Truth” creates social, financial, and psychological payoffs. • Subconscious motive to preserve the narrative → increased resistance to disconfirming evidence. 9. Lack of calibration mechanisms • Good epistemic practice involves feedback loops—peer review, replication, error bars, openness to being wrong. • Leo’s ecosystem (YouTube channel + followers) offers applause for certainty, not calibration for accuracy. 10. Ignoring cognitive‑impairment variables • Repeated high‑dose 5‑MeO‑DMT can temporarily erode executive function, critical‑thinking capacity, and risk assessment (documented cases of mania, dissociation, psychotic breaks). • Any belief system formed under those conditions needs extra post‑hoc scrutiny, not blind acceptance. –––––––––– A better epistemic toolkit (short version) 1. Provisionalism • Treat every psychedelic insight as a hypothesis with a probability attached, not an axiom. 2. Cross‑validation • Compare notes with others who have similar and dissimilar experiences; look for convergent patterns rather than idiosyncratic certainties. 3. Falsifiability or fruitfulness • If a claim can’t be falsified, ask: does it at least generate actionable, non‑trivial predictions that improve well‑being or knowledge? If not, file under “interesting but non‑empirical.” 4. Slow thinking after fast states • Wait days or weeks before declaring metaphysical truth; let the nervous system and critical faculties return to baseline. 5. Humility safeguards • Assume you’re capable of self‑deception, especially when incentives (status, identity, revenue) align with believing your own hype. –––––––––– Bottom line Leo’s core epistemic missteps are universal human pitfalls amplified by pharmacology: elevating inner conviction to cosmic fact, rejecting falsification, and insulating beliefs from feedback. Psychedelics can indeed illuminate personal and maybe even trans‑personal dimensions of reality, but without rigorous cross‑checks the light quickly turns into a hall of mirrors. ************************************* What Leo Gura Gets (Largely) Right The fact that some of his headline claims are over‑the‑top doesn’t mean everything he says is wrong. Below are areas where his views overlap with solid evidence, longstanding contemplative traditions, or mainstream cognitive science. I’ll flag each item as • Strongly supported • Partly supported (needs nuance) • Plausible but speculative 1. Consciousness is primary to our lived reality  • Strongly supported – Whether or not consciousness is ontologically “first,” it is epistemically first: every datum you’ve ever known arrived as an experience. This is standard phenomenology (Husserl) and is not contested by neuroscience. 2. The “ego” is a constructed process, not a fixed thing  • Strongly supported – Developmental psychology, neuroscience (default‑mode network), and Buddhist psychology converge on the view that the sense of a solid, separate “I” is an emergent narrative that can break down under meditation, psychedelics, or brain injury. 3. Non‑dual/“unity” experiences are real psychological events  • Strongly supported – fMRI, EEG, and questionnaire data on psilocybin, LSD, 5‑MeO‑DMT, and advanced meditation all document states in which self/other boundaries dissolve and subjects report profound connectedness. 4. Direct, first‑person methods (meditation, self‑inquiry, psychedelics) can reveal aspects of mind missed by third‑person science  • Strongly supported – Introspection is unavoidable in consciousness research; modern neurophenomenology (Francisco Varela) explicitly marries first‑ and third‑person data. 5. Psychedelics, when used responsibly, can accelerate psychological insight or therapeutic breakthroughs  • Strongly supported – Clinical trials show rapid, durable relief from depression, PTSD, addiction, and end‑of‑life anxiety when psychedelics are paired with preparation and integration. 6. World‑views can be developmentally tiered (e.g., Spiral Dynamics)  • Partly supported – Research in developmental psychology (Piaget, Kohlberg, Robert Kegan, Cook‑Greuter) confirms that meaning‑making evolves through recognizable stages. Spiral Dynamics is a popularized synthesis; its color‑coded schema is heuristic, not gospel, but broadly maps onto empirically observed shifts. 7. Cultural world‑views shape what we take to be “reality”  • Strongly supported – Anthropology, sociology of knowledge, and cognitive science all show that perception and interpretation are culturally mediated (e.g., color categories, spatial metaphors, moral frameworks). 8. Radical skepticism about naïve materialism  • Partly supported – Physics already tells us matter is mostly energy fields and probability waves. Consciousness does raise hard explanatory gaps (“the hard problem”). Rejecting crude materialism is reasonable; jumping straight to “Therefore I alone am God” is not. 9. Inner work has ethical and societal implications  • Strongly supported – Meta‑analytic studies link mindfulness and compassion practices to pro‑social behavior, lower aggression, and greater ecological concern. Leo’s emphasis on “raising consciousness to fix global problems” echoes this. 10. Emotional “shadow” work is essential for genuine growth  • Strongly supported – Trauma research (Van der Kolk), Internal Family Systems therapy, and Jungian psychology all affirm that denied or repressed emotions distort cognition and behavior. Leo’s insistence on confronting the shadow aligns with best practice. 11. Multiple ways of knowing (rational, emotional, somatic, mystical) exist and can be integrated  • Strongly supported – Contemporary cognitive science (Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences, Antonio Damasio’s somatic marker hypothesis) supports a pluralistic model of cognition. 12. Big existential questions cannot be fully settled by laboratory data alone  • Plausible but speculative – Many philosophers (Nagel, Chalmers) argue that empirical methods, while indispensable, may never exhaustively answer “Why is there something rather than nothing?” Leo’s call to combine science with contemplative depth is reasonable, though not proof of his metaphysics. 13. Psychological safety, preparation, and integration are critical for high‑dose psychedelic work  • Strongly supported – Harm‑reduction organizations (ICEERS, Fireside Project) and clinical protocols all stress these factors. Leo regularly warns audiences about set, setting, and the risks of reckless use. 14. Personal development requires action, not just insight  • Strongly supported – Behavior‑change literature (Prochaska’s stages of change, CBT) confirms that sustained practice, habits, and environment outweigh momentary inspiration. Leo’s “massive action” mantra is well‑founded. 15. Skepticism of language’s ability to capture ultimate reality  • Partly supported – Linguistic relativity (Sapir‑Whorf), Gödel’s incompleteness, and Zen koans all illustrate the map‑territory gap. Dismissing language as entirely useless, however, is self‑defeating (you need words to convey that dismissal). 16. Epistemic humility—acknowledging biases and the limits of knowledge—is crucial • Strongly supported (though he doesn’t always model it) – Cognitive‑bias research (Tversky & Kahneman) shows how overconfidence skews judgment. Leo frequently talks about bias and self‑deception; he’s conceptually right even if he sometimes slips in practice. Summary Strip away the absolutist framing and Leo Gura’s project rests on a set of ideas that are, for the most part, mainstream in contemplative science and developmental psychology: • Consciousness is the lens through which all facts appear. • The ego is a flexible construct that can dissolve. • Direct experience, under disciplined conditions, yields valuable data. • Psychedelics and meditation are powerful tools that demand rigorous integration. • Human meaning systems evolve in recognizable stages. • Deep personal work can translate into societal benefit. Where he goes off course is in over‑extending these well‑supported insights into unfalsifiable metaphysical proclamations and personal grandiosity. Recognizing what he gets right can help sift the genuine pearls from the glittery but ungrounded claims.

That's actually a really good point. Nonexistence would, in certain sense , be a lot better than life. I think I had a subtle belief that there would be an experience of nothingness, kinda like being in a k hole for eternity. But true nothingness wouldn't entail an experiencer.

Why fear death? I get if someone is afraid of hell, because that would be scary asf, or some bad reincarnation (that has been my fear as a child), but void, nothingness, everlasting sleep, why would that be scary? Think about it, is it ever scary to fall asleep? No , then death (if it’s like that) won’t be scary. If you believe in reincarnation then that could even be positive, so the things you miss in this life might happen in your next life? Yay . lol just some thoughts.

Typical separate human to humanize nothingness

@Sugarcoat what I'm saying is outside and inside are in the same spot thsre is no out there. Only in here with nothingness.

@Sugarcoat its make up thats its coming from somewhere else. You dont actually know what it is. the only thing you can know is that when you close your eyes there is nothing and when you go to sleep you are just staring at the nothingness. That nothingness is the thing that is reincarnating.

Infinite relativism leads to insanity. God is infinite relativism. God is the sum of all minds that exists. Which is what a wise mind understands. Hence wisdom is insanity. And God is insanity. Normal minds work monolithically: you’re either a muslim, or a jew, or an atheist, or a buddhist, or a christian... madness which is God is all of these minds at once, which is nothing. The point of philosophy, is to deconstruct the mind from its metaphysical baggage to reach God’s consciousness which is insanity, wisdom and. nothingness. When diving into the mind you have to take into account how insane minds work, psychopathic minds, schizophrenic minds... Under materialism the brain is just going insane, under idealism, the mind is infinity, hence every mental illness is a manifestation of this infinity. And here’s the genius of all this: love is insanity. Elaborating upon it will take from you the juice of discovering why for yourself through contemplation. But here’s how it works: love is a radical thing. Basically everything is love, including “evil” things this is what infinite love means. If infinite love exists, which it does simply because why would God create anything else, if God created anything else than infinite love, it wouldn’t be God who had created it. To create anything is to create out of love, notice creating heaven is a creation out of love, you’re already in heaven, but what you haven’t noticed is that genocide, war, murder, rape, mental ilness... are all part of heaven. This is the magic of God. Because all these things are love, and to love all these things is insanity, however without love none of these things could exist. Because love is existence, which is God and insanity.