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Thank you, The core reason for understanding this is to understand why we are born, if reincarnation happens again and again and for a reason, that we have to work towards in this life, then I will definitely want to work towards it. Edit: I need some guidance, some basic answers to my question and resource materials that I can go through.

Actually, Leo has already covered the major pitfall of enlightenment in his Zen Devils video. Mahasamadhi is a non-issue. What will happen is you will hit mahasamadhi and then your karma will get exhausted during the integration period. Maybe, to riff off Shanmugam, if you're really old and feeble you are presented with a choice, otherwise you're probably not. (I assume Mahasamadhi is Unity Consciousness and not sahaja, since karma has already been exhausted by the time sahaja is reached.) That is what the people who have gone through it have told me (I haven't completed it myself yet.) I wasn't even presented with a choice upon reaching 1000, since I had no intention of dying. Edit: A thought has occurred to me as to why the choice of death may be presented. The integration period can involve going through added crap to exhaust your karma fully (although usually not THAT bad.) If, however, you're already old and feeble, in pain, whatever, it may exacerbate all of that. Maybe that's what it's about. Taking the no-reincarnation option upon death or staying alive and going through the integration period struggles. This is a theory based on my experience so far.

@Shanmugam I don’t care about authorities really, I’m not into believing them, I’m not identified with any religion. I’m not asking to believe in anything. I’m simply researching it and it is in progress, I’m not concluding anything. But you have to understand that There are rules to this dream, you see? Everything changes. we used to be monkeys, now we are clever monkeys, then we will be something else. There is evolution and it’s not only physical but also happens on the level of subtle bodies or souls. It’s easy to understand that once you dig deeper into understanding of karma and reincarnation cycle. This cycle exists for evolutionary purposes, not just to torture us like Buddha thought. That’s it, evolution has its logic and plan and Homo sapiense is not the highest stage of evolution. Its not about higher meaning and purpose per se, its about how reality is structured, how it progresses, how it changes. Christianity, Islam and Judaism only exists because of that, they give a guidance within this ‘dream’, they are not about enlightenment, enlightenment for them is just one step, if they are about enlightenment they would simply state that, like Buddha did he said I teach enlightenment, but they stated different things. It’s not just bunch of metaphors of enlightenment like many ppl like to think. And they seem to be contradictory but once you look on the spirituality and religions from integral point of view you can see that they actually complement each other. To understand what Aurobindo meant, one need to research it, it’s rather a complicated topic. Even the chosen ones will be deceived (c) Jesus. (chosen ones = enlightened ones)

@Joseph Maynor Just to give some important points 1) In Buddhism, after the death of a lama, Tibetan lamas follow some stars and travel a long distance to find out the reincarnation of that Lama. This is a custom. Once they find that reincarnated child, they usually take him with them as the child becomes a boy and teach him Buddhism. Those lamas could be the three magis from East who visited Jesus during his birth (as explained in Bible) 2) In a Buddhist monastery in India, a manuscript was discovered. It talks about Issa, a saint from Isreal who was taken by lamas and brought to India when he was 14 years old. This explains why there is nothing found in Bible about where Jesus was between the age 12 to 30.. Consider the above fact and also consider those gnostic gospels which talk about Jesus in a different way. Watch the full video, you will get more details..

Question for Leo or any other people who have had significant enlightenment experiences: Why is there so much misconception about what happens after death between people who have experienced what you have? the buddhists believe this, jesus says this, hindus say this, reincarnation, heaven, hell, non duality, the list of these concepts goes on - how can so many people experience that which is beyond words yet come out of it with such radically different perspective on what actually happens after death?

Does anyone think Jesus, Mohammed, buddha, or any other spiritual being in our history, has experienced this awakening that we all seek? Each of them comes out of it with many similar views on how to live your life, but very different views on what happens when you die - heaven vs hell, reincarnation, never actually existing... the list seems to go on, although some of them may be somewhat similar/overlapping. So all these incredibly spiritual beings have this experience of that which is beyond words, yet coming to no clear consensus on what Truth awaits us after death. I need only look at the posts previously to see that there's no consensus either here - one starts to live? so I start to exist as everything that ever was, is and will be? GIven that I never existed, all my memories of anything that happened would be gone, so i'd have no recollection of my experiences. It's just a mindfuck when i try to ponder it. Would really love to find a way to get some 5MEO to get a glimpse of some of this, I've experienced only very mild enlightnement experiences as of yet compared to what I see Leo experiencing, but I had one profound one that showed me the groundlessness of reality, with consciousness creating reality, but it's hard to explain

@Leo Gura If you accept the idea of infinite layers and consecutive lives. What is your opinion on karma and reincarnation then? If there are layers of souls within your body is there a possibility that your "current" life will determine what "you" as the deeper layer (soul) will experience in the next life?

Hello folks, long time follower, first-time poster here. This past summer, thanks to following the path laid out by Uncle Leo (That's what we call him in my home, although he's younger), I woke up. I see and experience the unity daily and at times become so zoned out while meditating, I tear up with bliss but still have many old remnants and still have issues with the idea of a soul. Here is something that I have been contemplating off and on for a little while now, I hope I can explain my thoughts. If things are as I see them now, there is only one soul, but if things are not as they seem, I would consider the soul to be an array variable, as is used in software such as this very Forum and any program that is not extremely basic. For those who are not familiar with programming, here's a copy/paste of what an array variable is. "An array is a variable containing multiple values. Any variable may be used as an array. There is no maximum limit to the size of an array, nor any requirement that member variables be indexed or assigned contiguously. Arrays are zero-based: the first element is indexed with the number 0." By combining Buddhism with software practices and throwing nonduality out the door (or at least seeing the soul as a many-sided coin as the base of everything), perhaps the soul can be considered an array variable. All of our thoughts, experiences, and actions are smaller variables which accumulate over time and become a part of the larger variable -- the array/soul. The first element "0" could perhaps represent our birth/death/purpose/anything of utmost importance to the variable. When the functions that make use of this variable end (this existence), the variable would either be wiped clean and freed up, or recycled and embedded into a new function. This could explain both transcendence and reincarnation. This idea might not be a new concept but figured I'd share my thoughts and say hello to you fine people. Hello! How ya dooooooooooin?

Which topics you consider as fake, distractive nature, not worth & illusory in the path? What about Tarot, Adivination Magic Paranormal, Mental Powers, Psychokinesis Energy reading Aurea Extrasensorial Perception Entities Oniromancy Geometry patterns, "Don't distract!" Soul Karma Ietsism Subtle body Occultism Reincarnation Astral trips

I don’t know this Dali lama?..and I don’t anythjng about reincarnation as far as the conception. I can tell you that there is as much rascality in the center as any other. But I see it very clearly the whole movement of that center... I am not fortunate enough to have not gone through illusion ‘psychological becoming’ and deception ‘fueled by fear’. But at the same time I appreciate and have learned from illusion and deception. Any interpretation we come to as a reason of why things are the way they are to me would fall short of the truth, ‘As in of itself’ without our analyzation. I think it’s simply seeing the whole movement of the self so clear that this seeing acts as it’s own freedom. Like I said before I am not any different than any other.

@Faceless I don’t see what you mean. It must be so simple I can’t grasp it. Maybe you’re like the child born as the reincarnation of the Dali Lama. It seems very possible & interesting to me. Maybe you just never added the ego to begin with, and never experienced self deception. So there was nothing to transcend, nothing to be realized. Maybe you have only existed as love it’self, and never saw reality as other than your own illusion. No veil, no void, only love. That’s amazing to me.

From what I understand of the video, @Leo Gura is basically saying that idealism (the belief that all of reality is fundamentally a form of experience/consciousness) is true, because reality is groundless. What kind of leap is that to make? So we agree that reality is grounded in nothing, where anything is possible. Then why is it suddenly such an obvious thing that physical reality is an illusion and that brains do not generate consciousness? If literally ANYTHING is possible within this nothingness, why is a physical reality — where dead things eventually merge to become what we call awareness or consciousness — suddenly not possible in this context? Leo uses unfalsifiable inductive reasoning of the kind you see solipsists use ("you can't view the brain outside the brain") to claim that human consciousness is not generated by the brain, and that's just not sufficient to constitute a logical conclusion. You only have to refer to the "Russell's Teapot" thought experiment to prove how unfalsifiable claims are insufficient by themselves. Even if we grant Leo's assertion that what we call "our universe" is physics within consciousness and not the other way around, we now run into some problems: What happens after death? After all, the idea of death as the end of experience only makes sense in a physical context; if consciousness is generated by the brain. If we were to take seriously this extreme skepticism to what our "minds" tell us, we would have to go through life completely agnostic about what happens after death. Suddenly reincarnation seems plausible — if reality is a groundless "dream machine" that just churns out one groundless experience after another, as Leo also claims. A terrifying scenario, indeed. I have always found comfort in the fact that I know my existence is finite. Becoming an idealist completely shatters this notion. Is this what Leo is suggesting, or have I missed something? Believe it or not, there's an even bigger problem with dismissing all of physical reality as an illusion grounded in experience: Suddenly, everything can fall apart any minute. Why doesn't it? What reason do we have to be shocked if a UFO comes landing or the moon suddenly develops a face that talks? I imagine that the response would be: Because it would all be a dream and it wouldn't matter outside that context. But what about those "dreams" in reality that never end? Dreams featuring infinite lives of suffering? Surely the existence of such "dreams" is unacceptable? I know that my moment-to-moment suffering — whether in a dream or in waking life — is undesirable and would be unacceptable if it were to last for an infinity. This is the reality Leo seems to believe in, and I find it to be not only an amazing leap of logic for an otherwise smart individual, but also a deplorable demonstration of apathy that he seems completely fine with this. He's effectively dismissing all forms of suffering, no matter how gruesome or everlasting, when he admits to believe this suffering actually exists.

No he said " And then, popcorn will be created, and all of your reincarnation will be crunchy"

He has great theory on reincarnation btw

Maybe I'm his reincarnation ... YOU DIDN'T THOUGHT ABOUT THAT, DIDN'T YOU ???!!!

Good question. It was one of the questions I had to work myself through on my journey as well. Most people think of the soul and reincarnation like this - My name is Mark and my souls name is also Mark, and it looks just like I did when I was 20, and its separate from everyone else's soul, and when my body dies this soul will be placed into a new body. This way of thinking is an attempt to preserve the ego, even beyond physical death. Don't feel discouraged if that is what you are doing, the ego is very powerful and will do everything it can to preserve itself. The way I think of it is like this - This light is not my own. We all share the same eternal soul, and all other beings I will ever witness in my life are other incarnations of myself existing simultaneously. In that way, this one great soul reincarnates itself. And yet, you are that.

I think he thinks that you can experience the absolute suffering entirely for a lifetime, and not just as a ritual passage. @Ocean We could say there is the one soul The beloved ! RUMI REINCARNATION INCOMING !

@Leo Gura When I look into 5-meo-dmt on the internet, it just hits me how people become non dual extremists after using the substance. Where as regular DMT doesn't take that radical view on reality. DMT feels more cool and soft for that reason? Remember how you answer in my thread about no self and reincarnation? You talked about meta-identities that travels through different body-minds. Just a hypothesis from you. I liked that one. This is DMT to me. It's much more open to these kind of stuff. DMT know of non duality and recognize that everything is interconnected, but there is room for richness and individuality within that. Cool creatures and different worlds and dimensions can be exposed. Martin Ball just claim all is God, end of story. So boring. So does that spanish guy who also works with the toad medicine. He doesn't like the idea of any individual entity or identity. Its just God, no more debate or argue. And Ball just say reincarnation is a silly idea, because YOU are all lives ever lived, and all lives that ever will live. Too simple to me. Just this pure infinite white light and that explains it all, end of story. That's 5meo-people to me. There is quite some cool stuff between us and that pure non dual emptiness. 5meo-dmt doesn't seem cover that. Again, this is just my interpretation from reading, I might be wrong.

I think the real question is: What difference does reincarnation make if the part of you that cares about reincarnation dies with the body/there is no memory of a previous life? To me, it seems that a lot of reincarnation dogma is a way that the self projects itself beyond death because it cant tolerate the idea of non-existence. Other ways it might do this is to conceptualize heaven/hell, or maybe it can take the form of worrying about it's legacy. Maybe there is an afterlife/reincarnation, but maybe it can't be known until death happens. In my mind, it is sort of irrelevant. I'm not asserting that as truth, and I am not denying that some people's experiences of past lives are void by any means. Maybe I will experience that one day. But, it seems that the line of questioning what happens after death arises from not being able to accept that physical death will occur. You just have to look at your own experience, and question what motives there might be for those concepts to exist.

Just my opinion, these are all concepts to me as I'm not enlightened and have no authority to present this as truth. Disclaimer over! According to buddhism, once you attain nirvana there is no more reincarnation or karma. So you are actually correct, that is a contradiction, because reincarnation is the form we take, once you realize you aren't the form, it isn't that there is no reason to incarnate, you just aren't that, you aren't the form, the form appears to you, but is not you. Once you realize who you are, if "you" (ego) goes away, and there the true you stays, you know who you are, eternal, limitless, timeless. The cycle of birth and death is over, karma is over, if you realize you are what everything arises too, it's over. I believe form is the conduit for realizing you aren't that. How could nothingness know itself without form? Formlessness needs the form to realize itself, and form needs formlessness to exist. No thing can exist, can stand on it's own, without the space for it to exist in. Tolle has called it space consciousness, or just being more aware of space (formlessness) instead of just form. This is why buddhism uses the phrase "emptiness" a lot and they say the true nature of reality is indeed emptiness. When I started on a path a while back this was morbidly depressing, but I was totally missing the point. You can t have one without the other.

Reincarnation and no self is contradictory if we look from a non dual perspective. On the apparent level it's obvious that reincarnation excist. Animals die and gives food to other animals and life continues

@MarkusSweden There’s like 10,000 sects of Buddhism as well as Christianity. We could find some material to support just about anything we think of with either source. From my experience, there is just one being, so I supposed you could say it reincarnates, but I don’t see it that way, because the environment in which to reincarnate to is illusionary, and no being actually comes and goes / lives and dies. The being, be’s being’s, and everything the beings are experiencing, is actually the Being, appearing as other-than-the Being. If the being’s all realized they were all the one Being, I don’t think the concept of reincarnation would be around, as it usually implies individual souls and a false inherent purpose grounded in a hierarchy of spirit, but “each” is God already. And yet, at the same time, anything is possible, and there are mindfucks, so, who knows.

Future is now. The future stays the same or gets only worse unless fundamental change of pattern takes place in consciousness or our “individual” everyday lives. If we are not aware of thought as a process then these problems of detachment, division, conflict in relationship, being local, national, political, religious, cultural and so on, then things will never get better and will inevitably get worse. Science, religion, political ideas, or any other form of outward imposition will not solve this problem of relationship. Any attempt to bring about order in society through self centered “the me and my security” thinking will only make things worse. It absurd that one would actually think that taking a drug could bring about such order. Such an idea has already disproved itself just amongst the general crowd in this forum. It’s an obvious prepetual mechanical movement of becoming which is a thought induced “self centered” activity that leads only to self deception. And it’s also self evident that taking psychodelics don’t bring about a fundamental transformation in conflict and relationship. People on this forum take them on what seems to be, by reading various posts, a regular basis and this seems to be nothing other than a habitual crutch to experience something different and out of the ordinary daily routine. It’s apperent and so easily observable that the division in ourselves and in our everyday life is projected actually through the communication within this forum. People people constantly arguing to fuel there own self image and claiming absurdities to bring about a sense of respectability and righteousness in opposition to another. So it’s obvious that these drugs are not the answer. As long as this doesn’t change well everything will stay as it is or will only worsen. If we care about our own ambitions, projected attainments, and needs to become psychologically secure, there will be nothing but division, confusion, contradiction, and conflict. So the only way to bring about a change is obviously for us to change our own patterns of thought. Which means understand that very process as the self. There is no other way. Know one else can change you. If we all change oursleves then the society changes. Reincarnation?? When we die others are born. And when they are born others die. In knowing there is no you and I, but that that only takes place in thought we see that you are as much as me as I am you. So this is an obvious fact that when I die I will come back in another life form or another, because life is life. So there are consequences for everything thing that we do now. So this goes along with the idea on reincarnation. What I do or don’t do now determines the outcome in “my” next life. If we continue in this petty, superficial, immature manner of self sentered action or non action, it’s only obvious that are next life as a me, I, or it, will suffer those consequences. So reincarnation in that sense seems totally obvious and not even debatable. So if we see that unless we bring about a revolution in our oursleves then life for any future being will ultimately be a experience of suffering. Question is do we want to do what’s necessary to create a better environment for oursleves/others? Thought is the very reason for this disorder and disfunction in the world. Can we become aware of its process which means can we become aware of the processes of the self?

How reincarnation reconciles with having no one to be reincarnated? Did you have any insights on that during trips?

I am into instrumental psych rock. I like when there is absence of lyrics and no messages, just music and feelings. I like Naxatras they have many eastern music elements in their music. Other similar bands are Samsara Blues experiment, Toundra, Earthless (The guitarist is the reincarnation of Hendrin in his solos...), Oh Hiroshima, God is an Astronaut etc