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The neti neti method might be useful as a stepping stone towards nonduality, but notice that's it only goes half the way. Why? Because when we say "not that" about anything, that's a duality perspective. The nondual perspective includes everything. That of course means that it even includes the neti neti method but it's more than that. It's a totality perspective. So the neti neti method should only be used as a stepping stone or it becomes a duality trap.

Neti neti means not this, not that. I now have a different method that I will experiment with. Instead of saying not this not that, to say this and that. I am this, and I am that, I am everything I experience!

Something that I got reminded of is that all personal memories are from the personal stage! So it's the whole personal self that needs to be questioned, including when practicing the neti neti method. And I also want to remind myself of what Roger Castillo said in his recent satsang video. The thinking mind (the crystallized ego) is very attached to successes and failures. What needs to happen I theorize is that all personal successes and failures need to be recognized as a part of the perfect order of reality. So it's actually 100% success! And then from a transpersonal stage there can be a transcend and include of success and failures so that it's still valid but seen as a "game" layer on top of a foundation of peace.

Here is an older video by Leo where he explains the neti neti method. I find it useful for shifting my perspective from material identification and separations and to a nondual perspective.

@Gesundheit What Is sees these both as conceptual notions. Pointing attempts to arrest the mind, if not for just a glimpse of what IT IS, completely free of the mind's gravity. To be clear, you are approaching this identified with the mind's constructs. The words used to point are flying by. The more you think, the more you will fail, but that is OK... such futility is required, apparently. neti neti

Where's the line that separates something and nothing? When does something change to nothing? It never does because It's the same thing. No, not at all. You can not learn nor realize Infinite love with a finite mind. Of course Mahasamadhi is now, where else would it be? There is only here and now, and has been so for eternity, but "you", the one which happens to be in your body typing on a computer, could not interact within the illusion if you were not in a "physical" vessel in this gross realm. If you were in a mahasamadhi right now you would not be able to interact with anything or anyone, nor do anything, because you'd be in an absolute state of consciousness unable to stand or move. Agreed, yet we must somehow talk about these things, for the love of expression, the love of sharing. Yet in a lighthearted manner because you can't communicate serious awakenings. As soon as you take yourself seriously, or what you speak of seriously on a forum like this, you've already missed the point. Ken Wilber covers all these points in "The religion of tomorrow" much better than I can. The four inexpressibles cover it well, and The heart sutra: That which is emptiness is not other than form, and vise versa. And neti-neti, not this not that.

@Swarnim Yes, it is not my intention with this practice to be awake 24/7. I have seen the nothingness, and I do self inquiry and use the deconstruction of reality with neti-neti in combination. I have a lot of "associations" of objects that I consider a thing. On that I am working too, I am also doing that with every suffering that occures, using shinzen youngs mindfullness methods. Unfortunately I am not aware of all the associations I have. An awakening into the nothingness can help I believe, but I'll exercise mindfullness with what I have now. Unfortunately It is hard to deconstruct every association of "bad pain" that occures, because it doesn't happen really often, and I don't want to deliberately hurt myself. I'll just wait for the suffering to happen, and not cause myself for harm than necessary, because I am more interested in relieving suffering than in truth atm. I have seen the nothingness and had countless awakenings. I want to "stabilise" and fall deeper into enlightenment in the now.

So I wanted to share this Insight I had a while ago about the existential nature of the self / other and the sentient / inert duallity. Not long before this, I had a short Samadhi experience while doing some neti-neti and focusing on Actuallity meditation. I'm saying this because I applied the "Mu" insight while talking with a co-worker face to face. That day I had been pondering: what does it mean that something is alive? How is it possible for something to exist and be " dead, inert, not sentient " ? This notion felt so absurd. So I was chatting with, lets call him Paul, and as I was directly looking at his face, eyes, mouth moving, etc, I asked myself " how can I be sure of him being "alive", just like " I am " in my direct experience? What I saw was his mouth moving, making sounds, facial expressions, etc while I was PROJECTING on him the idea of " human being, alive, sentient, not inert and different from a rock " . This kind of freaked me out for a while. I felt as if he was a robot, as in ", just moving but no person inside ". I asked myself " what's the difference between him and a rock?? And I could't find a proof of him being more alive than a rock is, the only difference being that I was projecting that he is "alive" and that "he" displays more intelligence and movement. I imagined him being made of stone, but a kind of stone that is intelligent, could move, had a girlfriend, could comunicate, and looks and feels like flesh. WOW. IT'S THE SAME!! I thought " oh god, I'm fucked " . I knew I won't be able to shake this off. And that's how the dead / alive and inert / sentient conceptual duallity colapsed in my mind. Since then, I don't look at others the same way. Anyways, Paul is a cool guy. No idea what he was saying though LOL. TLDR : Others = Mu. Rocks = Mu. The only difference is that I project one is alive, human, sentient and rocks are not intelligent, not alive, etc. wtf. Is this what Leo means with "others" being imaginery? Edit : yes, nevertheless I'm still nice to people

@Nahm "The identification is a self nourishing thought-loop" is what an insight I got from reading faceless posts. I think I am going to raise thought awareness without interfering. As I mentioned, the identification will probably switch from the second thoughts to the next, or to the changing awareness thoughts. Yesterday I just laid in bed with a very calm mind doing nothing, not even meditating and it was calm. There is definitely something to it. "Now what should I do, how can I do contemplative work and neti neti and self inquiry if I just obsverve the seeker" is a thought and a mystery to me. It is a strange loop of deciding to do stuff, but who decides? hahaha. I'm just going with the flow now I guess. "Oh, I want to be in the mystery, how do I get there? What can I do?" hahahahahaha. "I wonder if the spiritual part of me will work without identification"... man that's also just a thought. I risk to identify as the referee of thoughts to decide what to do or what not to do hahahaha. Oh damn that is tricky. Just more thoughts always want to become identified with, in a very sneaky way, it's like the alan watts story of the police chasing thieves up a building. Everytime the police goes up one floor, the thieves go up one, and so they never catch up (until they arrive at the roof). That is happening with my thoughts right now. Maybe I'll inquiry every "level of thought", I don't know what the roof will look like or if it's an infinite loop. Really weird.

Neti Neti is the ancient Hindu meditation practice of stripping away the layers of your personality, until only Consciousness is left. It doesn't have to be meditative. You can practice this during your regular day, and notice forms arising that you identify with, but are not pure Consciousness. Irritated at your wife? What is the source of your irritation? Why do you respond the way you do? Notice the stimulus and the response. It feels automatic, but when you observe more closely, you realize that there is a space between her behavior and your irritation. Similar to the space between two frames in a feature film. The mind perceives the movie as continuous, but it really isn't. It may be a very small space, but it is there. That space is Consciousness. Simply recognizing the space is the first step to expanding it. The irritation is not who you are. You are not defined by it, nor are you at the mercy of it. You can observe it, and explore it, but you are not it. Neti Neti.

I have watched leo's videos on the Neti Neti technique and I want to make it a habit but I have a few questions is the Neti Neti technique supposed to be a contemplation exercise using words and saying things like "where is the perceiver?" or "this isn't me". this seems quite different from others forms of meditation where I want to quite my mind. Can I do this while doing basic tasks like waling and driving? is 20 minutes a day a good start? should this be more of a repetition thing asking the same body parts and ego parts if they are me or should it try and explore. Is brute repetition key or is it more just sitting and contemplating whatever comes to mind first? when I first watched his videos on the self, and asking where "I" am at that time I felt confident that I knew where "I" was and that was the head, but then later this conceptual idea loosened a bit and now my conceptual idea is that I am nothing, However I still feel like this could be hiding something. My intellectual idea of my ego is hiding behind my own vale of spiritualty and most likely is still about the same but is just pretending that I am nothing. How should I proceed? Any other tips on how to make this a habit and do it regularly? Thank you

Best episode of the series!! ? I really loved the part where Philosophy of Language and Linguistics was talked about. Now I have also started to question this label or to say limit--'Infinity' as well, anything that is coming out of the limits of language is just confined and limited within it's own limit, the nature of reality is perhaps unfathomable and a MYSTERY (and it's really hard for some to settle with this word cos it doesn't base/ground you somewhere, you don't get satisfaction it doesn't gratify the Self-Identity), and if somehow you are grasping it, or can fathom it, that shouldn't be mistaken for Reality itself. Reality as such, is a Mystery, which is the best thing that could possibly be about Reality, it's where the fun lies, there's no fun in labelling or giving reality meaning just for self gratification. Neti Neti!

Yesterday I had a Heaven awakening for a few hours, everything was perfect, a love and peace I couldn't escape from. This isnt my first awakening, but definately the best so far. I didn't even meditate but I know it is a result from the neti neti practice from a book where I had a no self experience. I cannot even put into words how the experience was, while driving 2 hours I had multiple ego deaths merging with objects etc. It was so full of love that my ego couldn't even make me feel bad. Now I realised that "my reality" can have 2 perspectives. The depressed nihilistic perspective to avoid suffering and surviving or realising I'm in heaven. Now this is a 180 degree change in perspective of the world, so I have to adjust to it. Guess what my ego is telling me. "No this is dangerous, you can get trapped into heaven, what if it changes, this is too good you need to ground yourself the world is full of dangers, are you sure this isn't a mental health issue, what if you are bipolar and today is heaven - tomorrow is hell? What about your family? Are you okay with you feeling like you're in heaven while your parents suffer, is this fair? Don't forget that this isn't permanent. Oh no this isn't permanent, now make sure this doesn't go away, okay just check to see if you are still able to tap into ego death... Okay it works... But dont do this too much, who knows maybe you'll fall so deep into it that suddenly you have a panic attack and end up in the dark night. Why are you smoking so much nicotine today, are you sure you weren't drugged? What if this is something neurological and you are about to have a seizure? WHILE DRIVING!!!! Yesterday I realised there was nothing the ego could do, but it simultaneously wants to keep that state of being and wants to control. Now I strongly believe I have to shower the ego with love until it understands without it having to fight with itself. I just use equanimity practice and adyashantis true meditation methods. Do you guys have any post satori practice I can do to "keep the balance" or any advice? Buddhism says that the next step is to keep the state of no self 24/7, but I don't know if I am comfortable with doing this...

The ancient Eastern sages practiced spiritual science. The literal meaning of brahmavidya is "supreme science". It is the discipline of focusing intently and systematically on the contents of consciousness, and discarding everything impermanent as ultimately unreal. Their principle was neti, neti atma: "this is not the self; that is not the self." They peeled away identity, layer by layer, and found at the core the one irreducible reality: Consciousness itself. This meets scientific standards, with one crucial exception. It cannot be externally observed and replicated. It can only be directly experienced.

Rupert Spira said “Be aware of simply being. Ask yourself, what is it that is aware of my being? What is it that knows that I am? Your own Being is know by itself. It is not an experience at all it is recognition alone “ am I being? Is that what I am? Or should I neti neti that?

It was about 3 days ago that something strange had happened in my consciousness. I was in class, bored, thinking about something that I occasionally questioned as a result of 5 months of meditation (which I had done about 4 months ago and left) which gave me some insights but these insights were not so concrete in my mind, they were just thoughts that came from time to time to my mind. Anyway, the thought of "what if everything is happening in the mind, what could that mean to me?" came. This was an "insight" (you could say) that came to me after doing the exercise on Leo's video on neti neti method. At that point of time, it did have an effect on me but this effect didn't last for too long, it didn't have that concreteness to it that was enough to convince me. Anyway, after the thought that I was talking about came, I decided to think on it a bit because I was quite bored. Not so long after I started thinking, suddenly something struck me. I don't how I could put it in to words. Words are just not enough to explain this to someone clearly. What I realized was this (shortly): Everything is happening in the mind or you could say, in a field of consciousness. Everything is just a projection that I'm creating. (But what is that I? I haven't answered that yet.) The other doesn't exist. Another way to say it is that, because other is a result of my creation, it's illusory by nature. If everything is illusory then I'm eternally alone and one... forever. Lastly, if all of these are true then I'm not even alive, I'm already dead. I'm just tricking and distracting myself not to realize that. All of these were the things that I realized and this time, it felt quite concrete. I felt like I was losing my mind. My heart started to pump faster, I started to breathe faster. My body started to shiver. My head started to feel lighter. For a moment I thought I was dying. Everything around me that I considered material, started feeling fluidly. I couldn't reach out to someone because they were in the end just a projection, they were not real. And all of this... scared the shit out of me. I was literally pressing the undo button in my mind at speeds that are not human, and trying to distract myself from the experience. I wanted to return back to my old conscioussness so bad but I knew that it wasn't possible anymore. I didn't expect this to be this serious. I started to blame Leo and myself at first (I blamed myself multiplied by two you could say :D) but in the end, I knew that this wasn't gonna change anything and that I was wrong about my blaming. After all of this had happened, I went to the bathroom and hoped that washing my face would change all of this. Surprise, surprise, It didn't change anything. I was still losing my sense of reality, uh-oh. Anyway, my storytelling started to pall on. I explained all of this to you to be sure if there are any flaws in my understading of the situation. So ultimately, my question is, is what I had experienced was an actual awakening or somehow I managed to delude myself so badly that the delusion shifted my paradigm? According to the things that I learned from that experience, I can't trust the correctness of your answers but neither my answers. I'm still quite new to this work and didn't expect such a thing to happen. It wasn't like what I had imagined it to be. I don't know what I'm going to do with this knowledge and how it's going to shape my life. Should I stop all of my consciousness work and move on (even if I won't be able to forget this experience) or should I continue on and see what is there to be discovered in my mind. I know that these questions don't have a literal answer and in the end it all depends on me but I feel like at this point, I need some guidance to get my thoughts straight. Sorry that this reading took a bit long. And also sorry for any grammatical mistakes in my writing, I'm a foreigner. I will be waiting for your answers. Thank you.

Hi all! a few days ago I posted about the 'self-inquyri' .. then I met 'neti neti' and it was a better experience, which I usually use both ... Two days ago, I went to bed, I started with neti neti and within minutes, intuitively I knew that I had to let myself go, that something was coming, then I started with the typical spasms that I have had for months, especially in my legs and suddenly without my will , I experienced that my stomach inflated and contracted violently, as if passing waves of water, with a perfect synchronicity in which 'I' could not get involved, then something happened that I will never forget again, I felt an orgasm from the tip from the feet to my head, continuous orgasm, I began to laugh without wanting to, laughter and happiness begin to increase more and more. This lasted approximately 3 minutes, finished, I felt a spiral-shaped current that took the shape of my inner body, slowly it spread, surprised by the experience, I remained smiling for several more minutes .. I also remember that the same intuition that I felt of letting myself go, I also felt a clear message, that I should not look for or wish this again .. Now, I'm not looking to repeat it, the experience was so beautiful that just remembering it puts me in a good mood and I have no intention of forcing it to repeat it, but inevitably my mind wants to know what happened. I would be grateful if someone experienced something similar. I was able to read on some sites about samadhi, but this requires concentration, an object and a lot of time ... quite the opposite of what happened to me. So I would discard any relationship with samadhi. Thank you !!!

Nice work! To answer your question, one of my first major mind-jarring experiences occurred from a strong dose of edibles in 2016. Something like neti-neti happened at the peak of the experience and somehow blasted me into an inner space that felt like a singularity in consciousness. This was accompanied by a flash of some kind of visual appearance vaguely similar to the new actualized logo. All while I was rolling around on the floor Context: In the years prior to this experience I had experimented with a psychedelic once, and had experimented with various meditation techniques (SDS, neti neti, mindfulness with labelling). Maybe these things can potentiate it significantly. Never heard about such strong experiences from smoked though.

When you get freaky with the girl next door but are also deep into your neti-neti practice

I have misinterpreted the spiritual neti neti method which says "not this not that". I have been thinking that I am Mind and that my body is in consciousness so that I am my body plus everything else I'm experiencing. So I thought that neti neti was only half of the truth, but my mistake was to think in terms of concepts. Even what we call experience is a concept! And therefore we aren't even experiences. From a meta perspective one can say that concepts are included in what we are, but that meta perspective is itself conceptual unless it becomes trans-conceptual. Really tricky. Leo explains the neti neti method in this video:

Sounds cool bro, but awareness/ consciousness / knower cannot be bodily functions and imagination simply because bodily functions and imaginations appear within that space also. Is that not correct? I recommend you do some Neti-neti. You are confused about the existence of this space because its not an object, but you can know its reality by being it. You cannot see it, you can be it, actually you cannot not be it.

By eliminating (i.e., neti,neti) everything which can be known/perceived as what "I" am not,you eventually arrive at what can't be eliminated and is the source from which perceiving and perceived is made possible. Just as the eye that see's can't turn and see itself,so it is with consciousness. Consciousness is inherently self existing,self knowing. By realizing "I" am that by which I know I exist", is Consciousness "waking up" from it's contracted identification with form (I-concept) and realizing it's original formless,non-contracted,boundless limitless nature. It's dis-identifying and severing the attachment from what is not true. When "what I am not" has been thoroughly seen through,what "I am"/what is/ Truth, stands alone as the One sole reality/existence/consciousness. Dissociation is not an experience of such realization. If it is, then it's not the realization of Truth.

I'm off work for a month and a half and wanted to make use of the rare opportunity by doing a retreat at home. I want to do meditation, Neti Neti and self-inquiry for 2 weeks. I can sit for a long time but have never done something this intense. Should I do half days or shoot for full days for the whole 2 weeks? Also should I stick with one method for one day and another one the next day or do all of them each day? Thanks!

That is awesome. I would recommend starting with explaining the neti neti method and then do spiral dynamics. net neti was the thing that started my spiritual journey. If you have any questions on anything please feel free to private message me.

@Alfonsoo I think that there is a lot of conceptual work and thought that needs to be put in to be able to get stage SOLID blue up the spiral. this is something that fascinates me more than anything. during my angry atheist stage in life I really started to hate all religion and wanted away from stage blue but now I know that that is the worst think an apostate could do because that just plays into their dogma even more. People who are extremely dogmatic and are basically willing to die for Christ (like my relatives) these people are the hardest to convert, however just loving them and not judging them is the first step. I think that my life calling is to try and help stage blue so this could take me years to master a strategy. Even if you don't convert them, you WILL deepen you connection with these people (or they will show their true hateful nature).Either way you have nothing to lose by loving them. If you are willing to spend lots of time I would recommend reading the bible in depth and try and memories verses, put the same passion into the verses an show them that it is a valid spiritual technology that you want to understand more, but is NOT LITERALLY TRUE. Show them new interpretations that you have that go against their dogma. the "turn the other cheek" style of verses are SO SIMILAR to Buddhism that you could use this. If someone says "man I hate those people in group X" teach them to act like Jesus. tell them kindly to turn the other cheek. modern Christians dont really do this that much. also, remember that their dogma's are not 100% biblical. A lot of what they believe in is simply culturally ASSUMED to be in the bible.Show them how this is wrong and point towards the fact that their 2000 year old faith is more like 50% B.S. made up last century. maybe even allow your self to experience the "Joy of the lord" and pray with them. When I was a believer I got very spiritually high off of praising god. I can now conger up this feeling of love and praise without believing in it. It feels amazing, truly amazing to worship. let them know that you understand the feeling and emotion of worship and join in non-dogmatically. This feeling is from consciousnesses not Jesus. I still listen to Christian Rock music and get the same feeling of Praise that I got with believing in it. I get the high without the low of shame and repression of "sinful thoughts". but I think that: if you are willing to spend LOTS of time with Christians and go to church, love them, respect them and honestly listen to what they say this will increase the chances of them moving up the spiral. I feel like "helping stage blue" would be a greater topic to have a thread about. if you cant change their mind at least you can maybe move them up the spiral a small bit. Also branding spiritual practices like neti neti or mindfulness as "cool thought experiments" may be useful if they Christian in question is a bit closer to stage Orange. If you have any more questions please feel free to ask. this stuff is SO interesting for me. I am free now and I want to free others. I remember what it was like to be SO DOGMATIC and it is not fun in the long run. I am free.