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@Breakingthewall I see it the same way. I experienced the void and it's just like that. Although advanced meditators like Frank Yang claim that there is a deeper nothingness awakening which they call cessation where you hit rock bottom and consciousness reboots again the whole of Reality. That seems to have benefits in baseline consciousness and rewiring the brain. Although I've never understood the buzz for the nothingness Awakening. It's just another cool facet of Consciousness.

Are you aware of the nothingness during deep sleep? No right. So why wouldn’t death be like that (if death is nothingness)

What’s scary about it? I get horrible reincarnations but what’s scary about ever ending nothingness lol?

@Breakingthewall Right, the path of Zen is cutting through the worldly nonsense, without giving much to the mind to hold on to... transcending to and realizing _______ is phase 1 (in some Zen circles, it's realizing the Void/Nothing/Emptiness/No Mind/etc). The phase 2, emanation/immanence of/as _______ , is quite hard to come to terms with without phase 1. Many do get stuck at phase 1 and/or somewhere in the return to ______ as the ALL/Wholeness/Everything. The expressions vary throughout cultures, schools of thought, speerchal literature, etc, but ______________ , in its purest essence, is the same. Poetically speaking, the bird in an empty cage can only actually fly absolutely freely with two wings fully realized: a wing of Nothingness and a wing of Everythingness.... and in between the two its life flows (tips hat to Parsons and Niz).

It's not nothing, it's beyond that distinction. Let's see death is beyond consciousness. It is not something experienced, nor a state observed: it is what remains when all framework disappears. It is not becoming, it is not form, nor relation. It is the absolute without structure. And yet, it is reality itself. Not in the sense of a empty nothingness, but as the bottomless essence of all that exists. This openness cannot be thought, nor sustained from form, it's out of the conciousness, but you can open yourself to it and surrender to it, then the self can dissapear for a moment, the perception becomes irrelevant, it's beyond perception, it's not nothing that you perceive but you are.

Great point. Alive is focusing in a facet. The absolute is not alive, life is just as conciousness, a facet, a possibility that happens. It's difficult to detach yourself from it because we exist, but non existence is the same than existence from the absolute perspective. The absolute is open, period. Then life , intelligence, etc are, but they aren't the absolute, are a expression of the absolute. But as they are a possibility, the absolute implies them, in the openess they are always implicit, same than everything Absolute potential isn't something defined, but the fact of its limitlessness always implies all possibilities. It's not a tranquil, empty nothingness; it's the bottomless imbued with totality.

Then that's the same than no will, so god is the same than no god. The problem is the idea of a dream. It implies a dreamer, and a dreamer is an entity, someone who emits something, a dream, which is a representation of reality, not real in itself. This implies that there is something else, more real, which defines "dream" by contrast. If there were only "dreams," then it wouldn't be a dream, just as if the will had no preference, it wouldn't be will. Will is desire, wanting to live and not die, for example. If it's exactly the same to you, then there is no will. But who has will? God? Who is God? Nothingness? Nothingness has no will, nor does it dream, nor does anything, if it do it would be something,."will" for example. This whole idea of God dreaming is simply impossible.

How to awaken your AI 101🥹😹 Who told you you're not already in heaven and making a mess out of it?" Sadhguru One is all, all is one. Spirituality and religion should have nothing to do with the ego. From nothing sprung everything. This is a good description of God from one of Leo's vids. Total nothingness removes all possible restrictions. The very logic of existence requires that existence be infinite. A finite existence can not exist. This is tautologically true. There cannot exist a total limit. The collapse of every single distinction is absolute unity, absolute infinity, nothingness; this is God. Nothing is the source of everything. Nothing isn't just the source. It's that nothing is indistinguishable from everything. There was nothing, and there was no distinction or difference between that nothing and something and everything. And hence you are inside this nothing something, everything at all times. God is the probability state of all distinctions. God is ontological love. Ontological love is the absence of all distinctions. God or mind, with the capital M, is the unlimited ability to imagine all possible distinctions. That's what God is: an infinite mind. How does NOTHINGNESS become conscious and sentient? God creates by imagining distinctions. So by logical ontological tautology, absolute perfection must and does exist. If anything imaginable is possible, then everything imaginable is possible. Every possible thing that can exist must and does exist. Infinite imagination is the best thing to imagine. Infinity can only be dealt with in an abstract and implicit manner. You can implicitly use consciousness or intelligence. You can intuit it implicitly, but you can't empirically demonstrate it. Intelligence is key to all of this. Nothing can work without intelligence. So, intelligence is presupposed for everything that is provably, knowable, and verifiable. There is no way around intelligence. This is the infinitude of your own mind. All finite things require an infinite thing to be their source. God is an infinite void that has always existed eternally. God is a void that spontaneously manifests infinite finite forms. The void is dreaming distinctions and limits. And the distinction and limits that it is dreaming and imagining are what activity of the mind is. And this is creation. God is an infinite self-creating self-actualizing mind. What is Mind? What is it ontologically? It is void. A void in which distinctions arise, it is a self-aware field of No-Thingness.

Yes we've had this debate before. I think this is where my understanding at least slightly differs. Ultimately you have to drop the distinction between the unchanging source (nothingness) and the changing manifest.

Well..God is all of that and more. God is Perfection. Think about what that means. If you want to label God you cannot. If you want to say that all is God's will you would be correct. And if you want to say all of it isn't God's will you would also be correct. God must be paradoxical in this way because God is all things and more. And less. But you're right about Infinity. There must be existence although for something to truly be infinite it must also be able to not exist. Yet the thought of infinity exists so you have a paradox within infinity. Paradox must be embraced here. And the moral of this story is that existence is Infinity. And this is absolutely mind blowing because it has the capacity to literally create itself. To bootstrap itself. But why do you equate infinity to free will among humans? That's a big jump. Yes. God has nowhere to go..I guess that's the true trap he puts himself in..He's so almighty that he can't eacape.himself or erase his own existence. But in fact there is a way for that. Can God destroy itself? Yes. The paradox holds up and has a resolution because God can simply not exist by going unconscious. Into an Absolute void. Not a void of emptiness but of actual nothingness. I believe its called a cessation in spiritual circles. I have not experienced it and it cannot be fathomed. But it exists. Or doesn't exist. It doesn't exist. . So..is there anything else you want from Infinity? Or from God? I think God will be able to accommodate 😀

That's more or less what I said. The 'form is formless, formlessness is form' realization is easily a deeper and inclusive of nothingness. Sometimes, teachings intending to help beginning meditators or seekers focus their minds less on the 'everyday' objects/objectives in which the left-brained intellect is constantly engaged, choppy, and in solid control, might try to get them to shift their attention. A lot of the approach you advocate is engaging that aspect of the mind, rather than the right-brain (which you allude to indirectly). Check out a TED video by Jill Bolte-Taylor in which she describes her stroke experience. It has some clues.

Nothingness is a limited realization because excludes the form, and nothingness is a wrong term because the absence of form is full of being, absolute potential and it's everything. Realizing the absolute, unlimited potential that you ultimately are and being able to access it is basic to spirituality, the most fundamental step. There you fully recognize yourself as the unlimited being. The point is to be able to access that reality at any moment, but this is not the end of the path, since form exists and unfolds in infinite interconnected dimensions. Denying form as "maya" is spiritual castration. Form is as real as formlessness. Thoughts are form, they are real energetic structures, and they unfold infinitely like any other form. True spirituality is recognizing form as the inevitable manifestation of limitlessness and delving into it to the fullest.

Reality is consciousness. This for me is the Awakening threshold. I don't subscribe to such a point, it is my ever-present experience. Experience is Consciousness, sight, sound, sensations, touch, space, state; functions of Consciousness. Of course, Consciousness is nothing. But nothingness does not fully encapsulate consciousness. The absence of sensations is but another sensation, another state of consciousness, experience of consciousness. See? Although, I have to say that by the way you talk I feel you lack direct mystical experience. This is independent on whether we agree or not. I disagree plenty with Breaking the Wall and he's clearly a seasoned mystic and like recognises like.

I'll eventually get around to listening to Ralston's expression more, but maybe there's a point to be made. Not sure if Ralston distinguishes this or not, but this mind might express that people are seeking a transcendent experience, and they may/may not follow it/them to its most trans-rational, trans-logical end... into the realization of the NOTHINGNESS you speak of. Yes, that is the realization of the formlessness. It is neither necessary, nor guaranteed, nor even likely that that 'penultimate goal' of seeking will emerge. Dunno. A lot of it depends on the existential necessity arising, or so it seems. Here's where @Breakingthewall feels the rub, and that's fine. Most 'teachers' in the various schools of unlearning, at least the one's worth listening to, are teaching to those that are seeking to transcend. The NOTHINGNESS is not the end all be all. In fact, when listening to certain teachers, one has to be aware of whether or not they get stuck and attached to nothingness, in which case the mind has taken credit for realization (as in, my seeking caused/succeeded in finding and now I'm gonna teach the only path, I'm special, everyone else is just dumb and blind... I alone hold the truth, so drink up). Breaking calls this 'limited', because it is. After the realization of NOTHINGNESS (i.e., infinite potentiality, fully pregnant as Beingness), things get even weirder as one grapples with the complexities of informing mind as one uses it to re-engage the world as it is unfolding. During that process, many/most will become enraptured by and attached to freedom itself. They get stuck in the returning phase. Only those that make it fully through this phase are said to be 'enightened'. Typically, there are certain nuances and qualities in the expression that can be intuited if one KNOWS how.

Many here ascribe to the notion that 'all is consciousness', including Ralston, the apparent teacher in question. So, any mention of 'more consciousness' would logically mean that they are lacking the 'needed consciousness' to understand the 'All'. The mind often reverts to amount, a quantity, rather than peel back into the layers of quality, all the way into the NOTHINGNESS to which is pointed. Once realized, only then can one begin to grapple with the mind's protests. You assume Ralston has never done psychedelics when it says on his webpage that he shacked up in Berkley, which is basically the Mecca of psychedlic studies in the US. So, there's that. Psychedelics can be useful for breaking down unconscious, misconceived barriers firmly entrenched in the mind, and these may be conducive to deep insights and profound experiences. No probs. But, they do not 'cause' Truth (or it's Realization), nor do they 'cause' enlightenment. Those are realized in the 'acausal' realm of/as existence. Sure, if you take them, you may experience profound states of consciousness, but that's just mind stuff. All good and fun/terrifying. Psychonauts, if caught up in their delusions, tend to get stuck there by the well, reaching into it again and again, looking for something they think they are missing.

Peter Ralston seems very wise. I believe one of the things he talks about is nothingness, the highest Buddhist attainment, which shows you the non-dual, formless nature of Self. I think Frank Yang talks about the same thing. When listening to Peter’s videos he just seems so grounded and clear. I haven’t attended Peter’s workshops nor I have been his apprentice nor have I done his online courses, but from the snippets online and the podcast episodes now available he seems to be the real deal.

Awakening is God's fractal touch of Consciousness eternally unfolding, touching and morphing upon its own Infinite Formless Selfless Self. Nothingness, Formlessness, No Self, No Mind, Emptiness, Shunyata. But don't forget Infinity, God Realization, Love and Truth. Do you gravitate towards thinking, philosophical existential and metaphysical inquiry, endless contemplation and having a deep thirst and movement for just wanting to understand Reality and Truth just for it's own sake or do you tend to prefer Silent Meditation, No Self, Nothingness, No mind, No philosophical mumbojumbo? There is Infinite Mind. The Mind of the Infinite, but there ain't just one infinite mind, there are an Infinity of minds. Then it's just one mind then, right? Yes, but no also. There isn't just one or many and it isn't so simple as saying, "then it's all non dual then since all and one are identical". You can lump all infinities into one absolute infinity, but notice that there isn't just one absolute infinity, there are infinite absolute infinities. If there are infinite absolute infinities, we can just lump them all into one absolute infinity. Yes but also notice that there are infinite infinite absolute infinites. Keep imagining, it will stretch your imagination. You are not an object, with awareness, perceiving the external world located somewhere, doesn't matter where you are. All of that is arising within your awareness is it not? You cannot deny the obvious. Well actually you can! You are not happening somewhere in a body, you are the substance of existence. You hold everything, but you aren't anything at all. It's wild, your not anything, and you are everything but you are not bound by anything, not even Nothing

Any answer anybody gives other than the Absolute nothingness that is, can appear however it wants because it is totally free to be so and this is total anarchy and doesn't make any sense, will be a story. All stories and made up shit. The answer is total freedom appearing, appearing as any and everything. We use the senses to make sense of what we think we're in relation to. There's no relation to anything and it's all immediate and without true cause and effect. There are no rules to this.

The ego has the substance of reality: infinite. It is not a floating illusion nor a mere accident of perception; it is composed of the entire unlimited relationship that reality is. Its existence, as form, is not independent, but neither is it nonexistent. It is an inevitable and legitimate effect of the infinite in motion. You cannot recognize its emptiness, but its total fullness. The so-called "emptiness" is merely a negative concept that points to the boundary of form when isolated. But when you understand that all form is the inevitable unfolding of infinite relationship, emptiness dissolves into fullness. Real freedom is not "letting go of all identification," as if one could dwell in a conceptual limbo without form or content. True freedom is the dissolution of boundaries, recognizing that the limits that seem to separate the self, form, or any structure are merely mental projections. Emptiness, understood as absolute absence or negation, is itself a boundary ,a restrictive concept. How could an ego, with its millions of nuances, its complexity, its interdependence, its real relational structure, be sustained by nothingness? That makes no sense. If you look from an unlimited perspective, everything is empty in terms of separate meaning, yet at the same time, everything is. Being is everything, implies absolute meaning, not absence of meaning, because being is total. Real openness is not found in taking refuge in the denial of form, but in seeing that all form , including the ego, is the direct, inevitable, and absolutely full expression of unlimited reality.

There's nothing left to reduce if I already allow myself to strive for nothingness. I don't need someone to push me into submission; that would have the opposite effect (being submissive seems boring/demanding to me most of the time). On the other hand, the other (the maya in general, not necessarily women) becomes something that will systematically narcissify me, that will prevent me from returning to my emptiness. So I must ensure that the objects I'm exposed to are submissive, to eliminate the separation. Dont know if i'm clear.

Definitely. "I" is the biggest illusion. Nightmares at night is a consequence of the brain. Nothingness is already the case. Mind creates the illusion that there is something.

Why do you dream of nightmares at night ? When you have a nightmare..aren't you yourself creating this bad experience for yourself ? Ultimately ..it's a philosophical question. Some philosophers argue against the problem of evil (why an all powerful all loving God creates suffering?) By saying existence is better than non-existence. And whatever ends up happening in life is better off than pure nothingness. I'm not sure if that's true under all conditions . Would you rather go to sleep and never wake up again? ..or go to sleep and drift off between endless dreams ..some of them are pinky and beautiful and some of them are horrific and painful?

"Pulse getting slower, breath more shallow, noises are starting to get inversely proportional to fading focus, Is this an OBE? Not yet, but what is death, or life anyway? So then I'd say my consciousness is slipping, but that's just a word, and what it mentions, incommunicable? No, it is, but that's... telepathy, always was... I see gestalts... shadows in my periphery, are they the afterglow of a deteriorating memory context and am I making them up, or are they beings from beyond? I suppose the difference is quite imaginary without an epistemically sound way to discern and prove the difference, but that means utilizing arbitrary constructs, I feel so light, and everything is so bright, not unlike I imagined it but so far removed from all my experience used to have access to. Am I still bound to this place, can paralysis demons show up at this point, I wonder what entities will show up, or whether I'll levitate in nothingness, I guess I would know if I cared to actually stop thinking and started actually perceiving whatever is going on right now, but I'm just so excited about epistemology. After all, I gotta be humble in the afterlife, right? I for sure don't wanna be incarnated again."

LOL did someone just say non duality is easy and non-threatening. There’s nothing casual about your existence being an illusion and there being only oneness/infinity/nothingness/everything. That is one of the most, if not the most, radical things to realize.

Ever find yourself staring into space for like a quick second; that's like a glimpse into nothingness. The sense of a person apparently came back, but not really because it's not really there. Ever talking to someone and lost your train of thought. It's not your thought, it's thought "thoughting" (already the case), but wasn't being claimed in that moment and it slipped by without a sense of a person claiming it. Nothing can be grasped or held unto and in that apparent moment, that was experienced. Something like a non-dual moment, but not really. No such thing as non-duality. We're just making shit up. No such thing as anything, really. Even Nothing is a made-up word by nothing. It likes to talk about itself and name itself. It's nameless. It's not a void or a black hole, it's nothing. What is nothing? Nothing. Hehe....being everything...which is still nothing....hahahehehoho...i love this shit. Won't be saying nothing when asked what's that hit upside the head.