Leo's Blog Discussion Mega-Thread

[Rafael Thundercat]

11 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

@Nilsi Way overthinking it.

God is an experience and we use words to talk about experiences. The end.

Uffff thanks. But I suspect that for @Nilsiwill not be the end. 

[Leo Gura]

18 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

Every experience of “God” is utterly singular, and by trying to reduce it to some abstract universal signifier, you’re limiting your spiritual potential beyond measure.

Every experience of a kangaroo is just as singular. Yet we can speak of kangaroos without all this post-structuralist masturbation.

What I said does not deny the variety of experiences that God comes in. Yes, there is great variety, but also a core.

Edited July 12 by Leo Gura

[Guest Nilsi]

22 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Every experience of a kangaroo is just as singular. Yet we can speak of kangaroos without all this post-structuralist masturbation.

What I said does not deny the variety of experiences that God comes in. Yes, there is great variety, but also a core.

Ok, so your standard is just to talk about everything in the abstract?

If you were out in the wild and suddenly came face to face with a kangaroo, the very concept of “kangaroo” would shatter in an instant. The hot, animal smell of its breath, the twitch of its ears, the way its massive body tenses to spring - the fascination and the primal fear - all of it would annihilate your tidy idea.

And real psychology - not the watered-down modern “science” of psychology obsessed with metrics and labels - would tell you exactly this: when you try to flatten that kind of raw, overwhelming encounter into a tidy signifier (“kangaroo,” “I encountered a kangaroo”), you’re not processing it - you’re neutralizing it. You’re building a neurotic defense against the intensity of the experience.

True emancipation doesn’t come from categorizing or pathologizing; it comes from the talking cure in its original sense, which isn’t just about narrating but about fidelity to the unrepresentable - to the Real that resists being pinned down.

Any meaningful spirituality must then, by necessity, be non-representational and experimental. Art, poetry, performance - this is the true language of the infinite.

Edited July 12 by Nilsi

[Guest Nilsi]

20 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Yes, there is great variety, but also a core.

Yes, and at the core is precisely that which cannot be represented.

[Leo Gura]

@Nilsi Do you really think you are telling me a thing I don't know?

I'm just trying to help people realize that God is an empirical word.

[Guest Nilsi]

7 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

@Nilsi Do you really think you are telling me a thing I don't know?

I'm just trying to help people realize that God is an empirical word.

I don’t care what you know or don’t know if you’re still playing these kinds of naive empiricist language games.

The point is precisely that there’s no such thing as an “empirical word.”

[Rishabh R]

@Nilsi But I think that there are empirical words. Not everything is subjective and relative.

Edited July 12 by Rishabh R

[Guest Nilsi]

17 minutes ago, Rishabh R said:

@Nilsi But I think that there are empirical words. Not everything is subjective and relative.

It’s not about relativity. Experience is absolute. That was never in question. The argument is about language and representation. I’ve already laid out my position clearly. Feel free to offer an actual counter-argument.

[Rishabh R]

44 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

It’s not about relativity. Experience is absolute. That was never in question. The argument is about language and representation. I’ve already laid out my position clearly. Feel free to offer an actual counter-argument.

In that case all language is just a symbol that points to something. 

But certain words like reality , experience,actuality are more closely tied to absolute and are better representations.

[Guest Nilsi]

15 minutes ago, Rishabh R said:

In that case all language is just a symbol that points to something. 

But certain words like reality , experience,actuality are more closely tied to absolute and are better representations.

All language is ultimately just symbols pointing to other symbols. And yes, it is arbitrary. You can pick any random syllables or phonemes, and it doesn’t fundamentally change anything. You could replace “God” with “spaghetti” or “reality” with “pineapple,” and the structure would stay the same. It’s silly to believe that using some supposedly privileged word instead of another somehow makes everything fall into place. That’s not how language works.

A signifier only has meaning through its position in the symbolic network - a system of differences and relations, not because of any inherent property in the sound or the word itself. You’re not doing anything by swapping one label for another if you’re still operating inside the same structure.

It’s never about finding the right magic symbol. It’s about how you can crack language open to the Real from within - by using style and syntax to push meaning to its limits, to create gaps, ruptures, and slippages where something beyond representation briefly shows itself. This can happen in all sorts of ways: through repetition that empties out a word until it collapses, through paradox or contradiction that language can’t resolve, through performance or gesture that interrupts smooth signification, or through excess and intensity that overflow the form itself.

And when I say “language,” I don’t just mean words. Art, performance, architecture, objects - everything can be read as language in this sense: a field of signs you can bend, fracture, or intensify to expose what no system of representation can fully contain.

[Rafael Thundercat]

The moment one start to conceptualize,, boommm is all lost..

[Rafael Thundercat]

13 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

All language is ultimately just symbols pointing to other symbols. And yes, it is arbitrary. You can pick any random syllables or phonemes, and it doesn’t fundamentally change anything. You could replace “God” with “spaghetti” or “reality” with “pineapple,” and the structure would stay the same. It’s silly to believe that using some supposedly privileged word instead of another somehow makes everything fall into place. That’s not how language works.

A signifier only has meaning through its position in the symbolic network - a system of differences and relations, not because of any inherent property in the sound or the word itself. You’re not doing anything by swapping one label for another if you’re still operating inside the same structure.

It’s never about finding the right magic symbol. It’s about how you can crack language open to the Real from within - by using style and syntax to push meaning to its limits, to create gaps, ruptures, and slippages where something beyond representation briefly shows itself. This can happen in all sorts of ways: through repetition that empties out a word until it collapses, through paradox or contradiction that language can’t resolve, through performance or gesture that interrupts smooth signification, or through excess and intensity that overflow the form itself.

And when I say “language,” I don’t just mean words. Art, performance, architecture, objects - everything can be read as language in this sense: a field of signs you can bend, fracture, or intensify to expose what no system of representation can fully contain.

When I read this conversarions here the only thing that comes to mind is a Text from Huang Po called Transmission of Mind. 

[Guest Nilsi]

7 minutes ago, Rafael Thundercat said:

The moment one start to conceptualize,, boommm is all lost..

That being the point.

Yet you still make excuses the moment someone utters the “right” magical concepts.

Edited July 12 by Nilsi

[Rafael Thundercat]

5 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

That being the point.

True, but people dont automaticaly jump out of conceptualization without conceptualizing a lot at first. there is where Leo and many others who dare to point towards the pointeless aim to do. To give oportunities for others stumble into it. I feel like Leo is more a facilitator of Awakening than any other thing. And still it dont get any easier. 

How many times I tried to talk people into the obviousness of what Reality is, in many ways, and still in vain, sometimes even being gasligthed. So at least Leo keep trying. Call it compassion if you will.

Edited July 12 by Rafael Thundercat

[gettoefl]

I know God is, and then I cease to speak forevermore.

[Rishabh R]

1 hour ago, Nilsi said:

All language is ultimately just symbols pointing to other symbols. And yes, it is arbitrary. You can pick any random syllables or phonemes, and it doesn’t fundamentally change anything. You could replace “God” with “spaghetti” or “reality” with “pineapple,” and the structure would stay the same. It’s silly to believe that using some supposedly privileged word instead of another somehow makes everything fall into place. That’s not how language works.

But when the word reality is uttered it causes a different mental imagery than the word pineapple. Language has varying words with distinctions to what they point to.

 

1 hour ago, Nilsi said:

And when I say “language,” I don’t just mean words. Art, performance, architecture, objects - everything can be read as language in this sense: a field of signs you can bend, fracture, or intensify to expose what no system of representation can fully contain.

Objects in that case empirical reality in your direct experience and merely conceptualizing about it is not the same thing as touching and object. Suppose you touch a hot stove , no matter how much one conceptualized it the reality of it being hot stove will never change unless you dismantle the stove and even then it is an empirical object.

[Daniel Balan]

@Leo Gura Why society and mankind as a whole would collapse if mankind realized God at a collective level? Why is it that God realization would make somehow society less functional? I totally agree that we are all full of shit, but why would people stop going to work, doing their duty as citizens etc if mankind as a whole would discover God? I tried to contemplate it but I can't figure out why you say society would collapse once mankind would drop all the bullshit and discover God.

[yetineti]

@Nilsi

You have a lot to say for someone who thinks words are arbitrary.

[yetineti]

One of my platonic friends kept running his mouth and saying how words meant nothing.

I asked him, randomly, one straight man to the other, ‘Do you want to fuck me?’

His face turned bright red. I said, ‘it’s just words, baby.’

He chooses his words more intelligently now.

Edited July 12 by yetineti

[Thought Art]

6 hours ago, Nilsi said:

I don’t care what you know or don’t know if you’re still playing these kinds of naive empiricist language games.

The point is precisely that there’s no such thing as an “empirical word.”

If you could hold context of what he is saying in perspective you’d see what he points too. 
 

It’s easy to over Intellectuallize. Also, your essentially man-splaining Leo things he literally teaches in his content. Cringe. While also bringing in context beyond what is relevant, imo

Edited July 12 by Thought Art