Leo's Blog Discussion Mega-Thread

[UnbornTao]

1 hour ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

@Rafael Thundercat A lot of followers describe a supposed “solipsistic realization” as though it arrived free of interpretation. Pure, immediate & undeniable. But the second they begin explaining it, you often see an entire contraband metaphysical framework being snuck in beneath it. 

Straight up you can see it is a simple belief adopted.

Sounds about right.

[UnbornTao]

8 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

You guys really refuse to understand what it means to be imagining yourself.

You think I am kidding around with you.

You really do often ask people to believe you, even if unknowingly and in an implicit way, beneath all the rhetoric.

Edited 8 hours ago by UnbornTao

[Joseph Maynor]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

If you imagine I am, then I am.

Don't you want to be imagined?

[zurew]

3 hours ago, Rafael Thundercat said:

The name for this sort of members is "LeoGura Minions"

Unconsciously internalized worldview, coupled with internalized persona (similar mannerism, similar choice of words and rhetoric, constantly in teacher preacher mode, disagreement automatically means that you are wrong and that you need to be  quickly told the correct set of beliefs ).

Some of these people never seriously engaged with any philosophy or spirituality outside of actualized.org. You grow up consuming years of Leo's content and that then frames your whole life.

Even the ones who did some drugs and spiritual practices -  how interesting, that after you internalize years of actualized.org beliefs and framing that you interpret most of your awakenings and trips inside that frame and that all of those foundational beliefs that you  internalized months or years before you did any serious practice , that they are suddenly "confirmed" the moment you do the practices.

Also notice how credence works with these people. After they "confirm" a given thing their credence in Leo's other claims  go up infinitely and they dont treat Leo's unconfirmed claims in an agnostic way and hence the cycle continues "internalize beliefs---> internalized framing clouds your interpretation of awakenings and trips -----> your credence in other unconfirmed claims go up and you internalize them"

[lostingenosmaze]

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

You guys really refuse to understand what it means to be imagining yourself.

You think I am kidding around with you.

We know you ain't kidding around, that's precisely why we refuse to understand you, these ain't kiddie gloves you handin' out here 😁

Edited 14 hours ago by lostingenosmaze

[AtmanIsBrahman]

8 hours ago, zurew said:

There is no confusion like that -  what I said there was applicable both to the structure and to the content of the dream as well (because solipsism fails to provide an explanation for both; in contrast with other idealist views, that can provide explanation for the content).

This is just wrong. Solipsism is the simplest explanation of reality. 

Standard idealism faces the challenge of how a bunch of consciousnesses that are separate can somehow come together (since the universe is consciousness). Solipsism actually has no such challenges-- the only challenge is incredulity. 

Also, you didn't really consider my point about explaining structure. Any worldview will struggle to explain why reality is structured exactly as it is on the micro-level.

8 hours ago, zurew said:

With respect to your comments about not caring about epistemic virtues and epistemic norms just only about truth - again whats interesting about that is that you only seem to invoke that when solipsism is attacked and you never invoke that when any other views are attacked

I'll walk back the original comment a little bit. The point was that truth comes before any implications or consequences in epistemic priority. But yes, it's true that you have to have epistemic standards. The only caveat is that these standards might be totally different for absolute matters (such as solipsism) than for relative matters.

Edited 13 hours ago by AtmanIsBrahman

[AtmanIsBrahman]

1 hour ago, zurew said:

Even the ones who did some drugs and spiritual practices -  how interesting, that after you internalize years of actualized.org beliefs and framing that you interpret most of your awakenings and trips inside that frame and that all of those foundational beliefs that you  internalized months or years before you did any serious practice , that they are suddenly "confirmed" the moment you do the practices.

Also notice how credence works with these people. After they "confirm" a given thing their credence in Leo's other claims  go up infinitely and they dont treat Leo's unconfirmed claims in an agnostic way and hence the cycle continues "internalize beliefs---> internalized framing clouds your interpretation of awakenings and trips -----> your credence in other unconfirmed claims go up and you internalize them"

You're making a lot of assumptions about me. That's not what I'm doing.

To be clear, I don't "believe in" solipsism or anything else Leo says. But I recognize that solipsism definitely has something to it. The simplicity is striking, and most objections to it are based on it sounding crazy.

[UnbornTao]

@Leo Gura What about sharing exercises and assignments? A more Socratic method could be useful.

Edited 8 hours ago by UnbornTao

[zurew]

3 hours ago, AtmanIsBrahman said:

Also, you didn't really consider my point about explaining structure. Any worldview will struggle to explain why reality is structured exactly as it is on the micro-level

Read back the thing that you quoted and responded to. Do you think this is talking about the structure , or do you think this is talking about the content? 

Quote

 in contrast with other idealist views, that can provide explanation for the content

Like, I couldnt have spelled out more explicitly for you and you still managed to miss it. (this isnt the first time, this is like the third post where you quote something about it that contradicts what you claim about it).

 

Most of your claims about solipsism : for instance that it has good explanatory power, that it has 0 assumptions, and you interpreting criticisms against solipsism as "being stuck in a materialist paradigm" are all evidence that you mostly just reguritate Leo and that you havent seriously thought about or researched the objections against solipsism.

For instance, its an assumption that only your mind exist; Its an assumption that you can know yourself; its an assumption that direct knowledge is possible; its an assumption that awakening is real ; its an assumption that further awakenigns wont undermine previous awakenings; when you make any given claim using  your memory (even related to awakenings) those are all dependent on you assuming that your memory is accurate about those events and experiences; its an assumption that you have access to all of your mind and that everything that you experience is all there is; its an assumption that only that things that you are aware of at any given moment is all there is etc etc. 

Wittgenstein's private language argument is also a big problem for solipsism and I dont think Leo has any good response to that.

Its also very funny that you think that its an issue for other idealist views that they need to explain and account for other minds and that is a problem in your eyes, but it isn't any problem in your eyes that solipsism doesnt account for the list of things that I previouly listed (not in this post, but in my post yesterday)  and it isn't a problem at all, that solipsism doesnt account for literally anything that has to do with the content of the dream.

 

Also notice that it almost always comes to back to epistemic cetainty and neither you nor Leo can offer literally any single objection or argument against any other non-solipsitic view that would render those alternative views impossible (so if your standard is epistemic certainty, and you only care about arguments against solipsism that shows that solipsism is impossible , then the fact of the matter is that neither you nor Leo managed to rule out non-solipsistic views).

[Human Mint]

On 5/25/2026 at 10:35 AM, Socrates said:

Academia Is A Sausage Factory

The funniest part is the comment section, which functions the same when someone gives up their religion. When you notice this, the mechanisms of dogma are the same amongst those two; it is really funny.

That is an interesting link.

[AtmanIsBrahman]

1 hour ago, zurew said:

I couldnt have spelled out more explicitly for you and you still managed to miss it. (this isnt the first time, this is like the third post where you quote something about it that contradicts what you claim about it).

I didn't miss what you said. My point is that the specific contents of the dream aren't accounted for in any paradigm. You've repeatedly failed to understand this. There's a difference between content and structure, or we could say content and context. Solipsism recontextualizes everything as being your mind, but doesn't change anything else. Your list of things that aren't explained are all red herrings.

 

1 hour ago, zurew said:

For instance, its an assumption that only your mind exist; Its an assumption that you can know yourself; its an assumption that direct knowledge is possible; its an assumption that awakening is real ; its an assumption that further awakenigns wont undermine previous awakenings; when you make any given claim using  your memory (even related to awakenings) those are all dependent on you assuming that your memory is accurate about those events and experiences; its an assumption that you have access to all of your mind and that everything that you experience is all there is; its an assumption that only that things that you are aware of at any given moment is all there is etc etc.

I never claimed most of these things.

1 hour ago, zurew said:

Also notice that it almost always comes to back to epistemic cetainty and neither you nor Leo can offer literally any single objection or argument against any other non-solipsitic view that would render those alternative views impossible (so if your standard is epistemic certainty, and you only care about arguments against solipsism that shows that solipsism is impossible , then the fact of the matter is that neither you nor Leo managed to rule out non-solipsistic views).

I never said epistemic certainty was my standard, but just to humor you... One way one might know that solipsism is true is if the existence of multiple consciousnesses is impossible. Right now, try to imagine two consciousnesses happening at the same time, as vividly as possible. The concept doesn't make sense. They would have to merge into one. This actually connects to God--there can't be two Gods just like there can't be two consciousnesses.

Anyways, you're pretty stuck in the rationalist paradigm and I would recommend rewatching the Deconstructing Rationality series. Just some tough love  
 

[zurew]

 Not affirming solipsism = being stuck in a rationalist paradigm.

Next time I will try to do spirituality and philosophy with your approach and I will ask Leo what set of things I need to affirm.

1 hour ago, AtmanIsBrahman said:

Your list of things that aren't explained are all red herrings.

Red herring is when I bring up something that is directly applicable to solipsism and you have no answer for it.

1 hour ago, AtmanIsBrahman said:

My point is that the specific contents of the dream aren't accounted for in any paradigm

Yeah and that point is very stupid, because it is accounted for in many paradigms better than in others.

And you also agreed with this previously btw and immediately ran away from it by saying "why should we care about explanatory power bro, I like simiplicity more and maybe  explanatory power shouldnt be cared about bro, what matter is what true bro and what true is true bro regardless of explanatory power".

1 hour ago, AtmanIsBrahman said:

I never claimed most of these things.

You claimed solipsism makes 0 assumptions ,which is laughably false and  anyone can recognize this who isn't mind raped by Leo.

1 hour ago, AtmanIsBrahman said:

Right now, try to imagine two consciousnesses happening at the same time, as vividly as possible. The concept doesn't make sense

it perfectly makes sense. 

Your lack of ability to imagine that others have consciousness doesnt get you to others not having consciousness and especially not getting you to the impossibility that others have consciousness - but of course you wont recognize this because Leo paved the entire landscape of possible thought your mind can navigate through.

 

And again there are a bunch of alternative idealist views that are different from solipsism  that can perfectly account for this, but of course you dont know about them , because your knowledge starts and stops with the things Leo feeds  to you. (nonduality, Bernardo's analytic idealism etc).

Edited 4 hours ago by zurew

[Natasha Tori Maru]

1 hour ago, AtmanIsBrahman said:

Anyways, you're pretty stuck in the rationalist paradigm and I would recommend rewatching the Deconstructing Rationality series. Just some tough love  
 

It helps to have delved into and mastered rationality, prior to deconstructing it. 

Otherwise you fall into trap of unexamined contradiction, emotional preference and loose associative thinking (there are more traps it appears, these are just some obvious ones).

Edited 3 hours ago by Natasha Tori Maru

[Eskilon]

@zurew Not trying to defend Solipisism or Leo per se, but here goes somethings I got while reading this discussion:

How do you know what an assumption is? If we go by the logic that any which view has assumptions into it by simple virtue of the fact that your knowledge is not 100%(meaning you don't know all the content and all the structure that existed, exists and will exists, and more), then it seems silly to look for truth in philosophy or any system of thought. Because the questions will never actually be fully answered, because each asnwer brings about more and more questions -- like a hydra. I mean sure you can critic other positions and have doubt, but don't you see the sillyness of it? The other person can do the same to you infinetely, you will never will run short of explanation or arrive at the ultimate answer that will answer all questions possible.

I think the genius of Buddha is exactly this, he didn't directly address metaphysical questions(he probably saw the whole stupidity of it if one is to attain nirvana) because it is indeed circular and you can makes a guess that this too is what he points samsara to be. The human mind is samsara, it runs in circles never getting satisfied and never actually being transformed. His whole effort was into transcending the mind, because the mind is indeed a hungry ghost.

When mystics says reality is this, you can doubt, you can potentially find holes in it if you really want it, but I think trying to be as precise as possible and digging into their words is stupidity. Because it will never end and truly transform you like a mystical experience. But maybe you don't actually want that, if that's not what you want and you just want to explore thoughts forever then ignore this.

My question for you is this, how do you know that your doubts about solipisism is true? Can you ever escape my questinoning into you from this point ownards, and if not what this might be point to?

Edited 3 hours ago by Eskilon

[zurew]

5 minutes ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

It helps to have delved into and mastered rationality, prior to deconstructing it. 

Otherwise you fall into trap of unexamined contradiction, emotional preference and loose associative thinking (there are more traps it appears, these are just some obvious ones).

His inference from "not affirming solispism" to "you are stuck in a rationalist paradigm" doesnt make any sense for multiple reasons , one obvious reason being that you can have a mystic epistemology and not be a solipsist and also not be a rationalist.

Ralston isnt a solipsist, Rupert Spira isnt a solipsist, Sadhguru isnt a solipsist and none of them are rationalists.

[zurew]

41 minutes ago, Eskilon said:

When mystics says reality is this, you can doubt, you can potentially find holes in it if you really want it, but I think trying to be as precise as possible and digging into their words is stupidity.

I didnt attack mysticism with my posts, I specifically attacked solipsism with my post.

Most mystics werent solipsists.

[Eskilon]

33 minutes ago, zurew said:

I didnt attack mysticism with my posts, I specifically attacked solipsism with my post.

But I want to know the reason you attack solipism with such passion. It seems as if you got an objectivetly better position, which I assure you is not the case, at least not intelectually or linguistically.

Because think about it, even if solipisism has faults other position is bound to have faults too because of -- assumptions as you were pointing above. But here you may claim that other positions have less assumptions than solipsism and therefore they are more accurate. But that is true only superficially, only if you haven't gone all the way.

See it like this, any and everything anybody may say about reality I can just back to them "How do you know you are not assuming things?" And they may explain their postion once I question them, but then I question them again! And they explain again if they are well equipped, but guess what? More questions and problems to solve! And so I go on inquiring. Do you see where this is going?

From an intellect point of view any position is equally bogus, because a person can always demand more and ask more questions, and if you don't know how to answer then one could always claim you are full of shit! And this is an inescapable problem, try as you might. All problems either "end" in infinite questioning and explanations or "I just know" circularity.

The point is, your criticism seems really silly because you don't have a 100% better alternative to bring to the table. Not even a slight better one if you want to be really rigorous about it, because of the problems I said above.

Edited 2 hours ago by Eskilon

[zurew]

1 hour ago, Eskilon said:

But I want to know the reason you attack solipism with such passion. It seems as if you got an objectivetly better position, which I assure you is not the case, at least not intelectually or linguistically.

Im not seeing you having such issues when non-solipsistic views are attacked in a similar fashion.

1 hour ago, Eskilon said:

From an intellect point of view any position is equally bogus

I disagree, unless your relativize literally all epistemic norms, but given that you do ,then what you are pointing out is not gonna be an exclusive problem to the intellect, it is gonna be a problem for any kind of justification and thats gonna target everything including mysticism and spirituality as well.

What I did instead - I pointed out certain epistemic virtues  and given the context of those, how solipsism ranks worse than other views. With that move you dont undermine literally all views and you dont relativize everything the same way as you did.

You can say that you dont give a fuck about those virtues and norms and thats perfectly fine with me, and thats compatible with me saying in so far as we are using those standards, solipsism is gonna rank worse.

The "truth is true regardless of your epistemic norms and standards" is an issue for everyone and not just for the intellect. The truth is true regardless of your spiritual practices and your drug of choice and your awakenings.

if you want to go that skeptical - then there is no rule in reality that awakenings have to do anything with whats true.

You are demanding such a standard from me that you dont demand from the mystics. Your standards are unreasonable mine isn't, because the standards I use dont relvativize and dont undermine literally all investigation (and just to be clear again, Im not against spiritual work; I value mystical experiences and I include spiritual practices in the epistemology that I use, but if you would push me on it the same way you pushed on the intellectual norms, then a similar answer would come up - maybe none of these things have to do anything with whats true).

 

if your criticism of my criticism is that one must have 100% certainty about what kind of epistemic norm(s) or standards must have to do something with whats true (because otherwise every criticism is just bogus); in that case, literally everything is just bogus including all philosophy and all mysticism because there isn't any rule in reality that any kind of epistemic norm or standard must have to do something with whats actually true and if you gonna claim "but there is such a norm" then you gonna get back to the bootstrapping problem that you tried to push on me and that you thought was exclusive issue to intellectual norms.

Im okay with a starting point and using that starting point to filter views, and im also okay with not having 100% certainty about anything and with giving qualificaiton for everything (you not gonna see a similar kind of intellectual honesty from most actualized members though).

Edited 1 hour ago by zurew

[Rafael Thundercat]

16 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

You guys really refuse to understand what it means to be imagining yourself.

You think I am kidding around with you.

You are imagining guys who you assume are refusing what means to he imagining themselfs. Some of these imginary guys may understand well what means to imagine themselfs and they just decide to be modest and not boost around about that. 

[AtmanIsBrahman]

2 hours ago, zurew said:

His inference from "not affirming solispism" to "you are stuck in a rationalist paradigm" doesnt make any sense for multiple reasons , one obvious reason being that you can have a mystic epistemology and not be a solipsist and also not be a rationalist.

It’s not because of solipsism specifically that I think you’re stuck in rationalism; it’s from your overall mode of argumentation and thinking. Your arguments are riddled with scientific/academic philosophical norms and standards. But maybe the people you’re communicating with don’t share the same paradigm. Of course you think they’re brainwashed, but it could be the other way around too—this finger-pointing game of “you’re brainwashed” or “you’re a Leo minion” doesn’t lead anywhere. It’s really just an ego game.

There is a possibility that you can step outside of rationalism as a paradigm and start truth-seeking afresh. You still have rationalism in your toolbox but can now go beyond it.

Edited 56 minutes ago by AtmanIsBrahman