Leo's Blog Discussion Mega-Thread

[Raze]

9 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Because it's God and Love.

Those people are clueless.

God is so God that once you experience it, you won't want to call it anything else.

Truly, I only require one word to explain everything.

GOD.

What if you were raised in a culture that’s language didn’t have the word God or love and has something else or nothing at all 

[Joseph Maynor]

I like the post on epistemology.  Epistemology is interesting in how it relates to metaphysics.

[Eskilon]

2 hours ago, aurum said:

Why would 'Pure Consciousness' not suffer from the same problem as using 'God'?

No, because consciousness is more relatable than the word God. If you say consciousness to a person he will get it better than the word God. It is a better pointer.

 

2 hours ago, aurum said:

You could argue he is switching up his answer as a teaching device, but that seems like unnecessary confusion to me.

It is more nuanced and compassionate approach. The same way if you had a daughter who is 5 years old and she ask about death, will you say stuff about it? Probably you will not be direct and with a ready-made answer. Each person deserves an unique answer because no two people are the same.

Edited 13 hours ago by Eskilon

[Stick]

On the 'OSHO wrong on God' blog I think that you are really undermining OSHO.
The dude didn't do a single drug yet he reached such high level of permanent trance.
How many psychedelic trip did it require you to see God? @Leo Gura
OSHO did it all through meditation and contemplation.
Although he didn't fully realize God he was very close.
Gotta give some respect to the goat.

[aurum]

3 hours ago, Eskilon said:

It is more nuanced and compassionate approach. The same way if you had a daughter who is 5 years old and she ask about death, will you say stuff about it? Probably you will not be direct and with a ready-made answer. Each person deserves an unique answer because no two people are the same.

There's tailoring your answer to your audience, and then there's just confusion.

I feel this is just confusion.

[abc123]

14 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Sorry, not buying it.

There is no other word for God but God.

I refuse to accept that anyone who is allergic to the word because of history is actually conscious of God, because if he was, he would not object to the word.

You don't throw away a perfect word just because some idiots used it incorrectly in the past.

Osho speaks of God as if he doesn't understand what it is.

13 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

That is the whole problem.

He doesn't grasp God. That is why he is resorting to these word games.

Come on dude, you are all about understanding context and making clear detailed distinctions.

- For example, here is a talk in "Being Loose and Natural" of him saying this:

"The word brahmacharya means that you have come to attain, you have come to know that you are the brahman, the ultimate, the divine – God himself you are. When one starts feeling this that one is God himself...."

- Or another example, read some of his sayings about God here:
https://oshofriends.com/god

 

13 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

That's not all. That's a stupid thing to bother rejecting.

A man of Osho's intellect should know better than to be rejecting a strawman.

You yourself reject the strawman version of God in your episode: What Is God? - Part 1

"....God exists certainly I'm not meaning that there is a bearded man in the clouds sitting down looking upon you and judging you and throwing you into hell that's not what"

So of course, he as well needs to make clear what he means with God and what he does not mean with it.

____________________________________________________________

Edited 8 hours ago by abc123

[zurew]

4 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

God is so God that once you experience it, you won't want to call it anything else.

This is just another empirical claim , where you have a sample size of 1 and you make your assertions and 100% confident inferences given that sample and then you expect people to take you seriously when you create another 2 hour video on epistemology and about epistemic responsibility.

Like yeah dude congratulations for your highly intelligent inference -   mystics who dont understand any english are categorically removed from being God realized.

Given the Ralston thread it seemed that you had a basic understanding about language and label usage - that multiple different labels can be used to point to the same thing -  so I dont undersatnd given that why you make confident inferences just purely from label usage.

 

 

It seems that you give more fucks about people simulating understanding by parroting your preferred labels than about figuring out who has what level of understanding irrespective of the labels they use. 

People will use your terminology here and you will be immediately swayed by it and infer from that they have a high level  understanding of spirituality.

Given your super unsophisticated scheme for figuring out who has what level of understanding, its comically easy for anyone to trick you into thinking that they are much more profound than they actually are.

[gettoefl]

Quote

 

A man who is awake cannot be a politician. He cannot be a religious leader, either, because these are all ego claims: I am the prophet of God; I am the messiah; I am somebody special sent from God; you are just ordinary human creatures, I am divine. This is simply sickness of the mind. These people are suffering from inferiority complex and covering it by fictions.

Q: WHO ARE YOU?

A: I am just myself. No prophet, no messiah, no Christ. Just an ordinary human being... just like you.

Q: WELL, NOT QUITE!

A: That's true... not quite! You are still asleep -- but that is not much of a difference. One day I was also asleep; one day you will be able to awaken. You can wake up this moment, nobody is preventing it. So the difference is just meaningless. A person who is capable of being asleep is capable of being awake.

Q: IS THERE SUCH A THING AS GOD?

A: No.

Q: WHAT IS WITHIN US? YOU TALK ABOUT TURNING INWARD. WHAT DOES THAT REALLY MEAN?

A: First, let us finish God; otherwise, he will interfere again and again. God is just a projection of the ego. As ego is false and a substitute for a true self, God is the ego of the whole world -- a substitute self, because our egos cannot exist without support. They need universal support, and God gives immense support.
When I say go inwards... you are not going to find God at all. You are going to find a pure, silent consciousness, and you are going to realize immediately that the same consciousness pervades all. I call it godliness, not God, because this is a quality. Don't give it a personality, don't confine it into a person. Let it remain free, flowing. It is more like a fragrance than like a flower. A flower can be painted, a flower can be photographed; a fragrance can only be experienced, you cannot photograph it, you cannot paint it. It is a quality far superior to the personal God. It is an impersonal consciousness, universal consciousness.

Q: DOESN'T THAT SEEM SORT OF BORING?

A: Boring?

Q: YEAH, BECAUSE IT'S ALL THE SAME.

A: Yes. To an asleep person, it is boring. The person who is asleep needs colorful dreams, changes -- every night, marriage, divorce, job change. The asleep person becomes bored very easily for the simple reason that his joy is derived from something, it is not coming from his own inner source.
I have never been bored since I came to know myself. I have been trying in every possible way. Eating the same food for years, I don't get bored. Sleeping at the same time, waking at the same time, doing the same thing round the clock for years, I don't get bored because there is no comparison with the past, there is no comparison with the future.
Boredom needs comparison. You have to remember that this rose is nothing new: you have seen it yesterday, you have seen it the day before yesterday. You are bored. And slowly your boredom creates a barrier between you and the rose. You cannot smell it any more, you cannot see it any more. Although you see it, you cannot see its newness, its freshness. The rose that you had seen yesterday is not the same rose. It has the same quality, the same fragrance, but it has its own individuality.
When you feel a cosmic consciousness, you are not lost like a dewdrop in the ocean. For the first time your individuality is revealed to you. For the first time you know the luminous being that you always have been; that you will always be immortal, that now there is no death. There is a tremendous insight into the beauty and the grace of things, and it goes on becoming bigger and bigger, fresher and fresher. It is not that it remains the same -- the universal energy is a constant growth.
That's why I wanted to finish with God in the first place, because God cannot grow. Where will he grow? He is perfect. Now perfection cannot grow. He knows all; what more is there for him to know? He is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent... and don't you get bored with God?
My godliness is imperfect; it is an opening, always bigger and bigger. It is expanding, and there are no limits to its expansion. And each moment is a discovery for the awakened man. In small things -- sipping the tea in the morning,the smell of the tea.... The taste of the tea is so new, it is as new as the sun rising outside the window.
It depends on how conscious you are to make the world new every moment. It is already new every moment; nothing is static, everything is changing, in a flux. The tree that you had left at home, by the time you go back a few leaves may have died, the wind may have taken them. A few new leaves may have come up, a few flowers may have fallen to the ground, a few new buds may have opened. It is only to a sleeping man that the tree is the same. To the awakened man, it is new every moment.
Heraclitus said, "You cannot step in the same river twice." And I say to you that you cannot step even once in the same river, because while your feet touch the surface of the river, it is flowing. Your feet go into the river, and it is flowing. By the time your feet have touched the bottom, it is not the same river you touched on the surface.
Heraclitus is wrong. Many people have said Heraclitus is wrong, that the world is permanent. I say it from a totally different direction -- and I know Heraclitus will have to agree with me, because I am not contradicting his basic standpoint, I am refining
When he says you cannot step twice, he is trying to say that everything is changing, the wife is not the same, the husband is not the same. If people are awake, I don't think there will be so much despair, gloom, grumpiness, so many complaints about everything. The husband is bored because it is the same wife, the same geography he has to explore every day. The wife is also bored; the moment the husband starts making an approach, immediately she has a heart attack, a headache, anything will do, but somehow..."at least one holiday. Just go to sleep silently. Don't disturb me." And this is the same woman who had been dreaming about this man one day, writing beautiful poems and letters to him -- and this is the same man.
What has happened? What went wrong? Why are they thinking to divorce each other? They have become bored, and they think that the other is responsible for the boredom. My point is that your sleep is responsible for all boredom. No divorce is going to help. The other person will bore you just the same.

- Osho

 

[Leo Gura]

In any other context such word games would be laughed out of the room.

Imagine if I was talking about moose, but simply because most people are fools who have confused raccoons for moose, I am supposed to stop calling moose, moose, and start calling them raccoons instead. And when asked about moose, I would boldly proclaim how moose do not exist! I would say there is no such thing as moose, only mooseiness. The moose was invented to brainwash and control the masses! Only a dimwit could speak of moose!

I am talking about a real fucking moose. Not raccoons, not mooseiness. If you think that moose means raccoon, that is a you problem. A moose is exactly its dictionary definition. And so is God.

God is: Infinite, Omnipresent, Omniscient, Omnipotent, Creator, Selfless, Benevolent, Love, Eternal, Immortal, Good, Perfection, Absolute, Beauty, Consciousness.

You can ask any AI what the definition of God is and it will clearly tell you. I am not using any kind of unique, Leo-centric definition of God. The only uniqueness I claim is in depth and clarity in understanding it.

Edited 6 hours ago by Leo Gura

[zurew]

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

In any other context such word games would be laughed out of the room.

You are doing the wordgames, because its you who want to infer big things from mere label usage and not give a fuck about the underlying substance that is pointed at by people who use different labels than you do.

Your moose-racoon example utterly fails, because people who create dictionary definitions  they actually do empirical work related to how the term is used by the general population and by specific fields and they dont do the method that you want them to do, where they ask Leo Gura what exclusive Gura-vocal definition should be given for the label that Leo prefers.

 

You are the dude who would fail a philosophy of language class  because you would fail Frege's puzzle , because you would think that the label 'morning  star'  and the label 'evening star'  would have to refer to two different physical objects.

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

I am not using any kind of unique, Leo-centric definition of God.

Yes you do, even given your definition once we clarify what you actually mean by those subterms even those  will mean something wildly different than what most theologians or how common folk understand those terms.

You have a definition of God where God's existence cannot be denied because its analytically true given your notion that God must exist , given that under your notion  God is an interchangeable label with Reality.

Literally almost no one uses the term "God" that way. The vast majority of people dont use it that way and you are arrogant enough to demand others to use that label the way you do and you stupid enough to confidently infer understanding from mere label usage.

Edited 3 hours ago by zurew

[Leo Gura]

12 minutes ago, zurew said:

Literally almost no one uses the term "God" that way.

Because they have no clue what God is and I do.

Someone has to clean up the mess that humans have made. That's my job. The only one who can clean it up is one who actually understands.

I am giving you the most technically precise and clear articulation of God that anyone has ever given you. And all you do is find more reasons to argue.

My articulation of God is more precise and accurate than Osho's. And it leads to a deeper realization of God in the end.

I stress these points because if I don't stress them over and over again, God will get missed. I understand all the misunderstanding and I am here cleaning it up. I am not going to repeat the misunderstandings of others.

If you confuse a moose with a raccoon, I will correct you and I will expect you to call it a moose because that's what it is. I am not going to sit around and entertain raccoon talk.

Edited 5 hours ago by Leo Gura

[zurew]

2 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

I am giving you the most technically precise and clear articulation of God that anyone has ever given you. And all you do is fine reasons to argue.

I can grant for the sake of the argument that you have the best understanding of what Reality is , what I have issue with right now are the norms that you demand related to language and label usage and also with you inferring big things based on mere label usage.

[Davino]

11 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Pure Consciousness does not mean God was realized.

Absolutely, I realised Pure Consciousness long long before having any clue about God.

Also I realised Love much after having my first God Awakening.

So there seems to be a logic to Awakening and its facets but also anomalies.

Edited 5 hours ago by Davino

[zurew]

20 minutes ago, Davino said:

Absolutely, I realised Pure Consciousness long long before having any clue about God.

You are assuming that the term "Pure Consciousness" was used the exact same way you use the term.

I dont understand why almost none of you is sensitive to the fact that 1) the exact same label can be used to refer to something different 2) Multiple different labels can be used to refer to the exact same thing

[Davino]

2 minutes ago, zurew said:

You are assuming that the term "Pure Consciousness" was used the exact same way you use the term.

It's quite a reasonable assumption.

Sometimes you miss complicated points and others you overcomplicate simple points.

3 minutes ago, zurew said:

I dont understand why almost none of you is sensitive to the fact that 1) the exact same label can be used to refer to something different 2) Multiple different labels can be used to refer to the exact same thing

I'm sensitive, it's part of epistemology to contemplate how language works, its limits and so on.

The irony is that most of the time confusion comes from those which already don't understand, for those who understand, terms are usually quite crystal clear and become ever more sharp with time. 

If I tell you point to your phone you understand what that word points to. If I tell you to point Consciousness, Infinity or Love, do you know what to do?

The more maths you do the more you understand maths. The more you love the more you understand what love is. The more you Awaken, the more you realize Consciousness. The more you realize God the more you are God. The more you explore Infinity, the more Infinite everything will become.

[Terell Kirby]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

God is: Infinite, Omnipresent, Omniscient, Omnipotent, Creator, Selfless, Benevolent, Love, Eternal, Immortal, Good, Perfection, Absolute, Beauty, Consciousness.

Can't get more explicit than that.

The beautiful thing is we can contemplate these things for ourselves, no middle man or spiritual teachers are needed to get deep with this stuff. It can all be done sitting in a dark closet.

[zurew]

1 hour ago, Davino said:

The irony is that most of the time confusion comes from those which already don't understand, for those who understand, terms are usually quite crystal clear and become ever more sharp with time. 

You are confusing understanding with term usage.

There are a bunch of things that can determine term usage that are unrelated to understanding.

This is why your inferences shouldnt be made merely based on what label is used in a single sentence, but rather should be based on long substance (where the given person gives a long description about the content of his awakenings and about his understanding of spirituality) and based on that long description you can make a much better judgement on that person's understanding about spirituality.

But thats precisely what I dont see from almost any of you , what I rather see is that you single out and focus on label usage in one single sentence and then you run away with big and firm conclusions about that person's understanding about spirituality.

It would be like as if a person who isn't familiar with Leo's term usage in any way at all, would only hear one single sentence from Leo "You are God" and based on that single sentence they would infer that Leo is talking about some supreme being that is seperate from the Universe.

 

1 hour ago, Davino said:

The more maths you do the more you understand maths.

Understanding maths is not the same thing as using the exact labels or terminology that you happen to use. If a highly intelligent alien species were to visit Earth and used different words to describe mathematical concepts, it would not follow that they lacked an understanding of maths. What would much more likely follow is simply that they use a different system of labels to describe the same underlying concepts.

Edited 3 hours ago by zurew

[Someone here]

17 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

That is the whole problem.

He doesn't grasp God. That is why he is resorting to these word games.

He grasps what you mean by god . It’s not word games in my opinion . You say he should be intelligent enough to know what the word “god” actually points to ..well he basically does. Why aren’t you intelligent enough to understand that ? He has explained in his books as well. he wrote hundreds of books on spirituality . All of his books on spirituality included the word God ..Love..beloved ..etc . These  confusing shorties on YouTube are not the whole picture .
All He means by the distinction between “God” and “Godliness “ is that god is not a “person “.. why almost nobody in mainstream society understands god except as person ? because they take themselves to be persons .  Even you speak loosely about God as “he” yet you are obviously conscious that God isn’t a he or a she . So you are also prone to think of god as it’s understood in colloquial sense of the word .

please listen to this video . I think in this one particularly specifically he clarifies the point perfectly.

 

[vibv]

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

In any other context such word games would be laughed out of the room.

Imagine if I was talking about moose, but simply because most people are fools who have confused raccoons for moose, I am supposed to stop calling moose, moose, and start calling them raccoons instead. And when asked about moose, I would boldly proclaim how moose do not exist! I would say there is no such thing as moose, only mooseiness. The moose was invented to brainwash and control the masses! Only a dimwit could speak of moose!

I am talking about a real fucking moose. Not raccoons, not mooseiness. If you think that moose means raccoon, that is a you problem. A moose is exactly its dictionary definition. And so is God.

God is: Infinite, Omnipresent, Omniscient, Omnipotent, Creator, Selfless, Benevolent, Love, Eternal, Immortal, Good, Perfection, Absolute, Beauty, Consciousness.

You can ask any AI what the definition of God is and it will clearly tell you. I am not using any kind of unique, Leo-centric definition of God. The only uniqueness I claim is in depth and clarity in understanding it.

His energy is more important than his words. You're the one hung up on words here. As if words could ever describe what GOD truly is.

Ones energy is a more accurate description of GOD than words could ever be.

Edited 3 hours ago by vibv

[AtmanIsBrahman]

22 minutes ago, Someone here said:

please listen to this video . I think in this one particularly specifically he clarifies the point perfectly.

The video only confirms that Osho is attacking a strawman.

He tries to differentiate his view from atheism by claiming he’s not a materialist. That differentiates his overall worldview from other atheists, but doesn’t really change his position on God. 

Then he says that God is not a person, which is a strawman of God. Only uneducated people and evangelical Christians think God is a person.

I think the takeaway is that most gurus just aren’t profound philosophers. That’s why there’s more to this work than just pursuing mystical states—understanding self-deception and bias, burning through karma, deconstructing rationality and science, and learning spiral dynamics, to name a few.

Edited 3 hours ago by AtmanIsBrahman