Solipsism, the child in the lap of the absolute

[CosmicTrekker]

I had a unsolicited experience many years ago, when the realisation dawned that I was the unborn eternity, and that I was completely and utterly alone for eternity. I was terrified by that realisation, no horror is even comparable.

Today (after 27 years from the previous experience), another insight arose, and with it the realisation, that "I am", is a child, a secondary level thought, and that "I am" is not the absolute, but a derivative, that has taken an attribute of that which is. 

 

This means that off course it's going to feel terrified when faced with its own existence, because it is just a fragment of the nameless infinity that is. 

As soon you separate from it, there's no peace. Peace is to absolutely desolve into the nothing that precedes everything, including the idea that "I am".

[Carl-Richard]

Solipsism around these parts are very concerned about denying the existence of certain spatio temporal entities (hidden forms and objects), while clinging to other spatio temporal entities as ontological primitives ("currently visible" forms and objects), and calling these primitives absolute, seemingly for no coherent reason. But there too, the answer is to simply dissolve any primitive that is not limitless.

[CosmicTrekker]

@Carl-Richard I'm not a philosopher so I might have misunderstood what you're pointing to, so forgive me. I think I get the gist of what you're saying, which is that as long as you see, witness, observe, or even be an observer, then you're still in duality, and that's not reality (reality being something that is, but which is beyond any capability to define, because to define it, requires duality). 

 

 

[Hojo]

Yes fear of solipsism is ego. You are deep sleep, between every thought of ego you see the brain dead state of deep sleep that never leaves.

[Sandroew]

Very nice! I understood exactly what you mean. (But i think you could have just used Infinity to describe it, solipsism proves to be a problematic concept for people.) How did the unsolicited experience happen ? What were you doing at the time ?

[Breakingthewall]

3 hours ago, CosmicTrekker said:

had a unsolicited experience many years ago, when the realisation dawned that I was the unborn eternity, and that I was completely and utterly alone for eternity. I was terrified by that realisation, no horror is even comparable

I've had that experience many times with psychedelics, especially with 5-MeO-DMT. It's absolutely horrible. You're alone, you are reality, there's nowhere to go, no time. You are eternal, reality is an eternal prison. You've always been here, alone, in eternity. There is no escape. I've even vomited, gone out into the street in a state of extreme high to avoid seeing that horror, drunk 4 beers in a row at a bar afterward to forget it, etc. But my feeling was: you have to hit that spot. You have to enter that state of absolute solitude until it becomes normal. It's almost impossible because it's horrible.

Then one day I did 5-MeO-DMT, and... the usual, cosmic loneliness, a gong that resonates and is absolute horror. I thought, okay, this is what I was meant to see today....again. After a few seconds I thought: no, I'm not going to settle for this shit. I put a double or triple amount of 5-MeO in the pipe without weighing it and thought: show me the truth or kill me. Reality shattered. There was no loneliness because there were no limits. It was everything, unlimited, total. It wasn't defined, closed, drawn, confined to a form, it was the unlimited, it wasn't someone, it was the boundless ocean. Nothing could be better, "better" wasn't a possibility, it, or i, was total, period.

"Alone" means nothing, because it's total, alone is absolutely meaningless, because alone is closed and you are open. Alone means a circle. Everything mean no lines, no definition. There is not one. Not numbers. One means nothing. If one means something, you are closed. 

Edited January 12 by Breakingthewall

[cetus]

59 minutes ago, Breakingthewall said:

I've had that experience many times with psychedelics, especially with 5-MeO-DMT. It's absolutely horrible. You're alone, you are reality, there's nowhere to go, no time. You are eternal, reality is an eternal prison. You've always been here, alone,

I aways think of this song when I hear ppl say they had their first realization of Absolute Truth. 

Edited January 12 by cetus

[Carl-Richard]

On 12.1.2026 at 7:29 PM, CosmicTrekker said:

@Carl-Richard I'm not a philosopher so I might have misunderstood what you're pointing to, so forgive me. I think I get the gist of what you're saying, which is that as long as you see, witness, observe, or even be an observer, then you're still in duality, and that's not reality (reality being something that is, but which is beyond any capability to define, because to define it, requires duality).

Correct. It is as simple as that. Solipsists around these parts tend to take the witnessing of objects as absolute, while the witnessing of objects is in fact relative. They will maybe protest this characterization and vaguely proclaim "this is everything that exists" but then also add a bunch of other statements after that (e.g. "if your grandma is not in your field of vision, she doesn't exist) which implies that only a certain configuration of objects exist and anything outside that configuration cannot be the case. "But my visual field is not an object". Well, objects are defined by exclusion (or distinction), and if your visual field can exclude or be distinct from your grandma, it's an object.

Edited 14 hours ago by Carl-Richard

[RisingLane]

"The feeling ‘I am’ is itself an illusion, therefore whatever is seen through this illusion cannot be real." - Key Quotes on the ‘I am’ by Nisargadatta Maharaj

[Breakingthewall]

6 hours ago, cetus said:

aways think of this song when I hear ppl say they had their first realization of Absolute Truth. 

Yeah but one alone is not the absolute truth , is ego inflation. The ego must explode and disappear, then there is not one nor loneliness 

[Breakingthewall]

16 hours ago, RisingLane said:

"The feeling ‘I am’ is itself an illusion, therefore whatever is seen through this illusion cannot be real." - Key Quotes on the ‘I am’ by Nisargadatta Maharaj

The feeling of "I am" exists in contrast to an external world. Without an external world, there is no "I am" because there is no consciousness. The fact is that reality will always reflect itself in some way, and in doing so, it will realize what it is, which is true.

Therefore, what Nisgardatta says is false if we want to be precise. "Illusion" is a misleading word; nothing is an illusion, but rather different perspectives. 

To say that I am is an illusion is like saying that consciousness is an illusion, or that form is an illusion. glorifying emptiness and denying wholeness, depressed neo-Advaida defining enlightenment as nothing 

Edited January 13 by Breakingthewall

[Breakingthewall]

16 hours ago, RisingLane said:

"The feeling ‘I am’ is itself an illusion, therefore whatever is seen through this illusion cannot be real." - Key Quotes on the ‘I am’ by Nisargadatta Maharaj

What I said before needs clarification, since Nisgardatta, when he says "illusion," surely means "not ultimate." In that case, he's right, and he's one of the few mystics who makes that leap, not considering consciousness as the ultimate substance.

The problem is the word "illusion," which implies falsehood. It would be much better to use the terms "relative" vs. "absolute," instead of "illusion" vs. "real." Nothing is false or illusory. Forms are real, but they are relational in form, absolute in essence.

[RisingLane]

Bernadette Roberts would also say that "I am" is not an illusion. But it's not eternal. It's something that arises and falls away. So it doesn't have any ultimate reality. But it's very real while it's happening.

"Because the mind bends on itself it sees or is aware of itself; thus we have the knowing experience 'This is I,' 'I am myself,' and so on. Self is not a socially learned or conditioned experience; it is not a mistake or an illusion. Rather, self or consciousness is a concrete function of the human brain; without it, man would not be man." - Quote from What is Self? 

Edited January 13 by RisingLane

[CosmicTrekker]

On 12/01/2026 at 8:25 PM, Sandroew said:

Very nice! I understood exactly what you mean. (But i think you could have just used Infinity to describe it, solipsism proves to be a problematic concept for people.) How did the unsolicited experience happen ? What were you doing at the time ?

Hi, I described the how this happen in these old posts: 
1. 

2. 

 

[CosmicTrekker]

On 12/01/2026 at 8:50 PM, Breakingthewall said:

I've had that experience many times with psychedelics, especially with 5-MeO-DMT. It's absolutely horrible. You're alone, you are reality, there's nowhere to go, no time. You are eternal, reality is an eternal prison. You've always been here, alone, in eternity. There is no escape. I've even vomited, gone out into the street in a state of extreme high to avoid seeing that horror, drunk 4 beers in a row at a bar afterward to forget it, etc. But my feeling was: you have to hit that spot. You have to enter that state of absolute solitude until it becomes normal. It's almost impossible because it's horrible.

Then one day I did 5-MeO-DMT, and... the usual, cosmic loneliness, a gong that resonates and is absolute horror. I thought, okay, this is what I was meant to see today....again. After a few seconds I thought: no, I'm not going to settle for this shit. I put a double or triple amount of 5-MeO in the pipe without weighing it and thought: show me the truth or kill me. Reality shattered. There was no loneliness because there were no limits. It was everything, unlimited, total. It wasn't defined, closed, drawn, confined to a form, it was the unlimited, it wasn't someone, it was the boundless ocean. Nothing could be better, "better" wasn't a possibility, it, or i, was total, period.

"Alone" means nothing, because it's total, alone is absolutely meaningless, because alone is closed and you are open. Alone means a circle. Everything mean no lines, no definition. There is not one. Not numbers. One means nothing. If one means something, you are closed. 

You've described this beautifully! Thanks for the insights. I'm glad that others have also come across this 'experience'. 
 

Funny thing is that, I also have vague recollections of the state you described when you took the extra doses of 5-MeO, but I can't quite put my finger on it. From what I can recollect, it was like being in a completely white boundless space and the light that was everything was completely diffused and shadowless. 

[CosmicTrekker]

On 12/01/2026 at 7:23 PM, Hojo said:

Yes fear of solipsism is ego. You are deep sleep, between every thought of ego you see the brain dead state of deep sleep that never leaves.

I agree with you, thank you. I imagine that the 'I' that saw that was from the perspective of this egoic self conditioned by its experiences as a human-being, and off-course it would shatter into a billion pieces when faced with the absolute. The irony is that it is only that which can truly know itself and we as human-being egos can never even come close to ever knowing it. 

[Mellowmarsh]

On 13/01/2026 at 10:32 PM, RisingLane said:

Bernadette Roberts would also say that "I am" is not an illusion. But it's not eternal. It's something that arises and falls away. So it doesn't have any ultimate reality. But it's very real while it's happening.

"Because the mind bends on itself it sees or is aware of itself; thus we have the knowing experience 'This is I,' 'I am myself,' and so on. Self is not a socially learned or conditioned experience; it is not a mistake or an illusion. Rather, self or consciousness is a concrete function of the human brain; without it, man would not be man." - Quote from What is Self? 

Something arising and falling, to me, sounds like I am aware of being and not being both. 

( being) is the arising of I am

(not being) is the falling away of I am

 

It’s like there’s something that is aware of it’s finite nature of being, while simultaneously aware of its infinite not being.

 

Infinity is just another word for not being. While being is just another word for finite.

 

 

 

 

 

[Joseph Maynor]

On 1/12/2026 at 0:50 PM, Breakingthewall said:

I've had that experience many times with psychedelics, especially with 5-MeO-DMT. It's absolutely horrible. You're alone, you are reality, there's nowhere to go, no time. You are eternal, reality is an eternal prison. You've always been here, alone, in eternity. There is no escape. I've even vomited, gone out into the street in a state of extreme high to avoid seeing that horror, drunk 4 beers in a row at a bar afterward to forget it, etc. But my feeling was: you have to hit that spot. You have to enter that state of absolute solitude until it becomes normal. It's almost impossible because it's horrible.

When I had this experience it wasn't horrifying or scary, it was puzzling and actually quite liberating.  It was just being as Consciousness, like noticing a Deeper Truth that is ordinarily veiled.  It was more like -- wow I gotta write this down, I can't believe it!  

[Mellowmarsh]

On 12/01/2026 at 5:59 PM, CosmicTrekker said:

As soon you separate from it, there's no peace. Peace is to absolutely desolve into the nothing that precedes everything, including the idea that "I am".

Very Good 👍 

There’s a place of perfect peace. But no one wants to live there.

To face yourself without distraction is to come face to face with the faceless, fearless truth of you, that will never leave you.

[Ramasta9]

I can never relate with the horrible / horror experience that people have. It seems more common with 5-meo and substances than naturally or spontaneously occurring experiences. My experience of merging into oneness was the most homecoming and eternally comforting / nourishing experience I could ever imagine or put into words. Its like finally returning home after an eternity of being lost, so it was the total opposite of feeling utterly alone.. but it was alone, in a totally different way, rather it was, All-One... so i guess the total opposite of lonely. For me, I see peace as simply resting in being. When I rest, surrender, i feel peaceful.

 

 

 

Edited 4 hours ago by Ramasta9