How To Know Reality Doesn't Exist

[Edvard]

When you're talking about enlightenment, people are saying that it gives insight of knowing that reality is an illusion. Sure, consciousness is the only thing we can be 100% certain exists, but how does that mean that we can be 100% certain the external world, with all its consistency, doesn't exist, just because you have an awareness of direct experience? What experience could make you know for certain that anything other than consciousness does OR doesn't exist? Everything is consciousness, after all.

And if the illusion was created by the mind, or God, where did God get this idea from?

That's what I have trouble understanding. 

[Nahm]

@Edvard There is only one way. You are illusory. You are nothing.  When you accept that, you are enlightened. Everything else snaps right into place. 

 

Edited July 21, 2017 by Nahm

[Edvard]

@Nahm Maybe so, and in a way it makes most sense after all, we are unsignificant even within the content of the illusion... so, I just wonder what does it matter? What matters is consciousness in its content, right? This is the content. There is suffering and happiness, and it makes ultimately sense that it doesn't exist, but exist at the same time, because why is there something instead of nothing? Because there is nothing, or only awareness, experience. All that makes sense, but what I'm trying to understand is how anyone can know anything based on experience alone. 

What I also wonder is that by reality being an illusion, does that mean that other illusory organisms don't feel anything - that it's just something I think, and that it's all just a dream? It can't be that, because everyone here cares about suffering, meaning that you in practice can say that other conscious beings exist? Which leads me back to saying, what matters is consciousness in its content. If we think we exist, why isn't that good enough to say that we exist? To me that is just as valid as saying that we don't exist. Saying that we don't exist is also an idea, created by the ego?

Edited July 21, 2017 by Edvard

[Nahm]

@Edvard DO EVERYTHING LEO IS TELLING YOU! 

The death of the ego is a DEATH OF YOU. You. Will.  fucking. die. Then you'll be infinite, but alone. Then you'll be right back in the illusion, but you know it's an illusion.  You'll know that it's YOUR illusion. 

It takes a long time.  You'll need to get from where you are now to non-thinking. 

Everything you said doesn't matter because the brain that's thinking it and the mouth that's saying it is an illusion. 

What does matter is doing the practices. There is no better or more all encompassing master than Leo. Just wake up and do what he's telling you. 

Let all the questions go, that is practicing in itself. Notice them arise in your mind, and let them go. After you let it go, notice how everything is the same. Had you said it, it would have made no progress for you. 

 

[SOUL]

Something being an illusion and something not existing are not the same thing but are confused as the same thing by many spiritualists. Attempting to understand is one of the most significant stumbling blocks to enlightenment, just accepting what is as it is is a cornerstone to exercising our awareness of being present in the moment.

[Edvard]

@Nahm I am doing the exercises, but I also wonder about certain things to what this means. But ultimately no one is right or wrong.

[Nahm]

@Edvard If no one is right or wrong then there is no Truth so just stop doing all your practices. You're wasting your time. 

[Edvard]

@Nahm So why say enlightenment can't be explained by words? Words and concepts don't exist, neither non-existence nor existence exist. That's what I meant by stating that no one is ultimately right or wrong in what enlightenment is, or means, because it's just experience, my mind figured.

Now, within the content of the illusion, there probably are right or wrong ways to reach enlightenment...

Edited July 21, 2017 by Edvard

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, Edvard said:

What experience could make you know for certain that anything other than consciousness does OR doesn't exist?

The point you're missing is: enlightenment is NOT an experience. It's prior to all experience. Your model of reality doesn't allow for such a thing to be possible -- because you're still operating under a naive realist paradigm without realizing it. Which is why you're confused.

Imagine for a second actually becoming "the external world", not just experiencing it, but actually becoming it. And when you do, you realize, it is Nothing, and identical to the "internal world".

[Nahm]

@Edvard I feel you. I get what you're saying. Our experience changes our definitions. Well, fuck....back to the practices.

 

[Joseph Maynor]

@Edvard Reality exists, just stripped of all concept.

[Ananta]

Lets keep it really simple. I'm certain of two things, I'm aware and I exist. I know I exist, because I experience, but I also know that experience is ultimately an illusion. When I negate all phenomenal objects, including thoughts, feelings, emotions. "I AM" no-thing, I just AM.

[Dodo]

3 hours ago, SOUL said:

Something being an illusion and something not existing are not the same thing but are confused as the same thing by many spiritualists. Attempting to understand is one of the most significant stumbling blocks to enlightenment, just accepting what is as it is is a cornerstone to exercising our awareness of being present in the moment.

The Ego definitely is an Illusion however, so it is not real. Therefore it is imagination, fairytale land. It means having two selves. It means being Schizophrenic (yeah, the symptoms are 100% the same). It has to be the first thing anyone should do as foundation. 

The whole reality is a hallucination, we're living in our own imagination, God's imagination. To truly grasp this we need to kill the illusion of having a separate self. We need to simply deepen into oneness. At once!

[Ananta]

59 minutes ago, Dodo said:

It means having two selves. It means being Schizophrenic (yeah, the symptoms are 100% the same).

No, you don't know about schizophrenia if you think it's the same.

The absolute/Brahman/awareness is not thinking, it's devoid of thinking. Thinking happens with awareness. You are aware OF thinking.

In schizophrenia, there is thinking/thought/ego and a "seperate" thought process happening simultaneously and/or auditory or visual hallucinations.

[Dodo]

34 minutes ago, Anna1 said:

No, you don't know about schizophrenia if you think it's the same.

The absolute/Brahman/awareness is not thinking, it's devoid of thinking. Thinking happens with awareness. You are aware OF thinking.

In schizophrenia, there is thinking/thought/ego and a "seperate" thought process happening simultaneously and/or auditory or visual hallucinations.

Yes, see? It's the same, but on another level. Since basically everything is created by the mind, all this is imaginary, the stuff that dreams are made of. God is dreaming this. Existence is dreaming and begins to awaken! The thing that is writing is just as real as empty space. There the imaginary is void - Ego becomes no Ego. Where there is just eternal peace and beauty. Deepening into emptiness.

[Ananta]

3 minutes ago, Dodo said:

Yes, see? It's the same, but on another level. Since basically everything is created by the mind, all this is imaginary, the stuff that dreams are made of. God is dreaming this. Existence is dreaming and begins to awaken! The thing that is writing is just as real as empty space. There the imaginary is void - Ego becomes no Ego. Where there is just eternal peace and beauty. Deepening into emptiness.

Oh, it's definitely all in the dream/illusion. I was just making the distinction that Brahman does not think, so can not be part of a self thats schizophrenic, other than to be aware OF it.

[Nahm]

@Joseph Maynor and how do you know that?

2 hours ago, Joseph Maynor said:

@Edvard Reality exists, just stripped of all concept.

 

@Dodo You are awesome!... and, who is this God you mentioned?

@Anna1 Nurses are angels from heaven! 

 

[Ananta]

4 minutes ago, Nahm said:

Nurses are angels from heaven! 

Ya know, in the past, I've tried to tell my patients that before I stick them, but they just don't seem to agree...lol!

Haha, I know longer do patient care (I'm in administration now), but still go into their rooms at the hospital to talk with them. Alot better then sticking them with needles. 

[Nahm]

@Anna1 you're a saint in my book! Thank you!!!

Edited July 22, 2017 by Nahm

[Ananta]

1 minute ago, Nahm said:

@Anna1 your a saint in my book! Thank you!!!

Ah, thanks!!