"If I kept going with this Samadhi I would not be alive today"

[Mafortu]

So this is something that has been bothering me a little, and I want to discuss.

Context:

Daniel Schmidt is a spiritual teacher, very talented musician and artist and has directed the very popular Samadhi and Inner Worlds Outer Worlds film series. Which I consider to be the best videos to introduce people into non-duality.

He released a video yesterday describing his yet most powerful experience he had in one of his meditations, which is on itself very interesting and I suggest you all watch it and his other videos I linked above.

Anyways, very similar to Leo, he has had many FINAL ego-death experiences in the past , and like Leo he says this time was for real and that if he kept going he would not be alive today 

So......  I guess this goes for Daniel, Leo and other teachers, does that mean your past ego-deaths were delusions? Having a no-self experience is absolute in the sense that you are AWARE that you no longer exist, and at that point the mind isnt thinking "I dont think there is coming back from this" unless of course the self-identification never stopped, so to say the most recent one was going to be for real this time makes me question how honest and sincere you were when you recounted those past experiences of no-self.

 

[Flyboy]

It might be helpful to consider that an awakening peak state that returns to "normalcy" is then relegated to concept (because it is in memory, not presently experienced).  As such, I wouldn't be surprised if the feeling that "this time it's total" is related to two things:

1. The new awakening is happening "NOW", and thus is presently your direct experience.  This is contrasted in your mind with the "concept" of your past awakening, which by definition cannot be the thing itself.  It makes sense that this phenomenon will result in incomparability.  Even after a new awakening, you remember the feeling of incomparability and it holds, even if in some ways this could be an illusion in the absolute sense.

2. Awakening has infinite depth and infinite facets, if reality is Absolutely Infinite.  However, the word "total" has no meaning in our experience except "at least everything we have already experienced."  So, anything that pushes the boundaries of your experience AND includes all of your previous experience would be felt as "total."  Total, in the absolute sense, is meaningless, as the word total implies a limit which does not exist.

Happy to hear other thoughts too

 

[lmfao]

3 hours ago, Mafortu said:

Anyways, very similar to Leo, he has had many FINAL ego-death experiences in the past , and like Leo he says this time was for real and that if he kept going he would not be alive today 

This is a very common way of feeling and thinking when you have a big breakthrough. 

Something that comes to my mind are the public correspondences between Leo and Peter Ralston. Leo brought up Mahasamadhi, and Peter said that there have been many times for him where he's suddenly felt like something extreme is going to take him away. But that it ultimately passed away. 

Change=death, and a large enough change to certain parts of your experience feel like death and there's raw fear

--

I think that even if you return to your baseline level of consciousness, certain enlightenment glimpses leave a residue or stain in the back of your mind. Where deep down you'll always know when you're distracting yourself or running away from a truth that fate won't let you deny 

Edited February 19, 2021 by lmfao

[traveler]

The fear of death comes when a resistance or "ego" interferes with a mystical experience. The ego comes in and says "if I go any further I'll die," but the ego was already dead untill it uttered those words. When the world reappears it let's out a sigh and says "that was close, I almost died."

What is, is the glimpse. This is the big bang echoing. There is no death, only for the dream of being born.

Edited February 19, 2021 by traveler

[Mafortu]

46 minutes ago, lmfao said:

This is a very common way of feeling and thinking when you have a big breakthrough. 

Something that comes to my mind are the public correspondences between Leo and Peter Ralston. Leo brought up Mahasamadhi, and Peter said that there have been many times for him where he's suddenly felt like something extreme is going to take him away. But that it ultimately passed away. 

Change=death, and a large enough change to certain parts of your experience feel like death and there's raw fear

--

I think that even if you return to your baseline level of consciousness, certain enlightenment glimpses leave a residue or stain in the back of your mind. Where deep down you'll always know when you're distracting yourself or running away from a truth that fate won't let you deny 

When I watched Daniel's video I immediately remembered Leo's and Ralston's exchange, which is why I brought this topic up

[tatsumaru]

4 hours ago, Mafortu said:

So this is something that has been bothering me a little, and I want to discuss.

Context:

Daniel Schmidt is a spiritual teacher, very talented musician and artist and has directed the very popular Samadhi and Inner Worlds Outer Worlds film series. Which I consider to be the best videos to introduce people into non-duality.

He released a video yesterday describing his yet most powerful experience he had in one of his meditations, which is on itself very interesting and I suggest you all watch it and his other videos I linked above.

Anyways, very similar to Leo, he has had many FINAL ego-death experiences in the past , and like Leo he says this time was for real and that if he kept going he would not be alive today 

So......  I guess this goes for Daniel, Leo and other teachers, does that mean your past ego-deaths were delusions? Having a no-self experience is absolute in the sense that you are AWARE that you no longer exist, and at that point the mind isnt thinking "I dont think there is coming back from this" unless of course the self-identification never stopped, so to say the most recent one was going to be for real this time makes me question how honest and sincere you were when you recounted those past experiences of no-self.

 

I think this whole "no-self" notion has gone a little bit too far particularly due to teachers who became overly obsessed with nihilism. Here's a Buddhist fable that might clear some of your confusion:

Tathāgata is a subject that the majority of Buddhists stay far away from, and non-Buddhists, with the exception of some Taoists, ever farther. Tathāgata was the term that Sakyamuni referred to himself as, instead of the pronouns me, I or myself.   Tathāgata is the Buddha that most Buddhists, those on the Long Paths, don’t want to discuss.

“Those who cannot accept that the Tathāgata is eternal, cause misery” - Mahaparinirvana Sutra.

What? How can Buddha say that; didn’t he say everything is impermanent?

The Buddha said the Self is “indestructible like a diamond” - Mahaparinirvana Sutra.

No way! The Buddha said there was no self.

“I will now show you the nature which is not produced and not extinguished” -Shurangama Sutra.

Buddha said that “Buddha Nature [the Tathāgata] is the True Self and like a diamond, for example, it cannot be destroyed” Dharmaksema.

Yes, Buddha taught impermanence, suffering, Emptiness, non-self for child-like students; yet on the day of Parinirvana, the Tathāgata taught eternity, happiness, and the Self, saying , “now, when his students have overcome the sickness of false views and possess a healthy, more mature appetite, he can teach them the Tathāgatagarbha.”

“Those who hold the theory of non-self are injurers of the Buddhist doctrines, they are given up to the dualistic views of being and non-being; they are to be ejected by the convocation of the Bhikshus and are never to be spoken to” - Lankavatara Sutra 765.

So why did Sakyamuni Buddha speak of non-being?

He told a story of a woman with an ailing infant. The sickness of that child requires that it temporarily desist from drinking its mother’s milk while the medicine which has been administered to it is assimilated. To facilitate this, the mother smears her breasts with a bitter substance, and this deters the infant from suckling at his mother’s breasts. But after the medicine has been absorbed, the child can drink the health-bestowing mother’s milk to his heart’s content – although at first he is hesitant and fearful of doing so. This relates to the doctrine of non-Self, Emptiness (which many commentators on Buddhism equate with “non-substantialism” or “non-essentialism”) and Self: when his students are still spiritually “sick”, the Buddha gives them the bitter medicine of “non-Self” and Emptiness; but when they have progressed into greater health and maturity, he teaches them the reality of the Tathagatagarbha. 

A commentator mentions how early in this sutra the Buddha has to reprimand his enthusiastic “non-Self”-championing monks who “repeatedly meditate upon the idea that there is no Self” for being perverse in their understanding of Dharma and wrong-headedly applying the teaching of non-Self where its writ does not run – to the real Self.

“As when a garment is cleansed of its dirt, or when gold is removed from its impurities, they are not destroyed but remain as they are; so is the skandha self freed from its defilements”- Lankavatara Sutra 756.

The clearest definition of Tathāgata (and the most important mantra for those on the Direct Path) is this: Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha!

[Nahm]

@Mafortu

This is just out of curiosity...are ‘you’ still believing in a past, death, separate selves / ego’s? 

 

[VeganAwake]

Yes there can be all kinds of glimpses that can occur.

Here the self was just clearly seen to be completely a figment of imagination. It was recognized there just never was a ME.

And what's funny is it was completely ordinary but shocking simultaneously.

Yes those samadhi films are spot on, the third one should be coming out soon I believe ❤

[Adamq8]

9 hours ago, tatsumaru said:

I think this whole "no-self" notion has gone a little bit too far particularly due to teachers who became overly obsessed with nihilism. Here's a Buddhist fable that might clear some of your confusion:

Tathāgata is a subject that the majority of Buddhists stay far away from, and non-Buddhists, with the exception of some Taoists, ever farther. Tathāgata was the term that Sakyamuni referred to himself as, instead of the pronouns me, I or myself.   Tathāgata is the Buddha that most Buddhists, those on the Long Paths, don’t want to discuss.

“Those who cannot accept that the Tathāgata is eternal, cause misery” - Mahaparinirvana Sutra.

What? How can Buddha say that; didn’t he say everything is impermanent?

The Buddha said the Self is “indestructible like a diamond” - Mahaparinirvana Sutra.

No way! The Buddha said there was no self.

“I will now show you the nature which is not produced and not extinguished” -Shurangama Sutra.

Buddha said that “Buddha Nature [the Tathāgata] is the True Self and like a diamond, for example, it cannot be destroyed” Dharmaksema.

Yes, Buddha taught impermanence, suffering, Emptiness, non-self for child-like students; yet on the day of Parinirvana, the Tathāgata taught eternity, happiness, and the Self, saying , “now, when his students have overcome the sickness of false views and possess a healthy, more mature appetite, he can teach them the Tathāgatagarbha.”

“Those who hold the theory of non-self are injurers of the Buddhist doctrines, they are given up to the dualistic views of being and non-being; they are to be ejected by the convocation of the Bhikshus and are never to be spoken to” - Lankavatara Sutra 765.

So why did Sakyamuni Buddha speak of non-being?

He told a story of a woman with an ailing infant. The sickness of that child requires that it temporarily desist from drinking its mother’s milk while the medicine which has been administered to it is assimilated. To facilitate this, the mother smears her breasts with a bitter substance, and this deters the infant from suckling at his mother’s breasts. But after the medicine has been absorbed, the child can drink the health-bestowing mother’s milk to his heart’s content – although at first he is hesitant and fearful of doing so. This relates to the doctrine of non-Self, Emptiness (which many commentators on Buddhism equate with “non-substantialism” or “non-essentialism”) and Self: when his students are still spiritually “sick”, the Buddha gives them the bitter medicine of “non-Self” and Emptiness; but when they have progressed into greater health and maturity, he teaches them the reality of the Tathagatagarbha. 

A commentator mentions how early in this sutra the Buddha has to reprimand his enthusiastic “non-Self”-championing monks who “repeatedly meditate upon the idea that there is no Self” for being perverse in their understanding of Dharma and wrong-headedly applying the teaching of non-Self where its writ does not run – to the real Self.

“As when a garment is cleansed of its dirt, or when gold is removed from its impurities, they are not destroyed but remain as they are; so is the skandha self freed from its defilements”- Lankavatara Sutra 756.

The clearest definition of Tathāgata (and the most important mantra for those on the Direct Path) is this: Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha!

Really awesome and YES!!! The true teachings of the Buddha was not a non self, it was that ANATA= NOT MY SOUL and that got interpreted obviously and clearly really wrong.

 

Modern nihilistic teachings has flowered out from a fake buddhism teaching.

The duality between no self and self will be transcended and you end up with the true Self!