People don't have a clue, srs

[OldManCorcoran]

You don't have any idea about any sort of mystical truth unless you're actually in the middle of some kind of ego death/mystical experience/whatever.

These occurrences are somewhat brief.

Afterwards, you have some conviction about what happened, but some months go by and you entirely forget. And in the end you basically have to just trust yourself on faith alone, because you don't even remember what happened anymore. So your own past thoughts become religious-like, in that you have to trust that you were accurate at the time. And trust your conviction was justified.

I believe Leo mentioned the difference in describing a rollercoaster vs actually riding it. The fact is, you can ride a rollercoaster, but after so many months go by you don't actually even really remember the sensations. You end up sort of speculating about what it did feel like... But you can't think yourself back on the rollercoaster, it is never going to be real like if you were to instead actually drive back to theme park and get on the ride again. And then when ON the rollercoaster, it's no longer speculative or based on make believe.

I have had serious psychedelic experiences, which have now faded over years. I can sit and try to think myself back into ego death or some total bullshit like meditation, but it never happens that I think really hard or DON'T think (meditation) and suddenly I'm in the middle of a DMT trip/ego death state again.

Once the actual event is over it's just a memory and also ideas which all fade over time and eventually become a matter of faith. You can have faith that your recollection of the sensations of riding the rollercoaster are genuine, but it's just never going to be the same as getting on the thing. And with these revelations it's more drastic because oftentimes they strongest states are brought about by drugs which long after the fact leads to speculation about whether you can really trust a doped mind.

The practices are probably useless. Probably we will remain stuck in egos until smoking more toad or dying. Staring at walls trying to get back to it is probably total BS.

[Yimpa]

You’ve confused some high mystical state for what Reality fundamentally is.

That is the problem.

[OldManCorcoran]

14 minutes ago, Yimpa said:

You’ve confused some high mystical state for what Reality fundamentally is.

That is the problem.

You don't know what reality fundamentally is. You might know in the midst of a high mystical state. Afterwards the state fades and you don't actually know anymore. You have an idea based on the memory of the high mystical state, but when you're not in that state you are believing yourself on faith.

Outside of being in the middle of such events, it's speculating and philosophy. It's not knowledge. Nobody is meditating themselves into a toad trip, realistically that is INSANELY naive to anyone familiar with such a thing.

High mystical state happens, things may potentially be known. State ends and the knowledge is based on just a memory/idea of what happened.

[Hojo]

You are here forever as an eye staring at a screen. The change you make within yourself needs to go beyond the screen of awareness or it will remain a part of the screen of awareness. You need to deeply shake the I of awareness awake. Through constant daily monthly yearly thought of god.

Edited April 18, 2023 by Hojo

[Leo Gura]

You are correct that state is king and you cannot just will yourself into a higher state. However, you jump to some wrong conclusions about that.

1) Psychedelics trips are much more than about occupying a different state, they are also about self-reflection, insight, contemplation, understanding, dealing with emotional baggage, healing trauma, and exposing yourself to new experiences. All of this has a cumulative effect on the mind and produces growth, maturity, widsom, self-mastery, and development.

2) By your logic all meditative practices are also useless because any awakenings acheived by meditation are also temporary experiences which fade over time. This is clearly a silly position.

Just because you have a temporary experience does not mean it doesn't powerfully affect you. Rape is a temporary experience. Notice how silly is it to tell someone, "Oh well, you aren't being raped right now so it's not important. Rape is just a state."

Notice your double standards. You would never dismiss rape in the way you dismiss a trip. Now imagine being raped 300 times and what that does to the psyche.

There is no problem with memory. Your whole life hinges on memory. If you lost your memory you would not know how to use a toilet or that you were even human. So there is no way around that. Every spiritual person relies on memory of their spiritual work. To even claim you had an enlightenment requires memory. This doesn't invalidate their work.

Edited April 18, 2023 by Leo Gura

[Buck Edwards]

Your memory is the baseline for your groundwork. It stores your blueprint. Without memory you simply cannot function. Think of psychedelic as a dye. Let's say you use this dye to color hair. The color stays in the hair long after the dye is washed out. Psychedelic effects might fade over time but the impact they bring in terms of contemplation, change of mindset, shift in perspective brings you a few notches up and helps you outgrow outdated beliefs. Even though you don't remember the experience, it has had enough impact on your psyche to the point where your psyche has been stained by the psychedelic for the rest of your life. You're always going to be grateful for the insights you had and these insights help you navigate better. 

[OldManCorcoran]

29 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

You are correct that state is king and you cannot just will yourself into a higher state. However, you jump to some wrong conclusions about that.

1) Psychedelics trips are much more than about occupying a different state, they are also about self-reflection, insight, contemplation, understanding, dealing with emotional baggage, healing trauma, and exposing yourself to new experiences. All of this has a cumulative effect on the mind and produces growth, maturity, widsom, self-mastery, and development.

2) By your logic all meditative practices are also useless because any awakenings acheived by meditation are also temporary experiences which fade over time. This is clearly a silly position.

Just because you have a temporary experience does not mean it doesn't powerfully affect you. Rape is a temporary experience. Notice how silly is it to tell someone, "Oh well, you aren't being raped right now so it's not important."

Notice your double standards. You would never dismiss rape in the way you dismiss a trip. Now imagine being raped 300 times and what that does to the psyche.

There is no problem with memory. Your whole life hinges on memory. If you lost your memory you would not know how to use a toilet or that you were even human. So there is no way around that. Every spiritual person relies on memory of their spiritual work. To even claim you had an enlightenment requires memory. This doesn't invalidate their work.

I certainly am heavily affected as you describe. I would not be considering topics such as nonduality without having endured such events.

Presumably your last trip was quite recent, I am much further removed from my last trip. Years actually. It's at the point now where I just kind of recall some abstract idea of what I saw visually, and really nothing of the mental shift. I know what I thought. But there would be no way to be sure of that again now except to trip again or wait until my life ends.

Like recalling riding a rollercoaster I last went on 11 years ago. I do recall the ride, I think I can imagine the butterfly feeling of the first drop, but it's too long gone now. I'd have to be on it again now to really know again.

[Yimpa]

20 minutes ago, OldManCorcoran said:

Like recalling riding a rollercoaster I last went on 11 years ago. I do recall the ride, I think I can imagine the butterfly feeling of the first drop, but it's too long gone now. I'd have to be on it again now to really know again.

Imagine being in love with someone, say your girlfriend. Do you always need to be with them in order for your life to change significantly and to be complete?

Consider how this statement sounds: “I need to always be with my girlfriend in order to understand and be myself.”

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, Squeekytoy said:

@Leo Gura i was the most awake on the planet but then I forgot... 

That's exactly how it works.

Forgetting is key life.

[Moksha]

@OldManCorcoran Instead of relying on the memory of an insight, why not realize the absolute now? In the moment that you unconditionally accept what is happening, without judgment, clinging, or resistance, simply letting the energy of this flow through you, you are free.

[Leo Gura]

Notice, your ability to do math requires memory. That doesn't make math any less true. No mathematician is stressing over math being undermined because it requires memory.

Edited April 18, 2023 by Leo Gura

[Vido]

@Leo Gura what is that part of you that is making you self reflect. I notice during intense suffering or emotional whirlpool, it's hard to even go couple layers deep into the problem

[Moksha]

5 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Notice, your ability to do math requires memory. That doesn't make math any less true. No mathematician is stressing over math being undermined because it requires memory.

That's true for most decisions in relative reality, which relies on the illusion of memories and anticipations.

There is also the absolute flow state, which can inform decisions in the moment beyond the belief in a past or a future. It happens sometimes, even for people that are not awake in general.

[Leo Gura]

14 minutes ago, Vido said:

@Leo Gura what is that part of you that is making you self reflect. I notice during intense suffering or emotional whirlpool, it's hard to even go couple layers deep into the problem

Consciousness is capable of self-reflection. That's just something it does.

[PeaceOut96]

@OldManCorcoran

Yeah once you come out of these High States and back to the default stuck state it seems like a distant memory. You're not even sure what happened, how Consciousness works etc. I have some points about that. Firstly off course by you being human you are limited by default, we are speaking about the mechanics of how reality works, its to much Information from the Source. Consciousness is Life. Every state is important, every experience you have and what it means to be you is part of God/Infinity, that why your ego can't will itself to a high state out of thin air, the paradox is its Your Will already, taking 5-Meo, meditating, doing yoga over severals years with no guarantes of what happens in the next moment. That the profoundity of this, and it could be no other way. Absolutly Perfect, Pure Beauty!  

But notice you're still able to recall your experiences! You are still able to understand. Thats the beauty of this work. Thats why Leo's probably still triping. Like 300 trips and there is always place to a "higher" more clean and crystalized understanding . And there ways to trip to get the correct understanding, this work requires Intelligence, care and the ability to spot self deception. 

After 2,5 years of integration I am able to understand my highest trips, and its always unfolding to become more clean. 

[OldManCorcoran]

4 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Notice, your ability to do math requires memory. That doesn't make math any less true. No mathematician is stressing over math being undermined because it requires memory.

It seems the actual mental state itself is beyond recollection, but the mental state is what you'd need access to in order to verify the insight. I guess because a mental state isn't an object of perception so there's nothing you can observe to remember. You can definitely remember what you thought but the thoughts were born out of direct knowing of a mental state, rather than an intellectual knowledge as with math.

To verify I was not simple delusional and insane, I'd need to have it happen again and then in the midst of it I could verify. But months and years after that, you may doubt yourself. You could write down the precise details of a trip then read it back years later and you can't tell if you were exaggerating or making things up or mistaken when you wrote it.

Because you trip so often, most likely the psychedelic states aren't fully leaving your mind. Perhaps if you didn't trip for a year or two, the freshness of the events would be long gone and you'd no longer be able to be certain that you wasn't just delusional at the time. And then to verify you were correct, you'd need to trip again, and in the midst of that trip: "ah, so I wasn't crazy after all!"

It seems something a person must periodically do at regular intervals to not just slip into self doubt. Doubt is not a bug it's a feature? Hehe.

[Razard86]

1. You go back to normal state because you do not understand what enlightenment is. Enlightenment is a permanent baseline shift, which you and all of humanity are capable of living from but you have to jail break your mind. Instead of complaining about going back to a regular state you could have asked Leo how do I jail break my mind and a cause a permanent shift. 

2. Be careful though because jail breaking your mind is changing your physiology and it makes everything direct, and intimate. There is no privacy when the veil of separation is removed. 

3. I have a method to do it, but I'm only giving it to people who I think are mature enough to handle it as you will have to shake off a whole lot of judgments against yourself and reality to even go all the way and the process is going to be HELL and psychosis, schizophrenia are all real dangers. An undeveloped immature mind could never recover and end up being committed. 

[DefinitelyNotARobot]

8 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Every spiritual person relies on memory of their spiritual work. To even claim you had an enlightenment requires memory. This doesn't invalidate their work.

Is there a difference between remembering an enlightenment and, say, remembering eating an apple for breakfast? I've noticed that thinking about past awakening can shift my state, even if it's just a slight shift, but I'm not sure if that has to do with the memory itself, or the state I'm already in while remembering it.

[Leo Gura]

25 minutes ago, DefinitelyNotARobot said:

Is there a difference between remembering an enlightenment and, say, remembering eating an apple for breakfast? I've noticed that thinking about past awakening can shift my state, even if it's just a slight shift, but I'm not sure if that has to do with the memory itself, or the state I'm already in while remembering it.

Definitely, recalling past spiritual experiences can shift your current state. But it's also important to be clear with yourself that a memory of an Awakening is not the same thing as Awakening.

[BlessedLion]

Yes but psychedelics take you up and drop you back. Getting there through meditation increases your baseline level of consciousness. 

 

For example. I just got out of a 21 day silent retreat and I'm basically living In a non dual state, my mind is absolutely silent and I'm aware that everything is mind, me, and God at all times. It's been like this for a week. I read Ramana Maharishi book and everything checks out as experience and if not I at least understand it. 

 

This was earned through hard work meditating and contemplating sober for 21 days straight. I've never had a trip that left me stabilized in a level like this no matter what the substance or how intense the experience was.