What if everything is already perfect?

Just thought I should post this as it is something I send out to everyone in the mail along with either Buddha's pithy Bahiya sutta, or "The Joy Hidden in Sorrow: Two talks on death and dying," by Ayyā Medhānandī.

What If Everything

Is “Already” Perfect?

ONLY READ IF YOU ARE READY FOR TRUTH

Life seems pretty miserable, doesn't it? You have a few birthdays, you try to satisfy desires as they arise, and before you know it, your health is declining, and then you die. If you are religious, at least you hope to go to heaven. But what are the chances you chose the one true religion? Each one claims to be the only true one, and they all demand blind faith.

But the one thing that almost nobody seems to consider is that they may simply be seeing reality incorrectly. In reality, everything functions perfectly according to natural laws. This perfection can only know itself when it’s realized that you and I do not exist.

Proof #1: Everything happens due to conditions. Think about that. Imagine what it would mean for that to be falsified. Could something happen without any supporting conditions? No, of course not. This is common sense.

The very strange thing is, this common sense is ignored so that we can feel as if we are independent agents able to make choices which are not dependent upon conditions (aka “Free Will”). Obviously, choices are made. But how? What causes one choice vs another choice? If it were random, then nothing would make any sense at all. But even if it were random, that still wouldn't help us feel as if our choices are truly our own.

We don't know our next thoughts until we think them. We don't decide which desires will surge up. And even if we did choose desires and thoughts, there would be conditions leading to those choices. Even a creator God, choosing to create the universe, is subject to the same lack of free will as any other being. Free will itself is a logical impossibility.

For some strange reason, when confronted with this realization, people often assume that their choices are meaningless, when in fact the opposite is the case. Precisely because each choice affects future conditions & future choices, each choice is important in shaping the future, tho it happens automatically. There is no “self” that exists outside of reality (aka the web of conditions) to influence reality. The most powerful choice to make is the choice to meditate on and contemplate this truth of Dependent Origination, for it leads to liberation from the dream of identity.

The next problem that people run into is imagining that they must exist as simply the awareness of what is going on, since they are now convinced that everything is happening automatically. That's a frightening idea, that one is trapped as some type of powerless observer. But thankfully, it is just another illusion.

Proof #2: Let's look at direct experience: sensations, emotions, and cognitive experiences like thoughts and other states of mind. Looking closely at these aspects of direct experience, is there any witness (self) to be found in any of it? Or is the sense of witnessing simply a conceptual overlay that integrates the various streams of perception? When seeing, is there truly someone experienced to be seeing, or is there only the seen? When a thought appears, "I am seeing," is it just a thought that links thoughts, or is it pointing to some real “self” somewhere that is seeing?

Reality is witnessless/backgroundless, disjoint, center-less, infinitely interpenetrating self-known timeless processes/suchnesses; it is not unified nor is it subject & object. It is maddening to ignore the truth!

With practice at not hiding from the logical truth, many "people" even today have managed (to varying degrees) to get over the delusion that the conditioned sense of self points to a truly existing self, and thus have overcome stress & the illusion of birth and death caused by unification (allowing for identification) of disjoint experiences.

Remember: You are not the center of the universe. There is no center, nor background, except an imagined one.

∞ ❤ ∞ www.u-dont-exist.com ∞ ❤ ∞

What If Everything

Is “Already” Perfect?

ONLY READ IF YOU ARE READY FOR TRUTH

Life seems pretty miserable, doesn't it? You have a few birthdays, you try to satisfy desires as they arise, and before you know it, your health is declining, and then you die. If you are religious, at least you hope to go to heaven. But what are the chances you chose the one true religion? Each one claims to be the only true one, and they all demand blind faith.

But the one thing that almost nobody seems to consider is that they may simply be seeing reality incorrectly. In reality, everything functions perfectly according to natural laws. This perfection can only know itself when it’s realized that you and I do not exist.

Proof #1: Everything happens due to conditions. Think about that. Imagine what it would mean for that to be falsified. Could something happen without any supporting conditions? No, of course not. This is common sense.

The very strange thing is, this common sense is ignored so that we can feel as if we are independent agents able to make choices which are not dependent upon conditions (aka “Free Will”). Obviously, choices are made. But how? What causes one choice vs another choice? If it were random, then nothing would make any sense at all. But even if it were random, that still wouldn't help us feel as if our choices are truly our own.

We don't know our next thoughts until we think them. We don't decide which desires will surge up. And even if we did choose desires and thoughts, there would be conditions leading to those choices. Even a creator God, choosing to create the universe, is subject to the same lack of free will as any other being. Free will itself is a logical impossibility.

For some strange reason, when confronted with this realization, people often assume that their choices are meaningless, when in fact the opposite is the case. Precisely because each choice affects future conditions & future choices, each choice is important in shaping the future, tho it happens automatically. There is no “self” that exists outside of reality (aka the web of conditions) to influence reality. The most powerful choice to make is the choice to meditate on and contemplate this truth of Dependent Origination, for it leads to liberation from the dream of identity.

The next problem that people run into is imagining that they must exist as simply the awareness of what is going on, since they are now convinced that everything is happening automatically. That's a frightening idea, that one is trapped as some type of powerless observer. But thankfully, it is just another illusion.

Proof #2: Let's look at direct experience: sensations, emotions, and cognitive experiences like thoughts and other states of mind. Looking closely at these aspects of direct experience, is there any witness (self) to be found in any of it? Or is the sense of witnessing simply a conceptual overlay that integrates the various streams of perception? When seeing, is there truly someone experienced to be seeing, or is there only the seen? When a thought appears, "I am seeing," is it just a thought that links thoughts, or is it pointing to some real “self” somewhere that is seeing?

Reality is witnessless/backgroundless, disjoint, center-less, infinitely interpenetrating self-known timeless processes/suchnesses; it is not unified nor is it subject & object. It is maddening to ignore the truth!

With practice at not hiding from the logical truth, many "people" even today have managed (to varying degrees) to get over the delusion that the conditioned sense of self points to a truly existing self, and thus have overcome stress & the illusion of birth and death caused by unification (allowing for identification) of disjoint experiences.

Remember: You are not the center of the universe. There is no center, nor background, except an imagined one.

∞ ❤ ∞ www.u-dont-exist.com ∞ ❤ ∞

"Buddhists must simply not Know God as *I* do!"

Many people have a real personal and "magical" relationship with what they think of as a personal God.

Buddha supposedly said it is better to believe in a personal God than it is to believe only in this material reality, since at least then you are hoping to overcome selfishness.

But I find that the belief in a personal God is often just a way to obscure the selfishness and subsume it into the idea of serving God (to say nothing of holy war). Of course, there are folks like Peace Pilgrim who seemed to have a "better" God to talk to, but the problem is that her God is not the same God that others are talking to, so ultimately the idea of getting answers from God is almost as bad as getting answers from a magic 8-ball. The real answer you need to get is, the answer to the question, "Are questions simply appearing automatically in this mind due to conditions?"

First of all, what is God? Many people think that God is the "being" that created the universe. Of course, if the universe had a beginning, then logically God must also. If God is beginningless, then the universe could also be beginningless (i.e. Big Bang after Big Bang etc.), thus making God just a useless conceptual addition. In any case, nobody has ever had any evidence that the God they talk to is the creator of the Universe, so what really are we talking about?

Basically, people are talking to some "being" that seems to know everything, and is all-loving, and has some kind of divine quality that can't be easily described. "I" "myself" have talked to such a God on various occasions.

But the one thing that this all-knowing "God" being never seems to know about is dependent origination. Why? Because if God were to explain dependent origination to someone, then they would realize that there is no self, and thus no God either. Instead, this "God" character usually seems strangely concerned with how to help the one talking to him to have a better life and avoid danger--in other words, how to better "live the dream" (the dream of self).

I used to be very hesitant to accept Buddha's teaching of no self/dependent origination, because of these amazing God experiences I'd had. It wasn't until I read "What is Self" by Catholic nun Bernadette Roberts, that I realized that God is merely that which is beyond the self. When perceived from the point of view of a self, the "beyond" or "divine" becomes reified into this God being. Once self is gone, the personal God too is gone, and the "divine" is all that remains, without any beings/labels/concepts to split it up. I think that in Buddhism, the term for this divine nature of all things is "suchness." It is pretty hilarious to imagine using a term like suchness instead of "divinity," I admit!

Here is an excellent post by Soh Wei Yu on his experience of divinity post-realization of anatta (no self).

But how can we *ever* understand the Grand Mystery, asks the kindergartener...

(This is a continuation from this post.)

The thing also is, all of this still doesn't explain anything because there's nothing to explain... ?? It still comes down to an unfathomable mystery but the mystery is solved by "there is no answer" but that's not an answer.

 The mystery is just the natural result of thinking you are separate from conditions. Is pooping a mystery? It is if you are trying to know it down to the smallest detail (i.e. why does my poop look 1cm longer today than yesterday?). The most you could ever hope to know are the general physical, chemical, or biological laws that make pooping happen (plus incidental details like what you ate for breakfast). You'll never know how each piece of poop is formed exactly. But what if the one who is studying the problem realizes they are not separate from it? Then there is no more "wondering", no more wanting to know. There is just the natural functioning of everything as it is. No more mystery, no more known/unknown split. 

When asked the nature of reality, Buddha once replied, "When this arises, so does that. With the cessation of that, this also ceases." So that is the nature of reality in a nutshell. At a kindergarten level or maybe pre-school. He could have gone deeper and tried to explain how all appearances are self-seen without any central or background reference, and there is no awareness apart from appearances themselves. But who could understand that? It's too much all at once for most people to have any idea of the meaning of that, and still it doesn't "answer" the question of the origin of it all. In fact, as I said,  Buddha investigated without finding any origin whatsoever. 

To say that there is no origin could sound like it is an unsolved mystery, perhaps. But on the other hand, the idea that there must be an origin is inherently illogical, because if there is an origin, what is the origin of the origin? So the "mystery" is basically a product of our illogical conditioning. 

Another question people ask is "why is there something rather than nothing?" But again, the question itself is illogical, because if there were nothing, then the question wouldn't exist. So as a result of their being (appearing to be) something, the question itself arises automatically. 

One may wonder, why is it that there is this incredibly divine aspect to reality that mystics can perceive? Doesn't that indicate a creator or something truly divine, something beyond all comprehension of these puny minds we have? And the answer is, the divinity is simply the way that reality must be--all atoms function perfectly, and it couldn't be any other way or else the universe would be nothing but chaos with no order at all. It is only by identifying with one little tiny part of reality that reality can be perceived as imperfect.

Finally one may wonder how identification can happen in this perfect universe. There are many hypotheses about that. I might answer (to a kindergartener) that dust naturally lands upon all surfaces. Imagine that each "surface" is self-aware without identity, in perfect seeing, until dust alights upon it. Now, instead of pure outward awareness, the dust is reflecting the appearance to itself, albeit in a very gross kind of way. The appearance has never seen itself, and it never imagines that what is happening is merely the natural accumulation of dust on its seeing surface. It begins to think it is quite a grandiose thing, almost a perfect thing, and it rejoices in knowing itself finally. But after many eons, it no longer finds itself feeling quite so perfect, with mountains of dust covering its view of reality. But by now it is completely forgotten that self-view is merely a result of dusty vision. Dust is not seen as dust, but as self itself. Every particle of dust is clung to, and the greatest fear is that the dust will somehow be removed and the appearance will no longer know itself. "Mr. Clean" becomes the greatest villain.

I didn't make that hypothesis up entirely myself--Buddha taught something like that; I simply embellished it.

Psychedelic Infinite Love vs Dependent Origination & No Self

Namaste folks! What follows is a dialog that I had with a friend which I think may help many people who are in the same struggle with longing for love:

I'm pretty confused and lost a lot of the time. I don't think they have hurt me, however.

They have led you to some confused thinking about reality, I can see that, but luckily you aren't in so deep that you are unable to reconsider.

 

When I was younger half the trips I had were bad and all were meaningless.

That actually is better than having good trips, because with bad trips you don't think that you have the truth, at least, usually.

 

Now everything has changed it seems, When I "journey" the one thing that comes up strongly always is love!!!, love myself, love everyone, love more. the two things that seem to work for me are the fungus and the aya and both do this and very feel right and good and healing. Some days in ordinary reality I feel like I'm a long long way from home, very lonely for my tribe, somewhere like in the middle of the sixties with Ken Kesey and the Merry Band of Tricksters or just with a group of incredibly beautiful people and deeply loved. Like at the Sat Nam Fest I went to a few years ago... I should probably find a place like that to go. You know what I mean. I just want more love in my life from people I adore, enlightened, awake, loving, creative souls...

Yes, this powerful love is an aspect of what I call luminosity. Luminosity to me is like "truth-value" to the mind. We have to be very careful when confronted with luminosity; we have to examine it deeply and check for any logical inconsistencies. What better way to get someone to believe a bunch of garbage than to flood them with love? That's a cult tactic, and also a common feature of psychedelic experiences and other mystical experiences.

True love is not the love that pulls you in, but rather the natural consequence of finding the automatic perfection. In other words, we can have all kinds of lovely experiences with infinite love, and still be none the wiser, no closer to liberation at all, because we still do not understand the logical source of true love, which is no self. No self & right view leads to complete happiness and the ability to help others reach that happiness as well. Helping others to reach true happiness thru wisdom is what true love IS. Love is not just a warm fuzzy feeling. That's the illusion of love.

It sometimes happens (like for the Catholic nun Bernadette Roberts) that this mystical love-fest ends up in no-self, but that is extremely rare, and even in her case, she still does not understand no-self as a seal, rather as a state, and so she is still not really free of delusions.

So LiberationUnleashed and I do not stress love as important (tho I used to), because love can mean anything to anyone, and following love around almost inevitably leads to more confusion and suffering, even if it may seem to be healing. After all, who is it that needs to be loved? YOU, right? Without you, there's no more loneliness, no more need for love to smooth over the suffering of identity. Then, rather than wanting love to come to us, reality itself oozes love outward in the form of wisdom. 

What did Buddha say about love? He emphasized that we should be compassionate to all beings, wishing them the greatest happiness and freedom. But he also made it clear that such wishing, such compassion, does not itself lead to liberation. It is helpful to free our minds from anger and such, which then allows us to let go of identity, but just focusing on compassion without seeing thru identity via dependent origination is not liberatory. 

Studying the Buddhist cannon helps us to see how the Buddha lived his life as the emissary of truth & wisdom. He did not go around hugging people and telling them how lovely they are. He taught them that they will suffer forever until they conquer self-view. 

It took me a lot of struggle to overcome the pull of the infinite love of the "divine source" that I found via ayahuasca. But once I decided that such an illogical divine source and its love was not enough to satisfy me, realizing the truth of dependent origination, "I" was blessed to go beyond the divine source, to No Mind, in which all appearances are perfectly self-known without any witness consciousness. This has removed all doubt for me in Buddha's teachings, which to begin with do not require blind faith as other teachings do.

 

When I was younger I could have killed my self with drugs several times I think and they were "drugs" (not plant medicine) prescribed by western doctors, alcohol...etc... really nasty stuff... I spent my younger years feeling really miserable for the most part. I still feel very lonely a significant amount of the time...

Feeling lonely is perfect. Sit with that and find the root of that and you'll be free of this ridiculous mind that thinks it is separate.

 

Recently, however I've been making new friends and it's really great, you, Scott, my friend Jim who would like to connect with you, I have him a copy of the book and he's shared books with me. But I don't go out into the world much or have a huge amount of people I connect deeply with or feel akin to. The solution might be  as simple as getting off my ass and going out once in a while or finding the answers though your help and LU but it's feeling worse before it, hopefully, feels better. I mean right now I'm feeling like, well, no God, no future, no me, no nothing, WTF? If you know what I mean. It still is a path I'm going down to be sure.

As long as you can see the logic in dependent origination, you are basically on the path to salvation. All that remains is to remove residual doubt and habits of identification. 

 

I'm grateful to be on a healing path or growth.

Nothing needs healing or growth. As Ajahn Chah said, "With enlightenment, nothing is gained. On the contrary, all is lost." I know that may sound like an unhappy path, but on the contrary, losing everything is the ultimate happiness.

 

Curious though, why me and most are home watching football, drinking beer and getting vaccinated?

Because it is extremely rare for beings to see thru the luminosity, or perception of truth-value, in illusory appearances. Logic is not as enticing as luminosity. Letting go and losing everything is not as enticing as clinging and getting things you want. Count your infinite blessings. You must have been suffering from beginning-less time like all other beings, I imagine, so it's about damn time you got free!

To detach or engage? What is true love?

Question: "I do get the release of ego and "I" part...where I have difficulties is the detachment.  If we are not meant to be engaged, why did we choose these flesh bags? "

Answer: Ok so you are conflating detachment with non-engagement perhaps. Detachment happens automatically when you see the truth: everything happens due to conditions, therefore it's not you doing anything, there's nobody here to be attached to, nor anyone to attach to anyone... ya know? But even the concept of detachment is a tricky one, because it conjures up the notion that there is someone detaching from something (like a dissociative disorder). Perhaps better is "primordial unattachment," but nobody is going to remember to say all that. 

As for engagement, it is always the case. Everything is always engaged. I think in Buddhism this is called total exertion. Everything is operating at 100% of its ability. The only reason we can't see that is because of identity clouding the view. 

One very divisive idea is love. Many people think that love is something mundane. They think a mother has unconditional love for her children. But that is obviously false, because the mother only has so-called love for her children *because* (she thinks) they are her children. That is completely conditional. At any time she might decide to "disown" them and then consider they are not her children. This happens all the time, especially in my culture (ashkenazi jewish--my grandmother disowned our whole side of the family because i was uncircumcised). Or in the case of a father (or even mother) who somehow finds out via DNA evidence that the child was not theirs. Either due to cheating or maybe switched in the hospital. Now it is a choice: Do I consider the child mine still? Do I still give it my "unconditional" love?

And even this very love itself, what is it? Wishing that someone be happy? But how can we wish for someone to be happy if we do not understand what true happiness is? Buddha's view on happiness is almost diametrically opposed to the common view. Happiness which does not come from letting go of identity is not real happiness. It is the trickster's version of happiness because it keeps you begging for more. 

True love arises from true detachment, ironically. Only with true detachment can we realize true happiness, and only then can we have true compassion for others, helping them to realize the great infinite happiness of no self. If all we know is false happiness, then our so-called love will only lead others to suffer more. For example we may know heroin as the ultimate happiness and so we give our partner some heroin. A friend of mine's mother gave her Xanax when she was a kid because she thought Xanax was the ultimate happiness, and of course now she suffers from anxiety. Or we can give affection, thinking that is the ultimate happiness. Of course, affection is very important for humans, especially little humans, but at some point it becomes just another desire to overcome. 

As Thusness (from the blog Awakening to Reality) says, "Your letting go must be more thorough than any nihilist. Your presence must be more thorough than any realist."

Now, as for your question of "why did we choose these flesh bags?" Once again, that is assuming 2 things: there is a "we" who chose, and second, that there is such a thing as agency/choice. Everything happens automatically due to conditions, logically, and so whatever "choice" there may have been was the same kind of choice a computer has in executing one piece of code vs another. Just a bunch of if-then statements. But there was a set of conditions that led to this mindstream's "birth" in this flesh bag--and basically it was due to habitual ignorance giving rise to identification with appearances.

When you have a dream, do you choose to identify as a dream character? No, not really, although in a sense yes, because you could have done a lot of meditation beforehand or taken galantamine or something to help you have a lucid dream and break out of identifying with any character in the dream. 

How does an Awakened person perceive the world? True Self vs No Self

Namaste friends!

I found this article (thanks Soh Wei Yu for linking it) which is a description of a Christian mystic's vision of non-duality. In the article, the author explains that he thinks altho the mystic is viewing things from a True Self perspective, he thinks that really it would be the same thing to call it No Self.

Here is my response posted in the comments:

I have to say that I think the premise that True Self and No Self are equal is based upon never having true No Self experience. Most people never do have No Self experience, but those who go beyond True Self into No Self, pretty much all agree that True Self was a delusion & not true liberation. Catholic nun Bernadette Roberts may not be the best person to talk about this since she does not have "anatta realization," (aka "always already the case" no-self realization) but even her limited experience with No Self has shown her that the unity with God she experienced prior to that was just delusion. As of this writing, her latest book is "What is Self?" although I also have her unpublished addendum to that.

With True Self it feels like there is this background identity to everything. Like in One Mind. But with "my" no mind experiences, there is no background identity. No identity at all. Everything is its own appearance, aware of itself with no central reference point. Like imagine every atom in the room seeing the room from its vantage point, understanding things from its vantage point, and that understanding totally interpenetrating every other atom's understanding. It goes up to every level of organization of appearances. But there is no Room Awareness or Universe Awareness which subsumes it all.

Compared to No Mind, True Self or One Mind is extremely easy to imagine, i think. But No Mind is almost impossible for people to imagine... having said that, when I explain this to folks as I have just now, I find that many of them are able to have the experience if they try for it (even if they have to get help from a psychedelic agent due to poor concentration in meditation). And yes, I know, the experience is just an experience to remove doubt, not an end in itself.

Ultimately, the reason that True Self is not liberation is because there is still identity in it, even if it is very subtle and glowingly beautiful. All identities are born and die. It may take billions of years for the God identity to die & be reborn in another realm, but this is what will happen to it, according to Buddha. And it makes sense logically. Imagine identifying AS a dream (rather than a dream character). You may think you've escaped the death that all the dream characters will face, yet you forget the dream will also end, which will be the end of the dream identity also.

Can Psychedelics like ayahuasca help us wake up to the truth?

Namaste friends!

As you may know from my first post on this blog, psychedelics and especially ayahuasca were the thing that broke my mind wide open and eventually led me to find Buddhism (dependent origination) in my search for answers.

And yet, from what I have found in talking to hundreds of people online who have tried ayahuasca and other psychedelics, it seems that most often the result of this is what happened to me for a few years: vastly inflated ego and delusional thinking.

This is also possible with many spiritual paths, of course. Any path which does not teach NO SELF via dependent origination, is liable to get people into "I AM" or "One [Universal] Mind" stages as listed here and clarified here. From there, most people seem to get stuck, because such a state is incredibly sublime and it is hard to imagine that there is any imperfection in it, even tho to outsiders it sounds ridiculous as people like Sai Baba claim to be God, claim to grow their infinite power each day and so forth. Would God listen to a human being (like Buddha) who tells him that he is actually delusional and in reality he is nobody?

Thus, if you are thinking of breaking open your mind with psychedelics, I ask you to please save yourself a great deal of suffering and delusional thinking and not do so unless a) you already have developed right view of No Self/automatic perfection, and b) you do not have manic/bipolar tendencies in your family.

I do think that psychedelics can be useful catalysts to removing all doubt about the Buddha Dharma, but only once Right View is firmly established (please do the dialog at LiberationUnleashed.com for an introduction to this No Self understanding). And even then, I don't think they are necessary, because with intense effort and desire, one can achieve the state of No Self/No Mind and even cosmic consciousness (which is separate and almost unrelated), just from following the meditation instructions I've posted.



Perhaps the main problem with psychedelics, and even cosmic consciousness states, is that the mind states are so far away from our everyday experience that it makes liberation seem something very difficult to achieve permanently. That is why Buddha tried to show people how to stop suffering right here, right now, in the midst of ordinary everyday life and perception. His advice to Bahiya is exemplary of that.

In fact, it makes sense that psychedelic states would not be conducive to understanding the dependently originated nature of reality, because to do so requires logically examining direct, ordinary experience and the causes & conditions associated with it.

Cosmic Consciousness in 2-3 hours? Awakening to no-self automatic perfection.

Namaste friends!

First, definition of terms: cosmic consciousness is the awareness of the entire universe all at once. However, I have found that there are different levels of identification in this state. The goal is to have no identity whatsoever, since as we will discuss, it is illusory. However, due to habits of mind, some traces of identity may seep into this state and disrupt the perfection. Be mindful of that, because with each insight comes the possibility for stagnation due to the incredible apparent level of truth it brings, as explained here.

Now, before you can try to have the experience:

First, you must have a solid intellectual grasp of the nature of reality. You must understand that free will is a delusion. Why is it? Because everything happens perfectly according to natural laws, automatically. Nowhere can science nor logic find a place for autonomous agents which are able to act outside of the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, and so forth. Even if there is some metaphysical universe, it too would operate on laws. Without laws there is only chaos. Try to simply define what free will means--you will see that you can't define it in a way that makes sense.

So this human brain has evolved to imagine that it is somehow separate from reality and in control of reality to some extent, but just enough to frustrate itself almost constantly due to things not being as they "should" be.

In fact, of course, everything is always functioning perfectly according to natural laws. Just from this small perspective it seems otherwise. So the task is to be mindful of the automatically perfect nature of reality and let go of the habit of thinking in terms of "I", "me", "mine." These concepts are created by the brain/mind and do not exist outside of that context.

A good mantra is: "Perfectly automatic, automatically perfect." Repeat that in "your" head all day long and deeply penetrate it.

Now, if you continue to do that, you will eventually disappear entirely from the universe. Actually, that's not true, because you never were here to begin with except, again, as a concept. But this sensation of "you"ness will be gone. Just universe left. It may take time, but it happens automatically just like everything else. Do not worry about it. Just keep mindful of the nature of reality.

If you are not perfectly clear now that there is nobody here in this automatic display, STOP reading at this point and ask for free help from those who have wisdom over at LiberationUnleashed.com

Before I go on about the cosmic consciousness trick, let me give you this caveat: One problem with psychedelics and even cosmic consciousness is that the states produced are so far away from our everyday experience that it makes liberation seem something very difficult to achieve permanently. That is why Buddha tried to show people how to stop suffering right here, right now, in the midst of ordinary everyday life and perception. His advice to Bahiya is exemplary of that.

---------------

And now here's the trick to blast into cosmic consciousness:

The mind's habits are particularly easy to break in a dream state or inbetween waking and dreaming.

So, wake up around 3am (assuming you normally wake at 6am or 7am) and sit up comfortably while you meditate on your breath for a few hours. Just notice the automatic nature of the breath as it goes in the nose, thru the body, and then out the body and thru the nose. As thoughts arise, just come back to the breath, noticing that thoughts arose automatically also. Noticing that noticing happened automatically also.

After about 2 hours of this practice, you should feel completely serene. At peace. You will also be very tired probably. So now lay down and go to sleep with the intention of entering into a lucid dream to continue contemplation of the automatic nature of reality.

Now chances are extremely good that you will enter a lucid dream due to the meditative mind-state you were in at the time of going to sleep.

Once you are in the dream and realize you are dreaming, again focus on the automatic nature of reality. Try to see how every particle "in you" functions according to the same laws as everything "outside you." You should start to notice the border between "inside you" and "outside you" becoming impossible to distinguish.

Another approach is to follow Buddha's advice to the wanderer Bahiya, in which he said, basically, "Try to see direct experience: in the seen, there is no seer seeing, only the seen. When only the seen is seen, that is the end of stress." In other words, we are getting rid of "experience of reality" in favor of reality itself.

At this point the whole dream explodes into cosmic consciousness when there is no separation between you and the universe. It can be so massively blissful and awesome that you wake up fairly quickly. But if you keep practicing, you should become more used to it over time.

The worst mistake tho, is to start prancing around like me and saying "Ooh, look at how special I am, I have achieved cosmic consciousness! I'm a true yogi! Bow down to me! haha!"

So don't do that. You're nobody, and certainly nobody special. Just automatic like everything else. Remember that. :)

love,
nobody

P.S. If you are interested in the Buddha dharma and you liked the linked blog entry on "Seven stages of awakening" by Thusness, then I suggest you join the facebook group Dharma Connection so you can talk to folks who are awakened to no-self. Obviously on any group there will be a bunch of nonsense, but this group does have some very worthwhile posters. The group's worthwhile posts are archived on this blog: http://dharmaconnectiongroup.blogspot.com/