I've recently been turned onto Tolle and I love the guy. Very enlightened being; full of compassion. I don't suspect that he tried DMT and doesn't admit it; for one thing, I'm sure he cherishes honesty and would regard himself as unclean through lying, even if only lying by omission.

Moreover, tons of spiritual people have echoed precisely the message that DMT can infuse you with. The light you see shining in everything? In China that's chi, in India it's prana, in Hawaiian culture it's mana, and among Christians it's the Holy Spirit.

Smoking DMT has inspired me to examine the Bhagavad Gita in depth now, and I find startling parallels. In chapter ten when Lord Krishna reveals his "true transcendental form" to Arjuna, he freaks out--he can't handle it. Much like a breakthrough that's leaves you both humbled and terrified. And this was written over 5000 years ago and quite unlikely to be the result of DMT inspired wisdom.

In short, don't be surprised when spiritual people echo things you've learned through plant sacraments. There are other ways of uncovering the divine light in all things than smoking DMT.

Beingness is just beingness and the constructed ego and monkey mind and all the rest is included in that beingness - no need to change anything. But ... except in those rare moments of simply being, I'm that dualistic me shut out (seemingly) from the reality of WHAT IS. Always the gateless gate. Help!


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I feel like its just a matter of whatever IS, IS, which means in the moments of meditation or day to day activities, its just a matter of simply allowing whatever is to be as it is without attachment or aversion. To simply be with the totality of experience is to include thoughts and feelings, as well as external perception, i don't feel theres a need to attempt to attain anything, for whatever is going on in the moment is exactly what needs to be happening, and here you are, witnessing it going "gee isn't this a fun game, wow look at my perversities, wow i've really created a big mess out of this one". Its paradoxical because one side will ache, will be in pain, will cry, will get angry, will scream and shout and worry and then there is a deeper part of your being just joyously laughing in its own bliss at the ignorance of the whole experience. Thats just my personal perception of this entire game, theres nothing to let go of, nothing to hold onto, because there was nothing in the first place, its all been done for you.

P.S. Affirmations drive me crazy because its just trying to override current thoughts with new thoughts, those thoughts will always remain until your conscious attention dissolves them through unidentification, but i guess having a positive thoughts is a step in the right direction of spacious awareness.

I love your passion, NotTwo. I'd be careful with those teachers who just present a smug there-is-nothing-you-can-do-and-I-won-the-enlightenment-sweepstakes trip. I'd be very cautious about idealizing any schtick.

Wisdom, at that level, is a performance, and whoever it is, is first and foremost performing wisdom.

I'd also be very careful with any teaching that just calls you in yourself a "dream character".

For me, first and foremost, I respect myself and my perspectives, and my passions.

Tolle is performing wisdom, and in my opinion, he does okay. Not great. Just okay. He brings quite a bit of confusion and belief along for the ride.

With any of these schticks that are teachers or that are dharma rappers, I ask, "How much of the fullness and completeness of human life, of the paradox of our actual, real lives do they preserve?"

Denying the passion and the person is one way to avoid the paradox. But is it life?

Is the schtick just another promise of pure pleasure through selling you on the suicide of the personality?

I find the idea of bombing out the personality and the ego to be more drama. I don't see any authority in any experience that comes out of a temper tantrum with life as it is, or with impatience with our individual selves.

Im not sure but it feels a bit like you've missed the point. They discuss that any attempts to remove ego is futile because that just comes from the same thing wanting to get rid of its own self. Ego, when observed, is built on a foundation of desire, and when purely observed, sooner or later you're posed the question "who is it that is aware of I" or in Tolle's case "Who is the I which hates myself?". You see, ego is a part of natural human function, it is not something to be dissolved, simply we unidentify with ego, and then we come back to it and shape it into a better functioning for the systems of human society, so that we can be better humans, more compassion etc. The reasons for this is because we are somehow all connected, nobody knows how, but it seems to be pointing towards the idea that we all share a consciousness. The goal is just to become a nice, kind human being, and when the ego wants something or doesn't want something, then it is resisting life, and that creates problems as it is run by survival and therefore will do whatever it can, including kill, steal, over indulge and what not, because its afraid that one day it is going to run out.

Just know thyself, its as simple as that. And Eckhart Tolle knows himself, so he discusses his foundations of reality that he has come to realise from his own interpersonal relationship with himself, and what seems to stem from understanding oneself is the idea that ultimately we are ONE and therefore it is not your suffering but OUR suffering, and so he is providing a simple message of "The Power of NOW" so that people can live life more totally than being run by past and future. When you look into these peoples eyes, you can tell that there is no more suffering inside them. They still experience pain, they still get angry, upset, frustrated and feel the range of human emotions as does anyone else, its just they aren't attached and on a deeper level, they laugh at the game of life, the cosmic joke. It's all quite simple really and i don't need to go endeavour on deep philosophical tangents to you, but its fun expressing these concepts, but BEING it is better, as the paradoxical nature is, when spoken, it instantly becomes untrue.

i could be wrong, but i think in a way this type of philosiphising only creates a further divide from the now, and yourself. I could be totally off base, but i think its a little pointless whats real whats not realy what am i what is this. Not questions that ever can be answered with words

For example, if i am already perfectly realized in this moment, what is the point of continuing my folly with the ego, if somewhere somehow I am already complete and awakened. It doesnt make any sense to me, like this talk of a non-gate to pass through. I think its mental masturbation, and the true truth comes from the heart and must be known and realized and can never be spoken.

Just my opinion of course, much love and respect

if the ultimate lesson of meditating is that you cant shut off the mind anyways, and you do the dishes after enlightenment, what the heck is the point anyways!

there is no point, it just is, lol

The point I took from NotTwo was that he was quite passionate about his wrestling with these things, and that it was and is more than mental masturbation for him.

I'm only interested in the passion here. I take it that is why you are here as well.

I'm honest about it. I'm passionate about it. I'm alive.

That little I know. I find Tolle to be underwater or to be kind of deadened and every person I've met who was into Tolle was using him to dampen down life and the other, to cut themselves off from their pain.

I'm on the opposite of Tolle. I'd say that the pain is your teacher, and that splitting off from a "pain body" is just splitting off from life. I'd rather respect the pain. I don't want to turn it off. So, I find his version of advaita to be a half-baked delusional system set up to sell people on a false freedom.

I'd rather hang out with the real passion and real suffering of real, honest people than idealize a soi-disant guru.

My apologies if you idealize Tolle or if you think that by looking in his glazed eyes you can see freedom. I don't want to idealize pain, or the ego, or the mind. But when Tolle calls the mind a "virus" I laugh at how he has created an unnecessary dualism.

I respect the mind. I respect words. I respect pain. I do not respect lies and falsehoods and false solutions to the unsolvable paradox of life.

Understoon drfaust!

I speak as kind of an outsider to the subject, my knowledge of it is far from complete, so i speak with no authority. But I agree with you 100% that real honest people are superiour to "gurus". Gurus are human, 100% human and fully capable of mistakes and misunderstanding.

I respect your opinion 100%

Thanks so much for your engagement. Perhaps I can clarify.

Many traditions work with effort, with doing something, such as, for example sitting practice or taking dmt or reading books. And they are honest about it. They appreciate the paradox of skillful means.

Yes, what you are is, and there is no effort necessary and any effort takes you away and so on. But to be honest, you are making many efforts and doing many things. So as NotTwo says you have the gateless gate paradox. deal with it. I did not make this up. It's a fact.

How do you skillfully deal with the paradox of having desire and having an ego? You are already "doing things". How do you accept yourself as you are?

In Zen, you make effort to move towards no effort. In Zen, you use the ego to clarify and make good distinctions, you use your discriminating mind to clear out hearsay and beliefs, to let go.

In that sense, and only in that sense, any teacher who mixes beliefs in with a nondual approach is diluting the nondual approach. In that sense, any teaching that prematurely pushes the ego away is not skillful enough. In Zen, one collaborates with oneself as one is including one's personality and one's ego.

my apologies. I dig how your name is such a paradox. This is such a passionate place, this place of asking these questions. I want to be careful to not tread too heavily on idealized figures. Idealization has its moments and its uses.

"Skillful means" is a concept I find useful.

But truly, I want to offer my apologies, because I'm afraid that I might have bullied you into agreeing with me 100%. I'm just a dream character in the field for you. It's your life that matters. And it is respect for that, as it is, that matters to me.

Beautifully stated.

Tolle to me is just a guy. I don't know much about him other than he is some guy that lives maybe 10 minutes away from me in a very pricey and trendy part of town, and wrote some books on mysticism. I have not looked all that deep into his work, but from what I have experienced of him, he is just a man. Any man or woman who wishes to, through experience and self inquiry, can come into a greater mystical revelation concerning life and the world.

The point is to not sit at the feet of anyone but life itself. Life is the initiator, life is the guru.

5-MeO-DMT, helps. A lot. Anyone serious about this should use daily meditation as an adjunct to the psychedelic work.

"Smoking DMT has inspired me to examine the Bhagavad Gita in depth now, and I find startling parallels. In chapter ten when Lord Krishna reveals his "true transcendental form" to Arjuna, he freaks out--he can't handle it. Much like a breakthrough that's leaves you both humbled and terrified. And this was written over 5000 years ago and quite unlikely to be the result of DMT inspired wisdom."


Mushrooms.

That is perhaps too simplified. Nobody knows what soma is or was with certainty. Pendell thinks it may have been ephedra of all things. And soma was very, very pre-Gita which came much later and grew out of the Bhakti movement of the early common era.

I think psychedelics are a sufficient but not a necessary condition for visionary experience. Visions can happen spontaneously.

Ramakrishna, for example had so many ecstatic and visionary experiences and he directly inspired them in others and he never used psychedelics.

I mention Ramakrishna as an historical example that has been written about and who inspired Romain Rolland's "oceanic experience" which Freud analyzed as a mystical experience. There are so many others.

Psilocybe mushrooms are, as far as I can tell, the most likely candidate for the vedic soma. Perhaps there really were 108 different soma plants. Peganum harmala is not to be discounted.

Buddhists, it seems, also possibly had/have some secrets of they're own (or old borrowed vedic remnants)..

Undoubtedly.

Ram Dass recounts a lovely story, in which he was at the early pow-wows (during the Timothy Leary days) to discuss the nature of reality as viewed through the psychedelic experience. An elderly lady frequented these meetings, and was clearly tuned into these concepts.

By how? Surely she wasn't part of the LSD crowd! So Ram Dass (then Dick Alpert) asked her what turned her on to this mode of thought. She leaned toward him and whispered, somewhat conspiratorially, I crochet!

I think there are a number of evidence for Soma being a mushroom, or even Jesus.
Now I think being an amanita muscaria or a psilocybin one maybe was just related to when and where about.

I love that story!

There are many methods. Ram Dass is a great example of someone who honored psychedelics and learned quite a bit from them but who also used other methods to grow. I also dig him because he was and is honest about his humanity. He never claimed to be "enlightened."

I'm not concerned with any of the soi-disant gurus. Let them be as they are. I am concerned with preserving a space for "humanity" in my own life and in those who I encounter. Part of that to me is accepting ourselves and appreciating our emotions. Part of that is having an attitude that we can learn and grow.

Perhaps you are seeing something other than what I am seeing? That, from my perspective is a Chhatra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chhatra

It is a visionary parasol that spontaneously arises in the visionary state when you "crochet" quite a bit!