A Rant Against Naive Realism
By Leo Gura - January 16, 2017 | 34 Comments
Reality is NOT physical!
Anne says: What about after all that.. Not all of us want to start youtube channels. Do we just exist, be, sunbathe like seals, and chew on plants when we get hungry, and then get kicked out because the park closes at 9? How do we create the reality we want to be in, with this limitlessness we have discovered, in a world that can lock you up if you don’t play by their rules. Enlightenment has been the most mind blowing realization and the most depressing reality check I have ever experienced.
Leo Gura says: No, you don’t need to create a Youtube channel. You need to find your life purpose.
See the life purpose course for that. All of you will have unique life purposes.
Jon Barzilaij says: Hello,
I’m Jon, living in France.
I find your post very interesting – do you have a blog or something ?
Best,
Jon
Jon Barzilaij says: Hello,
I’m Jon, living in France.
I find your post very interesting – do you have a blog or Something ?
Best,
Jon
Roz says: Hi, I totally agree with your comments, its been a long “journey” for want of a better word, I had my realisation fully about 2months ago, my husband thinks I have gone round the bend and everything is completely different on every level, however for the better, I trust my intuition now to know what to do next. I’m not saying it isnt scary, it can but theres a freedom to it, the truth shall set you free, as they say, its very true
Best wishes xx
Matias says: Follow the flow – there is no want when there is just being, the flow you encounter will lead. Adyashanti’s book The end of the world is simply amazing, I recommend it for trying to understand what comes after awakening – I couldn’t put it down.
Sourabh says: I am seriously doubting myself,bcoz of personal development stuff my studies are getting affected, everyone in my family is against me and telling me to focus on studies but i literally cant bcoz i am not interested in it anymore n looking to find my purpose to pursue for years but it isn’t getting revealed, clearly m going nowhere in life, cud u suggest sum Action steps to find it or where m i going wrong?
Carlos says: Invest in the life purpose course? There you’ll find practical applications to help you find your life purpose. Be extremely patient, meditate every day. The journey is worth it, even though you may never see results. But you will. It just takes a whole lot of time.
Everybodys situation is unique. I haven’t gotten the life purpose course, but I will. In the meantime, what I do is relate the videos to each other, take notes, and form my own system, inspired by the assignments Leo provides in his videos.
Leo Gura says: Yes, spiritual work involves losing your grounding for a while.
But you come back stronger than ever if you do the work right.
toomas says: just as the scientists will not find out what happened before the big bang. just as there is no basis under the turtle, there is no way for you leo, or anyone else for that matter, to become enlightened. all there is is more experience. your pursuit of enlightenment is the same as as asking the question about the turtle.
radical open mindedness – horse-, bull- and most of all chicken shit. all you have is hope that tomorrow you’ll get there and you don’t have the guts to admit it.
Leo Gura says: Don’t confuse enlightenment for a defeatist attitude.
toomas says: i fail to see the connection between your comment and mine so i can only speculate: if you interpret what was said as defeatist attitude, it is just a projection of yours.
Justin says: Ooooh, so I think feel a connection from one of your earlier videos about confusion. Is this why it is so important to accept that we are confused, because it trains us to not find a turtle under the elephant? To accept that reality is everything, every possibility of reality, and to surrender to the fact that no explanation will satisfy our ego?
Leo Gura says: Yes.
Although the final revelation will satisfy your ego beyond anything you imagined possible.
rez says: This was the best talk I listened to recently
Sevi 
david p says: I like this topic. All experiance happens inside you, and if you try to pin exactly where that is you will never find it. I think I read in the Bhagavada Gita, what you are is, unborn, out side of space and time, prior to consciousness, prior to the nothingness which consciousness flows out of. The absolute. So we can never know our true self? Is this all a waking dream and we are The absolute ? Its so bizarre. I can’t have any experience out side of my head. Prior to the nothing.
Cov says: I didn’t realize that in every moment I was Assuming there was someone there perceiving it.
Like if I look, nothing and no one is there.. that’s holy shit stuff..
Leo quick question, is there any difference between consciousness and nothingness? Or is nothingness like a mode of being of consciousness?
Brett Miller says: Leo,
Dude, did you realize you have several meta-rants inside the main root-rant. In one you go on a tyrade about how this isn’t an “Enlightenment” video and you don’t talk about Enlightenment all the time for this and that reason.
Wow man, drawing all these arbitrary distinctions. From where I am sitting, in my reality all your videos are pointing out instructions for realization. They come conditioned that way by the mind prior to perception
Killer video.
-Brett
PS: You weren’t lying about having a thorny mind that day, trying a new asceticism? Another thing I tend to agree with…taking a subtle approach to discussing Absolute reality is generally a good idea with non-devoted folks. Otherwise they flee or resist in short order.
Hengame says: Thank you Leo I am following evey single of your videos since 2014 and little by little your video and special your advice helped me to find other sources thank you for all I feel much much better than : years ago and I am working still on improvement .
Kenneth says: I listened to this while I was out walking today. Absolutely amazing. Something gave way in my mind after listening to it and processing it. My walk became a meditation, it was like I was not moving, but everything was moving past me and all around me, like I was in a kind of 3D movie. My walking became slow and leisurely, there was no objective of a destination, time evaporated. It felt wonderful, but not in an excited way, just very calm and accepting. Eventually I met someone I knew and had to engage in conversation and that snapped me out of it. I was still calmer, but the “oneness” of everything had gone. It was a totally beautiful experience.
Thank you Leo
Benjamin Schlufter says: I cannot follow you in any sense. All nice but the “ilusion” of my hunger still kills me when i dont keep earning money for food shelter and stuff. Now tell me how is that not real ?
Arturo Calle says: Hi Leo interesting video,
Question about what is the absolut reality, the ilusion of the physical world and space and time has always intrigue me like you, becuase it feels like it would answer one of the most important methaphysical question that we all wonder about: What am truly I?.
But for me what most intrigue me is not what, is why. Why are we here? Why does this render reality exists? And why I feel like a human being living a life in this world and time? wich can feel suffering and fear and love, and if its all an illusion. Why the illusion? Whats the point of all of this????
What has always shock me more is this whys. I dont understand, whats the point of this big illusion?
People want to be enlightment to be able to see what they truly are, name it pure consiousness or being or whatever. But why dont they just die and become that? Why you want to continue been in this reality and living your human life if you actually want to be and know the other reality? (if theres any)
Perhaps they are insecure of this other reality?…
I dont know, I just dont see the point on all of this.
So I want to ask you Leo if you have an idea, theory a belive of why we are here and feel what we feel?
I would apreciate greatly your insight.
Thanks
(sorry for bad english)
Diego says: Leo, I’m trying to contact you, but messages don’t arrive you.
Reactivate my account. I was testing a VPN, that’s why my account is blocked: “security violation.”
Thanks.
Alex says: Hey Leo, interesting video indeed. Thougt it got me wondering, if the external world does not exists, and is creates by the mind, then who created the mind? If reality does not exists then how is it possible to experience it ?
Michael says: Hi Leo, I have been following your videos for some time now. Sometimes it feels like I am getting some where, other times it feels like I am getting more confused then I was in the beginning.
In this video you talk about the brain rendering everything.
As I watched you on my computer I couldn’t stop wondering: Is my brain rendering you as well..? Am I rendering everybody? Am I the only consciousness there is..? Am I everybody..?
Feeling really confused..!
Thank you Leo for all mind bending videos
Michael
So could I just assume that dreams are no different from reality? I’ve been having a bunch of vivid dreams recently (maybe from meditation, late nights, or both) and I’m now positing it against reality. It’s all just a bunch of images in essence, but after you wake up and experience “reality”, it FEELS logical, it feels right. When I’m experiencing the dream and not aware that I’m dreaming, it can feel just as logical as reality does, but once we wake up, we instantly judge the dreams logic as being illogical. I feel that this is the key to understanding the “naive realism/mystical reality” dilemma you discuss in your video. Am I in the ballpark or no?
Leo Gura says: It is possible to awaken from “reality”. That’s called enlightenment.
Ken says: Another great video! Thanks!
Connor says: Leo
Isn’t this belief close to empiricism? After watching your videos I am only ankle deep in philosophy, but I think there are common threads here with Hume/Locke/Berkeley right? ie why not treat our experience as reality and forget about whatever may or may not be responsible for it/lay behind the scenes, since we don’t seem to have the capacity/tools to understand that?
Second question. Doesn’t this line of thinking lead to questions about whether I can know if I am the only one who is conscious and everything else (including other people and their consciousnesses) is just my phenomenal field?
Leo Gura says: Firstly, this is not merely a belief, it’s pointing to the Absolute nature of being.
Secondly, empiricism is not empirical enough! Empiricism is not metaphysics-free. Empiricism doesn’t understand you have direct access to being, independent of sensory perception.
Thirdly, Berkeley was an idealist, not an empiricist. He argued for the immateriality of reality. His point was that reality is a figment of the imagination of God. (He was right, BTW, so long as you understand that “God” is not a bearded man in the clouds, but nothingness.)
Fourthly, we DO have the capacity and tools to understand the Absolute nature of being.
Fifthly, there are no “whos” in existence. Existence itself IS the perceiver, so to speak. You don’t exist as a perceiver, and neither does any “other”. The perceiver of all phenomena is nothingness.
Connor says: Gotcha. I’ll read more about Berkeley – sounds like he was onto something. As for the fifth point, I’m slowly starting to grasp this. But I have to tell you, I have feel a deep pang of fear when I think about it, a fear I’ve never really felt save a few times on mushrooms, though slightly different. Have you felt this fear on your journey? I think it’s my ego’s unwillingness to accept that I am not Connor but this much, much larger thing/no thing/perceiver. Do I understand correctly that part of Enlightenment is sort of tapping into this “shared consciousness”? I hope I’m on the right track here (but I also embrace my state of confusion hehe )
Max Raoy Gron says: I think naive realism’s accurate, being an apple isn’t of a natural kind in physics, but in biology, recall. Being complex and of no interest to fundamental physics isn’t a failure to be real, green is as real as applehood.