Hi James,

But dogma, ideology does.

You’re right. Even the ideology that there is nothing, that God is “total disappearing”:

The reason Being, God or Godhead cannot be claimed is simple: the so-called Godhead or God is total disappearing. There is no “me,” no experience, no awareness, no being, no life, no consciousness, no body, no universe, no state, no enlightenment, no mind, nothing at all exists there.

God is the Creator, James. From the singular consciousness, worlds are created. Including me and you. I’m sorry you’re insisting on nothingness, which is indeed nihilism.

I understand that you felt something akin to disappearing in your meditations, but these meditations happened, as Anita said, under extreme conditions, you living in darkness for an entire year, and spending 8-10 hours per day meditating.

I would love to hear more about how you came to the decision to spend a year in darkness… because it is a pretty radical one. I would like to hear more about your process.

I also understand that you went through some pretty tough medical trauma, and that you now feel lucky to be able to breathe (My celebration is breathing.). I know that, because I myself have debilitating health issues, perhaps not life-threatening like yours, but very limiting and causing me slip into hopelessness pretty regularly (but then I bounce back). So I understand when you say “life is suffering”…

Anyway, I’d like to talk about the issues you’re facing, but would not like to subscribe to the idea of nothingness that you’re advocating. I hope we can remain in conversation.

Best wishes to you!

Hi James,

About experience of meditation that, when recognition happened that any experience belongs to body and mind, therefore no one to there to claim. James is dead. Therefore, Body feels pain yet there is no one to suffer. And that’s what Love is.

Oh James, I wish I could erase the physical pain in my body simply by telling myself that I don’t exist. Well, I can’t… the thought, the idea, that I don’t exist, doesn’t erase the physical pain of a broken bone, or a worn-out cartilage in the knee.

I can pretend that pain is neutral to me, or that it’s even enjoyable, but that would be lying to myself. Because there is someone who is feeling that pain, who is receiving the sensations (nerve impulses) coming from the body to the brain. And someone who is observing that pain.

Come to think of it, the pain is gone only in 3 cases: 1) the body heals, 2) you take strong medicine/sedatives that take away the pain temporarily, 3) you die (physically, not metaphysically). I’ve just looked it up: even people in wheelchair often feel pain in their limbs (so-called nerve pain), even if they can’t use their legs.

Anyway, if my body is hurting, I can’t pretend I’m not suffering, even though I can reduce my suffering by various means, including self-suggestion and positive thinking. In Buddhism, there is a term “the second arrow of suffering”, which means that we can make our pain worse (be it physical or emotional pain) by catastrophizing and interpreting the events in a non-favorable way, which only increases our suffering. So if we keep telling ourselves that our situation is hopeless and beyond repair, our pain is likely to increase.

If I understood you well, you say that Love is when you tell yourself that you don’t exist (Body feels pain yet there is no one to suffer. And that’s what Love is).

Pretty strange definition of love… Because love is a relational phenomenon… God loves his creation (a tree, a flower, animals, humans…). A mother loves her child. A person loves their beloved.

Love is about relation. So I can’t really wrap my head around the idea that God-as-Nothing would love Me-as-Nothing? Or am I not understanding you correctly?

Dear James: you are interpreting a personal, extreme experience as a universal truth.

You described a year in darkness and silence, 8–10 hours of meditation per day, a near‑death experience, an open‑heart surgery, a belief that you “died many times”. Long periods of isolation or sensory reduction can lead to: feeling detached from one’s body,
feeling like the self is unreal, feeling like thoughts are happening ‘on their own’, and a sense that the world is dreamlike or empty

This is dissociation and depersonalization that can make someone interpret their experience as “there is no self” or “everything is nothing.”

A conviction that your experience is the only truth, warnings that others will “burn” or “go insane” if they don’t accept your view0 this worldview, is being filtered through extreme sensory deprivation, trauma, isolation and altered states of consciousness, a collapse of personal identity, and a strong need to universalize your experience.

Those factors make you sound rigid, apocalyptic, absolutist, disconnected from shared reality, convinced you’ve discovered a final truth.

You interpret your internal experience as: the nature of the universe, the fate of all humans, the only truth, a warning others must hear. That’s why your messages feel heavy, fatalistic, and sometimes frightening. This is your psychological state being treated (by you) as metaphysics.

The worldview you’re expressing — “there is no self, no awareness, no soul, no meaning, only nothingness” — is functionally absolute nihilism. Again, you’re interpreting a personal psychological state as universal truth, which is why it comes across as nihilism rather than non‑duality.

You deny the validity of all other experiences. When Tee mentions NDEs full of love, light, or consciousness, you dismiss them as “mind.” When I described non‑duality, you dismiss it as “belief.”

This is classic nihilistic absolutism: “My nothingness is the only truth; everything else is illusion.”

That’s not philosophy — that’s personal nihilism interpreted as cosmic law.

You reject all relational concepts of love. You say love is: “Being nothing.”, “No one to protect.”, “No one to suffer.” This is not love as any spiritual tradition defines it. It’s the emotional tone of nihilism dressed in spiritual language.

You repeatedly say: “Awareness is nothingness.”, “The soul is nothingness.”, “Before birth = nothing. After death = nothing.”, “There is no you.”, “Everything you attach to burns.”- This is not non‑duality.

Non‑duality says the personal self dissolves into awareness, not into nothing.

You say awareness itself dissolves. That’s absolute nihilism.

You deny the existence of: a self, a soul, awareness, consciousness, meaning, continuity after death, any underlying reality beyond the body- This is the core of metaphysical nihilism (nothing exists in any meaningful sense) and existential nihilism (life has no inherent meaning).

Dear Tee: you’ve been engaging with patience and curiosity, and your question is exactly the right one. You’re not dismissing James’s experience; you’re simply pointing out the contradiction between: “There is no self,” and “I am here to warn you, you misunderstand, you must see the truth.” That contradiction matters because if there is no “James,” then there is also no one to warn, no one to correct, no one to insist on a single truth.

Someone — or some perspective — is clearly interacting with us. Calling it “nothingness” doesn’t explain the activity we’re all witnessing.

Your worldview, James, blends ego‑death language, sensory deprivation effects, and personal trauma into an absolutist philosophy that isn’t true non‑duality but a personalized form of nihilism.

Tee’s question— “Who is engaging with us if not James?”—is the perfect way to expose the contradiction in your claims, because you insist the self doesn’t exist while actively arguing, warning, and choosing words. You will likely respond with phrases like “there is no doer,” which avoid the contradiction rather than resolve it.

A grounded reply should gently point out that even if the self is seen as an illusion, illusions still function, and someone—or some perspective—is clearly choosing to type, argue, and interpret experiences. This shifts the conversation from metaphysical proclamations to observable reality, where a meaningful dialogue can actually occur.

Anita

Hi Everyone

I feel we might be clinging too tightly to words. 🩵

The truth is that already no one is ours. Even our loved ones. We just borrow them. It is a gift that they are in our lives for as long as they are. They are free to come and go. The universe gives and it takes away. 🩵

I don’t really see the perspective James has as nihilism. It occurs in many philosophies. Sometimes different words are used such as emptiness or stillness. 🩵

Funnily enough James, that is exactly what I was doing today. 😊 🩵