--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Angela Mailander <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I didn't say it was of no value. I said I don't see > why the state is "higher." If I experience two > radically different states of consciousness at will, > then why would I call one higher than the other? They > are different. They each have their points. The fact > that there are different states and that I can > experience them tells me that there must be a deeper > reality than any of them.
It's interesting that you say "The fact that there are different states and that I can experience them tells me that there must be a deeper reality than any of them." At a certain point, I became disillusioned with "states of consciousness" because a state comes and goes. For the longest time, I lived for states of consciousness that I not only enjoyed but that I thought (thanks to MMY) were "higher" and therefore an indication that I was making progress or maybe was even a "better" person because of them. There's the idea in MMY's description, as least how I understand it, that a state can become permanent -- such as permanent unity consciousness. But that just doesn't make any sense to me. All of his descriptions seem to be about an experiencer experiencing things in a certain way. What about the disappearance of a separate experiencer? Although you can define unity consciousness as the disappearance of the separate experiencer, MMY's description always seemed worded in such a way as to indicate that there was someone (some one) there having the experience. An experience always comes and goes. I would thing the "deeper reality than any of them" is independent of the sense of a separate me having the experience. I know what I'm saying will be subject to all sorts of interpretations. I think the event in consciousness that I'm interested in can't be described neatly. One thing with MMY's "knowledge" is that it has neat, clear descriptions. I've had experiences which fit all these descriptions, but again they were only experiences. An experience can be described. Those I consider wise are clear that Reality can only be alluded to. When I was a TBer, I felt I was in the know because I could repeat descriptions. I'd mastered certain words and concepts. Interestingly now, none of those seems to have any value for me anymore. I also thought that I was in the know because I'd experienced the states MMY described, at least I had experiences that seemed to fit his descriptions. (This gets muddy because we have know way of knowing if someone else's experience, or even our own, is correlated with MMY's descriptions.) In any case, while I will sometimes find myself curious about an experience, for the most part I've lost interest in experiences and "states of consciousness". Maybe it's a question of what I value. Maybe it's the loss of an addiction to experience. It's just interesting to find myself in such a different place than I was when I was so caught up in what MMY had to say and in the TMO.
