--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "curtisdeltablues" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Bhairitu <noozguru@> wrote: > > > > curtisdeltablues wrote: > > > > > > someone wrote: > > > > Curtis, think you are going a little overboard with your > > > > rejecting a lot of yogic science. > > > > > > I just said it is faith based, and it is. I don't share > > > your faith. > > > > Apparently you think anything that has the word "yoga" > > associated with it is "faith based."
I would say that one cannot *deny* the element of "faith-basedness" in anything that has the word "yoga" associated with it. The faith so permeates the environment of anything that has the word "yoga" associated with it that I don't think there can *exist* any such thing as "yogic science." Claims of personal experience are, IMO, *always* influenced by the teachings and the tradition of the environment one learned it in. I have seen no evidence that people who have spent long periods of time in "yogic" environments are *capable* of distinguishing their faith from their personal experience. One influences the other. That influence can be on the level of moodmaking, as we have all seen (and many of us identify with from our TM days), or it can be on the level of "influence," coloring the ways in which we *inter- pret* our personal experiences. This influence is present from the moment of one's first introductory lecture, or before, if one has read a bit or has been exposed to other spiritual environments. Would you have recognized transcendence as a personal experience if it had not been described to you in your intro lecture? You can say that you would have, but at this point there is no way to be sure. The description of the phenomenon preceded the experience of the phenomenon, and thus influenced it. <snip> > > I think that is a bit of an ignorant association > > but let's use "sound physics" instead. That is unless you > > see "physics" as "faith based." :D :D :D > > Again, invoking sciency sounding terms doesn't make the claims > more scientific. Exactly. This is an invocation of the "If I use another vocabulary to describe it, it won't be faith" shuck and jive routine that we are so familiar with from TM. :-) <snip> > > > You also pick and choose what you have faith in. Just putting > > > the words yogic and science together does not make it so. No more than "creation science" makes fundamentalist Christianity any less fundamentalist, or Christian. It's shuck and jive. <snip> > > > > You are throwing out the baby with the bathwater in your > > > > attempt to debase TM. > > > > > > What are you talking about, an "attempt to debase TM?" I > > > just don't buy into all the beliefs, I practice TM and > > > think it is a nice relaxation technique. So what is the > > > baby, all the beliefs that surround the practice? > > > > Dismissing the various branches of yoga as anyone would notice > > following this tract. And what is wrong with that? I dismiss them -- ALL of them. I don't believe that ANY of them are in any way "scientific," or anything other than faith-based philosophy. But I still practice many things that came from those faith-based philosophies. What I DON'T do, is claim that the reason I practice these things is based on anything OTHER than faith, even if it's just the faith that the form of meditation I practiced yesterday and was pleasant will be pleasant today. There is faith in THAT, much less anything else we tend to claim as the benefits or goals of meditation. Like Curtis, I don't believe much in "magical mantras," or in magical ways of "transmitting" them. While I have *experienced* the latter, personally I found the medi- tations that resulted from that initiation to be no more profound or useful than those meditations I learned in a big room together with hundreds of other people, and no initiation ceremony. Sometimes even without a mantra. "Yogic science" for me boils down to the word "faith," and more than anything else, faith in "authority." I'm not real big on "authority" these days, whether the authority invoked is Maharishi or Buddha or Krishna or Guru Dev or Patanjali or Padmasambhava. I don't hold ANY of them to be complete authorities -- they were probably correct about some of the things they believed and taught, and they were probably incorrect about some of the things they believed and taught. I believe from what they have said only what resonates with my own intuition and heart and sense of ethics, and I toss on the rubbish heap anything from what they have said that doesn't. And at least one of these guys would agree with my stance. His words on the subject grace the Home Page of this discussion group: "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense." -- Buddha, from the Dhammapada
