Anon wrote:
REPLY TO AKASHA:
I feel very disappointed that you dismissed this discussion so
easily. It is as if you didn't bother reading past my first
paragraph and formed an opinion on that basis alone.
Akasha:
I did read it but no comments came to mind. I can see from the excerpt
that you extracted from the broader diolog, that you may believe that
I have a strong interest in cross-cultural/religous comparisions of
"Enlightenment". I really don't. Read the "Broader Dialog" posted at
the end, which gives a fuller context for what the excerpt you extracted.
And I disagree with your premise: "I chose to assume that there is one
universe within which different people get 'enlightened'.
I know semantics can ruin a good discussion, but people and seekers
never get enlightened. And as I have indicated in other posts, I don't
think about enlightenment, and I don't think it is a particularly
useful label.
>From a recent post:
-------------
I gave up caring about A or E several years ago. Even going so far as
to say they don't
exist -- in that they are only labels, categorizations, and in some
instances judgements.
What does exist is Awareness and various comprehensions and insights
that can unfold as Awareness unfolds and reveals itself. And Awareness
is not the seeker. Seeking is outside the domain of (the unfoldment
of) Awareness. Try to lasso the state of Desirelessness with a desire?
Its funny at face value.
However, I periodically ask the question of "what is that" when people
use the A&E terms because I think some deep inquiry on the matter is
useful, it has been for me.
-------------
At best, it appears that A or E can be used as broad categories, like
being "grown-up" or a "college graduate" or "fit". Each connates some
level of achievement, though it may be hard sometimes to define what
that specifically is. Indeed people who use the term A & E don't
appear to care to give it much of a rigorous definition. And the
diversity of characteristics across people in the category of
"grown-up" or "college graduate" is huge. However, most in these
categories readily acknowledge that a lot more unfoldment is possible.
Same with those that are A or E, I presume.
There are a vast array of spiritual unfoldment methods and techniques
used and available. Vaj, for example, gives some insight into this. I
am coming around to the LBS voiced view "many paths, many peaks" in
contrast to the new-agey, feel good supposition that there are many
paths, but they all lead to the same mountain top (where all the
saints sing kumbaha and drink hot chocolate around the campfire I
suppose).
The plethora of various methods refine or address different parts of
body, nervous system, subtle bodies, vasanas, chakra / marma / prana,
dattus, ayur-vedic balances, devotion, intellectual understanding,
compassion, systems, etc. There is huge diversity or "paths". I think
it may be apt to follow the practice of moutaineers: they have all
climbed many peaks. Not necessarily all the same. But all are at home
in the very high mountains. That is their commonality as mountaineers.
SSRS told a story of when he was at a Kumba Mela -- (before becoming a
teacher), alone, walking and talking among the huge diversity of
saints. One was a very stern naked saint (many saints go naked by
tradition). And he was scoffing at those with clothes on. "What kind
of saints are these, they even wear clothes!!!!" His view was, i
believe, that no one could possibly be enlightened if they still wore
clothes -- an obvious sign of atachment.
So, many paths, many peaks, perhaps the commonality being the clean
crips air high-altitude air of Awareness -- but its expression can be
in many forms.
============ The Broader Dialog ===================
Peter:
> CC is "baby" awakening. Cessation of identification of
consciousness with mind. End of "I" and "me".
Akasha:
On a more serious note, do you singularly define CC as "Cessation of
identification of consciousness with mind. End of 'I' and 'me'"? Do
you feel "No I" is both nexcessary and sufficient to label the
experience "CC"? Without relying on dogmatic kneejerks, it does seems
there are additional "attributes" along with or beyond the experience
of "No I".
Though as you know I am no fan or labeling any experience or person
with such labels, it seems that if one does enjoy that exercise, they
may be jumping the gun a bit to "ring the bell of Eureka" of CC simple
when experience "no I". But as people often remind me that I know
nothing, I tend to agree.
Tom:
About as many as
there needs to be to allow all to have the unique experience they
need to have to wake up. Seems to be pretty straightforward to me that IT
is filtered through each unique set of DNA, why wouldn't it have to > be
unique for each. See you all next week. Tom T
Akasha:
That Awareness is expressed in the lifes of all in infinite ways is of
little surprise. However, what I was seeking to confirm (or refute if
there is no confirmation -- same process) is that there is some
commonality to the so called experience of so called awakening. As a
rough analogy, while all humans are unique and different, there are
are core features of commonality that allow them to be classified as
homo-sapiens.
And remember my "vector" here, I am not in need of or (desparately)
searching for a logical and consistent framework for "awakening". As
you know, I have yet to see the value of such labeling and
classsification. I don't (often) engage in it. ("not often", instead
of "never", since it is a habit -- resulting from past training -- but
a habit that is fading.) However since Peter offered up a definition,
I simply asked if that one feature was both necessary and sufficient
to define "CC. He chose not to answer directly but gave some wonderful
Peter-speak.
Though I don't choose to label people or experiences with the
"enlightenment" and "awakening" categories, since others do, I do ask
for their definitions to help clarify communications. When Rick or
others talk about so many new "awakenings" in FF, I have no idea what
he is realy referring to experientially - since this term appears to
be used by different people in quite different ways. Language and
communications are subverted when a single term has many meanings (and
can't be deciphered by context).
I raised the definitional issue with Peter because on the continuum of
experiences "around here", there are other salient features other than
or beyond "no doer". I wonder there are similar experiences "over
there". It occurs to me that if "no doer" is "all" that is meant by
"awakening", that this is a fairly primitive marker of growing
wholeness and spiritual unfoldment. That "many" are experiencing this
is not surprising. And explains why such "awakened' ones talk, act and
react in ways that appear inconsistent with other, perhaps deeper,
features of unfoldment.
Anon:
I like to think that there is one underlying reality that all forms
and expressions of enlightenment take part in. That may be asking too
much, but I'd like to take it as a starting point. Then, the question
arises, within that reality, how much room is there for variation of
experience that could meaningfully be called "awakened"
or "enlightened"?
Some differences may be accounted for by people being at
various "stages". Thus, for example, you could have some speak of the
world of change as unreal. While this sounds like a fairly advanced
perception, it may be a reflection of the Self/Non-Self duality that
M. associates with CC. Others might speak of the world of change as
utterly real, and seamlessly connected to the unchanging, which sounds
more like a UC perception.
One confounding factor brought out in various autobiographical
accounts is that "awakened" states may be experienced at first
as "ultimate" because they all have some quality of unboundedness,
infinity, immortality about them; whereas, it is only in retrospect
that they may be recognized as transitional states moving on to
more "awakenings".
But all of this presupposes that there is one more or less general
outcome (with many minor variations) for everyone who is destined
to "awaken". That could be a false assumption.
If we take it that advanced practitioners of many spiritual traditions
have "attained" to the states that they define as awakened, how are we
to account for the variances in description? Is some of this just a
problem of trying to describe the ineffable? Would all of these people
agree with each other about their states (if not their descriptions of
them) if they sat down and talked to each other, as Dr. Pete has
suggested? Or are there possibly fundamentally different "realized"
states? For example, could it be that the Hindus experience "Self-
realization" while Buddhists speak of there being no Self (big S or
little), because these are different experiences of the underlying
truth?
I ran across an example of this the other day. I read a book by Ted
Strauss, who used to be a TM teacher and now teaches with the Waking
Down people. He describes two different states which he claims are at
the same "level" of realization, but are experienced quite
differently. These are CC-like experiences. He claims to have had
both. The first he calls something like "disembodied witness
consciousness" and the second he calls something like "embodied
witness consciousness". He considers the former to be what has
traditionally been understood to be "Self-realization" and the latter
to be much more rare. While he says that the two are equivalent as a
realization of the Self as unbounded and uninvolved in any and all
activity, he considers the latter to be superior, and the speciality
of the Waking Down approach (naturally he considers it superior, since
he is part of that "tradition"). I actually don't know what he is
talking about, but found the concepts interesting. Is there anyone on
FFL who has enough experience of Waking Down to comment on this?
Anon REPLY TO AKASHA:
I feel very disappointed that you dismissed this discussion so
easily. It is as if you didn't bother reading past my first
paragraph and formed an opinion on that basis alone.
Somehow, I think you misunderstood me. To better explain the point
of view I was expressing, I'll use an analogy that you recently
used: physicists acknowledge that some phenomena are best described
by Newtonian physics, while others are better describe by Quantum
Mechanics. However, an underlying assumption is that these two
methods of describing and explaining phenomena are in fact
describing the same universe.
So that was my starting point. I chose to assume that there is one
universe within which different people get "enlightened". This says
nothing about the description of that universe, or the character of
the enlightenment of anyone in particular. For example, this same
universe may support an enlightenment in which God or Personal God
plays an important role, an enlightenment in which there is no God,
an enlightenment in which the ultimate truth can well be described
using words like "Self", or an enlightenment in which there is No
Self. These various forms of "enlightenment" may be on some
sequential path, or they may be mutually exclusive end states. All
of that is up for grabs, as far as I'm concerned. And yes, maybe
there are forms of "enlightenment" that have no commonality
whatsoever with other forms.
What if everyone exists in his/her own universe with its own rules?
What does that mean, really? Does it mean that the person's
experience alone defines his/her universe? or that everyone else's
universe doesn't really exist as far as I'm concerned? Well, we
could go that way. But I don't find it very fruitful.
I've included my original post below. I was hoping to get a more
thoughtful reply from you. But, if you don't want to, well, ok, it
was fun, I guess...
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