On Dec 31, 2008, at 6:32 PM, Patrick Gillam wrote:
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj wrote:
It's possible that most TMers are not
in fact "transcending" in the full
sense of that word and are merely
experiencing "thought-free" states.
[snip]"transcending/transcendence/
transcendent" are all English words,
and thus divorced from the original
Sanskrit definition/descriptions,
you can make them mean whatever you
want to and you can also assign whatever
neurophysiological finding you want as well.
Vaj (or anyone), are the original Sanskrit
definitions and descriptions of transcendence?
Maharishi's term for "transcendental" is "bhava-tita": "beyond causal
being" or "beyond moods". A more popular term is "para". MMY defines
transcending in his yoga-sutra "translation" as "nirodha" (his words:
"yoga is bringing transcending to the activity of the mind." YS 1:2)
IME many TM practitioners end up succumbing to torpor: thus all the
reports of people sleeping in the dome. The Patanjali tradition warns
of this as what happens rather than "going beyond", para, one instead
just "settles down" into a thought-free state he calls "sthiti".
Sthiti has some tamasic qualities and so it's easy to just lull into
that state, which can feel, experientially like a bare one-
pointedness, but easily devolves into torpor and then sleep.
The reason why so many TMers fall asleep is simple: they've turned the
marketing description "effortless" into a mood-making dogma: they're
afraid to use any mindfulness and balanced attention because of it.
When attention becomes to lax, one falls into the tamasic aspect of
sthiti, and they fall asleep. The "stress at the level of the nervous
system" excuse is BS. It's a well-known phenomenon.
