--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "curtisdeltablues" <curtisdeltabl...@...> wrote: > > The interpretation that the experiences gained by meditating > is the "Self" is not one I share now. When I was in the movement > I did relate to this interpretation, and did believe I was > experiencing what Maharishi was talking about. But once your > perspective changes you relate to the experience that meditation > brings differently.
This is exactly the point I was trying to make in my silly "Skillful Non-Means" post. While TMers can claim that their subjective *experiences* of meditating and transcending were "innocent" (although they had been told to expect them), they cannot claim the same about their beliefs about what they "mean." They were told what they "mean" explicitly. If later they did some reading from other books from similar traditions to rein- force those existing preconditioned beliefs, that does not change that they were preconditioned. The point of my silly cafe rap was that there is a certain freedom in addressing the experiences of meditation *as* simply experiences, without any high-falutin' "explanation" of what they "mean." My experience with long-term TMers is that it is very difficult for them to do this. They assume, after all these years, that their *interpretations* of their experiences, and what they "mean," is as innocent as the experiences themselves. But they're not. > Meditation altered functioning is not self evidently what > Maharishi claims. Who, after all would come up with "the home of all the laws of nature" on their own? And yet people say it as if it's self evident. " By my way of thinking you would have to experience this shift > in interpretation while still being able to access the > experience to know why I would make such a statement. > > In any case concerning people who make such claims I haven't > seen any evidence of superior anything. Nor have I. Although I have seen evidence (albeit subjective evidence) of siddhis, they didn't seem to do anything for the person who had mastered them's ability to act in an ethical manner. Or even to be happy long-term. He did, after all, off himself in the end. And he did some real damage to people along the way. <snip> > I am claiming that my my relationship with my body and mind > are in "proper perspective." It isn't broken and doesn't need > fixing. Hear, hear. It's fascinating when you realize that most of the people who are preaching to you trying to convince you to join their religion or to think like them are asking you to buy in to a *lesser* state of self esteem, isn't it? One in which you are "broken" until something outside yourself "fixes" you. And they wonder why people laugh at them. > I am rejecting the whole model as making a big deal out of > nothing. Yes you can change your internal functioning through > meditation, but I don't see the value. It doesn't seem to > improve people's minds or ethics in any way I can detect. I could see the point if those "benefits" really do seem to appear. But they were told to expect them, too, so that too could be preconditioning. Where I have seen benefits along these lines was when meditation was used *in conjunction with* other active exercises in which people learned how to act in an ethical manner (selfless giving, mindfulness) and strengthen their minds (visual- ization exercises, memorization/repetition, active debate in which one does not always have the luxury of defending the "side" of the issue one believes to be true). All of these *combinations* of tech- niques I have seen in Tibetan teachings, and to be honest I saw more development of *balanced* personalities there than in traditions that thought that meditation alone would "do it for them." > I'm not arguing that you shouldn't find value in it. If you do, > that's great. But the assumption that everyone else is > functioning in some sort of ignorance seems far fetched. Not to mention elitist. > And the term "enlightened" to describe what it seems to be > accomplishing for people seems doubly far fetched. Especially given the real-world actions of people they hold up as examples of enlightenment. > I think of yoga as an internal hobby, not as realizing > the "purpose of life." Fun if you are into that sort of > thing, but no more. And, after 40+ years pursuing all of this, I for one agree with you. And the thing is, people rarely get so attached to the "rightness" of their hobbies that they start wars with other people over them, or burn them at the stake for heresy. The same cannot be said for religion and the "strength of conviction" and the elitism that seems to go hand-in-hand with religion or religious ideas about what meditation and self discovery "means." Give me a good self discover hobbyists any day over yer garden variety religious fanatic. The former are fun to have a beer with; the latter tend to want to convince you that you're going to hell with every sip, and that they know this because...uh... because they "just know."
