On Apr 29, 2009, at 12:18 PM, TurquoiseB wrote:
Vaj, this is interesting to me in light of my
mini-rant the other day about TM "rounding"
and the almost *expected* negative results
of it such as being "spaced out," experiencing
"heavy unstressing," etc.
I have encountered other teachers in the larger
world of meditative arts who have also warned
about this "swoon" state, about mistaking it for
samadhi, and about its long-term debilitating
effects. Some of them spoke of it in terms of
"cruising the astral." That is, that the "swoon"
state, rather than being transcendental, was
"transcending" only to the astral level.
Yeah definitely. Yogis have a whole vocabulary for these phenomenon.
The videha-laya is the first one and it's the lower astral that
you're swooning in. The interesting thing to me is that all these
layas are blissful. Given that bliss is much emphasized by MMY, I
fear what happens to a lot of people is they encounter this "stupid
bliss" and think they've achieved the much-hailed transcendent! So
they "rinse and repeat". Yikes.
The astral level is characterized, in their
opinions by "grayness," by "flatness," by a lack
of emotion (either positive or negative), and by
the very "spaced out" feeling that TMers on
"rounding" courses often speak of. In their
opinions, *cultivating* this state ("indulging"
in "cruising the astral") can be bad for a seeker
because this "spaced out" feeling starts to creep
over into daily life. The "flatness" and "gray-
ness" and "lack of emotion" start to creep over
into daily life. That is why these teachers do
NOT recommend a practice that is based ONLY on
effortless or minimal-effort techniques; they
recommend instead a balance of these techniques
with more concentrative or focused techniques
of meditation, and with activities that are
performed outside of meditation, such as
mindfulness.
Exactly: flatness is one result, the other can be obsession since one
doesn't alleviate these thought patterns, it ends up strengthening
the patterns.
Some of them spoke of more dangerous side effects
of "cruising the astral," most of them having to
do with...uh...dead things (negative entities)
who are *also* cruising the astral, in some cases
looking for weak beings to victimize energetically.
I hadn't thought about this before, but I wonder if that is connected
in any way to the way certain TM-Sidhi folks would spontaneously
begin to channel. I knew one women who couldn't sleep for months
because these voices would just overtake her in her sleep and begin
chattering.
I'm wondering whether any of the sources you men-
tion below talked about these issues. Thanks in
advance...
Yeah. They say that cultivation of these states leads to a dead-end
kind of samadhi called jada-samadhi. Jada means "stunned, paralyzed,
stupid, stiff, dull." "Stupid samadhi". Another word used is "mudha"
or stupefaction. Before stupefaction comes ksipta of scatteredness--
probably what we used to call "spaced out".
