--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Hugo" <fintlewoodle...@...> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <jstein@> wrote: <snip> > > > > Nobody denies muscular exertion is involved, at least > > > > these days. > > > > > > Don't they? How are we supposed to progress from stage 1 > > > (hopping) to stage 2 (floating) if some sort of extra > > > gravity defying process isn't involved? > > > > They aren't claiming anybody's doing anything but > > hopping yet. > > But the hopping is supposed to be due to this controlling > of natural laws. God knows why, it's not like we are going > to jump in the air and stay there. Someone once asked Marshy > whether this would be how levitation happened and he said > that we would waft lightly into the air then float back down.
I can't recall how Hagelin explained hopping in terms of the probabilities business. Vaguely remember something about the body doing its best to "obey" the impulse to fly, just enough to get off the ground, but not enough to stay up. <snip> > > > I think we have to assume that he believes this, or is at > > > least happy to be on record trying to convince others to > > > believe it. So I think it should be put to the test. > > > > It isn't *happening* yet. How can you put something > > that isn't happening to the test? > > As far as JH is concerned it is happening. But not long enough to be measured by any device that tells you whether gravity is operating or not. The only sign of something happening is the burst of brain-wave "coherence" that happens the instant before liftoff. Ask Nablus > he'll tell you about staying in the air longer than > is humanly possible (his interpretation of his experience > not mine) Yeah, well... We did have one account way back on alt.m.t from TM teacher Susan Seifert of actually hovering, once. Very interesting description of what it felt like. I've never been able to find it again in the alt.m.t archives. <snip> > > The *experience*, or at least my experience, is that > > something else *is* going on, but I have no idea what. > > The most I can say is that hopping feels involuntary, > > like a sneeze, and that it feels as though it's > > triggered by an impulse generated by the sutra (or in > > a group setting, sometimes by an impulse generated by > > somebody else doing the sutra). > > I used to think something else was going on too, but > after a while I dropped that idea and couldn't fly > anymore and stopped doing the siddhis altogether some > years ago. I think that without a belief that it's somehow > leading somewhere the body can't be bothered to help. And > you need more of a belief than just that it's helping > personal development. That stopped ages ago too and simply > because it obviously wasn't (my eyesight got worse not better) > I can only speak for myself here, others may get a lot out > of it. I sure have. As far as believing that hopping leads to flying is concerned, the most I can say is that I don't rule it out, but that isn't what keeps me at it. (Not sure deteriorating eyesight is a particularly strong criterion, BTW.) <snip> > Ah, consciousness has so many ways of being transformed > into something that amazes us and tricks us into thinking > that it's more than it is or that strange powers are > involved. I've always thought the study of meditation > could give us a better idea of how it works because all > this bending it out of shape will be measurable in the > brain and could give us an idea of how the illusion is > created by seeing how the brain re-wires itself when we > think we are experiencing some sort of unified being. > The technology to do this is improving all the time. Whole philosophical issue here of the reality status of subjective experience, the extent to which it's an "illusion." We might well be able at some point to map the brain's rewiring down to the last synapse without getting anywhere near the answer to that one. Same issue with psychedelics. I'm editing a book recounting the author's extensive personal experimentation with LSD where this comes up in connection with experiences that are so fantastic it seems highly unlikely, in an Occam's razor sense, that they could have originated with anything stored within the physical brain. I'm pretty well convinced that the brain mediates consciousness rather than creating it, that the brain is a sort of "reducing valve," as Huxley put it, for something infinitely (you should pardon the term) vast. In this sense, "expansion of consciousness" is a matter of getting the brain's reducing function out of the way, neutralizing it, bypassing it, evading it, shutting it down. <snip> > I've had millions of wild experiences meditating and > hopping about, the thing is whether it's out of the > ordinary in the sense of normal mental functioning > being changed in a biophysical and thus subjective > experiental way, or in a violation of physics kind of > way, which is what JH claims. Will one lead to the > other? If not, how long can they keep telling people > that it will before they start asking questions? The big problem is asking the *right* questions, seems to me. I'm not at all sure we (including the TM folks) have an adequate frame of reference to do so at this point.
