--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <jst...@...> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Hugo" <fintlewoodlewix@> wrote: > >
> > 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. According to JHs Pphysics of flying lecture the point of lift off *is* gravity being re-ordered. > 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. I'll believe it when I see it and probably be sceptical then. In fact you'd have to film it and have every lab on earth check it for fraud before I'd consider it wasn't faked. As for experiencing it, I have done, totally effortless leaping about. One of the nicest experiences I ever had, like drifting through clouds of the sweetest heaven... But more easily explained as the awareness part of the mind being totally not focussed on what the body was doing, someone more credulous may attribute it to something rather more mystical don't you think? > <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.) It's an excellent demonstration that the eyesight sidhi doesn't work. The fact I can't fly, walk through walls or jump tall buildings in a single bound (well, no more than I used to) takes care of the rest. As far as getting the intended results I declare the whole thing a failure. Others say they do it for the personal growth reason only, I told myself that too but the fact I felt much better when I quit leads me to suspect that aspect wasn't all it's cracked up to be. You may differ, I know many who still do it and good luck to them, I'd rather go for a bike ride nowadays. > <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. We are very close to it already without mapping the last synapse. We know how much brain activity is needed to trigger consciousness, where things are stored in the brain and even where consciousness arises. Only a matter of time before it's sussed completeley, the brain may be the most amazing thing in existence but it's still a physical structure that evolved, unless there is something *really* weird going on. How we go about translating the explanation into our own experience might turn out to be the tricky bit. > > 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. Been there, a wild ride, I travelled in time, met god, became god, explored all past lives, and swam ina sea of infinity more times than I could count. Got bored of it in the end. I think it's the same sort of thing as TM but the mind is being forced to do it rather than by it settling down which makes it more intense but the loss of spatial dimension and the inability to keep track of time are very similar. It's the way we usually create the illusion within ourselves of there being a three dimensional world that gets changed, the contents are removed or altered by the unconscious dreamscape taking over. I think the Freudian idea of man subconsciously thinking himself superior or godlike in order to stay motivated is where all this spiritual stuff comes from. Some sort of drug or spiritual practise comes along and it cracks us open inside. It's all in the mind and the mind is in our heads. Stop taking the tablets or saying your mantra and it all wears off. Sad but true. > 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. I instinctively agree with you but intuition is absolutely the worst thing to rely on in matters of the mind because it's our brains that control it and the main motivating factor in the subconscious is the belief that we are going to live forever and that our lives are hugely significant in some way. We wouldn't bother getting out of bed if we thought any different surely? Perfectly normal paranoia. > <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. The right question here is: Why hasn't the one led to the other yet? The usual TM excuses are going to wear thin for everyone sooner or later. Perhaps we'll see another shift in emphasis once the "phase transition" starts to look like a permanent fixture.
