--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <jst...@...> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "curtisdeltablues" <curtisdeltablues@> > wrote: > <snip> > > Looking at his higher state of consciousness model, which > > really should have been his big detailed contribution to > > human thought: can you really say he gave the kind of > > details that an expert would be able to give? I saw > > hours and hours of tapes of him discussing "higher states" > > and it never really reached beyond the level of > > translating the brochure descriptions from the Sanskrit. > > Given how rich these state should be in terms of detailed > > knowledge concerning how the world works, am I the only > > one to be underwhelmed by his descriptions? > > "Detailed knowledge concerning how the world works," > such as what? What questions about how the world works > would you have expected to have answered if he had > been an expert?
Don't you think permanent access to Ritam should provide some pretty rock'n details about anything? Maharishi started quite a few businesses so it was not out of line to think he might have come up with something really innovative like how to get energy out of french fries or something. But lets just look at the detail he did provide as a basis. Would you be happy in any other area of human knowledge to get the kind of formulaic responses to describing the state that we got from him? Let's just take GC where the celestial level of life is open to perceptions. Do you think that a person who could see this level might have some useful insights about the finest aspect of the relative? Instead we got hours of word dissection or how "pra" the absolute becomes the relative in "chetana" in the Vedic word prachetana. Sort of interesting in a scholarly way but a long way from the kind of details a naturalist would give if they really were somewhere describing it. But if you are satisfied with the details of his description for each stage of development, then you are all set. For me they seem kind of lame and lacking in the depth and detail I expect in a book about Tuscan's approach to Italian cooking in the waking state of consciousness enhanced by a bit of Chianti. > > (For the record, his basuc model of higher states wasn't > original with him. His contribution was more in his > systematic, highly integrated explanations thereof in > layman's language. I think you are giving him a bit more credit for what he came up with in interpretation than it might deserve. But it never evolved. You would think with people in the movement growing into these states we would have unceasingly detail descriptions beyond what you might overhear over the trance-dance music at a rave. What other field of human knowledge billed as a science had so little growth of perspective in the decades Maharishi was in charge? We saw lots of innovations in marketing. But in terms of his insights about life we saw almost no growth of knowledge. Just rehashed cliches enhanced with the new Vedic word of the moment that made it all seem as if something new was coming out instead of the same old points with some new buzz words. And the higher states model was particularly stagnant and I find the the most surprising. That should have been the most vibrant growth part of his teaching considering all the "researchers in consciousness" were focusing their (even with my jaded perspective) intelligent minds on the task. IMHO, had it been significantly more > detailed, it wouldn't really have suited the purpose; it > would have been likely to cause confusion rather than > clarity. It was hard enough to get the basics across.) I don't agree that it would have caused confusion, why? Any field of knowledge is confusing until you learn the basics then then build on them. But he never did really build on the basics,he repeated them. And we used to get the basics across in a single advanced lecture on the seven states of consciousness in centers. People's descriptions today haven't really gone beyond those catch-phrases. >
