Ravi Yogi wrote: [In a response to a rather long post about the supposed 'path'
of enlightenment, not repeated here]
The important factors in the non-journey journey are:
* Three S's of spirituality - Satsang (company of the enlightened),
Seva
(service to Guru or God) and Sadhana (spiritual practices)
* And the 3 V's - Vairagya (dispassion to worldly objects), Viveka
(discrimination) and Vichara(inquiry, investigation).
* Above all Kripa or Grace of a Sadguru or God is the most important
factor.
This response helps clarify the question or questions I was asking. There are
many different traditions of enlightenment, each with their own set of
descriptive terms, practices and techniques. Ravi Yogi uses a number of special
terms in his response to me, most of which I do not know, and was kind enough
to
amplify them so I could grasp what they connoted.
Perhaps the question I am proposing is this: is there a completely generic way
to describe the journey of enlightenment, without the bamboozling
characteristics of a special vocabulary, that would appeal to the widest
audience? One of the problems I see is most spiritual language seems to me to
have strong religious connotations. When people with one religious orientation
hear the language of another religious orientation, it tends to be very
off-putting. People regularly slay each other on this world in the name of
whatever they label as their primary or exclusive overlord (which is kind of
generic term for the concept 'god'), and its accompanying metaphysical
theological system. However the experience of enlightenment and its associated
experiences are found across the board regardless of the spiritual camp where
one is parked.
There are other groups, such as scientists which tend to atheism, and spiritual
language tends to be rather unpopular with such groups. The concept of 'god'
does not compute, even though some scientists use the word in a very general
way
sometimes. So saying something like 'devotion to God or a teacher' might not go
over very well. You would have to find some neutral way to explain it to them.
One neuroscientist interested in spiritual phenomena and experiences wrote:
"The universality of these phenomena refutes the sectarian claims of any one
religion. And, given that contemplatives generally present their experiences of
self-transcendence as inseparable from their associated theology, mythology,
and
metaphysics, it is no surprise that scientists and non-believers tend to view
their reports as the product of disordered minds, or as exaggerated accounts of
far more common mental states — like scientific awe, aesthetic enjoyment,
artistic inspiration, etc."
The scientific community, and philosophers tend to be intellectual. Ravi Yogi
wrote at the beginning of his response to me the following:
"I would say not to intellectualize or philosophize too much (sushkatarka - dry
logic), otherwise you will just end deceiving yourself - a la Vakrabuddhi or
the
Trickster."
This could certainly apply to my posts, but also, over-intellectualising
doesn't
seem to work very well with simpler folk, but it is often necessary with
certain
groups. I realize that on forums the attention span often seems to be about one
sentence in duration. One would think that a group that discussed at length
recently "no mantra, no thoughts" would have a bit more room for a few more
thoughts.
