--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Bhairitu <noozguru@...> wrote:

Dear Bhairitu,

"Then I asked Robin in another post if he fancied himself an 'archarya' to 
which he never responded which tells me a lot in and of itself."

It should tell you nothing, Bhairtu: I did not even know what the term meant. 
And as for my Vata-Kapha-Pitta proportions, well, once I separated myself from 
Maharishi and TM, I separated myself from anything to do with ayurveda—which, 
thank Krishna, had not entered into the TM context when I went out on my own.

So, then, Bhairitu, my ignoring your post signified nothing more than my 
thinking that someone who would assume I knew what an archarya was, and 
moreover would write as if Vata, Kapha, and Pitta must have been incorporated 
into not just the vocabulary of my life, but constituted something to do with 
how I look upon physical and mental health—such a person was perhaps not 
someone who would even like to hear my answer.

I don't intend to judge the worth of ayurveda; I only know that my intimate and 
profound experiences physiologically and mentally with the East, more 
particularly, with the Veda, makes anything like this—in terms of my immediate 
existential reflexes—anathema. I will, for the rest of my life, do without the 
influence or contribution of ayurveda, just as I will live out my life in the 
chosen absence of anything New Age and spiritual. I am only interested in first 
person ontology. I mean, ultimately. [And it all starts with the idea of God's 
omnisubjectivity—and that quote from Hopkins that Pal-Gap appreciated.]

I consider, then, Bhairitu, the Eastern idea of the Self, Atman, the Absolute, 
Enlightenment, pure consciousness, Buddhahood—and the notion of the perfection 
of impersonal consciousness—to be an angelic hoax. Not that I doubt the 
sincerity of the various Buddhists, TMers, Hindus, Taoists, New Age 
spiritualists that I meet in the course of my life. I don't hold to the idea of 
Ultimate Truth, much less final 'Liberation'. And I have written too many words 
on this forum describing in some detail the why of this extreme prejudice in me.

What perhaps (as  well as the demands of my own life, and the ascertaining of 
the intrinsic worth of a given post pointed in my direction) made me skip over 
the faint moral obligation I felt to respond to your post was this assumed idea 
that these notions of archarya, Vata, Kapha, Pitta were part of the bloodstream 
of every human being who has gone through psychedelics and then the Eastern 
gods (most especially TM and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi). Do you understand what I 
am saying, then, Bhairitu? I don't doubt your intelligence and your wisdom; I 
only find it surprisingly naive and insensitive of you (a kind of  failure of 
objectivity about the real world) to draw the conclusion that these ayurvedic 
categories necessarily correspond to anything ultimately true and real in how 
God created the human being. And as it [ayurveda] pertains to the evaluation 
and analysis of the functioning of a human being—his or her personality.

I mean here in the West. How many persons on Park Avenue on a given day, if you 
interviewed them, would agree that ayurveda occupied the same place in their 
understanding of *how to analyze writing style* as they do for you? The 
universities that offer courses in creative writing, are there *any* which have 
realized their ignorance about how to assess the predilections of their 
students writing according to the emphasis of Vata, Kapha, & Pitta?

I am listening to "Suzanne" by Leonard Cohen as I sit in Starbucks here in 
Toronto. And my conclusion is: Ayurvea explains nothing about what is happening 
to me as I listen to this song.

I realize there are persons on FFL with very different religious and spiritual 
persuasions; what I find disappointing and cause for regret is there are 
persons who can't stand outside of their beliefs, or the world of spiritual 
belief in which they exist, in order to see the world that exists independently 
of that inner world. For you to assign some significance as you have for my not 
answering your question about whether I think of myself an archarya or not, and 
then, inside the same context, indicate implicitly the objectively unquestioned 
status of ayurveda: well, this, Bhairitu, well, this *is* significant.  

You seem like a bright and interesting person, with lots to say. But I 
recommend that you consider this ayurveda business as an unproven truth in 
medicine. And if allopathic medicine assimilates ayurveda on the terms in which 
Maharishi and his followers believe it should (because its integrity has been 
'cognized' by Vedic seers), then fine. I will give the matter another look. But 
for the time being, I would rather just talk to you one-on-one eschewing all 
mention of Vata, Kapha, and Pitta. Because I think these terms more or less 
ridiculous inside the mainstream of Western Civilization—maybe not from a 
medical point of view; but applied to understanding human beings the way they 
express themselves? This for me is absurd. Not necessarily objectively, 
Bhairtitu; but considered inside the context of how we live—and listening to 
Suzanne—it seems arbitrary and strained.

What is much more significant is: what can account for your uncritical 
assumption that necessarily everyone on FFL would go along with you in terms of 
your belief that these ayurvedic terms are already part of the internal 
vocabulary of the very being of all of us. Now *that*, if ayurveda can shed 
light on it, would interest me.

I have found out what archayra means. And I deny as forcibly as I can that I in 
any way whatsoever consider myself  a spiritual guide or instructor, or leader 
of a sect, or even a "highly learned man". I am not a teacher of reality, in 
other words, and I would never consider offering my services for counselling 
other human beings in the path to Truth.

Curtis of course has spoken most reasonably on my behalf when it comes to the 
finished product of our respective writing. I doubt I could improve on anything 
he has said there. I am engaged in a spontaneous, personal, intense 
conversation with someone who compels me with his passion and his intelligence 
and his integrity. If I thought my posts were subject to critical analysis on 
the basis of how carefully and thoroughly they represented something that has 
the possibility of being published, I would have to do re-write after re-write. 
I do not re-write my posts to Curtis. I look them over for syntactical howlers; 
but even then they, when I read them later, are riddled with errors.

Suzanne is a much better index of the context within which I write and live my 
life, Bhairitu, then anything that comes from the East.

My idea—always—is to try to get a perspective on my first person ontological 
self. As it inevitably express its very personal form of subjectivity. You 
might think about your own first person experiential point of view in going 
about determining the significance of someone writing within a certain style. I 
think it unbelievable that how I go about being who I am is finally determined 
on an entirely physical basis—although I find Curtis's bio-neurological 
paradigm so much more attractive to me than ayurveda. But then, I am violently 
biased, having (mostly my own fault) been catapulted into a ten year state of 
blissful hallucination.

Believe me, Bhairitu, this East versus West thing is still up for grabs.




> 
> Who says I didn't "appreciate" Curtis and Robin's ramblings?  I 
> appreciated them as what seemed like long ramblings of blind men 
> describing an elephant.  My interest was more why would Robin wax on for 
> pages over something if he wasn't vata imbalanced?  Curtis is a little 
> more succinct writer.  On a political forum I post on a couple of guys 
> have turned a thread or two into their own personal message exchange.  
> The last upgrade took away private messaging where they might have 
> carried on.  Most of us ignore the thread but do wonder why they spend 
> so much time and energy on it.
> 
> In ayurveda, people who are kapha are often of few words because writing 
> takes energy (think Lawson).  Pitta people are usually much more 
> succinct and to the point and write more than the kapha person.  The 
> vata person has a roar of ideas going through their heads and writes too 
> much and is seldom grounded enough to edit what they wrote.  Vata people 
> live in their heads and are often amazed at the flow of ideas that they 
> have.  Some of these people carry notepads around or dictate into the 
> smartphone the ideas as they've learned if they don't they'll forget 
> them.  In the computer field we often found that vata engineers had a 
> lot of solutions but never finished them.  And David Frawely once wrote 
> that some vata people mistake their spaciness for enlightenment.
> 
> In communication the more succinct and to the point you are the more you 
> communicate with people.  I was reading Matt Tiabbi's blog this morning 
> and the article how confused Rush Limbaugh is.  It was two pages of 
> writing but good writing that carries you along.  That is good writing.  
> With some of the rambles here you begin to realize the author isn't 
> saying anything much after three paragraphs and further reading is a 
> waste of time.
> 
> I recall how verbose movement publications when they didn't need to be.  
> It was like "if we write a lot of words people will think we are smart."
> 
> Then I asked Robin in another post if he fancied himself an "archarya" 
> to which he never responded which tells me a lot in and of itself.  Not 
> sayin' that Robin isn't experiencing some enlightenment but then I would 
> expect most people too have some experience after years of meditation.  
> Just because they can't turn lead into gold doesn't mean they aren't 
> experiencing enlightenment. :-D
>


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