--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb <no_reply@...> wrote: > > Good rap, Xeno. My experience is similar to yours, in that over the > years "intellectual knowledge" has become less and less interesting to > me, to the point that now I have little tolerance for it. And > interestingly in my case the "tipping point" was because of my own > experience -- some of it with Rama - Fred Lenz, some with Buddhist > teachers -- of having one's conceptual framework just "fall away." > > *Whatever* it was that Rama did to achieve it, he did have a knack for > being able to shift other people's state of attention. Radically. When > discussing some aspect of duality (even if it involved some "higher" > aspect of duality such as the siddhis or occult power), he wasn't just > talking about it; he could shift your state of consciousness such that > you were experiencing the state of attention he was talking about, *as* > he talked about it. But then he'd "mix it up" to provide a series of > Tantric contrasts. For example, after a few minutes talking about more > occult, dualistic mindstates, he'd shift things radically and start > talking about (and "broadcasting") Unity. Bam! Suddenly *everything* he > had been talking about earlier from the POV of occult dualism was now > completely irrelevant. Nothing that you believed only five minutes ago > was "true" is now either "true" any more, or relevant. > > I am not convinced that gaining "intellectual knowledge" (or, as you put > it, strengthening one's conceptual framework) is of value in the pursuit > of spiritual experience. The more firmly you come to believe that "you > know the truth," the further you are away from the truth. To some > extent, coming to believe in some framework from which to view the world > around you is like getting fat; every concept is just another pound > weighing you down and interfering with an in-the-moment, more accurate > view of the world around you and the ability to dance with it.
That is rather like what I thought I was saying. > > That said, in retrospect I think that Maharishi's simplistic rendering > of "seven states of consciousness" is one of the most debilitating > beliefs he ever came up with. Believing that "waking state" is only ONE > state is like believing that white is the only color in the world. I'm > much more comfortable with the Buddhist "ten thousand states of mind," > in which there can be *thousands* of variations in one's waking state > state of attention, each of them as different from one another as MMY's > simplistic waking state is from Unity. I woke up this morning, not feeling particularly great (I am under medication on the advice of a physician). I was dreaming. I dreamed I was in some movement facility, which in my dreams always seems to resemble being in a third world high school. I was looking for a meal, and came late. There was pizza and ice cream, but I couldn't find a spoon, and finally I found a spoon in a tray of dirty dishes. Then the dream wandered on to something about drilling in sand, and that there were different kinds of drill bits one had to use depending on how deep one wanted to drill. Some time was spent trying to figure out which bit was for what depth, and in the dream, the drill bits did not really resemble real drilling bits, but looked like square boxes of metal with various things sticking out of them. Then I woke up, lying in bed. Ugh. Waking up did not feel particularly better than the dream. Both were experiences. But both these experiences have a thread of commonality in them. You once agreed with a statement I made saying the MMY scenario was basically kind of like a general average of possibilities. Up to a point my experiences conformed to this. It gives a vision of possibilities to people who have no clue about spiritual experiences but at some point it might become a liability. You have to remember people often asked Maharishi all kinds of really stupid questions, and he had to come up with something to satisfy their hunger for what they sought. Maybe Maharishi was a victim of the stupidest group of students in the universe - us! > > That said, I disagree strongly with his statement, "Unity is real, > diversity is conceptual." It's ALL real. To believe otherwise is still > (IMO) to be caught up in a hierarchical view of consciousness, in which > some experiences can be said to be "higher" or "better" or "more real" > than others. Just more conceptual twaddle IMO. A statement like Unity is real, diversity is conceptual.' is useful for mentally grasping the import of experience, especially if one has the experience of conceptuality being blown off. In the end though, I think what you say here is right, in time it just no longer comes up. Zen masters sometimes tell their students to just stop having concepts and opinions, which does not mean one will not have them, but that it can become possible to appreciate experience without being sucked into those ideas that spontaneously form in our minds as a result of habit, learning, conditioning. It is a device for teaching, not a truth, and may be of value at some specific time in one's growth. Sequential change in experience does not necessarily have to be categorised as higher or better. The dream I related above is essentially the same basic value of experience as anything else I have had, however supposedly profound. We have to remember when we get on the enlightenment band wagon that for a while we become even crazier than we were before. Recall the old Zen saying: before enlightenment mountains were mountains and rivers were rivers, on the path enlightenment mountains aren't mountains, and rivers are not rivers; after enlightenment once again mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers. > > "What if everything I knew was wrong" is not a challenging question, but > a liberating one. IMO the more you think you know about reality and how > it all works, the less you know. And the less likely you are ever to > experience it as reality. I was replying to Judy here. I had formed a concept that she would find this difficult to do. I suspect this idea overstated her attachment to her own ideas, though in relation to you, maybe such a concept might be more robust. It is liberating if you are able to ask it honestly. There was a great story Bertrand Russell told once. He was in an engineering class when he was young (if I remember what I read 40 years ago correctly that is). A professor was explaining various forces for some device, and a student raised his hand and said 'Professor, haven't you forgotten to account for rotational forces at the top of this device? (something like that). The professor stopped, stared at the student and he said 'young man, I have been doing this problem like this for the last 20 years, but you are right!' Russell found this experience quite liberating, as it is a basic requirement of scientific investigation to be able to let go of an error. > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Xenophaneros Anartaxius" > <anartaxius@> wrote: >> >> Judy. All movements have this problem, at least in my estimation. My > early experiences with 'transcendence' were not with TM but were related > to Buddhist practices. The experiences that resulted were not deep > (though at the time I thought they were). The emphasis intellectually > however was on direct experience, on bypassing one's belief system, on > seeing that a lot of what we consider real is just a conceptual overlay > on perception, and that that overlay controls our behaviour. >> >> After learning TM, which I found easier than what I had done > previously, I spent more time intellectually with the TM model. However > after many years I found I was forgetting the insights I had previously > gained. As the TM movement branched out into all sorts of auxilliary > techniques and 'vedas' (e.g. sthapatya veda), I found my focus getting > distracted. As a natural sceptic, eventually I scaled down or discarded > most of this additional load, just maintaining TM. Instead of reading > spiritual stuff I read science fiction, westerns, books by atheists. > Then I just sort of stopped, except for meditation. One day, out of the > blue, the conceptual framework of my experience simply blew away. >> >> Explaining this is difficult, but it was pretty much like waking from > a dream. In the following years this shift has wormed its way deeper, > and I find I am much less attached to conceptual models, though of > course I still must use them for practical things. The strange thing is > this is the experience that is aimed at with meditation. It actually > seems to come after everything seems to stop working pretty much. It is > really mysterious, because it is also possible to lose the effect of the > experience if a particularly difficult stress starts to release. > Eventually it becomes more stable. >> >> Maharishi said 'Unity is real, diversity is conceptual'. This is it. > It is so simple. Yet the movement has so much conceptual baggage it is > easy to get totally lost in it. I could not fit this experience into the > movement's sense of progression of experiences, but I began to reread > and find new sources in other Eastern enlightenment traditions that seem > to explain this experience much better. >> >> I do believe Maharishi talked about this, but it seems to be buried in > off-hand comments he has made. It is not directly spoken of, and so the > focus on experiencing that one's conceptual view of life is essentially > ridiculous, that one completely misconstrued the nature of spiritual > experience, is diluted, and the attention is distracted to other > pursuits, like balancing doshas and whatnot, and rectifying jyotish > charts. This is all unnecessary unless it is the only way to keep > someone meditating, which I do not believe is actually necessary because > everyone is exactly what they are, every aspect of enlightenment is > present all the time, and we are just distracted. >> >> Talking about the goal that occurs when meditation matures is really > helpful. Maharishi started out teaching people that had no clue as to > what spiritual knowledge consisted of. There are many more people today > who now have a clue, but the bulk of the material in the TMO, at least > what we hear, is aimed at the beginners, and it pictures enlightenment > in much rosier terms than it really is. He tended to leave out the hard > parts, to make it attractive to busy people. >> >> I think being intensely curious and probing one's own ideas and those > of others helps a lot to kept from getting locked into a conceptual > system. Conceptualisation is a tool to get through life. We grow up with > it. It is what makes us forget who and what we are. I do not know what > the best solution is, but meditating regularly, and a lot helps, but > keeping the mind more flexible and not taking our ideas as seriously as > we sometimes think they are, especially spiritual ideas, may help keep > conceptualisation from overpowering the benefits of meditation. >> >> Yet in the end, seeing through this illusion of our own mind is very > strange and mysterious, and there is no way to know, really, what it is > like until it happens to you. The biggest error in conceptualistion is > in regarding self-realisation, because the mind spontaneously thinks it > is something that one can attain, or acquire, that it is something in > the future. It is none of these things, but if one is fortunate, > meditating gradually wears away these pursuits until the conceptual load > is light enough that one's own being finally can make that final self > referral loop back into its own nature, and one finally experiences > through the distortion of one's own mind. >> >> TM is a tiny self-referral loop, but the one I am talking about takes > in the whole universe. So perhaps the practice, as it evolves, keeps > expanding that loop with each successive meditation until at last it > takes in everything. People's experience differs a lot, their load of > stress varies a lot, so this conceptual story I have made up may not fit > them as well as it did me. But still it is just a story, an idea to > explain something that defies description. A really good question to ask > oneself is 'what if everything I have thought about life is just plain > wrong?' This is what self-realisation brings to experience. This is why, > in some traditions that are not too self important, enlightenment is > considered a joke. The ultimate joke. And of course, the joke is on us. >> >
