Well said, Z! The clearest, most balanced post from you I have seen.
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Xenophaneros Anartaxius"
<anartaxius@...> wrote:
>
> --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <authfriend@> wrote:
>
> > Over the years I've been on this forum, I have gradually ceased to believe
> > that there is a universally applicable scheme for the development of
> > enlightenment, such that if someone doesn't have *this* experience or does
> > have *that* experience, it means they are (or are not) enlightened.
>
> > Some experiences (or lack of same) may be more common than others, but you
> > can't make absolute, across-the-board "rules" that apply to all individuals
> > without exception, any more than you can do it with the experience of
> > falling in love. The uniqueness of first-person ontology remains just that.
>
> > My opinion, anyway.
>
> > [to Dr Dumbass] Not what I meant by "scheme." I meant something like
> > Maharishi's "Seven States of Consciousness"--an outline, format, a
> > schedule, a list of "symptoms."
>
> First-person ontology is the thing that enlightenment gets rid of, one ends
> up with a unity-centric ontology, the basic progression is that the mind's
> focus on individuality shifts to universality, and the ego is left without a
> job. The ego is why a person fears death. It's a fiction that conveniently
> wraps around various processes going on in experience, but it dies with great
> difficulty for most.
>
> Conventionally we still use nomenclature when we converse with other bodies
> because it simplifies communication to say 'yours', 'mine', 'me', 'I', etc.,
> when transferring information between minds. As we start out, everyone has a
> personal ontology experience, so what is unique about what everyone has? It's
> like different coloured coffee cups, that are otherwise all the same.
>
> The basic scheme of enlightenment is 'me' progressing to 'everything all
> together'. The details in between I think are pretty much as you surmise -
> different people experience the letting go of intitial state of spiritual
> progress differently, though there seem to be some basic commonalities.
>
> In attempting to 'harmonise' various traditions, I would say the common
> states described would correspond to M's WC, CC, and UC/BC. Traditions with
> meditation might add TC, although some, perhaps those meditating with
> mindfulness kinds of meditation, may not experience TC at all because that
> meditation is really aimed at UC (which is probably why many find it more
> difficult than TM).
>
> Mindfulness meditators may become aware at some point they are in a state
> that is with TM called CC; in other words, TC is not necessarily described as
> the goal, since in this meditation, you just sit there silently, which is how
> meditation functions in unity, there not being an inward and outward stroke.
> As far as I am aware, TM is not necessarily superior to these other methods
> as far as the final result; more important may be how much you want the final
> result. GC is more interesting as some traditions would consider the refined
> visions of GC as just sensory illusions, which then dissipate when unity
> dawns.
>
> The greatest difficulty I have heard people mention when talking of their
> experience outside of the TM movement is the loss of the sense of small self,
> or ego. Some people simply chicken out when they see that enlightenment is
> not about personal ontology. If they manage to chicken out prior to a very
> clear awakening, they might be able to go back to being the fake person they
> were before without much difficulty. People with a strong ego-structured mind
> might have the most resistance to this process of 'enlightenment'. Some
> people become frightened, really frightened. They have so much invested in
> 'who they are'.
>
> Enlightenment is not about your specialness in any way other than the
> capacity to be enlightened, so when you reach that threshold where you can go
> either way, you can either be a coward, or accept the fact you are going to
> die before your physical death. If the awakening is clear enough you do not
> get to go back, and any remaining issues you have you just have to hack
> through them, which really means they hack through the fictional 'you' until
> that 'you' is basically history. This is not necessarily pleasant.
>
> I think you are correct in assuming that the progression of experience is
> highly variable depending on the starting point and the 'karma' of the
> person, the history associated with an individual body. Some never make it;
> some breeze through without a hitch or any seeming progression (a very small
> number), and everyone else is in between somewhere.
>
> I suppose if you had a map of what might happen, it might be like a map of
> the United States with New York on one side, and San Francisco on the other,
> and some vague change of colour in between annotated with blurry text that
> cannot be read clearly.
>
> You follow the map, thinking you are going to reach, say, San Francisco from
> New York. Some of that indistinct stuff in the middle of the map might happen
> or not. You might get upset that you cannot find your way. In the end, you
> find you were tricked. You never left New York, but now 'you' have a
> completely different perspective on life, the consciousness no longer
> identifies with the personal 'me' shtick process running in the mind and the
> mind itself somehow acquiesces this state of affairs, so it does not matter.
> And this explanation is a big, big lie. But it might serve.
>