I'm convinced you can categorise these different states into the boxes as described by Marshy, but is that because my experiences were influenced by his clear descriptions. If I'd never read the book or seen the lecture, would I have had the experiences in the same order in the same way? There's no way to rule it out.
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <awoelflebater@...> wrote: ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <mjackson74@...> wrote: I agree with some of the things I believe Barry has said - that we are all part of this cosmic soup, and the entire infinite or nearly infinite range of experiences are available to us. The kinds of things Sal relates are available to all of us at anytime, but most of us aren't aware of it. The idea that there is some kind of definable "state" of awareness and a well laid out progression towards it is in my opinion some made up baloney on the part of the old rishis who didn't want to work, just wanted to set around all day looking at their navel and when they had some of these experiences they said "Ah ha! This is REAL reality, and all these po' folk runnin' around doing all this doing are full of crap! WE have the lock on what is true, real and righ!" And like everyone else in the world they wanted everyone else to corroborate their reality so they made a big deal out of it and created all the sacred books of the Hindoos that everybody was supposed to embrace if they were smart. Along comes Marshy, fanatic Hindoo, and he used the playbook to make a nice living for himself. So I think we can slip in and out of these different experiences of our own awareness. Some like maybe Eckhart Tolle can choose to stay in one spot for a long time, making it seem permanent. Others go back and forth. Which IMO accounts for the behavior we see in folks like Marshy, Muktananda, Kriyananda and all the rest where they appear to be brilliant enlightened individuals one day and the next day appear to be venal, petty tyrants and sexual opportunists and so forth. Well, just as in waking state there are almost infinite manifestations of perception, behaviour, intelligence then why wouldn't there be the same in so-called "enlightened" or at least, 'other' states of awareness? I am still not convinced there are these "enlightened" altered states of consciousness at all and I certainly don't think you can categorize these states, if they do exist, into tight little cubicles of defined characteristics that are the same for all those having attained those states. -------------------------------------------- On Sun, 2/16/14, steve.sundur@... mailto:steve.sundur@... <steve.sundur@... mailto:steve.sundur@...> wrote: Subject: [FairfieldLife] RE: Drinking Vedic Coffee and Discerning 'Cult' from 'Sect' To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Sunday, February 16, 2014, 2:28 PM I'm thinking of some of the other "flashy" experiences that have been related here periodically. Bob Price related one, sometime ago. MJ related one recently. In both cases they were more or less just "footnotes", and then life moved on. But they also seemed to have left their mark and a pretty deep impression, as though saying, "We're not finished here, just wanting to set a marker" But who knows, maybe it's just "random brain activity" as I believe Curtis once said. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com mailto:no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote: Yes, I used to get a lot of things like that. A text book progression of enlightened states as espoused by Marshy. Really amazingly nice and it convinced me I was going to get there but it all stopped, maybe it will start up again but I doubt it and it doesn't even interest me any more, it's like the acid trips I used to do, a great way to spend a day but is it a good long term proposition? At work once I became the unwitting centre of attention when I slipped into "unity" on a busy friday afternoon when we were normally running around trying to wrap everything up. Everyone else just pulled up a chair and sat round my desk, it was amazing how different yet the same I was, intensely relaxed but wide awake and flowing all things good from some centre that wasn't even me but was everything that existed and it was all lush, powerful and vivid. Happy days, but it wore off a few hours later and that was that. What it all means I cannot say, my guess is nothing, just a phase, maybe all that bending my mind out of shape suddenly reflexively threw it into a euphoric state. But whatever, it doesn't work any more... --In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <steve.sundur@...> wrote: Wow, I hope you don't me saying this, but this is the nicest post we've had in about six months. And it sounds like more than witnessing.I say that because as I've always understood it, the transcendental field is without attributes. It is when we experience it that it becomes blissful. But otherwise, it is just a silent witness.Whatever you were experiencing was creeping into waking state. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com mailto:no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote: Yes, like being wrapped in infinite cotton wool, all rosy and warm. During some of those experiences I'd spend days seeing the world like it's made of christmas tree lights with that angel hair round them. Then it got even better and I saw where the light came from and I knew everything without being able to answer any questions and then it stopped. What the point of it was, other than to make me feel my ascetic life was paying off, is beyond me. But if it had lasted any longer I probably would have started a cult myself. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <steve.sundur@...> wrote: (-: Hey, neat about that witnessing experience. I experienced it once, and didn't realize it till after the fact. But was the experience "blissful" for you? ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com mailto:no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote: Potayto, potahto. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony2k5@...> wrote: No, most of what you are offering as definition technically is about sects. Cults form around charismatic persons. Sects form out of specialness, exception or differentiation as in different denominations of protestantism or catholicism or denominations or types of meditation. Those are sects. Sects are around fragmentation and cults are around persons as charismatics. For instance, If someone really 'charismatic', like earlier defined by Weber, like a Robin were to show up in Fairfield, Iowa and take off a bunch of meditators as his followers by force and power of personality then we're talking cult, as a sect. That is different than the different sects of people out teaching meditations and some others out there teaching other things they've learned.-Buck in the Dome Salyavin808 writes: You don't need any leader to be a cult. All you need is a belief system that sets you apart from the norm.
