LOL - This is Hilarious, Barry! HA! I wouldn't be so quick to denigrate witnessing, something you were lording over the rest of us, on FFL, just recently. If witnessing means so damned little to you, why does everyone on this forum, know how long you lasted, with your very limited witnessing, many years ago, before it faded? I hate to say it, but sometimes you are just...slow.
You and Curtis, a couple of washed up ex-TM teachers, who never learned the techniques, they were teaching others. A real couple of lugnuts, you two, acting all high and mighty with that ex-TM teacher badge on, and you don't even know what it meant. Sure, witnessing NOW has no value - Hah, what a dopey strategy of yours. What will you decide next, that watching TV is a sure sign of enlightenment?? Probably. Look, Barry, let's stop kidding ourselves. You know, and I know, and everyone reading this knows, that when you say you have no witnessing, no established silence, and try to make this a positive, you look like a complete fool. People on this forum weren't born yesterday, and you, my friend, are getting more and more exposed, by the minute. The ex-TM teacher with no clothes. Good night, unless you have more to embarrass yourself with. Oh, and Barry? Put up, or shut up. I'll wait. - lol! :-) ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <turquoiseb@...> wrote : A rap for Curtis, now that the Jim-bot has shouted himself out and probably fallen asleep. For obvious reasons, I didn't want to get involved with Jim while he was busy doing his Biff Tanner imitation. He's clearly-out-of-control angry over the fact that he can't get me to react to his taunts, and that out-of-control-ness amuses me, so I'll allow him to continue to rant later when when he wakes up with a Boy-I-sure-shouted-them-down-didn't-I hangover. :-) But I do wish to comment on some of Curtis' comments, to add in my two centimes. Yes, I *do* agree with him in believing that Maharishi was WAY off in coming up with any meaningful interpretations of and descriptions of consciousness and what it means. And one of the key indicators of this to me is his reliance on a phenomenon that is seen as so meaningless in other meditation traditions that it is almost never spoken about, let alone suggested as a criterion for enlightenment. I am speaking, of course, of "witnessing." In Tibetan and other more traditional forms of meditation teaching, this phenomenon is so commonplace and is considered so meaningless that it is almost never mentioned, except with a passing warning. The warning is to not get hung up on it, because it's so easy to (in MMY terminology) "mood make" the sensation to convince oneself that they're more "advanced" than they really are. That, interestingly enough, is the same finding that neuroscientists have gleaned from lab experiments. The phenomenon of witnessnessing can be *generated*, merely by stimulating the proper areas of the brain. Furthermore, once the subject has experienced it via stimulation, it is possible for them to "bring on" that experience again just by making a mood of it. That's what I honestly think happened to the Jim-bot. He had some minor experiences of witnessing, and having a shitload of ego problems and wanting some attention, he kept mood-making the experience again so that he could use it to justify his oneupsmanship games. This is *exactly* why teachers in more legitimate traditions don't focus on "witnessing" as anything more than a beginner's perception, and don't try to convince students it's meaningful. The phenomenon is so easy to simulate subjectively that people get themselves in trouble *trying* to simulate it, and wind up wandering around in a state of classical psychological dissociation, unable to tell fantasy from reality. I might suggest that this pattern is very evident in the Jim-bot. Surely most people have noticed his compulsion to always try to "one-up" anyone in the realm of what he feebly considers "spiritual experience." Someone mentions an experience on Batgap or FFL, and he *can't help himself* and has to come roaring in claiming to have had that experience years ago. I've often been tempted to make up some experience that Maharishi supposedly talked about out of whole cloth and post it, just to see how long it would take Jimbo to claim he'd had the made-up experience, too. :-) Anyway, my point is that this compulsion to play oneupsmanship games with one's supposed "advanced consciousness" is considered by older, more established meditation traditions as *pretty much what happens* when one emphasizes "witnessing" and pretends that it's anything but the fleeting, everyday, beginner's experience it is. "Witnessing" is so easy to mood-make that these teachers don't want their students going down that path and losing themselves in delusion. Jim is the perfect example of what happens when they do.
