Yes it was an interesting ride since I was trapped for two days setting up my new laptop. I had been resisting for years because I didn't think my non 64 bit professional graphics and web building programs would run on 64 bit bit Windows. But I had to go for it to edit videos and to my delight my old school programs do run and much faster! My days also included interactions with viruses and reinstalling the whole operating system, so lets just say I had time staring at a screen...
I was happy to encourage Jim run his thing because I have always had a theory about his "experiences" and this interaction seems consistent with that. It was interesting to watch him go. He is certainly stuck somewhere and letting him do an imitation of that Indian poster, whose name shall not be spoken, for a while should be instructive for those on this forum who give him his "enlightened" pass. It all made a fantastic example of one of my original points about how subjectively reported higher states get you zero in epistemology points. Anybody can say anything for all sorts of reasons and our language is too imprecise to sort it all out. Perhaps MRI will someday. I think the knowledge of dissociative disorders has to be integrated into an discussion of spiritual states of mind. Margret Singer told me that TM people were the most dissociated ex cult members she worked with. If you combine this with a weakness toward this condition you get...well you know! It erodes the ability to distinguish fact from fantasy. This is one of my complaints about spiritual systems in general, lack of integrating psychological information and imprecise language with lots of social rewards for "going along" with people who are disturbed. Thanks for the info. I think that Tibetan perspective matches how I understood Maharishis teaching. Jim's perspective is only his own. At its root is something about feeling superior based on an assumption about himself that we are not buying. The name Jim-bot was too perfect. The combination of what I was dealing with on my computer and with him was scarily parallel! But it also reminded me of interactions with others here who go off this bend in an aggressive way toward me. It is an internet hazard. I'm back on the road but will post when I can. ---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.
