Okay, thanks for clarifying you position on it. I am not sure that the lives of those who are said to have achieved that state have a "highly inflated view of the value of their internal state"
They have related their experiences over time, accounts covering hundreds or even thousands of years, and if people have been attracted to that vision, they have jumped aboard that path. I haven't found a lot of evangelizing among the spiritual texts and treatises throughout this time. Sure you find some statements, but overall, it pretty much just lays out a road map. And as far as practicing meditation, it is something I really haven't done in over 20 years. Just recently, I have taken it up for about 30 minutes or so, before I come home from work and have some quiet time. Typically with a cat on my lap. If you think I am trying to defend the practice, I believe you are mistaken. I am, like you, sharing my own experience, which at this point, is somewhat independent of the practice. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <curtisdeltablues@...> wrote : Steve: I know, Curtis, you are a student of how the brain works, and I think you hold to the theory that enlightenment, or higher awareness is a figment of our imagination. M: I don't believe that the state of mind you develop is a figment of your imagination, I believe it is rooted in a biological change in the brain itself through many hours of practice in a certain type of meditation. I have it too. I just don't think that what people believe about it being a higher state of functioning has any evidence. I think it is enjoyable, may even help people who are hyper to settle down, but we really don't know much about what this change does to us other than folklore. And if we examine the lives of the purveyors of that folklore, we come up with a pretty ordinary person who has a highly inflated view of the value of their internal state. You don't have to have any more reason to practice than that you like it as far as I am concerned. I am addressing the system itself and the founder, not an individual practitioner like yourself. What you dig is none of my business. I am the first person to understand loving meditation practice. But Maharishi made his theories my business so I come here to discuss his POV and theories against my own experiences and observations of his life. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <steve.sundur@...> wrote : I guess that theory makes sense if you believe there is no such thing as enlightenment, or higher states of consciousness, because it is my guess that many of those who were said to be enlightened suffered memory loss, dementia and impaired mental capacity as they aged. So, either higher consciousness is a fraud, or there is a different explanation for it, and stabilized pure consciousness, which is said to be a trait of higher consciousness, remains intact. I feel like I've made some progress in refining my awareness over these past forty years, both from mediation and also just in living. I can easily see my mental capacity diminish, just as I see my physical abilities diminish currently. But I don't feel any diminishment in what I feel is that quieter part of my life. I feel like it will remain intact, no matter what. I know, Curtis, you are a student of how the brain works, and I think you hold to the theory that enlightenment, or higher awareness is a figment of our imagination. I haven't come to that conclusion, and I think 40 plus years of being on something called a spiritual path has rooted out mood making. Or at least I hope so. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <curtisdeltablues@...> wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <LEnglish5@...> wrote : The logical conclusion is that, by Maharishi's theory, Maharishi wasn't perfectly enlightened. Was there still question in your mind about this? M: I place the belief in enlightenment on the same level as being saved so I suspect Maharishi harbored this fantasy as do most of his followers. L: I heard him talk about how the consciousness of the world wouldn't support the most refined states of consciousness and automatically assumed that he was giving everyone a subtle message about his own state of consciousness, but apparently many, many people refused to take the implications of MMY's statements seriously and made a mental exception for MMY and Gurudev. M: Well then the consciousness of the world took a big downturn when he got old cuz he was not functioning very well at all. It might be easier to assume that his belief in enlightenment as a theory was contradicted by his own life. L:In fact, I pointed this implication out to a TM teacher and he explicitly said just that. You get the same thing with Christians asserting the divinity of Jesus in spite of him saying "There is none perfect; no, not one." M: I am saying the emperor has no clothes, you are saying that no one covers all their skin as an excuse. All this after the fact explanation requires more unproven beliefs to be heaped on top of the old one. How the hell could anyone know about the "consciousness of the world." It is a meaningless conjecture to cover what is more obvious. Maharishi's programs did not even work on himself. That is why they hid him away in the end. L ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <curtisdeltablues@...> wrote : I was struck by the posted interview between the Aussie and the Maharishi through closed circuit TV where Maharishi was unable to field a question about whether or not he could actually fly by going into "you kids get off of my lawn" mode. What struck me because I have spent quite a bit of time around old people in the last few years and it seemed obvious that Maharishi was clearly suffering from the diminished capacity of age and very likely dementia. He was not well. This observation only matters because at the heart of a lot of the premises in TM is that the state of consciousness in enlightenment transcends the functioning of the brain. This is the premise on which we have claims about witnessing deep sleep for example, and all the conjectural nonsense surrounding what happens after a "conscious" enlightened death. It is stated in different ways as a premise underneath many claims about how a person functions in enlightenment. We saw Maharishi, who in his salad days would have gigglingly swatted away such a direct question calling him on an outrageous claim, completely flummoxed and left with a broom in his hand chasing the local scamps out of his rutabaga patch. How can it be that "consciousness development" can have an effect on the person after their brain stops functioning and rots, when it couldn't even weather the storm of old age for the supposedly most developed person, Maharishi himself? Apparently consciousness development has the same impact as imagination development when it comes to being able to resist the ravages of age. Brain functioning trumps all imagination of it being otherwise. And the difference between Maharishi in old age and my own father can only be seen clearly in the zeros in their bank accounts.
