--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > The phenomena I am discussing would happen whether or > not the teacher in question remained silent the entire > time, and whether or not you acknowledged the person > as any kind of "authority." It happens merely as a > result of being in close proximity.
Curtis, just as a followup, remember who you're talking to, Bozo the Clown. My "theories" are probably not worth the frontal lobes they're imprinted on. I'm certainly not trying to sell them to other clowns. :-) However, one of the reasons I like this particular theory is that it works equally well to explain the "high" or inspiration one gets sometimes from being close to people who are *not* spiritual teachers. The genesis of my "recognition theory" was an evening spent at one of the Lannan Lectures in Santa Fe a few years ago. (http://www.lannan.org/lf/audio/lannan-archives/) The speakers that night were Toni Morrison and Michael Ondaatje, both marvelous writers, but as different from one another in their personalities and in their approach to writing as it is possible to be. They each spoke eloquently and inspiringly, and at the end of the evening as I walked out, I realized that I was high as a kite. High in the *same* way that I used to feel after seeing Rama or some other spiritual teacher who had a lot of phwam! and could (I thought at the time) use their woo-woo rays to shift my state of attention radically. I was clearly in a different state of attention after the lecture than I had been before it. But this got me to thinkin', because as far as I know, neither Toni Morrison nor Michael Ondaatje was up there on stage giving darshan or doing anything with woo-woo rays to *get* me high or shift my state of attention. I also seriously doubt that they were performing any kind of hypnosis. So where did the shift *come from*? So I started pondering whether the "high" might come from *my* side, as a result of running into someone who had access to more states of attention than I did. I'm a writer, but not nearly as good an writer or as experienced an writer as these two; they spoke about and drew upon insights and states of mind that I hadn't yet discovered with regard to writing. And as I *recognized* these states of attention in them, the same states of attention began to "wake up" inside of me. Voila, a new theory of how "darshan" might really work. I'm still pretty happy with the overall theory. It explains for me most of the subjective experiences I had around charis- matic and powerful teachers, without the drawbacks I perceive in the "darshan" theory or "the teacher is up there *doing* something to change your state of attention" theory. Later, of course, I found references to this same theory of recognition in Tibetan Buddhism and other spiritual traditions, but my first discovery of the concept really was that night in Santa Fe. The fact that others in old spiritual traditions had thought of it long before I did doesn't really decrease for me the insight I had in stumbling upon it myself, but your mileage may vary. Anyway, I just wanted to follow up and say that I think it's just *fine* that you tend to interpret your own experiences in terms of hypnosis, and the altered states that can be achieved via hypnosis. All I'm saying is that that model really doesn't cover all the bases as far as my own personal experience goes. Someday it's possible that my "recognition" theory won't cover all the bases, either, and at that point I'll probably find another. Theories about How Things Work are just something one does to pass the time. They're enter- tainment, nothing more. One doesn't have to be a slave to them. :-) To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
