--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "tomandcindytraynoratfairfieldlis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Vaj writes:snipped > The basic reason often given is that cultivation of siddhis thru > samyama causes one to become "vyuthana" or "outward" and attached to > the outer world. > > Tom T > The Sutras of Patanjali are a description not a prescription as so > many have supposed. Read them after thirty years of practice and > recognize how much of what is presented is now your day to day > experience. Tom T
Bingo. As has been discussed here before (at least by me and Marek), it's the same relationship that the Tibetan Book of the Dead has to death and dying. Those who see it as a prescription for dying well have kinds missed the point. It's a description of living well, a description of every moment of everyone's life. In the Bardo between death and rebirth, ritam rules. Everything the self has ever feared appears before it, tempting the self to believe in it to the extent that it forgets the Self. Everything the self has ever desired also appears before it, tempting it again to lose itself in the desire-manifestations and forget the Self. In everyday life, it's the same situation. Interestingly enough from a Tibetan perspective, those who have become most proficient at ELR ( everyday life ritam ) and can easily manifest their desires *also* become equally proficient at manifesting their fears. What you focus on, you become. Neither the desire-manifestations nor the fear-manifestations really exist, nor does the self that's manifesting them. All of it is just a set of distractions that is designed by the self to help it pretend that it exists. But the Self always has the last laugh. It can wait patiently as the self tries to manifest this desire and that desire, hoping to gain the peace of eternality from them. It can wait patiently as the self runs away from the fear-images it has manifested, hoping to find the peace of eter- nality by putting distance between the things it fears and itself. And all the while the Self just sits there, eternal, waiting for the self to realize that whether it was running towards eternality or running away from it, it was, is, and always will be eternal.
