--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "jim_flanegin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Rick Archer" <rick@> wrote: > Him: > > No, I don't have time to clarify my position right now but you > might > > remember that I don't doubt the notion of continuous witnessing > (in fact, > > I've had very long stretches of it) nor even of "celestial vision/ > god > > consciousness" (though it is defined and described variously); > it's just > > that direct experiences has taught me that these experiences are > not very > > valuable. I don't call these states enlightenment, thought they > DO fit > > the Hindu model of what the term (in it's various forms: bodhi, > > jivanmukta, brahmavidya, etc.) means. > > This reminds me of what Rory said a few posts back about CC, GC and > UC being transitory states. I remember distinctly "peaking" on GC > experiences; seeing angels, Deities, Galactic visions away from > earth, Guru Dev, blah, blah, blah, and through it all, I was > definitely NOT enlightened. > > My vision was certainly clear, and this skill I picked up by > practicing siddhis has stayed with me, but just because I could see > such things, and dwell in both Heaven and Hell didn't mean that I > had achieved my eternal freedom, Self Realization, or enlightenment > yet.:-)
Yes, I have found as long as "I" am claiming C.C., G.C., or U.C., and "Brahman" has not yet claimed "me," I am not fully liberated, and am still attached or bound to experience. Along these same lines, when you were asking about how we fall into ignorance, I find that consciousness *constantly* collapses into the particle, to experience the effect of our causative and innocent thought as a created being, to enter into the world of our own making. If the consciousness *believes* the particle-experience, or is caught in a given belief, it identifies with the concreteness of the effect and forgets the subtle simplicity of its own cause; it finds the bindu to be binding, and experiences the ignorance of the particle, or more accurately the particle's ignorance of the freedom of ourself, of That-Self. When we remember "Oh, yes, this particle-experience is not me; it is only one infinitesimal particle in the emptiful, Indefinable, Ungraspable That-Self," then Brahman remembers itself, and acts as the "Cosmic Consciousness" of the particle -- and so on, as described earlier :-)
