[FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
That's very interesting thoughts Buck. You might be right. But do remember that Maitreya is in incarnation with a body now and came to the West from the Himalayas in 1977, only two years after Maharishi inaugurated the Dawn of the Age of Enlightenment and proclaimed: Heaven will walk on Earth in this generation. http://shareintl.org/maitreya/Maitreya_faq.htm http://shareintl.org/maitreya/Maitreya_faq.htm
Re: [FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
Dear Buck, It will not be the Maiytreya who is the spiritual head of the Masters of Wisdom, now in a physical body and preparing the world for His reappearance. Whoever it may be, treat it with respect or get rid of it. You'll find more on the Reappearance of Christ and the Masters of Wisdom (of which Guru Dev is a senior member) here: http://www.share-international.org/ http://www.share-international.org/
[FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
Re Well I thought everybody knew he was killed by the long-time effects of the injection the FBI/CIA gave him when he was 24 hrs in prison before he left the USA. That's what Osho himself claimed.: Osho thought he was a victim of thallium poisoning by the FBI. As thallium causes hair loss and Osho had a full head of hair when he died that was obviously not the case. His symptoms match those caused by N2O abuse. And the authorities didn't need to kill him - they got much more mileage by having him slowly transported across country in handcuffs being filmed by the TV networks. Osho's bedroom was also bugged (without his knowledge) by his own deputy Sheela - the police confiscated those recordings (do they still have them?) so could have released juicy audio clips any time they wanted to embarrass him further.
[FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
On the subject of rating spiritual masters, are FFLifers familiar with Sarlo's Guru Rating Service? Sarlo himself was a disciple of Osho so gives him top rating but apart from that self-indulgence I find his subjective judgements on various teachers, gurus and rishis to be reliable. The site is in an irritating pink and blue colour scheme, and takes a while to learn how to navigate but now rates 1,750 people. Links are provided pro and anti the teachers and there's a feedback option. Take a peek and see how your favourites score . . . http://www3.telus.net/public/sarlo/Ratings.htm http://www3.telus.net/public/sarlo/Ratings.htm
[FairfieldLife] Re: Where Do the gods Exist?
Following up, because it's an interesting set of speculations: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, wrote: ... This broadens out into a wider debate on Egomaniac Godmen who had experienced selflessness. Why were so many of them such irritating self-centred arseholes? I personally associate it more with spiritual tradition than any particular cause and effect you could pin down or name. That is, I think it's the dynamics of the spiritual teacher role and its interaction with followers that has been passed down to us that is the culprit. Someone has some realizations -- major or minor -- and the first thing they've got to do is hang out a shingle and become a teacher. In that new role, they've got to deal with the focus of from dozens to thousands of students, all projecting their fantasies onto this new (and inexperienced) teacher, all gazing at them as if they were God and being told by past scriptures/books, etc. that the way to be around a spiritual teacher is to do everything they fucking say and never, ever doubt them. It's a scenario almost *designed* to charge up the teachers' egos and make them crazier than a loon. ... There's something horribly self-centred about the whole new-age trip that gives it that superficial, delusional character. It is *not* just the New Age. I suspect it has been like this at every point in human history in which there have been people claiming to be enlightened. We just see them fall off their pedestals more often these days, because of access and the media's fascination with fallen stars. I have speculated here before (although many may have mistaken it for being tongue in cheek because I've often presented it humorously, or tried) that what we think of as being enlightened may, in fact, be how people perceive a number of very common forms of mental illness. What you are discussing here, for example, is the prevalence of the classic symptoms of Narcissistic Personality Disorder in people who are perceived to be (at least by their followers) enlightened human beings. So what if the thing they *are* perceiving is just the overwhelming sense of ego and ego-importance of NPD? Most of the people one encounters are less sure of themselves, more given to doubts, and less likely to proclaim their POV as right and everyone else's as wrong. But that's just the daily, ho-hum routine of someone suffering from NPD. What if that sense of I am the center of the universe, and everything pretty much revolves around me is the thing that made *every supposedly enlightened being in history* appear to be enlightened? Another mental aberration that I believe is often confused with being spiritually evolved is mania. I don't think you were around when Ravi first showed up here on FFL, but it was pretty obvious from Day One that what we were dealing with there is someone who was going through a period of extreme manic depression, and who tended to post on his manic days. Now think about the supposedly inspired nature of many of the supposed saints' writings -- the sense that they are totally overwhelmed by their perceptions of the world around them, their feelings for God. Such saints are often described -- even by their followers -- as borderline emotional basket cases, given to breaking into tears when trying to describe the ecstasy of it all. Again, this is classic DSM-IV mania. Don't get me wrong...I'm not trying to convert you or anyone else here to my view of things, or to proclaim that enlightenment AS mental illness is the ONLY way to see things. I'm just making a case that it is ONE way of seeing things, and that as such, it is an avenue that should be explored. Some will react strongly to such a suggestion, getting their buttons pushed because they feel it demeans people they truly believe are enlightened or saint-like. But I think that the correspondences are something to be considered, and that they can be discussed without ego-battles, and without the hysteria of mania. :-) [https://scontent-b-ams.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/t1/555809_101515642095\ 68331_438201452_n.jpg]
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Where Do the gods Exist?
This broadens out into a wider debate on Egomaniac Godmen who had experienced selflessness. Why were so many of them such irritating self-centred arseholes? Many don't even have to have any legitimate experiences of any kind. The article I posted here on the so-called godmen of the city of Ayodhya - these days people use the guise of being a spiritual leader to grab as much money and prestige as they can. On Tue, 1/28/14, TurquoiseB turquoi...@yahoo.com wrote: Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Where Do the gods Exist? To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Tuesday, January 28, 2014, 7:33 AM --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, wrote: Coming back to Barry's post: 'I've seen a number of people have strong experiences of being enlightenment, and then afterwards back off and run away from any sadhana (spiritual practice, such as meditation) that would make being enlightenment come back. : Doesn't that apply to your Rama? I'd never hear of Rama till I encountered FFL but the fact that he was heavily into tranquillisers suggests he was suffering from acute anxiety. He got into Valium late in his life, as I understand it after it was prescribed for him after a sports injury. My personal feeling is that taking it was not in any way anxiety-related, but sensitivity-related, in that the Valium made pain go away. I have heard from people closer to him than I was that he felt physical pain a lot, and so he may have kept taking them after the injury was healed and then gotten hooked because of the insidiously addictive nature of the drug. Why so? Because he was unable to integrate his own spiritual experiences. I was not thinking about Rama when I wrote the line you quote. (I also see that Rama told his female followers that having sex with him would elevate them to a higher plane of consciousness. Are there really women that fall for that lame chat-up line?) More than you might imagine. Hey, Rama was at least tall, fairly good-looking, and charismatic as hell. Maharishi managed to get women to have sex with him, and he was a squat little toad. :-) This broadens out into a wider debate on Egomaniac Godmen who had experienced selflessness. Why were so many of them such irritating self-centred arseholes? I personally associate it more with spiritual tradition than any particular cause and effect you could pin down or name. That is, I think it's the dynamics of the spiritual teacher role and its interaction with followers that has been passed down to us that is the culprit. Someone has some realizations -- major or minor -- and the first thing they've got to do is hang out a shingle and become a teacher. In that new role, they've got to deal with the focus of from dozens to thousands of students, all projecting their fantasies onto this new (and inexperienced) teacher, all gazing at them as if they were God and being told by past scriptures/books, etc. that the way to be around a spiritual teacher is to do everything they fucking say and never, ever doubt them. It's a scenario almost *designed* to charge up the teachers' egos and make them crazier than a loon. I don't doubt that some of them - Muktanada and Osho, for example - had genuine experiences of loss of ego identity. But I've had such experiences (only short-lived) and although I had no way of piecing together my lost identity my character habits (my karma?) were still functioning. It did strike me then that genuine spiritual transformation would have to uproot those character habits - perhaps by spending two years cleaning the latrines in a leper colony. It wouldn't hurt. And at least the latrines would be cleaner, which is a more real accomplishment than many of the teachers managed. I suspect that people like Osho, Chögyam Trungpa, Muktanada and Rama had that ego-loss thing and falsely assumed it was the full enlightenment blow-out and so never realised what self-centred sods they remained. Another possibility, of course, is that there is no such *thing* as the full enlightenment blow-out. You don't seem to accept that as a possibility, but I do. I mean, take Osho's collection of Rolls-Royces: he wanted to have the largest collection in the world. How childish is that? Imagine that an authentic first-century manuscript was uncovered in the Vatican archives that proved Jesus of Nazareth had ten gold-plated chariots and was hoping to add to that collection to out-number the total of the Roman Emperor? Christianity would be finished as a world religion the very next day. Now you're just being naive. Christian TBs would find a way to rationalize it in a second. Osho's acolytyes came up with some baloney about his mania being a subversive attack on materialism - does anyone still believe
[FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
Re Egomaniac Godmen who had experienced selflessness: I've seen a lot of DVDs of Osho's talks and although I would never have dreamt of becoming a disciple I did find I agreed with most of what he said and he was clearly talking from personal experience (and not just book-learning - though he was famously well-read). He clearly had a genuine enlightenment experience. I suspect that whereas my own dips into egolessness were always of short duration, in Osho's case it was a permanent shift which left him in a state of superconsciousness. My suggestion is that he (perhaps naturally) took that radical shift as evidence he was now fully awakened. He would have benefited from having a Zen roshi or Christian abbot to congratulate him on his accomplishment but then add that now the serious work was about to begin. Because Osho was a lone wolf he became complacent and then once he became a rock star amongst spiritual masters he found himself imprisoned in a glittering jail of his own devising. The fact that his original spiritual emergence was genuine and permanent makes what he had to say well worth listening to. The fatuous, preening aspect of his cult only really affected his close disciples. We can simply ignore that side. Incidentally, Osho (like Rama) was also heavily addicted to Valium. Like Rama it was also initially prescribed for pain relief. Osho then became a daily user of laughing gas in his later years (to be fair, partly for pain relief) and that is almost certainly what killed him. He had classic symptoms of nitrous oxide poisoning at the end. All he had to do was take vitamin B12 supplements and he would have been fine.
Re: [FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
In the 1980s I was back living in my old home town. A former local farmer stopped by for a visit. He had become a distributor for fruit and vegetables and his main customer was Osho's ashram near Antelope, Oregon. Fast forward a few years later and one of the women at the software company I worked was my rudraksha beads and told me she grew up at Osho's ashram where her mother was a disciple. A couple months later I chatted with her mom at a company picnic. My tantra guru knew Osho and thought he was nuts. He gave him a tour of his India ashram and said he was going to give the people what they wanted: sex. On 01/28/2014 01:43 PM, s3raph...@yahoo.com wrote: Re Egomaniac Godmen who had experienced selflessness: I've seen a lot of DVDs of Osho's talks and although I would never have dreamt of becoming a disciple I did find I agreed with most of what he said and he was clearly talking from personal experience (and not just book-learning - though he was famously well-read). He clearly had a genuine enlightenment experience. I suspect that whereas my own dips into egolessness were always of short duration, in Osho's case it was a permanent shift which left him in a state of superconsciousness. My suggestion is that he (perhaps naturally) took that radical shift as evidence he was now fully awakened. He would have benefited from having a Zen roshi or Christian abbot to congratulate him on his accomplishment but then add that now the serious work was about to begin. Because Osho was a lone wolf he became complacent and then once he became a rock star amongst spiritual masters he found himself imprisoned in a glittering jail of his own devising. The fact that his original spiritual emergence was genuine and permanent makes what he had to say well worth listening to. The fatuous, preening aspect of his cult only really affected his close disciples. We can simply ignore that side. Incidentally, Osho (like Rama) was also heavily addicted to Valium. Like Rama it was also initially prescribed for pain relief. Osho then became a daily user of laughing gas in his later years (to be fair, partly for pain relief) and that is almost certainly what killed him. He had classic symptoms of nitrous oxide poisoning at the end. All he had to do was take vitamin B12 supplements and he would have been fine.
Re: [FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
Re My tantra guru knew Osho and thought he was nuts.: Don't all gurus bad-mouth the opposition? At Oregon, Osho had withdrawn from public appearances (apart from drive pasts in his Rollers), he was already heavily into Valium - up to 300mgs a day - way above a regular prescription dose, and he was dictating books while under the influence of laughing gas. He did make a partial recovery after he was expelled from the States - his humiliation there seems to have stripped him of some of his illusions and concentrated his mind. His last talks (back in Puna) are quite affecting as he obviously knew he was making his final bow. Re said he was going to give the people what they wanted: sex: It's still selling like hot cakes. The sex aspect is worth a brief look. Osho thought that people's experience of orgasm was the closest most would come to having a transcendental experience. (Colin Wilson had similar ideas!) He also had no time for the puritanical Indian mindset and wanted to import western liberal attitudes. Is an orgasm a pointer to an experience of expansion of spirit? I think the answer to that must vary considerably from one individual to another but the importance of fantasy in so much sexual activity suggests that for many a sexual climax intensifies their sense of self rather than releasing it. Tricky subject to discuss though! Especially on a public forum. Although I think that for a few people sex could initiate an awakening it is clearly open to abuse and there is no shortage of low-lifes happy to simply exploit the freedom on offer. I doubt if in Osho's wildest dreams he anticipated the sexual license that was a feature of his (first) Puna ashram as he attracted a lot of ex-hippie types. (There was a lot of drug use then.) Being a man - and the dominant male - he took full advantage in that rather sad and sordid way that failed gurus take their pick of the nubile females. At Oregon people were too tired and over-worked for too much hanky-panky and drugs were banned - and then AIDS reared its ugly head. And the Puna site today sells typical, bland new-age nostrums and sounds boringly respectable. At the end Osho came to believe that sex was a dead end as a route to enlightenment and only meditation was of any use.
Re: [FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
Well I thought everbody knew he was killed by the long-time effects of the injection the FBI/CIA gave him when he was 24 hrs in prison before he left the USA. That's what Osho himself claimed. I remember two comments Maharishi made about Osho. First was sometime late '70ies He (Osho) is very intelligent but not enlightened. Which, as it happens, correlates well with Mr. Benjamin Creme statement that Osho at the time of leaving the body had a point of evolution of 2,30, which is highly evolved but not enlightened. Robert Schumann, Igor Stravinsky, Emile Zola, Augustine, Hector Berlioz, En Lai Chou, Eugene Delacroix, Rene Descartes, Euclid, Giorgione, Frans Hals, Hans Holbein, Joshua, Mark, Martinius, John Locke, Moses, amongst others, are among the few individuals having reach such a high level of development and Initiation. http://www.share-berlin.de/list_of_initiates.htm#LinkR http://www.share-berlin.de/list_of_initiates.htm#LinkR The second comment is from memory, a few days after Rasjeesh left the USA and Bevan somehow triupmhantly gave Maharishi the news and Maharishi said, no, no, this could happen to all of us. He also at one time commented that He (Rajeesh) is really surrounded by CIA As if the problems the Movement had had with the said org. was nothing compared to what Rajneesh had to face.
Re: [FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
Nablusoss; Maitreya alert. Today I bought some old statuary here in Fairfield, Iowa. The tag on it said 'Maitreya'. Cast in metal in a combination of brass and dark metals. It's about the size of a gallon of milk. Seated in lotus, fabulous mudras with the hands. Heavy with cool ornamentation. With this pyramidal prismatic- like thing rising over of his head behind. Is this your guy, the one Benj Creme talks about? Looks kind of buddhist. Has a lot of evident inward silence inside it. What do I do with it? Seems it is not just some statue. Mantras or slokas that are appropriate? I am just a farmer in Iowa, -Buck
[FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
If spiritual masters were regulated by the advertising standards authority wouldn't they be fined for their false promises of bliss consciousness? If anything, they should be fined, for, on the one hand, holding out the promise of bliss consciousness, and, on the other, failing to provide a technique to establish such a state. Without the technique, it is like a bunch of Buddhists running around, talking about non-attachment, while reflecting, Noggin-attachment, instead. There is such hunger in the world for spiritual progress, yet 99.999% of the 'teachers' on the subject, have no clue. The experience of No Self, is quite a misnomer, and only reflects the contrast between the ego's world and the Real world. Since those having this experience don't feel like themselves, they call the experience in terms of losing their false identity. Very far away from established Bliss Consciousness, our birthright.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Where Do the gods Exist?
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, doctordumbass@... wrote: If spiritual masters were regulated by the advertising standards authority wouldn't they be fined for their false promises of bliss consciousness? If anything, they should be fined, for, on the one hand, holding out the promise of bliss consciousness, and, on the other, failing to provide a technique to establish such a state. Without the technique, it is like a bunch of Buddhists running around, talking about non-attachment, while reflecting, Noggin-attachment, instead. There is such hunger in the world for spiritual progress, yet 99.999% of the 'teachers' on the subject, have no clue. But *I* do, which is why you should pay attention to *ME* and what *I* say, rather than these know-nothings. Especially if they represent 2500-year-old Buddhist traditions rather than the slightly-over-50-year-old tradition established by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi when he made up the technique of Transcendental Meditation out of whole cloth. Besides, you should believe *ME*, because I'm so bloody *special*, having realized the full potential of this slightly-over-50-year-old tradition, and thus being more enlightened than you are. *I* am the one you should pay attention to, because...uh...well...I deserve it. *I* will tell you the TRUTH about which techniques are effective (even though I've never been trained in how to teach any of them) and will tell you *better* than any of these other 99.999% of teachers (even though I've never been one, and wouldn't even know how to *begin* to teach TM, much less any other form of meditation). So yeah, that's the ticket. Don't believe what any of these (spit) Buddhists say. Believe *ME* because...uh...well...because I *want* you to. The more people like you who focus on me and believe the stuff I say, even though I've never had any training in anything I say, the better off you'll be. Because *I* know the TRUTH, and 99.999% of the spiritual teachers in the world don't. Besides, *I* am humble about how incredibly special and highly evolved *I* am, and (spit) they aren't. Did I capture what you were trying to say adequately, Jimbo? :-)
[FairfieldLife] Re: Where Do the gods Exist?
I am pointing out that the mistake of thinking that non-attachment, and other full-blown symptoms, as I call them, of Enlightenment, cannot be consciously learned, and that to pretend to do so, is injurious, and a waste of time. Your behavior is a perfect example. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, doctordumbass@... wrote: If spiritual masters were regulated by the advertising standards authority wouldn't they be fined for their false promises of bliss consciousness? If anything, they should be fined, for, on the one hand, holding out the promise of bliss consciousness, and, on the other, failing to provide a technique to establish such a state. Without the technique, it is like a bunch of Buddhists running around, talking about non-attachment, while reflecting, Noggin-attachment, instead. There is such hunger in the world for spiritual progress, yet 99.999% of the 'teachers' on the subject, have no clue. But *I* do, which is why you should pay attention to *ME* and what *I* say, rather than these know-nothings. Especially if they represent 2500-year-old Buddhist traditions rather than the slightly-over-50-year-old tradition established by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi when he made up the technique of Transcendental Meditation out of whole cloth. Besides, you should believe *ME*, because I'm so bloody *special*, having realized the full potential of this slightly-over-50-year-old tradition, and thus being more enlightened than you are. *I* am the one you should pay attention to, because...uh...well...I deserve it. *I* will tell you the TRUTH about which techniques are effective (even though I've never been trained in how to teach any of them) and will tell you *better* than any of these other 99.999% of teachers (even though I've never been one, and wouldn't even know how to *begin* to teach TM, much less any other form of meditation). So yeah, that's the ticket. Don't believe what any of these (spit) Buddhists say. Believe *ME* because...uh...well...because I *want* you to. The more people like you who focus on me and believe the stuff I say, even though I've never had any training in anything I say, the better off you'll be. Because *I* know the TRUTH, and 99.999% of the spiritual teachers in the world don't. Besides, *I* am humble about how incredibly special and highly evolved *I* am, and (spit) they aren't. Did I capture what you were trying to say adequately, Jimbo? :-)
[FairfieldLife] Re: Where Do the gods Exist?
correction: I am pointing out that the mistake of thinking that non-attachment, and other full-blown symptoms, as I call them, of Enlightenment, can be consciously learned, and that to pretend to do so, is injurious, and a waste of time. Your behavior is a perfect example. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote: I am pointing out that the mistake of thinking that non-attachment, and other full-blown symptoms, as I call them, of Enlightenment, cannot be consciously learned, and that to pretend to do so, is injurious, and a waste of time. Your behavior is a perfect example. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, doctordumbass@... wrote: If spiritual masters were regulated by the advertising standards authority wouldn't they be fined for their false promises of bliss consciousness? If anything, they should be fined, for, on the one hand, holding out the promise of bliss consciousness, and, on the other, failing to provide a technique to establish such a state. Without the technique, it is like a bunch of Buddhists running around, talking about non-attachment, while reflecting, Noggin-attachment, instead. There is such hunger in the world for spiritual progress, yet 99.999% of the 'teachers' on the subject, have no clue. But *I* do, which is why you should pay attention to *ME* and what *I* say, rather than these know-nothings. Especially if they represent 2500-year-old Buddhist traditions rather than the slightly-over-50-year-old tradition established by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi when he made up the technique of Transcendental Meditation out of whole cloth. Besides, you should believe *ME*, because I'm so bloody *special*, having realized the full potential of this slightly-over-50-year-old tradition, and thus being more enlightened than you are. *I* am the one you should pay attention to, because...uh...well...I deserve it. *I* will tell you the TRUTH about which techniques are effective (even though I've never been trained in how to teach any of them) and will tell you *better* than any of these other 99.999% of teachers (even though I've never been one, and wouldn't even know how to *begin* to teach TM, much less any other form of meditation). So yeah, that's the ticket. Don't believe what any of these (spit) Buddhists say. Believe *ME* because...uh...well...because I *want* you to. The more people like you who focus on me and believe the stuff I say, even though I've never had any training in anything I say, the better off you'll be. Because *I* know the TRUTH, and 99.999% of the spiritual teachers in the world don't. Besides, *I* am humble about how incredibly special and highly evolved *I* am, and (spit) they aren't. Did I capture what you were trying to say adequately, Jimbo? :-)
[FairfieldLife] Re: Where Do the gods Exist?
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, doctordumbass@... wrote: correction: I am pointing out that the mistake of thinking that non-attachment, and other full-blown symptoms, as I call them, of Enlightenment, can be consciously learned, and that to pretend to do so, is injurious, and a waste of time. Your behavior is a perfect example. No problem. You're just not attached to being able to spell. It's a little like your non-attachment to being able to count, back when we still had posting limits. You were, after all, the FFL poster who spent the most time on the I Have No Self Control bench. :-) ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote: I am pointing out that the mistake of thinking that non-attachment, and other full-blown symptoms, as I call them, of Enlightenment, cannot be consciously learned, and that to pretend to do so, is injurious, and a waste of time. Your behavior is a perfect example. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, doctordumbass@ wrote: If spiritual masters were regulated by the advertising standards authority wouldn't they be fined for their false promises of bliss consciousness? If anything, they should be fined, for, on the one hand, holding out the promise of bliss consciousness, and, on the other, failing to provide a technique to establish such a state. Without the technique, it is like a bunch of Buddhists running around, talking about non-attachment, while reflecting, Noggin-attachment, instead. There is such hunger in the world for spiritual progress, yet 99.999% of the 'teachers' on the subject, have no clue. But *I* do, which is why you should pay attention to *ME* and what *I* say, rather than these know-nothings. Especially if they represent 2500-year-old Buddhist traditions rather than the slightly-over-50-year-old tradition established by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi when he made up the technique of Transcendental Meditation out of whole cloth. Besides, you should believe *ME*, because I'm so bloody *special*, having realized the full potential of this slightly-over-50-year-old tradition, and thus being more enlightened than you are. *I* am the one you should pay attention to, because...uh...well...I deserve it. *I* will tell you the TRUTH about which techniques are effective (even though I've never been trained in how to teach any of them) and will tell you *better* than any of these other 99.999% of teachers (even though I've never been one, and wouldn't even know how to *begin* to teach TM, much less any other form of meditation). So yeah, that's the ticket. Don't believe what any of these (spit) Buddhists say. Believe *ME* because...uh...well...because I *want* you to. The more people like you who focus on me and believe the stuff I say, even though I've never had any training in anything I say, the better off you'll be. Because *I* know the TRUTH, and 99.999% of the spiritual teachers in the world don't. Besides, *I* am humble about how incredibly special and highly evolved *I* am, and (spit) they aren't. Did I capture what you were trying to say adequately, Jimbo? :-)
[FairfieldLife] Re: Where Do the gods Exist?
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, doctordumbass@... wrote: OK, I am glad you enjoyed your nasty tidbit, at my expense, or so you think. Yeah, I've embarrassed the hell out of myself more times than I can count. But it sure beats the alternative, as you amply demonstrate. Just as a question, how can embarrassment happen without attachment? If you have no self and no image of self to protect or defend, how can you possibly be embarrassed, no matter what it does? ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, doctordumbass@ wrote: correction: I am pointing out that the mistake of thinking that non-attachment, and other full-blown symptoms, as I call them, of Enlightenment, can be consciously learned, and that to pretend to do so, is injurious, and a waste of time. Your behavior is a perfect example. No problem. You're just not attached to being able to spell. It's a little like your non-attachment to being able to count, back when we still had posting limits. You were, after all, the FFL poster who spent the most time on the I Have No Self Control bench. :-) ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote: I am pointing out that the mistake of thinking that non-attachment, and other full-blown symptoms, as I call them, of Enlightenment, cannot be consciously learned, and that to pretend to do so, is injurious, and a waste of time. Your behavior is a perfect example. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, doctordumbass@ wrote: If spiritual masters were regulated by the advertising standards authority wouldn't they be fined for their false promises of bliss consciousness? If anything, they should be fined, for, on the one hand, holding out the promise of bliss consciousness, and, on the other, failing to provide a technique to establish such a state. Without the technique, it is like a bunch of Buddhists running around, talking about non-attachment, while reflecting, Noggin-attachment, instead. There is such hunger in the world for spiritual progress, yet 99.999% of the 'teachers' on the subject, have no clue. But *I* do, which is why you should pay attention to *ME* and what *I* say, rather than these know-nothings. Especially if they represent 2500-year-old Buddhist traditions rather than the slightly-over-50-year-old tradition established by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi when he made up the technique of Transcendental Meditation out of whole cloth. Besides, you should believe *ME*, because I'm so bloody *special*, having realized the full potential of this slightly-over-50-year-old tradition, and thus being more enlightened than you are. *I* am the one you should pay attention to, because...uh...well...I deserve it. *I* will tell you the TRUTH about which techniques are effective (even though I've never been trained in how to teach any of them) and will tell you *better* than any of these other 99.999% of teachers (even though I've never been one, and wouldn't even know how to *begin* to teach TM, much less any other form of meditation). So yeah, that's the ticket. Don't believe what any of these (spit) Buddhists say. Believe *ME* because...uh...well...because I *want* you to. The more people like you who focus on me and believe the stuff I say, even though I've never had any training in anything I say, the better off you'll be. Because *I* know the TRUTH, and 99.999% of the spiritual teachers in the world don't. Besides, *I* am humble about how incredibly special and highly evolved *I* am, and (spit) they aren't. Did I capture what you were trying to say adequately, Jimbo? :-)
[FairfieldLife] Re: Where Do the gods Exist?
OK, I am glad you enjoyed your nasty tidbit, at my expense, or so you think. Yeah, I've embarrassed the hell out of myself more times than I can count. But it sure beats the alternative, as you amply demonstrate. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, doctordumbass@... wrote: correction: I am pointing out that the mistake of thinking that non-attachment, and other full-blown symptoms, as I call them, of Enlightenment, can be consciously learned, and that to pretend to do so, is injurious, and a waste of time. Your behavior is a perfect example. No problem. You're just not attached to being able to spell. It's a little like your non-attachment to being able to count, back when we still had posting limits. You were, after all, the FFL poster who spent the most time on the I Have No Self Control bench. :-) ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote: I am pointing out that the mistake of thinking that non-attachment, and other full-blown symptoms, as I call them, of Enlightenment, cannot be consciously learned, and that to pretend to do so, is injurious, and a waste of time. Your behavior is a perfect example. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, doctordumbass@ wrote: If spiritual masters were regulated by the advertising standards authority wouldn't they be fined for their false promises of bliss consciousness? If anything, they should be fined, for, on the one hand, holding out the promise of bliss consciousness, and, on the other, failing to provide a technique to establish such a state. Without the technique, it is like a bunch of Buddhists running around, talking about non-attachment, while reflecting, Noggin-attachment, instead. There is such hunger in the world for spiritual progress, yet 99.999% of the 'teachers' on the subject, have no clue. But *I* do, which is why you should pay attention to *ME* and what *I* say, rather than these know-nothings. Especially if they represent 2500-year-old Buddhist traditions rather than the slightly-over-50-year-old tradition established by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi when he made up the technique of Transcendental Meditation out of whole cloth. Besides, you should believe *ME*, because I'm so bloody *special*, having realized the full potential of this slightly-over-50-year-old tradition, and thus being more enlightened than you are. *I* am the one you should pay attention to, because...uh...well...I deserve it. *I* will tell you the TRUTH about which techniques are effective (even though I've never been trained in how to teach any of them) and will tell you *better* than any of these other 99.999% of teachers (even though I've never been one, and wouldn't even know how to *begin* to teach TM, much less any other form of meditation). So yeah, that's the ticket. Don't believe what any of these (spit) Buddhists say. Believe *ME* because...uh...well...because I *want* you to. The more people like you who focus on me and believe the stuff I say, even though I've never had any training in anything I say, the better off you'll be. Because *I* know the TRUTH, and 99.999% of the spiritual teachers in the world don't. Besides, *I* am humble about how incredibly special and highly evolved *I* am, and (spit) they aren't. Did I capture what you were trying to say adequately, Jimbo? :-)
[FairfieldLife] Re: Where Do the gods Exist?
Brahman Consciousness: waking sleeping dreaming waking sleeping dreaming waking sleeping dreaming waking sleeping dreaming waking sleeping dreaming waking sleeping dreaming waking sleeping dreaming waking sleeping dreaming waking sleeping dreaming waking sleeping dreaming waking sleeping dreaming waking sleeping dreaming waking sleeping dreaming waking sleeping dreaming waking sleeping dreaming waking sleeping dreaming waking sleeping dreaming... ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, doctordumbass@... wrote: If spiritual masters were regulated by the advertising standards authority wouldn't they be fined for their false promises of bliss consciousness? If anything, they should be fined, for, on the one hand, holding out the promise of bliss consciousness, and, on the other, failing to provide a technique to establish such a state. Without the technique, it is like a bunch of Buddhists running around, talking about non-attachment, while reflecting, Noggin-attachment, instead. There is such hunger in the world for spiritual progress, yet 99.999% of the 'teachers' on the subject, have no clue. But *I* do, which is why you should pay attention to *ME* and what *I* say, rather than these know-nothings. Especially if they represent 2500-year-old Buddhist traditions rather than the slightly-over-50-year-old tradition established by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi when he made up the technique of Transcendental Meditation out of whole cloth. Besides, you should believe *ME*, because I'm so bloody *special*, having realized the full potential of this slightly-over-50-year-old tradition, and thus being more enlightened than you are. *I* am the one you should pay attention to, because...uh...well...I deserve it. *I* will tell you the TRUTH about which techniques are effective (even though I've never been trained in how to teach any of them) and will tell you *better* than any of these other 99.999% of teachers (even though I've never been one, and wouldn't even know how to *begin* to teach TM, much less any other form of meditation). So yeah, that's the ticket. Don't believe what any of these (spit) Buddhists say. Believe *ME* because...uh...well...because I *want* you to. The more people like you who focus on me and believe the stuff I say, even though I've never had any training in anything I say, the better off you'll be. Because *I* know the TRUTH, and 99.999% of the spiritual teachers in the world don't. Besides, *I* am humble about how incredibly special and highly evolved *I* am, and (spit) they aren't. Did I capture what you were trying to say adequately, Jimbo? :-)
[FairfieldLife] Re: Where Do the gods Exist?
Its a damned good question - I have to have an identity, and a personality, in order to function. That doesn't automatically mean that I own it, or think of it as mine, yet, nonetheless, I am wholly responsible for how I act, and what I do. So my embarrassment comes about, when it does, when I miscalculate something, as I sometimes do, since I operate a lot without preconceptions, and hence, in uncharted territory. It is more a mechanism for self-correction, a practical thing, rather than leaning towards shame, which would occur if I were primarily dismayed by my actions, vs. my self-image. It is difficult for me to be more precise, so I'll leave it at that. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, doctordumbass@... wrote: OK, I am glad you enjoyed your nasty tidbit, at my expense, or so you think. Yeah, I've embarrassed the hell out of myself more times than I can count. But it sure beats the alternative, as you amply demonstrate. Just as a question, how can embarrassment happen without attachment? If you have no self and no image of self to protect or defend, how can you possibly be embarrassed, no matter what it does? ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, doctordumbass@ wrote: correction: I am pointing out that the mistake of thinking that non-attachment, and other full-blown symptoms, as I call them, of Enlightenment, can be consciously learned, and that to pretend to do so, is injurious, and a waste of time. Your behavior is a perfect example. No problem. You're just not attached to being able to spell. It's a little like your non-attachment to being able to count, back when we still had posting limits. You were, after all, the FFL poster who spent the most time on the I Have No Self Control bench. :-) ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote: I am pointing out that the mistake of thinking that non-attachment, and other full-blown symptoms, as I call them, of Enlightenment, cannot be consciously learned, and that to pretend to do so, is injurious, and a waste of time. Your behavior is a perfect example. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, doctordumbass@ wrote: If spiritual masters were regulated by the advertising standards authority wouldn't they be fined for their false promises of bliss consciousness? If anything, they should be fined, for, on the one hand, holding out the promise of bliss consciousness, and, on the other, failing to provide a technique to establish such a state. Without the technique, it is like a bunch of Buddhists running around, talking about non-attachment, while reflecting, Noggin-attachment, instead. There is such hunger in the world for spiritual progress, yet 99.999% of the 'teachers' on the subject, have no clue. But *I* do, which is why you should pay attention to *ME* and what *I* say, rather than these know-nothings. Especially if they represent 2500-year-old Buddhist traditions rather than the slightly-over-50-year-old tradition established by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi when he made up the technique of Transcendental Meditation out of whole cloth. Besides, you should believe *ME*, because I'm so bloody *special*, having realized the full potential of this slightly-over-50-year-old tradition, and thus being more enlightened than you are. *I* am the one you should pay attention to, because...uh...well...I deserve it. *I* will tell you the TRUTH about which techniques are effective (even though I've never been trained in how to teach any of them) and will tell you *better* than any of these other 99.999% of teachers (even though I've never been one, and wouldn't even know how to *begin* to teach TM, much less any other form of meditation). So yeah, that's the ticket. Don't believe what any of these (spit) Buddhists say. Believe *ME* because...uh...well...because I *want* you to. The more people like you who focus on me and believe the stuff I say, even though I've never had any training in anything I say, the better off you'll be. Because *I* know the TRUTH, and 99.999% of the spiritual teachers in the world don't. Besides, *I* am humble about how incredibly special and highly evolved *I* am, and (spit) they aren't. Did I capture what you were trying to say adequately, Jimbo? :-)
[FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
Coming back to Barry's post: 'I've seen a number of people have strong experiences of being enlightenment, and then afterwards back off and run away from any sadhana (spiritual practice, such as meditation) that would make being enlightenment come back. : Doesn't that apply to your Rama? I'd never hear of Rama till I encountered FFL but the fact that he was heavily into tranquillisers suggests he was suffering from acute anxiety. Why so? Because he was unable to integrate his own spiritual experiences. (I also see that Rama told his female followers that having sex with him would elevate them to a higher plane of consciousness. Are there really women that fall for that lame chat-up line?) This broadens out into a wider debate on Egomaniac Godmen who had experienced selflessness. Why were so many of them such irritating self-centred arseholes? I don't doubt that some of them - Muktanada and Osho, for example - had genuine experiences of loss of ego identity. But I've had such experiences (only short-lived) and although I had no way of piecing together my lost identity my character habits (my karma?) were still functioning. It did strike me then that genuine spiritual transformation would have to uproot those character habits - perhaps by spending two years cleaning the latrines in a leper colony. I suspect that people like Osho, Chögyam Trungpa, Muktanada and Rama had that ego-loss thing and falsely assumed it was the full enlightenment blow-out and so never realised what self-centred sods they remained. I mean, take Osho's collection of Rolls-Royces: he wanted to have the largest collection in the world. How childish is that? Imagine that an authentic first-century manuscript was uncovered in the Vatican archives that proved Jesus of Nazareth had ten gold-plated chariots and was hoping to add to that collection to out-number the total of the Roman Emperor? Christianity would be finished as a world religion the very next day. Osho's acolytyes came up with some baloney about his mania being a subversive attack on materialism - does anyone still believe that self-serving crap? There's something horribly self-centred about the whole new-age trip that gives it that superficial, delusional character. The trouble is Christianity's emphasis on obedience and humility seems to go too far in the opposite direction so we're still looking for a genuine route out of the dominant materialist paradigm.
[FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
Re In scientific terms, it could be that the electron inside the retina is in sync with the electrons in my my brain. Thus, my mind was able to see the pattern. It could be due to quantum entanglement, which is the best scientific term that I can think of.: The latest thinking in quantum mechanics is that there is only ONE electron in existence! How that can be the case is beyond my simple mind but it tallies nicely with what you're saying. By the way: when I said that we are at root a one-celled creature that knows how to split and grow, I should also have mentioned that what else we are expert at is growing a pair of lungs, growing a heart, a nervous system, a liver, sexual organs, and what-have-you. We're walking miracles but as that know-how is unconscious instead we like to brag about the fact we have an MA from Harvard - which is chicken shit compared to our innate abilities. Spirtitual practices (and drugs) can bring those innate abilities into conscious awareness. There's a school of thinking that embraces New Thought, Christian Science and similar systems which claims that we only become sick because of faulty thinking. I suspect their intuition is spot on. There mistake is to imagine that one can think one's way out of illness. You have to access that deepest strata of our being to effect changes. (Knowledge is structured in consciousness.) There are plenty of anecdotal stories about those who have take psychedelics or practised TM or other spiritual disciplines who have had spontaneous remissions of serious maladies. It could well be that they accessed those deeper strata which knew instinctively what to do. The whole field needs to be investigated by hard-nosed scientists but there aren't many prepared to tackle the legal obstacles in the way of serious research.
[FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
Re In scientific terms, it could be that the electron inside the retina is in sync with the electrons in my my brain. Thus, my mind was able to see the pattern. It could be due to quantum entanglement, which is the best scientific term that I can think of.: The latest thinking in quantum mechanics is that there is only ONE electron in existence! How that can be the case is beyond my simple mind but it tallies nicely with what you're saying. By the way: when I said that we are at root a one-celled creature that knows how to split and grow, I should also have mentioned that what else we are expert at is growing a pair of lungs, growing a heart, a nervous system, a liver, sexual organs, and what-have-you. We're walking miracles but as that know-how is unconscious instead we like to brag about the fact we have an MA from Harvard - which is chicken shit compared to our innate abilities. Spiritual practices (and drugs) can bring those innate abilities into conscious awareness. There's a school of thinking that embraces New Thought, Christian Science and similar systems which claims that we only become sick because of faulty thinking. I suspect their intuition is spot on. Their mistake is to imagine that one can think one's way out of illness. You have to access that deepest strata of our being to effect changes. (Knowledge is structured in consciousness.) There are plenty of anecdotal stories about those who have take psychedelics or practised TM or other spiritual disciplines who have had spontaneous remissions of serious maladies. It could well be that they accessed those deeper strata which knows instinctively what to do. The whole field needs to be investigated by hard-nosed scientists but there aren't many prepared to tackle the legal obstacles in the way of serious research.
[FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
S3, 'The latest thinking in quantum mechanics is that there is only ONE electron in existence! How that can be the case is beyond my simple mind but it tallies nicely with what you're saying. This is a fascinating topic to contemplate. But I'm sure there are already many scientists who are pursuing this area of study. Perhaps, quantum entanglement is the explanation as to why some rishis in the ancient past claimed that they had traveled to various planets in the universe through meditation alone. Given my limited experience, there are probably some meditators today who can attest to the possibility of traveling to the Moon and beyond through meditation. Further, quantum entanglement could be the mechanism for instantaneous communication with sentient beings from other parts of the universe with a special machine or through the the human brain alone. Regarding spontaneous cell repair of the body, the TMO has taught in the past that ayurveda and mantras can repair diseases without complicated medical operations. Deepak Chopra has become world famous for promoting this ancient method of healing. Ayurveda is essentially saying that the body is fully equipped to repair any diseases in the body, including cancer and AIDS. The body already has the chemicals and antibodies to repair these diseases. Supposedly, the body gets sick because the healing mechanism is out of balance. They can be repaired by special herbal preparations and special primordial sounds or mantras. Some hospitals have already recognized the value of these natural healing methods, such as ayurveda and accupuncture. But allopathic medicine is still the main treatment method for those people who have not maintained a healthy style of living to prevent diseases. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, s3raphita@... wrote: Re In scientific terms, it could be that the electron inside the retina is in sync with the electrons in my my brain. Thus, my mind was able to see the pattern. It could be due to quantum entanglement, which is the best scientific term that I can think of.: The latest thinking in quantum mechanics is that there is only ONE electron in existence! How that can be the case is beyond my simple mind but it tallies nicely with what you're saying. By the way: when I said that we are at root a one-celled creature that knows how to split and grow, I should also have mentioned that what else we are expert at is growing a pair of lungs, growing a heart, a nervous system, a liver, sexual organs, and what-have-you. We're walking miracles but as that know-how is unconscious instead we like to brag about the fact we have an MA from Harvard - which is chicken shit compared to our innate abilities. Spiritual practices (and drugs) can bring those innate abilities into conscious awareness. There's a school of thinking that embraces New Thought, Christian Science and similar systems which claims that we only become sick because of faulty thinking. I suspect their intuition is spot on. Their mistake is to imagine that one can think one's way out of illness. You have to access that deepest strata of our being to effect changes. (Knowledge is structured in consciousness.) There are plenty of anecdotal stories about those who have take psychedelics or practised TM or other spiritual disciplines who have had spontaneous remissions of serious maladies. It could well be that they accessed those deeper strata which knows instinctively what to do. The whole field needs to be investigated by hard-nosed scientists but there aren't many prepared to tackle the legal obstacles in the way of serious research.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Where Do the gods Exist?
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, wrote: Coming back to Barry's post: 'I've seen a number of people have strong experiences of being enlightenment, and then afterwards back off and run away from any sadhana (spiritual practice, such as meditation) that would make being enlightenment come back. : Doesn't that apply to your Rama? I'd never hear of Rama till I encountered FFL but the fact that he was heavily into tranquillisers suggests he was suffering from acute anxiety. He got into Valium late in his life, as I understand it after it was prescribed for him after a sports injury. My personal feeling is that taking it was not in any way anxiety-related, but sensitivity-related, in that the Valium made pain go away. I have heard from people closer to him than I was that he felt physical pain a lot, and so he may have kept taking them after the injury was healed and then gotten hooked because of the insidiously addictive nature of the drug. Why so? Because he was unable to integrate his own spiritual experiences. I was not thinking about Rama when I wrote the line you quote. (I also see that Rama told his female followers that having sex with him would elevate them to a higher plane of consciousness. Are there really women that fall for that lame chat-up line?) More than you might imagine. Hey, Rama was at least tall, fairly good-looking, and charismatic as hell. Maharishi managed to get women to have sex with him, and he was a squat little toad. :-) This broadens out into a wider debate on Egomaniac Godmen who had experienced selflessness. Why were so many of them such irritating self-centred arseholes? I personally associate it more with spiritual tradition than any particular cause and effect you could pin down or name. That is, I think it's the dynamics of the spiritual teacher role and its interaction with followers that has been passed down to us that is the culprit. Someone has some realizations -- major or minor -- and the first thing they've got to do is hang out a shingle and become a teacher. In that new role, they've got to deal with the focus of from dozens to thousands of students, all projecting their fantasies onto this new (and inexperienced) teacher, all gazing at them as if they were God and being told by past scriptures/books, etc. that the way to be around a spiritual teacher is to do everything they fucking say and never, ever doubt them. It's a scenario almost *designed* to charge up the teachers' egos and make them crazier than a loon. I don't doubt that some of them - Muktanada and Osho, for example - had genuine experiences of loss of ego identity. But I've had such experiences (only short-lived) and although I had no way of piecing together my lost identity my character habits (my karma?) were still functioning. It did strike me then that genuine spiritual transformation would have to uproot those character habits - perhaps by spending two years cleaning the latrines in a leper colony. It wouldn't hurt. And at least the latrines would be cleaner, which is a more real accomplishment than many of the teachers managed. I suspect that people like Osho, Chögyam Trungpa, Muktanada and Rama had that ego-loss thing and falsely assumed it was the full enlightenment blow-out and so never realised what self-centred sods they remained. Another possibility, of course, is that there is no such *thing* as the full enlightenment blow-out. You don't seem to accept that as a possibility, but I do. I mean, take Osho's collection of Rolls-Royces: he wanted to have the largest collection in the world. How childish is that? Imagine that an authentic first-century manuscript was uncovered in the Vatican archives that proved Jesus of Nazareth had ten gold-plated chariots and was hoping to add to that collection to out-number the total of the Roman Emperor? Christianity would be finished as a world religion the very next day. Now you're just being naive. Christian TBs would find a way to rationalize it in a second. Osho's acolytyes came up with some baloney about his mania being a subversive attack on materialism - does anyone still believe that self-serving crap? And Christ's followers would make up crap about it takes a thorn to remove a thorn and how his chariots were a brilliant satire of Rome. There's something horribly self-centred about the whole new-age trip that gives it that superficial, delusional character. It is *not* just the New Age. I suspect it has been like this at every point in human history in which there have been people claiming to be enlightened. We just see them fall off their pedestals more often these days, because of access and the media's fascination with fallen stars.
[FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
But in samadhi, during the dreaming state of consciousness, most people can experience lucid images which are not coming from the eyes. IMO, these experiences are just as valid as those during the waking state. Just as valid as in *you* accord them the same importance? If you have a dream about being run over by a truck is it the same as being actually run over on the way to the shops? If you dream about talking to someone and they tell you something, is it the same to you as reading this? Meaning that other people can read it and does it fit in with a procession of events from me reading Share's post and you reading mine? I suspect that it's all just isolated in your head and means nothing unless you tell someone and they choose to believe it. As a matter of fact, some dreams can be interpreted as messages from past lives or from the future. I'm positive you can interpret dreams as meaning something important to you but what about all the dreams that don't pertain to anything you recognise in your day to day life? The signal is so drowned out by noise that the only way you can get any sort of sense out of it is by filtering anything that doesn't seem to make sense out of the picture and forgetting about it. Very convenient but not very scientific, you really need a way to explain why other dreams don't make sense, you can't just cherry pick a few hits and claim that some other force is open to you. In the Old Testament, for example, the pharoah of Egypt asked Daniel to interpret his dreams. And, Daniel correctly interpreted that the dream was about a seven year drought that will descend upon the land. For this, the pharoah rewarded Daniel handsomely. I don't suppose you have a story from the last couple of millennia we could consider? I mean, good for Daniel, but surely with the amount of people around now and the momentous events that pollute the news on a daily basis shouldn't we have all sorts of prophets recording their visions and posting on youtube? We could at least then see for ourselves what sort of hit-rate this awesome latent power has. There is probably a scientific explanation as to why this happens Yup, and this is it: People see patterns in random noise, conveniently forget the overwhelming number of misses and attribute hits to some higher power. IMO, this happens because the dreaming state of consciousness belongs in the higher dimension above space-time. As such, the dream state can see the events that happened before the present time and those events that belong in the future. This isn't very scientific. If there were other dimensions we would notice them somewhat and it would make the walk to the shops a bit strange to say the least, we can't even imagine extra dimensions let alone imagine what navigating through them would be like. The trouble is you hear about things like extra dimensions in string theory and use that as a panacea to justify all the stuff you want to be true. Like your claim that the fact there might be 7 extra dimension might corresponds to the 7 states of consciousness. It doesn't make sense for so many reasons but the main one is that the dimensions (if they exist) are curled up so small they can't interact with our universe, just as well because the 3 dimensions we live in are plenty and there isn't even a way of imagining any more, our world would simply stop working. But the idea that there is a higher plane where these dreams live is interesting but for the reasons above I doubt it's real or we would have access to it these days and not have to rely on ancient stories for evidence. It would be practically rather useful after all.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Where Do the gods Exist?
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, wrote: Couple of experiences to relate, triggered by what you posted here. I remember in my teaching days that occasionally someone would comment how uncomfortable it was to just melt into the transcendence. Maybe they didn't use that exact phrase, but it was something along those lines and losing one self. Well, I am not a regular mediator, but when I do meditate it is TM, and recently I had a deep experience of transcendence, and yes, it was uncomfortable in just the way that those people would describe. Kinda strange, isn't it. Is that the onset of old age. (-: Experience #2. Lately I've have some issues with a tenant in a building we are trying to renovate. I like him, but there have been constant disagreements. It's dawned on me that he is probably bi-polar. It's taken a lot of mental energy to deal with it. When I get in situations like that, I don't turn the radio on in the car, so I can work on the problem in my head without a lot of distractions. And I've noticed how much more aware I am of my own thoughts and the things around me as I drive without listening to the radio. Now tell me, doesn't that just blow your socks off. (-: It loosened them somewhat, which is pretty good considering they are stretchy athletic socks, because I just came in from a short run. :-) I would suggest that experience #2 is related to experience #1. People get so used to where they live -- be it in their heads (their idea of self) or in their houses (their idea of 'home') -- that anything that separates them from all of this familiarity is seen as disruptive or threatening. It's one thing to *talk* about selflessness, but quite another to have the self just friggin' *go away*. For the same reason that many people *can't* be in the car without a radio playing to distract them and keep things feeling normal, many people can't conceive of being without the fiction of the being a self. My bet is that if science came up with a safe, no-side-effects pill that would provide the experience of No-Self, very few on this forum would take it. They would pay big bucks for some pill that would enable the self they cling to to fly, or turn invisible, or read minds, or stuff like that, but all of those things are safe because it's still the SOS (same old self) doing them. But being *without* that self, and actually being without a self, period? That's perceived as scary by most people, even the ones who have been touting the goal of selflessness for decades. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, wrote: Re this Chuang-tzu quote: A monk fell asleep and dreamed he was a butterfly. When he awoke, he asked himself Was I a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming I am a man? Chuang-tzu's point was NOT to imply that all experience is dream-like (it isn't); Chuang-tzu's point was NOT to suggest that he could really be a butterfly (he wasn't one)! What Chuang-tzu was getting at is that our everyday sense of self - I am a man - a father - a doctor - an American - is just the social role we've been conditioned to accept. It's our sense of identity he's attacking. It's that false sense of a permanent ID in the ever-changing flow of the Tao that is our hang-up. Although part of me chafes at the very notion of someone -- anyone -- saying What such-and-such sage meant... (we don't know, and never will), your *interpretation* of what he meant strikes a resonance with me. The phrase I like the most is that false sense of a permanent ID, with the emphasis on the word permanent. Whatever the fuck was going on around the Rama guy I spent time with, one of the benefits *of* being around him was that the energy field was so powerful and so transformative that you really *couldn't* hold on to any fixed version of self to identify with. One desert trip blew you out of your socks and out of your self, for at least a week. You tried to come home and identify with the things and roles you had identified with before, and it just didn't work. You weren't that self any more. Better, for that week you weren't really *any* self, fixed or otherwise. You were a churning flux of selves, all of them fleeting, all transitory. I came to really like it. Even if some future shrink figures out what was happening to the hundreds of people who experienced this and writes it off to whatever term he invents for explaining that phenomenon, I prefer to continue thinking of it as unexplainable. If you ever did LSD back in the day -- *good* acid, not that street shit that appeared after 1967 -- you may remember a similar feeling in the days after a powerful trip. 125 micrograms of Sandoz LSD would blow you out of any fixed self for 6-8 hours, but the really interesting thing was that for some *days* afterwards you had some difficulty getting back to the self you thought you were before the trip. Being around the Rama guy
Re: [FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
John, I've written about it here before: knowledge of previous lives. In every case the knowledge has helped me understand the dynamics of the relationship in this lifetime. So maybe we'll get a sidhi on an as needed basis! On Saturday, January 25, 2014 10:03 PM, jr_...@yahoo.com jr_...@yahoo.com wrote: Share, it's been my experience that a Patanjali sidhi is developing even though it's not a part of the TMSP. Can you explain more about the Patanjali siddhi that you're experiencing?
Re: [FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
Salyavin, my ears aren't quite wide enough yet. Maybe after the Dome (-: What I really mean is I'm rushing and will read your long reply after the Dome... On Sunday, January 26, 2014 1:35 AM, salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote: Hmmm, Share, I already replied to this but the mysterious aether that is the internet seems to have delayed its arrival. Or maybe some subtle beings have intercepted to try and prevent its revelatory nature reaching wider ears;-) I'll wait for a bit longer and then have another go...
[FairfieldLife] Re: Where Do the gods Exist?
well, it's sort of remarkable that you bring that up, because that is another thought, or experience that I have been having. People talk about enlightenment, but if they knew what it really entailed, I think they would take a pass They want that experience to dove tail into all their familiar habits and ways of thinking. But I don't think it works that way at all. I think a big part of the things we're attached to gets torn away, and that is not something with which most people would be comfortable. That unexpected deep experience of meditation sort of alerted me to that situation as well as some things that have occurred in daily activity. I have some other nice experiences, but they seem to sneak in the back door, so it is more of a gentle progression. I am not looking for anything, but I do notice some changes taking place. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, wrote: Couple of experiences to relate, triggered by what you posted here. I remember in my teaching days that occasionally someone would comment how uncomfortable it was to just melt into the transcendence. Maybe they didn't use that exact phrase, but it was something along those lines and losing one self. Well, I am not a regular mediator, but when I do meditate it is TM, and recently I had a deep experience of transcendence, and yes, it was uncomfortable in just the way that those people would describe. Kinda strange, isn't it. Is that the onset of old age. (-: Experience #2. Lately I've have some issues with a tenant in a building we are trying to renovate. I like him, but there have been constant disagreements. It's dawned on me that he is probably bi-polar. It's taken a lot of mental energy to deal with it. When I get in situations like that, I don't turn the radio on in the car, so I can work on the problem in my head without a lot of distractions. And I've noticed how much more aware I am of my own thoughts and the things around me as I drive without listening to the radio. Now tell me, doesn't that just blow your socks off. (-: It loosened them somewhat, which is pretty good considering they are stretchy athletic socks, because I just came in from a short run. :-) I would suggest that experience #2 is related to experience #1. People get so used to where they live -- be it in their heads (their idea of self) or in their houses (their idea of 'home') -- that anything that separates them from all of this familiarity is seen as disruptive or threatening. It's one thing to *talk* about selflessness, but quite another to have the self just friggin' *go away*. For the same reason that many people *can't* be in the car without a radio playing to distract them and keep things feeling normal, many people can't conceive of being without the fiction of the being a self. My bet is that if science came up with a safe, no-side-effects pill that would provide the experience of No-Self, very few on this forum would take it. They would pay big bucks for some pill that would enable the self they cling to to fly, or turn invisible, or read minds, or stuff like that, but all of those things are safe because it's still the SOS (same old self) doing them. But being *without* that self, and actually being without a self, period? That's perceived as scary by most people, even the ones who have been touting the goal of selflessness for decades. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, wrote: Re this Chuang-tzu quote: A monk fell asleep and dreamed he was a butterfly. When he awoke, he asked himself Was I a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming I am a man? Chuang-tzu's point was NOT to imply that all experience is dream-like (it isn't); Chuang-tzu's point was NOT to suggest that he could really be a butterfly (he wasn't one)! What Chuang-tzu was getting at is that our everyday sense of self - I am a man - a father - a doctor - an American - is just the social role we've been conditioned to accept. It's our sense of identity he's attacking. It's that false sense of a permanent ID in the ever-changing flow of the Tao that is our hang-up. Although part of me chafes at the very notion of someone -- anyone -- saying What such-and-such sage meant... (we don't know, and never will), your *interpretation* of what he meant strikes a resonance with me. The phrase I like the most is that false sense of a permanent ID, with the emphasis on the word permanent. Whatever the fuck was going on around the Rama guy I spent time with, one of the benefits *of* being around him was that the energy field was so powerful and so transformative that you really *couldn't* hold on to any fixed version of self to identify with. One desert trip blew you out of your socks and out of your
[FairfieldLife] Re: Where Do the gods Exist?
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, wrote: well, it's sort of remarkable that you bring that up, because that is another thought, or experience that I have been having. People talk about enlightenment, but if they knew what it really entailed, I think they would take a pass I agree. They want to experience enlightenment. That is, they want it to be something that happens to Who They Already Are. As several teachers I've worked with have said, One can *never* experience enlightenment; you can only be enlightenment. That enlightenment has no sense of fixed self, so they can't be who they think they are any more and still be it. I've seen a number of people have strong experiences of being enlightenment, and then afterwards back off and run away from any sadhana (spiritual practice, such as meditation) that would make being enlightenment come back. They want that experience to dove tail into all their familiar habits and ways of thinking. But I don't think it works that way at all. I think a big part of the things we're attached to gets torn away, and that is not something with which most people would be comfortable. Again, I agree. The periods of being enlightenment I've experienced have never been comfortable in the sense that many people think of that word. It was a different kind of comfort, but not one in which there is a me the way you've always known him *to be* comfortable. That unexpected deep experience of meditation sort of alerted me to that situation as well as some things that have occurred in daily activity. Yup, there is nothing like an extended period of samadhi (or samadhi-in-action, persisting for days, weeks, or months) to make one realize that one was never really experiencing it before in daily meditation. It's like apples and orange tractor-trailer trucks. :-) To extend the above metaphor, before it was like self experiencing meditation, whereas during an extended period of samadhi it's more being meditation. There is no self that can experience, and during thoughtless samadhi (that is, not samadhi-in-action), nothing that can be experienced even if there were. I have some other nice experiences, but they seem to sneak in the back door, so it is more of a gentle progression. I am not looking for anything, but I do notice some changes taking place. As Xeno said recently, I have given up even seeking experiences. They come, they go...big whoop. The only thing that seems to be relevant to living a spiritual life is to embrace them as they come *and* as they go, and do both without attachment. IMO, of course. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, wrote: Couple of experiences to relate, triggered by what you posted here. I remember in my teaching days that occasionally someone would comment how uncomfortable it was to just melt into the transcendence. Maybe they didn't use that exact phrase, but it was something along those lines and losing one self. Well, I am not a regular mediator, but when I do meditate it is TM, and recently I had a deep experience of transcendence, and yes, it was uncomfortable in just the way that those people would describe. Kinda strange, isn't it. Is that the onset of old age. (-: Experience #2. Lately I've have some issues with a tenant in a building we are trying to renovate. I like him, but there have been constant disagreements. It's dawned on me that he is probably bi-polar. It's taken a lot of mental energy to deal with it. When I get in situations like that, I don't turn the radio on in the car, so I can work on the problem in my head without a lot of distractions. And I've noticed how much more aware I am of my own thoughts and the things around me as I drive without listening to the radio. Now tell me, doesn't that just blow your socks off. (-: It loosened them somewhat, which is pretty good considering they are stretchy athletic socks, because I just came in from a short run. :-) I would suggest that experience #2 is related to experience #1. People get so used to where they live -- be it in their heads (their idea of self) or in their houses (their idea of 'home') -- that anything that separates them from all of this familiarity is seen as disruptive or threatening. It's one thing to *talk* about selflessness, but quite another to have the self just friggin' *go away*. For the same reason that many people *can't* be in the car without a radio playing to distract them and keep things feeling normal, many people can't conceive of being without the fiction of the being a self. My bet is that if science came up with a safe, no-side-effects pill that would provide the experience of No-Self, very few on this forum would take it. They would pay big bucks for some pill that would enable the self they cling to to fly, or turn invisible, or read minds, or stuff like that, but all of those things are safe because it's still the SOS (same old self) doing
[FairfieldLife] Re: Where Do the gods Exist?
Thank you. I find those comments helpful (-: ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, wrote: well, it's sort of remarkable that you bring that up, because that is another thought, or experience that I have been having. People talk about enlightenment, but if they knew what it really entailed, I think they would take a pass I agree. They want to experience enlightenment. That is, they want it to be something that happens to Who They Already Are. As several teachers I've worked with have said, One can *never* experience enlightenment; you can only be enlightenment. That enlightenment has no sense of fixed self, so they can't be who they think they are any more and still be it. I've seen a number of people have strong experiences of being enlightenment, and then afterwards back off and run away from any sadhana (spiritual practice, such as meditation) that would make being enlightenment come back. They want that experience to dove tail into all their familiar habits and ways of thinking. But I don't think it works that way at all. I think a big part of the things we're attached to gets torn away, and that is not something with which most people would be comfortable. Again, I agree. The periods of being enlightenment I've experienced have never been comfortable in the sense that many people think of that word. It was a different kind of comfort, but not one in which there is a me the way you've always known him *to be* comfortable. That unexpected deep experience of meditation sort of alerted me to that situation as well as some things that have occurred in daily activity. Yup, there is nothing like an extended period of samadhi (or samadhi-in-action, persisting for days, weeks, or months) to make one realize that one was never really experiencing it before in daily meditation. It's like apples and orange tractor-trailer trucks. :-) To extend the above metaphor, before it was like self experiencing meditation, whereas during an extended period of samadhi it's more being meditation. There is no self that can experience, and during thoughtless samadhi (that is, not samadhi-in-action), nothing that can be experienced even if there were. I have some other nice experiences, but they seem to sneak in the back door, so it is more of a gentle progression. I am not looking for anything, but I do notice some changes taking place. As Xeno said recently, I have given up even seeking experiences. They come, they go...big whoop. The only thing that seems to be relevant to living a spiritual life is to embrace them as they come *and* as they go, and do both without attachment. IMO, of course. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, wrote: Couple of experiences to relate, triggered by what you posted here. I remember in my teaching days that occasionally someone would comment how uncomfortable it was to just melt into the transcendence. Maybe they didn't use that exact phrase, but it was something along those lines and losing one self. Well, I am not a regular mediator, but when I do meditate it is TM, and recently I had a deep experience of transcendence, and yes, it was uncomfortable in just the way that those people would describe. Kinda strange, isn't it. Is that the onset of old age. (-: Experience #2. Lately I've have some issues with a tenant in a building we are trying to renovate. I like him, but there have been constant disagreements. It's dawned on me that he is probably bi-polar. It's taken a lot of mental energy to deal with it. When I get in situations like that, I don't turn the radio on in the car, so I can work on the problem in my head without a lot of distractions. And I've noticed how much more aware I am of my own thoughts and the things around me as I drive without listening to the radio. Now tell me, doesn't that just blow your socks off. (-: It loosened them somewhat, which is pretty good considering they are stretchy athletic socks, because I just came in from a short run. :-) I would suggest that experience #2 is related to experience #1. People get so used to where they live -- be it in their heads (their idea of self) or in their houses (their idea of 'home') -- that anything that separates them from all of this familiarity is seen as disruptive or threatening. It's one thing to *talk* about selflessness, but quite another to have the self just friggin' *go away*. For the same reason that many people *can't* be in the car without a radio playing to distract them and keep things feeling normal, many people can't conceive of being without the fiction of the being a self. My bet is that if science came up with a safe, no-side-effects pill that would provide the experience of No-Self, very few on this forum would
[FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
I think dreams are much more incoherent than they seem on recall in waking. Sometimes during dreaming I can focus on text, a piece of paper with text that appears in a particular dream. When I focus on the text, it is totally incoherent, nothing is readable, but in the general course of a dream it *seems* significant and *as if* it is readable. Situations, locations in dreams shift dramatically and it seems like there is a flow from one to another in recall. It is almost like visual morphing you see in movies. Interpreting dreams seems like a waste of time. Because the mind is so good a making up stories to explain things, it can formulate these supposedly meaningful patterns from the incoherence of a dream with ease. I doubt there is much significance in this. Dreams are a fun experience, or sometimes, not so fun. We have enough fantasies in life when we are awake, so why add fuel to the fire by claiming significance for a state of experience that is far more disjointed, wandering, and uncoordinated? ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote: But in samadhi, during the dreaming state of consciousness, most people can experience lucid images which are not coming from the eyes. IMO, these experiences are just as valid as those during the waking state. Just as valid as in *you* accord them the same importance? If you have a dream about being run over by a truck is it the same as being actually run over on the way to the shops? If you dream about talking to someone and they tell you something, is it the same to you as reading this? Meaning that other people can read it and does it fit in with a procession of events from me reading Share's post and you reading mine? I suspect that it's all just isolated in your head and means nothing unless you tell someone and they choose to believe it. As a matter of fact, some dreams can be interpreted as messages from past lives or from the future. I'm positive you can interpret dreams as meaning something important to you but what about all the dreams that don't pertain to anything you recognise in your day to day life? The signal is so drowned out by noise that the only way you can get any sort of sense out of it is by filtering anything that doesn't seem to make sense out of the picture and forgetting about it. Very convenient but not very scientific, you really need a way to explain why other dreams don't make sense, you can't just cherry pick a few hits and claim that some other force is open to you. In the Old Testament, for example, the pharoah of Egypt asked Daniel to interpret his dreams. And, Daniel correctly interpreted that the dream was about a seven year drought that will descend upon the land. For this, the pharoah rewarded Daniel handsomely. I don't suppose you have a story from the last couple of millennia we could consider? I mean, good for Daniel, but surely with the amount of people around now and the momentous events that pollute the news on a daily basis shouldn't we have all sorts of prophets recording their visions and posting on youtube? We could at least then see for ourselves what sort of hit-rate this awesome latent power has. There is probably a scientific explanation as to why this happens Yup, and this is it: People see patterns in random noise, conveniently forget the overwhelming number of misses and attribute hits to some higher power. IMO, this happens because the dreaming state of consciousness belongs in the higher dimension above space-time. As such, the dream state can see the events that happened before the present time and those events that belong in the future. This isn't very scientific. If there were other dimensions we would notice them somewhat and it would make the walk to the shops a bit strange to say the least, we can't even imagine extra dimensions let alone imagine what navigating through them would be like. The trouble is you hear about things like extra dimensions in string theory and use that as a panacea to justify all the stuff you want to be true. Like your claim that the fact there might be 7 extra dimension might corresponds to the 7 states of consciousness. It doesn't make sense for so many reasons but the main one is that the dimensions (if they exist) are curled up so small they can't interact with our universe, just as well because the 3 dimensions we live in are plenty and there isn't even a way of imagining any more, our world would simply stop working. But the idea that there is a higher plane where these dreams live is interesting but for the reasons above I doubt it's real or we would have access to it these days and not have to rely on ancient stories for evidence. It would be practically rather useful after all.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Where Do the gods Exist?
Barry wrote: As Xeno said recently, I have given up even seeking experiences. They come, they go...big whoop. The only thing that seems to be relevant to living a spiritual life is to embrace them as they come *and* as they go, and do both without attachment. IMO, of course. Regarding your phrase, do both [embracing and letting go] without attachment. , this is a description that is impossible to perform in daily life. I have come across this instruction before, from Buddhists, who try to perform action without attachment, as if a person has a choice in the matter. I am pointing it out, because they are mistaking the non-attachment that is a natural consequence of Moksha, with some mental process to free oneself from an impression in the mind. It is total nonsense. This becomes evident when a person attempts to convince themselves they are not attached to their actions, when, due to their state of consciousness, attachment is inevitable, and not something to attempt to change consciously. It causes a noticeable strain in their thinking, and behavior. Instead of focusing on progress, they get lost in mental games, *trying* unsuccessfully, to *act* and *appear* unattached. The state of non-attachment is not something to be cultivated slowly. Non-attachment only flowers when everything is available, due to Liberation; an absence, both of boundaries, and complete, eternal, inner fulfillment. When we are completely satisfied, within ourselves, established in infinite and lively Silence, only then does non-attachment occur naturally, and not before. Hope this helps. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, wrote: well, it's sort of remarkable that you bring that up, because that is another thought, or experience that I have been having. People talk about enlightenment, but if they knew what it really entailed, I think they would take a pass I agree. They want to experience enlightenment. That is, they want it to be something that happens to Who They Already Are. As several teachers I've worked with have said, One can *never* experience enlightenment; you can only be enlightenment. That enlightenment has no sense of fixed self, so they can't be who they think they are any more and still be it. I've seen a number of people have strong experiences of being enlightenment, and then afterwards back off and run away from any sadhana (spiritual practice, such as meditation) that would make being enlightenment come back. They want that experience to dove tail into all their familiar habits and ways of thinking. But I don't think it works that way at all. I think a big part of the things we're attached to gets torn away, and that is not something with which most people would be comfortable. Again, I agree. The periods of being enlightenment I've experienced have never been comfortable in the sense that many people think of that word. It was a different kind of comfort, but not one in which there is a me the way you've always known him *to be* comfortable. That unexpected deep experience of meditation sort of alerted me to that situation as well as some things that have occurred in daily activity. Yup, there is nothing like an extended period of samadhi (or samadhi-in-action, persisting for days, weeks, or months) to make one realize that one was never really experiencing it before in daily meditation. It's like apples and orange tractor-trailer trucks. :-) To extend the above metaphor, before it was like self experiencing meditation, whereas during an extended period of samadhi it's more being meditation. There is no self that can experience, and during thoughtless samadhi (that is, not samadhi-in-action), nothing that can be experienced even if there were. I have some other nice experiences, but they seem to sneak in the back door, so it is more of a gentle progression. I am not looking for anything, but I do notice some changes taking place. As Xeno said recently, I have given up even seeking experiences. They come, they go...big whoop. The only thing that seems to be relevant to living a spiritual life is to embrace them as they come *and* as they go, and do both without attachment. IMO, of course. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, wrote: Couple of experiences to relate, triggered by what you posted here. I remember in my teaching days that occasionally someone would comment how uncomfortable it was to just melt into the transcendence. Maybe they didn't use that exact phrase, but it was something along those lines and losing one self. Well, I am not a regular mediator, but when I do meditate it is TM, and recently I had a deep experience of transcendence, and yes, it was uncomfortable in just the way that those people would describe. Kinda strange, isn't it. Is
[FairfieldLife] Re: Where Do the gods Exist?
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, doctordumbass@... wrote: Barry wrote: As Xeno said recently, I have given up even seeking experiences. They come, they go...big whoop. The only thing that seems to be relevant to living a spiritual life is to embrace them as they come *and* as they go, and do both without attachment. IMO, of course. Regarding your phrase, do both [embracing and letting go] without attachment. , this is a description that is impossible to perform in daily life. I stopped reading right here. I think you have mistaken the phrase I have never been able to do it for that is impossible.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Where Do the gods Exist?
In regards to this, a few weeks ago I was listening to videos on YouTube from various spiritual teachers, and someone had posted a short video of Adyashanti which was titled 'When Self Obsession Falls Away', although from the talk posted itself I would have called the segment 'The Day of Awakening'. It is a very succinct description of how unspectacular it is. I thought it was such a clear description, I have transcribed it here, with a few edits to remove the uhs etc., of speech. [The Day of Awakening] It's not a mysterious thing, it's not a spiritually knowable thing. It's not a high state. It's actually almost the opposite of all that. It's so normalized and simple and unadorned. It's something that self couldn't actually possibly want. Because at that moment, you didn't end up being something better. There was no prize at the end of the line. There is nothing that you could have said about it - you wouldn't have much to tell anybody about that day. It wouldn't be like you have a big insight, like sometimes you do have insights, that can be quite transforming too. But this is of a different character - its something of a totally different character. It's not really an insight necessarily, it's not coming upon a more preferable experience, although you could evenly imagine that your body may experience a certain kind of relaxation, which is nice, but it wouldn't be, an achievement - it'd just be simple. Everything would be the way it was before that day. Nothing would have been solved on that day, nothing. There would be no guarantee that your life would end up a certain way - that it would be easy, or without any trial or difficulty. There would be no resolution - to anything - which, strangely enough, would the resolution to darn near everything. It would almost be - this is not true, but - it would almost be as if something walked off the stage without there being any resolution to anything. But only then did you realize that the problem was that you had been waiting for resolution, your whole life, for certain things - Why am I this way? Why do I think that? Why am I so screwed up in this way? Why do I hate my neighbor? Why am I so angry at something that happened forever ago? Imagine, nothing solved - nothing solved! You have no answers to any of those questions. Except you can just feel they would not be a problem any more. Not because they have been solved, but because you're not trying to solve them anymore. There wouldn't be that constant sort of contraction or insistance on life going a particular way. It would be just life would go the way it actually goes.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Where Do the gods Exist?
Love it, Xeno, thanks for posting. Heat wave here today, up to 45. Then Arctic Vortex III tonight. Opportunity to be flexible, ha! On Sunday, January 26, 2014 9:58 AM, anartax...@yahoo.com anartax...@yahoo.com wrote: In regards to this, a few weeks ago I was listening to videos on YouTube from various spiritual teachers, and someone had posted a short video of Adyashanti which was titled 'When Self Obsession Falls Away', although from the talk posted itself I would have called the segment 'The Day of Awakening'. It is a very succinct description of how unspectacular it is. I thought it was such a clear description, I have transcribed it here, with a few edits to remove the uhs etc., of speech. [The Day of Awakening] It's not a mysterious thing, it's not a spiritually knowable thing. It's not a high state. It's actually almost the opposite of all that. It's so normalized and simple and unadorned. It's something that self couldn't actually possibly want. Because at that moment, you didn't end up being something better. There was no prize at the end of the line. There is nothing that you could have said about it - you wouldn't have much to tell anybody about that day. It wouldn't be like you have a big insight, like sometimes you do have insights, that can be quite transforming too. But this is of a different character - its something of a totally different character. It's not really an insight necessarily, it's not coming upon a more preferable experience, although you could evenly imagine that your body may experience a certain kind of relaxation, which is nice, but it wouldn't be, an achievement - it'd just be simple. Everything would be the way it was before that day. Nothing would have been solved on that day, nothing. There would be no guarantee that your life would end up a certain way - that it would be easy, or without any trial or difficulty. There would be no resolution - to anything - which, strangely enough, would the resolution to darn near everything. It would almost be - this is not true, but - it would almost be as if something walked off the stage without there being any resolution to anything. But only then did you realize that the problem was that you had been waiting for resolution, your whole life, for certain things - Why am I this way? Why do I think that? Why am I so screwed up in this way? Why do I hate my neighbor? Why am I so angry at something that happened forever ago? Imagine, nothing solved - nothing solved! You have no answers to any of those questions. Except you can just feel they would not be a problem any more. Not because they have been solved, but because you're not trying to solve them anymore. There wouldn't be that constant sort of contraction or insistance on life going a particular way. It would be just life would go the way it actually goes.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Where Do the gods Exist?
whatever. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, doctordumbass@... wrote: Barry wrote: As Xeno said recently, I have given up even seeking experiences. They come, they go...big whoop. The only thing that seems to be relevant to living a spiritual life is to embrace them as they come *and* as they go, and do both without attachment. IMO, of course. Regarding your phrase, do both [embracing and letting go] without attachment. , this is a description that is impossible to perform in daily life. I stopped reading right here. I think you have mistaken the phrase I have never been able to do it for that is impossible.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Where Do the gods Exist?
One word: Bingo ! Trying to rule without nothingness is mood-making. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTIiUOGk508 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTIiUOGk508
Re: [FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
Share, I've written about it here before: knowledge of previous lives. In every case the knowledge has helped me understand the dynamics of the relationship in this lifetime. So maybe we'll get a sidhi on an as needed basis! Yes, I've read those posts mentioning this. I just wanted to make sure what siddhi it is you're talking about. Anyway, I believe that knowledge of past lives is a good proof that human consciousness belongs in the higher dimensions above the space-time continuum. That means, that while in samadhi, the person can literally see above the horizon of space-time. Thus, he or she can see the distant past and the distant future. But even in the regular waking consciousness, a person can remember his or her past during the present lifetime and can have a reasonable control of the future by planning and with some intuition. This too qualifies as a separate dimension above space-time.
Re: [FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
John, what you say makes sense. OTOH, I read an article just this past week: Hawking is now saying that black holes don't exist! That must do something to space time, event horizons, etc., the whole shebang! On Sunday, January 26, 2014 12:35 PM, jr_...@yahoo.com jr_...@yahoo.com wrote: Share, I've written about it here before: knowledge of previous lives. In every case the knowledge has helped me understand the dynamics of the relationship in this lifetime. So maybe we'll get a sidhi on an as needed basis! Yes, I've read those posts mentioning this. I just wanted to make sure what siddhi it is you're talking about. Anyway, I believe that knowledge of past lives is a good proof that human consciousness belongs in the higher dimensions above the space-time continuum. That means, that while in samadhi, the person can literally see above the horizon of space-time. Thus, he or she can see the distant past and the distant future. But even in the regular waking consciousness, a person can remember his or her past during the present lifetime and can have a reasonable control of the future by planning and with some intuition. This too qualifies as a separate dimension above space-time.
[FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
Xeno, We have enough fantasies in life when we are awake, so why add fuel to the fire by claiming significance for a state of experience that is far more disjointed, wandering, and uncoordinated? We really don't have a choice in the matter. It's a fact that people dream and it is a separate state of consciousness. From my observation, animals and insects rest at night. So, I would guess they too might experience animal or insect dreams. IMO, dreaming is part of Nature. As such, I've proposed here in this forum that dreaming is really another dimension above the space-time continuum. IMO, at the level of the human dream state, we can see things or events that are above the space-time horizon. This is the reason why some people can see in the distant future and in the distant past, even extending to past lives. Further, IMO the planets, particularly the Moon, affects the nature of our dreams. IOW, our mind is connected with the cosmos on a daily basis. Personally, I found that my dreams are pleasant when the Moon is in the nakshatra of Krittika. This is the area of the sky where the Pleiades is located in the sign of Taurus.
Re: [FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
Not quite. There are still black holes it's just the idea of how the event horizon (point of no return) works. With quantum effects it is currently thought to allow information back into the universe, but for you and me it's still certain doom I'm afraid. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/stephen-hawking-there-are-no-black-holes-9085016.html
Re: [FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
ah, salyavin, certainty (-: On Sunday, January 26, 2014 3:28 PM, salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote: Not quite. There are still black holes it's just the idea of how the event horizon (point of no return) works. With quantum effects it is currently thought to allow information back into the universe, but for you and me it's still certain doom I'm afraid. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/stephen-hawking-there-are-no-black-holes-9085016.html
[FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
Salyavin, If the human consciousness was taken out of your body, you could not possibly exist to talk about these ideas. The body might exist, but it will be a biological bot depending on Nature's instincts for sustenance and direction. The space-time continuum and the various states of consciousness would still exist. But they would not be understood until the time human consciousness is awakened in the biological bot that was your body. For this reason, I believe there is an integral connection between the space-time continuum and the various states of human consciousness. As such, we can say that the various states of human consciousness are the extra dimensions above space-time.
Re: [FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
Share, Hawking has been known to change his mind frequently. This appears to be in keeping with his M.O. :)
Re: [FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
John, I'm sure Hawking is just being a good scientist, changing his mind as his observations lead him to (-: On Sunday, January 26, 2014 4:58 PM, jr_...@yahoo.com jr_...@yahoo.com wrote: Share, Hawking has been known to change his mind frequently. This appears to be in keeping with his M.O. :)
Re: [FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
Hawking is just revisiting what he has done before and finding holes in his previous ideas. Currently he seems to be considering that the 'event horizon' of a black hole is not fixed but can shift, and that therefore perhaps we should not call them black holes anymore, they are more complex and bewildering than previously thought.
[FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
Re I personally believe that it's possible to see the physical DNA strands in a human cell while in samadhi which Patanjali describes as a siddhi for being as small as an atom.: I think you are right. When I took high-dose LSD (400mcg+) I could see the cellular processes within my (and other people's) flesh as clearly as I can see the keyboard I'm tapping now. Decades later, I was delighted to come across anthropologist Jeremy Narby's book The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge. He claims that when Amazonian shamans down their hallucinogenic brews, their consciousness sinks to the molecular level, and literally communicates with DNA. When I had my acid experiences I never thought of them at the time (or later on sober reflection) as hallucinations. But how could one otherwise explain them? It must come down to the fact I mentioned in a previous post that originally in the womb we were a one-cell creature - but a very, very smart one-cell creature that knew how to huff and puff and split itself into two and to keep on doing that until we're now the clever humans we are. Whatever else we are now good at - riding a bike, speaking French, cooking a tasty curry - can't compare to our expertise in being a cell-splitting organism. Boy, are we good at that! So that initial cellular knowledge must still be inside us because it's what we are - what we really, really are. Psychedelics seem to access that ancient know-how. As it seems highly likely that a drug is only activating an inherent capacity of the brain, the same experience should be actualized by meditation or other spiritual practices.
[FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, jr_esq@... wrote: Xeno, We have enough fantasies in life when we are awake, so why add fuel to the fire by claiming significance for a state of experience that is far more disjointed, wandering, and uncoordinated? We really don't have a choice in the matter. It's a fact that people dream and it is a separate state of consciousness. From my observation, animals and insects rest at night. So, I would guess they too might experience animal or insect dreams. IMO, dreaming is part of Nature. As such, I've proposed here in this forum that dreaming is really another dimension above the space-time continuum. IMO, at the level of the human dream state, we can see things or events that are above the space-time horizon. This is the reason why some people can see in the distant future and in the distant past, even extending to past lives. I do not disagree that dreaming is a part of Nature. I do not think however that is it 'in another dimension' or is 'above the space-time continuum', rather that dreaming is right there in the space-time continuum. Further, IMO the planets, particularly the Moon, affects the nature of our dreams. IOW, our mind is connected with the cosmos on a daily basis. Personally, I found that my dreams are pleasant when the Moon is in the nakshatra of Krittika. This is the area of the sky where the Pleiades is located in the sign of Taurus. For me, astrology has the same significance as dreams, interesting, but unreliable as a guide to reality.
[FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
Re Barry's: I've seen a number of people have strong experiences of being enlightenment, and then afterwards back off and run away from any sadhana (spiritual practice, such as meditation) that would make being enlightenment come back.: The classic account of that experience is Suzanne Segal's Collision with the Infinite (it was doing TM that left her struggling with terror!). http://www.amazon.com/Collision-Infinite-Life-Beyond-Personal/dp/1884997279 http://www.amazon.com/Collision-Infinite-Life-Beyond-Personal/dp/1884997279 So doesn't it make perfect sense for most people out there in the work-a-day world to be left to enjoy their illusions and consolations if embarking on a spiritual quest would only end by making them miserable? If spiritual masters were regulated by the advertising standards authority wouldn't they be fined for their false promises of bliss consciousness? Re My bet is that if science came up with a safe, no-side-effects pill that would provide the experience of No-Self, very few on this forum would take it.: there are already plenty of psychedelics that destroy the ego identity.
[FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
I've seen a number of people have strong experiences of being enlightenment, and then afterwards back off and run away from any sadhana (spiritual practice, such as meditation) that would make being enlightenment come back.: Yes, I've been thinking about this comment of Barry's all day. It hits home to some extent - only replace the word, strong, with mild, or infant, and I could relate to it more. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, s3raphita@... wrote: Re Barry's: I've seen a number of people have strong experiences of being enlightenment, and then afterwards back off and run away from any sadhana (spiritual practice, such as meditation) that would make being enlightenment come back.: The classic account of that experience is Suzanne Segal's Collision with the Infinite (it was doing TM that left her struggling with terror!). http://www.amazon.com/Collision-Infinite-Life-Beyond-Personal/dp/1884997279 http://www.amazon.com/Collision-Infinite-Life-Beyond-Personal/dp/1884997279 So doesn't it make perfect sense for most people out there in the work-a-day world to be left to enjoy their illusions and consolations if embarking on a spiritual quest would only end by making them miserable? If spiritual masters were regulated by the advertising standards authority wouldn't they be fined for their false promises of bliss consciousness? Re My bet is that if science came up with a safe, no-side-effects pill that would provide the experience of No-Self, very few on this forum would take it.: there are already plenty of psychedelics that destroy the ego identity.
[FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, s3raphita@... wrote: Re Barry's: I've seen a number of people have strong experiences of being enlightenment, and then afterwards back off and run away from any sadhana (spiritual practice, such as meditation) that would make being enlightenment come back.: The classic account of that experience is Suzanne Segal's Collision with the Infinite (it was doing TM that left her struggling with terror!). http://www.amazon.com/Collision-Infinite-Life-Beyond-Personal/dp/1884997279 http://www.amazon.com/Collision-Infinite-Life-Beyond-Personal/dp/1884997279 Suzanne was part of our life in Victoria during WTS days. She also had a brother who was involved. I believe she died of a brain tumour around 1986 or soerhaps that would explain her enlightenment experience. So doesn't it make perfect sense for most people out there in the work-a-day world to be left to enjoy their illusions and consolations if embarking on a spiritual quest would only end by making them miserable? If spiritual masters were regulated by the advertising standards authority wouldn't they be fined for their false promises of bliss consciousness? Re My bet is that if science came up with a safe, no-side-effects pill that would provide the experience of No-Self, very few on this forum would take it.: there are already plenty of psychedelics that destroy the ego identity.
[FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
Sorry, typing on an iPad from Philly. Neo doesn't appear to allow corrections of typos, quirky as it is so I tried to fix the so perhaps but couldn't. It came out soerhaps and it wouldn't let me change it. Returning home tomorrow to a real computer. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, awoelflebater@... wrote: ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, s3raphita@... wrote: Re Barry's: I've seen a number of people have strong experiences of being enlightenment, and then afterwards back off and run away from any sadhana (spiritual practice, such as meditation) that would make being enlightenment come back.: The classic account of that experience is Suzanne Segal's Collision with the Infinite (it was doing TM that left her struggling with terror!). http://www.amazon.com/Collision-Infinite-Life-Beyond-Personal/dp/1884997279 http://www.amazon.com/Collision-Infinite-Life-Beyond-Personal/dp/1884997279 Suzanne was part of our life in Victoria during WTS days. She also had a brother who was involved. I believe she died of a brain tumour around 1986 or soerhaps that would explain her enlightenment experience. So doesn't it make perfect sense for most people out there in the work-a-day world to be left to enjoy their illusions and consolations if embarking on a spiritual quest would only end by making them miserable? If spiritual masters were regulated by the advertising standards authority wouldn't they be fined for their false promises of bliss consciousness? Re My bet is that if science came up with a safe, no-side-effects pill that would provide the experience of No-Self, very few on this forum would take it.: there are already plenty of psychedelics that destroy the ego identity.
[FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
S3, That's an amazing LSD trip you had. Although I didn't take any drugs, I had a somewhat similar experience. I was able to see the inside details of my retina while in samadhi. I was literally floating by the bright pink cones and rods inside the retina. I talked to a TM checker about this experience. But she didn't say anything. To this day, I'm still trying to figure out how this can happen. But Patanjali's siddhi for being as small as an atom is the best description that I can find. In scientific terms, it could be that the electron inside the retina is in sync with the electrons in my my brain. Thus, my mind was able to see the pattern. It could be due to quantum entanglement, which is the best scientific term that I can think of. There was also a scientific lecture on YouTube in which the speaker stated that a person from a higher dimension could see through beings in the lower dimensions. Hence, I've been pursuing this line of thought in this thread and at other times in this forum.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Where Do the gods Exist?
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, salyavin808 wrote: Not quite. There are still black holes it's just the idea of how the event horizon (point of no return) works. With quantum effects it is currently thought to allow information back into the universe, but for you and me it's still certain doom I'm afraid. Speaking of certain doom, here's a language lesson for Card in case he wants to learn a new one: [https://scontent-a-ams.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/t1/q71/1477378_5719741\ 99557902_112978905_n.jpg]
[FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
You were making sense until you said If
[FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
Xeno, I do not disagree that dreaming is a part of Nature. I do not think however that is it 'in another dimension' or is 'above the space-time continuum', rather that dreaming is right there in the space-time continuum. From what I understand, the space-time continuum is like an empty box on a graph paper. It doesn't know that it is a box, nor does it know that it's empty. However, if you include human consciousness, the person can see that it's an empty box. and it is drawn on a piece of paper. I'm trying to say that space-time is just a mechanical representation of the physical universe. It does not include human consciousness. However, when human consciousness is included, space-time takes on a different perspective or a new vibration. Now the human being can understand that it's three dimensional and that time exist. As such, a new set of dimensions has been created which is above the space-time continuum.
[FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
kRtaarthaM prati naSTam apy anaSTaM tad-anya-saadhaaraNatvaat...
[FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
Re this Chuang-tzu quote: A monk fell asleep and dreamed he was a butterfly. When he awoke, he asked himself Was I a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming I am a man? Chuang-tzu's point was NOT to imply that all experience is dream-like (it isn't); Chuang-tzu's point was NOT to suggest that he could really be a butterfly (he wasn't one)! What Chuang-tzu was getting at is that our everyday sense of self - I am a man - a father - a doctor - an American - is just the social role we've been conditioned to accept. It's our sense of identity he's attacking. It's that false sense of a permanent ID in the ever-changing flow of the Tao that is our hang-up.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Where Do the gods Exist?
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, wrote: Re this Chuang-tzu quote: A monk fell asleep and dreamed he was a butterfly. When he awoke, he asked himself Was I a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming I am a man? Chuang-tzu's point was NOT to imply that all experience is dream-like (it isn't); Chuang-tzu's point was NOT to suggest that he could really be a butterfly (he wasn't one)! What Chuang-tzu was getting at is that our everyday sense of self - I am a man - a father - a doctor - an American - is just the social role we've been conditioned to accept. It's our sense of identity he's attacking. It's that false sense of a permanent ID in the ever-changing flow of the Tao that is our hang-up. Although part of me chafes at the very notion of someone -- anyone -- saying What such-and-such sage meant... (we don't know, and never will), your *interpretation* of what he meant strikes a resonance with me. The phrase I like the most is that false sense of a permanent ID, with the emphasis on the word permanent. Whatever the fuck was going on around the Rama guy I spent time with, one of the benefits *of* being around him was that the energy field was so powerful and so transformative that you really *couldn't* hold on to any fixed version of self to identify with. One desert trip blew you out of your socks and out of your self, for at least a week. You tried to come home and identify with the things and roles you had identified with before, and it just didn't work. You weren't that self any more. Better, for that week you weren't really *any* self, fixed or otherwise. You were a churning flux of selves, all of them fleeting, all transitory. I came to really like it. Even if some future shrink figures out what was happening to the hundreds of people who experienced this and writes it off to whatever term he invents for explaining that phenomenon, I prefer to continue thinking of it as unexplainable. If you ever did LSD back in the day -- *good* acid, not that street shit that appeared after 1967 -- you may remember a similar feeling in the days after a powerful trip. 125 micrograms of Sandoz LSD would blow you out of any fixed self for 6-8 hours, but the really interesting thing was that for some *days* afterwards you had some difficulty getting back to the self you thought you were before the trip. Being around the Rama guy was like that, without the drugs. It was just the damnedest thing, and probably *not* to everyone's taste. I mean, if you're really *attached* to your notion of self and Who You Think You Are, you're probably not going to be attracted to either LSD or an experience in the desert that proves to you that you don't *have* a self. But some of us are weird, and kinda liked it. I called it Surfing The Tao. :-) Try to imagine the alternative. Being so enamored of the notion of permanent self that you become attached to it, and fear your imagined self ever going away. If you are attached to it enough, you might actually intend that permanence into happening. And then what? You're stuck with one puny self for the rest of your life. No surprises, no changes. Always seeing the world around you the way you see it now. That's my idea of Hell.
[FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
Re Since you took DMT, what did you personally experience? How did you feel? Did you see any visions?: Within seconds of inhaling the stuff visions are popping up in your entire visual field. Weird, jester-type images - so fleeting you don't get a chance to make sense out of the experience. (As impressive as the images are I always felt it was my own mind creating them; it's just that my mind is a lot more creative than I generally give it credit for.) DMT has to be the drug of the Trickster god - it's like finding yourself inside a brightly coloured comic-strip with the Joker in charge of events. In certain moods, it could all seem hilarious; Life as a cosmic joke. The problem is that it only takes a slight nudge for joke to turn into an insane madhouse ride with no purchase left for reason or any enduring values. I only tried it a few times; those who take it a lot have said that a bad trip on DMT is 1) inevitable, and 2) even scarier than a bummer on LSD. I'm happy to leave such journeys to committed psychonauts. Alan Watts' verdict on DMT as amusing but relatively uninteresting sounds about right to me. My initial interest in the psychedelic was simply that DMT occurs naturally in our brains - generated by the pineal gland (!) - and probably has a role to play in our dreaming state. Because so many people who take the stuff experience visions of elf-like creatures trying to interact with them there's an intriguing speculation doing the rounds that people in the medieval past who had experiences of being transported to caves inhabited by fairy beings, and people today who have visions of being taken aboard UFOs by alien beings were/are essentially having an involuntary DMT trip caused by their pineal gland suddenly releasing too much of the chemical. (The whole experience lasts from 15 to 30 minutes.) Popular science writer Clifford A. Pickover has examined these theories if you're interested (but hasn't himself taken the drug.). Follow this link and then click on the DMT, Aliens, and God link. http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/sdee-book.html http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/sdee-book.html If you're ever tempted to try the stuff bear in mind that William Burroughs was scared shitless by the drug.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Where Do the gods Exist?
I never tried the stuff, and thus can't comment on it, but I wanted to comment on the clarity, balance, and yes, creativity with which you described it. Nice. Fascinating speculation about fantasy visions having been triggered by a naturally-occurring DMT trip. Having seen the original cave paintings at Lascaux and other prehistoric European caves, I think they might have been inspired by similar bursts of brains getting creative on their own asses. I also loved the Burroughs line. I recently saw an Anthony Bourdain show about Tangier, and the creative crowd who lived there for some time, Burroughs being a prime member. I'm familiar with his tastes in Better Living Through Chemistry. If *he* was scared by DMT, there just might be something to be scared of. :-) --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, wrote: Re Since you took DMT, what did you personally experience? How did you feel? Did you see any visions?: Within seconds of inhaling the stuff visions are popping up in your entire visual field. Weird, jester-type images - so fleeting you don't get a chance to make sense out of the experience. (As impressive as the images are I always felt it was my own mind creating them; it's just that my mind is a lot more creative than I generally give it credit for.) DMT has to be the drug of the Trickster god - it's like finding yourself inside a brightly coloured comic-strip with the Joker in charge of events. In certain moods, it could all seem hilarious; Life as a cosmic joke. The problem is that it only takes a slight nudge for joke to turn into an insane madhouse ride with no purchase left for reason or any enduring values. I only tried it a few times; those who take it a lot have said that a bad trip on DMT is 1) inevitable, and 2) even scarier than a bummer on LSD. I'm happy to leave such journeys to committed psychonauts. Alan Watts' verdict on DMT as amusing but relatively uninteresting sounds about right to me. My initial interest in the psychedelic was simply that DMT occurs naturally in our brains - generated by the pineal gland (!) - and probably has a role to play in our dreaming state. Because so many people who take the stuff experience visions of elf-like creatures trying to interact with them there's an intriguing speculation doing the rounds that people in the medieval past who had experiences of being transported to caves inhabited by fairy beings, and people today who have visions of being taken aboard UFOs by alien beings were/are essentially having an involuntary DMT trip caused by their pineal gland suddenly releasing too much of the chemical. (The whole experience lasts from 15 to 30 minutes.) Popular science writer Clifford A. Pickover has examined these theories if you're interested (but hasn't himself taken the drug.). Follow this link and then click on the DMT, Aliens, and God link. http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/sdee-book.html http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/sdee-book.html If you're ever tempted to try the stuff bear in mind that William Burroughs was scared shitless by the drug.
[FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
Re the energy field was so powerful and so transformative that you really *couldn't* hold on to any fixed version of self to identify with. One desert trip blew you out of your socks and out of your self, for at least a week.: The downside of these powerful transformations is that it can scare people into dropping the whole spiritual trip altogether. It can be impossible to integrate your insights into your regular, mundane life and you are set adrift with no direction home. Re If you ever did LSD back in the day -- *good* acid, not that street shit that appeared after 1967: I think that is a myth about LSD being of varying quality. The issue is mentioned here . . . http://theline.wordpress.com/2006/11/17/sandoz-lsd-no-better-than-modern-acid/ http://theline.wordpress.com/2006/11/17/sandoz-lsd-no-better-than-modern-acid/ Re LSD would blow you out of any fixed self for 6-8 hours, but the really interesting thing was that for some *days* afterwards you had some difficulty getting back to the self you thought you were before the trip.: Some people never came back. Re Try to imagine the alternative. Being so enamored of the notion of permanent self that you become attached to it, and fear your imagined self ever going away. If you are attached to it enough, you might actually intend that permanence into happening. And then what? You're stuck with one puny self for the rest of your life. No surprises, no changes. Always seeing the world around you the way you see it now. That's my idea of Hell.: That is precisely Hell. It also reminds me of what Aleister Crowley called the Black Brothers - The about-to-be-Black Brother constantly restricts himself; he is satisfied with a very limited ideal; he is afraid of losing his individuality—reminds one of the Nordic twaddle about race-pollution. Reminds me also of John Cowper Powys' verdict on Edgar Allan Poe. He admired Poe but thought he was a far more dangerous writer than conventional bad boys like Byron (a spoilt child) as Poe idealised dead forms (symbolised by the beloved in the crypt) - he wanted to hang on to that one image of beauty rather than commit himself to the flux of living things. A perceptive observation that nails the whole appeal of the Gothic.
[FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
Re Fascinating speculation about fantasy visions having been triggered by a naturally-occurring DMT trip. Having seen the original cave paintings at Lascaux and other prehistoric European caves, I think they might have been inspired by similar bursts of brains getting creative on their own asses.: You followed the Clifford Pickover link, yes? I was going to pick out his quote below as it exactly matches my sense while on DMT: Also, recall that DMT experiences sometimes include 2-D cartoon-like characters. Often DMT entities lack depth. Could a higher-production of DMT in ancient people have influenced artwork. Is that part of the reason why cave paintings and Egyptian art are so two dimensional?
[FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
They exist in our consciousness. That's why people see these subtle beings while in altered states of consciousness induced by drugs or while in the dream state of consciousness and in samadhi. Consciousness is a picture in our heads. Anything you see that isn't communicated to us via our senses we are imagining. IMO, this phenomenon cannot be ignored as a scientific fact nor be dismissed as a fantasy. Consciousness and its peculiarities isn't being ignored at last! But I suspect it's a fantasy in the sense that there isn't anything objective being experienced.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Where Do the gods Exist?
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, salyavin808 wrote: They exist in our consciousness. That's why people see these subtle beings while in altered states of consciousness induced by drugs or while in the dream state of consciousness and in samadhi. Consciousness is a picture in our heads. Anything you see that isn't communicated to us via our senses we are imagining. *And* anything that IS communicated to us via our senses we are imagining. IMO, this phenomenon cannot be ignored as a scientific fact nor be dismissed as a fantasy. Consciousness and its peculiarities isn't being ignored at last! But I suspect it's a fantasy in the sense that there isn't anything objective being experienced. More interesting, maybe there is. But it has no more -- or less -- reality than the things we imagine. Think of it as a variant on Catch-22's You're not paranoid if everybody IS trying to kill you. More like Even though you're imagining it, that doesn't mean it's not real. In the Maya-verse, there are still poisons, and they will still kill you. :-)
Re: [FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
Salyavin, by *objective* do you mean outside of our body? Because even fluctuations in our skull giving rise to a fantasy are objective in the sense that they are objects. They are energy currents and chemical changes and electrical activities. And they are being experienced! On Saturday, January 25, 2014 12:41 PM, salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote: They exist in our consciousness. That's why people see these subtle beings while in altered states of consciousness induced by drugs or while in the dream state of consciousness and in samadhi. Consciousness is a picture in our heads. Anything you see that isn't communicated to us via our senses we are imagining. IMO, this phenomenon cannot be ignored as a scientific fact nor be dismissed as a fantasy. Consciousness and its peculiarities isn't being ignored at last! But I suspect it's a fantasy in the sense that there isn't anything objective being experienced.
[FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
S3, Thanks for your detailed description of a DMT trip. I haven't tried it myself and probably won't given the points you've described here. But I am interested in the possible explanations why this happens and the experiences appear to be alike by those who take them. The pineal gland is a possible physical explanation for the visions. But it's also possible that these visions are actually manifestations of subtle beings that exist in another dimension of space and consciousness and are picked up by the mind at its heightened peak of receptivity by DMT. IMO, meditation can similarly make the mind sensitive enough to see these subtle beings during the dream and waking states while in samadhi. So, my original proposal still holds in that the human consciousness can attain the higher spacial dimensions other than spacetime. However, these higher spacial dimensions have seamlessly merged with the realm of consciousness. IMO, these are the higher dimensions that the scientists are still looking for in the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. But the expensive complicated machines cannot find them because these dimensions can only be detected by the human brain which experiences the various states of consciousness, such as waking, sleeping and dreaming. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, s3raphita@... wrote: Re Since you took DMT, what did you personally experience? How did you feel? Did you see any visions?: Within seconds of inhaling the stuff visions are popping up in your entire visual field. Weird, jester-type images - so fleeting you don't get a chance to make sense out of the experience. (As impressive as the images are I always felt it was my own mind creating them; it's just that my mind is a lot more creative than I generally give it credit for.) DMT has to be the drug of the Trickster god - it's like finding yourself inside a brightly coloured comic-strip with the Joker in charge of events. In certain moods, it could all seem hilarious; Life as a cosmic joke. The problem is that it only takes a slight nudge for joke to turn into an insane madhouse ride with no purchase left for reason or any enduring values. I only tried it a few times; those who take it a lot have said that a bad trip on DMT is 1) inevitable, and 2) even scarier than a bummer on LSD. I'm happy to leave such journeys to committed psychonauts. Alan Watts' verdict on DMT as amusing but relatively uninteresting sounds about right to me. My initial interest in the psychedelic was simply that DMT occurs naturally in our brains - generated by the pineal gland (!) - and probably has a role to play in our dreaming state. Because so many people who take the stuff experience visions of elf-like creatures trying to interact with them there's an intriguing speculation doing the rounds that people in the medieval past who had experiences of being transported to caves inhabited by fairy beings, and people today who have visions of being taken aboard UFOs by alien beings were/are essentially having an involuntary DMT trip caused by their pineal gland suddenly releasing too much of the chemical. (The whole experience lasts from 15 to 30 minutes.) Popular science writer Clifford A. Pickover has examined these theories if you're interested (but hasn't himself taken the drug.). Follow this link and then click on the DMT, Aliens, and God link. http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/sdee-book.html http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/sdee-book.html If you're ever tempted to try the stuff bear in mind that William Burroughs was scared shitless by the drug.
[FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
Nabs, I meant that the basic spacetime continuum is lower than the human states of consciousness. As such, the lower spacial dimensions cannot perceive the subtle beings or gods that can only be perceived by the human brain and consciousness.
[FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
Re The pineal gland is a possible physical explanation for the visions. But it's also possible that these visions are actually manifestations of subtle beings that exist in another dimension of space and consciousness and are picked up by the mind at its heightened peak of receptivity by DMT.: Yes, I agree it's possible. That's what makes it such a hot topic. If you follow the link I provided you'll also come across this comment from an experienced user of DMT, who says: Hey Clifford, James Kent here, I run the website http://tripzine.com. I published a psychedelic magazine for many years, and a friend recently pointed me to your article on DMT, Moses and Aliens. Since you asked people to voice their opinion I shall... I have done DMT quite a bit, have interviewed and spent time with the late Terence McKenna, am friends with Rick Strassman, and have studied this issue very closely for the past fifteen years. And though I have not published the results of all my research (yet), I would like to share with you some of my conclusions concerning DMT and the dramatic phenomena it produces. In short, I do not believe DMT is a gateway to an alternate dimension, nor does it provide contact with elves and alien entities. . . Why is the alien/elf archetype so common to the DMT experience? The only answer I have is that we humans must have some kind of innate evolutionary wetworking that forces us to latch onto any piece of anthropomorphic data that pops up in otherwise random sensory data, such as spotting a face peering out from behind the bushes, or spotting another human form hiding in the tall grass. The evolutionary advantage of such a trait is obvious . . . Read his entire comment and you'll appreciate he's done some serious thinking on the issue! Clifford Pickford himself reproduced an encyclopedia entry on the activity inside a single cell (biology). The detailed description given of Messenger RNA carrying genetic info from DNA inside a cell was compared by Clifford with descriptions of aliens scuttling around a UFO from a DMT vision. The parallels are striking. Consider that we all are single-cell creatures at root. What Clifford is suggesting is that a burst of DMT triggers our reversion back to single-cell consciousness. BUT we now have adult brains with stored adult memories and years of training in making sense of patterns. The DMT visions are our adult brains with their adult capacities trying to make sense of that primal consciousness. However . . . (part 2 follows!)
[FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
. . . However, if you like the weird side . . . Suppose the Clifford reading is right and DMT allows us to revert to cell-consciousness and in some sense read DNA? There's a wonderful take on life's origins called directed panspermia which holds that our planet was seeded with DNA by aliens many moons ago. If you can get your brain around that hypothesis, could it not be the case that our creators - the aliens - pre-programmed the evolution of life so that when a sufficiently intelligent species arose the brain's DMT-production (that was also pre-programmed) would trigger an internal video of our forefathers (foremothers?) with a message from them wishing us bon voyage! DMT trippers insist the elf-like creatures they encounter are desperately trying to communicate an important message to them. Perhaps we're still not bright enough to work out what they're trying to communicate? Sounds like a great plot line for a sci-fi novel by Olaf Stapledon.
[FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
And then there's the Canadian tennis player at the Australian Open who, in the middle of his match, had a vision of Snoopy on the court before passing out from the heat. 'I was dizzy from the middle of the first set and then I saw Snoopy and I thought, Wow Snoopy, that's weird,' Dancevic said. http://www.news.com.au/sport/more-sports/canadas-frank-dancevic-faints-after-hallucinating-that-he-saw-snoopy-in-australian-open-heat/story-fndukor0-1226802409203 http://www.news.com.au/sport/more-sports/canadas-frank-dancevic-faints-after-hallucinating-that-he-saw-snoopy-in-australian-open-heat/story-fndukor0-1226802409203 Re The pineal gland is a possible physical explanation for the visions. But it's also possible that these visions are actually manifestations of subtle beings that exist in another dimension of space and consciousness and are picked up by the mind at its heightened peak of receptivity by DMT.: Yes, I agree it's possible. That's what makes it such a hot topic. If you follow the link I provided you'll also come across this comment from an experienced user of DMT, who says: Hey Clifford, James Kent here, I run the website http://tripzine.com. I published a psychedelic magazine for many years, and a friend recently pointed me to your article on DMT, Moses and Aliens. Since you asked people to voice their opinion I shall... I have done DMT quite a bit, have interviewed and spent time with the late Terence McKenna, am friends with Rick Strassman, and have studied this issue very closely for the past fifteen years. And though I have not published the results of all my research (yet), I would like to share with you some of my conclusions concerning DMT and the dramatic phenomena it produces. In short, I do not believe DMT is a gateway to an alternate dimension, nor does it provide contact with elves and alien entities. . . Why is the alien/elf archetype so common to the DMT experience? The only answer I have is that we humans must have some kind of innate evolutionary wetworking that forces us to latch onto any piece of anthropomorphic data that pops up in otherwise random sensory data, such as spotting a face peering out from behind the bushes, or spotting another human form hiding in the tall grass. The evolutionary advantage of such a trait is obvious . . . Read his entire comment and you'll appreciate he's done some serious thinking on the issue! Clifford Pickford himself reproduced an encyclopedia entry on the activity inside a single cell (biology). The detailed description given of Messenger RNA carrying genetic info from DNA inside a cell was compared by Clifford with descriptions of aliens scuttling around a UFO from a DMT vision. The parallels are striking. Consider that we all are single-cell creatures at root. What Clifford is suggesting is that a burst of DMT triggers our reversion back to single-cell consciousness. BUT we now have adult brains with stored adult memories and years of training in making sense of patterns. The DMT visions are our adult brains with their adult capacities trying to make sense of that primal consciousness. However . . . (part 2 follows!)
[FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
Share, Thanks for the suggestion. I'll dig up that video and watch it when time allows.
[FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
Salyavin, Consciousness is a picture in our heads. Anything you see that isn't communicated to us via our senses we are imagining. In the usual waking consciousness, the senses are important to receive messages from the outside world. This is true. But in samadhi, during the dreaming state of consciousness, most people can experience lucid images which are not coming from the eyes. IMO, these experiences are just as valid as those during the waking state. As a matter of fact, some dreams can be interpreted as messages from past lives or from the future. In the Old Testament, for example, the pharoah of Egypt asked Daniel to interpret his dreams. And, Daniel correctly interpreted that the dream was about a seven year drought that will descend upon the land. For this, the pharoah rewarded Daniel handsomely. There is probably a scientific explanation as to why this happens. IMO, this happens because the dreaming state of consciousness belongs in the higher dimension above space-time. As such, the dream state can see the events that happened before the present time and those events that belong in the future. IMO, this phenomenon cannot be ignored as a scientific fact nor be dismissed as a fantasy. Consciousness and its peculiarities isn't being ignored at last! But I suspect it's a fantasy in the sense that there isn't anything objective being experienced.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Where Do the gods Exist?
Couple of experiences to relate, triggered by what you posted here. I remember in my teaching days that occasionally someone would comment how uncomfortable it was to just melt into the transcendence. Maybe they didn't use that exact phrase, but it was something along those lines and losing one self. Well, I am not a regular mediator, but when I do meditate it is TM, and recently I had a deep experience of transcendence, and yes, it was uncomfortable in just the way that those people would describe. Kinda strange, isn't it. Is that the onset of old age. (-: Experience #2. Lately I've have some issues with a tenant in a building we are trying to renovate. I like him, but there have been constant disagreements. It's dawned on me that he is probably bi-polar. It's taken a lot of mental energy to deal with it. When I get in situations like that, I don't turn the radio on in the car, so I can work on the problem in my head without a lot of distractions. And I've noticed how much more aware I am of my own thoughts and the things around me as I drive without listening to the radio. Now tell me, doesn't that just blow your socks off. (-: ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, wrote: Re this Chuang-tzu quote: A monk fell asleep and dreamed he was a butterfly. When he awoke, he asked himself Was I a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming I am a man? Chuang-tzu's point was NOT to imply that all experience is dream-like (it isn't); Chuang-tzu's point was NOT to suggest that he could really be a butterfly (he wasn't one)! What Chuang-tzu was getting at is that our everyday sense of self - I am a man - a father - a doctor - an American - is just the social role we've been conditioned to accept. It's our sense of identity he's attacking. It's that false sense of a permanent ID in the ever-changing flow of the Tao that is our hang-up. Although part of me chafes at the very notion of someone -- anyone -- saying What such-and-such sage meant... (we don't know, and never will), your *interpretation* of what he meant strikes a resonance with me. The phrase I like the most is that false sense of a permanent ID, with the emphasis on the word permanent. Whatever the fuck was going on around the Rama guy I spent time with, one of the benefits *of* being around him was that the energy field was so powerful and so transformative that you really *couldn't* hold on to any fixed version of self to identify with. One desert trip blew you out of your socks and out of your self, for at least a week. You tried to come home and identify with the things and roles you had identified with before, and it just didn't work. You weren't that self any more. Better, for that week you weren't really *any* self, fixed or otherwise. You were a churning flux of selves, all of them fleeting, all transitory. I came to really like it. Even if some future shrink figures out what was happening to the hundreds of people who experienced this and writes it off to whatever term he invents for explaining that phenomenon, I prefer to continue thinking of it as unexplainable. If you ever did LSD back in the day -- *good* acid, not that street shit that appeared after 1967 -- you may remember a similar feeling in the days after a powerful trip. 125 micrograms of Sandoz LSD would blow you out of any fixed self for 6-8 hours, but the really interesting thing was that for some *days* afterwards you had some difficulty getting back to the self you thought you were before the trip. Being around the Rama guy was like that, without the drugs. It was just the damnedest thing, and probably *not* to everyone's taste. I mean, if you're really *attached* to your notion of self and Who You Think You Are, you're probably not going to be attracted to either LSD or an experience in the desert that proves to you that you don't *have* a self. But some of us are weird, and kinda liked it. I called it Surfing The Tao. :-) Try to imagine the alternative. Being so enamored of the notion of permanent self that you become attached to it, and fear your imagined self ever going away. If you are attached to it enough, you might actually intend that permanence into happening. And then what? You're stuck with one puny self for the rest of your life. No surprises, no changes. Always seeing the world around you the way you see it now. That's my idea of Hell.
[FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
S3, That's a fascinating topic that you're raising about reading the information embedded in the DNA by using DMT. Perhaps the human being can do this through meditation as well. A siddha might be able to see the history of human beings millions of years ago as they evolved from the lower species if Darwin is correct. Or, as the highly evolved ancestors manifested into human bodies here on earth if the vedic tradition is correct.. I personally believe that it's possible to see the physical DNA strands in a human cell while in samadhi which Patanjali describes as a siddhi for being as small as an atom.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Where Do the gods Exist?
Yep, I love silence - best music, ever. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, steve.sundur@... wrote: Couple of experiences to relate, triggered by what you posted here. I remember in my teaching days that occasionally someone would comment how uncomfortable it was to just melt into the transcendence. Maybe they didn't use that exact phrase, but it was something along those lines and losing one self. Well, I am not a regular mediator, but when I do meditate it is TM, and recently I had a deep experience of transcendence, and yes, it was uncomfortable in just the way that those people would describe. Kinda strange, isn't it. Is that the onset of old age. (-: Experience #2. Lately I've have some issues with a tenant in a building we are trying to renovate. I like him, but there have been constant disagreements. It's dawned on me that he is probably bi-polar. It's taken a lot of mental energy to deal with it. When I get in situations like that, I don't turn the radio on in the car, so I can work on the problem in my head without a lot of distractions. And I've noticed how much more aware I am of my own thoughts and the things around me as I drive without listening to the radio. Now tell me, doesn't that just blow your socks off. (-: ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, wrote: Re this Chuang-tzu quote: A monk fell asleep and dreamed he was a butterfly. When he awoke, he asked himself Was I a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming I am a man? Chuang-tzu's point was NOT to imply that all experience is dream-like (it isn't); Chuang-tzu's point was NOT to suggest that he could really be a butterfly (he wasn't one)! What Chuang-tzu was getting at is that our everyday sense of self - I am a man - a father - a doctor - an American - is just the social role we've been conditioned to accept. It's our sense of identity he's attacking. It's that false sense of a permanent ID in the ever-changing flow of the Tao that is our hang-up. Although part of me chafes at the very notion of someone -- anyone -- saying What such-and-such sage meant... (we don't know, and never will), your *interpretation* of what he meant strikes a resonance with me. The phrase I like the most is that false sense of a permanent ID, with the emphasis on the word permanent. Whatever the fuck was going on around the Rama guy I spent time with, one of the benefits *of* being around him was that the energy field was so powerful and so transformative that you really *couldn't* hold on to any fixed version of self to identify with. One desert trip blew you out of your socks and out of your self, for at least a week. You tried to come home and identify with the things and roles you had identified with before, and it just didn't work. You weren't that self any more. Better, for that week you weren't really *any* self, fixed or otherwise. You were a churning flux of selves, all of them fleeting, all transitory. I came to really like it. Even if some future shrink figures out what was happening to the hundreds of people who experienced this and writes it off to whatever term he invents for explaining that phenomenon, I prefer to continue thinking of it as unexplainable. If you ever did LSD back in the day -- *good* acid, not that street shit that appeared after 1967 -- you may remember a similar feeling in the days after a powerful trip. 125 micrograms of Sandoz LSD would blow you out of any fixed self for 6-8 hours, but the really interesting thing was that for some *days* afterwards you had some difficulty getting back to the self you thought you were before the trip. Being around the Rama guy was like that, without the drugs. It was just the damnedest thing, and probably *not* to everyone's taste. I mean, if you're really *attached* to your notion of self and Who You Think You Are, you're probably not going to be attracted to either LSD or an experience in the desert that proves to you that you don't *have* a self. But some of us are weird, and kinda liked it. I called it Surfing The Tao. :-) Try to imagine the alternative. Being so enamored of the notion of permanent self that you become attached to it, and fear your imagined self ever going away. If you are attached to it enough, you might actually intend that permanence into happening. And then what? You're stuck with one puny self for the rest of your life. No surprises, no changes. Always seeing the world around you the way you see it now. That's my idea of Hell.
Re: [FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
John, it's been my experience that a Patanjali sidhi is developing even though it's not a part of the TMSP. On Saturday, January 25, 2014 8:18 PM, jr_...@yahoo.com jr_...@yahoo.com wrote: S3, That's a fascinating topic that you're raising about reading the information embedded in the DNA by using DMT. Perhaps the human being can do this through meditation as well. A siddha might be able to see the history of human beings millions of years ago as they evolved from the lower species if Darwin is correct. Or, as the highly evolved ancestors manifested into human bodies here on earth if the vedic tradition is correct.. I personally believe that it's possible to see the physical DNA strands in a human cell while in samadhi which Patanjali describes as a siddhi for being as small as an atom.
Re: [FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
Share, it's been my experience that a Patanjali sidhi is developing even though it's not a part of the TMSP. Can you explain more about the Patanjali siddhi that you're experiencing?
Re: [FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
Hmmm, Share, I already replied to this but the mysterious aether that is the internet seems to have delayed its arrival. Or maybe some subtle beings have intercepted to try and prevent its revelatory nature reaching wider ears;-) I'll wait for a bit longer and then have another go...
[FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
Re I know some people who have done ayuhuasca, they say it is quite a demanding experience.: Any drug that makes its partakers vomit (eg, heroin and ayahuasca) I assume is our body's way of telling us this isn't a good idea. I did try DMT a few times (an ingredient in ayahuasca) which gives you a 15-minute (!) trip as opposed to ayahuasca's six hours endurance test. One thing I noticed was that it gave other people an Aztec appearance. There's nothing occult about it of course. It's just that the ancient Mexican artists who have left us their visual records had themselves imbibed DMT-laced hallucinogens when they created their distinctive work.
[FairfieldLife] RE: Where Do the gods Exist?
S3, Since you took DMT, what did you personally experience? How did you feel? Did you see any visions?
