--- In [email protected], new.morning <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Does triggering deep spiritual experiences necessarily mean the > source of that experience is enlightened? Is a murti in a temple > "enlightened". It can trigger powerful spiritual experience to > some. Is love enlightened? It can trigger powerful spiritual > experience to some. > > Someone said a teacher was not so good because she did not give the > viewer of her picture a strong "energy hit". If personal > interpretation of darshaan experience is valid, the is > energy-hit-ology also valid for judging a teacher? > > IMO, interpreation of darshan experience, and any spiritual > "experience", altered, or beyond conventional state, is an issue. > > As an example regarding darshan, when I first met SSRS, I went up > to the stage and had a nice chat with him at intermission, and he > taught my intro course, he asked me and others questions, so there > was more than a 3 second type assembly line darshan. Yet I didn't > feel so much "from his darshan". But through the day I felt some > very positive things, but did not attribute it to darshan.
Excellent points, new. The issue, IMO, is that some folks are unable to distinguish between a state of inspiration or elevation that they feel around a certain person or object or place and the *source* of that inspiration or elevation. IMO, the "dynamic of darshan" is not on the level of "Beam me up, Scotty." It's not that the teacher or object (as in relic or centuries-old spiritual treasure) or place (as in physical place of power) *does something* and sends out a set of Woo Woo Rays that change the student and make them capable of new and more interesting states of attention. That's the simplistic, IMO childish way of looking at the phenomenon. What I think is happening is more of a kind of "spiritual resonance." The student comes into contact with an interesting teacher or spiritual object or physical place and these things trigger some kind of "resonance effect" in the student. Something about them "reminds" the student of different aspects of his Self that are not normally active. For some reason, the student is more able to see and exper- ience these higher aspects of Self *in the vicinity of* the teacher or object or place. And so, afterwards, it is quite natural for the student to *attribute* these glimpses of higher states of attention *to* the teacher or object or place. "He/it blasted me with darshan." And though it might be natural, I personally don't think that's what's happening. And the reason I don't think that is that *not everyone in the room* has the same feelings of being "uplifted by the darshan." Some people get a "hit" on the teacher or the object or the place, and others do not. So I really don't believe that it's a "Beam me up Scotty" type experience. The teacher around whom the student feels "powerful darshan" is NOT DOING ANYTHING. It's just that, for whatever reasons, the student feels a kind of *resonance* with that teacher that allows him or her to experience new states of attention. And that is way cool, but it doesn't mean that the teacher is a whiz-bang wizard capable of blasting someone with magical Woo Woo Rays and changing their lives forever. I would go so far as to say that for every person in a room with a spiritual teacher who feels blasted out of their socks by the teacher's "darshan," there are probably 99 others in the same room who are noticing absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. As I've said, I almost never got any kind of "hit" from Maharishi that tempted me to even think in terms of "darshan." Around Rama I had far more experiences that made me think in terms of "empowerment" or "trans- mission" or "darshan" (although he never used that term). Around some other teachers, and even around some spirit- ual objects (ancient relics or Tibetan works of art), I've also experienced these major shifts of state of attention. And certainly I've experienced the same thing by going to places of power. And sometimes the people there with me in those rooms with teachers, or those museums full of spiritual objects, or those places of power noticed *nothing* in terms of major shift of state of consciousness, while I did. Go figure, eh? IMO, this does *not* mean that I was in any way "more evolved" than the people who noticed nothing. It certainly doesn't mean that there was anything "wrong" with the people who noticed nothing, or that there was anything "right" about me *for* noticing major shifts in my state of attention. It's just what happened...a kind of "resonance effect." Some of us resonated with the teacher or the object or the place and some of us didn't. No harm, no foul, no "scored goal" either way. I honestly think that "resonance" is a fairly good way to think about these phenomena. Try it...you might like it.
