On Oct 8, 2007, at 2:45 AM, TurquoiseB wrote:
--- In [email protected], "BillyG." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- In [email protected], Vaj <vajranatha@> wrote: > > snip > > While I do feel it might be safe to say some people have had some > > awakening or some realization, it's very likely these are huge > > exaggerations on the part of a few people. > > So which is it Vaj...I'm confused? Well, some of both. If you'd been around the spiritual block a few more times, Billy, you might have noticed that the spiritual smorgas- bord is full of people who had a realization experience, declared it to the world as "I'm enlightened," and in some cases even set them- selves up as enlightened teachers, only to have the experience fade and go away within a few weeks or months or years.
Or they simply had an "opening" of some sort, more often just a meditational experience. I think we have to remember, bandying around nebulous western words like "enlightenment" or "awakening" have little definitive meaning. The west, by and large, lacks precise words and definitions for higher states of consciousness and this leads to specious claims, mistaken claims and all sorts of grandiosity.
Languages such as Sanskrit (or numerous others) have precise terminology describing the minutiae of the stages of unfoldment and higher consciousness. Woe onto him or her who naively declares themselves a saint when they don't have a clue, or maybe a just a sketch, of the territory they're claiming!
The sad part is that quite a few of these folks, now firmly ego-bound again, succumb to that ego and keep up the *pretense* of enlight- enment. They claim to be what they are not, working on mere memories of an experience that is no longer current.
Boy, ain't that the truth.
You tend to see this a lot in the NeoAdvaitain groups. Someone goes to a satsang, has a *legit- imate* experience of awakening, and thinking that such experiences are by definition perman- ent, declares themselves enlightened. People flock around and pat them on the back and say, "Oh, good for you...you 'got' it," and consider them "special." And often the very act of *believing* this specialness is enough to blast the awakening away and reduce the "enlightened one" to mere blubbering ego again.
Bingo.
