--- In [email protected], t3rinity <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- In [email protected], TurquoiseB <no_reply@> wrote: > > > > > People make fun of other peoples adherence to beliefs, while > > > their own belief system is rock-solid.
Left in from the original post because it seems relevant below. > No, not right, I don't believe in it ;-) [flying, levitation] > Surprise? I defend somebodies right to believe whatever he > wants without believing it myself. A good statement, but not really borne out by your impassioned arguments below. > My non-belief is not very strong though. I just don't know, and > I don't really care either. You somehow, along with Curtis seem > to be under the impression that whenever I cite scriptures I am > appealing to their authority. Thats also wrong. I just used them > to make a reference to a more general belief in flying in religious > scriptures. Noted. > > I've seen flying, or at least what appeared to > > be someone not only levitating for long periods > > of time in one place but moving through the air. > > You haven't seen flying, rather you saw something you believe was > flying. Scroll back up the page to the parts where you 1) berated people for having rock-solid belief systems, 2) claimed that it was Ok with you for people to believe what they wanted, and 3) that your disbelief in flying was not very strong and that you don't really care. Then read the above and what follows it. Sounds pretty strong and rock-solid to me. You're *affronted* that I've seen levitation. You do everything you can to suggest that's not what it was. Personally, I think you're just jealous that I (or anyone else) have had experiences you haven't, so you feel compelled to pooh-pooh the experiences. > Maybe it was maybe it was just a stage magic or a sort of > hypnosis. Maybe. But it's YOUR job to prove this is so, not my job. I was there, on hundreds of occasions, in settings as diverse as the L.A. Convention Center or small meeting rooms to the desert and once in a corner booth at Denny's at 3 a.m. while the waitress ducked out for a smoke. If you can suggest to me a way that that last one could have been pre-prepared and set up by a magician, I'm all ears. :-) The bottom line is that I saw what I saw and exper- ienced what I experienced. WHAT it was I don't really know and don't really care. The fact is that I saw it and felt it and HAD TO DEAL WITH IT. That's the part you have never experienced, Michael. That was my point in my first post. The day that YOU encounter some experience that just doesn't make sense and violates everything you believe but is *happening*, right in front of your eyes, is the day we can have a meaningful discussion about this. Until that day, you are working with belief and with theory, and I am talking about experience. WHAT the real nature of the experience is probably doesn't matter. What matters is that the seeker has to DEAL with it. It's like, "Oh, fuck. I just saw something that cannot happen. Now I have to deal with this if I want to be true to my experience." Some deal with such phenomena by trying to "explain them away," by calling them magic tricks or hypnosis or suggestion. Others just believe in them completely. Others, more like myself, don't know what the fuck they were, but to be honest with ourselves have to recognize that we saw and felt and experienced these phenomena many times, and so *something* was happen- ing. And we *know* that to talk about it is to risk ridicule, because we can never convince anyone of the truth of what we saw. But we manage to become comfortable with our own experience *anyway*. Here's what I would do if I could levitate. I'd find the biggest skeptics in the world, people with rock-solid belief systems like yours that tell them that such things can't really happen. I'd listen to them asking me to demonstrate levitation for them in public, and I'd laugh them off. HOWEVER, then I'd find out where they live or follow them out to the parking lot where no one else was around and demonstrate it for them, so completely that that could be no doubt in their minds what they were seeing. But there would be no one else around to "verify" their experience. I'd consider this a FAVOR to the skeptic. By doing this I would be placing them in the same position I am in with regard to phenomena like levitation or turning invisible, only more so. In my case, there were hundreds of others who experienced the same things I did, so that's some small comfort. But in the end it really comes down to what *I* experienced, and my personal relationship with that experience. THAT is what you're missing on this subject, Michael. And in my opinion that is the *only* valuable thing about the siddhis -- forcing a seeker to evaluate his own personal experience and decide whether he is going to trust it or disbelieve it. Being put in that position is a very valuable exper- ience in itself. It's the "test" that differentiates sit-in-their-armchairs-reading-about-someone-else's- experiences seekers from mystics. May you have such an experience someday. When you do, and have DEALT WITH IT, however you choose to deal with it, then we can discuss this further. Until then, you are just one more person with a rock-solid belief system based on what others have told you. Get it?
