What did angels look like? Different every time. The first time I saw the phenomenon I can’t but call “angel,” I was fifteen years old. I’d rigged a large coffee can and a Bunsen burner in the garage to make a small kiln and was enameling on copper. I like translucent enamels best, but if you want to do cool blues and greens, you can’t really get that effect on copper even if you put down a layer of flux first. So I remembered that my mom (who was at work killing dogs), had some small, sixteenth century silver plates—perfect for cool blues and greens.
The trouble was that sixteenth century silver is so pure that it melted in my kiln. Just before it flowed into the bottom of the coffee can, it was incandescent liquid, yet still held its form. In that moment, it came alive and indistinct from me, and while I still saw it as an “external” object, its center and mine were one, and from that center exploded a sound like a thousand silver bells. That sound expanded from my center, which was the silver, like ring-shaped waves in water (which was I) spread out to infinity, repeating again and again. The pleasure of those expanding “sound-rings” was intense, all-consuming beyond imagining, and filled all my senses. With the experience came knowledge, not separate in words, but part and parcel of the experience itself, though to communicate it, I have to translate into words. I knew I saw the angel that makes silver. It is not the case that the angel is one thing and silver is another. The angel showed me how he creates himself as silver. I knew the process to be sacred and saw that silver is not just silver but intelligence making itself into form. I saw it emerge from a sacred ground of nothing which was nothing, yet intelligent. I was an atheist at the time, so this was not something I was inclined to add to the experience; the knowledge, as I said, was part of the experience. Since then, I have had that kind of experience often, but it is different each time in that the angel of silver has appeared only once. But I have seen the angel of winter wheat and the angel of purple cabbages, just for example--the world looks as if made of translucent light in such moments. I can see how, given experiences like that, we might be tempted to say that “creation” or the “universe” or “multiverse” or whatever you want to call it emerges from a field of pure consciousness, but I stand with Curtis: Such experience is not evidence that the absolute vacuum state of the quantum field is identical with pure consciousness, though it might be evidence that the human mind is more mysterious than psychologists have fathomed. ----- Original Message ---- From: wayback71 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sunday, December 30, 2007 11:12:21 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: "Maharishi Effect" Quantum-Failure Essay --- In FairfieldLife@ yahoogroups. com, Angela Mailander <mailander111@ ...> wrote: > > Personal experience however subtle does not by itself count as evidence. It > might satisfy you to see what you see. I have seen what I can only call angels, but does that mean angels exist? While the experience is groovy to the max, I wouldn't call it evidence. Some folks might be tempted to call it evidence that I'm nuts. And, no, they didn't look like people and they didn't have wings. What did they look like? > > ----- Original Message ---- > From: Vaj <vajranatha@ ...> > To: FairfieldLife@ yahoogroups. com > Sent: Sunday, December 30, 2007 7:43:35 AM > Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: "Maharishi Effect" Quantum-Failure Essay > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > On Dec 29, 2007, at 8:18 PM, Patrick Gillam wrote: > > omments interleaved below. > > > --- In FairfieldLife@ yahoogroups. com, Vaj <vajranatha@ ...> wrote: > > > > > > On Dec 28, 2007, at 11:33 AM, Patrick Gillam wrote: > > > > > I'm curious - how many people here believe > > > consciousness is the fundamental substrate > > > of creation? If you do, what evidence do you > > > put forth to back up your belief? > > > > While I would agree that consciousness, the alaya-vijnana, is the > > basic substrate-conscious ness, my answer changes when you add "of > > creation". By "of creation" I take that to mean the physical universe. > > Once we include the universe as a physical object and seek to identify > > or intuit a unifying substrate that transcends AND includes > > materiality it becomes a different answer. > > I'm asking for viewpoints on Maharishi's teaching > that physical creation arises out of undifferentiated > consciousness. So yes, I'm wondering about a > substrate that transcends and includes materiality. > > Well then that would be like the "consciousness only" school where > consciousness is the creator. > > > From any "whole" that > > includes materiality I'd be forced to say prana is the unifying field > > interconnecting all of these (consciousness( es) and materials), this > > and akasha or fundamental Space. The reason I include Space is with a > > material object you need at least space. If that Space contains > > evolutionary activity, that Space requires Time. By "Time" I mean "Big > > Time" or "macrocosmic time". > > Seems to me that Space would arise out of > the substrate as well. And isn't prana a "relative" > phenomenon, to use Maharishi's phrasing, and > hence something that would be created from > an unmanifest, transcendent reality, as well? > > In some ways-of-seeing, it is a subtle prana that is the sole support for an > individual between existences. The same applies to universes. But even in yogic creation theory the "power of the mirror", the vimarsha-shakti, is the power that allows infinite recursion to flesh-out the Big Dream. > > > > If you ask about the individual consciousness' POV, it's a slightly > > different answer! It also changes if you use a word other than > > "creation". For example, I would prefer 'a network that is > > simultaneously network and node, node and network, instantaneously > > arising out of the sum interplay of a multiverse'. When that's the > > case, I can see and experience directly consciousness as primary. But > > lest we fool ourselves we should also be aware that this also implies > > a yogi would can pass his hand through matter as if it was truly an > > illusion. It's an easy claim to make, few truly and completely live at > > that absolute a level, but they do IME exist. :-) > > This is what I'm really interested in - empirical > evidence. Most of us got theory up the yinyang > 30 years ago. By now it seems we'd have lots of > evidence to validate the theory. > > I fear I'm dumbing down some fine detail here. > > Well one thing these traditions do do, the Hindu and Buddhist traditions, is > tell you in no uncertain terms what level of fineness our meditation has to be at for us to have clear insight into the universe. The Hindu yogis point out that perception must be very refined to even be able to cognize such insight. If you take the shortest syllable that you can utter (called a "matra") and divide it 600 times, that's the level of subtlety of a mental cognition that a yogi must perceive. This is the level of "microcosmic I-time" that a yogi must have in order to perceive the multiverse as part of his or her own direct experience. And I just don't see many meditators who can perceive that finely. Most of what you hear people talking about is projections from conditioning they've acquired, not very fine cognition. > > > Yes, if you did have a meditation technique that went that subtle, we would > have all the evidence that we need! > > > It's one thing to wax philosophical about "the unified field", it's quite > another to truly experience it. In order to do that we need to transcend the basic "refresh rate" of cognition, much like if you could blink fast enough and in the correct timing, you could see that the computer monitor you're using is actually just a sequence of pulses, displayed on a screen or monitor. > > > Thanks for your thoughtful inquiry Patrick! > > > > > > > > > > > <!-- > > #ygrp-mkp{ > border:1px solid #d8d8d8;font- family:Arial; margin:14px 0px;padding: 0px > 14px;} > #ygrp-mkp hr{ > border:1px solid #d8d8d8;} > #ygrp-mkp #hd{ > color:#628c2a; font-size: 85%;font- weight:bold; line-height: 122%;margin: > 10px 0px;} > #ygrp-mkp #ads{ > margin-bottom: 10px;} > #ygrp-mkp .ad{ > padding:0 0;} > #ygrp-mkp .ad a{ > color:#0000ff; text-decoration: none;} > --> > > > > <!-- > > #ygrp-sponsor #ygrp-lc{ > font-family: Arial;} > #ygrp-sponsor #ygrp-lc #hd{ > margin:10px 0px;font-weight: bold;font- size:78%; line-height: 122%;} > #ygrp-sponsor #ygrp-lc .ad{ > margin-bottom: 10px;padding: 0 0;} > --> > > > > <!-- > > #ygrp-mlmsg {font-size:13px; 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