On May 29, 2008, at 9:49 AM, Alex Stanley wrote:
I was just down near Kansas City, on a Waking Down retreat, and I asked Krishna Gauci ( http://www.krishnasatsang.com/ ) about FFL's Buddhist fundamentalists who insist that one must achieve all these states of esoteric duality. Krishna's spiritual background includes Advaita and Dzogchen, and his response was along the lines of, "Well, yeah, they're fundamentalists." But, he also speculated that embodied awakening would likely be a much more effective platform from which to actually achieve such states.
I think the place you're confused Alex is that not all "experiences" are dualistic and different experiences are handled differently--and for different reasons--on different paths. For example, at the level of Inner Tantra (either Buddhist or Hindu) experiences can be used to refine transcending to the point where one can release mind and the grasping to different patterns by grokking this experiential withdrawal. This withdrawal has certain subtle "signs". But differently, at the nondual level we're not talking about conventional (dualistic) experiences at all, as it is not an observer observing an object, but vidya or pure "knowing". Nonetheless we're stuck using dualistic lingo to try to convey what we're describing.
If people have "bought into" to a certain paradigm, it's often hard to convey another POV in a way they will get the essence of what you are saying--esp. if the listeners are attached to their paradigm or believe it actually has some absolute value, purity or "truth".
