On Mar 28, 2009, at 8:45 PM, curtisdeltablues wrote:
--- In [email protected], "sparaig" <lengli...@...> wrote:
At one stage you are directing the mantra. This is not like any
other thought. That was my point.
We seem to have different ideas about how things work
I know all of these advanced techniques are on the web but I don't
like to piss people off unnecessarily by being more specific. I
remember how people into it feel about their secrets. But I hope
you get my point from that.
We seem to have different ideas about how things work
But I'm not surprised, I've objected strongly to descriptions of
advanced techniques
that I have heard before.
I don't really understand how many different ways there are to think
of it. My point was that there seems to be a lot of leeway with the
so called innocent practice and it still works. For example Indians
who are using their Istideva's name transcend just fine despite all
sorts or emotional connections with their mantra. Thinking your
mantra from a body part, which would be exactly the kind of things
TM teachers are taught to poo poo as not innocent and would be
introducing effort, work just fine as well. And by the time we get
to the expansion of awareness technique found in certain advanced
techniques and the now defunct Age of Enlightenment technique, we
have a practice that for all purposes is a straight up hypnotic
inductions with all the trappings of a contrived moodmaking
technique generated by imagination. But again, it is just fine from
Maharishi.
I've learned a lot of variations on mantra concentration over the
years, from the TM "charm causes the mind to spontaneously
concentrate" idea to many other kinds. One of the problems I noticed
with very "slack" techniques like TM is that you can lose clarity if
you get used to allowing the mantra to be just this fuzzy "impulse".
It's too easy to fall into the defects (of mantra practice). It seems
to me the dogmas that surround TM mantra recitation has actually
hindered the practice.
Conversely, finding a relaxed balance between too much attention and
not enough attention--and then continuously repeating mantra for a
half hour or so without losing attention of your repetition is quite
different. You can tell if you're losing focus because you start to
screw up on your repetition. You'll get the same changes in the
mantra, but awareness is much quicker to respond. The advantage is,
you get results from the mantra much quicker and your attentional
skills get honed very finely.
