This also has to do with the quality of teaching of the so-called Socratic Method, based on the teachings of Socrates, in that the questions would determine the teaching; and the depth of the questions, would elicit the depth of response.
Therefore there would be a group desire to transcend to deeper levels of truth, in order to ask deeper questions of Socrates...
I always felt that Maharishi is a reincarnation of Socrates, in that I had heard, that one explanation for the blind love for him, was because in a previous incarnation, that he had been matured; so I thought of Socrates, when I heard that, as well as the similar garb...
I'm fascinated enough with this subject to make
it its own thread, to see if others here are
equally fascinated.
>>>> See, we maybe conditioned to stop the car when the traffic
>>>> lights turn red. You can provisionally accept it, validate
>>>> it as true, based on observation etc. The conditioning is
>>>> that you connect two facts, the
>>>> red traffic lights, and the need to stop the car.
>>>
>>> But that's a different type of conditioning;
>>> that's more like Pavlov's dogs. I was talking
>>> (and thought you were talking) about becoming
>>> convinced that something is true.
>>
>> But its all connected. You experience something, and then you are
>> being told something about that experience. (Or are otherwise no
>> need for all the lectures!) What you know, reinforces the
>> experience in a certain way. Then the reinforced experience
>> reinforces your belief about it again. You cannot isolate the two.
>
> It seems terribly important *to* the conditioned ego
> to believe that it hasn't been conditioned, that it
> has thought up (or "verified") all these concepts
> that have been taught to it on its own. The bottom
> line, however, is that it rarely, if ever, deviates
> from the concepts taught to it. And also feels the
> compulsion to argue their obvious "truth" with others.
My approach to the subject of "conditioning" has a
lot to do with my time with Rama. Whatever else he
might have been, he was a master at channeling and
"broadcasting" light (or whatever it was) so strongly
that it just blew away *all* of your conditioning.
You'd go to the desert with him convinced you had
pretty much everything figured out, and the next day
you'd awaken essentially *empty*, with not a certainty
left in you. About *anything*. It was as if the slate
had been wiped clean.
That's a *very* disconcerting process to go through.
There is very little to hang onto, and very little
self left to even want to. The *only* thing left to
cling to is Self.
And, when repeated over and over for years, this process
has the definite advantage (or disadvantage...however you
see it) of leaving one very suspicious of the concept
of "truth." When you've seen your own "truths" blasted
to bits and revealed as merely passing relative truths
hundreds of times, you don't tend to develop the same
attachment to the *latest* "truth" that some seekers do.
Or that's my experience, anyway.
The bottom line for me, when I encounter a new spiritual
trip, is to try to suss out how strongly this group
believes it knows the "truth." If the group has a *very*
strong set of dogma, and its practitioners display a
*very* strong attachment to the idea that they "know the
truth," what I inquire into next is the subjective "pace
of change" that these practitioners report as a result
of their practice.
What I've found (and others should feel free to contra-
dict me if you've found otherwise) is that, in general,
the slower the pace of spiritual change in the seekers,
the stronger the clinging to dogma and the belief that
they "know the truth" is in those seekers.
And the opposite -- in groups whose adherents seem to
experience a very *rapid* pace of change, in which they
see what they consider to be radical spiritual progress
on a daily or at least a weekly basis, there is very
*little* tendency to cling to dogma or certainty about
what constitutes "truth." It's as if "truth" is allowed
in these latter groups to "flow," to be a dynamic process
that changes every day, as the seeker changes.
Unc
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