--- In [email protected], "yifuxero" <yifux...@...> wrote: > > There seems to be an ordinary component and an extraordinary > component, i.e. rare, unusual; as is the case with the > demonstration of genuine Siddhis. In such cases, we can't > conclude "ordinariness". > Now let's see if we can find examples of the ordinary folk, > versus the extraordinary. > > 1. The BatGap people appear to be in the ordinary category. > They need to clarify what's in "it" for others: the benefits > of being Awakened. Some of the self-benefits are spoken of, > but as Barry points out, where's the relevance for others > and if so why are such people speaking out at all? Good > point indeed! Score one for the Skeptics. > ...
I'm really not trying to "score," merely to bring up what to me are interesting points in an otherwise (to me) uninteresting scenario. The interesting point to me with "awakenings" is *not* what they do for the people having them, but what they do for anyone else. I tend to relate the "BATGAP phenomenon" (if there is one, if the Yahoo forum represents it) as a kind of "echo chamber." Much like the TM movement itself. If you're around no one -- all day, every day -- but people who think the way you do and assume the same things you do, things get a bit...uh...skewed IMO. You start to "cut corners" in the things that you say, because you assume -- and *can* assume -- that almost everyone around you agrees with your assumptions, and thus that you don't have to back them up or justify them in any way, merely present them. Take one such assumption -- that enlightenment/ awakening/whatever-you-call-it is a worthy goal *in itself*. Not only do many if not most in the TMO echo chamber seem to assume that it's a worthy goal, they seem to assume that it's the *highest* goal, that nothing on earth or in heaven is *as* worthy, and *as* good a thing. So people who believe this, surrounded by other people who believe this, stop bothering to explain WHY it might be such a good thing, and WHY it might be a worthy goal. They just "skip the small shit" and assume, and everyone around them *lets* them so assume, probably because they assume it, too. I no longer assume this. I see enlightenment/ awakening/whatever-I-call-it as an interesting experience, but Just One More Experience. I see it as being on no "higher" or "lower" a plane than any other experience. ANY other experience. So, when encountering people who have been told for decades that enlightenment is the "highest goal," and that the one-pointed pursuit of enlight- enment is therefore the "highest path" one could possibly aspire to in life, I tend to say, "Now wait a minute...back up...tell me WHY you believe this. Give me concrete reasons -- with examples from real life -- why the pursuit of enlightenment is not the most selfish obsession on the planet. Tell me why it isn't putting one's own desires for some sort of flashy inner experience above all other priorities and experiences in life, and thus devaluing them. Tell me about the *value* that you perceive enlightenment having -- for you, and more important, for others." Then I shut up. The responses are often interesting. Often much more interesting in my opinion than the stuff spouted earlier to an echo chamber in hopes of a big "Yeah" response echoed back to them. I like to see what people *used to* never being called on their assump- tions do when called on their assumptions. I like to see what they do when the response to their pontifications is "Yeah, right" instead of "Yeah."
