--- In [email protected], "Robert Gimbel" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > -- The ability to float the body, must come from the ability to > maintain an extremely high vibration. > > As was mentioned before, I don't believe the ability to levitate or > perform any of the Siddhis, can be as important than the goal of > Self-Realization, or Enlightenment.
There are some traditions that feel that setting enlightenment as a "goal" is the very thing that prevents it from being realized. > Of course, how could it be any other way? As stated above. Or, as some Tibetan monks I've met live their lives, by setting the goal of personal enlightenment as a far lower priority than the goal of helping each person they meet during the day in whatever way they can. I honestly don't know if this approach helps or hinders their personal enlightenment, but it sure does seem to make them happy campers. As a general rule, the less time one of these monks seems to spend thinking about himself or his own personal enlightenment, the happier he is. And, when it appears within that community, the converse seems to be true -- those monks who get hung up focusing on their own enlightenment dont' seem to be very happy, or to laugh much. I'm sure you've all seen what I'm talking about. Some person is genuinely committed or "one-pointed" about his own enlightenment. He lives, breathes, and eats whatever he thinks will "get him there" faster. And along the Way, he treats people around him like shit. Zero compassion, zero interest in actually helping other people, zero humanity. Is it any wonder that such people don't seem to get enlightened very often? > Getting lost in any "power" would be a diversion from the path. I agree. I remain unconvinced that the siddhis have any real effect in terms of creating "higher coherence" or a higher vibe for the world at large. For me, their main value seems to be as 1) a teaching device, to help students loosen their ideas of what is possible and what is not, 2) a learning device, as students begin to master these things themselves, and find that they're pretty everyday and not nearly as flashy or impor- tant as they once seemed, and 3) fun. I've never understood the facination some people have for "powers" and "miracles." The whole Jesus story, water into wine, walking on water, that sorta thing. Big deal. Because I never made (and still do not make) any link between the ability to do these things and a teacher's state of conscious- ness, the ability to perform siddhis is, for me, just a "perk" in studying with a particular teacher. Siddhis, schmiddis. The bottom line for me is how well that teacher meditates, and how effectively he or she can transmit that ability to his or her students. > In comentary's Maharishi has said, that the siddhis were given from > more gross to more subtle. > > In this way, the siddhis help to begin to discriminate, not only > pure consciousness, but also the different levels of creation, from > gross to subtle. There I absolutely agree. As stated recently, I remain unconvinced that some of the siddhis actually *have* a physical counterpart. That is, I suspect (based on my own experience and that of hundreds of friends) that for some of the siddhis one has to be able to perceive at more subtle levels to even be *aware* of the siddhi as it is being per- formed. This would add one benefit to the three listed above -- the growing ability to perceive at finer levels. > Also, any particular aspect of any siddhi that was needed would > spontaneously be available to one who is Realized. This I don't believe is true. There are many, many, many stories of fully-realized individuals who never developed a facility with the siddhis. I think it's a predilection thing. Some enlightened beings, whose nature is to enjoy the manipulation of energies, gravitate to the siddhis, whether through a program of study, or spontaneously. Other enlightened beings couldn't care less, and thus do not develop either an interest in or a facility with the siddhis. > So, that any particular siddhi, or any particular ability which > might be expressed, at any given time, is only a bi-product of the > expanded state of inner-consciousness, which is available all of the > time. I'm definitely going to have to disagree on this one. My experience -- whatever it was -- convinces me that the siddhis do NOT have to do with the state of consciousness we call enlightenment. They have to do with OTHER states of attention, relative states. One can "move into" the states of attention that manifest the siddhis without being enlight- ened. And vice-versa. Just my opinion. > My feeling is about the flying siddhi, is that it really raises the > vibration, in the individual and the environment, and intensifies, > the radiance effect of the experience of pure consciousness. I'm less convinced. I think that the performance of any siddhi does generate a "higher" vibration, but I don't believe it is necessarily the vibration of enlightenment or pure conscious- ness, merely the vibration of the state of attention one has to be in to perform the siddhi. The teacher I worked with, whatever one may think of him, used to do "demos" for us to allow us to experience the *difference* between these two "vibes." He would perform one or more siddhis, and allow us to feel that energy. And then he would just go into samadhi and allow us to feel *that* energy. And back and forth, over and over, until you couldn't help but notice the difference. It's one of the things that makes me believe that we're talking apples and oranges. This is NOT to denigrate the states of attention that emanate from the siddhis. They are what they are, and pretty neat to experience and be around. In their way, these energies can be more immediately mind-boggling or flashy. But IMO the energy of samadhi or pure consciousness is far more trans- forming and potentially liberating to be around than the energy of the siddhis. Again, just my opinion. > The vibration, would be so high, to effect everything in the > enviornment. I would say that this is true of the vibration of samadhi, but not the vibration of the siddhis. The latter seems to be limited by proximity in time and space, whereas the vibration of samadhi does not. > I have heard and I believe that the ability to levitate is somewhat > dependent on world consciousness, and that with world consciousness, > heavy and fear laden and full of boundary thinking and feeling, it > is difficult to reach and maintain the intensity and speed of > vibration, necessary for the feat to occur. I suspect, based on my own experiences, that there is some truth to this, but that the "world consciousness" can limit only the *level* of creation on which the siddhi can be manifested. In a time of great purity, for example, one might be able to levitate on the physical plane; in a time of great confusion, one might be only able to levitate on a more subtle plane. Again, all of this is my opinion, based on my own experiences. I'm not trying to sell it to anyone as "truth" or "How Things Work." > I assume the stories of the levitators, of past times, and of people > levitating in India; those were in settings of privacy, it seems... > Even Jesus levitated only in front of his disciples.. And thus the question arises, would a stranger have seen him levitate? Jesus' students had worked with him for some time. They had been trained in whatever method of seeing into more subtle levels of creation that he taught. Perhaps what they saw was a phenomenon that only appeared to someone who could see on that level of subtlety. Perhaps a visitor would have sat there and seen nothing. It's just a speculation, but one with a point. People make assumptions about past records of siddhis being performed, the primary assumption being that *everyone* present would have seen them. I make no such assumptions. I know from experience that this is not neces- sarily true. Unc To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
