--- In [email protected], "Patrick Gillam" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: <snip> > Rory describes the dysfunctional way I absorbed the teaching for > many years, but in fairness to Maharishi, I recall many times when > he talked about "the pathless path," implying we're already there.
Yes indeed. I posted a quote from "Science of Being" to this effect a couple days ago. > I also recall a period in the 1990s when he seemed to be > trying to dislodge whatever conceptual attachments were > preventing our awakening to what is already there, talking > about the "mistake of the intellect" and what have you. > > In short, for me, it might be fairer to fault my understanding than > MMY's attempts to straighten it out. My experience--after some years of living fairly happily with MMY's concepts without examining them too closely--has been that if I take one of them right down to the nitty-gritty, I end up with a paradox or an infinite regress. At first this bothered me, then I began to find it liberating. The "mistake of the intellect" is key. Intellectual teaching can *only* be delivered and received on the level of the "mistake," by definition. It follows that any teaching about the ultimate Unity of reality that does *not* break down into paradox or infinite regress, when you take it as far as it can go, must be inauthentic. MMY talks about the nature of Reality being Self- referential. But infinite regress or paradox is what Self-reference *looks* like to the "mistaken" intellect. If you take what is circular and try to lay it out in a linear form so the intellect can comprehend it, you have to break the circle at some point, leaving two loose ends that can't be brought together (paradox). You either have to live with the paradox, or get rid of the loose ends by extending the line indefinitely at both of them (infinite regress). Once this sinks in, the ground is pulled right out from under your feet; the intellect has nowhere to stand. Concepts are drained of their solidity and become slippery, mushy, and insubstantial. It can be scary, but it can also be exhilarating. The paradoxes and infinite regresses, and the *reason* for them, are all there in MMY's teaching, but you do have to do some probing to identify them and see where they lead, because he doesn't tend to rub your nose in them, at least on the level of the rank-and-file. (Experience of transcending is an essential component of the process, or was for me.) I don't know whether the conceptual structure of his teaching holds people back, or whether ripping the concepts away before one is ready to see their ultimate uselessness on one's own terms would be counterproductive. Maybe it depends on the individual, and MMY walks a narrow line in an attempt to minimize the potential harm and maximize the potential benefits of teaching conceptually (especially since so many of his students are Westerners steeped in conceptual thinking). 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/
