Nice article. I would say not to intellectualize or philosophize too much(sushka tarka - dry logic), otherwise you will just end deceiving yourself - a la Vakrabuddhi or the Trickster. A thirsty man doesn't start reading books on water, types of water, the manufacturers, suppliers, etc. - he knows he is thirsty and that he needs water. People who quench their thirst might react differently, some may become silent, some will scream in joy, some might laugh, some shed tears, these expressions don't convey the joy of quenching thirst, they are not the real thing, just the after effects and we shouldn't focus on that. Some might have quenched their thirst by drinking water from a lake, some from a muddy lake, some from a river - this is unnecessary again and doesn't convey the joy of quenching the thirst. The important factors in the non-journey journey are: Three S's of spirituality - Satsang (company of the enlightened), Seva (service to Guru or God) and Sadhana (spiritual practices) And the 3 V's - Vairagya(dispassion to worldly objects), Viveka(discrimination) and Vichara(inquiry, investigation). Above all Kripa or Grace of a Sadguru or God is the most important factor. Love - Ravi Yogi
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Xenophaneros Anartaxius <anartaxius@...> wrote: > > If enlightenment is the experience of what we essentially are, then it cannot > be somewhere else than where we are, so the term 'transcendence,' meaning > 'having gone beyond the current limits,' or something like that, cannot mean we > have gone into some other realm, it just refers to having a more complete > experience wherein we notice aspects of our experience that we had not noticed > before. It does not refer to an actual journey. Whatever we think we are doing > to have this experience, it is not bringing something new into our life, it is > just making us more attentive to what is there already. It is conditioning. To > learn to play the piano, you have to condition the mind/body a certain way. To > recognise and name different birds, you have to be able to discriminate the > different kinds, which at first you may not be able to do. You might have to > develop your memory to recognise birds' different coloured plumage etc., and > which colours fit with female or male, or the age of the birds. To 'transcend,' > one has to condition the mind/body a certain way so that the discriminative > ability is enhanced. However this is done, one is learning a new habit. A > meditation system establishes a habit that can interfere with other habits we > might have, that is, de-condition those other habits, break them up; allows us > to unlearn those habits to a lesser or greater extent, while establishing the > effect of its own habit. Those other habits, primarily perceptual and > understanding based, in this context of spiritual development are called > 'ignorance.' > > > Even though it is not an actual journey from somewhere to somewhere else, this > learning/unlearning process can be thought of as a journey, and we end up > conceptualising what is going on in this process, or borrowing someone else's > ideas about it. The huge variation in description of this imaginary journey > found in the literature, in groups practising meditation, and other spiritually > oriented techniques, is enough to make one wonder how much of all this could be > real. There seems to be a kind of fantasy overkill that develops in spiritual > movements over time where peoples' imaginations take over where experience ends. > In a scientific discipline, imagination plays a big role, scientists come up > with all sorts of crazy ideas to try to explain their experiences and data. Most > of these ideas turn out to not work out because, well, scientists test them and > argue among themselves and eventually filter out the crap based on the results > of carefully constructed test situations. For some reason, there does not seem > to be a very good filtering mechanism in most spiritual circles, so the crap > continues to circulate unabated, and sometimes it seems to develop an > astonishing reproductive capacity as well. It often ends up in pretty books with > gold borders and illuminated letters, although buried in the dazzle may be > useful implementable plans. > > Enlightenment is a simple experience, and while the so-called path to it can be > made subject to a descriptive process, we might consider just how complex that > description needs to be to describe how to get the job done. In the Maharishi > system, there are these benchmark descriptions TC, CC, etc., but it might be > well to reflect on just how discrete these experiences are for any particular > person, considering there are differences in human nervous systems and the > programming (conditioning) of those nervous systems. Perhaps these experiences > blend together for some individuals, or perhaps some individuals, due to their > nature and backlog of experience, might skip one of the criteria described. A > teacher in the Zen tradition I heard once on the West Coast of the United States > spoke of an 'under-the-water feeling' that results from having meditated for > some years. When you are swimming and you are under water everything above the > surface feels walled off, inaccessible. This might correspond to the CC > described in TM movement literature, where the person (or non-person, however > you want to describe the internal experience), feels separated from activity. > This is a rather early stage, not really what enlightenment is. Partial > enlightenment, if one dares to call it that, is like travelling somewhere and > getting only a third, or halfway there. One has not arrived, if we are thinking > of this as some sort of journey from A to Z. If one travels for the first time > from Atlanta, Georgia to Portland, Oregon, but only ends up in Denver, Colorado, > what does this one know about Portland? > > Once I heard some people talking of a system created by psychiatrists to > unburden the psyche. This woman described it to me as the 'only way' to become > free. It seemed that the people that went through this process ended up blaming > everything they thought wrong in their lives on their parents. Techniques have a > designated purpose; once that purpose is achieved, do they have any more value? > Is that value, if still present, different from what it was initially? If you > want to open a can of beans, and you pick a can opener to do the job, once the > lid is cut off, what is the value of that can opener? What do you need next? How > many possible ways could one pursue to get enlightened? Is there just 'one way' > or many, or as some say, is there no way at all; the experience dawning in the > time and the place of its own blossoming? > > So what is essential, intellectually, to understand about this make-believe > journey? Enlightenment is a non-journey from A to A. It is really just A period. > But saying it that way does not allow for effectively communicating about it to > anyone. So how much is it necessary to flesh out the trip as a description? Do > we say it is A to A, or A to B, or A to B to C, or A to B to C to D to E to F to > G to H to I to J to K to L to M to N to O to P to Q to R to S to T to U to V to > W to X to Y to Z? Is there an optimum, efficient set of descriptions that can > fill out the understanding about enlightenment without being a mountain of > bullshit? And would such a description work for everyone, or do different people > need different ideas to motivate them on this quest? Do different techniques > result in different experiences that would force a different description of the > 'path'? What is the best tool to use when? What do you do when a tool does not > work? Spiritual seekers seem to have an excessive level of gullibility. How do > you know when to trust or distrust sources of information? >
