--- In [email protected], "curtisdeltablues" <curtisdeltablues@...> wrote: > > -- In [email protected], maskedzebra <no_reply@> wrote: > > > > I am, via your post, alerted to the contingent solipsistic > > tendency in meI have never shaken this since I was a small > > child. But you are the first person on this blog to convince > > me I should be aware of the need to mortify this temptation > > whenever my putative enlightenment is undergoing a vivisection. > > It kind of comes with the territory of discussing your > experience doesn't it? I wasn't suggesting that you were > more that way than I would be if I were doing the same. It > wasn't as pointed as that. I was speculating on why Turq's > reaction was different than my own in relating to you here. > I could understand why he went that way, but for me it is > not how I believe I will get the most from our interaction. > I would never take part in a vivisection of someone's > important inner life.
I'm curious, Curtis, as to whether you think that's what I was doing -- trying to slice and dice his "important inner life." From my side, what I thought I was doing was saying that I didn't CARE much about his inner life, and that it wasn't important to me. As for vivisecting claims of supposed higher states of consciousness, Yes, I sometimes indulge in that (although I don't think I was in this case). I find it's an interesting way to see whether someone who claims to have achieved a state beyond ego or small self or whatever can walk the talk of their claim. As we have seen in the past, some can and some can't. I think that Tom Traynor did a pretty good job of presenting himself as somewhat self realized on this forum, without feeling the need to lash out at those who might not either buy it or be impressed by it. I think that Dr. Pete, in the rare times that he's made suggestions about where he's at, has similarly mainly walked his talk. I think that Rory, in his most recent appearance on this forum (as opposed to his earlier playdates) did a pretty good job of keeping it in his pants, emotional-reaction-wise. Others...uh...not so much. As I've said before, I don't think we can "vivisect" what is essentially unprovable. Those who claim to be in higher states of consciousness are undoubtedly having *some* experience. What it is neither I nor (in my opinion) they can really say. It's when they (as blastedactresses has pointed out so well recently) try to turn their subjective experiences into some kind of "truth" or pronouncement that I might be tempted to have a little "Let's poke at the supposedly enlightened person and see if there's really no self in there or whether there's a really BIG one waiting to lash out in defensiveness and anger" fun with them. Like blastedactresses, I do not buy that anyone can extrapolate from their subjective experience something called truth. In my view, whatever they experience is nothing more -- or less -- than subjective experience. As such, there is nothing that I or anyone else can say to prove or disprove it. When they cross the line from relating a subjective experience to making pronouncements about what that experience "means," and calling those pronouncements "truth," I might try to remind them that what they're saying may be nothing more than opinion, and thus no more "truth" than anyone else's opinion. ANYONE else's opinion. And that includes supposed holy men from the present or past. I don't swing behind the idea that ANY of their opinions is "truth."
