Dear maskedzebra, I have refrained from commenting on your experiences such as your battles with the Vedic Gods and such since these are your metaphors for your battles, my comments on the rest below. --- In [email protected], maskedzebra <no_reply@...> wrote: > > Try this thought experiment: if you had never heard of enlightenment: it was a concept about which you were entirely ignorant (you didn't know of its existence, either in your vocabulary or in your experience), and you were describing what it was like to be Ravi Yogi RIGHT NOW, would you be forced tovirginally, innocentlydescribe, and thus discover, the necessity of, the reality of enlightenment (as classically delineated in your own scriptures)? Would, then, enlightenment, as a concept, as an empirical description of a certain style of functioning of your consciousness and your self, be required in order for you to 1. explain your experience to yourself; 2. explain your experience to others? > First of all you have to let me know what my scriptures are and what is their concept of enlightenment. Because all the scriptures I have read didn't give any concept, just pointers to it. So I will answer your question though it's not exactly well stated. I have been and continue to be at a loss of words for my experience, but I, as in my rational mind, does want to do both 1 & 2 - i.e. explain my experience to myself and others, daily, my rational mind is constantly at it, every minute, trying to explain it away. So the integration of the rational mind with the experience is the metaphors I throw out - some my own, some well repeated ones. I don't just parrot the well repeated ones but they mesh well with what I feel. > In my case, the violent shift from one state of consciousness to another state of consciousness (although occurring seemingly smoothly and irresistibly) was dramatic and extraordinary. And the attendant powers and abilities immediately conferred upon one simultaneous with effecting that transition from one state of consciousness into another, never-before-experienced state of consciousness, COULD NOT EXIST INSIDE ORDINARY WAKING STATE CONSCIOUSNESS. > > I, then, in making sense of what happened to me in Arosa in September 1976, WOULD [in this same thought experiment] REQUIRE a concept that entailed, in its nascent articulation, a perfect and felicitous conformity to what Maharishi defined as Unity Consciousness. So I would not have had to have an idea of enlightenment, in order to experientially validate its existence and its components for the first time when it happened to me. > > My putative enlightenment occurred not with respect to everything I had learned or knew about what enlightenment was before the moment I became enlightened. It happened, and I recognized what it was that was happening, based upon what I had learned from Maharishi. > > Now I don't say this same situation CANNOT apply to yourself, but I am interested in whether it DOES so apply. Mine - the first was dramatic and extraordinary too, but it has followed with periods of integration and another dramatic transition with higher intensity. But it doesn't seem to have the finality as you conclude yours to be, mine has more been like a rise and coast, another rise and coast, more like an airplane ascending, I can't say I have reached the destination. Unlike yours my idea of enlightenment hasn't included dominating others, besting others, or resulted or felt the need for an acknowledgement from others or need to put in a predefined bucket or the need to show off as a special state to be emulated by others. I have to say you have been cheated by Maharishi or that you missed the pun. I loved the quote - "Ignorance has no beginning but an end whereas Enlightenment has a beginning but no end". I don't know why your experience could not exist in the ordinary waking state consciousness - doesn't make any sense to me. Enlightenment is not opposed to the waking state. > Because if it does, then there is no such thing as enlightenment, since if enlightenment has anything to do with a true state of consciousness, it must represent reality accurately, and your critique (as expressed here in this post) of my enlightenment is at variance (obviously without your conscious knowledge of this) with reality. It is indeed the evidence of the non-fit between your subjective experience and the reality out of which you even have your individual existenceand your capacity to form the very judgment you have in this instance. > Doesn't make any sense to me - what are your definitions of "reality" and "enlightenment" and why doesn't enlightenment represent "reality" accurately?
> I have been told that after Rick Archer interviewed you about your self-realized state, you said you were actually only giving a mock-interview; that you were playing Rick for a fool (and I believe there were unwanted consequences to this decision of yours to publicly declare this). Well, I don't say in this instance you are DELIBERATELY repeating that same act with me; but I can assure you, Ravi: your categorical dismissal and denial of there being any sort of truthful epistemological basis to my enlightenment is, just on the face of it, a far too radical and uncompromising judgment to make. EVEN IF I AM WRONG OBJECTIVELY ABOUT WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED TO ME. And thus my post from yesterday, is, when it comes right down to it, more a clinical than a serious philosophical and theological document. > I never said I gave a mock interview, it was just a pun that you missed - yet again - why am I not surprised? > > Hey, Ravi: I really wish you would return to being a nice guy when it comes to myself. Can't I write something which will gain your approval again, so youas you have already done oncerevise your estimation of me and declare you have an open mind about me? > I always have an open mind, always ready to contradict myself- not sure why you thought I was not a nice guy and not sure why you would need my approval - you are giving too much power to me and your Vedic Gods - or may be you think I'm one of these Vedic Gods? I'm a nobody. > Am I all wrong about this, Ravi? > I really am unable to comment on any of the paragraphs above without some kind of details from you on your concept of "reality" (which you seem to stress in every paragraph) and/or "truth", "UC" (is this same as enlightenment?). You are wrong in your assessment - my post was sincere, not in isolation or impulsiveness, your entire argument was based on you having attained UC and your description of UC if indeed synonymous to enlightenment didn't make any sense to me. > P.S. I have a feeling that might be my last post at FFL. Not because of having suffered a mortal wound or unforgettable humiliation, but because I am perhaps veering (and have veered) a little too far beyond the standard deviation I have set for myself in order to continue my project of self-rehabilitation. If you decide to stop posting in the interest of your self-rehabilitation - that's fair enough - since I did that myself here for a few months here last year, but I wouldn't want it to be because of me. > Thank you for your post, Ravi. I wish you the greatest success and delight (and TRUTH!) inside the movement of your own experience of purported self-realization. Life is goodalwayssomewhere. > Thank you. Life is good - here. This quote says it all - ""Life is not a problem. If you are trying to solve it you will miss it." You seem to be a typical philosopher, caught in words, spend your entire time in words, creates God, reality, truth out of words - a peddler of empty words, master of intellectual jugglery.
