--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "curtisdeltablues" <curtisdeltablues@...> wrote: > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Buck" <dhamiltony2k5@> wrote: >> >> Whatever may have happened up until now may be because you didn't know, but >> now be careful. > > Do statements like this make religious people feel powerful or something? If > you crack a book on the history of religions you will find hundreds of > versions of people claiming to "know" this kind of thing. It is so back > water, provincial, lamo assumptivness.
Curtis, I think you are reacting to Bucks rather provincial, conservative stance which even in the context of the TM movement seems kind of backwater. He is quoting Swami Brahmananda Saraswati. > > The whole ominous "be careful" smacks of children's stories about the > boogieman. Be careful of what exactly, and how do you know that? Do Santa and > this guy share a database about our goodness? If they are both watching us > sleeping does that mean they watch us doing the wild thing? Is the whole > world just God's porno channel? We do not know the context of this lecture Brahmananda gave, who he was talking to, though it seems he was giving a general lecture to Hindus to encourage them to seek enlightnement. Out of context though it might be misunderstood. Buck just rather mindlessly posts these things in my opionion. As Buck seems to have a kind of old time religiosity, it grates on those that have a more up-to-date outlook on life. >> After getting a human body, if you don't reach God, then you have sold a >> diamond at the price of spinach.> > > Which version of God out of the thousands proposed by people throughout > history? Are you as "sure" of your version as fundamentalist Christians? > Would you strap bombs on your body to prove your point, are you that sure, > cuz plenty of people are. If confidence is the criteria you are way in the > back of the line. Whatever Brahmananda's experience was, it had something to do with 40 years of silence in the forest etc., so I doubt it would correspond with the sky god images the more fundamentalist Western or Eastern religions have. Even MMY said that a religion is basically what you have left over when the experience of enlightenment has departed from a tradition. >>> Do good works without hesitation.> > > I just did by taking the time to bust a myth. Enlightenment is mythbusting in the extreme. After all if life in ignorance is an illusion, then our idea of enlightenment is part of that ignorance so whatever we think we know at this stage of the game is going to be wiped off the map if we actually make progress. >>> The Jiva has been experiencing samsara for many many births. It is only >>> natural, therefore, that its tendencies have become worldly. To turn its >>> tendency toward Paramatma and away from samsara requires effort. In >>> reality, the aim of life is to stop the mind from involvement with this >>> world.> > > You need to get a life then cuz my world rocks. These world denying beliefs > are the opposite of brings joy to my life. This a version of Turn on tune in > drop out, Tim Leary talk. > > > <If one engages in spiritual practice of Bhagavan and in thinking and > speaking about Him, the mind will start to dwell on Him, and after some time, > it will withdraw from samsara on its own.> > > This is actually a refutation of Maharishi's whole teaching and shows that > Guru Dev is just another fundamentalist Hindu. This is probably like a technique, applied for certain people at a certain time (like before 1953). Maybe it was of use then, in India. It would not work for me, since I have no defined concept of spiritual beings or gods, they are all just the same to me. Zeus, YHWH, Allah, Thor. These are names applied to various concepts people have had and have. If one takes the trouble one might be able to comprehend something of what these things represent to various people. For example Zeus, my favorite because he is the king of the gods, can represent just an icon in an ancient temple, or a rather diffuse concept like Einstein's or Spinoza's use of the word 'god', which hardly corresponds to the way the typical person seems to imagine what this word means. >>>> "In our daily affairs we should adopt a strategy of quickly attending to >>>> good works and things related to the divine. Should any wrong thought >>>> arise, on the other hand, we should try to postpone it to another time by >>>> saying, "I'll do it tomorrow or the day after next." In this way wrong >>>> action can be continuously postponed." >>>>> >>>>> "To be born a human being is more fortunate than to be born a deva. >>>>> >>>>> Taking birth as a deva is considered comparable to taking birth as any >>>>> other life form. Birth as a god is attained by those who perform certain >>>>> sacrifices and karma, etc. associated with divinity, with the intention >>>>> to enjoy divine pleasures. The minds of the devatas wander incessantly >>>>> because of the abundance of enjoyable things in the heavenly realms, and >>>>> hence they cannot perform purushartha, actions consistent with the goals >>>>> of human life and evolution. For this reason, the human birth is >>>>> considered superior, because here, by doing as much purushartha as >>>>> possible, one can eventually become one with God." We do not know if Brahmananda believed this stuff. > This guy should have met Walt Disney, their minds are very similar. I think Disney was a genius, in the way he created and marketed his ideas. He was religious: "...I am personally thankful that my parents taught me at a very early age to have a strong personal belief and reliance in the power of prayer for Divine inspiration. My people were members of the Congregational Church in our home town of Marceline, Missouri. It was there where I was first taught the efficacy of religion... how it helps us immeasurably to meet the trial and stress of life and keeps us attuned to the Divine inspiration... Deeds rather than words express my concept of the part religion should play in everyday life. I have watched constantly that in our movie work the highest moral and spiritual standards are upheld, whether it deals with fable or with stories of living action. This religious concern for the form and content of our films goes back 40 years to the rugged financial period in Kansas City when I was struggling to establish a film company and produce animated fairy tales. Many times during those difficult years, even as we turned out Alice in Cartoonland and later in Hollywood the first Mickey Mouse, we were under pressure to sell out or debase the subject matter or go "commercial" in one way or another. But we stuck it out... Both my study of Scripture and my career in entertaining children have taught me to cherish them... Thus, whatever success I have had in bringing clean, informative entertainment to people of all ages, I attribute in great part to my Congregational upbringing and my lifelong habit of prayer..." Maharishi, businessman he was, recognised a kindred spirit in Disney. I doubt Brahmananda had a similar outlook, recluse he was. >>>>>> "A human being is like a lump of pure gold, whereas gods are like pieces >>>>>> of jewelry. Having been perfected as jewelry, their progression is >>>>>> complete and they cannot be further improved. On the other hand, gold >>>>>> which has not yet been crafted by the jewelry is completely unrestricted >>>>>> in its potential. Hence the birth of a human being is said to be the >>>>>> very best birth for action. Having attained this birth, one should not >>>>>> act carelessly, but should conscientiously perform the best purushartha. >>>>>> Strive to become one with God in this lifetime. Have firm faith in the >>>>>> Vedas and Shastras and keep the company of saints, mahatmas and wise >>>>>> people. Only then will the purpose of your life be fulfilled." > > Uh, mmmm....I don't know how to say this...uh.... > > You see saints and you aren't gittin in the dome brotha. So somebody is full > of it. Now considering the fact that Maharishi was always against people > visiting saints on their own I'd say you have a guru problem. Don't blame it > on the Rajas, Maharishi was an anti competition guy all the way. > > This is really funny. We should put them on Celebrity Death Match stop > animation cartoons and let them slug it out for your eternal soul... > > you know if you had one. Curtis, I think you are getting your buttons pushed by Buck's backwater method of posting. He is not putting his thought behind it - maybe you are reacting to that. If you talk to Bible carrying fundamentalists, and they can quote you to death out of the book, but nothing is going on in their minds because their minds have been subverted by the conceptual content of the book, and not its original intent, which is to wake us up somehow. Spiritual writing represents methods or stategies for achieveing a certain kind of experience, but if taken as a truth, they fail. They are like street signs that *attempt* to tell you which way to get to the next town for the next gig. If you stop and worship the sign, you get nowhere. And there are such things as illegible street signs. The idea of a soul is really important to a lot of people and cultures. But have you ever seen a 'soul'? I have not, but in some cultures it provides for some an explanation of duality, of why we seem isolated as an individual in a universe. For me it is a dumb idea, I could never relate to the idea of a soul. As an example, here is some material on enlightenment by Adyashanti, something more up-to-date and personal in description and maybe it makes more sense for this day and age: 'The maturing of awakening is this profound return to our essense, to the simplicity of what we are ... It is where there is a disappearance, as it were, where our nminds are no longer fixating on any level of experience. ... This state is not a mystical state. It is not a state of immensity or a state of specialness. It is a state of naturalness and ease. On another level, it is the undeniable sense that whatever the journey has been, there is a certain sense of finality. As one old Zen master said, it's like a job well done. At the end of the day you just go home. At a certain point in one's spiritual life, it is as if everything is spntaneously put down. This is hard to understand until it actually starts happen to you. Spirituality itself is put down. Freedom is put down. It's necessary for us to be free of our need for freedom, to be enlightened from our need for enlightenment ... We even lose what I call the spiritual world, because the whole idea of spirituality is itself a fabrication. It's perhaps a necessary fabrication at a certain point in time, but it's a fabrication nonetheless ... It is almost like we realize that even one's own great awakening was just another dream that never happened. And even so, there's a sense of shining reality; there is a shining presence through it all.'
