Xeno, very beautiful analysis, just what I was thinking about, but expressed more elegantly.
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Xenophaneros Anartaxius" <anartaxius@...> wrote: > > I think this argument here may be because we have assigned a term to a > particular experience and view that as an entity, as if it were an object. > When we are awake we are conscious, even if we cannot define what > consciousness is. > > The experience called TC is also consciousness, but it is not a separate > entity. TM is kind of like an analytical reductionist state, where > ever-present consciousness is separated out experientially, as it were, from > normal activity. In waking the mind is active and the reflection of that in > consciousness is active. When in TC, the mind is still, the reflection of > that is still, no activity, no intellection, no ability to define. It is > consciousness experiencing an undefined value; activity, consciousness in a > defined value. > > So in a sense consciousness is never really 'pure' as a separate thing, it is > just the means to grasp wider experience by creating a temporary artificial > state. Consciousness is not something elsewhere, it is always here. To get > people to meditate, one tells them a fib, that there is this better thing one > can experience because if you tell them they already have consciousness in > full measure, they won't be able to conceive that is true until they have a > wider range of experience. > > Take salt. A transparent crystal. We can find out more about salt by > chemically breaking it down and putting it back together. We can break it > into a yellow-greenish gas and a bright silvery metal. But the wholeness of > salt is gone in this state, until we chemically put the two components back > together. This analogy breaks down, because chlorine and sodium are entities, > while consciousness is not. > > Being contains active and non active but we can't tell which is which until > we experience clearly what truly deep inactivity is, when all possible > activity is gone commensurate with wakefulness. The ultimate object of > meditation is not to experience TC indefinitely, it is to experience how all > the possible states fit together as one unified block where everything has > the same level of 'purity'. The purpose of meditation and activity is to > separate, and then put it all back together repeatedly until we get the > significance of what 'together' is. > > In CC for example, you cannot grasp what 'together' is, you cannot imagine > it. You can imagine something, but you cannot imagine it correctly. You know > what activity is, and you know what deep silence is, but they are still > separate. When they come together, in fact, you still cannot imagine it, but > you know. But how to say it, you are mute. >
