--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Michael Jackson <mjackson74@...> wrote: > > Beautifully and cogently expressed - yet if these things are true, how do you > account for the fact that the behavior of the long term TM practitioners who > run and administrate the TM movement does not reflect the energy or essence > of the purity of consciousness that is supposedly expressed by the > enlightened or near enlightened? How do you account for people like Mark > Landau and Rory Goff who report what many would feel are fabulous experience > of awareness in essence falling back to a normal "waking state" of > consciousness? > > I have gotten to the point that I think even just the plain old TM technique > doesn't do what it is hyped to do - just my opinion. But I think it is a > valid and necessary step to look at the results of a technique or practice in > those who do it. The TMO consistently says this is the glory to come, pay no > attention to what reality actually is, pay attention to what we SAY reality > is. They have always dealt in futures and never delivered promised results.
That certainly is a valid criticism. Coming across an 'awakened' TM meditator seems very rare. It seems like those that wake up in a rather short time are those that throw their entire lives into it, and do not sit around waiting for enlightenment to be done for them. These people are curious, they question what is happening in the process all the time, and do not assume it will automatically happen, even if somehow this is the way it actually happens. For example if you focus on getting the experience of transcendental consciousness, and that is it, you are aiming at the bottom of the barrel of enlightenment. Aim for unity right from the start. What is it? Why should I go for it? What do you have to do or not do to get there? Is this the only way? A religion tries to keep you in a straight jacket so you do not vary from the path. But there really is not path. If you are hiking, you can step off the trail and see what happens. I think an experimental attitude is needed. What if things do not seem to be happening. What would happen if I meditated longer? Try and see what happens. I did that and initially the results were not so good. But later on I found I could meditate for much longer times without any ill effect. Things that did not work, I dropped. Spiritual movements tend to have a lot of magical thinking, but it is nuts and bolts thinking that get things done in the world. It seems as if those that end up running a spiritual movement after the 'master' dies (and in some movement when the master is still around) are the ones that like to bask in the glow of the master's presence rather than their own being (not the ego, I should add). You need a certain amount of autonomy - self respect, and self reliance. This is eschewed in hierarchical movements. Being is everywhere the same, no one owns it. It is totally without ownership, so anyone can have it, since from the beginning they do have it. There are no levels to it. We all have some screws loose somewhere in our lives, these are the things that inhibit us in this search. Some of us have lots more loose screws than others. Maybe they gather at the top of the hierarchy, where desire for power and control is given the greatest opportunity for expression. If you look at the technique of TM, and at some mindfulness techniques, the process is to minimise control, to let go as much as possible, finding a way to let go rather than hold on. A spiritual movement, by simply the desire to persist inevitably invites the exact opposite value to that of letting go. It is doomed from the beginning, so to get value from a spiritual movement, you have to get in on its initial surge, and then, probably, get out. And keep seeking as long as the desire to seek persists. Keep curious. I made the mistake of too blindly following recommended instructions for too long. Now, if a person is very innocent and devoted, they might make the 'journey' quickly. I think people like that are kind of rare. There is usually a mix of devotion and ambition and other qualities that make for a really bumpy ride. Once, I was on the MIU campus, and there was an open office door, and two administrators were talking about shakeups in the movement. They were discussing they did not want to be 'left behind', they wanted to at least maintain their position in the movement, or get even a higher position. Some people gravitate to this kind of authority and some do not, but I think those who do are not necessarily about letting go. There is holding on to something. We all have this tendency, but in spirituality, it tends to inhibit rather than promote our progress if it persists too long. Enlightenment is not a future event. The future is never now. Wearing down this anticipation is one of the reasons meditation, the kinds of meditation that foster letting go, help with. The intellectual environment, the emotional environment one is faced with is also important, I think. I feel you hit the nail on the head with the movement's focus on the future, its emphasis on future changes. All those emergency fixes for why the things are not going so well. Being is unbounded. It is everywhere the same. So it is in your face all the time. You do not have to face a particular direction to have it. The focus on benefits rather than enlightenment of the unity kind undercuts the purpose of adopting a spiritual stance toward life. The whole of life contains many bitter pills, and they come with the good stuff, one has to face them all with a perception of equality, and without mindless (that is unreflective) judgment. One of my relatives (now deceased for over thirty years), very old, over 90, learned TM. This person, born in the 1880s seemed to meditate correctly, but would have trouble with trivial thoughts. This person would say 'I want to be told what to do!' Just did not get it. No curiosity. I have often thought the TMO should have the cow for its symbol. It's vegetarian. It travels in herds. It is not very curious about its environment. It is fairly docile. And you can milk it every day. > ________________________________ > From: Xenophaneros Anartaxius <anartaxius@...> > To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com > Sent: Saturday, December 29, 2012 2:36 PM > Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: What is the TMO's concept of 'Heaven on Earth'? > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "seekliberation" <seekliberation@> > wrote: >> >> Once again, your post tends to remain rather vague in describing exactly >> what HoE is supposed to be like. First off, yes religions have had the >> aspiration to create heaven on earth. Given what I know, and what i've read >> from your posts, i'm convinced that neither of us really know in depth the >> process of souls incarnating in this world and the reason why ignorant and >> undeveloped souls are sent here. >> >> From what little I do know, All religions teach that our consciousness has >> to be fully developed for HoE to be a reality, just like you say. But that's >> the problem. From what i've learned, the reason we're incarnated here is >> BECAUSE our consciousness ISN'T fully awake. If our consciousness was fully >> awake, we wouldn't be here. It's just like a prison, if someone wasn't a >> criminal, they wouldn't be there. So creating a perfect prison is futile. >> Only Hinduism seems to contain the information of how and why our souls are >> incarnated here, and i'm convinced that Hinduism has branched off enough to >> where the information is very diluted. Western (Abrahamic) religions fall >> very short of understanding this cycle of birth and death (they believe life >> is a one-shot deal, heaven or hell, etc..). Bhuddism contains only the bare >> essentials to reach CC. Therefore, we have only fragmented ideas of >> perfection that are entirely out of context with the big picture of our > soul's situation here on earth. >> >> What i've noticed with many TM'ers and Siddhas is that they are a lot of the >> nicest people i've ever met, but they are very mild. They have to limit >> their experiences in life to mild experiences. The really deep and heavy >> experiences that help lead to our consciousness becoming fully >> awake.....they tend to avoid. Then they use their supreme logic to label >> those experiences as being negative or ignorant. As a result, their >> consciousness doesn't become fully awake, and the possibility of HoE is >> null. >> >> The whole reason of creating this post in the first place anyway, was >> because i'm convinced that the conception of HoE that exists in the TMO is a >> reality that is not achievable, particularly in this lifetime (unless the >> HoE concept is different from what I perceived). I am convinced that the >> concept of HoE in the TMO is a paradigm that is based on limiting our >> experiences only to what we can already handle, which is very limited in >> terms of the full spectrum of life which our creator expects us to become >> accustomed to. >> > > Before the TM movement got really going and became the weird 'TMO' of today, > and before the teaching became more bizarre, it was originally in many ways > more in line with other traditions in the expression what enlightenment is. > MMY said in the 1960s that 'The attainment of union is often described as the > expansion of consciousness, but consciousness, as consciousness, never > expands. The individual mind expands and in expanding becomes pure > consciousness. So "expansion of consciousness" is really a contradiction in > terms. Consciousness is already universal and and absolute and cannot expand, > but the abilities of the mind can expand...' > > It is that processing unit in our head that messes things up. It interprets > raw experience and manufactures representations of it which we then think are > 'true'. That we think these representations are real, is what is real, is the > part that is called 'ignorance'. There is a sliding scale of utility to our > thoughts. The mind is a tool for getting around in the world. The > representations and manipulations of the mind can be very useful. It can > enable us to know where and how to put food in our face. > > Its main drawback is the way it gets programmed when we grow up creates the > idea we are an individual 'person' that is distinct and real in comparison to > the other representations of the world it creates, and that those other > representations are also distinct entities in the field of experience. This > cracks the unity of raw experience into fragments, which the mind interprets > as reality. > > Processes like transcendental deep meditation (as MMY called it early on), > mindfulness meditation in various forms, contemplation in various forms, and > sometimes even concentration in various forms are methods for attempting to > reset the mind to a more pristine state by undoing the formation of the > boundaries that have already occurred. This does not mean the mind becomes a > mush of indistinction as a result. We still can remember the boundries. But > we no longer think of them as reality. > > The entire field of experience in aggregate is taken as reality, and the > fragmentation is seen as arbitrary, but with utility. The sense of our > individuality is a mental process, not an entity. The mistake is we assume > this process of the mind is an entity. It makes other mistaken > interpretations of experience in the same way. For example the idea of > rebirth. The mind's fracturing of the unity of raw experience into entities > and time and process is rebirth. The unity of experience is thought to be a > collection of separate things and of relations and of actions between them. > Thus the unity is 'reborn' into separate objects of perception, and as a > result the unity is not experienced. > > Note that in describing this, I am using concepts that fracture the unity of > experience into seeming entities and processes, if you were to take what I > say here and believe it to be true. The degree that our minds fractures > experience creates a sliding scale of heaven and hell. The more the raw > experience is broken into believed entities and processes, and the more > intransigent the mind is in holding these interpretations as true, the more > we live in hell. > > The 'process of enlightenment' is thus a deception of a special kind. It is a > collection of mental concepts and processes that initially are believed as > true, and as soon as the mind takes this in and believes it, the 'path of > enlightenment' is born. But for a spiritual tradition that has any utility, > this path of enlightenment contains a poison pill, like a computer virus that > wipes data from a hard drive. Somewhere along the illusory path, the > techniques practiced, and the ideas that have been rolling around in our head > about these practices, have been wearing down the boundaries programmed in > our perception, and spontaneously at some unpredictable moment comes the > realisation that the whole thing was a total fraud, that in fact, the > unbroken state of unity was there all the time. > > In Indian culture, this is called removing a thorn with a thorn. Ignorance is > like a thorn stuck in our hand or somewhere. The thorn (ignorance) causes > pain. We do not want to live in pain. We naturally want to get rid of it. We > dig it out with another thorn (called the 'teaching', the 'knowledge', the > 'creed', whatever it is called), and then eventually when the original thorn > is extracted, we throw *both* of them away, for they are both the same. > > What happens, because of the tendency of the mind to fall into this state of > ignorance, is a teaching always seems to end up in the hands of those who > have not realised the true nature of the poison pill in the teaching, and > references to it get massaged out of the teaching. Notice that religions, > some of which at one time may have had something to do with enlightenment, > become all about belief, and have little to do with direct experience of > reality. Even MMY thought that this is what happens, with time, the teaching > loses its force because of this decay. The TM movement is already in need of > a revival, though it does have the power to get some enlightened still. > > Seeking liberation is the process of moving from hell to heaven, while in > fact, heaven is there all the time. Kinda weird. The difference between hell > and heaven is in perception, not in place or time. >
