--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Xenophaneros Anartaxius"
<anartaxius@...> wrote:
>
> --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Buck" wrote:
>
> > Ha, You're supposing again for a lack of experience with it.
>
> Buck,
>
> Your manner of expression sometimes seems like something
> out of the 19th century. I am not saying that is a bad
> thing at all, it just has a kind of ancient ring to the
> syntax.
Excellent post, Xeno, and one which I will riff on
instead of one I saw in passing in my earlier scan
of FFL Message View and wanted to comment on there.
In that post, Buck actually referred to David Lynch
as "one of us," AS IF THE REST OF THE HUMAN
RACE WASN'T. That struck me as being *amazingly*
short-sighted and stuck in lame mindsets.
But your insight about Buck's use of language in his
Colbert-like rants is a better topic. Yes, it grates
on the senses, and for legitimate reasons. Buck's
act personifies what I consider "rearview mirror
thinking," always focused on some overglorified
vision of the past when commenting on the present
and longing for a future that is REALLY a march
"Forward, into the past" (credit to the Firesign
Theater for this phrase).
Like other conservatives (or other pseudo-conservatives
like Colbert) the Buck act is predicated on the belief
that things in the past were actually BETTER than
they are in the present. And in this rearview mirror
view of life, he is no different than those TM TBs
who feel that the "Vedic era" (which *never* existed
as they think it did, except in the delusional mind
of Maharishi and other Hindu supremacists) was BETTER
than our current era.
The problem with this type of thinking is that it
"templatizes" thinking, and subconsciously programs
those who have been taught to think this way into
viewing the present and visualizing the future through
"past-colored glasses." NOTHING is seen as it really
is, only as their minds relate it to some glorified
ideal that they carry around in their heads, and
which colors everything they see.
> The main problem with using the terminology 'science' and
> 'empiricism' with the word 'spiritual', is the essential
> value of of spiritual experience is not subject to empirical
> verification.
Exactly. The Buck Act is oblivious to this, being at its
essence almost *completely* unoriginal, and mere parroting
of Other People's Thoughts, especially Maharishi's. Spir-
itual experience will *never* be classified as "scientific"
*because of its very nature as subjective*. Any attempt to
convince people otherwise is merely a marketing technique
to sell the over-glorified value of subjective experience.
> As that experience can be said to have a value of unboundedness,
> anytime you create a system that tries to systemitise fostering
> that experience, you reduce it down and destroy it.
Or as people around me in Georgia used to put it when I
was growing up there, "Trying to stuff 20 pounds of shit
into a 5-pound sack." :-)
> Maharishi said as much. Buddhism also is similar to what you
> are saying, and some forms of it seem even less attached to
> jargon and spiritual shrubbery...
[insert vision from Monty Python here: "A shrubbery,
a shrubbery!"] :-)
> ...than the sanitised version of TM offered to the public
> (before anyone gets more involved in the movement).
>
> I do not think either Barry or I lack spiritual experience.
More important, neither of us confuses *direct*, first-
hand spiritual experience with *reading about it* or
hearing someone ELSE talk about theirs. Spiritual exper-
ience is by definition someone one has *oneself*.
> Everyone has a different way of expressing those kind of
> ideas. But if a system is 'not a religion' or as you say
> above 'different than just some religion' {which seems to
> indicate maybe it's a religion that is, well, better than
> 'just some religion' {and of course that is how any
> religious person tends to think of his/her religion in
> comparison with other 'so-called' religions})...
All of this, of course, is just parroted Maharishi-speak,
pure doubletalk to hide his (and his brainwashed students')
Hindu supremacy ideas.
> ...you would think religious terminology would simply be
> absent, especially if it were scientific and empirical.
> For some reason, very suspicious, that religious terminology
> always seems to creep in. For example in one post (#335210)
> you wrote:
>
> '...the summation of which is the
> realization of the Self through
> realization of God [the Unified Field],
> who is omnipresent...'
>
> That kind of makes it impossible to think whoever says
> something like this is not engaging in religion, particularly
> when they take a concept like 'God' and attempt to equate it
> with a scientific concept like 'the Unified Field' (with
> capital first letters!).
Buck does this all the time. It's deplorable, and I for
one am surprised that the self-appointed Arbiter Of Holy
Word Usage here on FFL never calls him on it. :-)
> For example you could just say 'the experience of a human
> being can be comprehended by that person in a way that is
> complete and whole' and leave off all the wiggle words that
> imply a religious connexion.
The problem with this suggestion is that Buck would have
to be capable of *thinking up* his own, original words
with which to describe such concepts. Nothing in anything
he has ever posted convinces me that he has this capability.
It's ALL parroted from somewhere, from things that other
people have said in the past, either from "Maharishi-past"
or over-glorified failed Utopian community pasts.
> It seems really hard for people to do this. I am not sure
> why. I sometimes use the phrase 'the absolute being' which
> unfortunately has in our culture the connotation 'The
> Absolute Being' which equals 'God' in most people's minds.
> But the experience of absolute being is hardly what most
> people conceive the word 'God' to mean, for when absolute
> being is experienced as being the only thing that exists,
> religious terms seem like total nonsense, because those
> terms were all aspects of the former delusion, they do
> not apply.
In other words, you kinda "have to have been there."
Again, trying to put such concepts into words that are
as non-misleading as possible is something YOU can
attempt because you've actually Been There. When some-
one who clearly never has been attempts to make up
words to describe something they've only heard about,
the result is ludicrous.
> One could, like that cigar chomping, drinking, con artist
> Helena Blavatsky, the inventor of Theosophy, make up all
> sorts of nonsense, and adapt all sorts of cultural spiritual
> artifacts to making up a spiritual system.
Speaking of ludicrous. :-)
> Maybe it is truly not possible to make spiritual pursuits
> absent from such artifacts. Who knows, some day there might
> be the Holy Shrine of the Cat, where Barry lifted that
> mammal out of a canal in Leiden, and woe to those who, in
> a moment of spiritual weakness, have a passing thought
> of Judith while on their pilgrimage.
Although they may benefit by pondering the koan, "If
it were Judy Stein floundering about in the canal
instead of a cat, would he have helped her out?" :-)
> Perhaps one could say it is just a self-validating experience
> of completeness at each and every moment. My point is if it
> is not a religion, you need leave religious terminology
> completely behind, and not just wink-wink when you use
> non-religious terminology, such as scientific concepts,
> implying that, well, really, this is really what these
> scientific concepts mean: you are finally going to find
> God.
Well said. That "wink wink" pathology is *rampant* in
the TMO. The very people who stand up in Intro lectures
and claim that "TM is not a religion" then turn around
and go off to a "celebration" in which they make offer-
ings to Hindu gods and goddesses *by name*, and bow
down to them. Hypocrisy taken to an extreme.
> The whole time I was around the movement, it was always this
> double standard of expression, and double standards do not
> inspire trust.
Nor do they inspire respect for the persons who are
*unable* to stop using them.
Good rap. Nice way to start off a new "posting week."
