Excellent article on previous post....makes it all the more important to formulate a set of objective/relative signs which attest to one's Enlightenment, realization of the Self. But this is problematic within the context of the groundrules laid out by the proponents of Pseudo-Advaita, of where are many in the Web. A quick "google" can uncover a few dozen of them. Most are devottes of Ramana Maharshi, a few of Nisargadatta Maharaj, and at least one of Adi Da.; or in the lineages of these people. (which is in itself a contradiction since Ramana Maharshi didn't setup a lineage. Gangaji claims she is in the "lineage" of Ramana since she is a devotee of HWL Poonja and the latter was a devotee of Ramana. At any rate, let's briefly discuss the problem involved in stating that "one" is Enlightened ; first within the context of the Neo-Advaitins then within the context of Buddhism. 1. In the Pseudo- or Neo-Advaitin "tradition": Ramana Maharshi, HWL Poonja, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Gangaji, I-Nome, Andrew Cohen, Adi Da, etc.... The problem arises since Ramana Maharshi himself stated that any talk of "I'm Enlishtened" is a lot of nonsense since there's no "I" left to claim it. This should stop a lot of self-styled Neo- Advaitins in their tracks straight away since lots of them have websites and obviously want to let on that they are Enlightened; but have difficulting enunciating that. They are left in a quandary: a. don't state it and thus potentially be left out of the adulation they crave by having sycophants worship them, attend their lectures, give donations, OR do make the bold claim and risk contradicting Ramana's teaching. If they go around saying "I'm enlightened", then people will become suspect in that making the claim outright have resorted to then, is to avoid certain taboo statements such as "I'm Enlightened" (but Andrew Cohen goes ahead and makes such a claim anyway).; and allude rather to certain peripheral statements of which there many. These are certain pet code or buzz phrases intended to convey the information that "I'm enlightened" ...but not allowed to say it outright; so I will resort to the code words. 2. The MMY/TM org solution is to zero in in certain symptons of Enlightenment which must be present for those in CC or higher but not present in those not in CC such as continuous Witnessing throughout the sleep state. The shortcoming here is that the list of symptoms appears to be mighty short, unless there are others conveyed during personal communications with the bonavide Teacher. (besides MMY, who would these people be?). The very notion that there are criteria for judging whether or not people are Enlightened is rejected by the Neo-advaitins but is no problem for MMY, whom in his cleverness has (more than anybody else) seen that for every state of Consciousness, there are corresponding physiological states. Although one cannot adequately describe Enlightenment, the physiological components CAN be described, (somethingthe Neo-Advaitins have overlooked). 3. Buddhism probably has the most complete and through framework for determining if the person is Enlightened; and some of these criteria were listed previously. 4. Other traditions, Sant Mat for example. The major goal here is God Consciousness which is probably the same as GC in MMY's scheme. A few of the Sant Mat Gurus probably were Enlightened but the Sant Mat Tradition basically can't deal with the idea of non-dualism and there's no conceptual framework for Advaita in Sant Mat since the founders of that Tradition reject Shankara. Well, that's about it. To conclude, many of the Neo-Advaitins want to claim Enlightenment for themselves but run into problem since their major founder Ramana Maharshi rejected the very idea of a claim as being delusional. Certain Neo-Advaitins such as Andrew Cohen have gone against Ramana's teachings with some risk to their reputations; and have indeed come up with their own long lists of the symptoms of Enlightenment, to wit: (Andrew's magazine What is Enlightenment" goes into this question in vertually every issue. Unfortunately for Andrew, if one of the criterions is "Your Mother must say you're Elnlightened" then Andrew is a failure in that regard since his Mom wrote a whole book listing the various symptoms of Andrew's big Ego. This begs the question then - are these "real" symptons of a Ego are just apparent symptoms ? I say - a cow is a cow regardless. What's your opinion?
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