Very interesting speculations, thank you. You could well be right on many if not all of them. I don't really have anything to add, except a couple of caveats:
First, as far as Robin was concerned, he was teaching primarily TM initiators, who all had Maharishi's techniques under their belts. So his approaches had to do more with making the most of the development of consciousness that came with those practices, stuff that he felt was missing from Maharishi's teaching, or at least was being missed by practitioners. He did use his drama training to convey this, and he certainly is an extrovert, but I don't think you could really say he was teaching his "path" per se. Maybe Ann has more to say, or would dispute this. Second, I didn't mean to suggest that "I am the world" was an egotistical statement! I assume it's simply a way of describing an experience. My thought was, if you've been living that experience for some time, if you're used to all your impulses seeming to come from there, how can you tell if something pops up that comes from a different place (presumably the small self)? Wouldn't you assume it was just one more universally beneficent impulse? I'm thinking of all the various harmful misbehaviors that so many spiritual teachers seem prone to. << Comments below... But you do seem to understand how someone who had that experience and had it "stick" would want to do what he or she could to share it with others, help them get there as well. Not really a matter of "ego" per se. I think it would depend on the sort of person they were before the moment as to how they acted, my tendency is to be a loner so any sharing would come from the simple desire others might have to be near me because of what they pick up. I really doubt I would go searching for people to help. I think you'd have to be an extrovert to become any sort of spiritual teacher and you could only teach from what you had acquired in your life, Marshy obviously had his Hindu upbringing, Robin his drama teaching. I'm a good cyclist and keen photographer but I'd have a job working that into a path others could follow! On the other hand, I can understand how being in that state and having others soaking up what they could of it might eventually bring out some of one's worst qualities that somehow never got expunged when the light dawned. But does anything get expunged? Maybe people stay fundamentally the same except for the transformation in inner perception. That's the best way I could put it, the relationship between what you see and who you are stays the same but is enhanced by a sudden lack of inner contradiction and a perceptionary changes. But as it's all undercut by a rushing surge of love you could be right, hard to be nasty when the simple act of speaking to someone is so enriching. Yes, the desire is to be evolutionary in the sense of making the most of who you are with. The idea of a moral superiority from being there is fascinating but what gets chucked out as far as brain functioning goes? Are all our problems caused by those niggling unbidden extra voices that suddenly take a sabbatical when you are enlightened? it would be a great thing to study, it feels like a switch being thrown, night into day. That must show up spectacularly on an EEG. Shame it's a bit on the rare side. Seems to me it would be hard to tell, if one's sustained experience is that "I am the world," what was "flowing all things good from some centre that wasn't even me but was everything that existed," on the one hand, and what was coming from the dregs of one's own personality, on the other. The "I am the world" thing was a simple observation I made and it had no huge ego attached to it, no matter how it sounds! It was simply seeing everything as both as it is, seperate from you, and part of the same thing as you in the sense that we're all part of this perfectly still but eternally rushing reality. The old metaphor of seeing the screen that the world is projected onto springs to mind here, but it's much better than that sounds. I think the more contradictory it sounds the better it's being explained but both things seem to be part of the one reality. I think it's all brain stuff but I can see how such a big deal gets made out of it with all this unified field talk. More interesting is the feeling that you couldn't go any further evolution wise, that the final end had been reached. All waveforms collapsed. Satisfaction. No more struggle. Is that a good thing? Maybe the dregs are simply what we are anyway and the inability of gurus to not screw up comes from the fact we (and they) have a far higher opinion of them than they deserve. We always project and expect holy men to be whiter than white but yes, maybe that wears off... ... or perhaps having people around you with such high expectations becomes wearying after a while and the ego starts to reassert itself to try and keep you sane, or make the most of what it can get. I don't know, just speculating from my meagre experience. But as experiences go it's up at the top of my personal most intriguing moments. << Yes it did sound familiar to Robin, I didn't have any rolling about on the floor crying. I was just sitting at my desk looking at a paper clip, suddenly I noticed a fingerprint on the metal and then I saw a rainbow in the oil of my fingerprint. And then everything changed, very real and profound. Wish I had the words to do it justice but the inner clarity and the colours and the sweetness and variety of emotion. All I remember thinking was "wow, I am the world". It only lasted four hours too, which isn't enough time to get a spiritual movement together. Probably just as well, all my followers would probably wear paperclips round their necks to signal their devotion - it could've been awful - but may have been great, the sitting round talking to people was really lovely, like those late night chats with good friends where you forget who you are and just roll with the conversation.Turn that up to eleven and you'll know where I'm coming from. I think it takes a certain sort of person to get an experience like that and take it some different level so other people can benefit. >> ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <authfriend@...> wrote: Fascinating, Salyavin. That is remarkably similar--virtually identical--to how Robin described his own exprience. Except for him, for whatever reason, it lasted for over a decade, and he spent 25 years working to get rid of it because of how ultimately destructive it had proved to be. << At work once I became the unwitting centre of attention when I slipped into "unity" on a busy friday afternoon when we were normally running around trying to wrap everything up. Everyone else just pulled up a chair and sat round my desk, it was amazing how different yet the same I was, intensely relaxed but wide awake and flowing all things good from some centre that wasn't even me but was everything that existed and it was all lush, powerful and vivid. Happy days, but it wore off a few hours later and that was that. What it all means I cannot say, my guess is nothing, just a phase, maybe all that bending my mind out of shape suddenly reflexively threw it into a euphoric state. But whatever, it doesn't work any more. >>