Consciousness, awareness is always unchanged. Meditative techniques, including just sitting still like Zen practitioners do, affect the mind, not consciousness. I disagree with you if would seem. Meditative techniques clear the mind so it becomes a better 'reflector' of consciousness. Long ago Maharishi said consciousness does not expand, it is the mind that expands. later on he seemed to give in to the understanding, which everyone seemed to interpret, that consciousness can grow, which is not possible if it is the one unchanging absolute reality. So you have all the consciousness your are ever going to get.
But the process of experience requires a subject (the senses) and an object (what is sensed) and consciousness illuminates both of these. If you drink a six-pack of stiff ale, the process of experience is very dull, because the mind is dysfunctional because of the drug. If you fast for a while, experience might be clearer than normal, but experience always changes. Consciousness remains constant through all varied experience, it doesn't do anything except illuminate, it is equally located in the subject and the object. It is not in your head looking out, it only seems that way in those various states of the mind called WC, TC, CC, GC to use Maharishi's terms, but once UC gets going, the sense of what consciousness might be spreads out until at some point there is the realisation that there is no division between subject and object, there is really no inner versus outer, it is all seamless being. Ultimately all these descriptions are inadequate because experience bypasses the logical reasoning mind, there is no rational, logical way to provide an accurate description. Consciousness is there from day one, so seeking it is actually ridiculous, but somehow necessary. Enlightenment does not bring anything new into experience, it is simply the realisation of what has always been the case, but various states of experience prior to this enlightening awakening can be mistaken for it it because those experiences do seem new and expansive, because the mind is changing, and its vistas are becoming clearer, and these experiences feel good, often like a grand release of oppression and fear. Enlightenment is knowledge about the nature of experience, of consciousness, that dawns at some point, but it is not continuous kind of experience. It is more like once you know how to drive a car, you just get in and drive, and you do not have to think or experience 'I know how to drive a car'. It is not a state, it is a knowledge that underlies states. Because this knowledge one has all life long, ignorant or otherwise, it is always a total surprise when it becomes clear, that this is something one has always known and had. Once you know, you cannot get rid of it, because it is not an experience involving a subject and an object which can change day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <fleetwood_macncheese@...> wrote : You hit the nail on the head when you said, "mindfulness is not a technique". It isn't. It is the normal silent watchfulness of the mind that one gains through regular practice of TM. There is no way to be mindful of a larger consciousness than one has developed, so mindfulness of a limited consciousness is both the result, and the failure of the "technique". "MIndfulness" (such a silly word) may give you a full tour of your mind, or world, as it currently exists, but there is no way to systematically expand the container of awareness, and so, "mindfulness" is basically a way to grow the ego, without subsequently expanding awareness. Barry is a great example of this, a man who's consciousness has remained unchanged during his years on this forum - no growth at all. I was never a bliss ninny, and I don't think that is a normal stage all TMers pass through - more that they are encouraged by peer pressure. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <anartaxius@...> wrote : Mindfulness assumes that 'reality' is ever present at all levels rather than something you have to hunt for or contact. In other words, it is based on the end game of enlightenment. I believe Jim mentioned this was a cart before the horse approach once. In some sense I think that is correct, but my observation of those who practised mindfulness experience just as much or more unstressing as TM meditators, and has just as deep insights into experience as TM meditators. They did not seem however as blissful as TM meditators or made mood-making attempts to pretendm everything was just fine, they did not have the illusion that experience was always going to be just peachy, there are hard knots to get out of the system and things one must face, and you might as well get it over with as fast as possible. I actually find mindfulness meditation more effective now than TM, though that was not always the case. TM seems pretty much at the end of the line for me, but still is useful at times. I think this is a natural progression. However with so many years practise, it is likely that TM still slides in from time to time. I find mindfulness rather blissful these days, and TM often feels 'intrusive' because it requires more activity than mindfulness, if you want to get the mantra going. In other words, TM has nothing to do, and mindfulness is just that state of nothing to do. TM is better at 'controlling' a restless mind. My mind is no longer restless, and so the TM advantage in this situation is considerably diminished, like, to zero. So in this case mindfulness is really no longer a technique at all, and TM is superfluous. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <mjackson74@...> wrote : But mindfulness isn't the only other meditation out there. I used the mantras Chopra gave out after leaving TM (or rather that his teacher gave out, they who were originally taught by Roger Gabriel, a TM Governor who defected the Movement with Chopra). The mantras are different, chosen by one's birth chart and I think there are a hundred or so of them. The experience was quite good and no less "deep" than my experience of TM. And that is just one of the many other types of meditations. From: "fleetwood_macncheese@... [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Saturday, July 5, 2014 5:41 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: YAS: Meditating has instant effect on reducing stress When examined for what it is, so called mindfulness, is not a mechanism for reliable transcendence, at all - more like meandering around on the surface of the mind. Something that clearly evolved, as a poor second best, after the knowledge of TM was lost. Those championing it have had very few, or no sustained, deep experiences of transcending, otherwise they would see it for the shallow practice that it is. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <LEnglish5@...> wrote : Eh, while the study in question by Rosenthal and company was tiny and had no control group, it was still a quite impressive finding. My point isn't so much that mindfulness doesn't have an effect on PTSD, but that the media hypes it as being very strong, while ignoring the evidence that TM's effects on stress are demonstrably far stronger. Stress isn't the only thing going on in the world, and isn't the only cause of mental and physical problems, and mindfulness' effects on the brain are quite different than TM's, so it is entirely possible that mindfulness will prove to be more therapeutic about many things in specific people than TM is. But on raw measures of stress-redection, my expectation is that TM will always prove superior, just because that is all TM is, really: Just stress reduction. Maharishi's description that the mind is allowed to wander in the direction of greater happiness, which also happens to be the state of least excitation of the brain, is very accurate, according to all the research. That's an important thing. It facilitates healing in nearly all situations. I saw "nearly all" because there are people who become more anxious, the more relaxed they get, and it may be due to a different mechanism than Maharishi's "stress release model" that he came up with to describe the cycle of activity during TM, and no doubt there are other exceptions. But for most people, TM's stress-reduction is a Very Good Thing that can help heal nearly any condition. L ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <turquoiseb@...> wrote : From: "LEnglish5@... [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> Norman Rosenthal led a study on TM and PTSD that found that in 2 of the 5 subjects, brain imaging showed that the abnormally active amygdala had reset after teh first meditation, and stayed that way for the rest of the study. People are desperate to find that mindfulness works, so they report even the most trivial findings as though they were important. TMers are so desperate to "prove" TM to be "the best" that they'll diss any study that involves a "competing" meditation technique, no matter how trivial they claim it is. :-) ALL "research" on TM will be forever tainted because of the indoctrination given those who conduct the research by Maharishi and his parrot-teachers. From Day One of their exposure to TM they've been told that it's "the best," at the same time that they were told that all other techniques were garbage. That kind of indoctrination creates fanatics and cultists, not scientists. You *don't* see people doing research into other techniques of meditation wasting their time trying to prove them "superior" to TM, or to anything else. They're content to do real research to see whether the technique they're studying has some beneficial effect. It's only *TM* "researchers" who are so petty as to feel the need to constantly put down other techniques and the researchers who study them.
