Excellent.
________________________________ From: "[email protected] [FairfieldLife]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sunday, July 13, 2014 6:04 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Living a spiritual and artistic life No. It is just that CC is not enlightenment by any standard. It is an early stage experience that one may have by whatever means a person is pursuing enlightenment. It is not a permanent experience subjectively. It is the first substantial taste of what 'freedom' in the enlightenment sense might be because you recognise that there is something more to experience than just thoughts, activity, and the dead of sleep (TC is not substantial because it is intermittent). Sleep is a completely silent state too, but there is no sense of self or ego or sense of mind there, so evaluation of experience is not possible in sleep, so you do not learn anything from it. I believe others here have pointed out that M referred to CC as 'glorified ignorance'. The subjective experience of experiencing deep silence inside but seemingly separate from the activity of the mind and the world is nice. It represents the greatest contrast between activity and non-activity that one can have on a spiritual path. It is the easiest experience to point to on the spiritual path because of that contrast between 'absolute' and 'relative' is so strong. But as they are separate, they are dis-integrated, and the mind for the most part is as deluded as ever, still seeing snakes in the grass when there are none. What is actually being experienced is the reflection of being on a silent aspect or facet of the mind that has developed as a result of meditation. You do not experience pure consciousness in this state. For the sake of explaining this to someone in these states, you just say that, even though it is not accurate, because it has referential and experiential meaning for them in that state. But it is a lie. It gives you an idea of what pure consciousness might be. An analogical experience and a metaphorical explanation. There is no scientific evidence of consciousness in the brain, or the mind, although scientist, for the sake of research, have to assume consciousness is there somehow. They are measuring correlates of subjective experience, that is all. The witness of activity and experience is located equally everywhere, not merely simultaneous with activity and experience, but this is unknown in CC. CC experiences have been reported by TM meditators and Zen meditators, but the Zen meditators do no consider this enlightenment by any means. I assume it is also experienced by others but I am not so familiar with those other traditions. I believe I saw a reference to it once in an article about Sufis. The main thing is, in the TM movement, one is not often informed that what one is being told is part of the illusion. A thorn to remove a thorn. That at some point that explanation is going to be pulled out from under your as experience and understanding change. When you dig out the thorn of ignorance with that second thorn (the ideas and understanding that the spiritual path brings), what are you going to do with the two thorns? You don't want the first one, that is clear, but the second one is the same thing, so you have to toss that one as well. That means everything on the spiritual path at some point has to be tossed away. Everything you thought was real, turns out to be an uninformed opinion about experience from your point of view. A further problem develops, because if you want to talk about it, you have to express it as a metaphorical opinion, and whoever is dense enough to believe you is going to be sucked into the lie unless you have the tools to lead them out of that eventually. Unlike many other paths TM does not seem to foster critical thinking and practical scepticism about what one is told. It actually seems worse has time goes on, TM is becoming more and more a system of belief rather than a system of strategies and understanding for freeing the mind from ignorance. Note that in Fred's article, the word enlightenment only appears twice—as a keyword, and in the references, it does not appear in the text of the article or the abstract. Note too that M once said that with TM there was at least CC for everyone. But remember that is a pale shadow of experience and knowledge to come. And that the experience and knowledge to come might not be what you expect. ---In [email protected], <LEnglish5@...> wrote : You have apparently missed the scientific research that Fred Travis published more thn 10 years ago on people who were reporting being in CC consistently for at least a year. This article discusses the theory and research on pure consciousness during TM and the theory and research on the stabilization of pure consciousness outside of TM: Transcendental experiences during meditation practice http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nyas.12316/full L ---In [email protected], <anartaxius@...> wrote : This reply Michael, is not logically sound. It is circumstantial evidence that M was more interested in other things. But I too noticed that projects began, or were advertised, and then never materialised. I never gave money to any movement project. It was always very clear that the flow of money was a one way street, and that if a project did not materialise or was unfinished, you would not get anything back. And for Nabby, if Buddha managed 500 enlightened people, what is TM movement tally so far? Maharishi's statement would be true if the movement produced 501 enlightened people, which taking into account modern communications, would not be so hot by comparison. I have never heard of any official movement statement regarding anyone getting enlightened, including Maharishi. The most I have heard is from time to time the movement publishes a list of 'experiences' certain people have had, such as 'after TM I noticed that my nail fungus seemed better than before'. ---In [email protected], <mjackson74@...> wrote : His habit of begging, cajoling, bullying and wheedling people to give him money for projects that never materialized and giving no explanation for where the money went makes your assertion untrue. ________________________________ From: nablusoss1008 <[email protected]> Raising individual and collective consciousness was the one aspect that mattered most to Maharishi, everything else was just the frosting of the cake. "It is said that the Lord Buddha left 500 enlightened people. I think we will do better" - Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Buddha Yayanti, River Rhine, Germany, 1982
