Yes, preliminary. The thing about experiences, even intermittent witnessing, is that some people collect these experiences, while remaining unchanged, themselves. Driven by egoic fear. It is like being a tourist of higher-consciousness experiences. I did listen to a bit of the Sat Shree interview and he says a veil, separating him from the rest of the universe, was torn open, with no possibility of being repaired. To live Being, silence, and bliss, is a far different thing, than collecting, "I saw this", and, "this happened once", and, "for awhile, this other thing happened". Enlightenment is not an aggregate, a museum, or even, a mausoleum, of experiences - that's how religions get born, in the graveyards of memories, of higher consciousness.
Experiences, as seen in the mind, continually shrink - very unsatisfying, whereas enlightenment constantly, effortlessly taps that font of creativity and expansion [pure awareness], renewing itself, so the mind, when it does act, has no need to rely on stale and shrinking memories - it can go anywhere it chooses, or just rest empty, in pure awareness. Once everything is available, there is no longer a need to collect experiences of any variety, no matter how tantalizing their memory may be. ---In [email protected], <[email protected]> wrote : The Turq hasn't had any spiritual experiences in his whole life. Forty-five years ago he experienced a few days of witnessing in Fiuggji, but that's only a preliminary experience. Yet he likes to brag about it even today, decades later. Later he had some hallucinations about his Buddhist-guru, the Lenz-guy who killed himself while wearing a dog-collar around his neck, levitating. And that's it. The fact is that the Turq-fellow never had any spiritual experiences at all. Yet he judge others, what a phony. ---In [email protected], <punditster@...> wrote : On 11/14/2014 2:50 AM, TurquoiseBee wrote: > Prove to me that there is or ever has been such a thing as an "enlightened being." I'll wait. > Perception is reality- there are no other experiences except those that are subjective. Almost everything we know is based on verbal testimony what someone TOLD US. There is no knowing outside of conscious experience - knowledge is structured in consciousness. Everyone is special by virtue of being human with a self-conscious mind. The proof that everyone is enlightened is consciousness itself. The only reason you don't have the experience of being enlightened is because you are not Self-realized - you are ignorant. You didn't listen to your teachers and you apparently have not even read any wisdom books. Go figure. > The thing is, John, you can't do it. You believe in "enlightenment" for the same reason you believe that these works of fiction are "wisdom books," because someone you chose to believe TOLD YOU. That does *NOT* constitute proof. Me,I believe that the subjective experience that some call enlightenment exists. I believe this because I've experienced it for weeks and months at a time. But *having experienced it*, I can say that it was JUST ANOTHER EXPERIENCE. It did *not* make me "special," and it doesn 't make anyone *else* "special," either. It doesn't make anything they say any more accurate or cosmic or correct or valuable, any more than a profound drug-induced or psychosis-induced subjective experience does. Youdon't want to believe this because you have invested decades of your life pursuing practices that you believe will make you "special." And after all these decades you are really *desperate* to be "special." My advice is to relax, because it is never going to happen. Even if you have experiences that convince you that you're "enlightened," no one (except the gullible idiots on the Batgap Forum) will treat you any differently, no one will think you're "wise," and no one will be any more impressed by you than they ever have been. And if you write a book based on your experiences, it definitely won't be a "wisdom book." :-)
