I think you are right if we look at the source of the quote. He is interpreting a Rig Vedic verse that says that the gods reside in heaven. Richo akshare parame veyomon. (It has been decades but I think that is how you spell it!) So at its loftiest level in his system he interprets this to mean that the hymns of the Veda are in the absolute which is the religious idea that despite historical evidence to the contrary, the Vedas came along with Man. (And like Christianity's creation myth, fails to account for the 250 million year reign of the dinosaurs!)
So he took this religious assertion from his holy books and tried to put it into terms that might sell in the modern world to people who were not Hindu believers. The rest of the connection with how the movement uses this is all Maharishi and is a long way from the phrase itself. He uses it as a selling point to say that his trademarke meditation gives you a special state of mind where your "knowledge" (understanding and experience by his definition) is perfect or complete or any other one of the superlatives he applied to it like supreme knowledge. It is essentially a religious concept that he tried to make folksy for us to relate to. The intro lecture completes this descending into our common life with claims about how it gives us our full mental potential using the now discredited idea that we only use 10% of our brains and that with TM we will use the rest of it. So we are left to interpret it for ourselves how we personally relate to it all. I think there is a bit of dodging and weaving going on with movement claims where if one claim is seen as not accurate the target is shifted, like flying becomes the much less measurable world peace. So we have claims about mental development and how the growth of consciousness expands and since that is the "container" of "knowledge" our knowledge is somehow improved. (exactly how it does is not spelled out.) In the end you have people saying stuff like they feel more "wholeness, or unboundedness or purity,bliss, or simplicity", or any other of a list of vague puffy words that, although poetic, don't really describe more than a nice feeling inside. And we forget that originally the claim was about knowledge and not just a nice internal feeling. What I am saying is that I don't believe that this connection of the expansion of consciousness feeling has proven to have any affect at all on people's "knowledge" in any way that seems to matter or is detectible outside their own self satisfied feeling about themselves. Same for Maharishi. He seemed like a super ambitious guy and an empire builder who made his share of mistakes like any other super ambitious guy. I don't see anything in what I heard him say after a decade and a half of listening to every tape of him talking I possibly could, that couldn't be replicated by anyone who was a good speaker and versed in the Hinduism he believed in. If anything he was a bit of an intellectual slacker by never mastering the all important Vedic language of Sanskrit while claiming that his mental state was so refined he didn't need to do the work that mastery would take. He was more of a business man dabbling in just enough spirituality to keep us entertained on courses. But once I started reading the books for myself I realized how thin his presentation of the breadth of the Vedic literature really was. He was a Reader's Digest Vedic guru pitching a superficial self congratulatory version of the Vedas. I heard this complaint from more than one Sanskrit scholar in the movement BTW. I also had an interesting exchange with Vernon Katz in Yugoslavia where he knowingly told me that Maharishi was quite the "optimist" about his teaching. I know he loves Maharishi but I am quite sure he saw through more of Maharishi's intellectual pretensions and failings than most. So what is the evidence that knowledge is different in different states of consciousness? I don't have any. It seems like a cool idea that just didn't see to pan out. And with the movement functioning on the level it does intellectually, when I listen to movement leaders like Raja Dude and Hagelin, I have to conclude that whatever they are talking about isn't something that someone who doesn't share their religious notions about being "saved" by these states of salvation, needs. YMMV of course. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <sharelong60@...> wrote : Hi Curtis, still fumbling here and what I'm sensing is that, in terms of knowledge, my interpretation of what Maharishi meant is something more than what I'll call everyday knowledge. In fact, I've often wondered if by knowledge, Maharishi didn't mean Truth. But maybe I've now descended into splitting hairs (-: From: "curtisdeltablues@... [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2014 2:54 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Okay, let's put it on the table: UFOs Share, I think you make a great case for taking care of yourself (diet and exercise), getting enough rest, and if you feel tired in the afternoon, take a nap. I am on board with all of that. We are both welcome to our own interpretations of what part meditation plays in that. If it is something you value and enjoy it is none of my business. It was Maharishi's claim that I disagree with. I don't see any connection with what you said below with knowledge being different in different states of C. I suspect even at your most unsettled and unrested, if I asked you about something you know about, you would just answer me just as you do when you are feeling better. That is because your knowledge isn't different in different states of consciousness. That our variable feelings are different in different states would make a better case than about our "knowledge" being different. All we can say is that we feel better or worse at different times, and our body's state seems to affect this. The variable of how much consciousness I am experiencing at any one time seems like a very small variable among more important factors. How much I care about something is the biggest predictor of how rich my knowledge is and given something I care about, I will fight through any fatigue factor to do it as much justice as I can to a subject I care about. Again, we are just talking here. It is a great way to sort out thoughts isn't it? ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <sharelong60@...> wrote : Curtis and Steve, I'm also just thinking out loud, sort of fumbling around with all this. Because KISIC and KIDIDSOC always resonated with me as being true. They felt right. But it's also fun to try and reason them out as well. But as I said, I'm just fumbling around, exploring, also sort of playing with words and our accepted meaning of them. As I've said before, I don't really think in terms of higher and lower states of consciousness. I think of more developed brain states, meaning, more of the brain functioning in a very healthy way. Which I think would automatically be of benefit to the world. I'm assuming that if most of a person's brain was functioning in a very healthy way, then that is how they would behave. It seems like a reasonable assumption to me. More fumbling, but here's an example from my life and I'm not claiming any higher SOC. But I do know that when I'm rested, when my physiology is settled, I feel more in harmony with the people around me. And I treat them more positively. That's a major value for me, and I think for them too. OTOH, if I'm upset or distracted, I can't even be with them as completely, so my knowledge of them at that moment, is incomplete and therefore not as valuable for either of us in terms of living a rich human life. From: "curtisdeltablues@... [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2014 1:09 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Okay, let's put it on the table: UFOs --In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <steve.sundur@...> wrote : Share, I agree that there is some conflating here of mental abilities and "knowledge". C: You mean by Maharishi in his examples, right? He started the comparison which you are labeling conflation. S: I think it is the typical apple/orange thing. The way the concept was presented by Maharishi was the obvious difference between waking, sleeping, and dreaming states of consciousness which we note in every day experience. C: That was another example he used. The clear and foggy, tired not tired example was also his. Of course saying that these are different mental states doesn't really make any practical case for how it might apply to our daily life which is why he needed to extend the example. Saying that our "knowledge" is different in deep sleep is a bit of a stretch because it is a state of zero consciousness. So it isn't that the knowledge is different as much as the knower is gone. In dreams we also have a very altered sense of self so there really isn't a parallel there either. It isn't that our knowledge, which is by his definition experience and understanding.The understanding part is missing because the experience is not organized as it is in waking state. So saying that these are different style experience does nothing to establish the principle he is attempting to establish, that "knowledge" is structured in "consciousness." The best he does is to point out that to know anything we must be aware and to know specific things we must be aware of those things and be in a state of mind capable of that. Not exactly an enlightened news flash. C: But where it gets interesting is when you consider the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh states, and how knowledge is perceived or acquired, differently in those states. But, if you don't buy into the reality of those states, then it is easy to dismiss the theory. C: You can have had the experience of altered states without buying into them as higher states. If you have done heavy rounding you know that you can alter your mental functioning. What it means is the issue. And in all my own experience I can't find an example of my "knowledge" being different, just my experience of my own mental functioning. The understanding was being pumped in by hours of lectures of Maharishi trying to convince me how I should interpret the experience and its value and meaning. I had the same beliefs throughout the process of changing internal experience, there was not change in my knowledge. Then when my "knowledge" changed again and I rejected his teaching I could still experience the states I had when I was a believer, they are not connected. S: After all, they are subjective by nature, so if someone says "prove it", you may be hard pressed to do so. C: If this was the kind of state extolled by Maharishi, the highest state of human development, there would be plenty of proof. Maharishi gave lots of examples of how we would see results in activity, he was not poo pooing proof for his claims, he as boldly claiming it could be proven. His confidence has not held up to scrutiny over time. Maharishi was using a philosophical proof system to make his case. I am showing that it is a flawed one. Proof by analogy isn't valid, analogies are a way to explain something you have proven in another way. In the beginning he could claim that people just didn't have the experience so no noticeable results could be shown to prove his claim. Now we have people claiming to be in these higher states. So now it turns out that even if knowledge IS structured in consciousness, other than self satisfaction, nothing is changed in their "knowledge" that does anyone else any good at all. It is indistinguishable from someone saying, "now that Jesus has saved me and I have eternal life, everything in my life is unfolding in God's perfect plan." So the idea of the value of knowledge is reduced to: " I feel good about myself now." Did it really take years of practice to achieve that? And isn't the concept of the value of human knowledge much more than that? This is a great topic no matter where you stand on it, thanks for pitching in Steve. I am just thinking out loud here, sorting out my own perspective by expressing it. On the other hand, you have someone like Barry owning up to having such experiences, but placing no particular importance to them. You have someone like Michael, who has waxed on about traversing the whole field of those higher states of consciousness, but then deciding that doing so sort of invalidates his oft repeated assumption that the technique doesn't work. So, I'm not sure what is going on with these guys. It sounds to me that at least those two have already implicated themselves as to verifying that "knowledge is different in different states of consciousness" Barry said as much this morning. Now, the fact that this seems to put him at odds with what Curtis is saying, may require him to backtrack some. Or more likely, he doesn't really care. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <sharelong60@...> wrote : Curtis, from your first paragraph, it sounds like you're equating knowledge with mental abilities. But I don't think that's what Maharishi meant. I think what he meant by knowledge is conclusions drawn from perceptions. One of the classical examples is that of the blind men touching different parts of the elephant and then coming to different conclusions about the identity of the object being touched in different places. Another classic example is the snake and the string wherein the agitated person sees something threatening and the calm person sees something nonthreatening. Even in every day life, if 10 people witness an accident, there will be 10 different reports. And how about the party game of telephone? Why doesn't the message stay the same with each hearing and repeating? From: "curtisdeltablues@... [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2014 10:59 AM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Okay, let's put it on the table: UFOs --In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote : Both the Turq's claim that he saw the Lenz-Rama-guy levitate many times and Curti's claim that "knowledge is not different in different states of consciousness" loom over these two guys forever. C: Nabbie with your attention to the details of what I write you could easily be mistaken for a fanboy. Yes, this is one of my favorite topics and thanks for reminding me. Let's revisit it to see if my views have changed I am denying that Maharishi has made a convincing case for his claim that: Knowledge is different in different states of consciousness. The example he used was that when we are sleepy our "knowledge" is different. When I was a young man, and more easily swayed by my internal feelings when thinking, I agreed with him. But now I do not find this to be the case. As an adult professional I have learned how to functions at a certain level mentally no matter what my level of rest or fatigue. My "knowledge" is not significantly affected. Being more likely to forget something can happen. But this is a long way from the breadth of this claim. I would say that fatigue exerts no more than a 10% influence over my mental abilities. So the comparison falls flat in my experience. Are you really incapable of doing your job well if you are tired? Does it make that much of a difference in your functioning really? You might enjoy it less but that is a different claim. And as far as extending this into the so called "higher states" as if this analogy would prove anything about them even if it were true, I call bullshit. I have seen nothing from any of the so called enlightened guys, Maharishi included, that couldn't be replicated from anyone familiar with their use of language and a Hinduism 101 course. Light some incense: "The mind is a shallow boat surrounded by the ocean of infinity. The mind experiences pleasure and pain, It associates with the objects of perception which sells out the infinite full potential of their inner nature for a localized, finite experience. When the mind expands into its limitless source, it becomes one with that infinite nature, and takes on the qualities of truth,consciousness and bliss awareness, beyond the limitations of space and time. This is what the ancient rishis called Sat Chit Ananda." You guess who wrote that from the "knowledge" it contains. Is there anything in those words that would make it impossible for the writer to be in waking state? Is there something so different from what a person who was not experiencing that reality could write, if they knew the language form and structure of the claims in that philosophy? Can you really tell if that was real or Memorex? So Nabbie, you defend your teachers assertion that he did not prove. He just asserted it. Now is your moment to show how your elevated consciousness has such a superior state of knowledge, that you can turn my objections to ashes before my eyes. Being scornful of my objections is not an argument. Show us why we should accept that knowledge is different in different states of consciousness without resorting to the proof by bogus analogy, blatant unsupported assertion, or appeal to the authority of Hindu holy books that Maharishi tried. Do your guru a solid and help him make his case for the infidels. But we both know that no one can because you just bought into a belief that doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Same 3 choices every time you take a swing at me. You can defend your belief with reasoned argument to convince me where what I wrote was wrong somehow or missing an important point, you can follow angry Jim and go ad hominem as he recently did AGAIN, or you can slink away to take another sucker punch another day, never defending your position or refuting mine with reason, like an internet troll. It's a good thing that Richard keep reminding every possible lurker here how far out of any possible self-insight these two guy's are. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <punditster@...> wrote : On 11/15/2014 4:23 PM, nablusoss1008 wrote: Sal is adjusting his speak every day now. Watch out, one of these days he'll even retract his extremely silly judgements on the Crop Circles. > "Adjusting his speak" - that's a good one! Apparently he already believes in tall tales - he has yet to reply to Barry's levitation claims about Rama. Go figure. "And I don't just mean explaining things away, to be convincing you have to show that something more realistic happened, more credible and using explanations we already understand and are known to happen in certain circumstances." - salyavin808 > ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> mailto:no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <sharelong60@...> mailto:sharelong60@... wrote : Salyavin, I love your last paragraph: folklore in action; techno ghost stories for the nuclear age. As for me, I believe there is life somewhere else in the vast universe. And I think they are more highly advanced than us and maybe here with us. And I think it's great. We can believe what we like. I have no opinion on intelligent life elsewhere, we don't know the variables that allow for it to develop. We could be unique or the universe could be teeming or maybe there's just one or two per galaxy over it's entire history. But the chances of there being other humanoids visiting Earth at the just same time as we've understood where we are cosmically? It beggars belief. Alien craft is the least likely explanation for UFO's. But I hope it's true. But at that point, I'm more like turq. It doesn't really impact my life one way or the other. Either way, what is the action step? (-: I don't know, just enjoy the ride, the evolving myth. We are apparently on the brink of something called "disclosure". We've been here before a few times as I recall, it never amounts to much but it's fun watching the TB's get excited that their favourite daydream is to be officially confirmed. But it won't be, the UFO's won't land and Maitreya won't appear. It's the way of things. The connection between the two is that people want there to be more, want there to be a reason and for there to be salvation from a higher power, whether it's alien or spiritual. We're talking deep human needs here. From: salyavin808 <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> mailto:no_re...@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Saturday, November 15, 2014 3:06 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Okay, let's put it on the table: UFOs ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> mailto:no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : Sal doesn't like UFO's because they aren't scientific :-) It's an interesting point Nabs. The thing is one can only get scientific about something if it is available to study, UFO's are so fleeting and ephemeral that there really isn't anything to study other than hearsay or suspiciously absent film taken by higher powers to keep the whole thing secret. But a great many people have studied what they can about UFO sightings, and done it with as much rigour as you can with such a paucity of hard evidence. I'm not sure there is an encounter that hasn't got a better explanation that doesn't involve us being visited by beings from another world. And I don't just mean explaining things away, to be convincing you have to show that something more realistic happened, more credible and using explanations we already understand and are known to happen in certain circumstances. Even testing soil damage and skin burns for alternative causes. People are being scientific about UFO's. But here's the thing you overlook in your quip, I've been interested in UFO's for as long as I remember, I've a got a shelf full of the classic books on the subject. Even the true believer stuff from "serious" researchers like Timothy Good and the abductionists like Bud Hopkins. I bet I know all the great encounters by heart - Cortile, Ramirez, Roswell, Pascagoula, Ilkley Moor, Rendlesham... I love it but I don't take it at face value. To me, UFO's are folklore in action. The evolving myth of abduction and what they are supposedly doing here are the legends of our time, a new religion, encapsulating our fears about technology and promising us freedom from our destructive ways, yet always remaining remarkably evidence free. There's always a new vision to add to the mythos but conveniently never any hard evidence to help decide one way or the other. And the longer that scenario goes on the more convinced any casual observer should be that we are kidding ourselves, because deep down we like ghost stories and that's really what they are. Something scary always just out of reach. Techno ghost stories for the nuclear age. Former Astronaut Explains The UFO Cover-Up 2013 1080p HD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AAJ34_NMcI Former Astronaut Explains The UFO Cover-Up 2013 ... Edgar Dean Mitchell, Sc.D. is an American pilot, retired Captain in the United States Navy and NASA astronaut. As the lunar module pilot of Apollo 14, ... View on www.youtube.com Preview by Yahoo ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <steve.sundur@...> mailto:steve.sundur@... wrote : I didn't really read what sal has written below, but I think the gist of it is, that he doesn't like the person who coined the word "flying saucer" Is that what his dissertation is about this time? ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> mailto:no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : There is not one astronaut who has NOT reported seeing UFO's, sometimes huge and in large nubers, back to NASA and/or their families. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> mailto:no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> mailto:no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : If Gordon is not crazy, then the American government is purposefully, mindfully, ABSOLUTELY evil. If there are aliens visiting us and we're not being told -- it robs every person on Earth. EVERY PERSON ON EARTH. Neither you, nor I, nor anyone ever could possibly be who we are now if we knew that UFOs are real. IT. WOULD. CHANGE. EVERYTHING. And that's why it might be kept a secret -- the concept "money" would be bereft of allure. If you say that it would NOT be "all that much of a big deal, cuz everyone's so inured already by Hollywood films," then YOU DON'T KNOW JACK SHIT ABOUT PSYCHOLOGY. Every person in every way: changed. Agreed. Luckily I don;t suppose it will come to that. Which is a shame as I'd be the happiest person on Earth if it turned out that UFO's were alien spacecraft, but the truth of sightings always turns out to be more mundane. Take the name "flying saucers", everyone sees saucer shaped craft but the name is a mistake from the first encounter anyone had. Kenneth Arnold (an experienced pilot) saw a squadron of highly reflective crescent shaped aircraft flying at great speed in a V formation over the Rocky mountains in 1947. He described them as flying like a saucer would if skipped across water. A journalist made up the name flying saucer and after that everyone saw saucer shaped craft when they saw something mysterious in the sky. The power of suggestion. Sadly there's no such thing as a reliable witness and any one can be fooled, Arnold most likely saw a flock of pelicans and mistook them for unknown aircraft and miscalculated their distance from him. We all make mistakes but the influence his mistake had is immeasurable. Because we people are so unreliable, if I had to bet I would say that Cooper saw some atmospheric effect from flying at supersonic speed that no one had noticed before and mistook it for real craft moving above him. And early radar was hopelessly unreliable, the UK air defence system in the cold war was always telling us that giant UFOs were crossing the north sea but when planes were scrambled to look it turned out to have been temperature inversions confusing the equipment. When these anomalies were understood and ironed out UFO reports stopped coming in. It's the way it goes, people see stuff and imagination plugs any gaps, popular culture is rife with imagery that came before the sightings. I can't trust myself let alone anyone else! I would like to see this film they took though but, I don't suppose we ever will. That's the way (Message over 64 KB, truncated)
