---In [email protected], <LEnglish5@...> wrote :
Just how are you aware of a state where the physical machinery by which the brain communicates with itself and allows perception OF isn't even active in the first place? That's not my point. If you believe that reduced activity in the brain is more close to the 'ground-state', then the next step would be sleep, coma, and finally death. Therefore, I think, to define pure awareness in such a negative way, as the lack of activity, is a dead end. Also, we tend to think, that a more highly developed brain, is more likely to reflect a higher degree of awareness. Otherwise very low biological organisms would be the highest developed, and a state of hibernation would be like samadhi. That's not what I think. Think of Guru Dev's, the atman is a light onto itself, it doesn't need any other light to illuminate it. So, awareness is the key signature, and not non-activity. Think about that. So, if we agree upon the fact, that awareness is reflected in the brain, through a particular activity, the more you experience a hightened sense of awareness, the more you should find a corresponding activity for this awareness, and not the lack thereof. Take the example of Bhairitu, of the movie and the screen on which it is displayed. The screen is always there, but it is through the movie, that it becomes visible. In normal life, we are not aware of the screen, as the movie captures our full attention. Through awareness and meditation, you get aware of the constant presence of the background, the screen. But to be aware of the screen without the movie, you still would need light to see it. if the thalamus isn't passing data from the outside sense to the cortex, there is no perception of the outside world. If the thalamus isn't passing processed data from the cortex into the incoming data stream (or what would be the incoming data stream depending on whether you are dreaming or awake), there's no possibility of perception OF, or discussion/describing OF, anything, even awareness itself. Are you asserting that you are in a state that transcends the physical reality of the brain and therefore are not bound by the limitations of how the brain communicates with itself? No. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying that there are two things: what you actually experience, and what you think that it means - the theory. I think that the word 'transcendence' is an ontological term, and it points directly to something that underlies everything, all concrete experiences, but is still transcendent to all. In one way, it is always there, in another way, it transcends everything, so, to experience it as the backdrop of all activity, to experience it as the witness, seems to be the best thing to me. What I am saying is, that the classic TC description in TM, is not the thing itself, as it is basically only an awareness of a transition, one of having been somewhere, no mantra, no thought, and then noticing it. That transition of becoming aware of having had no mantra, no thought, to noticing it AS A THOUGHT, is not the real thing in my opinion. It's like the transition of drowsiness to wakefullness, but in that it is just momentary. And that, in my opinion, is NOT the Atman, the realization of the self. I am not saying that it is bad or anything. I am just saying, that it is something else than what is being said it is. It's not the Atman, it's not Samadhi, it's not transcendence in any particular sense. Transcendence is there in everything, so it is also contained within this, but not in any special way. You get only as much awareness as you get. But you are made to believe that this is transcendence. This belief is so to say a teaching device. I'm hammering on this point out of two reasons: OTOH, any TMer, when you leave the movement, will ask you if you still meditate, if you still use your TM mantra. If you say, that you meditate, but not the TM way, they will immediately ask, but do you transcend? It's like a fundamental Christian asking, but do you believe in God? do you believe in Jesus? My answer was always, define God, so my answer to TMers is: define transcendence. Maybe I'm a real bore, but I am actually trying to define it, and put it into words just for myself, so if nobody reads this, it's okay to me ;-) For me, the real issue is this: when, at a certain time many years back, a particular chakra opened, the over-head one, the experience was so different, from ANYTHING I had ever experienced, that I was wondering, what I had done so far - and that included so-called transcending. I was thinking: what did I do so far, spending all the time sitting here, does everybody else already have it, and I didn't notice? Is this so-called enlightenment? I was on Purusha, surrounded in the big hall by meditating people. What I was meditating for now, what was I supposed to do? I was starting to ask people around me, if they knew this, I had one friend, who knew everything about it, but none of the other's. This experience continued, day after day, and I was exstatic, at some point, I lost it, but I could regain it, after meditating more. Now back to TM style transcending: what was remarkable, after this opening, was that it was hard for me to be drowsy. OTOH TM style transcending was not possible anymore. So, being still hooked up to TM thinking somewhat, I would say, TM-transcendence or 'flat- transcendence' or whatever, but I knew it wasn't the real thing. There is no connection of this, to what I had experienced, no connection at all. Not that my new awareness was in any way an extension of what I had previously experienced as transcending. In that sense, I reject the term transcendence for it, it is just a label, it is not what is really described, it is calles one thing, but it is something else. How do you know this is the case? L ---In [email protected], <[email protected]> wrote : ---In [email protected], <LEnglish5@...> wrote : Um, ok... The most detailed research on pure consciousness showed that the subject didn't press a button signalling that they had had a PC episode until *after* their physiology reverted to normal. They didn't notice PC. They noticed the transition *out of* PC. Yes. Just to let you know: it did serve me well for many years - so I do know it well. But it is very different from the more fully aware state without any thought, except for the basic awareness of the state itself. Thought is so subtle, that you are aware of what is going on, but you cannot actively think. And it is more related to the chakras and kundalini. But whatever. L ---In [email protected], <[email protected]> wrote : ---In [email protected], <LEnglish5@...> wrote : "But as you said, of course, transcendence has nothing to do with either having a thought, or having no thought. It is not a physiological signature, as some keep telling here, a physiological signature, can only relate to a particular experience, and any experience is by the mind." Actually, sensory experiences happen because raw sensory data comes into the brain via the thalamus and is routed to the cortext via connections called thalamo-cortical feedback loops. Internal thinking is perceived when processed data from the cortex is fed back to the thalamus and merged into the incoming raw sensory data. This is called thinking. The process of transcending is when the activity of the thalamus becomes less and so the funneling of raw sensory data and/or the merging of processed data becomes less. This happens whenever one allows the mind to wander but is facilitated by what we call "Transcendental Meditation." Which is not the same as you describe below, it maybe less, but is not zero. When the thalamus no longer allows ANY data to come in from the outside and no longer allows ANY processed data to be merged with the (now non-existent) raw data stream, and yet the part of the thalamus that promotes the connectivity between distant parts of the cortex remains functioning normally, one has no internal experience, no external experience--that is, nt thoughts--and yet the brain is still alert. This is samadhi. In TM what you experience of TC is not fully alert. When you are fully aware, you already have a thought. It's not samadhi. Real samadhi is when the kundalini rises to the top chakra. And it certainly has a physiological signature: I just described it. There is a physiological signature, but it has nothing to do with samadhi, it is only your imagination L
