---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <anartaxius@...> wrote :
cult 1. a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object. 2. a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister. synonyms: sect, denomination, group, movement, church, persuasion, body, faction 3. a misplaced or excessive admiration for a particular person or thing. synonyms: obsession with, fixation on, mania for, passion for, idolization of, devotion to, worship of, veneration of Now that the banished person on FFL who devoted a considerable amount of free time energy to explaining that the TM org is a cult is gone, and that observation indicates approximately half the active members of FFL are still under the influence of cult-like thought patterns; now that that person has been eliminated, we should see an increase in docile, cult-like behaviour on FFL, and a lowering of the level of intelligent discussion. (That is an hypothesis by the way, not a truth) There was a scientific paper written in 1984 by neuroscientist Michael Persinger titled Striking EEG Profiles from Single Episodes of Gossolalia and Transcendental Meditation in which he wrote: 'Transient, focal, epileptic-like changes in the temporal lobe, without convulsions, have been hypothesised to be primary correlates of religious experiences. Given these properties, direct measurement of these phenomena within the laboratory should be rare. However, two illustrated instances have been recorded. The first case involved the occurrence of a delta-wave-dominant electoral seizure for about 10 sec. from the temporal lobe only of a Transcendental Meditation teacher during a peak experience within a routine TM episode. The second case involved the occurrence of spikes within the temporal lobe only during protracted intermittent episodes of glossolalia [speaking in tongues] by a member of a Pentecostal sect. Neither subject had any psychiatric history. These observations are commensurate with the hypothesis that religious experiences are natural correlates of temporal lobe transients that can be detected by routine EEG measures.' Persinger is a cognitive neuroscientist, and his theories of religious experience have received some criticism; he is of the belief that strong magnetic field can induce religious experiences, but his research has not been convincingly replicated. More of note Persinger wrote a book with two other authors in 1980 called TM and Cult Mania in which he investigated the efficacy of TM. 'TM and Cult Mania takes a look at the assertions made by the Transcendental Meditation movement and analyses them from a scientific perspective. The book acknowledges that those who practice the Transcendental Meditation technique feel relaxed and experience an increase in creativity. According to the book, the physiological effects reported by the scientific studies on Transcendental Meditation are relatively small from a scientific perspective and "no more effective than many other meditation techniques". Transcendental Meditation is seen as most noteworthy due to its ability to manipulate stress and expectancy.' The authors concluded 'Transcendental Meditation has achieved international recognition through commercial exploitation' and 'poor scientific procedures ' and that 'the reported effects of TM upon human behaviour are trivial. Considering the alleged potency of the TM procedure, the changes in physiological and behavioural measures are conspicuously minute'. TM and Cult Mania comes to the conclusion that, 'science has been used as a sham for propaganda by the TM movement.' The book was criticised by some because Persinger associated religious beliefs and spiritual practices with mental illness, that he cast spiritual interests under a cloud of psychopathology. Having been on FFL now for about four years, I think that psychopathy is quite evident on this Yahoo group, and that now that the Buck persona seems to be in charge of the way things go, that pathology of cult behaviour will intensify unless there are enough counterbalancing voices that are not suppressed, to keep this mental illness from spreading. Now I have practiced TM into my fifth decade, and as is known here, I seem to have some slight sociopathic tendencies. These tendencies have increased through the practice of TM. I feel the changes are positive, but they can be described in negative language. Loss of the small self can be described as 'depersonalisation' which is as good a tag as any. The persona gets thrown out from the centre of your life to the periphery, where it becomes an object, like trees and rocks. Everything in the universe becomes an object, and consciousness or awareness becomes the subject, and disappears from view. During most of the practice though, before this depersonalisation occurs, awareness/consciousness is basically regarded as an object, as per statements like, 'I experienced pure consciousness during meditation'. The form of that statement show the mind is not enlightened because the 'I' experienced such and such and 'such and such' is the object of the experience. Another way to say that is the idea of self replaces the real self. This of course is how ignorance is described, but this is also how initial experiences of meditation are described. However the cult mentality provides an explanation that overrides this perception that consciousness is being regarded as an object by saying 'consciousness is experiencing itself', but when the mind, in retrospect, talks about the experience, it is always 'I experienced such and such'. What we have here are two layers of contradictory explanation. The culturally programmed one, what we grew up with before becoming consciously involved in something spiritual, and the cult program on top of that. The fact of enlightenment (not a scientific fact or a legal fact) is there is experience, and that is all, nothing but that. That simple statement encapsulates the result of the entire decades long quest in which the mind under the influence whatever cult explanation (Zen, Tao, TM, Tantra, Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Sufi, whatever) eventually comes. All the stuff (Zen, Tao, TM, Tantra, Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Sufi, whatever) that the mind engaged in during the quest is seen through and is no longer real because it is seen as all part of the state called ignorance. And that part (Zen, Tao, TM, Tantra, Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Sufi, whatever) is the part that is the mental illness. Most of us here are still infected with it. Those that have been cured of the infection are regarded with deep suspicion because they do not believe the various structures and view along the spiritual path have any merit any more, and the cured regard those with the infection as insane, and sometimes say so. There is an incredible irony in being sucked into a cult of enlightenment because for a while, and perhaps unfortunately for a whole lifetime, in the quest to be free of ignorance, one for a time becomes even more ignorant, having substituted one set of wrong ideas (what you grew up with) with another set of wrong ideas (the spiritual path). The objective of the spiritual path is to create a tipping point so that the mind's fixation on ideas, on thought is eventually obliterated, but this often fails because in a cult mentality, the explanations that would undo the path are eliminated within the path and replaced with some rote formulae. Examples of some of these missing statements would be 'enlightenment is a joke', or 'there really is no such thing as enlightenment', or 'you are already enlightened and don't know it' or 'there is nothing between you and your enlightened state other than your opinions' or 'everything you think about enlightenment is untrue'. These simple rejoinders diminish in time and get replaced by some grandiose scheme that imply that if you follow this path, you will be on a golden illuminated highway to a heaven that surpasses the gods (or whatever version of these imaginary entities or entity strikes your fancy), that and you will forever be happy and without problems. The problem with FFL now is that happy grandiose state is being forced from without rather than from within each of us, trying to create a happy problem-free state without having to face any of the issues such as the real veracity of the spiritual path, depersonalisation, ego, bad science, magical thinking, various sorts of personal bias, deep seated fears, and our own snarky, sniping behaviours which in the past have surfaced repeatedly. This all might have something to do with that little area of the brain called the amygdala, which is deep within the brain's medial temporal lobe. The amygdala is a key to emotional behaviour and is central to both pleasure and fear. When the amygdala is stimulated by whatever means, it overrides our prefrontal cortex, our machinery for cognitive intelligence, and our intelligent behaviour, and we either freeze up, get angry, or run. Behaviours that, based on what people write, appeared here quite often. But what is interesting is if you suppress in the environment those things that stimulate the amygdala, the prefrontal cortex, our intelligence has no opportunity to learn how to discriminate and deal with the difference between a real tangible threat and a non threatening, but seemingly threatening situation. What this means is, if you create a 'community situation' devoted to a particular set of ideas, a cult, in which those ideas are peacefully traded, you create a situation where one of the key processes of learning leading to the so called enlightened state is removed, and instead of enhancing the opportunity for realisation, the opposite happens. Why do you think, in historical India, late in life you go alone into the forest to gain realisation? You leave community behind and go solo. 'Enlightenment' is a solo flight. It is all about what you are alone as one single quality. It's not about companionship, it's not about friends, its about the discrimination of real and fake, and group dynamics reinforce group thinking, thinking running along tracks rather than freely enquiring and trying to discover what is happening for real, rather than what you think is happening. Groupthink is only useful in the early stages to help build some confidence to go solo, to burn the bridges of ignorant attachments. Like parents encouraging a child, but the child eventually has to become independent or they become a burden. This is why small cults turn into large cults called religions. The groupthink dominates and whatever knowledge of spirituality remains gets buried so deeply in the groupthink, in the community, that it is as good as lost forever. Thus community freezes the early stages of spiritual seeking and destroys the opportunity to progress to the later stages. Because it is so much easier to bask in one's illusions than to have all the things you think are true and dear eventually stripped away revealing that what you thought was there, wasn't. What you are looking for when you seek enlightenment is not there in where you are looking, in what you are thinking. There are tools that help. Meditation, the ability to be silent, is one. Curiosity is another, and some persistent sense of a goal is another. But none of these things are arrival. The tools, like any tools can be dangerous if handled improperly. In cults, the dangers are minimised in the rhetoric, and the goal is bombastically hyped as is the 'need' to stay connected with a group, the solo nature of the enlightenment trek is minimised in favour of group comfort. But it is not about a group. It's about seeing collections of things are essentially just the way the mind dreams its thoughts and attributes significance to specific kinds of properties bundled together. The cerebral cortex needs to be trained to unbundle these things and this requires some individual initiative for a while to keep it on track, and individual initiative is contrary to groupthink even as it is also a fundamental error in thinking how the universe works. As Fairfield Life settles down, becomes more comfortable, what I am saying is your chances of enlightenment, however you imagine it to be, are being reduced because it is so much easier to be complacent that everything you hold dear is somehow true, rather than experiencing the lie it is. Spiritual experiences are just a different kind of life experience. Like the old wise men of some primitive tribe who are consulted for their long experience, and judgements derived therefrom, spiritual experiences are intermittent happenings that ought to give us some perspective on just what experience, i.e., consciousness is about. What is needed is the perspective that fits these experiences into a coherent whole, this is what we call enlightenment, not the experiences that lead up to something, but what their real significance is in freeing us from our own lack of perception. Once that happens, you can forget about the whole trip if you like. This kind of perspective only comes after the seeking stage in enlightenment is done with. Our moderator is an affectionado of community. And thus unsuitable for any kind of enlightenment trek other than the very early stages in which people acquire the confidence to go further. It is pretty clear from the statements he has past made, that he has a cult mentality, devoted to specific ideas and community. If you want enlightenment, he will be your obstacle. You need the freedom to discover what overrides your intellectual intelligence with fear, anger, or the desire to flee, so that the mind can train itself to distinguish and attain some mastery over conditioned responses to stimuli. You need a variety of contrary inputs to learn to distinguish useful from useless. You need a competent form of meditation, curiosity and the desire to find out. If you are seeking, you have not yet found out anything. If you are comfortable in a community, because of what they say, you have not yet found out anything. You need to be independent of groupthink, and question everything you hold dear and sacred, because none of it is true. First class post. I'm sure glad you're still here to help keep us on the straight and narrow. I intend to hold Buck at his word and take advantage of the "tolerant yahoo guidelines" without giving up my point of view about anything and I shall keep picking at the mass of poor science and religious delusions that call itself "the knowledge" as best as my meagre mind can manage. It's what our insightful friend on gardening leave would have wanted I'm sure...
