--- In [email protected], "sparaig" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- In [email protected], "jim_flanegin" <jflanegi@> wrote: > > > > You have missed the point of the siddhis, which is to practice > > them > > innocently, without any expectation of a result. It is the > > expectation of a result that interferes with the result of a sutra > > actually, so if I or anyone else were moodmaking, there would be > > no results to report! If you are familiar with the practice of > > sanyama, you would see these mechanics as obvious, and a direct > > repudiation of your statement about moodmaking or Dumbo's feather. > > Sorry to say, you don't know what you are talking about here. > > That's not quite true. Awareness of the expected result is > built into the sidhis practice.
And that is *why*, in my opinion, the "results" of practicing the siddhis take the form that they do. If the students had been told that they would develop to see the blue aura that surrounds all things, they would have started seeing blue everywhere. > Of course, in the case of yogic flying, floating would > preclude a placebo effect, at least according to most > peopple... No, actually it wouldn't. What if the ability to float is inherent in being a human being, and the only thing that prevents it being commonplace is the widespread belief that it isn't possible? In that case, all that would be necessary to "produce" floating would be a placebo that allowed people to get past their disbelief. Obviously, the TM siddhi placebo is not that powerful. > ...but until then, you can't be 100% certain that hopping > isn't just placebo... And, in my opinion, even afterwards. Historical records are full of the occasional person floating. Christian saints have been seen to float, and they certainly never heard of either Patanjali or Maharishi. > ...and certainly you can't be sure that any purely > internal "flavor" isn't just placebo. Agreed. > My own take is that if it were just placebo, there would > be more hopping and other flavors reported, but who can say? The effect of imprinting, and decades of having been told what is possible and what is not, is a tough nut to crack. One of the reasons that I still like Carlos Castaneda is that he is one of the only writers in spiritual tradition I have ever encountered who captured how powerfully witnessing or performing actual siddhis affects one. It rocks your world. Your whole *body* goes into shock, and your mind starts working overtime to try to *dismiss* what you just saw or experienced. You try to find any way you can imagine to make the experience GO AWAY. Why? Because holding to the beliefs that were taught to you is *safe*, comforting. Suddenly finding your- self in "new territory," where the *only* thing you can trust is your own experience, is decidedly *not* safe. It's scary. *That* is why I keep bringing up your tendency not to believe your own experience, Lawson. I honestly believe that such a stance is counterproductive to the realization of enlightenment. The enlightened have -- almost by definition -- learned to trust their own experience more than anything else. Those who have not are "also rans."
