[Comments] interleaved: ** --- In [email protected], "curtisdeltablues" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Marek: "But do you feel that the content-free, unbounded state is who > you are > (without denying the Curtis guy who does his Delta Blues thing)? Is > the silent witness just one of the items on your plate or is it > something like the plate itself? Bad analogy, I know, but you know > what I'm asking, right?" > > ME : I think the plate analogy is a good one. Here is where my belief > system probably is shaping my experience. If I put my attention on > that aspect of my self for a moment it feels like a part of myself, > but it is not the part that interests me.
[Okay, but does it feel like an 'aspect' or a 'part' of yourself, equivalent in 'weight' to your role as a performer, or your son/husband/father roles, etc. In other words, does it feel like another persona or does it feel like you? What or Who is attention?] Any aspect of our conscious > awareness is so amazing that I am usually pretty blown away to be > alive at all. That gives me a lot of joy. The plate idea seems good > because when I want a meal I take that aspect of the dinner for > granted and focus on the items resting on the plate. The idea that > the plate is the "real" meal doesn't make sense. And the idea that > our silent awareness underlying activity is my true nature seems wrong > to me. [Plate isn't the meal, it's the ground of the meal; but I understand this in terms of what you said before, that you're more interested in being Alive and less interested (or perhaps, not at all interested) in Being. But I guess the question I'm getting at again is the one I posed in the first comment and actually, you *do* seem to have answered it here -- you don't feel that the 'silent awareness underlying activity' is who you are. At least that's what I think you mean by it not being "my true nature"?] > > I figure that the guys in the Vedic tradition were doing the best they > could to explain human consciousness, and I don't discount their > contribution. I just feel that we have learned a bit since then and > that should be brought into the discussion. I believe that > consciousness is an emergent quality of the activity of my brain. If > my brain dies, there is no more me at all. I'm cool with that. The > miracle for me is that I am alive now. So with that belief I think my > experience of what I used to refer to as my transcendent nature when > I was in TM is not experienced in as charming a way. It just seems to > be a given and a container for the things that do matter to me. That > has been one of the coolest aspects of posting here, a re-evaluation > of my relationship with all these terms again. I really appreciate > your taking the time to share your own view of it all and to ask me > about mine. > [I think you are correct about the Vedic age guys and I do believe that I've made a conscious choice to accept their valuation of these enlightenment experiences *as* 'enlightenment' experiences and have more or less, appropriated the vocabulary and grammar of the Eastern traditions in which that perspective represents an apogee of human realization. But I do think that a lot of these yogis really did a lot research in this area and have for a long time and with enough willing subjects to test out quite a lot of experimental hypotheses. But I'd have to agree with you, and that is just a supposition or belief on my part that provides a reason to accept much more of what those traditions say. One of the things that comes up frequently in these posts is the value of firmly established traditions as opposed to experimenters. There's value in both, and I feel that different yogic experimenters over time have advanced this research into what the human psyche and Self is. Traditions then grow up around successful experiments and serve to preserve them. Maharishi seems to have been an experimenter with what he learned around Guru Dev. His earlier teachings, both philosophy and technique, didn't depart that far from traditional teachings within Vedanta and Tantra. But I do think that his use of bija mantras that could be correlated to the stage of a person's life at the time they begin the meditation, by the devata they refer to (Saraswati for student years, Lakshmi for the start of the householder years, etc., etc., Krishna for the final years), and the semi-syllabic extension of the bijas were excellent decisions. If that was wholly his own idea, Guru Dev's actual instruction or Maharishi's inspired sense of what Guru Dev wanted him to do -- who's to know? Maharishi's later techniques seem to me to have been more experimental and maybe not as effective for many people, though Maharishi's introduction to sanyama was pretty cool. I appreciate Maharishi for his willingness to break or bend tradition and risk error. And, if he hadn't it would have been an entirely different world. He's been an extraordinary influence and catalyst in the world, regardless of one's personal opinion of him as either guru or man. It's a pleasure to indulge in conversations like this. Real satsang. Thank you.]
