Richard, In transcendental samadhi, it gets tricky, because to me, that's still duality. One (a nervous system) is still saying "I am." One is not saying "I am suchandsuch," but nonetheless, it is saying, "I am." But that's still two thingies, ego and amness. Or, if you prefer to go up a notch in abstraction, 1. Absolute 2. Soul. Samadhi is amness, primal sinless ego, singing OM -- singing like hunters doing duck calls -- hoping to lure the Absolute down from the heights of akhanda mandala karum. But, ha!, it's one smart duck!
One transcends by doing less and less. Thinking a thought is work being done. The least work of this type is samadhi -- a nervous system is still operating but "in neutral, not in drive." If I have no awareness of anything outer, but I'm still aware, I've transcended, stopped, MOST thinking, but awareness without an object is still some work being done. That least state of excitation, that smallest amount of working, results in the experience, amness, but it is not a perfect silence since it is an action of a body that is intended to symbolize the Absolute. The Absolute is, functionally, the imaginary friend of amness. The problem with samadhi is that identification remains localized as body, mind, spirit. Time still seems to exist as a potential of Being, and urp, now I'm getting claustrophobic! The trick of enlightenment is to identify with the Absolute instead of Being. It's a toughie, cuz you know Being is soooooooo convincing. How convincing? There's that story about the sage who had become so powerful that he could create a whole new creation with its own new Gods, so Indra and his boys sent a hot chick to twiddle the sage's twiddleables. And, yep, sure enough, ten thousand years of tapas went down the drain, and then the sage didn't have enough shakti to do a new creation, so the Gods could relax. How sweet must Being Beauty be, eh? That chick musta been something to have a sage pay 10,000 years of tapas for her fee. Like that, Being can suck ya in. Pun intended. One moment one's almost perfectly identified with the unbounded, then BLAMMO, you're Indra with a ton of work to do, or worse, Edg on caffeine. Nope, TM's mantra only gets ya to samadhi, and dwelling there is good cuz as one gets "used to" identifying with a symbol of perfect silence -- that is, the sound of OM -- one cultures one's nervous system until it can shift from local, quality ladened, unbounded but yet fettered ensoulment onto the Absolute. Once this toggling of identification happens, that's the last paradigm shift the mind can have -- when even wooden decoy bliss cannot bribe the Absolute down to the duck hunter. That's enlightenment -- one leaps out of the zombie. Edg --- In [email protected], "Richard J. Williams" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Duveyoung wrote: > > To me Being is all the gunas perfectly balanced but > > still having the quality of being manifest -- that is, > > observable and thus distinct from the Absolute -- just > > exactly as a mirror is functional but "invisible" to > > human eyes that are tuned to see only to the mirror's > > reflections. > > > But Maharishi has said that the relative is separate from > the Absolute, that the Absolute is "free from the gunas", > and that the Absolute is not an object of knowledge. > > "The Vedas mainly deal with the subject of the three modes > of material nature. Rise above these modes, O Arjuna. Be > transcendental to all of them. Be free from all dualities > and from all anxieties for gain and safety, and be > established in the Self." > > http://www.asitis.com/2/45.html >
