Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: How does one decide if a person's testimony is valid?
I do not believe in God, but I have a sense of the infinite.Robert Desnos ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, anartaxius@... wrote : Duveyoung, comments in your text, below. From: Duveyoung no_re...@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Friday, December 19, 2014 1:30 AM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: How does one decide if a person's testimony is valid? Anartaxius -- gunna devil-advocate on yer buns. Gunna be snarky N the worm turns funzies. Just to see what I can getcha to pony up about why your authority in these matters, well, matters. Who says I have any authority in these matters? All I do is basically talk about how I experience the world You speak as I do when I'm really doing my mad-poet high-stepping -- dead certain of everything -- only I do it with a jester-wearing-a-hat costume, and you come across as professorial with a jaunty mortar board hat. I have never worn one of those hats. If I sound professorial, then it would appear I just have a boring pedantic writing style. Well, listen to my screeching from the back of the room below, and let's us just see what can be seen. Please take my attack, yes, attack, in the spirit of those English Parliament debates where the other party yells in the most raucous, rude, and in your face manner...only this time I'll feign some low-life kinda-Bronx accent.with an imagined voicing not unlike a delivery by Groot. (But, actually I'm still angry at Curtis for ripping me apart like this a few weeks ago...I'm just his fanboy trying to impress him...hee hee.} I am glad I have never had to argue with Curtis. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, anartaxius@... wrote : Yes, no longer mutually exclusive. I think it is basically a teaching technique. I think. I think. Hm. Either way, if you're using the word I or think then, we're talking about processes of a human nervous system, and that seems, dang it, ever so iffy -- maybe even, error prone, maybe even bullshit. Please clear this up for us. The rest of your statement kinda depends on it. An I seems to have the power to think -- I'm chewing on this, but it's flavor is kinda like gum from under a seat. As I said in a previous post, I THINK it is a teaching technique. Teaching is basically highlighting diversity and then connecting diversity. Say sharpening a pencil. You need a pencil, and something to sharpen it with. Two things. A person needs to know what a pencil is, and what a sharpening device is. The sharpening device could be a knife, or a dedicated device which we call a pencil sharpener. Then you demonstrate how the two go together to sharpen the pencil. To expand knowledge, you can use the pencil sharpening demonstration by analogy to other areas of life, say, sex. There are certain things that are similar, sticking one thing in another, torque, etc. Regarding the use of the word 'I'. It is a bundle identifier, it refers to a mammilian body, with limbs, eyes, etc., that has a certain location in space-time, and functions in certain ways. It has other identifiers, such as 'Xeno'. You have never seen this however, you just see text on a screen probably. A collection of certain specific parts, such as windshield, chassis, tyres, wheels, engine (which is also a collection of parts) we can call a car. That the collection of limbs, and eyes, and thoughts that has the tag Xeno does not imply that there is something in that collection that is an 'I', a special sort of entity that is called a 'me'. Mathematically a collection equals the sum of its parts, not more. A collection can have some kinds of functionality as a whole that single parts may not have. A hammer plus a human can drive a nail into a piece of wood which it could not do by itself, but the hammer and the human are not intrinsically more in themselves as a result of that temporary alignment. As Nisargadatta said, it forces a person to look within if all they know is thinking and doing. The 'within' really is not a separate place in the universe, You know it's a not separate place how? Because I amuse you? WaitI mean: Because YOU'RE a Nisargadatta devotee of many decades or what? Can ya scurry up a quote for us. I ask, cuz you used the word said. Which I take meant wrote via translator/transcriber of pristine merit not I heard him in his original language and I know that language perfectly or I have studied at his feet. See the problem here with this kind of use of words by you? This is simply a matter of definition. The universe contains all. Physical, and if you like, awareness. It is defined this way, nothing outside, the concept of outside being nonsensical, and therefore there is no separate place. The mind's conceptualisation creates separation, this and that, within the matrix of the universe. A brick is not a horse, or 'I' am this special unique thing inside this body
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: How does one decide if a person's testimony is valid?
Duveyoung, comments in your text, below. From: Duveyoung no_re...@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Friday, December 19, 2014 1:30 AM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: How does one decide if a person's testimony is valid? Anartaxius -- gunna devil-advocate on yer buns. Gunna be snarky N the worm turns funzies. Just to see what I can getcha to pony up about why your authority in these matters, well, matters. Who says I have any authority in these matters? All I do is basically talk about how I experience the world You speak as I do when I'm really doing my mad-poet high-stepping -- dead certain of everything -- only I do it with a jester-wearing-a-hat costume, and you come across as professorial with a jaunty mortar board hat. I have never worn one of those hats. If I sound professorial, then it would appear I just have a boring pedantic writing style. Well, listen to my screeching from the back of the room below, and let's us just see what can be seen. Please take my attack, yes, attack, in the spirit of those English Parliament debates where the other party yells in the most raucous, rude, and in your face manner...only this time I'll feign some low-life kinda-Bronx accent.with an imagined voicing not unlike a delivery by Groot. (But, actually I'm still angry at Curtis for ripping me apart like this a few weeks ago...I'm just his fanboy trying to impress him...hee hee.} I am glad I have never had to argue with Curtis. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, anartaxius@... wrote : Yes, no longer mutually exclusive. I think it is basically a teaching technique. I think. I think. Hm. Either way, if you're using the word I or think then, we're talking about processes of a human nervous system, and that seems, dang it, ever so iffy -- maybe even, error prone, maybe even bullshit. Please clear this up for us. The rest of your statement kinda depends on it. An I seems to have the power to think -- I'm chewing on this, but it's flavor is kinda like gum from under a seat. As I said in a previous post, I THINK it is a teaching technique. Teaching is basically highlighting diversity and then connecting diversity. Say sharpening a pencil. You need a pencil, and something to sharpen it with. Two things. A person needs to know what a pencil is, and what a sharpening device is. The sharpening device could be a knife, or a dedicated device which we call a pencil sharpener. Then you demonstrate how the two go together to sharpen the pencil. To expand knowledge, you can use the pencil sharpening demonstration by analogy to other areas of life, say, sex. There are certain things that are similar, sticking one thing in another, torque, etc. Regarding the use of the word 'I'. It is a bundle identifier, it refers to a mammilian body, with limbs, eyes, etc., that has a certain location in space-time, and functions in certain ways. It has other identifiers, such as 'Xeno'. You have never seen this however, you just see text on a screen probably. A collection of certain specific parts, such as windshield, chassis, tyres, wheels, engine (which is also a collection of parts) we can call a car. That the collection of limbs, and eyes, and thoughts that has the tag Xeno does not imply that there is something in that collection that is an 'I', a special sort of entity that is called a 'me'. Mathematically a collection equals the sum of its parts, not more. A collection can have some kinds of functionality as a whole that single parts may not have. A hammer plus a human can drive a nail into a piece of wood which it could not do by itself, but the hammer and the human are not intrinsically more in themselves as a result of that temporary alignment. As Nisargadatta said, it forces a person to look within if all they know is thinking and doing. The 'within' really is not a separate place in the universe, You know it's a not separate place how? Because I amuse you? WaitI mean: Because YOU'RE a Nisargadatta devotee of many decades or what? Can ya scurry up a quote for us. I ask, cuz you used the word said. Which I take meant wrote via translator/transcriber of pristine merit not I heard him in his original language and I know that language perfectly or I have studied at his feet. See the problem here with this kind of use of words by you? This is simply a matter of definition. The universe contains all. Physical, and if you like, awareness. It is defined this way, nothing outside, the concept of outside being nonsensical, and therefore there is no separate place. The mind's conceptualisation creates separation, this and that, within the matrix of the universe. A brick is not a horse, or 'I' am this special unique thing inside this body — but that is just an idea created by thought and the meaning of and relation of words one to another, and the way the mind connects them to experience. As for Nisargadatta, I
[FairfieldLife] Re: How does one decide if a person's testimony is valid?
Hi Edg, kudos to you for saying all this. And a real good and funny read. What you say resembles much of my thinking on this topic, so you save me the time to formulate it myself ;-) So according to some, we should not think? Or should not think about metaphysical abstract topics? Or not about topics, that are somehow removed from our direct experience? Unless they have a direct, provable (or possible) impact on our lives? And all really realized beings don't talk about metaphysical stuff, because it doesn't lead anywhere? Did I get something wrong here, or is this thought-police? Don't get me wrong here: everybody is free, I think, to NOT get into this kind of stuff, or dismiss it for himself as unproductive or even counter-productive. But then everybody else is also free to engage into for whatever fun purposes they want to have. I guess it's just different for different kind of people. For me, abstract meta-physical thinking is just soemthing I like. I was interested in philosophy already when I was a boy, and before I entered the spiritual path. Not that I studied it, but I always had a soft spot for it. Any kind of thought, is simply an exploration to start with. And anyway, why are people here, discussing various spiritual topics, if they don't have an interest for it? Or is it just that one shouldn't go too far in it? I don't know. For me it's like exploring my environment. I want to walk left, and I want to go for a walk around the house, and possibly into the city (or the forest), and I don't like anyone to stand at any place, and tell me, that it's not useful to go there, and there is nothing there to see anyway, and even more, this road goes to a place that doesn't even exist. It makes me want to go there even more, and I will think, go f**ck yourself, to that guy. But then, there may be comes a time, you just tire off, and you got enough, and you can't keep walking through the whole town forever, and you just go back, or settle wherever you are. But then you have seen everything, you have seen some of the landscape, and you have internalized it, or you have tried every thought, and you have seen which implications it may have, and if it's just a mental training, and you can see, if it could touch on something, that is actually more, than your mere experience. I once met a guy, who carried 'I am that' by Nisarfadatta through all of India in his backbag, together with his girl friend in a motorbike. There were camping with tents and stuff going basically everywhere, and this was the only book they took along, and you know, as a book it is quite heavy and big. But to them it was their bible, literally a book of instruction. I suggested they might get an e-reader, which weren't yet popular at the time, and get the book as PDF. But at this time, there weren't ipads or iphones yet, simply some more expensive ereaders, just the first generation.
[FairfieldLife] Re: How does one decide if a person's testimony is valid?
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : Hi Edg, kudos to you for saying all this. And a real good and funny read. What you say resembles much of my thinking on this topic, so you save me the time to formulate it myself ;-) Thanks. Gets me in the feels. So according to some, we should not think? Or should not think about metaphysical abstract topics? Or not about topics, that are somehow removed from our direct experience? Unless they have a direct, provable (or possible) impact on our lives? And all really realized beings don't talk about metaphysical stuff, because it doesn't lead anywhere? I think thinking never stops. What, instead, seems to be reported is that any identification with anything stops -- after enlightenment. If I and a pal see two raindrops on a pane coursing downwards, and I take one and he takes the other -- we can be found cheering the drops racing competitively downwards -- one of us finally saying I won! This seems to be the core of the identification problem -- we're whores. Anything can symbolize me. My next thought, for instance. Yep, that's me right there -- that there thought passing though, and oh, here I come again in another fine manifestation. Like that -- reality is a tar baby. Can't even hit I'm a person once. So in this sense, all philosophy is mere neuron chatter -- not significantly different -- edification-wise -- than, say, reading any book. Don't even start trying to make it important or you'll just end up being A PERSON . . . .again. Me? I just want to roll in it all day long like a dog finding cat doo on the lawn. Did I get something wrong here, or is this thought-police? Don't get me wrong here: everybody is free, I think, to NOT get into this kind of stuff, or dismiss it for himself as unproductive or even counter-productive. But then everybody else is also free to engage into for whatever fun purposes they want to have. I guess it's just different for different kind of people. For me, abstract meta-physical thinking is just soemthing I like. I was interested in philosophy already when I was a boy, and before I entered the spiritual path. Not that I studied it, but I always had a soft spot for it. As a narcissist, I'm always inside thoughts -- hunkering downdwelling with iterative fears. Dealing with thoughts more than actions -- kinda philosophical, eh? From birth, been a loner. Any kind of thought, is simply an exploration to start with. And anyway, why are people here, discussing various spiritual topics, if they don't have an interest for it? Or is it just that one shouldn't go too far in it? I don't know. I wanted to be really good at yo-yo, hula hoop, ice skating, teaching a dog tricks, bowling, chess, billiards, piano, guitar, singing, Latin, science, and on and on -- each pursuit ending or rounding off well before I arrived at any status of note. Though I could brag -- as anyone can -- world class has always eluded me. Gotta surrender to this about each of us. We all sorta just mess around with stuff and wait for the dharma parts to cling to us. Always knew I was a writer, so I'm sorta happy with discovering my dharma being that -- not sure of course. But look at all my other attempts to find a stable place for personification. Been a thousand other things besides writer. When I see Nabby and his circles or Turq with his ex-pat stuff or Curtis with his coffee can string plunker or me with a keyboard, all I'm seeing is how a nervous system gloms onto a life. It seems so claustrophobic - so limited -- so tiny. Sit in an airport and watch the folks drift by -- each one almost screaming what's what about them by face, posture, vibe. How can anyone get upset by anyone else when it's so obvious no one chooses the contents of their minds? We just do our shit, get upset anyway, and die. For me it's like exploring my environment. I want to walk left, and I want to go for a walk around the house, and possibly into the city (or the forest), and I don't like anyone to stand at any place, and tell me, that it's not useful to go there, and there is nothing there to see anyway, and even more, this road goes to a place that doesn't even exist. It makes me want to go there even more, and I will think, go f**ck yourself, to that guy. Ditto. But then, there may be comes a time, you just tire off, and you got enough, and you can't keep walking through the whole town forever, and you just go back, or settle wherever you are. But then you have seen everything, you have seen some of the landscape, and you have internalized it, or you have tried every thought, and you have seen which implications it may have, and if it's just a mental training, and you can see, if it could touch on something, that is actually more, than your mere experience. Not sure about your seen everything or tried every thought, but yeah, I get it. We tire.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: How does one decide if a person's testimony is valid?
Duveyoung, I was replying to this and Yahoo managed to not save most of my draft, so I am having to reconstruct about 2/3 of what I had already written in response, and I had a business trip this afternoon, so my memory is no longer fresh, so if you expect a reply from me, you will have to wait a bit more, a few days I think. A devil's advocate is always the best adversary, unless of course we are on the same side there. From: Duveyoung no_re...@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Friday, December 19, 2014 1:30 AM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: How does one decide if a person's testimony is valid? Anartaxius -- gunna devil-advocate on yer buns. Gunna be snarky N the worm turns funzies. Just to see what I can getcha to pony up about why your authority in these matters, well, matters. You speak as I do when I'm really doing my mad-poet high-stepping -- dead certain of everything -- only I do it with a jester-wearing-a-hat costume, and you come across as professorial with a jaunty mortar board hat. Well, listen to my screeching from the back of the room below, and let's us just see what can be seen. Please take my attack, yes, attack, in the spirit of those English Parliament debates where the other party yells in the most raucous, rude, and in your face manner...only this time I'll feign some low-life kinda-Bronx accent.with an imagined voicing not unlike a delivery by Groot. (But, actually I'm still angry at Curtis for ripping me apart like this a few weeks ago...I'm just his fanboy trying to impress him...hee hee.} ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, anartaxius@... wrote : Yes, no longer mutually exclusive. I think it is basically a teaching technique. I think. I think. Hm. Either way, if you're using the word I or think then, we're talking about processes of a human nervous system, and that seems, dang it, ever so iffy -- maybe even, error prone, maybe even bullshit. Please clear this up for us. The rest of your statement kinda depends on it. An I seems to have the power to think -- I'm chewing on this, but it's flavor is kinda like gum from under a seat. As Nisargadatta said, it forces a person to look within if all they know is thinking and doing. The 'within' really is not a separate place in the universe, You know it's a not separate place how? Because I amuse you? WaitI mean: Because YOU'RE a Nisargadatta devotee of many decades or what? Can ya scurry up a quote for us. I ask, cuz you used the word said. Which I take meant wrote via translator/transcriber of pristine merit not I heard him in his original language and I know that language perfectly or I have studied at his feet. See the problem here with this kind of use of words by you? it is made to seem that way at first to break the habit of looking without. Nisargadatta told you this? Again I ask, cuz, man, authority is dripping off of this statement, and it's a statement that is shockingly different from anything specific that Nisargadatta SEEMS to have said in the books that I have read. Hm. I think we have a case of you interpreting and me interpreting, and now I gotta ask ya why you come across as it's so obvious about this thing. I'm not a smart person, but I try harder. Let us all know just what you're saying here. Are you enlightened or what? If you're hinting at it like this, I've got a basket of rotten veggies back here, ya know? But then at some point you have to connect the inner and outer viewpoint that has been constructed and consciously take down the mental and experiential barrier that seems to exist between inner and outer. And everyone understands exactly what your words mean because . . . ? Cuz, hey, I don't know JACK SHIT about this connecting skill you're suggesting is to be humanly used. God might be able to do that, but . . . So? What exactly happens? Does the ego get the two databases together and say, Now all you fuckers inside the skull gotta understand the outsiders are the same as you here insiders, so leave off with that outer guys are other guys shit, and you outer guys with all your snooty but we're physical shit gotta stuff that crappola and see that you are merely reflections of the inners. Is it something like that? Does the ego just up and finally take the reins of the whole spectrum of experiencing and TAKE CHARGE? Where's is the volition you seem to believe can be COMMANDEERED to do this kinda micro-neuron-level restructuring? I gotta know, cuz that's some crazy shit -- and I'm interested. It is curious that even after decades of meditation, some people SOME people, eh? Meaning my decades of inquiry were for naught? I got low esteem here, so naturally everything's my fault, so with a knee jerk like that, I gotta push back and be brave enough to challenge you. I think you're saying your KEN, your wisdom is deeper, more clear, more
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: How does one decide if a person's testimony is valid?
From: anartax...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Yes, no longer mutually exclusive. I think it is basically a teaching technique. Thanks for finally putting it so succinctly. Pondering such things as the supposed difference between awareness and consciousness is BY DEFINITION something that can only be performed by someone in the state of ignorance. My position is that pondering it would be OK if the pondering led to a lack of ignorance. I honestly do not believe that to be the case. I feel that instead pondering such things *perpetuates* and *strengthens* the ignorance. As Nisargadatta said, it forces a person to look within if all they know is thinking and doing. The 'within' really is not a separate place in the universe, it is made to seem that way at first to break the habit of looking without. But then at some point you have to connect the inner and outer viewpoint that has been constructed and consciously take down the mental and experiential barrier that seems to exist between inner and outer. It is curious that even after decades of meditation, some people do not seem to move beyond this. I think that is caused by a lack of scepticism, and an inability to trust one's own sense direction. Supposedly TM is to create field independence and self sufficiency, but these qualities do not seem to appear in a lot of people. I think the belief system in the TMO is a major factor, it says these things will happen, but it does not pointedly make it a conscious issue of what sort of attitude the mind must have for it to be nurtured, since that attitude means questioning the very foundation of the system of belief. If one takes the meaning of the words belief and knowledge seriously, if there is such a thing as knowledge, then belief will have to fall by the wayside at some point and be replaced by something more direct and substantial. As many people have experienced, the entire path of spiritual growth is based on concepts that have no real practical significance or meaning once they have achieved their purpose; they are tools, like a multi-stage rocket booster, which once they have done the required job, are jettisoned. Someone who wants to teach this sort of thing might have to revisit such tools, or make up new ones, because if such a one just sits there and says 'everything is one' or 'you are that' or some such, it is not going to be very effective. The enlightenment success rate seems really poor, you cannot show it to someone. It is really the realisation you made a mistake and now you have realised what it was, but it did not change anything to fix it. A difficult selling point. Like selling the next year's new model car, when it looks exactly like the previous year. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, noozguru@... wrote : Problem is for some people awarenessand consciousness are no longer mutually exclusive. That they areseems to be splitting hairs. Like Krishnamurti I just don't careabout these issues anymore. And furthermore I am bewildered thatpeople who have been practicing meditation for decades have notachieved enlightenment or moksha yet. Maybe there is somethingto the idea of an old soul? On 12/17/2014 11:33 AM, anartaxius@... [FairfieldLife]wrote: I wasevaluating these statements a few months ago. All I cansay is I seem to get them in terms of my own experience,but that does not help anyone else. Basically justmeditating for half a century seems to be the trick. Alsocertain specific experiences that have occurred alsohelped illuminate them for me. Specifically thetransition from waking to deep anaesthesia to waking,which is about as close to death one can get as far asshutdown of the brain was one factor for me. Also thetransition from TC to waking although that is moreerratic, and it does not happen any more for me. Anotherexperience is the realisation that what one thinks isnot true except in a very limited and restricted sense. Inother words, feeling comfortable with these statementsas having an experiential significance can only comewithin one's experience, not in the telling of thatexperience. You cannot prove a thing. As alsopointed out by others, translation is a factor, butbasically it is the same old thing, whatever you call'absolute' and 'relative' specifies a difference inexperience and the mind has to recognise thatdifference, the relationship of the words bring tolight. It can be as simple as life and death. Awarenessis what you have in death, but the awareness, i.e.,being, does not do anything or is conscious of anything.Consciousness and awareness is what you have in life.Parsing the difference goes on in the mind until you nolonger really think of them as essentially different. Itis just an exercise in mental clarity rather than anexercise of truth. Truthis really local. It is the relationship between astatement and a situation. I have a MAD magazine in myright hand is a
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: How does one decide if a person's testimony is valid?
Anartaxius -- gunna devil-advocate on yer buns. Gunna be snarky N the worm turns funzies. Just to see what I can getcha to pony up about why your authority in these matters, well, matters. You speak as I do when I'm really doing my mad-poet high-stepping -- dead certain of everything -- only I do it with a jester-wearing-a-hat costume, and you come across as professorial with a jaunty mortar board hat. Well, listen to my screeching from the back of the room below, and let's us just see what can be seen. Please take my attack, yes, attack, in the spirit of those English Parliament debates where the other party yells in the most raucous, rude, and in your face manner...only this time I'll feign some low-life kinda-Bronx accent.with an imagined voicing not unlike a delivery by Groot. (But, actually I'm still angry at Curtis for ripping me apart like this a few weeks ago...I'm just his fanboy trying to impress him...hee hee.} ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, anartaxius@... wrote : Yes, no longer mutually exclusive. I think it is basically a teaching technique. I think. I think. Hm. Either way, if you're using the word I or think then, we're talking about processes of a human nervous system, and that seems, dang it, ever so iffy -- maybe even, error prone, maybe even bullshit. Please clear this up for us. The rest of your statement kinda depends on it. An I seems to have the power to think -- I'm chewing on this, but it's flavor is kinda like gum from under a seat. As Nisargadatta said, it forces a person to look within if all they know is thinking and doing. The 'within' really is not a separate place in the universe, You know it's a not separate place how? Because I amuse you? WaitI mean: Because YOU'RE a Nisargadatta devotee of many decades or what? Can ya scurry up a quote for us. I ask, cuz you used the word said. Which I take meant wrote via translator/transcriber of pristine merit not I heard him in his original language and I know that language perfectly or I have studied at his feet. See the problem here with this kind of use of words by you? it is made to seem that way at first to break the habit of looking without. Nisargadatta told you this? Again I ask, cuz, man, authority is dripping off of this statement, and it's a statement that is shockingly different from anything specific that Nisargadatta SEEMS to have said in the books that I have read. Hm. I think we have a case of you interpreting and me interpreting, and now I gotta ask ya why you come across as it's so obvious about this thing. I'm not a smart person, but I try harder. Let us all know just what you're saying here. Are you enlightened or what? If you're hinting at it like this, I've got a basket of rotten veggies back here, ya know? But then at some point you have to connect the inner and outer viewpoint that has been constructed and consciously take down the mental and experiential barrier that seems to exist between inner and outer. And everyone understands exactly what your words mean because . . . ? Cuz, hey, I don't know JACK SHIT about this connecting skill you're suggesting is to be humanly used. God might be able to do that, but . . . So? What exactly happens? Does the ego get the two databases together and say, Now all you fuckers inside the skull gotta understand the outsiders are the same as you here insiders, so leave off with that outer guys are other guys shit, and you outer guys with all your snooty but we're physical shit gotta stuff that crappola and see that you are merely reflections of the inners. Is it something like that? Does the ego just up and finally take the reins of the whole spectrum of experiencing and TAKE CHARGE? Where's is the volition you seem to believe can be COMMANDEERED to do this kinda micro-neuron-level restructuring? I gotta know, cuz that's some crazy shit -- and I'm interested. It is curious that even after decades of meditation, some people SOME people, eh? Meaning my decades of inquiry were for naught? I got low esteem here, so naturally everything's my fault, so with a knee jerk like that, I gotta push back and be brave enough to challenge you. I think you're saying your KEN, your wisdom is deeper, more clear, more substantially integral, whatever, so I gotta hit ya about this kind of snooty shit. do not seem to move beyond this. seem -- I think you meant to type definitely are such turds they'll never make it, right? I ask, cuz, I know I didn't make it, and so I'm wondering if it's just me or EVERYONE ELSE at FFL that you're hinting about. You could be more specific here. I think that is caused by a lack of scepticism, and an inability to trust one's own sense direction. Aand, your sense was what adjective again? Trustworthy? But I was supposed to know that MY sense was inferior? Do I have this
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: How does one decide if a person's testimony is valid?
Try to get to this tomorrow or the next day. My bedtime. I also require a certain amount of time during the day to work, and most importantly, to goof off and play. What appears certain to me is not necessarily certain to others, and what is certain to me is not necessarily true either. The most certain aspect of my life is there is experience. Beyond that, what can one say? A lot apparently, but is there any significance in that? A hint however: the words 'I think' = opinion = I do not really know. If there is something to the enlightenment tale, the only authority that can tell you if it is real, is you, and that will work out only if you pursue it to the point where you have zero options left, and you are comfortable living freedom in a cage of unbreakable bars, where you have no say in what comes next. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : Anartaxius -- gunna devil-advocate on yer buns. Gunna be snarky N the worm turns funzies. Just to see what I can getcha to pony up about why your authority in these matters, well, matters
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: How does one decide if a person's testimony is valid?
I don't think Anartax wears a mortar board hat - I think he might be sporting a pork pie hat instead. From: Duveyoung no_re...@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2014 8:30 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: How does one decide if a person's testimony is valid? Anartaxius -- gunna devil-advocate on yer buns. Gunna be snarky N the worm turns funzies. Just to see what I can getcha to pony up about why your authority in these matters, well, matters. You speak as I do when I'm really doing my mad-poet high-stepping -- dead certain of everything -- only I do it with a jester-wearing-a-hat costume, and you come across as professorial with a jaunty mortar board hat. Well, listen to my screeching from the back of the room below, and let's us just see what can be seen. Please take my attack, yes, attack, in the spirit of those English Parliament debates where the other party yells in the most raucous, rude, and in your face manner...only this time I'll feign some low-life kinda-Bronx accent.with an imagined voicing not unlike a delivery by Groot. (But, actually I'm still angry at Curtis for ripping me apart like this a few weeks ago...I'm just his fanboy trying to impress him...hee hee.} ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, anartaxius@... wrote : Yes, no longer mutually exclusive. I think it is basically a teaching technique. I think. I think. Hm. Either way, if you're using the word I or think then, we're talking about processes of a human nervous system, and that seems, dang it, ever so iffy -- maybe even, error prone, maybe even bullshit. Please clear this up for us. The rest of your statement kinda depends on it. An I seems to have the power to think -- I'm chewing on this, but it's flavor is kinda like gum from under a seat. As Nisargadatta said, it forces a person to look within if all they know is thinking and doing. The 'within' really is not a separate place in the universe, You know it's a not separate place how? Because I amuse you? WaitI mean: Because YOU'RE a Nisargadatta devotee of many decades or what? Can ya scurry up a quote for us. I ask, cuz you used the word said. Which I take meant wrote via translator/transcriber of pristine merit not I heard him in his original language and I know that language perfectly or I have studied at his feet. See the problem here with this kind of use of words by you? it is made to seem that way at first to break the habit of looking without. Nisargadatta told you this? Again I ask, cuz, man, authority is dripping off of this statement, and it's a statement that is shockingly different from anything specific that Nisargadatta SEEMS to have said in the books that I have read. Hm. I think we have a case of you interpreting and me interpreting, and now I gotta ask ya why you come across as it's so obvious about this thing. I'm not a smart person, but I try harder. Let us all know just what you're saying here. Are you enlightened or what? If you're hinting at it like this, I've got a basket of rotten veggies back here, ya know? But then at some point you have to connect the inner and outer viewpoint that has been constructed and consciously take down the mental and experiential barrier that seems to exist between inner and outer. And everyone understands exactly what your words mean because . . . ? Cuz, hey, I don't know JACK SHIT about this connecting skill you're suggesting is to be humanly used. God might be able to do that, but . . . So? What exactly happens? Does the ego get the two databases together and say, Now all you fuckers inside the skull gotta understand the outsiders are the same as you here insiders, so leave off with that outer guys are other guys shit, and you outer guys with all your snooty but we're physical shit gotta stuff that crappola and see that you are merely reflections of the inners. Is it something like that? Does the ego just up and finally take the reins of the whole spectrum of experiencing and TAKE CHARGE? Where's is the volition you seem to believe can be COMMANDEERED to do this kinda micro-neuron-level restructuring? I gotta know, cuz that's some crazy shit -- and I'm interested. It is curious that even after decades of meditation, some people SOME people, eh? Meaning my decades of inquiry were for naught? I got low esteem here, so naturally everything's my fault, so with a knee jerk like that, I gotta push back and be brave enough to challenge you. I think you're saying your KEN, your wisdom is deeper, more clear, more substantially integral, whatever, so I gotta hit ya about this kind of snooty shit. do not seem to move beyond this. seem -- I think you meant to type definitely are such turds they'll never make it, right? I ask, cuz, I know I didn't make it, and so I'm wondering if it's just me or EVERYONE ELSE at FFL that you're hinting
[FairfieldLife] Re: How does one decide if a person's testimony is valid?
I was evaluating these statements a few months ago. All I can say is I seem to get them in terms of my own experience, but that does not help anyone else. Basically just meditating for half a century seems to be the trick. Also certain specific experiences that have occurred also helped illuminate them for me. Specifically the transition from waking to deep anaesthesia to waking, which is about as close to death one can get as far as shutdown of the brain was one factor for me. Also the transition from TC to waking although that is more erratic, and it does not happen any more for me. Another experience is the realisation that what one thinks is not true except in a very limited and restricted sense. In other words, feeling comfortable with these statements as having an experiential significance can only come within one's experience, not in the telling of that experience. You cannot prove a thing. As also pointed out by others, translation is a factor, but basically it is the same old thing, whatever you call 'absolute' and 'relative' specifies a difference in experience and the mind has to recognise that difference, the relationship of the words bring to light. It can be as simple as life and death. Awareness is what you have in death, but the awareness, i.e., being, does not do anything or is conscious of anything. Consciousness and awareness is what you have in life. Parsing the difference goes on in the mind until you no longer really think of them as essentially different. It is just an exercise in mental clarity rather than an exercise of truth. Truth is really local. It is the relationship between a statement and a situation. I have a MAD magazine in my right hand is a true statement if you have a copy of a MAD magazine in your right hand. But such a statement really does not say much about the character of the items mentioned. It is a very coarse approximation of a unique situation. For example, it did not contain information about the pigeon crapping on my head while I was holding the magazine. Trying to apply a statement to the entire universe as a whole simply contains no useful content. The most generalised 'true' statements are probably general relativity and the standard model of quantum mechanics, and they are not entirely general about all the universe is, they still have local value. No one has figured out how to combine them into a more general statement, and we also do not know if there is some unknown they cannot account for. When a person says they grasp what Nisargadatta said, what they are really saying is they are experiencing a certain way, and that way for them is what they would call 'truth', but it is not an expressible truth, a provable truth, like holding a magazine in hand, it just means that whatever is being experienced can be no other way at that moment, and that the mind is settled in the knowledge that it cannot be any other way. Every moment is absolute. Statements like 'awareness is not the same as consciousness' make the mind work, and it is an exercise in mental flexibility to find experiences that correspond to these terms, assuming such experiences are possible. Eventually, like practising a musical instrument, like fingers, or breath, or embouchure for a musician, the mind gets a bit more flexible and responsive if you work it a certain way for a while. Once that work is done, it can relax because what was previously work now can happen automatically. Basically it breaks down previous conditioning by replacing it with another sort of conditioning which is presumably less restrictive in function. Jiddu Krishnamurti said it a different way. He said 'My secret is I do not mind what is happening'. That just means from his perspective there is experience, and that is all there is, nothing else is happening. For myself, I find the world of metaphysics simply vanished as experience clarified. It was a reality created entirely by the relationship of words to one another, but there were no magazines to hold, it was imaginary, that mental world of things supposedly 'beyond'. Awakening shows the mind there is nothing beyond what one experiences. The universe becomes immanent and lean and mean, because a ton of useless mental garbage is taken down. You can still make up stuff if you want, you just do not have to; it is no longer necessary to rely on a mental world of concepts to enjoy life. You do not have to parse experience to enjoy, you just have it. But you can parse it if you want. And to do stuff you do have to parse the world conceptually. I have not had much time lately to post, I have been working on an electronic form of a publication, which means working with Extensible Markup Language, and attempting to remember and relearn stuff I have not done for several years, and it gets harder every year as the brain ages, so this has turned out to be an exercise in
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: How does one decide if a person's testimony is valid?
Problem is for some people awareness and consciousness are no longer mutually exclusive. That they are seems to be splitting hairs. Like Krishnamurti I just don't care about these issues anymore. And furthermore I am bewildered that people who have been practicing meditation for decades have not achieved enlightenment or moksha yet. Maybe there is something to the idea of an old soul? On 12/17/2014 11:33 AM, anartax...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] wrote: I was evaluating these statements a few months ago. All I can say is I seem to get them in terms of my own experience, but that does not help anyone else. Basically just meditating for half a century seems to be the trick. Also certain specific experiences that have occurred also helped illuminate them for me. Specifically the transition from waking to deep anaesthesia to waking, which is about as close to death one can get as far as shutdown of the brain was one factor for me. Also the transition from TC to waking although that is more erratic, and it does not happen any more for me. Another experience is the realisation that what one thinks is not true except in a very limited and restricted sense. In other words, feeling comfortable with these statements as having an experiential significance can only come within one's experience, not in the telling of that experience. You cannot prove a thing. As also pointed out by others, translation is a factor, but basically it is the same old thing, whatever you call 'absolute' and 'relative' specifies a difference in experience and the mind has to recognise that difference, the relationship of the words bring to light. It can be as simple as life and death. Awareness is what you have in death, but the awareness, i.e., being, does not do anything or is conscious of anything. Consciousness and awareness is what you have in life. Parsing the difference goes on in the mind until you no longer really think of them as essentially different. It is just an exercise in mental clarity rather than an exercise of truth. Truth is really local. It is the relationship between a statement and a situation. I have a MAD magazine in my right hand is a true statement if you have a copy of a MAD magazine in your right hand. But such a statement really does not say much about the character of the items mentioned. It is a very coarse approximation of a unique situation. For example, it did not contain information about the pigeon crapping on my head while I was holding the magazine. Trying to apply a statement to the entire universe as a whole simply contains no useful content. The most generalised 'true' statements are probably general relativity and the standard model of quantum mechanics, and they are not entirely general about all the universe is, they still have local value. No one has figured out how to combine them into a more general statement, and we also do not know if there is some unknown they cannot account for. When a person says they grasp what Nisargadatta said, what they are really saying is they are experiencing a certain way, and that way for them is what they would call 'truth', but it is not an expressible truth, a provable truth, like holding a magazine in hand, it just means that whatever is being experienced can be no other way at that moment, and that the mind is settled in the knowledge that it cannot be any other way. Every moment is absolute. Statements like 'awareness is not the same as consciousness' make the mind work, and it is an exercise in mental flexibility to find experiences that correspond to these terms, assuming such experiences are possible. Eventually, like practising a musical instrument, like fingers, or breath, or embouchure for a musician, the mind gets a bit more flexible and responsive if you work it a certain way for a while. Once that work is done, it can relax because what was previously work now can happen automatically. Basically it breaks down previous conditioning by replacing it with another sort of conditioning which is presumably less restrictive in function. Jiddu Krishnamurti said it a different way. He said 'My secret is I do not mind what is happening'. That just means from his perspective there is experience, and that is all there is, nothing else is happening. For myself, I find the world of metaphysics simply vanished as experience clarified. It was a reality created entirely by the relationship of words to one another, but there were no magazines to hold, it was imaginary, that mental world of things supposedly 'beyond'. Awakening shows the mind there is nothing beyond what one experiences. The universe becomes immanent and lean and mean, because a ton of useless mental garbage is taken down. You can still make up stuff if you want, you just do not have to; it is no longer necessary to rely on a mental world of concepts to enjoy life. You do not have to parse experience to enjoy, you
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: How does one decide if a person's testimony is valid?
Yes, no longer mutually exclusive. I think it is basically a teaching technique. As Nisargadatta said, it forces a person to look within if all they know is thinking and doing. The 'within' really is not a separate place in the universe, it is made to seem that way at first to break the habit of looking without. But then at some point you have to connect the inner and outer viewpoint that has been constructed and consciously take down the mental and experiential barrier that seems to exist between inner and outer. It is curious that even after decades of meditation, some people do not seem to move beyond this. I think that is caused by a lack of scepticism, and an inability to trust one's own sense direction. Supposedly TM is to create field independence and self sufficiency, but these qualities do not seem to appear in a lot of people. I think the belief system in the TMO is a major factor, it says these things will happen, but it does not pointedly make it a conscious issue of what sort of attitude the mind must have for it to be nurtured, since that attitude means questioning the very foundation of the system of belief. If one takes the meaning of the words belief and knowledge seriously, if there is such a thing as knowledge, then belief will have to fall by the wayside at some point and be replaced by something more direct and substantial. As many people have experienced, the entire path of spiritual growth is based on concepts that have no real practical significance or meaning once they have achieved their purpose; they are tools, like a multi-stage rocket booster, which once they have done the required job, are jettisoned. Someone who wants to teach this sort of thing might have to revisit such tools, or make up new ones, because if such a one just sits there and says 'everything is one' or 'you are that' or some such, it is not going to be very effective. The enlightenment success rate seems really poor, you cannot show it to someone. It is really the realisation you made a mistake and now you have realised what it was, but it did not change anything to fix it. A difficult selling point. Like selling the next year's new model car, when it looks exactly like the previous year. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, noozguru@... wrote : Problem is for some people awareness and consciousness are no longer mutually exclusive. That they are seems to be splitting hairs. Like Krishnamurti I just don't care about these issues anymore. And furthermore I am bewildered that people who have been practicing meditation for decades have not achieved enlightenment or moksha yet. Maybe there is something to the idea of an old soul? On 12/17/2014 11:33 AM, anartaxius@... mailto:anartaxius@... [FairfieldLife] wrote: I was evaluating these statements a few months ago. All I can say is I seem to get them in terms of my own experience, but that does not help anyone else. Basically just meditating for half a century seems to be the trick. Also certain specific experiences that have occurred also helped illuminate them for me. Specifically the transition from waking to deep anaesthesia to waking, which is about as close to death one can get as far as shutdown of the brain was one factor for me. Also the transition from TC to waking although that is more erratic, and it does not happen any more for me. Another experience is the realisation that what one thinks is not true except in a very limited and restricted sense. In other words, feeling comfortable with these statements as having an experiential significance can only come within one's experience, not in the telling of that experience. You cannot prove a thing. As also pointed out by others, translation is a factor, but basically it is the same old thing, whatever you call 'absolute' and 'relative' specifies a difference in experience and the mind has to recognise that difference, the relationship of the words bring to light. It can be as simple as life and death. Awareness is what you have in death, but the awareness, i.e., being, does not do anything or is conscious of anything. Consciousness and awareness is what you have in life. Parsing the difference goes on in the mind until you no longer really think of them as essentially different. It is just an exercise in mental clarity rather than an exercise of truth. Truth is really local. It is the relationship between a statement and a situation. I have a MAD magazine in my right hand is a true statement if you have a copy of a MAD magazine in your right hand. But such a statement really does not say much about the character of the items mentioned. It is a very coarse approximation of a unique situation. For example, it did not contain information about the pigeon crapping on my head while I was holding the magazine. Trying to apply a statement to the entire universe as a whole simply contains no
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: How does one decide if a person's testimony is valid?
On 12/17/2014 01:04 PM, anartax...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] wrote: Yes, no longer mutually exclusive. I think it is basically a teaching technique. As Nisargadatta said, it forces a person to look within if all they know is thinking and doing. The 'within' really is not a separate place in the universe, it is made to seem that way at first to break the habit of looking without. But then at some point you have to connect the inner and outer viewpoint that has been constructed and consciously take down the mental and experiential barrier that seems to exist between inner and outer. It is curious that even after decades of meditation, some people do not seem to move beyond this. I think that is caused by a lack of scepticism, and an inability to trust one's own sense direction. Supposedly TM is to create field independence and self sufficiency, but these qualities do not seem to appear in a lot of people. I think the belief system in the TMO is a major factor, it says these things will happen, but it does not pointedly make it a conscious issue of what sort of attitude the mind must have for it to be nurtured, since that attitude means questioning the very foundation of the system of belief. If one takes the meaning of the words belief and knowledge seriously, if there is such a thing as knowledge, then belief will have to fall by the wayside at some point and be replaced by something more direct and substantial. As many people have experienced, the entire path of spiritual growth is based on concepts that have no real practical significance or meaning once they have achieved their purpose; they are tools, like a multi-stage rocket booster, which once they have done the required job, are jettisoned. Someone who wants to teach this sort of thing might have to revisit such tools, or make up new ones, because if such a one just sits there and says 'everything is one' or 'you are that' or some such, it is not going to be very effective. The enlightenment success rate seems really poor, you cannot show it to someone. It is really the realisation you made a mistake and now you have realised what it was, but it did not change anything to fix it. A difficult selling point. Like selling the next year's new model car, when it looks exactly like the previous year. Depends on what you are teaching. I learned to teach meditation using shaktipat. It jumpstarts the student though I did know one person who got shaktipat from one of Muktananda's teachers and felt nothing. He was even a very spiritual guy (raised in a Rosicrucian family). Buck complained a while back about people falling asleep at the dome. I asked how he could tell the difference between sleeping and them being in delta state. For a few years when I meditate I find I will go quickly from alpha to theta then a little while later into delta. The latter being just like deep sleep has no thought yet unlike sleep you don't lose consciousness. It wouldn't surprise me at all if some folks at the dome are experiencing same. Unlike sleep you realize you just experienced something very deep. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, noozguru@... wrote : Problem is for some people awareness and consciousness are no longer mutually exclusive. That they are seems to be splitting hairs. Like Krishnamurti I just don't care about these issues anymore. And furthermore I am bewildered that people who have been practicing meditation for decades have not achieved enlightenment or moksha yet. Maybe there is something to the idea of an old soul? On 12/17/2014 11:33 AM, anartaxius@... mailto:anartaxius@... [FairfieldLife] wrote: I was evaluating these statements a few months ago. All I can say is I seem to get them in terms of my own experience, but that does not help anyone else. Basically just meditating for half a century seems to be the trick. Also certain specific experiences that have occurred also helped illuminate them for me. Specifically the transition from waking to deep anaesthesia to waking, which is about as close to death one can get as far as shutdown of the brain was one factor for me. Also the transition from TC to waking although that is more erratic, and it does not happen any more for me. Another experience is the realisation that what one thinks is not true except in a very limited and restricted sense. In other words, feeling comfortable with these statements as having an experiential significance can only come within one's experience, not in the telling of that experience. You cannot prove a thing. As also pointed out by others, translation is a factor, but basically it is the same old thing, whatever you call 'absolute' and 'relative' specifies a difference in experience and the mind has to recognise that difference, the relationship of the words bring to light. It can be as simple as life
