[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
Thanks for your scientifically verified exposition. Now, where's your research on the angels that dance on the head of a pin? Be specific. I wan't to know numbers down to the last digit, thanks. L --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradhatu@... wrote: On Jul 27, 2012, at 7:42 AM, iranitea no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@ wrote: Determining whether or not the mantra is subtle isn't part of TM practice. Lawson, you were making the point, that just thinking OF the mantra, would be a subtle form of the mantra. And, since it is your main point here, to immediately return to the mantra, if you notice it isn't there, as you make this point again below, that it is imperial to follow the TM instruction, you constantly contradict yourself. If the mantra can be so vague, that you don't know anymore if you are thinking it or not, how could you then follow the instruction? You should at least know if you are thinking the mantra, in order to be able to determine if you should go back to it, when you are not. Now you say it doesn't matter if it is subtle or not, then you claim, thinking about the mantra is a subtle form thereof. It is all self contradictory. You and Judy have been making this point for ages, that the mantra could be so subtle, that you don't know if it's there. That's all BS, if you don't know if it's there, you can't go back to it. So much for your 'I just follow instructions' The primary indicator of reaching the end of mantra (the nÄdÄnta) is photism, as the mantraâs sound energy becomes light energy. An experienced mantra-yogi progresses through sixteen sequentially advanced stages in the refinement of the mantra. Someone practicing at the finest levels will be able to experience around 512 thought-recitations of mantra to the average beginners 1 vibration. Beginners mantra meditation methods come nowhere near this level of subtlety, so I wouldnât expect Lawson to be really aware of this, although itâs not unusual for TMers to make really exaggerated claims about what they âthinkâ they can do. ;-)
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradhatu@... wrote: On Jul 27, 2012, at 7:42 AM, iranitea no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@ wrote: Determining whether or not the mantra is subtle isn't part of TM practice. Lawson, you were making the point, that just thinking OF the mantra, would be a subtle form of the mantra. And, since it is your main point here, to immediately return to the mantra, if you notice it isn't there, as you make this point again below, that it is imperial to follow the TM instruction, you constantly contradict yourself. If the mantra can be so vague, that you don't know anymore if you are thinking it or not, how could you then follow the instruction? You should at least know if you are thinking the mantra, in order to be able to determine if you should go back to it, when you are not. Now you say it doesn't matter if it is subtle or not, then you claim, thinking about the mantra is a subtle form thereof. It is all self contradictory. You and Judy have been making this point for ages, that the mantra could be so subtle, that you don't know if it's there. That's all BS, if you don't know if it's there, you can't go back to it. So much for your 'I just follow instructions' The primary indicator of reaching the end of mantra (the nÄdÄnta) is photism, as the mantraâs sound energy becomes light energy. An experienced mantra-yogi progresses through sixteen sequentially advanced stages in the refinement of the mantra. Someone practicing at the finest levels will be able to experience around 512 thought-recitations of mantra to the average beginners 1 vibration. Beginners mantra meditation methods come nowhere near this level of subtlety, so I wouldnât expect Lawson to be really aware of this, although itâs not unusual for TMers to make really exaggerated claims about what they âthinkâ they can do. ;-) Welcome back, Vaj! Interesting thoughts. One thing that is also a misunderstanding of the terms subtle and vague. The instruction in TM is always to pick up the mantra on the level of thought, where one just is at the moment, and then think it like any other thought, it would automatically correspond in subtlety with ones level of awareness. The impression of the mantra being vague or distant, comes from the fact that the mind is unacquainted with these subtle states, therefore it cannot perceive them properly. This would be a sign for the beginner, that the mantra has become more refined. In a certain way, the vagueness of the mantra is signified between the distance of the thinking mind in meditation, to the obviously more subtle perception of the mantra. Imagine you stand near the highway, while cars are rushing with 90 mph, it will be hard for you to notice details on the car while they are rushing by. But if you are going with a similar speed, (if you are not driving yourself) you can look at the car and see many details. The problem comes as it is habitual for many TMers to have thoughts and mantra going parallel. Then this impression comes that Lawson says that the mind stuff feels mantra-ish, or uses words like mantraness (To all TM newbies and lurkers here: These are NOT terms used by the TMO, or part of the TM instructions, they are inventions of Lawson). That is to say, that the mantra is going on in the background, most likely while other thought activity is going on in the foreground. The mantra is obviously not perceived as mantra anymore, it is just perceived that it is somehow there. A vagueness that is not directly perceived but by its effects, as, I guess Lawson had something in mind like a coloring of the mind. It's more like a neutrino or the Higgs particle, which cannot be detected directly anymore, but through its effects. But the mantra is not an end in itself, all these perceptions are just WITHIN the mind, it is just more of mind, and therefore quite useless. The instruction in the checking notes is, when one notices the mantra and strong thought activity, one should give slight preference to the mantra, while not pushing the thoughts away. To speak of the mantra as being there, while a person would not even notice it, as Judy has once in the past suggested to me, is simply an absurdity.
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
Vaj said: Someone practicing at the finest levels will be able to experience around 512 thought-recitations of mantra to the average beginners 1 vibration. If we would have just one person practicing like this in the domes, having 512 thought recitations, that's almost the amount of pundits they now gonna import. They could save some money and just import 44 pundits.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
On Jul 29, 2012, at 8:34 AM, iranitea no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote: Welcome back, Vaj! Interesting thoughts. One thing that is also a misunderstanding of the terms subtle and vague. The instruction in TM is always to pick up the mantra on the level of thought, where one just is at the moment, and then think it like any other thought, it would automatically correspond in subtlety with ones level of awareness. The impression of the mantra being vague or distant, comes from the fact that the mind is unacquainted with these subtle states, therefore it cannot perceive them properly. Unfortunately you’ll always have meditation students who over-parse or obsess on inconsequential details to the point of taking meditative instruction to heart, but totally missing the spirit of what one’s doing. When one is back in thoughts, one has failed to maintain the transcendent, and so one needs to non-judgmentally train oneself to re-acquire the object of meditation (in this case, the mental object which is the mantra). That’s all. It’s technical term is known as “repairing”. In general in meditative forms that favor mental quiesence it’s better to have balanced attention using the object of meditation and that includes balanced vivid perception, not fuzzy or foggy perception of the object of meditation. If the object becomes too vague, there’s always the danger that one will fall into the defects of meditation, in this case, laxity. This is probably why independent peer-reviewed research on TM which does not cultivate balanced attention show that the majority of practitioners and actually in descending sleep cycles (i.e. napping). This may also be why more and more Domers are incorporating Mindfulness into their TM practice (MTM). This is helping compensate for the over-institutionalisation of “effortlessness” in the TM Org and the loss of purity of the tradition. This would be a sign for the beginner, that the mantra has become more refined. In a certain way, the vagueness of the mantra is signified between the distance of the thinking mind in meditation, to the obviously more subtle perception of the mantra. Imagine you stand near the highway, while cars are rushing with 90 mph, it will be hard for you to notice details on the car while they are rushing by. But if you are going with a similar speed, (if you are not driving yourself) you can look at the car and see many details. The problem comes as it is habitual for many TMers to have thoughts and mantra going parallel. Then this impression comes that Lawson says that the mind stuff feels mantra-ish, or uses words like mantraness (To all TM newbies and lurkers here: These are NOT terms used by the TMO, or part of the TM instructions, they are inventions of Lawson). That is to say, that the mantra is going on in the background, most likely while other thought activity is going on in the foreground. The mantra is obviously not perceived as mantra anymore, it is just perceived that it is somehow there. A vagueness that is not directly perceived but by its effects, as, I guess Lawson had something in mind like a coloring of the mind. It's more like a neutrino or the Higgs particle, which cannot be detected directly anymore, but through its effects. It could also be that he was never instructed on the signs and significance of ajapa-japa: the continuation of mantra continuously beyond meditation sessions. But the mantra is not an end in itself, all these perceptions are just WITHIN the mind, it is just more of mind, and therefore quite useless. The instruction in the checking notes is, when one notices the mantra and strong thought activity, one should give slight preference to the mantra, while not pushing the thoughts away. To speak of the mantra as being there, while a person would not even notice it, as Judy has once in the past suggested to me, is simply an absurdity. Cultivating a fuzzy awareness is why we’ve come to call such practitioners dTMers, short for discursive TMers (not to be confused with demonic TMers ;-)).
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradhatu@... wrote: This may also be why more and more Domers are incorporating Mindfulness into their TM practice (MTM). This is helping compensate for the over-institutionalisation of effortlessness in the TM Org and the loss of purity of the tradition. Though I think Vaj is just picking stuff out of thin air as usual this could very well be a scenario in the future and a good reason to sell the Domes for 1 $ and move the rest of the operation to India.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
On Jul 29, 2012, at 9:01 AM, iranitea no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote: Vaj said: Someone practicing at the finest levels will be able to experience around 512 thought-recitations of mantra to the average beginners 1 vibration. If we would have just one person practicing like this in the domes, having 512 thought recitations, that's almost the amount of pundits they now gonna import. They could save some money and just import 44 pundits. Fortunately, there are groups that are helping sidhas train in bindu-bhedhana which previously would only have been practiced by close students of Swami Brahmananda Saraswati.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
On Jul 29, 2012, at 9:37 AM, nablusoss1008 no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradhatu@... wrote: This may also be why more and more Domers are incorporating Mindfulness into their TM practice (MTM). This is helping compensate for the over-institutionalisation of effortlessness in the TM Org and the loss of purity of the tradition. Though I think Vaj is just picking stuff out of thin air as usual this could very well be a scenario in the future and a good reason to sell the Domes for 1 $ and move the rest of the operation to India. Mindful TM, MTM, is currently practiced by numerous dome-going sidhas in Fairfield. I cannot say about other group practice centers. Hopefully this coherence will spread from FF to others TM Org pithas. Even the initials of the word are more balanced!
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
Vaj, do you realize that MTM also stand for Mary Tyler Moore and that this came out in the famous Merv Griffin Show with Maharishi and Clint and Mary? MTM was the name of her production company. She made a joke about Mary's TM. Maharishi playfully corrected her. More seriously, I still think that long term TMers spontaneously fall into mindfulness but it's called something else: yogah stah kuru karmani, established in Being perform action. And in this sense, every thinking is an action. OTOH maybe should read book on Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh. From: Vaj vajradh...@earthlink.net To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Sunday, July 29, 2012 8:42 AM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation On Jul 29, 2012, at 9:37 AM, nablusoss1008 no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradhatu@... wrote: This may also be why more and more Domers are incorporating Mindfulness into their TM practice (MTM). This is helping compensate for the over-institutionalisation of effortlessness in the TM Org and the loss of purity of the tradition. Though I think Vaj is just picking stuff out of thin air as usual this could very well be a scenario in the future and a good reason to sell the Domes for 1 $ and move the rest of the operation to India. Mindful TM, MTM, is currently practiced by numerous dome-going sidhas in Fairfield. I cannot say about other group practice centers. Hopefully this coherence will spread from FF to others TM Org pithas. Even the initials of the word are more balanced!
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradhatu@... wrote: no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote: MTM, is currently practiced Even the initials of the word are more balanced! You can say what you want about this Vaj fellow, but he does have humour !
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
On Jul 29, 2012, at 10:12 AM, Share Long sharelon...@yahoo.com wrote: Vaj, do you realize that MTM also stand for Mary Tyler Moore and that this came out in the famous Merv Griffin Show with Maharishi and Clint and Mary? MTM was the name of her production company. She made a joke about Mary's TM. Maharishi playfully corrected her. More seriously, I still think that long term TMers spontaneously fall into mindfulness but it's called something else: yogah stah kuru karmani, established in Being perform action. And in this sense, every thinking is an action. OTOH maybe should read book on Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh. For me, it’s all about balance. From my POV, what appears to happen in some meditation practitioners is that the object of meditation, the mantra in TM, becomes a non-ascertained object to an inattentive awareness. As awareness allegedly expands, moments of non-ascertaining awareness should decrease and inattentive awareness should be replaced with an over-arching awareness or presence. It’s the over-arching remembering that keeps a practice from falling into non-attentive states and it’s sequelae.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
Thanks. This is clear and very helpful. Just one question: it seems you are using awareness, presence and remembering interchangeably (see snip below). Am I understanding correctly? over-arching awareness or presence. It’s the over-arching remembering From: Vaj vajradh...@earthlink.net To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Sunday, July 29, 2012 9:43 AM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation On Jul 29, 2012, at 10:12 AM, Share Long sharelon...@yahoo.com wrote: Vaj, do you realize that MTM also stand for Mary Tyler Moore and that this came out in the famous Merv Griffin Show with Maharishi and Clint and Mary? MTM was the name of her production company. She made a joke about Mary's TM. Maharishi playfully corrected her. More seriously, I still think that long term TMers spontaneously fall into mindfulness but it's called something else: yogah stah kuru karmani, established in Being perform action. And in this sense, every thinking is an action. OTOH maybe should read book on Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh. For me, it’s all about balance. From my POV, what appears to happen in some meditation practitioners is that the object of meditation, the mantra in TM, becomes a non-ascertained object to an inattentive awareness. As awareness allegedly expands, moments of non-ascertaining awareness should decrease and inattentive awareness should be replaced with an over-arching awareness or presence. It’s the over-arching remembering that keeps a practice from falling into non-attentive states and it’s sequelae.
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, iranitea no_reply@... wrote: snip To speak of the mantra as being there, while a person would not even notice it, as Judy has once in the past suggested to me, is simply an absurdity. I don't believe I ever suggested such a thing. Could you quote the post, please? I think you may have misunderstood what I wrote (not for the first time, either).
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
Vag You should give up trying to convince TM practitioners by paraphrasing ol' Gelugpa Lati Rinpoche and Rama Linga Ding Dong. As usual, your Buddhist Gelugpa idiot-olgy betrays you as a doctrinare. Go back to Shambhala, Maine and smoke some more chara-s. Then praise Shiva. You'll feel like you are going higher and higher. You can then tell everyone all about the vastness of your view. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradhatu@... wrote: On Jul 29, 2012, at 10:59 AM, Share Long sharelong60@... wrote: Thanks. This is clear and very helpful. Just one question: it seems you are using awareness, presence and remembering interchangeably (see snip below). Am I understanding correctly? over-arching awareness or presence. It's the over-arching remembering In this model, awareness becomes sheer-awareness, which dissolves into nondual presence. All three are maintained and supported by an over-arching mindfulness. Combined with introspection we can thus develop a type of metacognition that can operate as a kind of quality control for quickly detecting laxity or mental over-excitation. In Buddhist tradition, a mind that can falls into laxity or over-excitation is considered dysfunctional. Heaven forbid we actually train our mindstream as dysfunctional because of institutionalized fear of balanced attention! ;-)
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@... wrote: But PC is not awareness OF awareness. PC is just awareness by Itself. BE-ing. L --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, salyavin808 fintlewoodlewix@ wrote: [...] None of this seems remotely right to me. This would mean PC is unconciousness not awareness of awareness itself which is rather nice and the sole (soul) reason I still do TM. Sure I get the back from somewhere awareness too and am happy if it contributes something nice but silent inner wakefulness and knowing about it seems like a better deal. L It is amazing to me that people who have been doing TM for decades still do not know what 'Being Is'... They still think that Being is located somewhere in the mantra...? They don't realize that the mantra is suppposed to settle the mind so that it realizes that Being is beyond the mind... They still think that Being is located somewhere in the body...? They don't seem to realize that what TM is supposed to reveal to them is the possiblity to transcend thought, using a mantra as a thought, and going beyond the mantra to experience 'Being'... They sometimes think that repeating the mantra over and over without ever letting go of the mantra, is somehow going to get them 'Enlightened'... Some people even think that they need to 'Levitate' in order to be 'Enlightened'... What they need to understand is that the 'Witness' is the whole key to enlightenment... As you become familiar with the 'Witness' you witness the mantra becoming finer and finer and then drop the mantra and just be with the 'Witness'... They won't allow themselves to experience the witness, because they think they need to keep on thinking, thinking, thinking the mantra in order to do the program as taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi... But, Maharishi himself said that enlightenment comes about by beginning to 'Identify with the Witnessing Awareness'... This is the source of 'Unbounded Awareness'...not in the mantra... The mantra itself is not 'Unbounded'... ONly the 'Witness' is unbounded... And when the witness is established completely, then one is 'Enlightened'... You witness the mantra refining refining... YOu witness the sutra refining, refining... Until all that is left is the witness'... Then nothing more need be done... The whole process is to establish the witnessor as the seer as the knower of all... The witnessing awareness itself is Atma which translates as 'Soul'.. Not the vacumn state and not some mathematically equation, but the Soul itself... Then the 'Soul' begins to experience from the level of itself... Self-Realization is 'Soul-Realization' according to Guru Dev... I don't know how this part of the teaching became so 'Over-Looked' by the TM true believers... Maybe they would rather stay on the path, then arrive at the goal..? Robert
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
What you say may be true, but I assert that no-one here is really at the level where that becomes an issue. Why would I assert this? Because anyone that subtle in their thinking would have much better things to do than argue with people on the internet. *I* even have better things to do. L --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartaxius@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@ wrote: I have never made the claim that I never knew the mantra was there or not. I have made the claim that mantraness can be infinitely faint/vague/ill-defined, etc and that just as one doesn't have to be thinking P I N K E L E P H A N T in order to qualify as thinking about pink elephants, so too, one need not be able to describe just what makes your mental activity mantra-ish enough to qualify as thinking the mantra. L Lawson this response is not so much about what everyone has been discussing, but you said something interesting, that 'mantraness can be infinitely faint/vague, ill-defined, etc.' Activity in the human brain seems to be largely chemical, you could stop that activity by injecting, say, hydrochloric or sulphuric acid into the brain (do not attempt this at home). We can easily suppose that this would stop all thought in its tracks. At a more subtle level there is quantum mechanics, though the processing function of the brain does not seem to be at the quantum mechanical level operationally. However, because observed reality is quantized at the quantum level, it would seem there is a limit to how fine something can be before it vanishes; that, is a thought could not be infinitely divisible in amplitude, since the thought requires processes at the molecular level to exist. And even if the mind somehow could function as a quantum level machine, it still would have this quantization limit. The philosopher David Hume also discussed this (in 1739): 'It is universally allowed, that the capacity of the mind is limited, and can never attain a full and adequate conception of infinity. And though it were not allowed, it would be sufficiently evident from the plainest observation and experience. It is also obvious, that whatever is capable of being divided in infinitum, must consist of an infinite number of parts, and that it is impossible to set any bound to the number of parts, without setting bounds at the same time to the division. It requires scare any induction to conclude from hence, that the idea which we form of any finite quantity, is not infinitely divisible, but that by proper disctinctions and separations we may run up this idea to inferior ones, which wil be perfectly simple and indivisible. In rejecting the infinite capacity of the mind, we suppose it may arrive at an end in the division of its ideas; nor are there any possible means of evading the evidence of this conclusion.' In other words, the mantra becoming fainter is kind of like descending a staircase rather than a slide, we may not notice the steps, but as one approaches the limit, reality gets grainy, not smooth. The processes of the brain thus are quantized, at the molecular and atomic level, on the level of basic chemical interaction, and even if we were to allow these processes to be at the quantum level, they would be discrete and not infinitely divisible.
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@... wrote: What you say may be true, but I assert that no-one here is really at the level where that becomes an issue. Why would I assert this? Because anyone that subtle in their thinking would have much better things to do than argue with people on the internet. *I* even have better things to do. L Argument is a way of refining your understanding, because others say things that can challenge hidden assumptions one has. You come across viewpoints that you could not possibly generate in your own mind, because the mind is limited in experience and expression; others have other experiences and ideas. In this way you can get insights into your own experience that would otherwise not occur, and it helps makes one's own expression more fluid and expansive. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartaxius@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@ wrote: I have never made the claim that I never knew the mantra was there or not. I have made the claim that mantraness can be infinitely faint/vague/ill-defined, etc and that just as one doesn't have to be thinking P I N K E L E P H A N T in order to qualify as thinking about pink elephants, so too, one need not be able to describe just what makes your mental activity mantra-ish enough to qualify as thinking the mantra. L Lawson this response is not so much about what everyone has been discussing, but you said something interesting, that 'mantraness can be infinitely faint/vague, ill-defined, etc.' Activity in the human brain seems to be largely chemical, you could stop that activity by injecting, say, hydrochloric or sulphuric acid into the brain (do not attempt this at home). We can easily suppose that this would stop all thought in its tracks. At a more subtle level there is quantum mechanics, though the processing function of the brain does not seem to be at the quantum mechanical level operationally. However, because observed reality is quantized at the quantum level, it would seem there is a limit to how fine something can be before it vanishes; that, is a thought could not be infinitely divisible in amplitude, since the thought requires processes at the molecular level to exist. And even if the mind somehow could function as a quantum level machine, it still would have this quantization limit. The philosopher David Hume also discussed this (in 1739): 'It is universally allowed, that the capacity of the mind is limited, and can never attain a full and adequate conception of infinity. And though it were not allowed, it would be sufficiently evident from the plainest observation and experience. It is also obvious, that whatever is capable of being divided in infinitum, must consist of an infinite number of parts, and that it is impossible to set any bound to the number of parts, without setting bounds at the same time to the division. It requires scare any induction to conclude from hence, that the idea which we form of any finite quantity, is not infinitely divisible, but that by proper disctinctions and separations we may run up this idea to inferior ones, which wil be perfectly simple and indivisible. In rejecting the infinite capacity of the mind, we suppose it may arrive at an end in the division of its ideas; nor are there any possible means of evading the evidence of this conclusion.' In other words, the mantra becoming fainter is kind of like descending a staircase rather than a slide, we may not notice the steps, but as one approaches the limit, reality gets grainy, not smooth. The processes of the brain thus are quantized, at the molecular and atomic level, on the level of basic chemical interaction, and even if we were to allow these processes to be at the quantum level, they would be discrete and not infinitely divisible.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
On Jul 27, 2012, at 7:42 AM, iranitea no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@... wrote: Determining whether or not the mantra is subtle isn't part of TM practice. Lawson, you were making the point, that just thinking OF the mantra, would be a subtle form of the mantra. And, since it is your main point here, to immediately return to the mantra, if you notice it isn't there, as you make this point again below, that it is imperial to follow the TM instruction, you constantly contradict yourself. If the mantra can be so vague, that you don't know anymore if you are thinking it or not, how could you then follow the instruction? You should at least know if you are thinking the mantra, in order to be able to determine if you should go back to it, when you are not. Now you say it doesn't matter if it is subtle or not, then you claim, thinking about the mantra is a subtle form thereof. It is all self contradictory. You and Judy have been making this point for ages, that the mantra could be so subtle, that you don't know if it's there. That's all BS, if you don't know if it's there, you can't go back to it. So much for your 'I just follow instructions' The primary indicator of reaching the end of mantra (the nādānta) is photism, as the mantra’s sound energy becomes light energy. An experienced mantra-yogi progresses through sixteen sequentially advanced stages in the refinement of the mantra. Someone practicing at the finest levels will be able to experience around 512 thought-recitations of mantra to the average beginners 1 vibration. Beginners mantra meditation methods come nowhere near this level of subtlety, so I wouldn’t expect Lawson to be really aware of this, although it’s not unusual for TMers to make really exaggerated claims about what they “think” they can do. ;-)
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@... wrote: Determining whether or not the mantra is subtle isn't part of TM practice. Lawson, you were making the point, that just thinking OF the mantra, would be a subtle form of the mantra. And, since it is your main point here, to immediately return to the mantra, if you notice it isn't there, as you make this point again below, that it is imperial to follow the TM instruction, you constantly contradict yourself. If the mantra can be so vague, that you don't know anymore if you are thinking it or not, how could you then follow the instruction? You should at least know if you are thinking the mantra, in order to be able to determine if you should go back to it, when you are not. Now you say it doesn't matter if it is subtle or not, then you claim, thinking about the mantra is a subtle form thereof. It is all self contradictory. You and Judy have been making this point for ages, that the mantra could be so subtle, that you don't know if it's there. That's all BS, if you don't know if it's there, you can't go back to it. So much for your 'I just follow instructions' Nor does it matter that it doesn't matter. If you're doing TM, then you follow the instructions, if you don't follow the instructions, such as they are, then you're not doing TM. Of course, follow the instructions can be kind of vauge sometimes, but that's as OK as any other part of the process. As long as you can think a thought, you can meditate. L. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartaxius@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, iranitea no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@ wrote: Oh dear, for the last 39 years I've been doing TM improperly. The horror. Lawson, that's the dawn of knowledge, when you know that you don't know anymore, all your previous knowledge has been evaporated. There is a very good practice in Zen to cultivate the 'don't know' mind. If you like, read this http://www.kwanumzen.org/about-zen/three-letters-to-a-beginner/ I have been practicing TM for a long time, and I do think this 'don't know' mind has come about. A long long time ago I learned mindfulness, and found at that time it was rather difficult, or perhaps because my mind would not settle down then, annoying. Lately though the character of TM and mindfulness just seem to have merged; it does not matter anymore. It does not matter whether the mantra is there or not, or if I notice that the mantra is not there, it does not matter if I start it again or not. It actually seems as if there are no subtle levels of the mantra at all. I think it helps to find alternative explanations, to try to find different ways to explain the same thing. This is easy to do with metaphysics because there are no facts. The scientist Richard Feynman would attack physics problems this way, he would try to find alternative ways to explain various phenomena, and of course he was ultimately constrained by facts, what the experiments showed. This keeps thinking more flexible, and when you do this, you are breaking the potential for doctrinaire ossification of belief. You step outside on a fine sunny day and there is all this stuff and instead of saying, 'Well, there is a pond, and trees, and clouds'; you just feel 'Wow!', And then if that could be expressed in more concrete conceptual terms it might be something like 'What is all this?'. A certain freshness imbues experience because you do not know what is going to happen and you are not thinking about what things are and what they might become.
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@... wrote: I'll put it differently: if there is a choice, there is also a chooser. There is no choice. It is choiceless awareness. L. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@ wrote: You're sure about this, are you... Yes, absoutely. From everything you have said here, I am absolutely sure that you don't know about it, and that's okay. You cannot relate from your on experience, and then project it to what I and for example Xeno or Empty were saying. I accept, that whatever you say, is the way for you, you cannot go any other way. But you have not enough knowledge to comment on the instructions of other teachers like SSRS, or even Guru Dev, or Swami Shantanand Saraswathi. To believe that these later two, didn't know how to meditate correctly is just hilarious and arrogant. L --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, iranitea no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@ wrote: And again: noticing something, however subtle, even the first glimmering of awareness of awareness, is no longer pure consciousness. Lawson, not trying to be arrogant here, but the states Empty and I are talking about, you simply don't know. You really have no glue. You are just talking from a script. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, iranitea no_reply@ wrote: Thank you Empty, this is simply superb, best post of the week IMHO. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, emptybill emptybill@ wrote: Lawson. You do not seem to understand SSRS's instructions about meditation with a mantra. Is this because you have never heard those instructions? SSRS pointed out that a meditator does not need to place attention back upon the mantra during meditation just because they become aware they are not thinking the mantra. Recognition of not thinking the mantra does not itself constitute a requirement to think the mantra. Likewise, the realization of not thinking the mantra does not, in itself, constitute a form of thinking. The reason is simple. The nature of awareness is witnessing (sakshi-j�ana). This is pure Vedanta. When the field of experience subsides with the ceasing (nirodha) of every external or internal experience, including the termination of I-consciousness (aham-pratyaya), what remains is the awareness that is naturally present as the inner self (pratyag-atman). Awareness is a seer (drista). It is not the cognizer of a cognitive activity (pramata). It is not a knower (j�aatri), a doer (kartri) or an enjoyer (bhoktri) but rather is knowingness itself. The seer is the witness-consciousness (sakshin) which witnesses the ending of all forms of experience during meditation and simply remains as is, uninvolved and prior to all experience. SSRS's instruction is founded upon this realization and is the pointing-out instruction which allows meditators to remain as they truly are. They remain, during this period of silent awareness, as sheer seeing (dristi-matrataa) until cognitive, affective or sensory activity causes limited identification once again. Thus recognizing or remembering the mantra occurs as a natural consequence rather than from a demand to think the mantra. ..
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
I have never made the claim that I never knew the mantra was there or not. I have made the claim that mantraness can be infinitely faint/vague/ill-defined, etc and that just as one doesn't have to be thinking P I N K E L E P H A N T in order to qualify as thinking about pink elephants, so too, one need not be able to describe just what makes your mental activity mantra-ish enough to qualify as thinking the mantra. L --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, iranitea no_reply@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@ wrote: Determining whether or not the mantra is subtle isn't part of TM practice. Lawson, you were making the point, that just thinking OF the mantra, would be a subtle form of the mantra. And, since it is your main point here, to immediately return to the mantra, if you notice it isn't there, as you make this point again below, that it is imperial to follow the TM instruction, you constantly contradict yourself. If the mantra can be so vague, that you don't know anymore if you are thinking it or not, how could you then follow the instruction? You should at least know if you are thinking the mantra, in order to be able to determine if you should go back to it, when you are not. Now you say it doesn't matter if it is subtle or not, then you claim, thinking about the mantra is a subtle form thereof. It is all self contradictory. You and Judy have been making this point for ages, that the mantra could be so subtle, that you don't know if it's there. That's all BS, if you don't know if it's there, you can't go back to it. So much for your 'I just follow instructions' Nor does it matter that it doesn't matter. If you're doing TM, then you follow the instructions, if you don't follow the instructions, such as they are, then you're not doing TM. Of course, follow the instructions can be kind of vauge sometimes, but that's as OK as any other part of the process. As long as you can think a thought, you can meditate. L. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartaxius@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, iranitea no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@ wrote: Oh dear, for the last 39 years I've been doing TM improperly. The horror. Lawson, that's the dawn of knowledge, when you know that you don't know anymore, all your previous knowledge has been evaporated. There is a very good practice in Zen to cultivate the 'don't know' mind. If you like, read this http://www.kwanumzen.org/about-zen/three-letters-to-a-beginner/ I have been practicing TM for a long time, and I do think this 'don't know' mind has come about. A long long time ago I learned mindfulness, and found at that time it was rather difficult, or perhaps because my mind would not settle down then, annoying. Lately though the character of TM and mindfulness just seem to have merged; it does not matter anymore. It does not matter whether the mantra is there or not, or if I notice that the mantra is not there, it does not matter if I start it again or not. It actually seems as if there are no subtle levels of the mantra at all. I think it helps to find alternative explanations, to try to find different ways to explain the same thing. This is easy to do with metaphysics because there are no facts. The scientist Richard Feynman would attack physics problems this way, he would try to find alternative ways to explain various phenomena, and of course he was ultimately constrained by facts, what the experiments showed. This keeps thinking more flexible, and when you do this, you are breaking the potential for doctrinaire ossification of belief. You step outside on a fine sunny day and there is all this stuff and instead of saying, 'Well, there is a pond, and trees, and clouds'; you just feel 'Wow!', And then if that could be expressed in more concrete conceptual terms it might be something like 'What is all this?'. A certain freshness imbues experience because you do not know what is going to happen and you are not thinking about what things are and what they might become.
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@... wrote: I have never made the claim that I never knew the mantra was there or not. I have made the claim that mantraness can be infinitely faint/vague/ill-defined, etc and that just as one doesn't have to be thinking P I N K E L E P H A N T in order to qualify as thinking about pink elephants, so too, one need not be able to describe just what makes your mental activity mantra-ish enough to qualify as thinking the mantra. L Lawson this response is not so much about what everyone has been discussing, but you said something interesting, that 'mantraness can be infinitely faint/vague, ill-defined, etc.' Activity in the human brain seems to be largely chemical, you could stop that activity by injecting, say, hydrochloric or sulphuric acid into the brain (do not attempt this at home). We can easily suppose that this would stop all thought in its tracks. At a more subtle level there is quantum mechanics, though the processing function of the brain does not seem to be at the quantum mechanical level operationally. However, because observed reality is quantized at the quantum level, it would seem there is a limit to how fine something can be before it vanishes; that, is a thought could not be infinitely divisible in amplitude, since the thought requires processes at the molecular level to exist. And even if the mind somehow could function as a quantum level machine, it still would have this quantization limit. The philosopher David Hume also discussed this (in 1739): 'It is universally allowed, that the capacity of the mind is limited, and can never attain a full and adequate conception of infinity. And though it were not allowed, it would be sufficiently evident from the plainest observation and experience. It is also obvious, that whatever is capable of being divided in infinitum, must consist of an infinite number of parts, and that it is impossible to set any bound to the number of parts, without setting bounds at the same time to the division. It requires scare any induction to conclude from hence, that the idea which we form of any finite quantity, is not infinitely divisible, but that by proper disctinctions and separations we may run up this idea to inferior ones, which wil be perfectly simple and indivisible. In rejecting the infinite capacity of the mind, we suppose it may arrive at an end in the division of its ideas; nor are there any possible means of evading the evidence of this conclusion.' In other words, the mantra becoming fainter is kind of like descending a staircase rather than a slide, we may not notice the steps, but as one approaches the limit, reality gets grainy, not smooth. The processes of the brain thus are quantized, at the molecular and atomic level, on the level of basic chemical interaction, and even if we were to allow these processes to be at the quantum level, they would be discrete and not infinitely divisible.
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
Lawson, As SSRS discussed many times, abiding in silent awareness during meditation happens naturally in TM practice that is if someone has meditated for a long time following proper instruction. He further clarified that if a practitioner continues to maintain an effortless TM practice, then they do not need Sahaj meditation. That is because they have already realized what he is pointing out and are practicing accordingly. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@... wrote: Determining whether or not the mantra is subtle isn't part of TM practice. Nor does it matter that it doesn't matter. If you're doing TM, then you follow the instructions, if you don't follow the instructions, such as they are, then you're not doing TM. Of course, follow the instructions can be kind of vauge sometimes, but that's as OK as any other part of the process. As long as you can think a thought, you can meditate. L. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartaxius@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, iranitea no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@ wrote: Oh dear, for the last 39 years I've been doing TM improperly. The horror. Lawson, that's the dawn of knowledge, when you know that you don't know anymore, all your previous knowledge has been evaporated. There is a very good practice in Zen to cultivate the 'don't know' mind. If you like, read this http://www.kwanumzen.org/about-zen/three-letters-to-a-beginner/ I have been practicing TM for a long time, and I do think this 'don't know' mind has come about. A long long time ago I learned mindfulness, and found at that time it was rather difficult, or perhaps because my mind would not settle down then, annoying. Lately though the character of TM and mindfulness just seem to have merged; it does not matter anymore. It does not matter whether the mantra is there or not, or if I notice that the mantra is not there, it does not matter if I start it again or not. It actually seems as if there are no subtle levels of the mantra at all. I think it helps to find alternative explanations, to try to find different ways to explain the same thing. This is easy to do with metaphysics because there are no facts. The scientist Richard Feynman would attack physics problems this way, he would try to find alternative ways to explain various phenomena, and of course he was ultimately constrained by facts, what the experiments showed. This keeps thinking more flexible, and when you do this, you are breaking the potential for doctrinaire ossification of belief. You step outside on a fine sunny day and there is all this stuff and instead of saying, 'Well, there is a pond, and trees, and clouds'; you just feel 'Wow!', And then if that could be expressed in more concrete conceptual terms it might be something like 'What is all this?'. A certain freshness imbues experience because you do not know what is going to happen and you are not thinking about what things are and what they might become.
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@... wrote: Oh dear, for the last 39 years I've been doing TM improperly. The horror. Lawson, that's the dawn of knowledge, when you know that you don't know anymore, all your previous knowledge has been evaporated. There is a very good practice in Zen to cultivate the 'don't know' mind. If you like, read this http://www.kwanumzen.org/about-zen/three-letters-to-a-beginner/
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
Xeno, very beautiful analysis, just what I was thinking about, but expressed more elegantly. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartaxius@... wrote: I think this argument here may be because we have assigned a term to a particular experience and view that as an entity, as if it were an object. When we are awake we are conscious, even if we cannot define what consciousness is. The experience called TC is also consciousness, but it is not a separate entity. TM is kind of like an analytical reductionist state, where ever-present consciousness is separated out experientially, as it were, from normal activity. In waking the mind is active and the reflection of that in consciousness is active. When in TC, the mind is still, the reflection of that is still, no activity, no intellection, no ability to define. It is consciousness experiencing an undefined value; activity, consciousness in a defined value. So in a sense consciousness is never really 'pure' as a separate thing, it is just the means to grasp wider experience by creating a temporary artificial state. Consciousness is not something elsewhere, it is always here. To get people to meditate, one tells them a fib, that there is this better thing one can experience because if you tell them they already have consciousness in full measure, they won't be able to conceive that is true until they have a wider range of experience. Take salt. A transparent crystal. We can find out more about salt by chemically breaking it down and putting it back together. We can break it into a yellow-greenish gas and a bright silvery metal. But the wholeness of salt is gone in this state, until we chemically put the two components back together. This analogy breaks down, because chlorine and sodium are entities, while consciousness is not. Being contains active and non active but we can't tell which is which until we experience clearly what truly deep inactivity is, when all possible activity is gone commensurate with wakefulness. The ultimate object of meditation is not to experience TC indefinitely, it is to experience how all the possible states fit together as one unified block where everything has the same level of 'purity'. The purpose of meditation and activity is to separate, and then put it all back together repeatedly until we get the significance of what 'together' is. In CC for example, you cannot grasp what 'together' is, you cannot imagine it. You can imagine something, but you cannot imagine it correctly. You know what activity is, and you know what deep silence is, but they are still separate. When they come together, in fact, you still cannot imagine it, but you know. But how to say it, you are mute.
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, iranitea no_reply@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@ wrote: Oh dear, for the last 39 years I've been doing TM improperly. The horror. Lawson, that's the dawn of knowledge, when you know that you don't know anymore, all your previous knowledge has been evaporated. There is a very good practice in Zen to cultivate the 'don't know' mind. If you like, read this http://www.kwanumzen.org/about-zen/three-letters-to-a-beginner/ LOL. By definition, TM practice means to follow the instructions (such as they are) for TM practice. That you and EmptyBill are unable to get such simple instructions and instead think that I'm serious about whether or not I've been doing TM properly or not... Fact is, TM is such that that realization has hit me many countless times over the years -as one gets more subtle in thinking, one starts to reevaluate what one has learned, and the simplest of things start to look somewhat different. Eventually, one comes to the understanding that, like the mantra, the instructions have remained the same, but our perception of them/it has changed. And yet, YOU and EmptyBill seem to not have gotten this simple issue, either for TM, where it should be the most obvious, or anything else, for that matter, or so I surmise. L
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, iranitea no_reply@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@ wrote: Oh dear, for the last 39 years I've been doing TM improperly. The horror. Lawson, that's the dawn of knowledge, when you know that you don't know anymore, all your previous knowledge has been evaporated. There is a very good practice in Zen to cultivate the 'don't know' mind. If you like, read this http://www.kwanumzen.org/about-zen/three-letters-to-a-beginner/ I have been practicing TM for a long time, and I do think this 'don't know' mind has come about. A long long time ago I learned mindfulness, and found at that time it was rather difficult, or perhaps because my mind would not settle down then, annoying. Lately though the character of TM and mindfulness just seem to have merged; it does not matter anymore. It does not matter whether the mantra is there or not, or if I notice that the mantra is not there, it does not matter if I start it again or not. It actually seems as if there are no subtle levels of the mantra at all. I think it helps to find alternative explanations, to try to find different ways to explain the same thing. This is easy to do with metaphysics because there are no facts. The scientist Richard Feynman would attack physics problems this way, he would try to find alternative ways to explain various phenomena, and of course he was ultimately constrained by facts, what the experiments showed. This keeps thinking more flexible, and when you do this, you are breaking the potential for doctrinaire ossification of belief. You step outside on a fine sunny day and there is all this stuff and instead of saying, 'Well, there is a pond, and trees, and clouds'; you just feel 'Wow!', And then if that could be expressed in more concrete conceptual terms it might be something like 'What is all this?'. A certain freshness imbues experience because you do not know what is going to happen and you are not thinking about what things are and what they might become.
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
Determining whether or not the mantra is subtle isn't part of TM practice. Nor does it matter that it doesn't matter. If you're doing TM, then you follow the instructions, if you don't follow the instructions, such as they are, then you're not doing TM. Of course, follow the instructions can be kind of vauge sometimes, but that's as OK as any other part of the process. As long as you can think a thought, you can meditate. L. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartaxius@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, iranitea no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@ wrote: Oh dear, for the last 39 years I've been doing TM improperly. The horror. Lawson, that's the dawn of knowledge, when you know that you don't know anymore, all your previous knowledge has been evaporated. There is a very good practice in Zen to cultivate the 'don't know' mind. If you like, read this http://www.kwanumzen.org/about-zen/three-letters-to-a-beginner/ I have been practicing TM for a long time, and I do think this 'don't know' mind has come about. A long long time ago I learned mindfulness, and found at that time it was rather difficult, or perhaps because my mind would not settle down then, annoying. Lately though the character of TM and mindfulness just seem to have merged; it does not matter anymore. It does not matter whether the mantra is there or not, or if I notice that the mantra is not there, it does not matter if I start it again or not. It actually seems as if there are no subtle levels of the mantra at all. I think it helps to find alternative explanations, to try to find different ways to explain the same thing. This is easy to do with metaphysics because there are no facts. The scientist Richard Feynman would attack physics problems this way, he would try to find alternative ways to explain various phenomena, and of course he was ultimately constrained by facts, what the experiments showed. This keeps thinking more flexible, and when you do this, you are breaking the potential for doctrinaire ossification of belief. You step outside on a fine sunny day and there is all this stuff and instead of saying, 'Well, there is a pond, and trees, and clouds'; you just feel 'Wow!', And then if that could be expressed in more concrete conceptual terms it might be something like 'What is all this?'. A certain freshness imbues experience because you do not know what is going to happen and you are not thinking about what things are and what they might become.
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartaxius@... wrote: I have been practicing TM for a long time, and I do think this 'don't know' mind has come about. A long long time ago I learned mindfulness, and found at that time it was rather difficult, or perhaps because my mind would not settle down then, annoying. Lately though the character of TM and mindfulness just seem to have merged; it does not matter anymore. It does not matter whether the mantra is there or not, or if I notice that the mantra is not there, it does not matter if I start it again or not. It actually seems as if there are no subtle levels of the mantra at all. I think it helps to find alternative explanations, .. or better still: Get a checking !
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@... wrote: Determining whether or not the mantra is subtle isn't part of TM practice. Nor does it matter that it doesn't matter. If you're doing TM, then you follow the instructions, if you don't follow the instructions, such as they are, then you're not doing TM. I was not talking about determining whether the mantra was subtle or not during practice. This is thinking about the practice afterward. If experience is unified, what meaning doth has transcendence? What meaning subtle? You have the world and consciousness as a single block as it were (the uncarved block of the Tao in terms of another system). You have the material and the spiritual joined at the hip and at every other point. Transcendence means nothing then. You can call the world and transcendence material, or you can call it spiritual; it does not really matter. Better maybe to say not much at all. What do you have when the full mission of TM is accomplished? It is interesting that one facet of the presumed discovery of the Higgs boson is that it shows that the vacuum is physical, it has physical properites. If unification exists, the distinction between physical and presumed non-physical reality does not exist. This solves a lot of philosophical, logical problems because you are not dealing with two incompatible substances which the mind simply cannot connect together. But if experiment and experience show these two supposed things are really the same, it makes things much easier. You can investigate reality as spirit or as material. Maybe, as in Genesis, God really can walk in the Garden among his children. This is how people like Maharishi, Krishnamurti, Muktananda, Adyashanti, those Buddhists, the Sufis, and on and on, can influence people in the direction of enlightenment. One teacher might fail one, but another might take up the banner; there is a certain rolling of the dice in this game. Of course, follow the instructions can be kind of vauge sometimes, but that's as OK as any other part of the process. As long as you can think a thought, you can meditate. Lawson, I perhaps am not being fair here; I am trying, as those who began this thread with you, to pull this discussion away from the level of some Joe who just learned TM, and is having these experiences that we call transcending, and subtler states of the mantra, blackouts, feeling 'something good' after meditation etc., because this does not last. There are plenty of people in the world who have left this level of experience behind, and some of them are on this forum. There are TM meditators in Fairfield who have left this behind, there are those practicing other techniques who have left this behind. That people question the validity of what one learns in the three days checking and on residence courses, and even on more advanced course the TMO offers can be a good thing if it is genuine questioning and not mere cavil. People progress at different rates; some give up - there was that quote attributed to Jesus that sometimes the seed falls on ground that is just too hard, and does not sprout. As the quote by Bertrand Russell on the home page of this forum says 'What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is the exact opposite'. Curiosity may sometimes kill the cat, but without it, it will be difficult to find where one is at. I seem to recall that Maharishi said long ago (or somethng like this anyway) that anything that results in the experience of being *is* transcendental meditation. TM as Maharishi taught it, is one way this universal process of experience recollecting its wholeness is facilitated. Now that the process has been branded for marketing, made expensive etc., and those who teach it are also subject to tight controls, it has become a niche product. This is not necessarily because those now in control are complete idiots, though of course this is a very attractive hypothesis, it is because the process is being restricted to a narrow channel by ideology. Some of this seems to be Maharishi's doing, but the close followers of a master often seem the most unbalanced of all the practitioners because they take what the master says as the truth, whereas the master indicates how and where one, on one's own, needs to look to find it for oneself. In other words the process of restricting access to official channels is the very process by which universality is restricted to a point value; thus the attempt to preserve the so called purity of the teaching, this holding on, is the very process that damps down the process, like holding onto the mantra at all costs prevents it from dying away. TM was a revival, and now, revival will take place in some other way, even though TM will produce good results for people and new learners for years to come. Being waxes and wanes and takes with it all it contains. The TMO cannot
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartaxius@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Yifu yifuxero@ wrote: Dr. Michael Shermer replies to Harris (and the recent reseach on choices) in his Sci Am article Free Won't. The experimentation isn't as simple as a neurological blip, then choice made a few second later. First, as to the blip indicating a choice, even more recent reseach indicates the first choice can be negated through the power of Won't...and so on; with multiple blips and choices popping up. The net result is more like an evolutionary tree of neurological indicators or blips and choices, with a final choice if forced. The basic pattern of choices then; turns out to be unpredictable but probabilistic, reminding us of Feynman's sum over histories outcome of quantum particles. The final outcome or choice of the particle is a sum over histories of possible outcomes in a multiverse of choices. ... Shermer doesn't refute the Harris determinism theme though. He mainly brings up new reseach showing that the outcome of choices presented is a highly complex affair; as we would say karma is unfathomable. This is an interesting way to put it. I was just reading about Feynman's work. Yes there is also that possibility that seems to be an intervention. If one notices the mantra is gone and the sense arises that one should begin it again, and you don't intervene, did you make the choice to come back to the mantra? A more interesting question: is there such a thing as NOT thinking the mantra if you notice that you aren't thinking it? While it is possibly/probably true when thinking is taking place on a very superficial level, that there is an obvious either/or to thinking or not-thinking the mantra, I have often found that the opposite is also true: when thinking is subtle, the distinction between realizing you are not-thinking the mantra and actually thinking it, blurs completely. It all goes back to how one defines thinking the mantra. There are two different comments I have heard on this topic that apply, at least for me: there is no end to how subtle the mantra can become. the thought OF the mantra is still the mantra.
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
If this is what you meant as my point Lawson sez: And again: noticing something, however subtle, even the first glimmering of awareness of awareness, is no longer pure consciousness. Empty Bill sez: Theny ou do not understand what the witness actually is. However,if you are referring to a point that is different, then please restate you point. Lawson also sez: There are two different comments I have heard on this topic that apply, at least for me: 1. there is no end to how subtle the mantra can become. 2. the thought OF the mantra is still the mantra. Empty Bill sez: 1.There is indeed an end to the subtlety of the mantra. According to Patanjali, the scale of subtlety terminatesin the a-linga the quality of unmarked, non-differentiation (YS 1.45). Thus,whether an object is a physical quanta or a subjective thought, pradhana/prakritiis the final field of subtlety. Empty Bill further sez about your claim that - 2. The thought OF the mantra is NOT the mantra. If your statement were true then simply the thought mantrawould equally qualify as the mantra. A thought of or thought about the mantra is simply a thought that is all. The actual meditation bija-mantra is that human speech sound pronounced by the initiating teacher. Any thought that is eitherof or about the bija-mantra, is a relational remembrance a signal to return to the mantra but is not the mantra itself. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@... wrote: Many words, none of which address my point. L --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, emptybill emptybill@ wrote: One of the first signs of the progressive development of CC is the simultaneous presence of pure awareness together with either the mantra or thought(s). You are not accounting for this development but are treating pure consciousness only in the exclusionary terms of TC. MMY never treated CC as a sudden appearance but rather as a gradual refinement and clarification of the gross and subtle values of the nervous system. MMY emphasized that Pure Awareness/Pure Consciousness is always present because it is the who in who-we-are. He always pointed to this as the reason anyone might transcend spontaneously during ordinary human experience and that, in fact, such had happened many times in documented human history. Shankara, for his part, pointed out that the sakshi/witness is what we are and can never be generated by any yoga, quality of knowing or any activity. Lawson sez: Buddhists and other traditions warn of getting trapped in subtle experiences. As presented, and argued, the instruction is to revel in the trap, in the guise of calling it something other than a trap. Another case of sweet poison, which SSRS appears to indulge in a lot, it seems. To bad you need to make such claims. You are so poorly informed about other meditative traditions that you believe you can include them as a misfit proof of your assertions. When you make a claim such as the one above you demonstrate that you are a clueless TM ideologue. Robin gets a pass because when he generalizes about The East everyone here knows he has no clue about these traditions. You, however, present yourself as if you understood them when you so obviously do not.
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, emptybill emptybill@... wrote: If this is what you meant as my point � Lawson sez: And again: noticing something, however subtle, even the first glimmering of awareness of awareness, is no longer pure consciousness. Empty Bill sez: Theny ou do not understand what the witness actually is. However,if you are referring to a point that is different, then please restate you point. Lawson also sez: There are two different comments I have heard on this topic that apply, at least for me: 1. there is no end to how subtle the mantra can become. 2. the thought OF the mantra is still the mantra. Empty Bill sez: 1.There is indeed an end to the subtlety of the mantra. According to Patanjali, the scale of subtlety terminatesin the a-linga � the quality of unmarked, non-differentiation (YS 1.45). Thus,whether an object is a physical quanta or a subjective thought, pradhana/prakritiis the final field of subtlety. Empty Bill further sez about your claim that - 2. The thought OF the mantra is NOT the mantra. If your statement were true then simply the thought mantrawould equally qualify as the mantra. A thought of or thought about the mantra is simply a thought � that is all. The actual meditation bija-mantra is that human speech sound pronounced by the initiating teacher. Any thought that is eitherof or about the bija-mantra, is a relational remembrance � a signal to return to the mantra but is not the mantra itself. Oh dear, for the last 39 years I've been doing TM improperly. The horror. L.
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, salyavin808 fintlewoodlewix@... wrote: One thing that I'll mention is that the research on pure consciousness shows that people's brains have returned to a more normal mode of functioning by the time they actually notice PC. In a very real sense, PC cannot be held onto or indulged in or even enjoyed. By the time you notice it, it's been gone for quite a while, relatively speaking. None of this seems remotely right to me. This would mean PC is unconciousness .. Bingo. It is hard to tell what people are referring to when they talk of their own experience of transcendence. There is qualia, which restricts our knowledge of what others experience. We can only go by the indications they give, how they describe their states, and compare notes, with what we experience or have experienced once. In this sense, what you describe, and what I used to call transcendence, as defined by the TM, it was a momentary going into something, some kind of blank, which is noticed, when you go out of it. It is nice, but I wouldn't call it transcendence any more today. It's just a surrogate, Maharishi himself called it a hazy experience of transcendence, not the 'real' experience, but, marketer as he was, said, that he didn't want to call TM 'Hazy Transcendental Meditation', how would that sound. So, Maharishi was fully aware of this. But it's the trick that ties people to the thing. We all know that he tricked us with the flying siddhis, he tricked us with the time it takes to CC, but his greatest trick was this transcendence thing. Defining transcendence in this way, as the momentary loss of mantra without thought, this slipping in and out of something, being aware in the sense of noticing it, only AFTER the thing happens. And saying this can only be achieved through a procedure he defines as effortless. That's what keeps people glued to the concept, that's square one of the belief system. Basically, as I see it today, this procedure,with the inward and the outward strokes of meditation, happens all WITHIN the mind. You never break out of this, 'transcendence' here is like glued to a rubber-band, you are always within the mind, following a script. Do this when that happens, and when something else happens, do that. Ideal for people who have some kind of obsessive disorder. You should think, that when people have been meditating 20, 30 + years, they would know how to meditate, that meditation what have let to something, that they would know hoe to get into deeper inner states, and would be guided from within. But no, that's a no no, they still have to follow a script, still need to get checkings and so on. When I was still in the movement, I had heard that Maharishi asked people, don't you think that all this routine, all this program you are following, is like a prison? At the time, I didn't understand, because I loved the program. Now I understand what he had meant. I think that Maharishi as deeply aware of all these issues, he probably assumed, that people, as they advanced would be led on from within, so he only wanted to kick-start them and make sure that they got a good meditation routine. But then again, there are scriptures warn, that meditation itself is a hindrance to enlightenment, as it is of course also an attachment. (Ashtavakra Gita for example) ..not awareness of awareness itself which is rather nice and the sole (soul) reason I still do TM. Sure I get the back from somewhere awareness too and am happy if it contributes something nice but silent inner wakefulness and knowing about it seems like a better deal. Right. For me there is no decision to be made. There is simply no choice. It is not, for me, an automated meditation, like TM, where an automatic flow is kind of initiated, and then followed, but where there is still a choice, like the choice, pick up the mantra. It is completely automatic from within, where I just witness the flow of attention.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
Yoohoo Transcendendal Meditation... Eventually the mantra transcends out of existence, or rather, the three-in-one rishi-devata-chhandas during meditation converges into a single point whose only quality is observerness. L On 7/24/12 8:27 AM, Vaj wrote: On Jul 24, 2012, at 11:14 AM, sparaig wrote: But PC is not awareness OF awareness. PC is just awareness by Itself. Not if it's a witness-consciousness. Dualistic meditations, which rely on objects, will create a witness-consciousness, not a nondual consciousness. That's why Advaita Vedanta draws a distinction between samadhi type states and nondual contemplation. You're confusing the two, a fundamental error, and therefore a wrong View of the reality you're attempting to describe. -- Squeak from the very start (introduction to Squeak and Pharo Smalltalk for the (almost) complete and compleate beginner). https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6601A198DF14788Dfeature=view_all
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
There's that pesky I again... L --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, iranitea no_reply@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, salyavin808 fintlewoodlewix@ wrote: One thing that I'll mention is that the research on pure consciousness shows that people's brains have returned to a more normal mode of functioning by the time they actually notice PC. In a very real sense, PC cannot be held onto or indulged in or even enjoyed. By the time you notice it, it's been gone for quite a while, relatively speaking. None of this seems remotely right to me. This would mean PC is unconciousness .. Bingo. It is hard to tell what people are referring to when they talk of their own experience of transcendence. There is qualia, which restricts our knowledge of what others experience. We can only go by the indications they give, how they describe their states, and compare notes, with what we experience or have experienced once. In this sense, what you describe, and what I used to call transcendence, as defined by the TM, it was a momentary going into something, some kind of blank, which is noticed, when you go out of it. It is nice, but I wouldn't call it transcendence any more today. It's just a surrogate, Maharishi himself called it a hazy experience of transcendence, not the 'real' experience, but, marketer as he was, said, that he didn't want to call TM 'Hazy Transcendental Meditation', how would that sound. So, Maharishi was fully aware of this. But it's the trick that ties people to the thing. We all know that he tricked us with the flying siddhis, he tricked us with the time it takes to CC, but his greatest trick was this transcendence thing. Defining transcendence in this way, as the momentary loss of mantra without thought, this slipping in and out of something, being aware in the sense of noticing it, only AFTER the thing happens. And saying this can only be achieved through a procedure he defines as effortless. That's what keeps people glued to the concept, that's square one of the belief system. Basically, as I see it today, this procedure,with the inward and the outward strokes of meditation, happens all WITHIN the mind. You never break out of this, 'transcendence' here is like glued to a rubber-band, you are always within the mind, following a script. Do this when that happens, and when something else happens, do that. Ideal for people who have some kind of obsessive disorder. You should think, that when people have been meditating 20, 30 + years, they would know how to meditate, that meditation what have let to something, that they would know hoe to get into deeper inner states, and would be guided from within. But no, that's a no no, they still have to follow a script, still need to get checkings and so on. When I was still in the movement, I had heard that Maharishi asked people, don't you think that all this routine, all this program you are following, is like a prison? At the time, I didn't understand, because I loved the program. Now I understand what he had meant. I think that Maharishi as deeply aware of all these issues, he probably assumed, that people, as they advanced would be led on from within, so he only wanted to kick-start them and make sure that they got a good meditation routine. But then again, there are scriptures warn, that meditation itself is a hindrance to enlightenment, as it is of course also an attachment. (Ashtavakra Gita for example) ..not awareness of awareness itself which is rather nice and the sole (soul) reason I still do TM. Sure I get the back from somewhere awareness too and am happy if it contributes something nice but silent inner wakefulness and knowing about it seems like a better deal. Right. For me there is no decision to be made. There is simply no choice. It is not, for me, an automated meditation, like TM, where an automatic flow is kind of initiated, and then followed, but where there is still a choice, like the choice, pick up the mantra. It is completely automatic from within, where I just witness the flow of attention.
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Yifu yifuxero@... wrote: Dr. Michael Shermer replies to Harris (and the recent reseach on choices) in his Sci Am article Free Won't. The experimentation isn't as simple as a neurological blip, then choice made a few second later. First, as to the blip indicating a choice, even more recent reseach indicates the first choice can be negated through the power of Won't...and so on; with multiple blips and choices popping up. The net result is more like an evolutionary tree of neurological indicators or blips and choices, with a final choice if forced. The basic pattern of choices then; turns out to be unpredictable but probabilistic, reminding us of Feynman's sum over histories outcome of quantum particles. The final outcome or choice of the particle is a sum over histories of possible outcomes in a multiverse of choices. ... Shermer doesn't refute the Harris determinism theme though. He mainly brings up new reseach showing that the outcome of choices presented is a highly complex affair; as we would say karma is unfathomable. This is an interesting way to put it. I was just reading about Feynman's work. Yes there is also that possibility that seems to be an intervention. If one notices the mantra is gone and the sense arises that one should begin it again, and you don't intervene, did you make the choice to come back to the mantra? --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartaxius@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@ wrote: The argument is simply because the presentation, as is, specifically states there is a choice to be made, and that in the proper circumstances, nothing need be done. In fact, as long as there is a choice, there is a chooser, and as long as there is a chooser, the choice should be made. Now, it is sometimes/often/always my experience that simply being aware that I am not thinking the mantra is indeed, in some sense, thinking the mantra, but a choice didn't need to be made in that situation, anyway. Buddhists and other traditions warn of getting trapped in subtle experiences. As presented, and argued, the instruction is to revel in the trap, in the guise of calling it something other than a trap. Another case of sweet poison, which SSRS appears to indulge in a lot, it seems. Recent neurological research seems to indicate that even in waking, choices are made in the brain prior to any conscious awareness that such a thing has happened, as much as seven seconds prior to conscious awareness that 'I made a choice'. This seems to cast doubt on the idea that there is a chooser that is conscious; rather we become aware of it after the fact. Maybe stuff just happens, and there is no chooser, and we have a false idea that 'I' did it. L --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartaxius@ wrote: I think this argument here may be because we have assigned a term to a particular experience and view that as an entity, as if it were an object. When we are awake we are conscious, even if we cannot define what consciousness is. The experience called TC is also consciousness, but it is not a separate entity. TM is kind of like an analytical reductionist state, where ever-present consciousness is separated out experientially, as it were, from normal activity. In waking the mind is active and the reflection of that in consciousness is active. When in TC, the mind is still, the reflection of that is still, no activity, no intellection, no ability to define. It is consciousness experiencing an undefined value; activity, consciousness in a defined value. So in a sense consciousness is never really 'pure' as a separate thing, it is just the means to grasp wider experience by creating a temporary artificial state. Consciousness is not something elsewhere, it is always here. To get people to meditate, one tells them a fib, that there is this better thing one can experience because if you tell them they already have consciousness in full measure, they won't be able to conceive that is true until they have a wider range of experience. Take salt. A transparent crystal. We can find out more about salt by chemically breaking it down and putting it back together. We can break it into a yellow-greenish gas and a bright silvery metal. But the wholeness of salt is gone in this state, until we chemically put the two components back together. This analogy breaks down, because chlorine and sodium are entities, while consciousness is not. Being contains active and non active but we can't tell which is which until we experience clearly what truly deep inactivity is, when all possible activity is
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
Thank you Empty, this is simply superb, best post of the week IMHO. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, emptybill emptybill@... wrote: Lawson. You do not seem to understand SSRS's instructions about meditation with a mantra. Is this because you have never heard those instructions? SSRS pointed out that a meditator does not need to place attention back upon the mantra during meditation just because they become aware they are not thinking the mantra. Recognition of not thinking the mantra does not itself constitute a requirement to think the mantra. Likewise, the realization of not thinking the mantra does not, in itself, constitute a form of thinking. The reason is simple. The nature of awareness is witnessing (sakshi-jñana). This is pure Vedanta. When the field of experience subsides with the ceasing (nirodha) of every external or internal experience, including the termination of I-consciousness (aham-pratyaya), what remains is the awareness that is naturally present as the inner self (pratyag-atman). Awareness is a seer (drista). It is not the cognizer of a cognitive activity (pramata). It is not a knower (jñaatri), a doer (kartri) or an enjoyer (bhoktri) but rather is knowingness itself. The seer is the witness-consciousness (sakshin) which witnesses the ending of all forms of experience during meditation and simply remains as is, uninvolved and prior to all experience. SSRS's instruction is founded upon this realization and is the pointing-out instruction which allows meditators to remain as they truly are. They remain, during this period of silent awareness, as sheer seeing (dristi-matrataa) until cognitive, affective or sensory activity causes limited identification once again. Thus recognizing or remembering the mantra occurs as a natural consequence rather than from a demand to think the mantra. ..
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
And again: noticing something, however subtle, even the first glimmering of awareness of awareness, is no longer pure consciousness. L. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, iranitea no_reply@... wrote: Thank you Empty, this is simply superb, best post of the week IMHO. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, emptybill emptybill@ wrote: Lawson. You do not seem to understand SSRS's instructions about meditation with a mantra. Is this because you have never heard those instructions? SSRS pointed out that a meditator does not need to place attention back upon the mantra during meditation just because they become aware they are not thinking the mantra. Recognition of not thinking the mantra does not itself constitute a requirement to think the mantra. Likewise, the realization of not thinking the mantra does not, in itself, constitute a form of thinking. The reason is simple. The nature of awareness is witnessing (sakshi-j�ana). This is pure Vedanta. When the field of experience subsides with the ceasing (nirodha) of every external or internal experience, including the termination of I-consciousness (aham-pratyaya), what remains is the awareness that is naturally present as the inner self (pratyag-atman). Awareness is a seer (drista). It is not the cognizer of a cognitive activity (pramata). It is not a knower (j�aatri), a doer (kartri) or an enjoyer (bhoktri) but rather is knowingness itself. The seer is the witness-consciousness (sakshin) which witnesses the ending of all forms of experience during meditation and simply remains as is, uninvolved and prior to all experience. SSRS's instruction is founded upon this realization and is the pointing-out instruction which allows meditators to remain as they truly are. They remain, during this period of silent awareness, as sheer seeing (dristi-matrataa) until cognitive, affective or sensory activity causes limited identification once again. Thus recognizing or remembering the mantra occurs as a natural consequence rather than from a demand to think the mantra. ..
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@... wrote: And again: noticing something, however subtle, even the first glimmering of awareness of awareness, is no longer pure consciousness. Lawson, not trying to be arrogant here, but the states Empty and I are talking about, you simply don't know. You really have no glue. You are just talking from a script. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, iranitea no_reply@ wrote: Thank you Empty, this is simply superb, best post of the week IMHO. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, emptybill emptybill@ wrote: Lawson. You do not seem to understand SSRS's instructions about meditation with a mantra. Is this because you have never heard those instructions? SSRS pointed out that a meditator does not need to place attention back upon the mantra during meditation just because they become aware they are not thinking the mantra. Recognition of not thinking the mantra does not itself constitute a requirement to think the mantra. Likewise, the realization of not thinking the mantra does not, in itself, constitute a form of thinking. The reason is simple. The nature of awareness is witnessing (sakshi-j�ana). This is pure Vedanta. When the field of experience subsides with the ceasing (nirodha) of every external or internal experience, including the termination of I-consciousness (aham-pratyaya), what remains is the awareness that is naturally present as the inner self (pratyag-atman). Awareness is a seer (drista). It is not the cognizer of a cognitive activity (pramata). It is not a knower (j�aatri), a doer (kartri) or an enjoyer (bhoktri) but rather is knowingness itself. The seer is the witness-consciousness (sakshin) which witnesses the ending of all forms of experience during meditation and simply remains as is, uninvolved and prior to all experience. SSRS's instruction is founded upon this realization and is the pointing-out instruction which allows meditators to remain as they truly are. They remain, during this period of silent awareness, as sheer seeing (dristi-matrataa) until cognitive, affective or sensory activity causes limited identification once again. Thus recognizing or remembering the mantra occurs as a natural consequence rather than from a demand to think the mantra. ..
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
You're sure about this, are you... L --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, iranitea no_reply@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@ wrote: And again: noticing something, however subtle, even the first glimmering of awareness of awareness, is no longer pure consciousness. Lawson, not trying to be arrogant here, but the states Empty and I are talking about, you simply don't know. You really have no glue. You are just talking from a script. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, iranitea no_reply@ wrote: Thank you Empty, this is simply superb, best post of the week IMHO. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, emptybill emptybill@ wrote: Lawson. You do not seem to understand SSRS's instructions about meditation with a mantra. Is this because you have never heard those instructions? SSRS pointed out that a meditator does not need to place attention back upon the mantra during meditation just because they become aware they are not thinking the mantra. Recognition of not thinking the mantra does not itself constitute a requirement to think the mantra. Likewise, the realization of not thinking the mantra does not, in itself, constitute a form of thinking. The reason is simple. The nature of awareness is witnessing (sakshi-j�ana). This is pure Vedanta. When the field of experience subsides with the ceasing (nirodha) of every external or internal experience, including the termination of I-consciousness (aham-pratyaya), what remains is the awareness that is naturally present as the inner self (pratyag-atman). Awareness is a seer (drista). It is not the cognizer of a cognitive activity (pramata). It is not a knower (j�aatri), a doer (kartri) or an enjoyer (bhoktri) but rather is knowingness itself. The seer is the witness-consciousness (sakshin) which witnesses the ending of all forms of experience during meditation and simply remains as is, uninvolved and prior to all experience. SSRS's instruction is founded upon this realization and is the pointing-out instruction which allows meditators to remain as they truly are. They remain, during this period of silent awareness, as sheer seeing (dristi-matrataa) until cognitive, affective or sensory activity causes limited identification once again. Thus recognizing or remembering the mantra occurs as a natural consequence rather than from a demand to think the mantra. ..
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
I'll put it differently: if there is a choice, there is also a chooser. L. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@... wrote: You're sure about this, are you... L --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, iranitea no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@ wrote: And again: noticing something, however subtle, even the first glimmering of awareness of awareness, is no longer pure consciousness. Lawson, not trying to be arrogant here, but the states Empty and I are talking about, you simply don't know. You really have no glue. You are just talking from a script. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, iranitea no_reply@ wrote: Thank you Empty, this is simply superb, best post of the week IMHO. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, emptybill emptybill@ wrote: Lawson. You do not seem to understand SSRS's instructions about meditation with a mantra. Is this because you have never heard those instructions? SSRS pointed out that a meditator does not need to place attention back upon the mantra during meditation just because they become aware they are not thinking the mantra. Recognition of not thinking the mantra does not itself constitute a requirement to think the mantra. Likewise, the realization of not thinking the mantra does not, in itself, constitute a form of thinking. The reason is simple. The nature of awareness is witnessing (sakshi-j�ana). This is pure Vedanta. When the field of experience subsides with the ceasing (nirodha) of every external or internal experience, including the termination of I-consciousness (aham-pratyaya), what remains is the awareness that is naturally present as the inner self (pratyag-atman). Awareness is a seer (drista). It is not the cognizer of a cognitive activity (pramata). It is not a knower (j�aatri), a doer (kartri) or an enjoyer (bhoktri) but rather is knowingness itself. The seer is the witness-consciousness (sakshin) which witnesses the ending of all forms of experience during meditation and simply remains as is, uninvolved and prior to all experience. SSRS's instruction is founded upon this realization and is the pointing-out instruction which allows meditators to remain as they truly are. They remain, during this period of silent awareness, as sheer seeing (dristi-matrataa) until cognitive, affective or sensory activity causes limited identification once again. Thus recognizing or remembering the mantra occurs as a natural consequence rather than from a demand to think the mantra. ..
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@... wrote: You're sure about this, are you... L --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, iranitea no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@ wrote: And again: noticing something, however subtle, even the first glimmering of awareness of awareness, is no longer pure consciousness. Lawson, not trying to be arrogant here, but the states Empty and I are talking about, you simply don't know. You really have no glue. You are just talking from a script. So iran is not arrogant ? Must be post of the week :-)
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
I think this argument here may be because we have assigned a term to a particular experience and view that as an entity, as if it were an object. When we are awake we are conscious, even if we cannot define what consciousness is. The experience called TC is also consciousness, but it is not a separate entity. TM is kind of like an analytical reductionist state, where ever-present consciousness is separated out experientially, as it were, from normal activity. In waking the mind is active and the reflection of that in consciousness is active. When in TC, the mind is still, the reflection of that is still, no activity, no intellection, no ability to define. It is consciousness experiencing an undefined value; activity, consciousness in a defined value. So in a sense consciousness is never really 'pure' as a separate thing, it is just the means to grasp wider experience by creating a temporary artificial state. Consciousness is not something elsewhere, it is always here. To get people to meditate, one tells them a fib, that there is this better thing one can experience because if you tell them they already have consciousness in full measure, they won't be able to conceive that is true until they have a wider range of experience. Take salt. A transparent crystal. We can find out more about salt by chemically breaking it down and putting it back together. We can break it into a yellow-greenish gas and a bright silvery metal. But the wholeness of salt is gone in this state, until we chemically put the two components back together. This analogy breaks down, because chlorine and sodium are entities, while consciousness is not. Being contains active and non active but we can't tell which is which until we experience clearly what truly deep inactivity is, when all possible activity is gone commensurate with wakefulness. The ultimate object of meditation is not to experience TC indefinitely, it is to experience how all the possible states fit together as one unified block where everything has the same level of 'purity'. The purpose of meditation and activity is to separate, and then put it all back together repeatedly until we get the significance of what 'together' is. In CC for example, you cannot grasp what 'together' is, you cannot imagine it. You can imagine something, but you cannot imagine it correctly. You know what activity is, and you know what deep silence is, but they are still separate. When they come together, in fact, you still cannot imagine it, but you know. But how to say it, you are mute. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@... wrote: I'll put it differently: if there is a choice, there is also a chooser. L. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@ wrote: You're sure about this, are you... L --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, iranitea no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@ wrote: And again: noticing something, however subtle, even the first glimmering of awareness of awareness, is no longer pure consciousness. Lawson, not trying to be arrogant here, but the states Empty and I are talking about, you simply don't know. You really have no glue. You are just talking from a script. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, iranitea no_reply@ wrote: Thank you Empty, this is simply superb, best post of the week IMHO. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, emptybill emptybill@ wrote: Lawson. You do not seem to understand SSRS's instructions about meditation with a mantra. Is this because you have never heard those instructions? SSRS pointed out that a meditator does not need to place attention back upon the mantra during meditation just because they become aware they are not thinking the mantra. Recognition of not thinking the mantra does not itself constitute a requirement to think the mantra. Likewise, the realization of not thinking the mantra does not, in itself, constitute a form of thinking. The reason is simple. The nature of awareness is witnessing (sakshi-j�ana). This is pure Vedanta. When the field of experience subsides with the ceasing (nirodha) of every external or internal experience, including the termination of I-consciousness (aham-pratyaya), what remains is the awareness that is naturally present as the inner self (pratyag-atman). Awareness is a seer (drista). It is not the cognizer of a cognitive activity (pramata). It is not a knower (j�aatri), a doer (kartri) or an enjoyer (bhoktri) but rather is knowingness itself. The seer is the witness-consciousness (sakshin) which witnesses the ending of all forms of experience during meditation and
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
The argument is simply because the presentation, as is, specifically states there is a choice to be made, and that in the proper circumstances, nothing need be done. In fact, as long as there is a choice, there is a chooser, and as long as there is a chooser, the choice should be made. Now, it is sometimes/often/always my experience that simply being aware that I am not thinking the mantra is indeed, in some sense, thinking the mantra, but a choice didn't need to be made in that situation, anyway. Buddhists and other traditions warn of getting trapped in subtle experiences. As presented, and argued, the instruction is to revel in the trap, in the guise of calling it something other than a trap. Another case of sweet poison, which SSRS appears to indulge in a lot, it seems. L --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartaxius@... wrote: I think this argument here may be because we have assigned a term to a particular experience and view that as an entity, as if it were an object. When we are awake we are conscious, even if we cannot define what consciousness is. The experience called TC is also consciousness, but it is not a separate entity. TM is kind of like an analytical reductionist state, where ever-present consciousness is separated out experientially, as it were, from normal activity. In waking the mind is active and the reflection of that in consciousness is active. When in TC, the mind is still, the reflection of that is still, no activity, no intellection, no ability to define. It is consciousness experiencing an undefined value; activity, consciousness in a defined value. So in a sense consciousness is never really 'pure' as a separate thing, it is just the means to grasp wider experience by creating a temporary artificial state. Consciousness is not something elsewhere, it is always here. To get people to meditate, one tells them a fib, that there is this better thing one can experience because if you tell them they already have consciousness in full measure, they won't be able to conceive that is true until they have a wider range of experience. Take salt. A transparent crystal. We can find out more about salt by chemically breaking it down and putting it back together. We can break it into a yellow-greenish gas and a bright silvery metal. But the wholeness of salt is gone in this state, until we chemically put the two components back together. This analogy breaks down, because chlorine and sodium are entities, while consciousness is not. Being contains active and non active but we can't tell which is which until we experience clearly what truly deep inactivity is, when all possible activity is gone commensurate with wakefulness. The ultimate object of meditation is not to experience TC indefinitely, it is to experience how all the possible states fit together as one unified block where everything has the same level of 'purity'. The purpose of meditation and activity is to separate, and then put it all back together repeatedly until we get the significance of what 'together' is. In CC for example, you cannot grasp what 'together' is, you cannot imagine it. You can imagine something, but you cannot imagine it correctly. You know what activity is, and you know what deep silence is, but they are still separate. When they come together, in fact, you still cannot imagine it, but you know. But how to say it, you are mute. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@ wrote: I'll put it differently: if there is a choice, there is also a chooser. L. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@ wrote: You're sure about this, are you... L --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, iranitea no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@ wrote: And again: noticing something, however subtle, even the first glimmering of awareness of awareness, is no longer pure consciousness. Lawson, not trying to be arrogant here, but the states Empty and I are talking about, you simply don't know. You really have no glue. You are just talking from a script. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, iranitea no_reply@ wrote: Thank you Empty, this is simply superb, best post of the week IMHO. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, emptybill emptybill@ wrote: Lawson. You do not seem to understand SSRS's instructions about meditation with a mantra. Is this because you have never heard those instructions? SSRS pointed out that a meditator does not need to place attention back upon the mantra during meditation just because they become aware they are not thinking the mantra. Recognition of not thinking the
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, iranitea no_reply@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@ wrote: And again: noticing something, however subtle, even the first glimmering of awareness of awareness, is no longer pure consciousness. Lawson, not trying to be arrogant here, but the states Empty and I are talking about, you simply don't know. You really have no glue. You are just talking from a script. IMHO, silent awareness seems refer to 'praatibha' and the other five divine, intuitional senses (shraavaNa, etc; YS III 37), that according to III 38 are obstacles to samaadhi (te samaadhaav upasargaaH...).
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, cardemaister no_reply@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, iranitea no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@ wrote: And again: noticing something, however subtle, even the first glimmering of awareness of awareness, is no longer pure consciousness. Lawson, not trying to be arrogant here, but the states Empty and I are talking about, you simply don't know. You really have no glue. You are just talking from a script. IMHO, silent awareness seems refer to 'praatibha' and the other five divine, intuitional senses (shraavaNa, etc; YS III 37), that according to III 38 are obstacles to samaadhi (te samaadhaav upasargaaH...). An interesting take. One thing that I'll mention is that the research on pure consciousness shows that people's brains have returned to a more normal mode of functioning by the time they actually notice PC. In a very real sense, PC cannot be held onto or indulged in or even enjoyed. By the time you notice it, it's been gone for quite a while, relatively speaking. L
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, cardemaister no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, iranitea no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@ wrote: And again: noticing something, however subtle, even the first glimmering of awareness of awareness, is no longer pure consciousness. Lawson, not trying to be arrogant here, but the states Empty and I are talking about, you simply don't know. You really have no glue. You are just talking from a script. IMHO, silent awareness seems refer to 'praatibha' and the other five divine, intuitional senses (shraavaNa, etc; YS III 37), that according to III 38 are obstacles to samaadhi (te samaadhaav upasargaaH...). An interesting take. One thing that I'll mention is that the research on pure consciousness shows that people's brains have returned to a more normal mode of functioning by the time they actually notice PC. In a very real sense, PC cannot be held onto or indulged in or even enjoyed. By the time you notice it, it's been gone for quite a while, relatively speaking. L I think most upaniSat-s compare turiiya (caturtha) to deep sleep. So, if one can be aware during deep sleep, it's possible for one to have silent awareness during Transcendental Consciousness??
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, cardemaister no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, iranitea no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@ wrote: And again: noticing something, however subtle, even the first glimmering of awareness of awareness, is no longer pure consciousness. Lawson, not trying to be arrogant here, but the states Empty and I are talking about, you simply don't know. You really have no glue. You are just talking from a script. IMHO, silent awareness seems refer to 'praatibha' and the other five divine, intuitional senses (shraavaNa, etc; YS III 37), that according to III 38 are obstacles to samaadhi (te samaadhaav upasargaaH...). An interesting take. One thing that I'll mention is that the research on pure consciousness shows that people's brains have returned to a more normal mode of functioning by the time they actually notice PC. In a very real sense, PC cannot be held onto or indulged in or even enjoyed. By the time you notice it, it's been gone for quite a while, relatively speaking. None of this seems remotely right to me. This would mean PC is unconciousness not awareness of awareness itself which is rather nice and the sole (soul) reason I still do TM. Sure I get the back from somewhere awareness too and am happy if it contributes something nice but silent inner wakefulness and knowing about it seems like a better deal. L
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, cardemaister no_reply@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, cardemaister no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, iranitea no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@ wrote: And again: noticing something, however subtle, even the first glimmering of awareness of awareness, is no longer pure consciousness. Lawson, not trying to be arrogant here, but the states Empty and I are talking about, you simply don't know. You really have no glue. You are just talking from a script. IMHO, silent awareness seems refer to 'praatibha' and the other five divine, intuitional senses (shraavaNa, etc; YS III 37), that according to III 38 are obstacles to samaadhi (te samaadhaav upasargaaH...). An interesting take. One thing that I'll mention is that the research on pure consciousness shows that people's brains have returned to a more normal mode of functioning by the time they actually notice PC. In a very real sense, PC cannot be held onto or indulged in or even enjoyed. By the time you notice it, it's been gone for quite a while, relatively speaking. L I think most upaniSat-s compare turiiya (caturtha) to deep sleep. Even viveka-cuuDaamaNi (lots of stuff about deep sleep, here's one, perhaps not the best one): Scripture declares that this dualism is Mayacreated and actually nondual in the final analysis. It is experienced for oneself in deep sleep. 405 mAyAmAtramidaM dvaitamadvaitaM paramArthataH . iti brUte shrutiH sAkShAtsuShuptAvanubhUyate .. 405.. (Attemp at sandhi-vigraha: legend -- ; = sandhi aka euphonic combination of sounds eliminated maayaa-maatram idam; dvaitam: advaitam; parama-arthataH. iti bruute shrutiH saakSaat suSuptau [locative singular from suSupti]; anubhuuyate.)
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
But PC is not awareness OF awareness. PC is just awareness by Itself. BE-ing. L --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, salyavin808 fintlewoodlewix@... wrote: [...] None of this seems remotely right to me. This would mean PC is unconciousness not awareness of awareness itself which is rather nice and the sole (soul) reason I still do TM. Sure I get the back from somewhere awareness too and am happy if it contributes something nice but silent inner wakefulness and knowing about it seems like a better deal. L
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@... wrote: The argument is simply because the presentation, as is, specifically states there is a choice to be made, and that in the proper circumstances, nothing need be done. In fact, as long as there is a choice, there is a chooser, and as long as there is a chooser, the choice should be made. Now, it is sometimes/often/always my experience that simply being aware that I am not thinking the mantra is indeed, in some sense, thinking the mantra, but a choice didn't need to be made in that situation, anyway. Buddhists and other traditions warn of getting trapped in subtle experiences. As presented, and argued, the instruction is to revel in the trap, in the guise of calling it something other than a trap. Another case of sweet poison, which SSRS appears to indulge in a lot, it seems. Recent neurological research seems to indicate that even in waking, choices are made in the brain prior to any conscious awareness that such a thing has happened, as much as seven seconds prior to conscious awareness that 'I made a choice'. This seems to cast doubt on the idea that there is a chooser that is conscious; rather we become aware of it after the fact. Maybe stuff just happens, and there is no chooser, and we have a false idea that 'I' did it. L --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartaxius@ wrote: I think this argument here may be because we have assigned a term to a particular experience and view that as an entity, as if it were an object. When we are awake we are conscious, even if we cannot define what consciousness is. The experience called TC is also consciousness, but it is not a separate entity. TM is kind of like an analytical reductionist state, where ever-present consciousness is separated out experientially, as it were, from normal activity. In waking the mind is active and the reflection of that in consciousness is active. When in TC, the mind is still, the reflection of that is still, no activity, no intellection, no ability to define. It is consciousness experiencing an undefined value; activity, consciousness in a defined value. So in a sense consciousness is never really 'pure' as a separate thing, it is just the means to grasp wider experience by creating a temporary artificial state. Consciousness is not something elsewhere, it is always here. To get people to meditate, one tells them a fib, that there is this better thing one can experience because if you tell them they already have consciousness in full measure, they won't be able to conceive that is true until they have a wider range of experience. Take salt. A transparent crystal. We can find out more about salt by chemically breaking it down and putting it back together. We can break it into a yellow-greenish gas and a bright silvery metal. But the wholeness of salt is gone in this state, until we chemically put the two components back together. This analogy breaks down, because chlorine and sodium are entities, while consciousness is not. Being contains active and non active but we can't tell which is which until we experience clearly what truly deep inactivity is, when all possible activity is gone commensurate with wakefulness. The ultimate object of meditation is not to experience TC indefinitely, it is to experience how all the possible states fit together as one unified block where everything has the same level of 'purity'. The purpose of meditation and activity is to separate, and then put it all back together repeatedly until we get the significance of what 'together' is. In CC for example, you cannot grasp what 'together' is, you cannot imagine it. You can imagine something, but you cannot imagine it correctly. You know what activity is, and you know what deep silence is, but they are still separate. When they come together, in fact, you still cannot imagine it, but you know. But how to say it, you are mute. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@ wrote: I'll put it differently: if there is a choice, there is also a chooser. L. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@ wrote: You're sure about this, are you... L --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, iranitea no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@ wrote: And again: noticing something, however subtle, even the first glimmering of awareness of awareness, is no longer pure consciousness. Lawson, not trying to be arrogant here, but the states Empty and I are talking about, you simply don't know. You really have no glue. You are just talking from a script. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, iranitea
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
Dr. Michael Shermer replies to Harris (and the recent reseach on choices) in his Sci Am article Free Won't. The experimentation isn't as simple as a neurological blip, then choice made a few second later. First, as to the blip indicating a choice, even more recent reseach indicates the first choice can be negated through the power of Won't...and so on; with multiple blips and choices popping up. The net result is more like an evolutionary tree of neurological indicators or blips and choices, with a final choice if forced. The basic pattern of choices then; turns out to be unpredictable but probabilistic, reminding us of Feynman's sum over histories outcome of quantum particles. The final outcome or choice of the particle is a sum over histories of possible outcomes in a multiverse of choices. ... Shermer doesn't refute the Harris determinism theme though. He mainly brings up new reseach showing that the outcome of choices presented is a highly complex affair; as we would say karma is unfathomable. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartaxius@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@ wrote: The argument is simply because the presentation, as is, specifically states there is a choice to be made, and that in the proper circumstances, nothing need be done. In fact, as long as there is a choice, there is a chooser, and as long as there is a chooser, the choice should be made. Now, it is sometimes/often/always my experience that simply being aware that I am not thinking the mantra is indeed, in some sense, thinking the mantra, but a choice didn't need to be made in that situation, anyway. Buddhists and other traditions warn of getting trapped in subtle experiences. As presented, and argued, the instruction is to revel in the trap, in the guise of calling it something other than a trap. Another case of sweet poison, which SSRS appears to indulge in a lot, it seems. Recent neurological research seems to indicate that even in waking, choices are made in the brain prior to any conscious awareness that such a thing has happened, as much as seven seconds prior to conscious awareness that 'I made a choice'. This seems to cast doubt on the idea that there is a chooser that is conscious; rather we become aware of it after the fact. Maybe stuff just happens, and there is no chooser, and we have a false idea that 'I' did it. L --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartaxius@ wrote: I think this argument here may be because we have assigned a term to a particular experience and view that as an entity, as if it were an object. When we are awake we are conscious, even if we cannot define what consciousness is. The experience called TC is also consciousness, but it is not a separate entity. TM is kind of like an analytical reductionist state, where ever-present consciousness is separated out experientially, as it were, from normal activity. In waking the mind is active and the reflection of that in consciousness is active. When in TC, the mind is still, the reflection of that is still, no activity, no intellection, no ability to define. It is consciousness experiencing an undefined value; activity, consciousness in a defined value. So in a sense consciousness is never really 'pure' as a separate thing, it is just the means to grasp wider experience by creating a temporary artificial state. Consciousness is not something elsewhere, it is always here. To get people to meditate, one tells them a fib, that there is this better thing one can experience because if you tell them they already have consciousness in full measure, they won't be able to conceive that is true until they have a wider range of experience. Take salt. A transparent crystal. We can find out more about salt by chemically breaking it down and putting it back together. We can break it into a yellow-greenish gas and a bright silvery metal. But the wholeness of salt is gone in this state, until we chemically put the two components back together. This analogy breaks down, because chlorine and sodium are entities, while consciousness is not. Being contains active and non active but we can't tell which is which until we experience clearly what truly deep inactivity is, when all possible activity is gone commensurate with wakefulness. The ultimate object of meditation is not to experience TC indefinitely, it is to experience how all the possible states fit together as one unified block where everything has the same level of 'purity'. The purpose of meditation and activity is to separate, and then put it all back together repeatedly until we get the significance of what 'together' is. In CC for example, you cannot grasp what
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
One of the first signs of the progressive development of CC is the simultaneous presence of pure awareness together with either the mantra or thought(s). You are not accounting for this development but are treating pure consciousness only in the exclusionary terms of TC. MMY never treated CC as a sudden appearance but rather as a gradual refinement and clarification of the gross and subtle values of the nervous system. MMY emphasized that Pure Awareness/Pure Consciousness is always present because it is the who in who-we-are. He always pointed to this as the reason anyone might transcend spontaneously during ordinary human experience and that, in fact, such had happened many times in documented human history. Shankara, for his part, pointed out that the sakshi/witness is what we are and can never be generated by any yoga, quality of knowing or any activity. Lawson sez: Buddhists and other traditions warn of getting trapped in subtle experiences. As presented, and argued, the instruction is to revel in the trap, in the guise of calling it something other than a trap. Another case of sweet poison, which SSRS appears to indulge in a lot, it seems. To bad you need to make such claims. You are so poorly informed about other meditative traditions that you believe you can include them as a misfit proof of your assertions. When you make a claim such as the one above you demonstrate that you are a clueless TM ideologue. Robin gets a pass because when he generalizes about The East everyone here knows he has no clue about these traditions. You, however, present yourself as if you understood them when you so obviously do not. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@... wrote: The argument is simply because the presentation, as is, specifically states there is a choice to be made, and that in the proper circumstances, nothing need be done. In fact, as long as there is a choice, there is a chooser, and as long as there is a chooser, the choice should be made. Now, it is sometimes/often/always my experience that simply being aware that I am not thinking the mantra is indeed, in some sense, thinking the mantra, but a choice didn't need to be made in that situation, anyway. Buddhists and other traditions warn of getting trapped in subtle experiences. As presented, and argued, the instruction is to revel in the trap, in the guise of calling it something other than a trap. Another case of sweet poison, which SSRS appears to indulge in a lot, it seems. L --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartaxius@ wrote: I think this argument here may be because we have assigned a term to a particular experience and view that as an entity, as if it were an object. When we are awake we are conscious, even if we cannot define what consciousness is. The experience called TC is also consciousness, but it is not a separate entity. TM is kind of like an analytical reductionist state, where ever-present consciousness is separated out experientially, as it were, from normal activity. In waking the mind is active and the reflection of that in consciousness is active. When in TC, the mind is still, the reflection of that is still, no activity, no intellection, no ability to define. It is consciousness experiencing an undefined value; activity, consciousness in a defined value. So in a sense consciousness is never really 'pure' as a separate thing, it is just the means to grasp wider experience by creating a temporary artificial state. Consciousness is not something elsewhere, it is always here. To get people to meditate, one tells them a fib, that there is this better thing one can experience because if you tell them they already have consciousness in full measure, they won't be able to conceive that is true until they have a wider range of experience. Take salt. A transparent crystal. We can find out more about salt by chemically breaking it down and putting it back together. We can break it into a yellow-greenish gas and a bright silvery metal. But the wholeness of salt is gone in this state, until we chemically put the two components back together. This analogy breaks down, because chlorine and sodium are entities, while consciousness is not. Being contains active and non active but we can't tell which is which until we experience clearly what truly deep inactivity is, when all possible activity is gone commensurate with wakefulness. The ultimate object of meditation is not to experience TC indefinitely, it is to experience how all the possible states fit together as one unified block where everything has the same level of 'purity'. The purpose of meditation and activity is to separate, and then put it all back together repeatedly until we get the significance of what 'together' is. In CC for example, you cannot grasp what 'together' is, you cannot imagine it. You can imagine something, but you cannot imagine it correctly. You know what activity is,
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartaxius@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@ wrote: The argument is simply because the presentation, as is, specifically states there is a choice to be made, and that in the proper circumstances, nothing need be done. In fact, as long as there is a choice, there is a chooser, and as long as there is a chooser, the choice should be made. Now, it is sometimes/often/always my experience that simply being aware that I am not thinking the mantra is indeed, in some sense, thinking the mantra, but a choice didn't need to be made in that situation, anyway. Buddhists and other traditions warn of getting trapped in subtle experiences. As presented, and argued, the instruction is to revel in the trap, in the guise of calling it something other than a trap. Another case of sweet poison, which SSRS appears to indulge in a lot, it seems. Recent neurological research seems to indicate that even in waking, choices are made in the brain prior to any conscious awareness that such a thing has happened, as much as seven seconds prior to conscious awareness that 'I made a choice'. This seems to cast doubt on the idea that there is a chooser that is conscious; rather we become aware of it after the fact. Maybe stuff just happens, and there is no chooser, and we have a false idea that 'I' did it. No doubt, this is true at some level, but in the context of the fictitious I that delusionally holds that it is the author of actions, to paraphrase Lord Krishna, if that I can note that the mantra is not being thought, then that is the time to reintroduce the mantra and NOT enjoy some afterglow of transcendental consciousness, which is really, from what I can tell, just a very quiet experience of CC, and not a full-blown one either, if there is still decision-making going on. L
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
Many words, none of which address my point. L --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, emptybill emptybill@... wrote: One of the first signs of the progressive development of CC is the simultaneous presence of pure awareness together with either the mantra or thought(s). You are not accounting for this development but are treating pure consciousness only in the exclusionary terms of TC. MMY never treated CC as a sudden appearance but rather as a gradual refinement and clarification of the gross and subtle values of the nervous system. MMY emphasized that Pure Awareness/Pure Consciousness is always present because it is the who in who-we-are. He always pointed to this as the reason anyone might transcend spontaneously during ordinary human experience and that, in fact, such had happened many times in documented human history. Shankara, for his part, pointed out that the sakshi/witness is what we are and can never be generated by any yoga, quality of knowing or any activity. Lawson sez: Buddhists and other traditions warn of getting trapped in subtle experiences. As presented, and argued, the instruction is to revel in the trap, in the guise of calling it something other than a trap. Another case of sweet poison, which SSRS appears to indulge in a lot, it seems. To bad you need to make such claims. You are so poorly informed about other meditative traditions that you believe you can include them as a misfit proof of your assertions. When you make a claim such as the one above you demonstrate that you are a clueless TM ideologue. Robin gets a pass because when he generalizes about The East everyone here knows he has no clue about these traditions. You, however, present yourself as if you understood them when you so obviously do not. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@ wrote: The argument is simply because the presentation, as is, specifically states there is a choice to be made, and that in the proper circumstances, nothing need be done. In fact, as long as there is a choice, there is a chooser, and as long as there is a chooser, the choice should be made. Now, it is sometimes/often/always my experience that simply being aware that I am not thinking the mantra is indeed, in some sense, thinking the mantra, but a choice didn't need to be made in that situation, anyway. Buddhists and other traditions warn of getting trapped in subtle experiences. As presented, and argued, the instruction is to revel in the trap, in the guise of calling it something other than a trap. Another case of sweet poison, which SSRS appears to indulge in a lot, it seems. L --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartaxius@ wrote: I think this argument here may be because we have assigned a term to a particular experience and view that as an entity, as if it were an object. When we are awake we are conscious, even if we cannot define what consciousness is. The experience called TC is also consciousness, but it is not a separate entity. TM is kind of like an analytical reductionist state, where ever-present consciousness is separated out experientially, as it were, from normal activity. In waking the mind is active and the reflection of that in consciousness is active. When in TC, the mind is still, the reflection of that is still, no activity, no intellection, no ability to define. It is consciousness experiencing an undefined value; activity, consciousness in a defined value. So in a sense consciousness is never really 'pure' as a separate thing, it is just the means to grasp wider experience by creating a temporary artificial state. Consciousness is not something elsewhere, it is always here. To get people to meditate, one tells them a fib, that there is this better thing one can experience because if you tell them they already have consciousness in full measure, they won't be able to conceive that is true until they have a wider range of experience. Take salt. A transparent crystal. We can find out more about salt by chemically breaking it down and putting it back together. We can break it into a yellow-greenish gas and a bright silvery metal. But the wholeness of salt is gone in this state, until we chemically put the two components back together. This analogy breaks down, because chlorine and sodium are entities, while consciousness is not. Being contains active and non active but we can't tell which is which until we experience clearly what truly deep inactivity is, when all possible activity is gone commensurate with wakefulness. The ultimate object of meditation is not to experience TC indefinitely, it is to experience how all the possible states fit together as one unified block where everything has the same level of 'purity'. The purpose of meditation and activity is to separate, and then put it all back together repeatedly until we
[FairfieldLife] Re: SSRS's instruction on silent awareness during meditation
And this is where SSRS and I disagree. Recognizing ANYTHING is a form of thought. That is, by definition, the very first act of the intellect: the universal conscious notes that it exists. Likewise, it can be the very first act of our own internal equivalent: we note that we exist -that we have pure consciousness. But since we have noting, we have the ability to decide as well. And.. the realization that you are not thinking the mantra can also BE the mantra anyway. Avoiding the thinking of pink elephants, or recognizing that you are not thinking about pink elephants, is still thinking about pink elephants. L --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, emptybill emptybill@... wrote: Lawson. You do not seem to understand SSRS's instructions about meditation with a mantra. Is this because you have never heard those instructions? SSRS pointed out that a meditator does not need to place attention back upon the mantra during meditation just because they become aware they are not thinking the mantra. Recognition of not thinking the mantra does not itself constitute a requirement to think the mantra. Likewise, the realization of not thinking the mantra does not, in itself, constitute a form of thinking. The reason is simple. The nature of awareness is witnessing (sakshi-j�ana). This is pure Vedanta. When the field of experience subsides with the ceasing (nirodha) of every external or internal experience, including the termination of I-consciousness (aham-pratyaya), what remains is the awareness that is naturally present as the inner self (pratyag-atman). Awareness is a seer (drista). It is not the cognizer of a cognitive activity (pramata). It is not a knower (j�aatri), a doer (kartri) or an enjoyer (bhoktri) but rather is knowingness itself. The seer is the witness-consciousness (sakshin) which witnesses the ending of all forms of experience during meditation and simply remains as is, uninvolved and prior to all experience. SSRS's instruction is founded upon this realization and is the pointing-out instruction which allows meditators to remain as they truly are. They remain, during this period of silent awareness, as sheer seeing (dristi-matrataa) until cognitive, affective or sensory activity causes limited identification once again. Thus recognizing or remembering the mantra occurs as a natural consequence rather than from a demand to think the mantra. \ .. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Buck dhamiltony2k5@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Buck wrote: [...] Though it proly would not work for TM to broadside SSRavi Shankar as his meditation is so like TM; evidently is also 'effortless' though he uses different mantras. Can't pick the same fight over 'effortlessness' that way as with the Buddhists so evidently AOL for as large as it is, is strategically ignored. From what I hear, SSRS has decided that people should not bother returning to the mantra if they find themselves in pure consciousness. That is an important distinction, if correct, and to me, it misses the point of TM: Well, 'pure consciousness' is one of those correct experiences of meditation listed in the TM second nite lecture. Pure consciousness during TM is no more or less correct than falling asleep or having an itch. Sitting activated by transcending in Brahman could be that too. Though yours is an interesting explanation about how some TM'ers can look so spiritually anemic after decades of their mental practice interrupting their silence coming back to the mantra. Possbly explains why folks may have withered away from meditating for lack of cultivated experience. It is an interesting distinction in the sublimity of meditation practice. Of course, constantly coming back to a mantra dovetails for someone disposed with an active mind as in, 'keep on keeping on'. It gives them something to do. It seems some have done that for decades based on instruction. You make a really interesting distinction. So you agree with SSRS on this, i take it. Been checked lately? if you can notice you are not thinking the mantra, you are no longer in PC anyway, so there's no point in enjoying it, as you aren't really there. You're just fooling yourself. Om,and who is fooling who with that description? WHo is not fooling who for that matter? Are you trying to make some point or merely score points? BTW, I know that people like to think that SSRS has taught many millions to meditate, but in fact, the group meditation that he led a few years ago, as far as I can tell, was just a do your own thing. It wasn't that many people practicing what his organization
