[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[sparaig]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jst...@... wrote:

 There's an assumption being made here that isn't
 necessarily correct: that the fact that the TMO
 *does* not produce representatives of
 enlightened TMers means that it *cannot* do so,
 the corollary assumption being that it cannot do
 so because there aren't any.
 
 There are various reasons why the TMO might not
 do so even if it could. It's even possible that
 the TMO *cannot* produce such representatives
 not because there aren't any but for other
 reasons, one of which ed11 has explored in recent
 posts.
 
 Such possibilities tend not to be taken into
 account in the context of making these assumptions
 and drawing from them the conclusion that TM
 doesn't produce enlightenment.
 
 These assumptions and that conclusion may be
 correct, but we don't *know* that for sure, and
 we shouldn't pretend we do. Maybe there are ways
 we could rule out the other possibilities, but
 we can't do that if we don't acknowledge their
 existence.
 
 Granted, the TMO doesn't address the issue
 straightforwardly, and it's most likely
 unrealistic to expect that it ever will. And
 we may never be able to answer the question
 with any degree of certainty. But we ought to
 be able to discuss it in an intellectually
 honest manner.


In fact, the TMO DOES present people showing signs of CC as measured by
self-reports of continuous transcendence + waking/dreaming/sleeping for 
at least a year.

They also present people who show pure consciousness duriong TM of as
much as 50% of the time spent meditating.

Neither of these is sufficient to call them fully in CC, however, and by MMY's
definitions, if you can't show Yogic Flying on demand then you're not in
UC, and the TMO doesn't claim to have anyone nearly there (nor does anyone
else credible --e.g. Benson's investigations of advanced Buddhist monks
introduced to him by the Dali Lama showed no more ability to float than the 
average Yogic Flyer in the TMO).


L..


L.

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[sparaig]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradh...@... wrote:

 
 On Jan 14, 2009, at 11:28 PM, sparaig wrote:
 
  Doesn't sound at all like the Shamatha Project, but instead a gift
  from a friend in the early 70's. Whether it had anything to do with
  his research at that time or not, I have no clue.
 
 
  You seem to fail to understand my point:
 
  I'll make it clear: someone who practices Buddhism, studies Buddhism:
  gives their friends special presents of Buddhist retreats, is  
  consulted with
  on how to phrase questions ABOUT Buddhism when talking to the Dali  
  Lama,
  is hardly someone outside the tradition, regardless of whether or  
  not they
  have a Jewish last name.
 
 
 But someone who studies Buddhism does not necessarily practice Buddha- 
 dharma. Maybe he's lying and they lied about there being no Buddhist  
 researchers on the team, but I've seen no real evidence of that, your  
 posturings aside. It would be hard for someone who has spent years  
 researching advanced yogis not to have some interest in how they got  
 that way. These are extraordinary people we're dealing with. In fact  
 I would hope they did have a good grasp of the subject matter, along  
 with the as many of the numerous techniques and styles of meditation  
 that are out there. Otherwise how could they be an expert in their  
 field?
 
  There are many scholars of Buddhism who have no interest in  
  practicing
  Buddhism, but simply researching it. Quite a few are Christians. No
  surprise here--although some interesting finds I hadn't seen--thanks
  Lawson.
 
 
 
  Are you suggesting this guy isn't a practicing Buddhist, regardless  
  of whether
  or not he goes to Synagogue  (or the Uni-Uni Church for that matter)?
 
 I haven't followed him around or spied on him, but it has been said  
 (in regards to the Shamatha Project specifically) he is not a  
 Buddhist, so I take that to mean he does not practice buddha-dharma.  
 It wouldn't matter so much to me if he did, simply because I believe  
 Dr. Saron has integrity. But I suspect he just has a deep interest  
 based on meeting some truly extraordinary people.


So all TM researchers are full blown TBers that accept all that MMY says
without question, unlike the guys who practice Buddhist meditation, 
study Buddhist thought, are good friends with the Dahli Lama, etc...


They aren't Buddhist because they say so, whereas the TM researchers
are suspect merely because they practice TM or work at MUM...


Lawson

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[TurquoiseB]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues
curtisdeltabl...@... wrote:

 It underlines the point that enlightenment gives you wisdom.  
 The story I was referring to was when Trotaka revealed his 
 enlightenment to the others. Shankara was insisting that they 
 all wait for him [Trotaka] and the others snickered that he 
 didn't understand it anyway. He came in singing his cognized 
? Trotaka stakham sp? verses revealing his complete knowledge. 

Which, coincidentally, just happened to be 
a sappy love song to his teacher, expressing
his total devotion to him. THAT is what Maha-
rishi was trying to put forth as the primary
criterion of enlightenment.

 I memorized them on my TTC, it is a beautiful song. This is 
 from a TTC tape on him.  His wisdom came from his enlightenment 
 and he put all the smartypants guys to shame.  

And his enlightenment came from being slavishly
devoted to his master and willing to do any-
thing that this master said, without a moment's
hesitation. 

Notice the trend here?

 His verses were so perfect that it blew them away with his 
 mental ability gained not through pulling all-nighters, but 
 by his devotion and enlightenment.  

And the lesson being clearly taught here was
that the latter (enlightenment) came from the
former (devotion). Trotaka didn't have to crack
the books to get smart, all he had to do was
do whatever he was told to do by his master.

I'm just reiterating the point I made earlier,
that Maharishi was trying to cultivate that
sense of devotion to one's master that *he*
considered the highest in his students by
telling emotional feel good stories. This
story is NOT about Trotaka's intellect; the
intellect is presented as *secondary*, some-
thing that happened *as the result* of total,
unthinking bhakti. In fact, the development
of the intellect in the other students is 
what is being presented as secondary. They 
are being presented not as happening as Trotaka 
because they were not as sold out to their 
master as he was.

I'm not saying that this theory of enlighten-
ment through devotion is unique, nor am I sug-
gesting that it's not valid for some people,
who are made that way. What I am suggesting
is that Maharishi, by telling this story over
and over and over, was trying to establish it
as *the* path for people who might NOT be
made that way. In my estimation he clearly
saw total, unthinking devotion to one's
master AS the highest path, because *he*
was made that way, and he wanted to remake
all of his students over to be like him. 

I am gracious enough to believe that in the
beginning he did this because he really thought
that *his* path -- the only one he was capable
of because *he* was not a great intellect or 
drawn to any of the other many viable paths to
enlightenment -- was the best path to teach 
others, for their own good. But at the same 
time, I think it is important to remember that 
the master that Maharishi was teaching his 
students the value of being slavishly devoted 
to was HIM.

I believe that on one level Maharishi may have
been trying to convince his students that bhakti
and slavish devotion were good things because
in his opinion they could lead to enlightenment.
But on another, I equally believe that he was
trying to establish that same unthinking devotion
towards HIM in his students that he was talking 
about in Trotaka. 

Forty years later, the unthinking devotion is 
all that remains, with nary an example of it 
having led to enlightenment in sight. (Or at 
least not as recognized by Maharishi or the 
organization he founded.)

Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[Vaj]

On Jan 14, 2009, at 11:28 PM, sparaig wrote:


Doesn't sound at all like the Shamatha Project, but instead a gift
from a friend in the early 70's. Whether it had anything to do with
his research at that time or not, I have no clue.



You seem to fail to understand my point:

I'll make it clear: someone who practices Buddhism, studies Buddhism:
gives their friends special presents of Buddhist retreats, is  
consulted with
on how to phrase questions ABOUT Buddhism when talking to the Dali  
Lama,
is hardly someone outside the tradition, regardless of whether or  
not they

have a Jewish last name.



But someone who studies Buddhism does not necessarily practice Buddha- 
dharma. Maybe he's lying and they lied about there being no Buddhist  
researchers on the team, but I've seen no real evidence of that, your  
posturings aside. It would be hard for someone who has spent years  
researching advanced yogis not to have some interest in how they got  
that way. These are extraordinary people we're dealing with. In fact  
I would hope they did have a good grasp of the subject matter, along  
with the as many of the numerous techniques and styles of meditation  
that are out there. Otherwise how could they be an expert in their  
field?


There are many scholars of Buddhism who have no interest in  
practicing

Buddhism, but simply researching it. Quite a few are Christians. No
surprise here--although some interesting finds I hadn't seen--thanks
Lawson.




Are you suggesting this guy isn't a practicing Buddhist, regardless  
of whether

or not he goes to Synagogue  (or the Uni-Uni Church for that matter)?


I haven't followed him around or spied on him, but it has been said  
(in regards to the Shamatha Project specifically) he is not a  
Buddhist, so I take that to mean he does not practice buddha-dharma.  
It wouldn't matter so much to me if he did, simply because I believe  
Dr. Saron has integrity. But I suspect he just has a deep interest  
based on meeting some truly extraordinary people.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[Vaj]

On Jan 14, 2009, at 8:00 PM, Patrick Gillam wrote:


--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity wrote:


We have no idea as to whether TM
successfully produces enlightenment
or unity consciousness.


Rick says there are dozens of Fairfielders
claiming to be enlightened. Some post here.
All either did TM for years, or still do.


Having only listened to the FF enlightened over the phone or via  
email I thought it would be interesting if there was someone who  
would infiltrate the Wednesday Night Satsang, a weekly gathering of  
the enlightened you refer to. So I had a friend with deep personal  
experience with actual enlightenment and a certain amount of  
realization themselves go to the satsang and observe, gauge and  
report back on their findings based on their own considerable  
experience.


Their conclusion? Some were able to be in the present, that is some  
of them had gained some basic awareness. That's all. Otherwise they  
were superficially compassionate but seemingly nice people, but  
largely ego-bound. The ability to be 'in the present' was then  
combined with language popular among Neoadvaita teachers and of  
course, self-fulfilling prophecies of what MMY talked about. The  
person was little impressed. There was a lot of one upmanship, my  
enlightenment trumps your enlightenment going on. Much unsolicited  
advice from well-meaning enlightened. Negative emotions were really  
no different from the rank and file. Vindictiveness was sometimes  
present.


Personally I was impressed with one gentleman, owner of a successful  
local business, but his realization stemmed from his childhood, i.e.  
a pre-existing condition.

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[TurquoiseB]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradh...@... wrote:

 Having only listened to the FF enlightened over the phone or via  
 email I thought it would be interesting if there was someone who  
 would infiltrate the Wednesday Night Satsang, a weekly gathering 
 of the enlightened you refer to. So I had a friend with deep 
 personal experience with actual enlightenment and a certain amount 
 of realization themselves go to the satsang and observe, gauge and  
 report back on their findings based on their own considerable  
 experience.
 
 Their conclusion? Some were able to be in the present, that is 
 some of them had gained some basic awareness. That's all. Otherwise
 they were superficially compassionate but seemingly nice people, 
 but largely ego-bound. The ability to be 'in the present' was then  
 combined with language popular among Neoadvaita teachers and of  
 course, self-fulfilling prophecies of what MMY talked about. The  
 person was little impressed. There was a lot of one upmanship, 
 my enlightenment trumps your enlightenment going on. Much 
 unsolicited advice from well-meaning enlightened. Negative 
 emotions were really no different from the rank and file. 
 Vindictiveness was sometimes present.

Vaj, I'm not going to get sucked into the game
of analyzing a group of people I've never met
and judging their claimed enlightenment. But I
will provide another story to show that this
What some people consider enlightenment may not 
be what other people consider enlightenment
thang is NOT limited to the TM movement.

On another forum, someone who had once studied
with the Rama guy talked about his experiences
studying for a short time with one of Rama's 
former students, who is now marketing himself
as fully enlightened.

What he described was someone who had mastered
the same emanating golden light minor siddhi
that Rama had, and who could broadcast enough
(in his opinion) minor shakti to give people
sitting in the same room with him a buzz.

But how did this person run his organization, 
and present himself and his teachings to the
public? *Exactly* the same way that Rama did.
That is: 

* He requires absolute obedience from all of 
his accepted students, and throws them out if 
they ever fail to do what he tells them to do.

* He has a sizeable security team to protect
him from perceived threats and personal attacks.
( This is a teacher so minor that his follow-
ing consists of a few dozen students and that no
one has ever heard of. Who is going to be threat-
ening him or wishing him harm? At least Rama had
actually received a real death threat once. :-)

* *Just like his mentor*, this guy suggests that
all of his students be celibate, but with the
exception that all of the women students are 
expected to sleep with him if he wants them to.

And yet, a few dozen people have actually accepted
this guy as enlightened, for no other reason 
than that he can produce a little flashy golden
light and they feel a buzz when they meditate 
with him. 

I'm presenting this as an example of how standards
vary greatly when it comes to judging enlightenment
and whether someone has realized it. I think that
we see these different standards on this forum.

Some, like yourself, have fairly high standards 
based on what you have been taught and what you have
chosen to believe. Others have fairly low standards,
and tend to believe that someone is enlightened if
they merely claim it. 

Again, what this all comes back to for me is the
situation created by an organization that refuses
to ever certify enlightenment, and allows it to
remain a kind of hazily-defined, ever-changing 
myth, and never names anyone who has realized the
mythic state. 

Yes, there are problems related to certification,
but in my opinion there are far more problems that
arise when an organization refuses to point to
concrete *examples* of enlightenment. What tends
to happen is that seekers within these traditions,
having never seen anyone be acknowledged as having 
realized enlightenment, tend to project their hope 
that enlightenment really exists onto anyone who 
has a good story to tell. 

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[nablusoss1008]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues 
curtisdeltabl...@... wrote:


 I agree that King Tony is intelligent enough in a true believer sort
 of way.  I just don't believe that the highest state of human
 development and Tony should be used in the same sentence. 


I often find it fascinating that someone declares someone to be or not 
be enlightened.
When it comes from a hillbilly like curtis it goes beyond; it becomes 
hilarious.

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[cardemaister]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradh...@... wrote:

 
200%  
 of life, not just 100%. So it's quite silly to argue that Trotaka  
 remained some dumbkoff 

http://www.koff.net/index.html   ;D

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[curtisdeltablues]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_re...@... wrote:

 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues
 curtisdeltablues@ wrote:
 
  It underlines the point that enlightenment gives you wisdom.  
  The story I was referring to was when Trotaka revealed his 
  enlightenment to the others. Shankara was insisting that they 
  all wait for him [Trotaka] and the others snickered that he 
  didn't understand it anyway. He came in singing his cognized 
 ? Trotaka stakham sp? verses revealing his complete knowledge. 
 
 Which, coincidentally, just happened to be 
 a sappy love song to his teacher, expressing
 his total devotion to him. THAT is what Maha-
 rishi was trying to put forth as the primary
 criterion of enlightenment.
 
  I memorized them on my TTC, it is a beautiful song. This is 
  from a TTC tape on him.  His wisdom came from his enlightenment 
  and he put all the smartypants guys to shame.  
 
 And his enlightenment came from being slavishly
 devoted to his master and willing to do any-
 thing that this master said, without a moment's
 hesitation. 
 
 Notice the trend here?
 
  His verses were so perfect that it blew them away with his 
  mental ability gained not through pulling all-nighters, but 
  by his devotion and enlightenment.  
 
 And the lesson being clearly taught here was
 that the latter (enlightenment) came from the
 former (devotion). Trotaka didn't have to crack
 the books to get smart, all he had to do was
 do whatever he was told to do by his master.
 
 I'm just reiterating the point I made earlier,
 that Maharishi was trying to cultivate that
 sense of devotion to one's master that *he*
 considered the highest in his students by
 telling emotional feel good stories. This
 story is NOT about Trotaka's intellect; the
 intellect is presented as *secondary*, some-
 thing that happened *as the result* of total,
 unthinking bhakti. 

Nailed and nailed!



In fact, the development
 of the intellect in the other students is 
 what is being presented as secondary. They 
 are being presented not as happening as Trotaka 
 because they were not as sold out to their 
 master as he was.
 
 I'm not saying that this theory of enlighten-
 ment through devotion is unique, nor am I sug-
 gesting that it's not valid for some people,
 who are made that way. What I am suggesting
 is that Maharishi, by telling this story over
 and over and over, was trying to establish it
 as *the* path for people who might NOT be
 made that way. In my estimation he clearly
 saw total, unthinking devotion to one's
 master AS the highest path, because *he*
 was made that way, and he wanted to remake
 all of his students over to be like him. 
 
 I am gracious enough to believe that in the
 beginning he did this because he really thought
 that *his* path -- the only one he was capable
 of because *he* was not a great intellect or 
 drawn to any of the other many viable paths to
 enlightenment -- was the best path to teach 
 others, for their own good. But at the same 
 time, I think it is important to remember that 
 the master that Maharishi was teaching his 
 students the value of being slavishly devoted 
 to was HIM.
 
 I believe that on one level Maharishi may have
 been trying to convince his students that bhakti
 and slavish devotion were good things because
 in his opinion they could lead to enlightenment.
 But on another, I equally believe that he was
 trying to establish that same unthinking devotion
 towards HIM in his students that he was talking 
 about in Trotaka. 
 
 Forty years later, the unthinking devotion is 
 all that remains, with nary an example of it 
 having led to enlightenment in sight. (Or at 
 least not as recognized by Maharishi or the 
 organization he founded.)

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[curtisdeltablues]

 I often find it fascinating that someone declares someone to be or
not  be enlightened.
 When it comes from a hillbilly like curtis it goes beyond; it
becomes  hilarious.

I was knocking a few back the other night with my main dog Maitreya
and your name came up Nabbie.  He refers to you as the priggish old
Euro with American envy, anywhooo, he was laughing his ass off over
all the stuff he has gotten you to believe about himself through the
years with his Benji Creme pranks.  Apparently they sit around all
night knocking back 10 year old Port wine and Stilton cheese and high
five-ing about what they are going to get you to swallow next.  He got
so tipsy telling the stories that he tried to get his old pal Mahesh
on the phone at one point (who he used to trade Nabbie gullibility
stories with) until I reminded him that he was dead.  Then he got all
sappy over how funny it was when good ol' Mahesh got you to believe
you were flying while bouncing on your butt. (He does the most
hilarious imitation of you flying BTW, think a seated Michael Jackson
with epilepsy.) 

After the bartender got tired of wiping the bar after Maitreya kept
shooting his Scottish  Newcastle beer through his nose laughing at
your ability to believe anything we were asked to hit the road  Me
back to my crib and Maitreya with a waitress just getting off duty.  I
heard him lay his rap on her as they headed out the door:I'm the Lord
of the earth see baby, and someday I'll hold a press conference with
the whole world and I'll give you a country of your own... which one
would you like baby, cuz you're so fine...



--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, nablusoss1008 no_re...@... wrote:

 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues 
 curtisdeltablues@ wrote:
 
 
  I agree that King Tony is intelligent enough in a true believer sort
  of way.  I just don't believe that the highest state of human
  development and Tony should be used in the same sentence. 
 
 
 I often find it fascinating that someone declares someone to be or not 
 be enlightened.
 When it comes from a hillbilly like curtis it goes beyond; it becomes 
 hilarious.

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[grate . swan]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradh...@... wrote:

 

 
 Their conclusion? Some were able to be in the present, that is some  
 of them had gained some basic awareness. That's all. Otherwise they  
 were superficially compassionate but seemingly nice people, but  
 largely ego-bound. The ability to be 'in the present' was then  
 combined with language popular among Neoadvaita teachers and of  
 course, self-fulfilling prophecies of what MMY talked about. The  
 person was little impressed. There was a lot of one upmanship, my  
 enlightenment trumps your enlightenment going on.

:)

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[Richard J. Williams]

Curtis wrote:
 I'm reading his two volume biography.

This one? If so, it's really great, I read
them about a year ago. Guralnick really gets
to the source.

'Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley'
by Peter Guralnick
Back Bay Books, 1995
http://tinyurl.com/9ynr39

'Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley'
by Peter Guralnick
Back Bay Books, 2000
http://tinyurl.com/a5u47g

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[nablusoss1008]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues 
curtisdeltabl...@... wrote:

  I often find it fascinating that someone declares someone to be or
 not  be enlightened.
  When it comes from a hillbilly like curtis it goes beyond; it
 becomes  hilarious.
 
 I was knocking a few back the other night with my main dog Maitreya
 and your name came up Nabbie.  He refers to you as the priggish old
 Euro with American envy, anywhooo, he was laughing his ass off over
 all the stuff he has gotten you to believe about himself through the
 years with his Benji Creme pranks.  Apparently they sit around all
 night knocking back 10 year old Port wine and Stilton cheese and 
high
 five-ing about what they are going to get you to swallow next.  He 
got
 so tipsy telling the stories that he tried to get his old pal Mahesh
 on the phone at one point (who he used to trade Nabbie gullibility
 stories with) until I reminded him that he was dead.  Then he got 
all
 sappy over how funny it was when good ol' Mahesh got you to believe
 you were flying while bouncing on your butt. (He does the most
 hilarious imitation of you flying BTW, think a seated Michael 
Jackson
 with epilepsy.) 
 
 After the bartender got tired of wiping the bar after Maitreya kept
 shooting his Scottish  Newcastle beer through his nose laughing at
 your ability to believe anything we were asked to hit the road  Me
 back to my crib and Maitreya with a waitress just getting off 
duty.  I
 heard him lay his rap on her as they headed out the door:I'm the 
Lord
 of the earth see baby, and someday I'll hold a press conference with
 the whole world and I'll give you a country of your own... which one
 would you like baby, cuz you're so fine...

Haha, you are simply hilarious and it's evident why you prefer Elvis 
as King. 

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[TurquoiseB]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity no_re...@... wrote:

 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote:
 
  what thype of rigorous
  requirements would you suggest for studies done
  on homeopathy?
  
  I'm asking out of curiosity because a friend of
  mine is a homeopath, and has clued me in to some
  of the recent attempts to demonize that practice
  in the UK. Their stance, which makes sense to me
  given what I know of the practice, is that con-
  trol groups are an inappropriate form of rigor-
  ous requirement because every patient in home-
  opathy is treated differently, based on their
  own *particular* symptomology. Two patients com-
  plaining of the same primary symptom might be
  treated completely differently given their 
  *other* symptoms. 
 
 
 Not a problem. You can still double blind. Have a group of people
 with the same disorder (maybe migraine headaches). Have homoeopaths
 treat all of them, but some of the homeopaths, randomly assigned, 
 will be dispensing placebos. Let them all see the patients over 
 time so if they want to do some adjusting they can. They just 
 won't have control over what is in the pill bottle.

That's pretty much what I came up with, too.
Thanks. I'm not really pushing homeopathy or
anything, I was just curious.

Still curious, I'm wondering how you ever get
patients to *participate* in studies like this?
Do you pay them? And do you tell them the truth
about the protocols of the study?

It seems to me that if you tell them the truth,
and that only half of them are going to get
real medicine, then they know ahead of time that
they only have a 50% chance of getting relief
from what ails them, so why participate? That's
why I ask whether you pay them.

On the other hand, if you lie to them and suggest
that everyone is getting medicine, aren't you 
setting up your *own* placebo effect?

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[TurquoiseB]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, I am the eternal
l.shad...@... wrote:

 Where are the numbers? In South America, if the initiations we 
 here of are true, and in India, based on what the TMO shows us 
 about TMO money at work in India. Now I remember 20 years or 
 more ago there were these missions to places like Thailand, 
 where one could sponsor a meditator and a Governor for something
 like USD 30 a month.  But that seems to have stopped. So we're 
 left, I truly believe, with 10-50 thousand old time meditators, 
 max.  It's not a pop into enlightenment before you finish the 7 
 step program type of meditation. So I believe that Rick knows 
 people who are quietly enlightened, but I'd imagine they 
 represent a small portion of the 10-50K.
 
 Look at it this way.  We're self-selected special.

That's my whole point -- where are the enlightened?

We are talking, after all, about an organization
that used to promise enlightenment *in its brochures*
in 5-8 years. It's 35-40 years later. Where are all
these enlightened beings? The TMO has failed to point
to even ONE and say, Here is the product we were
advertising.

It seems to me that the argument that they're really
there, just living quietly it specious. To use your
own analogy, it's like the developer of the Segway
raised investment money for 40 years but failed to
ever produce a Segway that actually worked. 

Sure, you'd still have a cadre of TB investors who
still believed in the Segway because they believed in
the charisma and the personality of the promoter, but
there would be nothing that the promoter would be able
to show off to prove that his theories were correct.

THAT is the position I am suggesting that the TMO is
in. Anecdotal stories about people living quietly in
enlightenment and the TMO allowing it to happen because
they are somehow protecting their privacy is specious.
It's on the same level as someone saying, I saw a
Segway run once in a lab, but being unable to prove it.

I'm presenting the Where's the beef? argument. The
TMO has been selling the beef of enlightenment for
40 years, but has failed to produce a single burger
that it can point to and say, THERE is the result of
buying our product. You want fries with yours? 

I have *no problem* with people still having faith and
believing in what they were told originally. That is
understandable, and no different than any other religion.

It's just that I wish they'd be honest and own up to
their faith *being* faith, and nothing else. 

I think that TB TMers have boxed themselves in by
adhering to the We're not a religion party line. If
they could admit that they believe in a religion, they
could admit that they believe what they do based on
faith and nothing more. But they can't do that, because
they can't admit that they're part of a religion. So
they have to come up with all these convoluted argu-
ments and specious claims to justify their belief in
something that even they have never seen. It's an entire
religion based on the ongoing cognitive dissonance of
denying that it's a religion.

Wouldn't it be simpler to just admit to being a faith-
driven person?

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[TurquoiseB]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity no_re...@... wrote:

  all i am left with is suggesting you try TM for awhile, and draw 
  your own conclusions. 
 
 Fair enough.  That is all anyone can do.
 
  the so called conventional wisdom is often just conventional, and 
  not wisdom at all. go out on a limb, you might enjoy the view.
 
 I did and I didn't. 

I'm pretty sure that the argument being proposed
is that there is something wrong with you because
you didn't enjoy the view, Ruth.

And there is something even *more* wrong with you
if you say so in a public forum like this.

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[authfriend]

OK, finishing up on this reply...

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues 
curtisdeltabl...@... wrote:

 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote:
snip
  FWIW, I'm a skeptic on both the personal improvement
  and objective measurement of enlightenment counts.
  I'm not sure personal improvement is an inevitable
  feature of enlightenment, such that lack of same
  can be said to be proof that one is *not* enlightened;
  and I'm highly dubious that any conclusive objective
  proof of enlightenment (including EEG, etc.) is
  possible.
 
 That seems like a position I can relate to.
 The question comes, where do you go for
 information about enlightenment?  If anyone
 takes Maharishi as an expert they have to
 ignore a lot of what he claimed about it to
 reconcile King Tony as the most evolved
 person in the movement with what we have
 experienced from other brilliant people in
 our lives. I haven't gotten more than a true
 believerness from his speeches yet.

Geez, Curtis, that's an awfully sweeping
statement based on *your* personal reaction
to King Tony's speeches. You say anyone,
but *I* sure don't feel I have to ignore a
lot of what MMY claimed on that basis. Just
for one thing, I don't think listening to a
few of Tony's speeches tells you much about
how brilliant he is or isn't, let alone whether
he validates MMY's teaching. Enlightenment
as I understand it doesn't have to do with
brilliance in any case.

snip
  The burden is on the people making the
 claim, not the people saying where's
 the beef?

I think the only person who gets to say,
Where's the beef? is the individual who
isn't satisfied with their own experience.
But by the same token, they don't get to
demand that the people making the claims
prove anything. All they get to say is,
I didn't get no beef.

snip
   I can evaluate how people function and
   I notice when someone is extra smart or
   exceptional in some way.
  
  According to your standards.
 
 How could it be any other way?  But 
 according to Maharishi's own standards
 it has also failed. He set the bar high
 at mastery of sidhis and never retracted
 this objective test for enlightenment.

That was for Unity consciousness. And in
any case, taken with the rest of his 
teaching, performance of siddhis is at
Nature's behest.

  And
 saying that guys like Tony can fly but
 don't choose too is not going to cut it.

Again, it's Nature's choice, not Tony's.

That may not satisfy you, but it could be
that what would satisfy you just isn't what
enlightenment is *about*.

  We've been talking a bit at cross-purposes
  here. You're more interested in the
  question of benefits, but I'm really
  addressing the narrower issue of whether
  one can say TM does or does not produce
  enlightenment as a distinct, permanent
  state. I don't see any way to determine
  that on an objective basis.
 
 Again, you are departing from how Maharishi
 viewed it

I'm departing from what MMY *said* about it.

snip 
 Now outside Maharishi's teaching the concept
 of enlightenment seems more interesting to me.
 What is your personal view of what it would
 mean, if you care to articulate it?

I think half the problem is the attempt to
articulate anything about it other than one's
own experience.

ed11 had a great comment in post #204887:

i am not sure there is any commonality at
all, any intersection at all, between the
things we hear, read, and observe about
enlightened monks and recluses and spiritual
teachers, and how enlightenment plays out
for us average, daily go to work, do the
dishes and laundry, go to the movies, type
of folks. no template.

I suspect that more than we realize, there's
no real template for recluses and spiritual
teachers either. My current thinking is that
the templates are not much more than bait to
draw you onto the path, and from then on it's
a DIY project, as I said to ed11.

My working hypothesis is still that MMY had
the mechanics of the process of development
of consciousness right, but his notions of
what it would look like from the outside
were just hopeful guesses. And from the
inside, you have to *be* enlightened to know
what it looks like.

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[authfriend]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_re...@... wrote:

 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, I am the eternal
 L.Shaddai@ wrote:
 
  Where are the numbers? In South America, if the initiations we 
  here of are true, and in India, based on what the TMO shows us 
  about TMO money at work in India. Now I remember 20 years or 
  more ago there were these missions to places like Thailand, 
  where one could sponsor a meditator and a Governor for something
  like USD 30 a month.  But that seems to have stopped. So we're 
  left, I truly believe, with 10-50 thousand old time meditators, 
  max.  It's not a pop into enlightenment before you finish the 7 
  step program type of meditation. So I believe that Rick knows 
  people who are quietly enlightened, but I'd imagine they 
  represent a small portion of the 10-50K.
  
  Look at it this way.  We're self-selected special.
 
 That's my whole point -- where are the enlightened?
 
 We are talking, after all, about an organization
 that used to promise enlightenment *in its brochures*
 in 5-8 years. It's 35-40 years later. Where are all
 these enlightened beings? The TMO has failed to point
 to even ONE and say, Here is the product we were
 advertising.
 
 It seems to me that the argument that they're really
 there, just living quietly it specious. To use your
 own analogy, it's like the developer of the Segway
 raised investment money for 40 years but failed to
 ever produce a Segway that actually worked. 
 
 Sure, you'd still have a cadre of TB investors who
 still believed in the Segway because they believed in
 the charisma and the personality of the promoter, but
 there would be nothing that the promoter would be able
 to show off to prove that his theories were correct.
 
 THAT is the position I am suggesting that the TMO is
 in. Anecdotal stories about people living quietly in
 enlightenment and the TMO allowing it to happen because
 they are somehow protecting their privacy is specious.

Hmm, I haven't heard any such anecdotal stories,
have you?

snip
 I have *no problem* with people still having faith and
 believing in what they were told originally. That is
 understandable, and no different than any other religion.
 
 It's just that I wish they'd be honest and own up to
 their faith *being* faith, and nothing else.

Barry reminds me of a horse attached to a capstan
that turned a mill or a pump in pre-electricity
days, walking endlessly in a circle. The angle of
view changes depending on where he is in the circle,
but the view itself is limited to what he can see
as he plods around the path, wearing it ever deeper
into the ground. And that view never *evolves*, it
never incorporates any new input; it just repeats
over and over.

One can certainly *make* a religion of what MMY
taught, but it takes a whole lot more (and less)
than having confidence that there is such a thing
as enlightenment and that TM is a particularly
effective way to get you there.

As I pointed out earlier, TM critics like Barry
use the terms faith and religion as pejoratives;
and they apply the terms to anything that isn't
validated by objective proof. There's no middle
ground involving personal experience or reasoned
intellectual analysis. As far as they're concerned,
if there's no objective proof, it's nothing more
than believing what one was told without question.

So limited, so barren.

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[authfriend]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_re...@... wrote:

 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity no_reply@ 
wrote:
 
   all i am left with is suggesting you try TM
   for awhile, and draw  your own conclusions. 
  
  Fair enough.  That is all anyone can do.
  
   the so called conventional wisdom is often just
   conventional, and not wisdom at all. go out on
   a limb, you might enjoy the view.
  
  I did and I didn't. 
 
 I'm pretty sure that the argument being proposed
 is that there is something wrong with you because
 you didn't enjoy the view, Ruth.
 
 And there is something even *more* wrong with you
 if you say so in a public forum like this.

Notice that in Barry's limited view, there's no way
ed11 can disagree with Ruth without its being taken
as evidence that there's something wrong with *ed11*.

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[enlightened_dawn11]

i have no argument with what Ruth says. she does draw some 
conclusions based on her lack of experience with TM, just as Barry 
does. i don't see anything like the same arrogance and nastiness 
that i see in him, however. and she never trolls like he does.

as to your earlier post about Barry being a horse yoked to a capstan-
 perfect, except he's leading with the other end of the horse-lol

this is why i have referred to him as the disease of FFL- he will 
try to generate conflict at any time, trying to resolve his failed 
spiritual goals with TM and the Maharishi.

he implores, where are all of the enlightened people???, as he 
continues to plod around in circles, watching movies, and doing his 
ineffective meditation. what can you say to someone like that 
except, take off your blinders?

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jst...@... 
wrote:

 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote:
 
  --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity no_reply@ 
 wrote:
  
all i am left with is suggesting you try TM
for awhile, and draw  your own conclusions. 
   
   Fair enough.  That is all anyone can do.
   
the so called conventional wisdom is often just
conventional, and not wisdom at all. go out on
a limb, you might enjoy the view.
   
   I did and I didn't. 
  
  I'm pretty sure that the argument being proposed
  is that there is something wrong with you because
  you didn't enjoy the view, Ruth.
  
  And there is something even *more* wrong with you
  if you say so in a public forum like this.
 
 Notice that in Barry's limited view, there's no way
 ed11 can disagree with Ruth without its being taken
 as evidence that there's something wrong with *ed11*.

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[ruthsimplicity]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_re...@... wrote:

 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity no_reply@ wrote:
 
  --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote:
  
   what thype of rigorous
   requirements would you suggest for studies done
   on homeopathy?
   
   I'm asking out of curiosity because a friend of
   mine is a homeopath, and has clued me in to some
   of the recent attempts to demonize that practice
   in the UK. Their stance, which makes sense to me
   given what I know of the practice, is that con-
   trol groups are an inappropriate form of rigor-
   ous requirement because every patient in home-
   opathy is treated differently, based on their
   own *particular* symptomology. Two patients com-
   plaining of the same primary symptom might be
   treated completely differently given their 
   *other* symptoms. 
  
  
  Not a problem. You can still double blind. Have a group of people
  with the same disorder (maybe migraine headaches). Have homoeopaths
  treat all of them, but some of the homeopaths, randomly assigned, 
  will be dispensing placebos. Let them all see the patients over 
  time so if they want to do some adjusting they can. They just 
  won't have control over what is in the pill bottle.
 
 That's pretty much what I came up with, too.
 Thanks. I'm not really pushing homeopathy or
 anything, I was just curious.
 
 Still curious, I'm wondering how you ever get
 patients to *participate* in studies like this?
 Do you pay them? And do you tell them the truth
 about the protocols of the study?
 
 It seems to me that if you tell them the truth,
 and that only half of them are going to get
 real medicine, then they know ahead of time that
 they only have a 50% chance of getting relief
 from what ails them, so why participate? That's
 why I ask whether you pay them.
 
 On the other hand, if you lie to them and suggest
 that everyone is getting medicine, aren't you 
 setting up your *own* placebo effect?


People participate for a variety of reasons.  For experimental drugs
for serious illnesses people really try to get on board on the chance
that they might get a helpful treatment. And the treatment (or
non-treatment) is free.  

Sometimes people are paid to participate in research.  College and med
students make a little extra money doing this.  For example, I got
paid once to be a participate in hypothermia research.  Got immersed
nearly naked in a tank of frightfully cold water.  For something like
fifty bucks. :) 

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[enlightened_dawn11]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jst...@... 
wrote:

 OK, finishing up on this reply...
 
 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues 
 curtisdeltablues@ wrote:
 
  --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ 
wrote:
 snip
   FWIW, I'm a skeptic on both the personal improvement
   and objective measurement of enlightenment counts.
   I'm not sure personal improvement is an inevitable
   feature of enlightenment, such that lack of same
   can be said to be proof that one is *not* enlightened;
   and I'm highly dubious that any conclusive objective
   proof of enlightenment (including EEG, etc.) is
   possible.
  
  That seems like a position I can relate to.
  The question comes, where do you go for
  information about enlightenment?  If anyone
  takes Maharishi as an expert they have to
  ignore a lot of what he claimed about it to
  reconcile King Tony as the most evolved
  person in the movement with what we have
  experienced from other brilliant people in
  our lives. I haven't gotten more than a true
  believerness from his speeches yet.
 
 Geez, Curtis, that's an awfully sweeping
 statement based on *your* personal reaction
 to King Tony's speeches. You say anyone,
 but *I* sure don't feel I have to ignore a
 lot of what MMY claimed on that basis. Just
 for one thing, I don't think listening to a
 few of Tony's speeches tells you much about
 how brilliant he is or isn't, let alone whether
 he validates MMY's teaching. Enlightenment
 as I understand it doesn't have to do with
 brilliance in any case.
 
 snip
   The burden is on the people making the
  claim, not the people saying where's
  the beef?
 
 I think the only person who gets to say,
 Where's the beef? is the individual who
 isn't satisfied with their own experience.
 But by the same token, they don't get to
 demand that the people making the claims
 prove anything. All they get to say is,
 I didn't get no beef.
 
 snip
I can evaluate how people function and
I notice when someone is extra smart or
exceptional in some way.
   
   According to your standards.
  
  How could it be any other way?  But 
  according to Maharishi's own standards
  it has also failed. He set the bar high
  at mastery of sidhis and never retracted
  this objective test for enlightenment.
 
 That was for Unity consciousness. And in
 any case, taken with the rest of his 
 teaching, performance of siddhis is at
 Nature's behest.
 
   And
  saying that guys like Tony can fly but
  don't choose too is not going to cut it.
 
 Again, it's Nature's choice, not Tony's.
 
 That may not satisfy you, but it could be
 that what would satisfy you just isn't what
 enlightenment is *about*.
 
   We've been talking a bit at cross-purposes
   here. You're more interested in the
   question of benefits, but I'm really
   addressing the narrower issue of whether
   one can say TM does or does not produce
   enlightenment as a distinct, permanent
   state. I don't see any way to determine
   that on an objective basis.
  
  Again, you are departing from how Maharishi
  viewed it
 
 I'm departing from what MMY *said* about it.
 
 snip 
  Now outside Maharishi's teaching the concept
  of enlightenment seems more interesting to me.
  What is your personal view of what it would
  mean, if you care to articulate it?
 
 I think half the problem is the attempt to
 articulate anything about it other than one's
 own experience.
 
 ed11 had a great comment in post #204887:
 
 i am not sure there is any commonality at
 all, any intersection at all, between the
 things we hear, read, and observe about
 enlightened monks and recluses and spiritual
 teachers, and how enlightenment plays out
 for us average, daily go to work, do the
 dishes and laundry, go to the movies, type
 of folks. no template.
 
 I suspect that more than we realize, there's
 no real template for recluses and spiritual
 teachers either. My current thinking is that
 the templates are not much more than bait to
 draw you onto the path, and from then on it's
 a DIY project, as I said to ed11.
 
 My working hypothesis is still that MMY had
 the mechanics of the process of development
 of consciousness right, but his notions of
 what it would look like from the outside
 were just hopeful guesses. And from the
 inside, you have to *be* enlightened to know
 what it looks like.

i completely agree. enlightenment has so much to do with silence and 
how it moves that to try and generalize or draw conclusions solely 
from outward activity will get you in the same trouble as the major 
(failed) religions face-- superficial activity, and codified actions 
have nothing to do with enlightenment.

damn, this is probably 50 for me this week...so i'll just do a shout 
out to lurkernomore2000 and say that he is consistently the funniest 
poster on here, bar none. humor as dry as a martini, and just as 
intoxicating.

and i sure hope shaddai's predictions for the TMO happen-- that they 
become an 

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[sparaig]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_re...@... wrote:

 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, I am the eternal
 L.Shaddai@ wrote:
 
  Where are the numbers? In South America, if the initiations we 
  here of are true, and in India, based on what the TMO shows us 
  about TMO money at work in India. Now I remember 20 years or 
  more ago there were these missions to places like Thailand, 
  where one could sponsor a meditator and a Governor for something
  like USD 30 a month.  But that seems to have stopped. So we're 
  left, I truly believe, with 10-50 thousand old time meditators, 
  max.  It's not a pop into enlightenment before you finish the 7 
  step program type of meditation. So I believe that Rick knows 
  people who are quietly enlightened, but I'd imagine they 
  represent a small portion of the 10-50K.
  
  Look at it this way.  We're self-selected special.
 
 That's my whole point -- where are the enlightened?
 
 We are talking, after all, about an organization
 that used to promise enlightenment *in its brochures*
 in 5-8 years. It's 35-40 years later. Where are all
 these enlightened beings? The TMO has failed to point
 to even ONE and say, Here is the product we were
 advertising.
 
[...]
 I'm presenting the Where's the beef? argument. The
 TMO has been selling the beef of enlightenment for
 40 years, but has failed to produce a single burger
 that it can point to and say, THERE is the result of
 buying our product. You want fries with yours? 

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL_udi=B6T4T-470V0HV-
1_user=10_rdoc=1_fmt=_orig=search_sort=dview=c_acct=C50221_versi
on=1_urlVersion=0_userid=10md5=aceb1f61bfe6810c76c0c34c8e9a344d

OR

http://preview.tinyurl.com/9aug52

Patterns of EEG coherence, power, and contingent negative variation 
characterize the 
integration of transcendental and waking states


There are others, but this is the one with the complete article available 
online via
 pub med.


Lawson

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[ruthsimplicity]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, enlightened_dawn11
no_re...@... wrote:

 thanks for sharing this. the true state of enlightenment- quite a 
 mouthful. though i think we are talking apples and oranges. although 
 Hsuan Hua appears to be a very evolved person, and probably a nice 
 enough guy, does it really make sense that we should all emulate 
 him, any more than we should all emulate the Maharishi, or Mother 
 Teresa, or pick your saint? 
 
 who knows what the world we live in becomes, and what our world 
 becomes with the injection of enlightenment? none of us comes from a 
 recluse or monk tradition, and so there is no template to determine 
 how we express enlightenment in the everyday world.
 
 everyone has some idea of how enlightened spiritual teachers act, 
 based on the process of observation you describe. but enlightened 
 people living in the world, who don't want to be teachers? no way. 
 no way at all to assess them.
 
 i am not making excuses or trying to justify anything, one way, or 
 the other. just making the point that what works for recluses 
 doesn't work for us. 
 
 i am not sure there is any commonality at all, any intersection at 
 all, between the things we hear, read, and observe about enlightened 
 monks and recluses and spiritual teachers, and how enlightenment 
 plays out for us average, daily go to work, do the dishes and 
 laundry, go to the movies, type of folks. no template.
 
I think this is interesting and thoughtful, so I mean no disrespect
with my comments.  If we have no idea how enlightenment plays out for
the ordinary person, then why are you meditating?  There must be some
assumptions you make about enlightenment and what it is.  What are
your assumptions?

My next issue is the most problematic.  You comment that we don't know
how enlightenment will play out for average folks.  Others have
commented that we cannot know whether someone like King Tony is
enlightened because we don't know how enlightenment plays out and we
aren't King Tony.  Some have even said that the actions of the
enlightened person may not appear enlightened or even good.  But it
isn't the Nazi version of enlightenment because you do not have to
agree with the enlightened person. 

It comes back to the unseen force of Nature.

The problem with this theory is that it is essentially religious or
faith based.  It is fine if you have faith, but troublesome for those
that don't.  There is nothing really that can be discussed or studied.
 Even history is of limited help because history is rewritten all the
time, especially religious history.   Look at the discussion of the
MMY tapes.

I have no real problem with having faith.  The need for belief in More
is peculiarly human.  It may be because there is More (after all, I
can't prove that there isn't).  It may be be for evolutionary reasons.
 It may be one of many coping mechanisms humans have.  However, let us
not mix up faith with science and use mumbo jumbo to try to convince
others that what has not been proved is proved. Vedic science is not
science. 

There also is nothing wrong with doubt.  I cannot prove King Tony is
not enlightened.  But no one has proved he is. Apparently the flying
thing is a no go and under your theory we don't know how enlightenment
plays out. But I can doubt that KT is enlightened. I can even say that
his writings are kooky pseudo-science.  I can also doubt enlightenment
exists at all.  I can also explore theories about why people have what
others find to be strange beliefs.  

We all have to make decisions in our life.  Accept Jesus Christ as
your lord and savior?  Keep kosher?  Wear a burka?  Go to a scientolgy
meeting?  Do TM?  Give away all your worldly goods to the poor? Lots
of competing ways to live your life.  Some I respect more than others.
I respect action. I value doing doing the best your can and helping
others.  We live in a relative world where people feel real pain and
people can do good things based on knowledge of the facts.

MMY said: Right action came to be regarded as a means to gain
nirvana, whereas right action is in fact the result of this state of
consciousness in freedom.. . The teaching of right action without due
emphasis on the primary necessity of realization of Being is like
building a wall without a foundation. 

I don't accept this.  My faith is that doing good is good. It is a
primary necessity.  This primary theoretical difference is where I
part from MMY and from many religions.

 


  

   





  

Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[Vaj]

On Jan 14, 2009, at 1:02 PM, sparaig wrote:

Patterns of EEG coherence, power, and contingent negative  
variation characterize the

integration of transcendental and waking states


There are others, but this is the one with the complete article  
available online via

 pub med.



As far as I am aware there is no standard neurological definition of  
transcendental consciousness, so they made up their own definition.  
It's self-defined--and therefore quite meaningless--beyond TB's and  
people who buy the marketing spiel.


This is probably why the Cambridge Handbook of Neuroscience  
considered it a problem to make a claim about the ultimate meaning  
or nature of
the state attained. It doesn't really tell you anything other than  
'we're claiming this is significant because it's transcendental  
consciousness becasue we say it is'.  As the Cambridge Handbook  
comments: Thus, from the vantagepoint of the researcher who stands  
outside the tradition, it is crucial to separate the highly detailed  
and verifiable aspects of traditional knowledge about meditation from  
the transcendental claims that form the metaphysical or theological  
context of that knowledge. It's not enough to say here is nirvana  
or here is witnessing. And it certainly demonstrates nothing  
outside of EEG correlates seen in the normal EEG's of waking,  
dreaming or sleeping humans. This is why neuroscientists are by and  
large, underwhelmed by these type of claims.


It's also why the TMO needs to desperately to use high marketing spin  
to mask the ho-hum--or simply bad--science.

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[authfriend]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradh...@... wrote:

 
 On Jan 14, 2009, at 1:02 PM, sparaig wrote:
 
  Patterns of EEG coherence, power, and contingent negative  
  variation characterize the
  integration of transcendental and waking states
 
 
  There are others, but this is the one with the complete article  
  available online via
   pub med.
 
 
 As far as I am aware there is no standard
 neurological definition of transcendental
 consciousness, so they made up their own
 definition. It's self-defined--and therefore
 quite meaningless--beyond TB's and people
 who buy the marketing spiel.

Transcendental experience--the term used in
the abstract of the article--can never be
anything *but* self-defined. The most the
neurological researcher can do is cite
objectively measurable correlates of self-
reports of the experience.

You could pose the same objection to anyone
who came up with a definition of transcendental
consciousness. If there *were* a standard
neurological definition, whoever first posed
it would be subject to the same objection; if
such an objection invalidated the definition,
there would never *be* a standard definition.

The subjects characterize their experience as
transcendental because it seems to match
descriptions of the state called transcendental
in the enlightenment literature. As with dreaming,
there's no way to put the state on the table and
measure it; it will always be subjective. All
that can be measured are physiological and
behavioral correlates.

Here's the abstract (I don't know how to get the
full text--Lawson??):

Long-term meditating subjects report that
transcendental experiences (TE), which first
occurred during their Transcendental Meditation
(TM) practice, now subjectively co-exist with
waking and sleeping states. To investigate
neurophysiological correlates of this integrated
state, we recorded EEG in these subjects and in
two comparison groups during simple and choice
contingent negative variation (CNV) tasks. In
individuals reporting the integration of the
transcendent with waking and sleeping, CNV was
higher in simple but lower in choice trials, and
6-12 Hz EEG amplitude and broadband frontal EEG
coherence were higher during choice trials.
Increased EEG amplitude and coherence,
characteristic of TM practice, appeared to become
a stable EEG trait during CNV tasks in these
subjects. These significant EEG differences may
underlie the inverse patterns in CNV amplitude
seen between groups. An 'Integration Scale,'
constructed from these cortical measures, may
characterize the transformation in brain dynamics
corresponding to increasing integration of the
transcendent with waking and sleeping.

 This is probably why the Cambridge Handbook of
 Neuroscience considered it a problem to make a
 claim about the ultimate meaning or nature of
 the state attained.

Note that no such claims are made in the abstract.
It's clearly stated that the reported experiences
are subjective; all the study does is measure 
external characteristics of subjects who have
reported the experience.

 It doesn't really tell you anything other than  
 'we're claiming this is significant because
 it's transcendental consciousness becasue we
 say it is'.  As the Cambridge Handbook comments:
 Thus, from the vantagepoint of the researcher
 who stands outside the tradition, it is crucial
 to separate the highly detailed  and verifiable
 aspects of traditional knowledge about meditation
 from the transcendental claims that form the
 metaphysical or theological context of that
 knowledge.

Irrelevant, because, again, no such claims are
being made, at least in the abstract of this
article.

You *could* make a reasonable objection by
explaining why you don't think the subjects'
descriptions of the transcendental experience
really do match the descriptions in the
enlightenment literature. But the objection
you posed instead is obviously bogus.

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[TurquoiseB]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity no_re...@... wrote:

 We all have to make decisions in our life.  Accept Jesus Christ 
 as your lord and savior?  Keep kosher?  Wear a burka?  Go to a 
 scientolgy meeting?  Do TM?  Give away all your worldly goods to 
 the poor? Lots of competing ways to live your life.  Some I 
 respect more than others. I respect action. I value doing doing 
 the best your can and helping others. We live in a relative world 
 where people feel real pain and people can do good things based 
 on knowledge of the facts.
 
 MMY said: Right action came to be regarded as a means to gain
 nirvana, whereas right action is in fact the result of this state 
 of consciousness in freedom.. . The teaching of right action 
 without due emphasis on the primary necessity of realization of 
 Being is like building a wall without a foundation. 
 
 I don't accept this.  My faith is that doing good is good. It is 
 a primary necessity.  This primary theoretical difference is 
 where I part from MMY and from many religions.

Actually, Ruth, I doubt that you will find
many religions that agree with Maharishi. His
is a pretty lone voice shouting out in a sea 
of preaching the value of service and good works.

I agree with you 100%. All I have to do to come
to that decision is to look at the lives of those
who believed Maharishi's ideas on this, and see
what they did with their lives and whether they
are happy or not *in* those lives.  

The spiritual traditions I tend to put credence 
in *all* speak of the value of service and good
works, both for the world and for the seeker. 
There is very little in the world of religions
or spiritual practice that can shift your state
of consciousness *more* than doing something for
someone else when you didn't have to. Doing so
really *IS* a technique for shifting one's state
of consciousness to a higher place, and IMO those
who pooh-pooh it and claim it isn't a viable
technique are IMO missing out on one of the most
important tools available to them in the spiritual
warehouse.

If for no other reason, performing service and
good works works to shift your state of atten-
tion because it *takes your mind off of your self*.
Whereas endless rounding and spending money on 
one add on product after another to supposedly
hasten your *own* enlightenment merely serves to
focus you more and more intently on your self. 

There is much in Maharishi's dogma that I think
is valuable. However, there is much that is missing,
and I think the value of selfless service -- *not*
just for your spiritual teacher, but for the world
at large, and for everyday people in your everyday
life, every day -- is the thing that is most missing.

You've probably seen on this forum the absolute
*disdain* that some people seem to have for performing 
good works. That attitude did not magically appear; it 
was carefully cultivated IMO. And I think you need go 
no further than watching the everyday behavior of those 
in whom it *was* cultivated to see what such a belief
system produces. 

I've met quite a few individuals from spiritual trad-
itions whose very practice is *founded* on selfless 
service. They teach that it is far more important to
do good works than to meditate, or at the very least
that the two pretty much *have* to be practiced simul-
taneously. 

And I have to say, in all honesty...no bullshit, no 
slams intended...these were by far the happiest people 
I have ever encountered in the world of spiritual prac-
tice. Whereas, speaking from 40+ years of experience, 
as a general rule, those who focused the most on their 
*own* enlightenment were the unhappiest. 

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[curtisdeltablues]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jst...@... wrote:
snip

Curtis:
  
  That seems like a position I can relate to.
  The question comes, where do you go for
  information about enlightenment?  If anyone
  takes Maharishi as an expert they have to
  ignore a lot of what he claimed about it to
  reconcile King Tony as the most evolved
  person in the movement with what we have
  experienced from other brilliant people in
  our lives. I haven't gotten more than a true
  believerness from his speeches yet.
 
Judy:
 Geez, Curtis, that's an awfully sweeping
 statement based on *your* personal reaction
 to King Tony's speeches. You say anyone,

Agreed.  I can't speak for everyone.  I was ruling out that someone
else might find him exceptional in some way.  There might be someone
who hears him and thinks: this guy is living the full potential of
his creative intelligence. I am inspired by his example to spend hours
developing the state of mind he is functioning from.  But I doubt you
would find such a person outside the small group of people who are
already very involved with the beliefs.  Most of the movement
spokespersons don't come off to the non meditating public as being
mentally advanced.  It is quite the opposite from my experience
listening to journalists describe their experiences with top movement
people.  

 but *I* sure don't feel I have to ignore a
 lot of what MMY claimed on that basis. Just
 for one thing, I don't think listening to a
 few of Tony's speeches tells you much about
 how brilliant he is or isn't,

Here I disagree.  I've heard enough from him to assess that.  A
person's intelligence shows up pretty quickly in their speech for me.
 I get more platitude stringing than evidence of thinking in his
speech and consider that a sign of a very uninteresting mind. 
Remember that the bar is set pretty high, full human potential,
(remember people are using 10% of their brains and now with TM we can
use 100%?)  So he really needs to show up as a pretty unique mind and
for me this would be obvious in hearing him speak pretty quickly.  An
example would be listening to Bill Clinton who I view as being extra
intelligent.  It shows.  

 let alone whether
 he validates MMY's teaching. Enlightenment
 as I understand it doesn't have to do with
 brilliance in any case.

Then this is a personal take on enlightenment.  For Maharishi the full
development of creative intelligence included measurable enhancements
of both.  The claim is so lofty, that this state is the purpose of
human life, that it isn't too much to expect some evidence of it.
Maharishi made the rules of how to judge it so this is all fair.  He
claimed to be able to tell a person's state of consciousness from a
single spoken word.

 
 snip
   The burden is on the people making the
  claim, not the people saying where's
  the beef?
 
 I think the only person who gets to say,
 Where's the beef? is the individual who
 isn't satisfied with their own experience.
 But by the same token, they don't get to
 demand that the people making the claims
 prove anything. All they get to say is,
 I didn't get no beef.

I disagree. The movement is making public claims and among those is
that it is involved in science.  Challenging claims for no evidence is
legitimate.  People can interpret their internal experiences as living
in a state of enlightenment, but the movement's claims include
objectively verifiable aspects of a person.  This is the difference
from say the claim I am saved by Jesus H. Christ.  This claim
doesn't include any outward manifestations.  So it would not be proper
to say prove you are saved, to me.  But if a person is claiming to
be living in a special state of mind that could be said to be the full
potential of human life, I can expect a 16 ounce prime New York Strip,
or I should rightfully conclude that perhaps the person was a bit
deluded about their special mental state.  I am only talking about
Maharishi's definitions.  Once we are out of his system then claims of
enlightenment can be of the I am saved nature and don't have to
display any enhanced mental functioning.

 
 snip
I can evaluate how people function and
I notice when someone is extra smart or
exceptional in some way.
   
   According to your standards.
  
  How could it be any other way?  But 
  according to Maharishi's own standards
  it has also failed. He set the bar high
  at mastery of sidhis and never retracted
  this objective test for enlightenment.
 
 That was for Unity consciousness. And in
 any case, taken with the rest of his 
 teaching, performance of siddhis is at
 Nature's behest.

I can't remember anytime he used this caveat.  When he spoke of the
sidhis when I was in the movement it was in terms of being at will. He
specifically claimed that people in the movement would be flying
through the air.  I never heard him say only if nature wants you to.
 In any case he has had yogic flying demonstrations so it seems
obvious that if anyone 

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[sparaig]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradh...@... wrote:

 
 On Jan 14, 2009, at 1:02 PM, sparaig wrote:
 
  Patterns of EEG coherence, power, and contingent negative  
  variation characterize the
  integration of transcendental and waking states
 
 
  There are others, but this is the one with the complete article  
  available online via
   pub med.
 
 
 As far as I am aware there is no standard neurological definition of  
 transcendental consciousness, so they made up their own definition.  
 It's self-defined--and therefore quite meaningless--beyond TB's and  
 people who buy the marketing spiel.
 
 This is probably why the Cambridge Handbook of Neuroscience  
 considered it a problem to make a claim about the ultimate meaning  
 or nature of
 the state attained. It doesn't really tell you anything other than  
 'we're claiming this is significant because it's transcendental  
 consciousness becasue we say it is'.  As the Cambridge Handbook  
 comments: Thus, from the vantagepoint of the researcher who stands  
 outside the tradition, it is crucial to separate the highly detailed  
 and verifiable aspects of traditional knowledge about meditation from  
 the transcendental claims that form the metaphysical or theological  
 context of that knowledge. It's not enough to say here is nirvana  
 or here is witnessing. And it certainly demonstrates nothing  
 outside of EEG correlates seen in the normal EEG's of waking,  
 dreaming or sleeping humans. This is why neuroscientists are by and  
 large, underwhelmed by these type of claims.
 
 It's also why the TMO needs to desperately to use high marketing spin  
 to mask the ho-hum--or simply bad--science.


Unlike the BUddhist meditation researchers, natch...

Lawson

Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[Vaj]

On Jan 14, 2009, at 2:35 PM, sparaig wrote:


As far as I am aware there is no standard neurological definition of
transcendental consciousness, so they made up their own definition.
It's self-defined--and therefore quite meaningless--beyond TB's and
people who buy the marketing spiel.

This is probably why the Cambridge Handbook of Neuroscience
considered it a problem to make a claim about the ultimate meaning
or nature of
the state attained. It doesn't really tell you anything other than
'we're claiming this is significant because it's transcendental
consciousness becasue we say it is'.  As the Cambridge Handbook
comments: Thus, from the vantagepoint of the researcher who stands
outside the tradition, it is crucial to separate the highly detailed
and verifiable aspects of traditional knowledge about meditation from
the transcendental claims that form the metaphysical or theological
context of that knowledge. It's not enough to say here is nirvana
or here is witnessing. And it certainly demonstrates nothing
outside of EEG correlates seen in the normal EEG's of waking,
dreaming or sleeping humans. This is why neuroscientists are by and
large, underwhelmed by these type of claims.

It's also why the TMO needs to desperately to use high marketing spin
to mask the ho-hum--or simply bad--science.



Unlike the BUddhist meditation researchers, natch...


As far as I am aware there are no Buddhist meditation techniques that  
sell and market their form of meditation using research, either  
legitimate scientific research, pilot research or marketing research.


But there were some earlier pilot studies, not unlike many pilot  
studies, which left something to be desired. I think the difference  
is they've now moved beyond the pilot level stage and towards more  
rigorous research that's bearing fruit. That's why insurers are  
beginning to reimburse for them when used as treatments for  
depression. It may also be why mindfulness-style meditation is/was  
increasing at a logarithmic rate--the research is showing some signs  
of promise, both in terms of meditative mastery and actual health  
benefits. There's also some new and interesting research on Hindu  
kundalini meditation as well as Christian (Benedictine IIRC) meditation.

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[authfriend]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_re...@... wrote:

 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity no_reply@ 
wrote:
snip
  MMY said: Right action came to be regarded as
  a means to gain nirvana, whereas right action
  is in fact the result of this state of
  consciousness in freedom.. . The teaching of
  right action without due emphasis on the primary
  necessity of realization of Being is like
  building a wall without a foundation. 
  
  I don't accept this.  My faith is that doing good
  is good. It is a primary necessity.  This primary
  theoretical difference is where I part from MMY
  and from many religions.
 
 Actually, Ruth, I doubt that you will find
 many religions that agree with Maharishi. His
 is a pretty lone voice shouting out in a sea 
 of preaching the value of service and good works.

Actually, faith vs. works has been a controversy
within Christianity almost from the beginning. Put
faith vs. works into a search engine and see what
you come up with (41,600 hits in Yahoo).

Martin Luther (founder of Protestantism) said
(paraphrased): Good works do not a good person make,
but a good person will do good works (the
implication being that while good works don't make
you good, if you aren't doing good works, you aren't
a good person).

snip
 If for no other reason, performing service and
 good works works to shift your state of atten-
 tion because it *takes your mind off of your self*.

Tricky, though, because it can also foster a sense
of pride in one's selflessness, thus canceling out
that effect.

snip
 You've probably seen on this forum the absolute
 *disdain* that some people seem to have for performing
 good works.

Funny, I haven't seen anyone expressing absolute
*disdain* for good works. I suspect Barry's
fantasizing again.

snip
 I've met quite a few individuals from spiritual trad-
 itions whose very practice is *founded* on selfless
 service. They teach that it is far more important to
 do good works than to meditate, or at the very least
 that the two pretty much *have* to be practiced simul-
 taneously.

And you're sure they were not already well on
their way to enlightenment and doing their
selfless service entirely spontaneously as a
*result* of their development of consciousness?

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[Marek Reavis]

This has been an excellent thread, thanks to both of you.

**

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues 
curtisdeltabl...@... wrote:

 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote:
 snip
 
 Curtis:
   
   That seems like a position I can relate to.
   The question comes, where do you go for
   information about enlightenment?  If anyone
   takes Maharishi as an expert they have to
   ignore a lot of what he claimed about it to
   reconcile King Tony as the most evolved
   person in the movement with what we have
   experienced from other brilliant people in
   our lives. I haven't gotten more than a true
   believerness from his speeches yet.
  
 Judy:
  Geez, Curtis, that's an awfully sweeping
  statement based on *your* personal reaction
  to King Tony's speeches. You say anyone,
 
 Agreed.  I can't speak for everyone.  I was ruling out that someone
 else might find him exceptional in some way.  There might be someone
 who hears him and thinks: this guy is living the full potential of
 his creative intelligence. I am inspired by his example to spend 
hours
 developing the state of mind he is functioning from.  But I doubt 
you
 would find such a person outside the small group of people who are
 already very involved with the beliefs.  Most of the movement
 spokespersons don't come off to the non meditating public as being
 mentally advanced.  It is quite the opposite from my experience
 listening to journalists describe their experiences with top 
movement
 people.  
 
  but *I* sure don't feel I have to ignore a
  lot of what MMY claimed on that basis. Just
  for one thing, I don't think listening to a
  few of Tony's speeches tells you much about
  how brilliant he is or isn't,
 
 Here I disagree.  I've heard enough from him to assess that.  A
 person's intelligence shows up pretty quickly in their speech for 
me.
  I get more platitude stringing than evidence of thinking in his
 speech and consider that a sign of a very uninteresting mind. 
 Remember that the bar is set pretty high, full human potential,
 (remember people are using 10% of their brains and now with TM we 
can
 use 100%?)  So he really needs to show up as a pretty unique mind 
and
 for me this would be obvious in hearing him speak pretty quickly.  
An
 example would be listening to Bill Clinton who I view as being extra
 intelligent.  It shows.  
 
  let alone whether
  he validates MMY's teaching. Enlightenment
  as I understand it doesn't have to do with
  brilliance in any case.
 
 Then this is a personal take on enlightenment.  For Maharishi the 
full
 development of creative intelligence included measurable 
enhancements
 of both.  The claim is so lofty, that this state is the purpose of
 human life, that it isn't too much to expect some evidence of it.
 Maharishi made the rules of how to judge it so this is all fair.  He
 claimed to be able to tell a person's state of consciousness from a
 single spoken word.
 
  
  snip
The burden is on the people making the
   claim, not the people saying where's
   the beef?
  
  I think the only person who gets to say,
  Where's the beef? is the individual who
  isn't satisfied with their own experience.
  But by the same token, they don't get to
  demand that the people making the claims
  prove anything. All they get to say is,
  I didn't get no beef.
 
 I disagree. The movement is making public claims and among those is
 that it is involved in science.  Challenging claims for no evidence 
is
 legitimate.  People can interpret their internal experiences as 
living
 in a state of enlightenment, but the movement's claims include
 objectively verifiable aspects of a person.  This is the difference
 from say the claim I am saved by Jesus H. Christ.  This claim
 doesn't include any outward manifestations.  So it would not be 
proper
 to say prove you are saved, to me.  But if a person is claiming to
 be living in a special state of mind that could be said to be the 
full
 potential of human life, I can expect a 16 ounce prime New York 
Strip,
 or I should rightfully conclude that perhaps the person was a bit
 deluded about their special mental state.  I am only talking about
 Maharishi's definitions.  Once we are out of his system then claims 
of
 enlightenment can be of the I am saved nature and don't have to
 display any enhanced mental functioning.
 
  
  snip
 I can evaluate how people function and
 I notice when someone is extra smart or
 exceptional in some way.

According to your standards.
   
   How could it be any other way?  But 
   according to Maharishi's own standards
   it has also failed. He set the bar high
   at mastery of sidhis and never retracted
   this objective test for enlightenment.
  
  That was for Unity consciousness. And in
  any case, taken with the rest of his 
  teaching, performance of siddhis is at
  Nature's behest.
 
 I can't remember anytime he used this caveat.  When he spoke of the
 sidhis when I was 

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[ruthsimplicity]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues
curtisdeltabl...@... wrote:


 
 I disagree. The movement is making public claims and among those is
 that it is involved in science.  Challenging claims for no evidence is
 legitimate.  People can interpret their internal experiences as living
 in a state of enlightenment, but the movement's claims include
 objectively verifiable aspects of a person.  This is the difference
 from say the claim I am saved by Jesus H. Christ.  This claim
 doesn't include any outward manifestations.  So it would not be proper
 to say prove you are saved, to me.  But if a person is claiming to
 be living in a special state of mind that could be said to be the full
 potential of human life, I can expect a 16 ounce prime New York Strip,
 or I should rightfully conclude that perhaps the person was a bit
 deluded about their special mental state.  I am only talking about
 Maharishi's definitions.  Once we are out of his system then claims of
 enlightenment can be of the I am saved nature and don't have to
 display any enhanced mental functioning.


Excellent post Curtis.  

If there is no proof except in the mind of the enlightened, the
unenlightened mind is at risk of manufacturing its own proof.  Then
they do can what they please with the belief they have the support of
nature. I know a person who is a bit this way, firmly believing she
Knows the Cause of all sorts of mundane things. Shaddai hinted at the
risk of the ego taking over.  

There is no guru to help when people lose their way. 

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[sparaig]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradh...@... wrote:

 
 On Jan 14, 2009, at 2:35 PM, sparaig wrote:
 
  As far as I am aware there is no standard neurological definition of
  transcendental consciousness, so they made up their own definition.
  It's self-defined--and therefore quite meaningless--beyond TB's and
  people who buy the marketing spiel.
 
  This is probably why the Cambridge Handbook of Neuroscience
  considered it a problem to make a claim about the ultimate meaning
  or nature of
  the state attained. It doesn't really tell you anything other than
  'we're claiming this is significant because it's transcendental
  consciousness becasue we say it is'.  As the Cambridge Handbook
  comments: Thus, from the vantagepoint of the researcher who stands
  outside the tradition, it is crucial to separate the highly detailed
  and verifiable aspects of traditional knowledge about meditation from
  the transcendental claims that form the metaphysical or theological
  context of that knowledge. It's not enough to say here is nirvana
  or here is witnessing. And it certainly demonstrates nothing
  outside of EEG correlates seen in the normal EEG's of waking,
  dreaming or sleeping humans. This is why neuroscientists are by and
  large, underwhelmed by these type of claims.
 
  It's also why the TMO needs to desperately to use high marketing spin
  to mask the ho-hum--or simply bad--science.
 
 
  Unlike the BUddhist meditation researchers, natch...
 
 As far as I am aware there are no Buddhist meditation techniques that  
 sell and market their form of meditation using research, either  
 legitimate scientific research, pilot research or marketing research.
 

So, you think the only reason why the TM researchers are marketing
TM is for the money?

Nyah, and I['m pretty sure you know it too.

Buddhist meditation researchers have every bit as much at stake, emotionally,
as TM researchers. Likewise with those that report on the latest Buddihist or
TM research.

 But there were some earlier pilot studies, not unlike many pilot  
 studies, which left something to be desired. I think the difference  
 is they've now moved beyond the pilot level stage and towards more  
 rigorous research that's bearing fruit. That's why insurers are  
 beginning to reimburse for them when used as treatments for  
 depression. It may also be why mindfulness-style meditation is/was  
 increasing at a logarithmic rate--the research is showing some signs  
 of promise, both in terms of meditative mastery and actual health  
 benefits. There's also some new and interesting research on Hindu  
 kundalini meditation as well as Christian (Benedictine IIRC) meditation.


And TM has always been elligible (for the past few decades at least) for 
reimbursement
with some insurance companies, and if you can get a VA doctor to recomend it,
the VA will pick up at least part of the tab.

L.

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[authfriend]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues 
curtisdeltabl...@... wrote:

 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote:
 snip
 
 Curtis:
   
   That seems like a position I can relate to.
   The question comes, where do you go for
   information about enlightenment?  If anyone
   takes Maharishi as an expert they have to
   ignore a lot of what he claimed about it to
   reconcile King Tony as the most evolved
   person in the movement with what we have
   experienced from other brilliant people in
   our lives. I haven't gotten more than a true
   believerness from his speeches yet.
  
 Judy:
  Geez, Curtis, that's an awfully sweeping
  statement based on *your* personal reaction
  to King Tony's speeches. You say anyone,
 
 Agreed.  I can't speak for everyone.  I was ruling
 out that someone else might find him exceptional in
 some way.

Not what I'm disagreeing with...

snip

...this is my disagreement:

  but *I* sure don't feel I have to ignore a
  lot of what MMY claimed on that basis.

Seems to me it's apples and oranges.

 Just
  for one thing, I don't think listening to a
  few of Tony's speeches tells you much about
  how brilliant he is or isn't,
 
 Here I disagree.  I've heard enough from him to
 assess that.  A person's intelligence shows up
 pretty quickly in their speech for me. I get
 more platitude stringing than evidence of thinking
 in his speech and consider that a sign of a very
 uninteresting mind.

Maybe we've heard different speeches; I've gotten
more than that. But in any case, I don't buy that
a person has to be intellectually brilliant to
claim enlightenment as far as what MMY taught is
concerned. Remember Trotaka?

 Remember that the bar is set pretty high, full
 human potential,

Full potential of the *individual*. There's an
almost infinite variation in what constitutes the
full potential of each individual.

 (remember people are using 10% of their brains
 and now with TM we can use 100%?)

(As you suggest later, that was always bogus.)

 So he really needs to show up as a pretty unique
 mind

I think that's a standard you've set personally.

 The claim is so lofty, that this state is the
 purpose of human life, that it isn't too much to
 expect some evidence of it. Maharishi made the
 rules of how to judge it so this is all fair.

Assuming you know exactly what he had in mind
by the rules he set.

snip
  I think the only person who gets to say,
  Where's the beef? is the individual who
  isn't satisfied with their own experience.
  But by the same token, they don't get to
  demand that the people making the claims
  prove anything. All they get to say is,
  I didn't get no beef.
 
 I disagree. The movement is making public claims

This isn't to the point of what I'm getting at.
I'm not defending either the movement's claims or
MMY's along these lines.

snip
 I can evaluate how people function and
 I notice when someone is extra smart or
 exceptional in some way.

According to your standards.
   
   How could it be any other way?  But 
   according to Maharishi's own standards
   it has also failed. He set the bar high
   at mastery of sidhis and never retracted
   this objective test for enlightenment.
  
  That was for Unity consciousness. And in
  any case, taken with the rest of his 
  teaching, performance of siddhis is at
  Nature's behest.
 
 I can't remember anytime he used this caveat.

If the enlightened person is the innocent tool
of nature, how could it be otherwise?

  When he spoke of the
 sidhis when I was in the movement it was in terms
 of being at will. He specifically claimed that
 people in the movement would be flying through the
 air.  I never heard him say only if nature wants
 you to.

Not necessarily a contradiction. Requires
explanation, but I guess nobody ever asked him,
which is kind of surprising.

snip 
  That may not satisfy you, but it could be
  that what would satisfy you just isn't what
  enlightenment is *about*.
 
 Again, Maharishi spent a lot of time making sure
 we did know what his version of enlightenment was
 about, and it included functioning at one's full
 potential.

Don't know how you could tell if anybody else was
functioning at their full potential.

snip
  I suspect that more than we realize, there's
  no real template for recluses and spiritual
  teachers either. My current thinking is that
  the templates are not much more than bait to
  draw you onto the path, and from then on it's
  a DIY project, as I said to ed11.
 
 Too cynical for me.

I don't think it was cynical. I think the whole
business is--hate to use the term--ineffable. You
can't make a two-dimensional template for something
that exists in three dimensions. But if your goal
is to have others become enlightened, you have to
come up with *something* to draw people in. Maybe
you make a rough approximation and figure that as
folks' consciousness develops, they'll realize the
templates are no more than approximations 

Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[Vaj]

On Jan 14, 2009, at 4:12 PM, sparaig wrote:


As far as I am aware there are no Buddhist meditation techniques that
sell and market their form of meditation using research, either
legitimate scientific research, pilot research or marketing research.



So, you think the only reason why the TM researchers are marketing
TM is for the money?

Nyah, and I['m pretty sure you know it too.


I'm serious. I believe it's a way to sell TM--AND the researchers are  
dye-in-the-wool TB's so they do feel it is their mission. I feel  
their approach is more that of a religious zealot than that of an  
objective scientist. Religious zealots are always selling something.  
It might be Jesus on a wafer or Jehovah in a red wrist string, but the  
gateway drug of the TMO is clearly TM. In their case if they succeed  
in getting some marginal research some airtime, they could rake in the  
bucks for their church, the church of TM.


Buddhist meditation researchers have every bit as much at stake,  
emotionally,
as TM researchers. Likewise with those that report on the latest  
Buddihist or

TM research.


I'd agree they have a lot at stake, for example the Shamatha Project  
scientists are not Buddhists at all. The reason they're willing to  
risk their careers--and these include some famous scientists like  
Elizabeth Blackburn--is numerous scientists have had first hand  
contact with legitimate yogis in the traditions they're studying. Not  
only was the advantages of their states of consciousness palpable, it  
was impressive enough for them to lay their significant careers on the  
line. That's saying something. They're so impressed with what they've  
seen, they're banking on the repeatability of these yogis sadhanas in  
new students. Not so much of a stretch when you realize these  
traditions have been repeatedly reproducing awakening century after  
century. And a strong suspicion of repeatability is what any scientist  
would appreciate.






But there were some earlier pilot studies, not unlike many pilot
studies, which left something to be desired. I think the difference
is they've now moved beyond the pilot level stage and towards more
rigorous research that's bearing fruit. That's why insurers are
beginning to reimburse for them when used as treatments for
depression. It may also be why mindfulness-style meditation is/was
increasing at a logarithmic rate--the research is showing some signs
of promise, both in terms of meditative mastery and actual health
benefits. There's also some new and interesting research on Hindu
kundalini meditation as well as Christian (Benedictine IIRC)  
meditation.




And TM has always been elligible (for the past few decades at least)  
for reimbursement
with some insurance companies, and if you can get a VA doctor to  
recomend it,

the VA will pick up at least part of the tab.


That's scary--not because it's TM--but because the research IMO  
certainly does not warrant it. In other words (unless I'm really  
missing something), it's insurance fraud. Sadly I believe that's well  
within the style of behavior I do associate with the Maharishi (money  
laundering, smuggling, shaking down poor Indians, bilking famous  
Indian professionals, etc.). I know you probably think that's some  
sort of thing I relish in (picking on TM), but really once the gravity  
of the situation dawned on me, what I was more interested in was  
taking action on the many, many people who could, would or did suffer  
from these cretins.

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[curtisdeltablues]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jst...@... wrote:


 
 snip
 
 ...this is my disagreement:
 
   but *I* sure don't feel I have to ignore a
   lot of what MMY claimed on that basis.
 
 Seems to me it's apples and oranges.
 
  Just
   for one thing, I don't think listening to a
   few of Tony's speeches tells you much about
   how brilliant he is or isn't,
  
  Here I disagree.  I've heard enough from him to
  assess that.  A person's intelligence shows up
  pretty quickly in their speech for me. I get
  more platitude stringing than evidence of thinking
  in his speech and consider that a sign of a very
  uninteresting mind.
 
 Maybe we've heard different speeches; I've gotten
 more than that. But in any case, I don't buy that
 a person has to be intellectually brilliant to
 claim enlightenment as far as what MMY taught is
 concerned. Remember Trotaka?

That is an interesting example and wasn't he put in charge of the
Math?  In any case the reason the story worked was that although he
appeared to be a big dope he actually was brilliant and it was his
exposition on the meaning of the verse they were studying that was the
big reveal in the story.  So he appeared dumb but was actually really
brilliant.

The thing about King Tony is that he was chosen as the supreme guy. 
We aren't picking on him randomly, he is Mahariahi's choice as the
best guy ever for the job.  And with that tailwind I would expect some
really interesting stuff from him.  Instead I get the usual word salad
Maharishis speak.  When I was at MIU we used to get some really bright
people like Domash teaching the knowledge.  The guy dripped with
superior intelligence IMO.  Even Haglin in the early days was a
brainiac until he went all zombie.  Given Maharishi's description of
enlightenment I would expect a whole bunch of people like that to
emerge.  

 
  Remember that the bar is set pretty high, full
  human potential,
 
 Full potential of the *individual*. There's an
 almost infinite variation in what constitutes the
 full potential of each individual.

This one worked better before the decades rolled by.  I used it a lot
in teaching.  But if you look at the group of long termers you would
have to imagine that they all started pretty low on the scale to end
up where they are now.  And as a group I think TM practicers are
pretty well educated and above average intelligence to even get
involved with these concepts in the first place.  I don't view them as
mentally deficient as some TM critics might.  I just don't find them
much different from other bright people who really really believe
something I don't.  But this goes against Maharishi's claims that this
group should really shine as a beacon for the rest of humanity doesn't it?

 
  (remember people are using 10% of their brains
  and now with TM we can use 100%?)
 
 (As you suggest later, that was always bogus.)

But it illustrated the principle that with TM we would develop our
full potential and that should be noticeable in a big group.

 
  So he really needs to show up as a pretty unique
  mind
 
 I think that's a standard you've set personally.
 
  The claim is so lofty, that this state is the
  purpose of human life, that it isn't too much to
  expect some evidence of it. Maharishi made the
  rules of how to judge it so this is all fair.
 
 Assuming you know exactly what he had in mind
 by the rules he set.

He was kind of repetitious with his teaching.  I spent years learning
exactly what the rules were so I could teach them.  Then he had me
tested to make sure I knew them.  Then he certified that I had it
right.  So yeah, I knew exactly what rules he set.  And it isn't even
really that subtle you didn't need to take TTC to know them.

 
 snip
 
   That was for Unity consciousness. And in
   any case, taken with the rest of his 
   teaching, performance of siddhis is at
   Nature's behest.
  
  I can't remember anytime he used this caveat.
 
 If the enlightened person is the innocent tool
 of nature, how could it be otherwise?

Well if we are using terms like innocent tool to describe King Tony
then we may be in more agreement than I thought!  We went around and
around with Jim on this topic about being able to do magical things
but Nature not wanting it.  It just doesn't ring true to me. 
Maharishi did everything in his power to demonstrate yogic flying as a
way to get people interested in TM.  To say that if someone actually
could fly but Nature would not let them just doesn't pass the sniff
test for me.  I think this is another area where if you really think
about it, Maharishi's teaching sort of falls apart.  it ends with the
notion that even though TM improves your intelligence, nature might
make you act like a dumbass for its own purposes.  That is redefining
self development beyond all reason.

 
   When he spoke of the
  sidhis when I was in the movement it was in terms
  of being at will. He specifically claimed that
  people in the movement would be flying 

Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[Vaj]

On Jan 14, 2009, at 6:41 PM, curtisdeltablues wrote:


Maybe we've heard different speeches; I've gotten
more than that. But in any case, I don't buy that
a person has to be intellectually brilliant to
claim enlightenment as far as what MMY taught is
concerned. Remember Trotaka?


That is an interesting example and wasn't he put in charge of the
Math?  In any case the reason the story worked was that although he
appeared to be a big dope he actually was brilliant and it was his
exposition on the meaning of the verse they were studying that was the
big reveal in the story.  So he appeared dumb but was actually really
brilliant.



You're of course correct. In Vedanta-style realization, you must have  
BOTH absolute AND relative realization, which means you have not only  
complete relative knowledge of the path you've just realized, but  
continuing relative wisdom as life naturally unfolds around you. 100%  
just doesn't cut it.


If Judy was really familiar with MMY's teaching, she'd know about 200%  
of life, not just 100%. So it's quite silly to argue that Trotaka  
remained some dumbkoff with only 100%--absolute knowledge. To this  
very day, the 200% criteria is a requirement for a possible  
Shankaracharya. You must be a legit jnani.

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[sparaig]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradh...@... wrote:

 
 On Jan 14, 2009, at 4:12 PM, sparaig wrote:
 
  As far as I am aware there are no Buddhist meditation techniques that
  sell and market their form of meditation using research, either
  legitimate scientific research, pilot research or marketing research.
 
 
  So, you think the only reason why the TM researchers are marketing
  TM is for the money?
 
  Nyah, and I['m pretty sure you know it too.
 
 I'm serious. I believe it's a way to sell TM--AND the researchers are  
 dye-in-the-wool TB's so they do feel it is their mission. I feel  
 their approach is more that of a religious zealot than that of an  
 objective scientist. Religious zealots are always selling something.  
 It might be Jesus on a wafer or Jehovah in a red wrist string, but the  
 gateway drug of the TMO is clearly TM. In their case if they succeed  
 in getting some marginal research some airtime, they could rake in the  
 bucks for their church, the church of TM.
 
  Buddhist meditation researchers have every bit as much at stake,  
  emotionally,
  as TM researchers. Likewise with those that report on the latest  
  Buddihist or
  TM research.
 
 I'd agree they have a lot at stake, for example the Shamatha Project  
 scientists are not Buddhists at all. The reason they're willing to  
 risk their careers--and these include some famous scientists like  
 Elizabeth Blackburn--is numerous scientists have had first hand  
 contact with legitimate yogis in the traditions they're studying. Not  
 only was the advantages of their states of consciousness palpable, it  
 was impressive enough for them to lay their significant careers on the  
 line. That's saying something. They're so impressed with what they've  
 seen, they're banking on the repeatability of these yogis sadhanas in  
 new students. Not so much of a stretch when you realize these  
 traditions have been repeatedly reproducing awakening century after  
 century. And a strong suspicion of repeatability is what any scientist  
 would appreciate.
 

Who is in charge of the Shamatha Project, and who is doing research on it?


L.
 
 
  But there were some earlier pilot studies, not unlike many pilot
  studies, which left something to be desired. I think the difference
  is they've now moved beyond the pilot level stage and towards more
  rigorous research that's bearing fruit. That's why insurers are
  beginning to reimburse for them when used as treatments for
  depression. It may also be why mindfulness-style meditation is/was
  increasing at a logarithmic rate--the research is showing some signs
  of promise, both in terms of meditative mastery and actual health
  benefits. There's also some new and interesting research on Hindu
  kundalini meditation as well as Christian (Benedictine IIRC)  
  meditation.
 
 
  And TM has always been elligible (for the past few decades at least)  
  for reimbursement
  with some insurance companies, and if you can get a VA doctor to  
  recomend it,
  the VA will pick up at least part of the tab.
 
 That's scary--not because it's TM--but because the research IMO  
 certainly does not warrant it. In other words (unless I'm really  
 missing something), it's insurance fraud. Sadly I believe that's well  
 within the style of behavior I do associate with the Maharishi (money  
 laundering, smuggling, shaking down poor Indians, bilking famous  
 Indian professionals, etc.). I know you probably think that's some  
 sort of thing I relish in (picking on TM), but really once the gravity  
 of the situation dawned on me, what I was more interested in was  
 taking action on the many, many people who could, would or did suffer  
 from these cretins.


Right so the research that has been coming out for the last 20 years on TM  is 
all
useless, since, afterall, it was considered and debunked by the Cambridge
Handbook on COnsciousness, right?


L.

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[Patrick Gillam]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity wrote:

 We have no idea as to whether TM
 successfully produces enlightenment 
 or unity consciousness.  

Rick says there are dozens of Fairfielders 
claiming to be enlightened. Some post here. 
All either did TM for years, or still do.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[Vaj]

On Jan 14, 2009, at 7:50 PM, sparaig wrote:


I'd agree they have a lot at stake, for example the Shamatha Project
scientists are not Buddhists at all. The reason they're willing to
risk their careers--and these include some famous scientists like
Elizabeth Blackburn--is numerous scientists have had first hand
contact with legitimate yogis in the traditions they're studying. Not
only was the advantages of their states of consciousness palpable, it
was impressive enough for them to lay their significant careers on  
the

line. That's saying something. They're so impressed with what they've
seen, they're banking on the repeatability of these yogis sadhanas in
new students. Not so much of a stretch when you realize these
traditions have been repeatedly reproducing awakening century after
century. And a strong suspicion of repeatability is what any  
scientist

would appreciate.



Who is in charge of the Shamatha Project, and who is doing research  
on it?


The PI is Cliff Saron (who is Jewish). If you saw the movie on the  
rediscovery of samadhi in humans, Monks, In the Lab LINK
he's the pudgy guy who talks about the late great neuroscientific  
genius Francisco Varela, working with yogis and brainstorming just  
what type of research they might do in the future--and how that could  
be a benefit to modern life.




That's scary--not because it's TM--but because the research IMO

certainly does not warrant it. In other words (unless I'm really
missing something), it's insurance fraud. Sadly I believe that's well
within the style of behavior I do associate with the Maharishi (money
laundering, smuggling, shaking down poor Indians, bilking famous
Indian professionals, etc.). I know you probably think that's some
sort of thing I relish in (picking on TM), but really once the  
gravity

of the situation dawned on me, what I was more interested in was
taking action on the many, many people who could, would or did suffer
from these cretins.



Right so the research that has been coming out for the last 20 years  
on TM  is all
useless, since, afterall, it was considered and debunked by the  
Cambridge

Handbook on COnsciousness, right?


No, that's just a prominent example, but yes, an important recent one.  
It's important to understand that scientists in general, if they think  
a body of research is BS will, instead of trying to demonize it or  
point out it's numerous shortcomings, simply ignore it. The idea is  
'don't even give it the attention it clearly does not deserve.' I  
guess the saying might be get even by living well becomes for  
researchers get even by researching well. 'Stoop not down unto that  
darkly splendid world.' (of bad science).

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[yifuxero]

--My Kriya Yoga teacher. Enlightened, probably.  Others, maybe not.
http://www.sanskritclassics.com/aboutbaba.html


- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Patrick Gillam jpgil...@... 
wrote:

 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity wrote:
 
  We have no idea as to whether TM
  successfully produces enlightenment 
  or unity consciousness.  
 
 Rick says there are dozens of Fairfielders 
 claiming to be enlightened. Some post here. 
 All either did TM for years, or still do.

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[sparaig]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradh...@... wrote:

 
 On Jan 14, 2009, at 7:50 PM, sparaig wrote:
 
  I'd agree they have a lot at stake, for example the Shamatha Project
  scientists are not Buddhists at all. The reason they're willing to
  risk their careers--and these include some famous scientists like
  Elizabeth Blackburn--is numerous scientists have had first hand
  contact with legitimate yogis in the traditions they're studying. Not
  only was the advantages of their states of consciousness palpable, it
  was impressive enough for them to lay their significant careers on  
  the
  line. That's saying something. They're so impressed with what they've
  seen, they're banking on the repeatability of these yogis sadhanas in
  new students. Not so much of a stretch when you realize these
  traditions have been repeatedly reproducing awakening century after
  century. And a strong suspicion of repeatability is what any  
  scientist
  would appreciate.
 
 
  Who is in charge of the Shamatha Project, and who is doing research  
  on it?
 
 The PI is Cliff Saron (who is Jewish). If you saw the movie on the  
 rediscovery of samadhi in humans, Monks, In the Lab LINK
 he's the pudgy guy who talks about the late great neuroscientific  
 genius Francisco Varela, working with yogis and brainstorming just  
 what type of research they might do in the future--and how that could  
 be a benefit to modern life.

A friend of mine at the time, Cliff Saron, who was part of the research group, 
offered me 
a weekend retreat at Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Barre, Massachusetts 
as a birthday 
gift. That was very generous of him and it put me in contact with an 
environment that was 
pretty much influenced by Buddhist meditation practices.


No possible semblance of bias there...

 
 
  That's scary--not because it's TM--but because the research IMO
  certainly does not warrant it. In other words (unless I'm really
  missing something), it's insurance fraud. Sadly I believe that's well
  within the style of behavior I do associate with the Maharishi (money
  laundering, smuggling, shaking down poor Indians, bilking famous
  Indian professionals, etc.). I know you probably think that's some
  sort of thing I relish in (picking on TM), but really once the  
  gravity
  of the situation dawned on me, what I was more interested in was
  taking action on the many, many people who could, would or did suffer
  from these cretins.
 
 
  Right so the research that has been coming out for the last 20 years  
  on TM  is all
  useless, since, afterall, it was considered and debunked by the  
  Cambridge
  Handbook on COnsciousness, right?
 
 No, that's just a prominent example, but yes, an important recent one.  
 It's important to understand that scientists in general, if they think  
 a body of research is BS will, instead of trying to demonize it or  
 point out it's numerous shortcomings, simply ignore it. The idea is  
 'don't even give it the attention it clearly does not deserve.' I  
 guess the saying might be get even by living well becomes for  
 researchers get even by researching well. 'Stoop not down unto that  
 darkly splendid world.' (of bad science).


Yes, that's how scientists deal with Scientific Creationism too...



Lawson

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[curtisdeltablues]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Patrick Gillam jpgil...@...
wrote:

 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity wrote:
 
  We have no idea as to whether TM
  successfully produces enlightenment 
  or unity consciousness.  
 
 Rick says there are dozens of Fairfielders 
 claiming to be enlightened. Some post here. 
 All either did TM for years, or still do.

Let me guess, and in every case nature is taking a pass on any of
them doing something so amazing that it would force the world to take
Maharishi's teaching seriously.  Like curing even one form of
childhood cancer for example with Ritam.  Or being able to perform at
will ANY of the sidhis.

Like for example they could use the finding lost things sidhi to find
the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.  I'd settle for one of them
solving the world's energy needs with an eco friendly solution.  Or
like figuring out a way to turn tahini into an edible food without
coating your teeth with that sesame sludge!  I would even settle for
them solving the problem of drunk people thinking they are more
attractive to the opposite sex than they really are.  That could
really make my job in clubs easier!

An exhibition like this would force the world to understand the power
of Maharishi's knowledge and would allow his hoped for flying numbers
and world peace would break out.  I can see why nature's wisdom would
not allow that and instead have the movement leaders mince about in
grandiose self importance over nothing virtually guaranteeing that
Maharishi's teaching will die out with the last of the ex hippie
generation.  

Nature can be such a tool when it comes to  actually using nature's tools!

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[sparaig]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig lengli...@... wrote:

 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradhatu@ wrote:
 
  
  On Jan 14, 2009, at 7:50 PM, sparaig wrote:
[...]
   Who is in charge of the Shamatha Project, and who is doing research  
   on it?
  
  The PI is Cliff Saron (who is Jewish). If you saw the movie on the  
  rediscovery of samadhi in humans, Monks, In the Lab LINK
  he's the pudgy guy who talks about the late great neuroscientific  
  genius Francisco Varela, working with yogis and brainstorming just  
  what type of research they might do in the future--and how that could  
  be a benefit to modern life.
 
 A friend of mine at the time, Cliff Saron, who was part of the research 
 group, offered 
me 
 a weekend retreat at Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Barre, Massachusetts 
 as a 
birthday 
 gift. That was very generous of him and it put me in contact with an 
 environment that 
was 
 pretty much influenced by Buddhist meditation practices.
 
 
 No possible semblance of bias there...


Likewise:

http://tinyurl.com/88f2jk

The last member of the group was Dr. Clifford Saron, a pyychologist,
 neuroscientist, suber tech, and personal friend. CLiff, whose knowledge
 of the brain and of Buddhism far exceeds mine, was invited to provide no 
only the essential, high-quality audio recording of the conversation but also 
to provide  with advice during the breaks  on phrasing my questions about 
Buddhism. --Paul Ekman.


From the forward:

A Conversation Between
The Dalai Lama and Paul Ikman, PhD.




No possibility of bias there, seeing how he's touted as the expert on Buddhism 
by the guy writing the book on the subject who consult4ede him on how to 
properly ask questions about Buddhism (not scientific research)


Lawson

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[authfriend]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradh...@... wrote:

 
 On Jan 14, 2009, at 6:41 PM, curtisdeltablues wrote:
 
  Maybe we've heard different speeches; I've gotten
  more than that. But in any case, I don't buy that
  a person has to be intellectually brilliant to
  claim enlightenment as far as what MMY taught is
  concerned. Remember Trotaka?
 
  That is an interesting example and wasn't he put in
  charge of the Math?  In any case the reason the story
  worked was that although he appeared to be a big dope
  he actually was brilliant and it was his exposition
  on the meaning of the verse they were studying that
  was the big reveal in the story.  So he appeared dumb
  but was actually really brilliant.
 
 You're of course correct. In Vedanta-style realization,
 you must have BOTH absolute AND relative realization,
 which means you have not only complete relative
 knowledge of the path you've just realized, but  
 continuing relative wisdom as life naturally unfolds
 around you. 100% just doesn't cut it.
 
 If Judy was really familiar with MMY's teaching, she'd
 know about 200% of life, not just 100%.

(Holding my sides...poor Vaj! He really should learn
how to use the Search feature here.)

 So it's quite
 silly to argue that Trotaka remained some dumbkoff with
 only 100%--absolute knowledge. To this very day, the
 200% criteria is a requirement for a possible 
 Shankaracharya. You must be a legit jnani.

Of course, I never suggested Trotaka remained some
dumbkoff [sic; best not to use foreign words unless
you can spell 'em]. Send that straw man in for
repairs, Vaj, he's lost his stuffing.

OK, smart guys, straight from the horse's mouth:

TROTAKACHARYA was one of the most outstanding of the
four chief disciples of SHANKARA. The atmosphere
around SHANKARA was always vibrant with waves of
wisdom emanating from the conversations of his most
learned and enlightened disciples, PADMA-PADA,
HASTA-MALAKA and VARTIKA-KARA.

TROTAKA, moving among them, provided an innocent foil
to all that brilliance and, amid those tidal waves of
knowledge, his mind and heart floated in the divine
radiance of his master, preferring to enjoy it rather
than annalyse it through the prism of discriminatory
logic. The vast intellects of his fellow disciples
tended to disregard his less cerebral virtues, but the
one-pointedness of his heart and mind was unaffected
by their less than full appreciation of him.

...TROTAKA responded at the feet of his master to his
most pressing needs. He was a man of practical outlook
and held fast to one thing - service to the master. He
did not join in the other disciples' intellectual
discussions with the master, but in full sincerity of
purpose, undertook such duties as would justify his
engagement in accordance with his nature - cleaning the
floor, cooking meals and washing clothes. This freed
the other, more learned, disciples from domestic duties
and gave them more time to serve their master on an
intellectual level
 
...This does not detract from the recognition and
appreciation of those of more highly developed intellect
since it is they who are more capable of comprehending
and evaluating the philosophy and really enjoying the
creative application of the whole philosophy in
practical life. What is meant here is that, even those
who are not so highly developed intellectually, can
innocently become as tools in the hands of the divine,
to work out His plan. And this seems to be the case in
the tradition of JYOTIR MATH - not much learning is
needed: just innocent surrender to the master. This
gives us the key to success - we have simple sincere
feelings, devotion, a sense of service - and wisdom
dawns.

(Y'all recognize the text, right?)

King Tony is no dumbkoff, goodness knows. But it
would make sense to me if MMY had picked King Tony
for his less cerebral virtues, for his depth of
devotion and one-pointedness of mind and heart,
rather than for vastness of intellect.

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[sparaig]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jst...@... wrote:

 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradhatu@ wrote:
[...]
 
  It doesn't really tell you anything other than  
  'we're claiming this is significant because
  it's transcendental consciousness becasue we
  say it is'.  As the Cambridge Handbook comments:
  Thus, from the vantagepoint of the researcher
  who stands outside the tradition, it is crucial
  to separate the highly detailed  and verifiable
  aspects of traditional knowledge about meditation
  from the transcendental claims that form the
  metaphysical or theological context of that
  knowledge.
 
 Irrelevant, because, again, no such claims are
 being made, at least in the abstract of this
 article.
 
 You *could* make a reasonable objection by
 explaining why you don't think the subjects'
 descriptions of the transcendental experience
 really do match the descriptions in the
 enlightenment literature. But the objection
 you posed instead is obviously bogus.


What is truly funny is that the authors of the above are hinting
they are  outside the tradition even though they, in many cases,
both practice the techniques and study the theoretical underpinnings
that purport to explain the techniques.


Somehow this is different than the TM researchers' obvious bias, but
I'm not sure how.


Lawson

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[authfriend]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues 
curtisdeltabl...@... wrote:

 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote:
snip
  Maybe we've heard different speeches; I've gotten
  more than that. But in any case, I don't buy that
  a person has to be intellectually brilliant to
  claim enlightenment as far as what MMY taught is
  concerned. Remember Trotaka?
 
 That is an interesting example and wasn't he put in
 charge of the Math?

Yup. Better see my post to Vaj on this, though,
before you take it any further.

  In any case the reason the story worked was that
 although he appeared to be a big dope he actually
 was brilliant and it was his exposition on the
 meaning of the verse they were studying that was 
 the big reveal in the story.

Well, according to the one I've heard, he was
washing Shankara's clothing in the river, and
the disciples heard him singing a song of 
devotion to the master that he had made up
himself. That was the big reveal, because it
came from such a full heart.

 The thing about King Tony is that he was chosen as
 the supreme guy. We aren't picking on him randomly,
 he is Mahariahi's choice as the best guy ever for
 the job.  And with that tailwind I would expect
 some really interesting stuff from him.

Yeah, I wouldn't, at least not in terms of
intellectual brilliance.

I'm going to snip heavily, because we're really
talking about two different things here.

snip
  Assuming you know exactly what he had in mind
  by the rules he set.
 
 He was kind of repetitious with his teaching.  I
 spent years learning exactly what the rules were
 so I could teach them.  Then he had me tested to
 make sure I knew them.  Then he certified that I
 had it right.  So yeah, I knew exactly what rules
 he set.

You knew exactly what he wanted you to *teach*.

snip
I suspect that more than we realize, there's
no real template for recluses and spiritual
teachers either. My current thinking is that
the templates are not much more than bait to
draw you onto the path, and from then on it's
a DIY project, as I said to ed11.
   
   Too cynical for me.
  
  I don't think it was cynical. I think the whole
  business is--hate to use the term--ineffable. You
  can't make a two-dimensional template for something
  that exists in three dimensions. But if your goal
  is to have others become enlightened, you have to
  come up with *something* to draw people in. Maybe
  you make a rough approximation and figure that as
  folks' consciousness develops, they'll realize the
  templates are no more than approximations and stop
  measuring themselve and others by them.
 
 I still think that is very cynical.  It presupposes
 that Maharishi was devious and was getting us to do
 something for our own good with less than full consent.

He may have had no choice, is what I'm suggesting.

snip
 I think there is much more evidence of higher
 functioning worthy of the term King in this guy:
 
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1Qo1eaWF8c
 
 http://tinyurl.com/27dg6a

That's pretty high functioning, all right. Too bad
it didn't last longer.

I'll never forget watching Ed Sullivan with my
father, the college professor and Wagner scholar,
when Presley made his first appearance on the 
show. I must have been around 12. To my
astonishment, after the first number, he turned
to me and said, That guy's *good*!

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[curtisdeltablues]

 ...This does not detract from the recognition and
 appreciation of those of more highly developed intellect
 since it is they who are more capable of comprehending
 and evaluating the philosophy and really enjoying the
 creative application of the whole philosophy in
 practical life. What is meant here is that, even those
 who are not so highly developed intellectually, can
 innocently become as tools in the hands of the divine,
 to work out His plan. And this seems to be the case in
 the tradition of JYOTIR MATH - not much learning is
 needed: just innocent surrender to the master. This
 gives us the key to success - we have simple sincere
 feelings, devotion, a sense of service - and wisdom
 dawns.
 
 (Y'all recognize the text, right?)

It underlines the point that enlightenment gives you wisdom.  The
story I was referring to was when Trotaka revealed his enlightenment
to the others.  Shankara was insisting that they all wait for him and
the others snickered that he didn't understand it anyway.  He came in
singing his cognized Trotaka stakham sp? verses revealing his
complete knowledge. I memorized them on my TTC, it is a beautiful
song.  This is from a TTC tape on him.  His wisdom came from his
enlightenment and he put all the smartypants guys to shame.  His
verses were so perfect that it blew them away with his mental ability
gained not through pulling all-nighters, but by his devotion and
enlightenment.  

I agree that King Tony is intelligent enough in a true believer sort
of way.  I just don't believe that the highest state of human
development and Tony should be used in the same sentence. If
enlightened people just show up as ordinary then Maharishi was not
being honest or he didn't know what it would do for someone.  



--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jst...@... wrote:

 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradhatu@ wrote:
 
  
  On Jan 14, 2009, at 6:41 PM, curtisdeltablues wrote:
  
   Maybe we've heard different speeches; I've gotten
   more than that. But in any case, I don't buy that
   a person has to be intellectually brilliant to
   claim enlightenment as far as what MMY taught is
   concerned. Remember Trotaka?
  
   That is an interesting example and wasn't he put in
   charge of the Math?  In any case the reason the story
   worked was that although he appeared to be a big dope
   he actually was brilliant and it was his exposition
   on the meaning of the verse they were studying that
   was the big reveal in the story.  So he appeared dumb
   but was actually really brilliant.
  
  You're of course correct. In Vedanta-style realization,
  you must have BOTH absolute AND relative realization,
  which means you have not only complete relative
  knowledge of the path you've just realized, but  
  continuing relative wisdom as life naturally unfolds
  around you. 100% just doesn't cut it.
  
  If Judy was really familiar with MMY's teaching, she'd
  know about 200% of life, not just 100%.
 
 (Holding my sides...poor Vaj! He really should learn
 how to use the Search feature here.)
 
  So it's quite
  silly to argue that Trotaka remained some dumbkoff with
  only 100%--absolute knowledge. To this very day, the
  200% criteria is a requirement for a possible 
  Shankaracharya. You must be a legit jnani.
 
 Of course, I never suggested Trotaka remained some
 dumbkoff [sic; best not to use foreign words unless
 you can spell 'em]. Send that straw man in for
 repairs, Vaj, he's lost his stuffing.
 
 OK, smart guys, straight from the horse's mouth:
 
 TROTAKACHARYA was one of the most outstanding of the
 four chief disciples of SHANKARA. The atmosphere
 around SHANKARA was always vibrant with waves of
 wisdom emanating from the conversations of his most
 learned and enlightened disciples, PADMA-PADA,
 HASTA-MALAKA and VARTIKA-KARA.
 
 TROTAKA, moving among them, provided an innocent foil
 to all that brilliance and, amid those tidal waves of
 knowledge, his mind and heart floated in the divine
 radiance of his master, preferring to enjoy it rather
 than annalyse it through the prism of discriminatory
 logic. The vast intellects of his fellow disciples
 tended to disregard his less cerebral virtues, but the
 one-pointedness of his heart and mind was unaffected
 by their less than full appreciation of him.
 
 ...TROTAKA responded at the feet of his master to his
 most pressing needs. He was a man of practical outlook
 and held fast to one thing - service to the master. He
 did not join in the other disciples' intellectual
 discussions with the master, but in full sincerity of
 purpose, undertook such duties as would justify his
 engagement in accordance with his nature - cleaning the
 floor, cooking meals and washing clothes. This freed
 the other, more learned, disciples from domestic duties
 and gave them more time to serve their master on an
 intellectual level
  
 ...This does not detract from the recognition and
 appreciation of those of more highly developed 

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[sparaig]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltabl...@... 
wrote:

  ...This does not detract from the recognition and
  appreciation of those of more highly developed intellect
  since it is they who are more capable of comprehending
  and evaluating the philosophy and really enjoying the
  creative application of the whole philosophy in
  practical life. What is meant here is that, even those
  who are not so highly developed intellectually, can
  innocently become as tools in the hands of the divine,
  to work out His plan. And this seems to be the case in
  the tradition of JYOTIR MATH - not much learning is
  needed: just innocent surrender to the master. This
  gives us the key to success - we have simple sincere
  feelings, devotion, a sense of service - and wisdom
  dawns.
  
  (Y'all recognize the text, right?)
 
 It underlines the point that enlightenment gives you wisdom.  The
 story I was referring to was when Trotaka revealed his enlightenment
 to the others.  Shankara was insisting that they all wait for him and
 the others snickered that he didn't understand it anyway.  He came in
 singing his cognized Trotaka stakham sp? verses revealing his
 complete knowledge. I memorized them on my TTC, it is a beautiful
 song.  This is from a TTC tape on him.  His wisdom came from his
 enlightenment and he put all the smartypants guys to shame.  His
 verses were so perfect that it blew them away with his mental ability
 gained not through pulling all-nighters, but by his devotion and
 enlightenment.  
 
 I agree that King Tony is intelligent enough in a true believer sort
 of way.  I just don't believe that the highest state of human
 development and Tony should be used in the same sentence. If
 enlightened people just show up as ordinary then Maharishi was not
 being honest or he didn't know what it would do for someone.  

Eh, he's no slouch, you know. MD from Lebanon and PhD from MIT.

ANd what sign do you expect a secular enlightened person to show...


Lawson

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[authfriend]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues 
curtisdeltabl...@... wrote:

  ...This does not detract from the recognition and
  appreciation of those of more highly developed intellect
  since it is they who are more capable of comprehending
  and evaluating the philosophy and really enjoying the
  creative application of the whole philosophy in
  practical life. What is meant here is that, even those
  who are not so highly developed intellectually, can
  innocently become as tools in the hands of the divine,
  to work out His plan. And this seems to be the case in
  the tradition of JYOTIR MATH - not much learning is
  needed: just innocent surrender to the master. This
  gives us the key to success - we have simple sincere
  feelings, devotion, a sense of service - and wisdom
  dawns.
  
  (Y'all recognize the text, right?)
 
 It underlines the point that enlightenment gives
 you wisdom.

*Wisdom* is not the same as intellectual brilliance.
Wisdom is as much of the heart as of the mind. MMY
makes the distinction pretty clear in this piece.

I've definitely heard some wisdom from King Tony.
I wish he would do more speaking.

This is my 50th; see you folks Friday or Saturday.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[Vaj]

On Jan 14, 2009, at 8:40 PM, sparaig wrote:

 The PI is Cliff Saron (who is Jewish). If you saw the movie on the
 rediscovery of samadhi in humans, Monks, In the Lab LINK
 he's the pudgy guy who talks about the late great neuroscientific
 genius Francisco Varela, working with yogis and brainstorming just
 what type of research they might do in the future--and how that could
 be a benefit to modern life.

 A friend of mine at the time, Cliff Saron, who was part of the  
 research group, offered me
 a weekend retreat at Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Barre,  
 Massachusetts as a birthday
 gift. That was very generous of him and it put me in contact with an  
 environment that was
 pretty much influenced by Buddhist meditation practices.


 No possible semblance of bias there...


Doesn't sound at all like the Shamatha Project, but instead a gift  
from a friend in the early 70's. Whether it had anything to do with  
his research at that time or not, I have no clue.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[I am the eternal]

On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 8:12 PM, curtisdeltablues 
curtisdeltabl...@yahoo.com wrote:


 I agree that King Tony is intelligent enough in a true believer sort
 of way.  I just don't believe that the highest state of human
 development and Tony should be used in the same sentence. If
 enlightened people just show up as ordinary then Maharishi was not
 being honest or he didn't know what it would do for someone.


This would be kind of hard to research, it's been so long since I read
this.  But is it not true that a feature of enlightenment is that it gives
you the gift of gab Maharishi had, the ability to pull many things together
intellectually and speak out with charisma?   Of course to everything there
is a season.  Guru Dev only spoke for perhaps 10 minutes at a time and it
was all that old time (fundy Vedic) religion.  Perhaps some people here
where there when Maharishi invited a saint to visit (in India).  Maharishi
translated from Hindi to English and back.  The saint spoke very elegantly,
explaining that he could not sleep, because who would hold up creation?
Unless Paramahansa Yogananda's book was ghosted, he put words together very
well and and his book Autobiography of a Yogi, my first book in the area,
was a spellbinder IMO.  Myself, I always had a hard time with someone who
could dissect the brain and find the Veda there.  I don't see that as much
as a show of brillance as someone who wanted to please the master, a
one-up-manship to Keith Wallace and the bogus article he published in
Scientific American.

BTW, I got to know Keith Wallaces' brother rather well, he told some great
stories about himself and Keith going ashram hopping before setting on
Maharishi's.

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[curtisdeltablues]

 *Wisdom* is not the same as intellectual brilliance.
 Wisdom is as much of the heart as of the mind. MMY
 makes the distinction pretty clear in this piece.

I'll have to dig up my notes.  He makes a point in this tape about the
perfection of the verses, their perfect meter being a sign of his
completely balanced heart and mind.  That was what put the other guys
back on their heels.  And we have to assume that if he ran Joitir Math
his enlightenment gave him the thinking chops he needed to represent
the tradition and pass it down so obviously his enlightenment included
both developed qualities to their fullest degree. But it is a parable
and what we each get from it may vary.

Now on to the real King!  Elvis was a bit before my time.  I was all
wrapped up in the Brits.  But I'm making up for lost time now, I'm
reading his two volume biography.  It restore a piece of the link from
my blues guys to today.  His first song put out was a cover of Big Boy
Cruddup's That's Alright Mama.  When you get back I would like to
hear how his early performances effected you.  He was more interesting
and talented than I knew.  Youtube is catching me up.  In singing some
of his songs I am amazed at his expressiveness.  

 
 I've definitely heard some wisdom from King Tony.
 I wish he would do more speaking.

Hey different strokes for different folks.  It would kind of suck for
practicers of Maharishi's programs to hate the new guy, so I'm glad
you dig him.  My millage does vary!




 
 This is my 50th; see you folks Friday or Saturday.

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jst...@... wrote:

 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues 
 curtisdeltablues@ wrote:
 
   ...This does not detract from the recognition and
   appreciation of those of more highly developed intellect
   since it is they who are more capable of comprehending
   and evaluating the philosophy and really enjoying the
   creative application of the whole philosophy in
   practical life. What is meant here is that, even those
   who are not so highly developed intellectually, can
   innocently become as tools in the hands of the divine,
   to work out His plan. And this seems to be the case in
   the tradition of JYOTIR MATH - not much learning is
   needed: just innocent surrender to the master. This
   gives us the key to success - we have simple sincere
   feelings, devotion, a sense of service - and wisdom
   dawns.
   
   (Y'all recognize the text, right?)
  
  It underlines the point that enlightenment gives
  you wisdom.
 
 *Wisdom* is not the same as intellectual brilliance.
 Wisdom is as much of the heart as of the mind. MMY
 makes the distinction pretty clear in this piece.
 
 I've definitely heard some wisdom from King Tony.
 I wish he would do more speaking.
 
 This is my 50th; see you folks Friday or Saturday.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[Vaj]

On Jan 14, 2009, at 8:53 PM, sparaig wrote:


Likewise:

http://tinyurl.com/88f2jk

The last member of the group was Dr. Clifford Saron, a pyychologist,
neuroscientist, suber tech, and personal friend. CLiff, whose  
knowledge
of the brain and of Buddhism far exceeds mine, was invited to  
provide no
only the essential, high-quality audio recording of the conversation  
but also
to provide  with advice during the breaks  on phrasing my questions  
about

Buddhism. --Paul Ekman.


From the forward:

A Conversation Between
The Dalai Lama and Paul Ikman, PhD.




No possibility of bias there, seeing how he's touted as the expert  
on Buddhism
by the guy writing the book on the subject who consult4ede him on  
how to

properly ask questions about Buddhism (not scientific research)



There are many scholars of Buddhism who have no interest in practicing  
Buddhism, but simply researching it. Quite a few are Christians. No  
surprise here--although some interesting finds I hadn't seen--thanks  
Lawson.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[Vaj]

On Jan 14, 2009, at 9:36 PM, I am the eternal wrote:

On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 8:12 PM, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltabl...@yahoo.com 
 wrote:


I agree that King Tony is intelligent enough in a true believer sort
of way.  I just don't believe that the highest state of human
development and Tony should be used in the same sentence. If
enlightened people just show up as ordinary then Maharishi was not
being honest or he didn't know what it would do for someone.

This would be kind of hard to research, it's been so long since I  
read this.  But is it not true that a feature of enlightenment is  
that it gives you the gift of gab Maharishi had, the ability to pull  
many things together intellectually and speak out with charisma?
Of course to everything there is a season.  Guru Dev only spoke for  
perhaps 10 minutes at a time and it was all that old time (fundy  
Vedic) religion.  Perhaps some people here where there when  
Maharishi invited a saint to visit (in India).  Maharishi translated  
from Hindi to English and back.  The saint spoke very elegantly,  
explaining that he could not sleep, because who would hold up  
creation?  Unless Paramahansa Yogananda's book was ghosted, he put  
words together very well and and his book Autobiography of a Yogi,  
my first book in the area, was a spellbinder IMO.  Myself, I always  
had a hard time with someone who could dissect the brain and find  
the Veda there.  I don't see that as much as a show of brillance as  
someone who wanted to please the master, a one-up-manship to Keith  
Wallace and the bogus article he published in Scientific American.


Exactly. I look at his work on finding the Veda in the human nervous  
system--or whatever he calls it--and it's simply a work of the  
intellect and jiving various correspondences together. Very  
Theosophical.


His work on mercury rasayanas in nerve regeneration sounded  
interesting, but I've been unable to find a copy anywhere. And he  
never answered my emails. I guess I must live in the land of mud.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[Sal Sunshine]

On Jan 14, 2009, at 8:42 PM, curtisdeltablues wrote:

 Now on to the real King!  Elvis was a bit before my time.  I was all
 wrapped up in the Brits.  But I'm making up for lost time now, I'm
 reading his two volume biography.  It restore a piece of the link from
 my blues guys to today.  His first song put out was a cover of Big Boy
 Cruddup's That's Alright Mama.  When you get back I would like to
 hear how his early performances effected you.  He was more interesting
 and talented than I knew.  Youtube is catching me up.  In singing some
 of his songs I am amazed at his expressiveness.

Curtis,
In the bio of Elvis I read a few years back, the author told the story  
of
how he was recording a song in Sun Studios before he became famous,
and he was singing Crying In The Chapel (at least I'm pretty sure that
was the song).  Anyway, a woman was in there just to pick something
up, heard him singing, and asked who it was.  When they told her,
she said she was so moved by his voice she got the chills.

I also remember reading his mother never really understood
his stardom and why he became such an iconic figure.  But how
could she, really?  Too close.  And there'd never been anyone like him  
before.

Sal

Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[Sal Sunshine]

On Jan 14, 2009, at 8:42 PM, curtisdeltablues wrote:

 I've definitely heard some wisdom from King Tony.
 I wish he would do more speaking.

 Hey different strokes for different folks.  It would kind of suck for
 practicers of Maharishi's programs to hate the new guy, so I'm glad
 you dig him.  My millage does vary!

If he ever starts belting out Jailhouse Rock,
I'll be the first one in his new court.

Sal

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[curtisdeltablues]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Sal Sunshine salsunsh...@...
wrote:

 On Jan 14, 2009, at 8:42 PM, curtisdeltablues wrote:
 
  I've definitely heard some wisdom from King Tony.
  I wish he would do more speaking.
 
  Hey different strokes for different folks.  It would kind of suck for
  practicers of Maharishi's programs to hate the new guy, so I'm glad
  you dig him.  My millage does vary!
 
 If he ever starts belting out Jailhouse Rock,
 I'll be the first one in his new court.
 
 Sal

This one kind of says it all doesn't it? 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9p2G-_5H0Ufeature=related

http://tinyurl.com/7a2dhn

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[sparaig]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradh...@... wrote:

 
 On Jan 14, 2009, at 8:40 PM, sparaig wrote:
 
  The PI is Cliff Saron (who is Jewish). If you saw the movie on the
  rediscovery of samadhi in humans, Monks, In the Lab LINK
  he's the pudgy guy who talks about the late great neuroscientific
  genius Francisco Varela, working with yogis and brainstorming just
  what type of research they might do in the future--and how that could
  be a benefit to modern life.
 
  A friend of mine at the time, Cliff Saron, who was part of the  
  research group, offered me
  a weekend retreat at Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Barre,  
  Massachusetts as a birthday
  gift. That was very generous of him and it put me in contact with an  
  environment that was
  pretty much influenced by Buddhist meditation practices.
 
 
  No possible semblance of bias there...
 
 
 Doesn't sound at all like the Shamatha Project, but instead a gift  
 from a friend in the early 70's. Whether it had anything to do with  
 his research at that time or not, I have no clue.


You seem to fail to understand my point:

I'll make it clear: someone who practices Buddhism, studies Buddhism:
gives their friends special presents of Buddhist retreats, is consulted with
on how to phrase questions ABOUT Buddhism when talking to the Dali Lama,
is hardly someone outside the tradition, regardless of whether or not they
have a Jewish last name.



Lawson

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[sparaig]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradh...@... wrote:

 
 On Jan 14, 2009, at 8:53 PM, sparaig wrote:
 
  Likewise:
 
  http://tinyurl.com/88f2jk
 
  The last member of the group was Dr. Clifford Saron, a pyychologist,
  neuroscientist, suber tech, and personal friend. CLiff, whose  
  knowledge
  of the brain and of Buddhism far exceeds mine, was invited to  
  provide no
  only the essential, high-quality audio recording of the conversation  
  but also
  to provide  with advice during the breaks  on phrasing my questions  
  about
  Buddhism. --Paul Ekman.
 
 
  From the forward:
 
  A Conversation Between
  The Dalai Lama and Paul Ikman, PhD.
 
 
 
 
  No possibility of bias there, seeing how he's touted as the expert  
  on Buddhism
  by the guy writing the book on the subject who consult4ede him on  
  how to
  properly ask questions about Buddhism (not scientific research)
 
 
 There are many scholars of Buddhism who have no interest in practicing  
 Buddhism, but simply researching it. Quite a few are Christians. No  
 surprise here--although some interesting finds I hadn't seen--thanks  
 Lawson.


Are you suggesting this guy isn't a practicing Buddhist, regardless of whether
or not he goes to Synagogue  (or the Uni-Uni Church for that matter)?


Lawson

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[TurquoiseB]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity no_re...@... wrote:

 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradhatu@ wrote:
  
  Let's not forget the last study putsch: the TM is good for your
heart  
  marketing campaign. Luckily the BBC caught them on that one, as did  
  some physicians reviews. But it makes me wonder: should someone be  
  pointing all this out to the NIH? Should the NIH sue for fraud and  
  deception? I mean, these are our tax dollars they are, quite  
  actually, stealing.
  
  If you look at it, it's pretty clear what they're trying to do: cash  
  in on insurers who are already paying for treatments like MBCT for  
  depression. Once they can get into the medical system with their  
  product, they be able to rake in the $$$ with their over-inflated  
  mantra prices.
 
 I  have done some letters to Senate and Congress regarding the NIH
 Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, which is a big
 money pit for poor research.  I think it should be disbanded and
 research money for alternative therapies needs to be tied to more
 rigorous requirements. 

Just as a question, Ruth, given your background
and your feelings on this, what thype of rigorous
requirements would you suggest for studies done
on homeopathy?

I'm asking out of curiosity because a friend of
mine is a homeopath, and has clued me in to some
of the recent attempts to demonize that practice
in the UK. Their stance, which makes sense to me
given what I know of the practice, is that con-
trol groups are an inappropriate form of rigor-
ous requirement because every patient in home-
opathy is treated differently, based on their
own *particular* symptomology. Two patients com-
plaining of the same primary symptom might be
treated completely differently given their 
*other* symptoms. 

So what, in your opinion, would be a valid study
design for homeopathy? In the US, the AMA so 
successfully demonized homeopathy that it is 
difficult for it to gain acceptance. But in Europe
that is not true, because no such demonization took
place until recently. *All* pharmacies in France
and Spain sell both allopathic and homeopathic
medicines; *all* doctors prescribe both; *all*
patients give positive feedback on both.

So I'm asking out of curiosity. I *understand* the
scientist's/medical doctor's skepticism of home-
opathy -- we are talking substances so diluted in
strength that no trace of them can be found in
the pills prescribed. And yet they work, and work
consistently enough that most countries in Europe
rely on them as often as they do allopathic treat-
ment. So what kind of study would be rigorous
enough to validate this in your eyes, given the
limitation that there can't be any control 
groups in the traditional sense?

Thanks for pondering this, and for your reply if
you have one. I'm really not trying to challenge
you or put you on the spot, and I *agree* with
your assessment of the NIH Center for Complementary 
and Alternative Medicine as it currently works. I'm
just asking because of my friend's interest in 
homeopathy, and my own personal experiences with
homeopathic treatment, as prescribed for me by
full-fledged MD's in France and in Spain. It
worked. I can see no rational reason for *why*
it worked, but it did. Go figure.

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[TurquoiseB]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity no_re...@... wrote:

 You are assuming a conclusion that
 simply can't be assumed.   We have no idea as to whether TM
 successfully produces enlightenment or unity consciousness.  The 
 TMO does not say that out of X number of meditators, Y have reached 
 GC, or UC.  

More important, the TMO cannot produce *repre-
sentatives* of CC, GC, or UC. The most they
can say is that a few people show *some* of
the things that our teacher claimed were 
symptoms of these states. And even then, not
all of the symptoms, and not regularly.

That really IS what David OJ's statement says.

 Plus, even more importantly, we don't even know if higher states of
 consciousness are in fact higher or important or just different.  
 
 After all these years we know next to nothing. The 60s, the 70s, the
 80s, the 90s, and soon the 00's will pass.  Meditators get old,
 meditators die, still thinking that they are hammering a nail when
 there is no indication that they have either a hammer or nail.

Exactly.

What we are seeing is argumentation backwards
from the conclusion. Many of the folks here who
argue the benefits of TM *assume* those benefits
as a given, and then base all of their subse-
quent arguments on that assumption.

They assume that TM is a hammer because they were
*told* that it was. Rather than admit that they
just believed was fact this when it was told to 
them, they assume that it's a hammer *as if it 
were a fact*.

Vaj goes overboard in his attempts to prove that
TM isn't a hammer (doesn't produce enlightenment
as it has been described throughout history), and
that puts some people off, including me sometimes.
But I am at least willing to admit that my former
belief in TM as a method for realizing permanent
enlightenment was based on *what I was told*, not
anything I ever experienced personally or saw 
around me in my days with the TMO. I was stupid, 
and just believed what I had been told.

When I experienced other perspectives on the 
enlightenment process, and other, more rigorous
definitions of what enlightenment might be (and
other, more interesting subjective experiences of
the states in question), I stopped believing in 
the TM model, and admitted to myself and to others 
that the main reason I believed the TMO's spiel at 
the time was that it was really the only one I'd 
ever heard. For many people on this forum, it
still is because they react to any others by
sticking their fingers in their ears and saying,
I can't HEAR you...I can't HEAR you.

I'd have more respect for the TM apologists here
if they 1) could admit the degree of *assumption*
they have about TM and where those assumptions came 
from (from believing what they were told), and 2) 
if they were more open to open intellectual inquiry 
into other spiritual disciplines and *their* desc-
riptions of enlightenment and what the definitions 
of it might be.

The bottom line, however, is that as far as I can
tell not a single TM apologist on this forum can 
point to a single human being on the planet and 
declare, This person is fully enlightened, and they 
got that way by doing TM and only TM. The *TMO* 
itself cannot do this. 

And yet they keep repeating over and over and over
and over the tired old claim that TM not only
produces enlightenment, but that it's the fastest
and most effective way to produce it. 

One would think that after a few decades of saying
this shit that one or two of them would have been
able to actually *hear* the words as they came
out of their mouths, and wonder why they were still
saying them. 

Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[Vaj]

On Jan 12, 2009, at 9:42 PM, ruthsimplicity wrote:


--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradh...@... wrote:



Let's not forget the last study putsch: the TM is good for your heart
marketing campaign. Luckily the BBC caught them on that one, as did
some physicians reviews. But it makes me wonder: should someone be
pointing all this out to the NIH? Should the NIH sue for fraud and
deception? I mean, these are our tax dollars they are, quite
actually, stealing.

If you look at it, it's pretty clear what they're trying to do: cash
in on insurers who are already paying for treatments like MBCT for
depression. Once they can get into the medical system with their
product, they be able to rake in the $$$ with their over-inflated
mantra prices.


I  have done some letters to Senate and Congress regarding the NIH
Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, which is a big
money pit for poor research.  I think it should be disbanded and
research money for alternative therapies needs to be tied to more
rigorous requirements.


I just signed up for the Harvard conference on meditation research  
and psychotherapy this May with HH the 14th Dalai Lama. It will be my  
first foray into the leading edge world of meditation research. I'm  
looking forward to meeting some of the shining lights like Herbert  
Benson and Richard Davidson. There are requests for discussion as  
part of the registration and I hope to be able to ask some questions  
in that vein: questionable research and it's impact on legitimate  
meditation research overall. Of course the impact on funding is an  
important part of that.

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[nablusoss1008]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity no_re...@... 
wrote:

 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, nablusoss1008 no_reply@ wrote:
 
  No worries, the Buddhist's are too busy feeling spescial.
  
  Maharishi would never ask anyone in Enlightenment to publiscise 
his/her
  state of freedom.
 
 
 Nabby, if that is the case, are we to take it on faith that we will
 become enlightened?

It's certainly my faith that we all grow into something bigger every 
minute. If the culmination of this growth sooner or later can be called 
Enlightenment is not so important. In my opinion.

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[raunchydog]

Requiring natural remedies to produce verifiable research is a bogus
excuse to demonize their use. The politics of allelopathic medicine
and the globalization Big Pharma push pills for profit and
alternative medicine cuts into their bottom line.  Since herbs and
homeopathy, rely on history, case studies, subjective reports and
trial and error to prove effectiveness, they are an easy target for
Big Pharma, to cry, snake oil. Anything that empowers people to
treat their own ailments means a smaller piece of pie for the big guys. 

Drug researchers can produce quantifiable results but they can also
cheat by ignoring test results they don't like. Figures can lie and
liars can figure. A drug company often pays for its own research,
which amounts to the fox guarding the chickens. They push newer,
better drugs to market as quickly as possible with all their
attendant side effects and 5 years later the drug proves dangerous.
It's a risk they are willing to take, squeezing every dime they can
out of a market until it becomes obvious a drug is killing more people
than it saves. It hypocritical to say that drug research, motivated by
profit, is superior to any standard measuring the effectiveness of
herbs that DON'T kill people and drugs that DO.

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_re...@... wrote:

 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity no_reply@ wrote:
 
  --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradhatu@ wrote:
   
   Let's not forget the last study putsch: the TM is good for your
 heart  
   marketing campaign. Luckily the BBC caught them on that one, as
did  
   some physicians reviews. But it makes me wonder: should someone be  
   pointing all this out to the NIH? Should the NIH sue for fraud and  
   deception? I mean, these are our tax dollars they are, quite  
   actually, stealing.
   
   If you look at it, it's pretty clear what they're trying to do:
cash  
   in on insurers who are already paying for treatments like MBCT for  
   depression. Once they can get into the medical system with their  
   product, they be able to rake in the $$$ with their over-inflated  
   mantra prices.
  
  I  have done some letters to Senate and Congress regarding the NIH
  Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, which is a big
  money pit for poor research.  I think it should be disbanded and
  research money for alternative therapies needs to be tied to more
  rigorous requirements. 
 
 Just as a question, Ruth, given your background
 and your feelings on this, what thype of rigorous
 requirements would you suggest for studies done
 on homeopathy?
 
 I'm asking out of curiosity because a friend of
 mine is a homeopath, and has clued me in to some
 of the recent attempts to demonize that practice
 in the UK. Their stance, which makes sense to me
 given what I know of the practice, is that con-
 trol groups are an inappropriate form of rigor-
 ous requirement because every patient in home-
 opathy is treated differently, based on their
 own *particular* symptomology. Two patients com-
 plaining of the same primary symptom might be
 treated completely differently given their 
 *other* symptoms. 
 
 So what, in your opinion, would be a valid study
 design for homeopathy? In the US, the AMA so 
 successfully demonized homeopathy that it is 
 difficult for it to gain acceptance. But in Europe
 that is not true, because no such demonization took
 place until recently. *All* pharmacies in France
 and Spain sell both allopathic and homeopathic
 medicines; *all* doctors prescribe both; *all*
 patients give positive feedback on both.
 
 So I'm asking out of curiosity. I *understand* the
 scientist's/medical doctor's skepticism of home-
 opathy -- we are talking substances so diluted in
 strength that no trace of them can be found in
 the pills prescribed. And yet they work, and work
 consistently enough that most countries in Europe
 rely on them as often as they do allopathic treat-
 ment. So what kind of study would be rigorous
 enough to validate this in your eyes, given the
 limitation that there can't be any control 
 groups in the traditional sense?
 
 Thanks for pondering this, and for your reply if
 you have one. I'm really not trying to challenge
 you or put you on the spot, and I *agree* with
 your assessment of the NIH Center for Complementary 
 and Alternative Medicine as it currently works. I'm
 just asking because of my friend's interest in 
 homeopathy, and my own personal experiences with
 homeopathic treatment, as prescribed for me by
 full-fledged MD's in France and in Spain. It
 worked. I can see no rational reason for *why*
 it worked, but it did. Go figure.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[Sal Sunshine]

On Jan 13, 2009, at 3:11 AM, TurquoiseB wrote:

 So I'm asking out of curiosity. I *understand* the
 scientist's/medical doctor's skepticism of home-
 opathy -- we are talking substances so diluted in
 strength that no trace of them can be found in
 the pills prescribed. And yet they work, and work
 consistently enough that most countries in Europe
 rely on them as often as they do allopathic treat-
 ment. So what kind of study would be rigorous
 enough to validate this in your eyes, given the
 limitation that there can't be any control
 groups in the traditional sense?

 Thanks for pondering this, and for your reply if
 you have one.

I'll be interested in Ruth's reply too.  My (admittedly
limited) experience with homeopathy is that it's little
better than a high-class scam, with very few if any
results that you wouldn't get from a placebo.  I've never
heard of any working that didn't seem to come from
wishful thinking.

Sal

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[enlightened_dawn11]

you are entitled to your uninformed opinion, and your arrogant 
attitude (TM apologists, etc.), and that is all it is. 

the practice of TM, for anyone who stuck with it, turns out to be 
everything the Maharishi said it was, and more. of course with your 
limited practice of the technique (30 YEARS AGO), you would not and 
could not know that. so i'll leave you shooting your blanks in the 
dark.

it is pure ego tripping that keep those like you critical of TM 
going here on FFL. nothing more. hell, none of you even do TM 
anymore, and we are all supposed to sit around drooling and 
believing -anything- that comes out of your mouths? 

i'd have some respect for you Barry if you based what you wrote on 
experience. but you don't, substituting instead arrongance and ego 
for real life.

its like you trying to convince us of your abilities driving a 
Ferrari, when all you've done is putt-putted around in a junker- lol

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_re...@... 
wrote:

 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity no_reply@ 
wrote:
 
  You are assuming a conclusion that
  simply can't be assumed.   We have no idea as to whether TM
  successfully produces enlightenment or unity consciousness.  
The 
  TMO does not say that out of X number of meditators, Y have 
reached 
  GC, or UC.  
 
 More important, the TMO cannot produce *repre-
 sentatives* of CC, GC, or UC. The most they
 can say is that a few people show *some* of
 the things that our teacher claimed were 
 symptoms of these states. And even then, not
 all of the symptoms, and not regularly.
 
 That really IS what David OJ's statement says.
 
  Plus, even more importantly, we don't even know if higher states 
of
  consciousness are in fact higher or important or just 
different.  
  
  After all these years we know next to nothing. The 60s, the 70s, 
the
  80s, the 90s, and soon the 00's will pass.  Meditators get old,
  meditators die, still thinking that they are hammering a nail 
when
  there is no indication that they have either a hammer or nail.
 
 Exactly.
 
 What we are seeing is argumentation backwards
 from the conclusion. Many of the folks here who
 argue the benefits of TM *assume* those benefits
 as a given, and then base all of their subse-
 quent arguments on that assumption.
 
-snip-

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[authfriend]

There's an assumption being made here that isn't
necessarily correct: that the fact that the TMO
*does* not produce representatives of
enlightened TMers means that it *cannot* do so,
the corollary assumption being that it cannot do
so because there aren't any.

There are various reasons why the TMO might not
do so even if it could. It's even possible that
the TMO *cannot* produce such representatives
not because there aren't any but for other
reasons, one of which ed11 has explored in recent
posts.

Such possibilities tend not to be taken into
account in the context of making these assumptions
and drawing from them the conclusion that TM
doesn't produce enlightenment.

These assumptions and that conclusion may be
correct, but we don't *know* that for sure, and
we shouldn't pretend we do. Maybe there are ways
we could rule out the other possibilities, but
we can't do that if we don't acknowledge their
existence.

Granted, the TMO doesn't address the issue
straightforwardly, and it's most likely
unrealistic to expect that it ever will. And
we may never be able to answer the question
with any degree of certainty. But we ought to
be able to discuss it in an intellectually
honest manner.

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[curtisdeltablues]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, raunchydog raunchy...@... wrote:

This topic rocks and I can't wait for Ruth to weigh in.


 Requiring natural remedies to produce verifiable research is a bogus
 excuse to demonize their use.

I would prefer putting them in the I don't know category rather than
demonizing them maybe.  But this is medicine and lives are at stake so
we do want to find out what works and what doesn't with rigorous
studies, right?  We'll get into the complications of getting them done
later, but for now I just want to establish the principle that
anything used in medicine should be studied as best we can.  Otherwise
we are flying blind with people's lives.

 The politics of allelopathic medicine
 and the globalization Big Pharma push pills for profit and
 alternative medicine cuts into their bottom line.  Since herbs and
 homeopathy, rely on history, case studies, subjective reports and
 trial and error to prove effectiveness,

This is just the beginning of the scientific method.  It is all on a
continuum.  But incomplete science is not reliable at that stage of
the process and we should be clear what we know an what we don't about
alternative medicines.  Just as big drug companies shouldn't
automatically demonize herbal treatments we shouldn't give them more
credibility than they deserve on slim evidence.

 they are an easy target for
 Big Pharma, to cry, snake oil. Anything that empowers people to
 treat their own ailments means a smaller piece of pie for the big guys.

This limits money for research because companies are not going to
spend a lot of money on something that they can't patent.  This is an
area for government research IMO because it is for the common good. 
But I don't believe that it is just pharma companies crying snake oil.
 The fact is that humans have been wrong about all sorts of stuff in
medicine and will continue to be wrong.  We are cognitively flawed in
our attachment to ideas that are wrong.  This is where science helps
us go beyond our limitations. 
 
 
 Drug researchers can produce quantifiable results but they can also
 cheat by ignoring test results they don't like. Figures can lie and
 liars can figure.

And other people can catch them lying.  This is the dance of the human
side of science.  But it doesn't invalidate the principles, just makes
us cautious about the application.  We have discovered all sorts of
useful things in medicine and continue to do so.  Some bad
applications is a bogus reason to demonize drug research...right?

 A drug company often pays for its own research,
 which amounts to the fox guarding the chickens.

Not always, it depends on what controls are in place.  The fact is
that they may be the only people interested enough to put up the money.

 They push newer,
 better drugs to market as quickly as possible with all their
 attendant side effects and 5 years later the drug proves dangerous.

And sometimes push a new improved drug when their patent runs out
that doesn't work as well as the drug that is being sold cheaper as
generics.  This is a weird area that concerns me.

 It's a risk they are willing to take, squeezing every dime they can
 out of a market

Profit is not the enemy for any business.  It is not necessarily a bad
thing.  More profit can be used for more research.  The profit motive
guides research and now we have very little research on cures for
things.  Everyone wants to create maintenance drugs that can be sold
over time.  This is a huge problem IMO.  We need a different
interaction with the government looking out for the common good in
medicine.  Our system is failing us.

 until it becomes obvious a drug is killing more people than it
saves. It hypocritical to say that drug research, motivated by
profit, is superior to any standard measuring the effectiveness of
herbs that DON'T kill people and drugs that DO.

It is a myth that herbs  and alternative remedies don't kill people,
some do. Some people also delay more aggressive treatments  that might
save lives.  But herbs are powerful and need to be studied more. 
Because they are complex compounds they are hard to study.  But they
are not safe just because they come from nature.  

This topic really brings out all the gray zones in our beliefs.  I am
trying to fill in some other perspectives in what you wrote Raunchy. 
It is not out of disrespecting your POV which has many valid points.





 
 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote:
 
  --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity no_reply@
wrote:
  
   --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradhatu@ wrote:

Let's not forget the last study putsch: the TM is good for your
  heart  
marketing campaign. Luckily the BBC caught them on that one, as
 did  
some physicians reviews. But it makes me wonder: should
someone be  
pointing all this out to the NIH? Should the NIH sue for fraud
and  
deception? I mean, these are our tax dollars they are, quite  
   

Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[Arhata Osho]

Having been in Corporate Sales in Manhattan, I had friends both in Advertising 
and 
Pharmaceutical Sales.  Sales is about making money - from idea to finished
product, it's about money.  The buyer, should be about 'awareness'.  Awareness, 
hopefully, 
creates responsibility in a drugged out world!  An endless loop of one hand 
serving
the other with an illusive caveat for taking the high road. Corporations sell 
needs that
may or may not be there - it comes down to the buyer and how that buyer uses the
product.  'Fast food brains' are their own worst karma.
Arhata












Requiring natural remedies to produce verifiable research is a bogus

excuse to demonize their use. The politics of allelopathic medicine

and the globalization Big Pharma push pills for profit and

alternative medicine cuts into their bottom line.  Since herbs and

homeopathy, rely on history, case studies, subjective reports and

trial and error to prove effectiveness, they are an easy target for

Big Pharma, to cry, snake oil. Anything that empowers people to

treat their own ailments means a smaller piece of pie for the big guys. 



Drug researchers can produce quantifiable results but they can also

cheat by ignoring test results they don't like. Figures can lie and

liars can figure. A drug company often pays for its own research,

which amounts to the fox guarding the chickens. They push newer,

better drugs to market as quickly as possible with all their

attendant side effects and 5 years later the drug proves dangerous.

It's a risk they are willing to take, squeezing every dime they can

out of a market until it becomes obvious a drug is killing more people

than it saves. It hypocritical to say that drug research, motivated by

profit, is superior to any standard measuring the effectiveness of

herbs that DON'T kill people and drugs that DO.



--- In FairfieldLife@ yahoogroups. com, TurquoiseB no_re...@.. . wrote:



 --- In FairfieldLife@ yahoogroups. com, ruthsimplicity no_reply@ wrote:

 

  --- In FairfieldLife@ yahoogroups. com, Vaj vajradhatu@  wrote:

   

   Let's not forget the last study putsch: the TM is good for your

 heart  

   marketing campaign. Luckily the BBC caught them on that one, as

did  

   some physicians reviews. But it makes me wonder: should someone be  

   pointing all this out to the NIH? Should the NIH sue for fraud and  

   deception? I mean, these are our tax dollars they are, quite  

   actually, stealing.

   

   If you look at it, it's pretty clear what they're trying to do:

cash  

   in on insurers who are already paying for treatments like MBCT for  

   depression. Once they can get into the medical system with their  

   product, they be able to rake in the $$$ with their over-inflated  

   mantra prices.

  

  I  have done some letters to Senate and Congress regarding the NIH

  Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, which is a big

  money pit for poor research.  I think it should be disbanded and

  research money for alternative therapies needs to be tied to more

  rigorous requirements. 

 

 Just as a question, Ruth, given your background

 and your feelings on this, what thype of rigorous

 requirements would you suggest for studies done

 on homeopathy?

 

 I'm asking out of curiosity because a friend of

 mine is a homeopath, and has clued me in to some

 of the recent attempts to demonize that practice

 in the UK. Their stance, which makes sense to me

 given what I know of the practice, is that con-

 trol groups are an inappropriate form of rigor-

 ous requirement because every patient in home-

 opathy is treated differently, based on their

 own *particular* symptomology. Two patients com-

 plaining of the same primary symptom might be

 treated completely differently given their 

 *other* symptoms. 

 

 So what, in your opinion, would be a valid study

 design for homeopathy? In the US, the AMA so 

 successfully demonized homeopathy that it is 

 difficult for it to gain acceptance. But in Europe

 that is not true, because no such demonization took

 place until recently. *All* pharmacies in France

 and Spain sell both allopathic and homeopathic

 medicines; *all* doctors prescribe both; *all*

 patients give positive feedback on both.

 

 So I'm asking out of curiosity. I *understand* the

 scientist's/ medical doctor's skepticism of home-

 opathy -- we are talking substances so diluted in

 strength that no trace of them can be found in

 the pills prescribed. And yet they work, and work

 consistently enough that most countries in Europe

 rely on them as often as they do allopathic treat-

 ment. So what kind of study would be rigorous

 enough to validate this in your eyes, given the

 limitation that there can't be any control 

 groups in the traditional sense?

 

 Thanks for pondering this, and for your reply if

 you have one. I'm really not trying to challenge

 you or put you on the spot, and I *agree* 

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[curtisdeltablues]

 Thanks for pondering this, and for your reply if
 you have one. I'm really not trying to challenge
 you or put you on the spot, and I *agree* with
 your assessment of the NIH Center for Complementary 
 and Alternative Medicine as it currently works. I'm
 just asking because of my friend's interest in 
 homeopathy, and my own personal experiences with
 homeopathic treatment, as prescribed for me by
 full-fledged MD's in France and in Spain. It
 worked. I can see no rational reason for *why*
 it worked, but it did. Go figure.

This is a great topic!  What I have read about homeopathy is that a
large number of people will get better from any illness on their own.
 Our bodies are designed to fight disease.  So the causative
relationship between anything we do homeopathic or otherwise is
impossible to determine from our experience.

I am watching a lot of people treat the various Winter afflictions
from flues to colds and bacterial infections.  Some use antibiotics
some don't.  Some get better quickly, some drag on.  There are too
many variables to know what is working and what isn't, we are all just
winging it!

There is a strong desire for the doctor to do something when a sick
person visits them.  Here we might give some anitbiotic when it is
really just a virus that has to run its course.  In Europe, perhaps
they are giving something the patient believes in that is cheaper. 
the effect may be more psychological and societal, a way to manage
large numbers of patients when finding out the exact cause may be
impractical.  Then if things escalate, we get put in a hospital where
they can do the serious expensive tests to really find out what is
going on.  But most of us wont need that because our bodies win the
battle for us as we happily down whatever pill we think is going to
help us.

The conceptual problem I have with homeopathy is that if the principle
was correct, that titrations so great that there are no physical
molecules present in the formula, but only the influence, then any
drink of water would have the powerful effects of all the molecules it
had come in contact with on the way to us.  I don't think we are that
subtle to be influenced in this way.  


--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_re...@... wrote:

 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity no_reply@ wrote:
 
  --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradhatu@ wrote:
   
   Let's not forget the last study putsch: the TM is good for your
 heart  
   marketing campaign. Luckily the BBC caught them on that one, as
did  
   some physicians reviews. But it makes me wonder: should someone be  
   pointing all this out to the NIH? Should the NIH sue for fraud and  
   deception? I mean, these are our tax dollars they are, quite  
   actually, stealing.
   
   If you look at it, it's pretty clear what they're trying to do:
cash  
   in on insurers who are already paying for treatments like MBCT for  
   depression. Once they can get into the medical system with their  
   product, they be able to rake in the $$$ with their over-inflated  
   mantra prices.
  
  I  have done some letters to Senate and Congress regarding the NIH
  Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, which is a big
  money pit for poor research.  I think it should be disbanded and
  research money for alternative therapies needs to be tied to more
  rigorous requirements. 
 
 Just as a question, Ruth, given your background
 and your feelings on this, what thype of rigorous
 requirements would you suggest for studies done
 on homeopathy?
 
 I'm asking out of curiosity because a friend of
 mine is a homeopath, and has clued me in to some
 of the recent attempts to demonize that practice
 in the UK. Their stance, which makes sense to me
 given what I know of the practice, is that con-
 trol groups are an inappropriate form of rigor-
 ous requirement because every patient in home-
 opathy is treated differently, based on their
 own *particular* symptomology. Two patients com-
 plaining of the same primary symptom might be
 treated completely differently given their 
 *other* symptoms. 
 
 So what, in your opinion, would be a valid study
 design for homeopathy? In the US, the AMA so 
 successfully demonized homeopathy that it is 
 difficult for it to gain acceptance. But in Europe
 that is not true, because no such demonization took
 place until recently. *All* pharmacies in France
 and Spain sell both allopathic and homeopathic
 medicines; *all* doctors prescribe both; *all*
 patients give positive feedback on both.
 
 So I'm asking out of curiosity. I *understand* the
 scientist's/medical doctor's skepticism of home-
 opathy -- we are talking substances so diluted in
 strength that no trace of them can be found in
 the pills prescribed. And yet they work, and work
 consistently enough that most countries in Europe
 rely on them as often as they do allopathic treat-
 ment. So what kind of study would be rigorous
 enough to validate this in 

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[curtisdeltablues]

 These assumptions and that conclusion may be
 correct, but we don't *know* that for sure, and
 we shouldn't pretend we do. Maybe there are ways
 we could rule out the other possibilities, but
 we can't do that if we don't acknowledge their
 existence.

While I agree with what you have written, I still think it is up to
the movement to provide the evidence for its claims.  They are selling
a product after all. And it is making very substantial claims for that
product.  

It is not unreasonable to conclude that guys like Tony Nader are the
examples of what TM can do at the highest level.  Maharishi basically
said as much.  If you hear Tony speak and are impressed with anything
about him then that you believe comes from his TM induced state, then
that is reason enough to do TM.

Needless to say, I am not so impressed with any of the TM leaders for
me to conclude that they are functioning in some enhanced state of
mind. So for me, I consider the value of their claims dubious. I know
from my own experience that you can alter your mental functioning
quite a bit through meditation, but it doesn't necessarily translate
into much of a benefit for me. YMMV of course.



--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jst...@... wrote:

 There's an assumption being made here that isn't
 necessarily correct: that the fact that the TMO
 *does* not produce representatives of
 enlightened TMers means that it *cannot* do so,
 the corollary assumption being that it cannot do
 so because there aren't any.
 
 There are various reasons why the TMO might not
 do so even if it could. It's even possible that
 the TMO *cannot* produce such representatives
 not because there aren't any but for other
 reasons, one of which ed11 has explored in recent
 posts.
 
 Such possibilities tend not to be taken into
 account in the context of making these assumptions
 and drawing from them the conclusion that TM
 doesn't produce enlightenment.
 
 These assumptions and that conclusion may be
 correct, but we don't *know* that for sure, and
 we shouldn't pretend we do. Maybe there are ways
 we could rule out the other possibilities, but
 we can't do that if we don't acknowledge their
 existence.
 
 Granted, the TMO doesn't address the issue
 straightforwardly, and it's most likely
 unrealistic to expect that it ever will. And
 we may never be able to answer the question
 with any degree of certainty. But we ought to
 be able to discuss it in an intellectually
 honest manner.

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[nablusoss1008]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, enlightened_dawn11 
no_re...@... wrote:

 you are entitled to your uninformed opinion, and your arrogant 
 attitude (TM apologists, etc.), and that is all it is. 
 
 the practice of TM, for anyone who stuck with it, turns out to be 
 everything the Maharishi said it was, and more. of course with your 
 limited practice of the technique (30 YEARS AGO), you would not and 
 could not know that. so i'll leave you shooting your blanks in the 
 dark.
 
 it is pure ego tripping that keep those like you critical of TM 
 going here on FFL. nothing more. hell, none of you even do TM 
 anymore, and we are all supposed to sit around drooling and 
 believing -anything- that comes out of your mouths? 
 
 i'd have some respect for you Barry if you based what you wrote on 
 experience. but you don't, substituting instead arrongance and ego 
 for real life.
 
 its like you trying to convince us of your abilities driving a 
 Ferrari, when all you've done is putt-putted around in a junker- lol

Very well said ! I also don't understand why someone who has not been 
in the Movement for more than thirty years still bother to attack the 
TMO year after year here on FFL producing 50 (!) looong posts every 
week. One would think he would have moved on, but no. The bitterness, 
the anger seems never to resolve. Poor soul.

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[authfriend]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues 
curtisdeltabl...@... wrote:

  These assumptions and that conclusion may be
  correct, but we don't *know* that for sure, and
  we shouldn't pretend we do. Maybe there are ways
  we could rule out the other possibilities, but
  we can't do that if we don't acknowledge their
  existence.
 
 While I agree with what you have written, I still
 think it is up to the movement to provide the
 evidence for its claims.  They are selling a
 product after all. And it is making very
 substantial claims for that product.

Part of the whole question, though, is whether there
is any way to provide the kind of evidence that
would satisfy you. I'm not sure it isn't a category
error to think it should be possible.

I keep using the example of dreams as a kind of
parallel. Obviously dreaming is vastly more commonly
reported than enlightenment, but the category error
is very similar: There is no way we can prove on an
objective basis that people have vivid fantasy 
experiences while asleep.

 It is not unreasonable to conclude that guys like
 Tony Nader are the examples of what TM can do at
 the highest level.  Maharishi basically said as
 much.  If you hear Tony speak and are impressed
 with anything about him then that you believe comes
 from his TM induced state, then that is reason enough
 to do TM.
 
 Needless to say, I am not so impressed with any of
 the TM leaders for me to conclude that they are
 functioning in some enhanced state of mind.

More than that, even if you were, it wouldn't be
*evidence* in any objective sense.

 So for me, I consider the value of their claims
 dubious. I know from my own experience that you can
 alter your mental functioning quite a bit through
 meditation, but it doesn't necessarily translate
 into much of a benefit for me. YMMV of course.

This is also highly subjective, of course. You've made
it pretty clear that you're happy with your current
state of mental (and presumably other) functioning and
that you feel it represents a lot of progress (although
you're explicit that there's room for improvement).

But you don't know to what degree your history of
meditating is responsible for your current level of
functioning, and there's no way I can see for the
TMO to provide you with evidence of any benefit. 



 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote:
 
  There's an assumption being made here that isn't
  necessarily correct: that the fact that the TMO
  *does* not produce representatives of
  enlightened TMers means that it *cannot* do so,
  the corollary assumption being that it cannot do
  so because there aren't any.
  
  There are various reasons why the TMO might not
  do so even if it could. It's even possible that
  the TMO *cannot* produce such representatives
  not because there aren't any but for other
  reasons, one of which ed11 has explored in recent
  posts.
  
  Such possibilities tend not to be taken into
  account in the context of making these assumptions
  and drawing from them the conclusion that TM
  doesn't produce enlightenment.

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[enlightened_dawn11]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, nablusoss1008 no_re...@... 
wrote:

 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, enlightened_dawn11 
 no_reply@ wrote:
 
  you are entitled to your uninformed opinion, and your arrogant 
  attitude (TM apologists, etc.), and that is all it is. 
  
  the practice of TM, for anyone who stuck with it, turns out to 
be 
  everything the Maharishi said it was, and more. of course with 
your 
  limited practice of the technique (30 YEARS AGO), you would not 
and 
  could not know that. so i'll leave you shooting your blanks in 
the 
  dark.
  
  it is pure ego tripping that keep those like you critical of TM 
  going here on FFL. nothing more. hell, none of you even do TM 
  anymore, and we are all supposed to sit around drooling and 
  believing -anything- that comes out of your mouths? 
  
  i'd have some respect for you Barry if you based what you wrote 
on 
  experience. but you don't, substituting instead arrongance and 
ego 
  for real life.
  
  its like you trying to convince us of your abilities driving a 
  Ferrari, when all you've done is putt-putted around in a junker- 
lol
 
 Very well said ! I also don't understand why someone who has not 
been 
 in the Movement for more than thirty years still bother to attack 
the 
 TMO year after year here on FFL producing 50 (!) looong posts 
every 
 week. One would think he would have moved on, but no. The 
bitterness, 
 the anger seems never to resolve. Poor soul.

Barry is still after all of these years trying to justify his lost 
chance at enlightenment in this lifetime. plain and simple. he has 
created a hell which he faces every day.

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[curtisdeltablues]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jst...@... wrote:

Snip
  
  While I agree with what you have written, I still
  think it is up to the movement to provide the
  evidence for its claims.  They are selling a
  product after all. And it is making very
  substantial claims for that product.
 
 Part of the whole question, though, is whether there
 is any way to provide the kind of evidence that
 would satisfy you. I'm not sure it isn't a category
 error to think it should be possible.

Not according to Maharishi.  He seemed to believe that TM practice
would improve all aspects of a person in a measurable way.  So I don't
think it is a category error.  But the question of what kind of
evidence would be adequate for me personally is interesting. 

 
 I keep using the example of dreams as a kind of
 parallel. Obviously dreaming is vastly more commonly
 reported than enlightenment, but the category error
 is very similar: There is no way we can prove on an
 objective basis that people have vivid fantasy 
 experiences while asleep.

But we can prove that dreams have a value by depriving people of sleep
and seeing what happens.  So the value of sleep as a state is
established.  The content of dreams is another question.  But
enlightenment as Mahariahi defines it is more than a subjective
experience, it has implications for how we function.  He claims it
improves it to its full potential which is quite a grand, and I would
expect, noticeable difference.  In Maharishi's view the subjective
experiences of say gods or something are not the important issue, it
is the practical benifits.  So his claims fall into the testable.

 
  It is not unreasonable to conclude that guys like
  Tony Nader are the examples of what TM can do at
  the highest level.  Maharishi basically said as
  much.  If you hear Tony speak and are impressed
  with anything about him then that you believe comes
  from his TM induced state, then that is reason enough
  to do TM.
  
  Needless to say, I am not so impressed with any of
  the TM leaders for me to conclude that they are
  functioning in some enhanced state of mind.
 
 More than that, even if you were, it wouldn't be
 *evidence* in any objective sense.

But you know it would be good enough for me.  I don't live my life by
some strict research protocol, who does?  I can evaluate how people
function and I notice when someone is extra smart or exceptional in
some way.  The lack of many inspiring people in the movement is
significant.  If the claims were true we would see a bunch of really
interesting people.  Movement people are nice enough on the whole, but
I don't consider them advanced beyond any of the well educated people
I know outside the movement.  And as we get to the upper echelon of
the movement I see more feyness than specialness.  They seem like many
other types of super believers who I have met in my life.  The
ideology doesn't seem to matter much, it is their absolute devotion to
it that defines them.  I find their confident obsession with having
the highest teaching revealing the deepest meaning of life off putting.

 
  So for me, I consider the value of their claims
  dubious. I know from my own experience that you can
  alter your mental functioning quite a bit through
  meditation, but it doesn't necessarily translate
  into much of a benefit for me. YMMV of course.
 
 This is also highly subjective, of course. You've made
 it pretty clear that you're happy with your current
 state of mental (and presumably other) functioning and
 that you feel it represents a lot of progress (although
 you're explicit that there's room for improvement).

It depends on what metrics matter to you I guess.  The way Maharishi
uses awareness as a thing that you can expand seems bogus to me. the
analogy of being well rested breaks down pretty fast.  My Curtis
improvement projects are not in that area.  What has changed the most
in my aging is my perspective.  That seems pretty universal as people
age, they are more happy with what they understand about their life.

I would expect that if awareness was something that could be expanded
and this was beneficial that was would see people in the movement
showing some signs of having extra awareness.  By my estimation they
seem to show less.  At the movement's highest levels they seem to
require a very sheltered environment to maintain their beliefs.  They
seem much less flexible and understanding than most people I meet in
my life.  Their desire for belief homogeneity in their environments
gives them away like any other super religious group-think people.

 
 But you don't know to what degree your history of
 meditating is responsible for your current level of
 functioning, and there's no way I can see for the
 TMO to provide you with evidence of any benefit. 
 

Agreed.  TM came to me at a stage in my life where I had a few
different roads I could have taken.  I consider my getting into TM to
be one of the better choices at the time.  

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[billy jim]

Back in the mid-80's Korean Zen master Seung Sahn Nim, while guiding a retreat, 
was asked whether Master Hsuan Hua was a Zen Master. Seung Sahn Nim described 
him as a Tripitaka master.  He considered him important for his role in 
inspiring young Americans to take up Dharma practice in a manner similar to the 
serious practitioners in China, ie: three steps, one bow - dedicating the 
results to all beings equally without remainder.

Reading his talks inspired me at the time, eventually to join a small monastery.
Later I met Anagarika Munindra, who was a master of Vipassana and had 
specialized in mastering the Jhanas (Dhyana-samapati), particularly the Metta 
Jhana (Brahma-viharas). When he walked into a house the walls glowed and waves 
of bliss-energy permeated the people present. 

This kind of experience ended up being my gauge, since it is impossible to 
verify someone's station of awareness - inference is an undependably ally. 

I have found some Neo-vedantin writings to be valuable. However, many of them 
seem to stop going deeper after experiencing a few special cognitions of their 
own ground-nature. The primal dzogchen instructions of Garab Dorje discuss 
how our attention needs to be focused after such congnitions so that the 
originary and experiential radiances united in continous clear light awareness.


   

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[authfriend]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues 
curtisdeltabl...@... wrote:

 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote:
 
 Snip
   
   While I agree with what you have written, I still
   think it is up to the movement to provide the
   evidence for its claims.  They are selling a
   product after all. And it is making very
   substantial claims for that product.
  
  Part of the whole question, though, is whether there
  is any way to provide the kind of evidence that
  would satisfy you. I'm not sure it isn't a category
  error to think it should be possible.
 
 Not according to Maharishi.  He seemed to believe
 that TM practice would improve all aspects of a
 person in a measurable way.  So I don't think it is
 a category error.

Yes, but what I'm talking about is whether a person
can become enlightened via TM, not whether they
experience personal improvement as a result of TM
practice.

On the other hand, he *did* seem to think measures
could be found objectively to demonstrate enlightenment,
and the movement has been working on this for a long
time without accomplishing more than finding various
signs it says are suggestive of development in that
direction.

FWIW, I'm a skeptic on both the personal improvement
and objective measurement of enlightenment counts.
I'm not sure personal improvement is an inevitable
feature of enlightenment, such that lack of same
can be said to be proof that one is *not* enlightened;
and I'm highly dubious that any conclusive objective
proof of enlightenment (including EEG, etc.) is
possible.

snip
  I keep using the example of dreams as a kind of
  parallel. Obviously dreaming is vastly more commonly
  reported than enlightenment, but the category error
  is very similar: There is no way we can prove on an
  objective basis that people have vivid fantasy 
  experiences while asleep.
 
 But we can prove that dreams have a value by depriving
 people of sleep and seeing what happens.  So the value
 of sleep as a state is established.

True, but not what I'm getting at. (Actually we can
simply deprive people of *dreaming* sleep and document
that it has negative effects, at least for many people--
oddly enough, preventing REM sleep seems to help some
of those who are clinically depressed.)

Again, what I'm after is how to evaluate the claim that
TM doesn't produce enlightenment as a distinct and
permanent state of consciousness.

  The content of dreams is another question.  But
 enlightenment as Mahariahi defines it is more than
 a subjective experience, it has implications for
 how we function.  He claims it improves it to its
 full potential which is quite a grand, and I would
 expect, noticeable difference.  In Maharishi's
 view the subjective experiences of say gods or
 something are not the important issue, it is the
 practical benifits.  So his claims fall into the
 testable.

But by what standards does one evaluate the results
of such testing? Who gets to define full potential?

snip
   Needless to say, I am not so impressed with any of
   the TM leaders for me to conclude that they are
   functioning in some enhanced state of mind.
  
  More than that, even if you were, it wouldn't be
  *evidence* in any objective sense.
 
 But you know it would be good enough for me.  I don't
 live my life by some strict research protocol, who does?
 I can evaluate how people function and I notice when
 someone is extra smart or exceptional in some way.

According to your standards.

  The lack of many inspiring people in the movement is
 significant.  If the claims were true we would see a
 bunch of really interesting people.

See, I wouldn't go along with that, but it depends
on how you interpret the claims.

We've been talking a bit at cross-purposes here.
You're more interested in the question of benefits,
but I'm really addressing the narrower issue of
whether one can say TM does or does not produce
enlightenment as a distinct, permanent state. I
don't see any way to determine that on an objective
basis.

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[nablusoss1008]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, enlightened_dawn11 
no_re...@... wrote:

 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, nablusoss1008 no_reply@ 
 wrote:
 
  --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, enlightened_dawn11 
  no_reply@ wrote:
  
   you are entitled to your uninformed opinion, and your arrogant 
   attitude (TM apologists, etc.), and that is all it is. 
   
   the practice of TM, for anyone who stuck with it, turns out to 
 be 
   everything the Maharishi said it was, and more. of course with 
 your 
   limited practice of the technique (30 YEARS AGO), you would not 
 and 
   could not know that. so i'll leave you shooting your blanks in 
 the 
   dark.
   
   it is pure ego tripping that keep those like you critical of TM 
   going here on FFL. nothing more. hell, none of you even do TM 
   anymore, and we are all supposed to sit around drooling and 
   believing -anything- that comes out of your mouths? 
   
   i'd have some respect for you Barry if you based what you wrote 
 on 
   experience. but you don't, substituting instead arrongance and 
 ego 
   for real life.
   
   its like you trying to convince us of your abilities driving a 
   Ferrari, when all you've done is putt-putted around in a junker-
 
 lol
  
  Very well said ! I also don't understand why someone who has not 
 been 
  in the Movement for more than thirty years still bother to attack 
 the 
  TMO year after year here on FFL producing 50 (!) looong posts 
 every 
  week. One would think he would have moved on, but no. The 
 bitterness, 
  the anger seems never to resolve. Poor soul.
 
 Barry is still after all of these years trying to justify his lost 
 chance at enlightenment in this lifetime. plain and simple. he has 
 created a hell which he faces every day.

Bingo !

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[curtisdeltablues]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jst...@... wrote:

snip
  Not according to Maharishi.  He seemed to believe
  that TM practice would improve all aspects of a
  person in a measurable way.  So I don't think it is
  a category error.
 
 Yes, but what I'm talking about is whether a person
 can become enlightened via TM, not whether they
 experience personal improvement as a result of TM
 practice.

For Maharishi it was not two different things.  He defined
enlightenment as the full potential of the individual.  So I guess it
boils down to how you define the concept outside his system.  This
makes sense because your view of the concept may be shaped by more
than Maharishi's view.

 
 On the other hand, he *did* seem to think measures
 could be found objectively to demonstrate enlightenment,
 and the movement has been working on this for a long
 time without accomplishing more than finding various
 signs it says are suggestive of development in that
 direction.
 
 FWIW, I'm a skeptic on both the personal improvement
 and objective measurement of enlightenment counts.
 I'm not sure personal improvement is an inevitable
 feature of enlightenment, such that lack of same
 can be said to be proof that one is *not* enlightened;
 and I'm highly dubious that any conclusive objective
 proof of enlightenment (including EEG, etc.) is
 possible.

That seems like a position I can relate to.  The question comes, where
do you go for information about enlightenment?  If anyone takes
Maharishi as an expert they have to ignore a lot of what he claimed
about it to reconcile King Tony as the most evolved person in the
movement with what we have experienced from other brilliant people in
our lives.  I haven't gotten more than a true believerness from his
speeches yet.  But if you are looking at the concept of enlightenment
in a more philosophically personal way then TM and its teachings can
just be a part of your personal influences that shape but don't define
your own exploration of what this concept means to you.   I can relate
to that.
 
 snip
 
 Again, what I'm after is how to evaluate the claim that
 TM doesn't produce enlightenment as a distinct and
 permanent state of consciousness.

I think the claim is that it does.  The response is what is the
proof.  I don't feel as though trying to prove negatives is helpful.
 The burden is on the people making the claim, not the people saying
where's the beef?
 
   The content of dreams is another question.  But
  enlightenment as Mahariahi defines it is more than
  a subjective experience, it has implications for
  how we function.  He claims it improves it to its
  full potential which is quite a grand, and I would
  expect, noticeable difference.  In Maharishi's
  view the subjective experiences of say gods or
  something are not the important issue, it is the
  practical benifits.  So his claims fall into the
  testable.
 
 But by what standards does one evaluate the results
 of such testing? Who gets to define full potential?

Maharishi laid out a bunch of them.  So far it hasn't seemed to pan out.
 
 snip
Needless to say, I am not so impressed with any of
the TM leaders for me to conclude that they are
functioning in some enhanced state of mind.
   
   More than that, even if you were, it wouldn't be
   *evidence* in any objective sense.
  
  But you know it would be good enough for me.  I don't
  live my life by some strict research protocol, who does?
  I can evaluate how people function and I notice when
  someone is extra smart or exceptional in some way.
 
 According to your standards.

How could it be any other way?  But according to Maharishi's own
standards it has also failed.  He set the bar high at mastery of
sidhis and never retracted this objective test for enlightenment.  And
saying that guys like Tony can fly but don't choose too is not going
to cut it.  So we are left with a claim that doesn't seem to have
evidence from his own criteria.  That is more than fair isn't it?  As
far as my own goals go, I feel confident in my ability to assess if
someone is packing some interesting heat in their belfry.  We
eventually need to live by our own standards and values.

 
   The lack of many inspiring people in the movement is
  significant.  If the claims were true we would see a
  bunch of really interesting people.
 
 See, I wouldn't go along with that, but it depends
 on how you interpret the claims.

Makes sense.  The people the movement is producing may float your boat
and not mine.  

 
 We've been talking a bit at cross-purposes here.
 You're more interested in the question of benefits,
 but I'm really addressing the narrower issue of
 whether one can say TM does or does not produce
 enlightenment as a distinct, permanent state. I
 don't see any way to determine that on an objective
 basis.

Again, you are departing from how Maharishi viewed it, your perfect
right.  I think you could get a bunch of people in the movement to
articulate 

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[ruthsimplicity]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues
curtisdeltabl...@... wrote:
  But according to Maharishi's own
 standards it has also failed.  He set the bar high at mastery of
 sidhis and never retracted this objective test for enlightenment.  And
 saying that guys like Tony can fly but don't choose too is not going
 to cut it.  So we are left with a claim that doesn't seem to have
 evidence from his own criteria.  That is more than fair isn't it?  

Yes.

Some replies I have heard:

The answer from some is that for some reason we cannot see him perform
the sidhis or he cannot perform the siddhis if we are watching.  Sort
of saying that we are not ready to view such miraculous acts. 
Troublesomely convenient as it takes us back to simply having faith. 
Plus it is inconsistent with flying at the domes and public
demonstrations.  

Another answer is that MMY was saying this for other purposes, to get
people to do the siddhis and when they became enlightened the fact
that they couldn't fly wouldn't matter anymore.  Also troublesome.  It
is hard to take on a theory where the proponent misleads people.

Another answer is that everything is hunky dory, nature is what nature
does, whatever MMY said he said it for a reason that you cannot know
until you are enlightened,  and if you do the siddhis you will reach
UC if not in this life maybe the next. There is no good reply because
this isn't an argument, it is faith.  You gots it or ya don't.  

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[authfriend]

I'll have to get back to this later for a fuller
response, but I just want to make a couple of
quick points:

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues 
curtisdeltabl...@... wrote:

 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote:
snip
  Again, what I'm after is how to evaluate the claim that
  TM doesn't produce enlightenment as a distinct and
  permanent state of consciousness.
 
 I think the claim is that it does.

I'm referring to the claim I was addressing to start
with, that the TMO cannot supply examples of
people who became enlightened via TM, the conclusion
being that this is the case because TM does not produce
enlightenment.

  The response is what is the
 proof.  I don't feel as though trying to prove
 negatives is helpful.

Again, my take is that you can't prove it either
way. That's why I said I wanted to *evaluate* the
claim that TM doesn't produce enlightenment, not
*prove* it (or its contrary).

snip
The lack of many inspiring people in the movement is
   significant.  If the claims were true we would see a
   bunch of really interesting people.
  
  See, I wouldn't go along with that, but it depends
  on how you interpret the claims.
 
 Makes sense.  The people the movement is producing may
 float your boat and not mine.

I don't know enough people in the movement to say
either way. What I'm disagreeing with is your
second sentence.

More later.

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[ruthsimplicity]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_re...@... wrote:

 what thype of rigorous
 requirements would you suggest for studies done
 on homeopathy?
 
 I'm asking out of curiosity because a friend of
 mine is a homeopath, and has clued me in to some
 of the recent attempts to demonize that practice
 in the UK. Their stance, which makes sense to me
 given what I know of the practice, is that con-
 trol groups are an inappropriate form of rigor-
 ous requirement because every patient in home-
 opathy is treated differently, based on their
 own *particular* symptomology. Two patients com-
 plaining of the same primary symptom might be
 treated completely differently given their 
 *other* symptoms. 


Not a problem.  You can still double blind.  Have a  group of people
with the same disorder (maybe migraine headaches).   Have homoeopaths
treat all of them, but some of the homeopaths, randomly assigned, will
be dispensing placebos.  Let them all see the patients over time so if
they want to do some adjusting they can.  They just won't have control
over what is in the pill bottle.

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[ruthsimplicity]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig lengli...@... wrote:

 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity no_reply@ wrote:
 
  --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, enlightened_dawn11
  no_reply@ wrote:
  
  
   regarding the achievement of a state of continuous samadhi, 
   and shouting it from every rooftop, perhaps the organization
whose 
   purpose it is to spread TM would, but what purpose would it serve 
   for a run of the mill TMer experiencing continuous samadhi to ever 
   mention it, to anyone? 
  
  Given how the TMOs push marketing (as evidenced by the recent
  promotion of the non-study on ADHD),
 
 
 Careful, your bias is showing. The study itself is explicit about
what was done
 and what was found. The fact that it is being used for marketing in
ways you
 disagree with doesn't invalidate teh study.
 


Not totally explicit.  It didn't mention how the kids were coached to
expect improvement.  And it still is a non-study from which you can
draw absolutely no conclusions so promoting it at all is dishonest.

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[ruthsimplicity]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues
curtisdeltabl...@... wrote:

 There is a strong desire for the doctor to do something when a sick
 person visits them. 

Yes, a problem.  One effective way around the problem is telling
personal experience stories where you as the MD or your kids did not
take any medicine and got better.  I had that same cold, it lasted
about a week. I like eating some slightly spicy foods when I have a
cold, it seems to help me feel better.  

Or person comes in with a slightly sprained ankle and wants this that
and the other thing.  When I last twisted my ankle I taped it up,
elevated it when I was sitting or laying down, and made sure that I
used it a lot.  I even went bike riding the day afterwords. It hurt,
but it was the best thing for it. 

Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[I am the eternal]

On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 8:53 PM, ruthsimplicity no_re...@yahoogroups.comwrote:


 My experience is similar, though I doubt that I have told as many as
 you have told that I used to do TM.

 I sure would like to know the drop out rate.


I've mentioned to hundreds of people on the plane (front cabin or back
cabin), in cocktail lounges, in the capital cities of dozens of countries,
you name it.  Always the same response, if I get one at all.  Now that leads
me to suspect that the dropout rate is not 95%.  That it's 99.9%.  Indeed
the number of people still practicing TM can be totaled by counting the
people who go to various TM Centers around the world, live in ideal
villages, go to Invincible your country, live in Fairfield.  Where are the
numbers?  In South America, if the initiations we here of are true, and in
India, based on what the TMO shows us about TMO money at work in India.  Now
I remember 20 years or more ago there were these missions to places like
Thailand, where one could sponsor a meditator and a Governor for something
like USD 30 a month.  But that seems to have stopped.  So we're left, I
truly believe, with 10-50 thousand old time meditators, max.  It's not a pop
into enlightenment before you finish the 7 step program type of meditation.
So I believe that Rick knows people who are quietly enlightened, but I'd
imagine they represent a small portion of the 10-50K.

Look at it this way.  We're self-selected special.


When you lust after some hot chick, realize that somewhere some guy is
really tired of her shit.

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[sparaig]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Sal Sunshine salsunsh...@... wrote:

 On Jan 12, 2009, at 8:53 PM, ruthsimplicity wrote:
 
  My experience is similar, though I doubt that I have told as many as
  you have told that I used to do TM.
 
  I sure would like to know the drop out rate.
 
 95%.
 
 Sal


First you have to define the terms...

According to Uncle B, I'm no longer a TMer because I'm not 100%
regular.


On the other hand, I know someone who does it perhaps once a month who
still considers themselves a TMer.


Lawson

Lawson

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[ruthsimplicity]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Sal Sunshine salsunsh...@...
wrote:

 On Jan 12, 2009, at 8:53 PM, ruthsimplicity wrote:
 
  My experience is similar, though I doubt that I have told as many as
  you have told that I used to do TM.
 
  I sure would like to know the drop out rate.
 
 95%.
 
 Sal


:)

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[ruthsimplicity]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, enlightened_dawn11 
 all i am left with is suggesting you try TM for awhile, and draw 
 your own conclusions. 


Fair enough.  That is all anyone can do.


 the so called conventional wisdom is often just conventional, and 
 not wisdom at all. go out on a limb, you might enjoy the view.

I did and I didn't. 

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[lurkernomore20002000]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Arhata Osho arhatafreespe...@...
wrote:

 Having been in Corporate Sales in Manhattan,

Selling my poems and treatises outside of Rockerfeller Center

I had friends both in Advertising and
 Pharmaceutical Sales.

Especially my Asian friends doing caricatures and drawings in Times
Square, and my other friends selling  pharmaceticals  around 42nd
street.

Sales is about making money - from idea to finished
 product, it's about money. The buyer, should be about 'awareness'. 
Awareness, hopefully,
 creates responsibility in a drugged out world!  An endless loop of one
hand serving
 the other with an illusive caveat for taking the high road.
Corporations sell needs that
 may or may not be there - it comes down to the buyer and how that
buyer uses the
 product.  'Fast food brains' are their own worst karma.
 Arhata












 Requiring natural remedies to produce verifiable research is a bogus

 excuse to demonize their use. The politics of allelopathic medicine

 and the globalization Big Pharma push pills for profit and

 alternative medicine cuts into their bottom line. Since herbs and

 homeopathy, rely on history, case studies, subjective reports and

 trial and error to prove effectiveness, they are an easy target for

 Big Pharma, to cry, snake oil. Anything that empowers people to

 treat their own ailments means a smaller piece of pie for the big
guys.



 Drug researchers can produce quantifiable results but they can also

 cheat by ignoring test results they don't like. Figures can lie and

 liars can figure. A drug company often pays for its own research,

 which amounts to the fox guarding the chickens. They push newer,

 better drugs to market as quickly as possible with all their

 attendant side effects and 5 years later the drug proves dangerous.

 It's a risk they are willing to take, squeezing every dime they can

 out of a market until it becomes obvious a drug is killing more people

 than it saves. It hypocritical to say that drug research, motivated by

 profit, is superior to any standard measuring the effectiveness of

 herbs that DON'T kill people and drugs that DO.



 --- In FairfieldLife@ yahoogroups. com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ . wrote:

 

  --- In FairfieldLife@ yahoogroups. com, ruthsimplicity no_reply@
wrote:

  

   --- In FairfieldLife@ yahoogroups. com, Vaj vajradhatu@  wrote:

   

Let's not forget the last study putsch: the TM is good for your

  heart

marketing campaign. Luckily the BBC caught them on that one, as

 did

some physicians reviews. But it makes me wonder: should someone
be

pointing all this out to the NIH? Should the NIH sue for fraud
and

deception? I mean, these are our tax dollars they are, quite

actually, stealing.

   

If you look at it, it's pretty clear what they're trying to do:

 cash

in on insurers who are already paying for treatments like MBCT
for

depression. Once they can get into the medical system with their

product, they be able to rake in the $$$ with their
over-inflated

mantra prices.

  

   I have done some letters to Senate and Congress regarding the NIH

   Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, which is a big

   money pit for poor research. I think it should be disbanded and

   research money for alternative therapies needs to be tied to more

   rigorous requirements.

 

  Just as a question, Ruth, given your background

  and your feelings on this, what thype of rigorous

  requirements would you suggest for studies done

  on homeopathy?

 

  I'm asking out of curiosity because a friend of

  mine is a homeopath, and has clued me in to some

  of the recent attempts to demonize that practice

  in the UK. Their stance, which makes sense to me

  given what I know of the practice, is that con-

  trol groups are an inappropriate form of rigor-

  ous requirement because every patient in home-

  opathy is treated differently, based on their

  own *particular* symptomology. Two patients com-

  plaining of the same primary symptom might be

  treated completely differently given their

  *other* symptoms.

 

  So what, in your opinion, would be a valid study

  design for homeopathy? In the US, the AMA so

  successfully demonized homeopathy that it is

  difficult for it to gain acceptance. But in Europe

  that is not true, because no such demonization took

  place until recently. *All* pharmacies in France

  and Spain sell both allopathic and homeopathic

  medicines; *all* doctors prescribe both; *all*

  patients give positive feedback on both.

 

  So I'm asking out of curiosity. I *understand* the

  scientist's/ medical doctor's skepticism of home-

  opathy -- we are talking substances so diluted in

  strength that no trace of them can be found in

  the pills prescribed. And yet they work, and work

  consistently enough that most countries in Europe

  rely on them as often as they do allopathic treat-

  ment. 

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[sparaig]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity no_re...@... wrote:

 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig LEnglish5@ wrote:
 
  --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity no_reply@ wrote:
  
   --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, enlightened_dawn11
   no_reply@ wrote:
   
   
regarding the achievement of a state of continuous samadhi, 
and shouting it from every rooftop, perhaps the organization
 whose 
purpose it is to spread TM would, but what purpose would it serve 
for a run of the mill TMer experiencing continuous samadhi to ever 
mention it, to anyone? 
   
   Given how the TMOs push marketing (as evidenced by the recent
   promotion of the non-study on ADHD),
  
  
  Careful, your bias is showing. The study itself is explicit about
 what was done
  and what was found. The fact that it is being used for marketing in
 ways you
  disagree with doesn't invalidate teh study.
  
 
 
 Not totally explicit.  It didn't mention how the kids were coached to
 expect improvement.  And it still is a non-study from which you can
 draw absolutely no conclusions so promoting it at all is dishonest.


How do you know they were coached beyond the usual TM course expectations
thing?

L.

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[TurquoiseB]

All very interesting, I'm sure. But being the
simple boob I am, I tend to prefer Lao-Tzu's
take on the situation. He managed to say it
in 13 words:

Just remain in the center, watching. And then 
forget that you are there. 


--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradh...@... wrote:

 These are the three types of repetition: observing the forms of the  
 mantra letters (1) in the heart of the deity in front, (2) in your  
 own heart, and (3) observing the sounds of the mantra. Each of these  
 in turn has two forms, whispered and mental repetition. For each of  
 the three types, whispered repetition is done first and then mental  
 while the breath is held. The process becomes subtler and subtler and  
 should be done in order. If one knows how to meditate, the  
 meditations of Action Tantra are very profound, its progression of  
 stages accomplishing a withdrawal of winds [Skt.: vayus] which  
 enhances meditative stabilisation.
 
 The first type is said to have three objects of observation --  the  
 deity in front, moon at its heart, and mantra letters; the second  
 type, two -- moon and mantra letters at one's own heart; and the  
 third, one -- the mantra sounds. These refer to the main objects of  
 observation on which the mind focuses and should not be taken as  
 meaning that the other factors do not remain vividly appearing to the  
 mind. One must remain undistractedly on whatever the object is at  
 that point.
 
 When facility is gained with those concentrations, you pass on to the  
 concentrations without repetition abiding in fire, abiding in sound,  
 and bestowing liberation at the end of sound. The concentration of  
 abiding in fire bestows feats [siddhis] in the sense of empowering  
 and stabilising the mind. The concentration of abiding in sound is  
 the time of achieving a fully qualified calm abiding (shamatha)  an  
 effortless and spontaneous meditative stabilisation induced by  
 physical and mental pliancy. The yoga of concentration on the end of  
 sound is a cultivation of a union of calm abiding and special insight  
 (vipashyana) observing suchness, whereby the liberation of Buddhahood  
 is eventually attained. These three concentrations are all performed  
 within vivid and continuous visualisation of oneself as a deity.
 
 With regard to the concentration of abiding in fire, you must cease  
 the conception of inherent existence in the sense of not giving it a  
 chance to be produced. Still, it is necessary to maintain conception  
 of a conventional deity, that is to say one with a face, arms, and so  
 forth. Previously, during the repetition of mantra while observing  
 the sound of the letters, it was as if you were listening to the  
 reverberation of the sounds of your own recitation, whether whispered  
 or mental. However, here you are to listen to the mantra sounds as if  
 someone else were reciting them. Therefore, that the concentration of  
 abiding in fire is said to be without mantra repetition means that it  
 is free from the aspect of one's own repetition, not that it is free  
 from mantra sounds altogether.
 
 These sounds are 'heard' from within a tongue of flame imagined at  
 the heart  all this within the clear appearance of your own body as a  
 deity's. Your own mind is as if inside the tongue of flame, appearing  
 in the form of the mantra sounds resounding as if by their own power.  
 This is like the practice on other occasions of the mind's taking the  
 mind as its object of observation  a factor of the mind taking the  
 general mind as its object. Here the mind is appearing as the sounds  
 of someone else's repetition and is simultaneously listening to those  
 sounds.
 
 In the previous meditations all forms and sounds were appearances of  
 the mind realising suchness; thus, all forms seen and sounds heard  
 were appearances of the mind. Within that, one was as if listening to  
 the mantra repeated by oneself; hence, there still was a sense of a  
 listener and the listened. However, here in the concentration of  
 abiding in fire one's own basis of designation is as if dwelling  
 inside the tongue of flame, and it itself is
 appearing as the sounds being listened to in that same place.
 
 The external sign of proficiency with the concentration of abiding in  
 fire is to become free from hunger and thirst meditative  
 stabilisation itself having become your sustenance.
 
 Then, you should pass on to the concentration of abiding in sound.  
 Here you imagine a subtle moon at the heart of your divine body. This  
 is because the smaller the object is the easier it is to eliminate  
 scattering and excitement and the brighter the object is the easier  
 it is to eliminate laxity. If the object observed is too large, it is  
 difficult to eliminate conceptions; therefore a small object of  
 observation is required.
 
 Earlier, in the concentration of abiding in fire, you imagined a  
 tongue of flame at the heart in 

Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[Vaj]

On Jan 12, 2009, at 7:25 AM, TurquoiseB wrote:


All very interesting, I'm sure. But being the
simple boob I am, I tend to prefer Lao-Tzu's
take on the situation. He managed to say it
in 13 words:

Just remain in the center, watching. And then
forget that you are there.



Different situation. Karma-tantra would be for someone with a  
different disposition.


The Hua Hu Jing or Classic on Converting the Barbarians was a  
Taoist counter-argument against Buddhism.

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[raunchydog]

Vaj, Do you actually practice these mental acrobatics or are you just
recommending techniques to produce a migraine? Simple, natural
effortless? Not so much. Barry's, recommendation sounds closer to the
TM technique than what you may be doing. What is the purpose of
complicating your sadhana?

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_re...@... wrote:

 All very interesting, I'm sure. But being the
 simple boob I am, I tend to prefer Lao-Tzu's
 take on the situation. He managed to say it
 in 13 words:
 
 Just remain in the center, watching. And then 
 forget that you are there. 
 
 
 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradhatu@ wrote:
 
  These are the three types of repetition: observing the forms of the  
  mantra letters (1) in the heart of the deity in front, (2) in your  
  own heart, and (3) observing the sounds of the mantra. Each of these  
  in turn has two forms, whispered and mental repetition. For each of  
  the three types, whispered repetition is done first and then mental  
  while the breath is held. The process becomes subtler and subtler
and  
  should be done in order. If one knows how to meditate, the  
  meditations of Action Tantra are very profound, its progression of  
  stages accomplishing a withdrawal of winds [Skt.: vayus] which  
  enhances meditative stabilisation.
  
  The first type is said to have three objects of observation --  the  
  deity in front, moon at its heart, and mantra letters; the second  
  type, two -- moon and mantra letters at one's own heart; and the  
  third, one -- the mantra sounds. These refer to the main objects of  
  observation on which the mind focuses and should not be taken as  
  meaning that the other factors do not remain vividly appearing to
the  
  mind. One must remain undistractedly on whatever the object is at  
  that point.
  
  When facility is gained with those concentrations, you pass on to
the  
  concentrations without repetition abiding in fire, abiding in sound,  
  and bestowing liberation at the end of sound. The concentration of  
  abiding in fire bestows feats [siddhis] in the sense of empowering  
  and stabilising the mind. The concentration of abiding in sound is  
  the time of achieving a fully qualified calm abiding (shamatha)  an  
  effortless and spontaneous meditative stabilisation induced by  
  physical and mental pliancy. The yoga of concentration on the end of  
  sound is a cultivation of a union of calm abiding and special
insight  
  (vipashyana) observing suchness, whereby the liberation of
Buddhahood  
  is eventually attained. These three concentrations are all performed  
  within vivid and continuous visualisation of oneself as a deity.
  
  With regard to the concentration of abiding in fire, you must cease  
  the conception of inherent existence in the sense of not giving it a  
  chance to be produced. Still, it is necessary to maintain conception  
  of a conventional deity, that is to say one with a face, arms, and
so  
  forth. Previously, during the repetition of mantra while observing  
  the sound of the letters, it was as if you were listening to the  
  reverberation of the sounds of your own recitation, whether
whispered  
  or mental. However, here you are to listen to the mantra sounds as
if  
  someone else were reciting them. Therefore, that the concentration
of  
  abiding in fire is said to be without mantra repetition means that
it  
  is free from the aspect of one's own repetition, not that it is free  
  from mantra sounds altogether.
  
  These sounds are 'heard' from within a tongue of flame imagined at  
  the heart  all this within the clear appearance of your own body
as a  
  deity's. Your own mind is as if inside the tongue of flame,
appearing  
  in the form of the mantra sounds resounding as if by their own
power.  
  This is like the practice on other occasions of the mind's taking
the  
  mind as its object of observation  a factor of the mind taking the  
  general mind as its object. Here the mind is appearing as the sounds  
  of someone else's repetition and is simultaneously listening to
those  
  sounds.
  
  In the previous meditations all forms and sounds were appearances of  
  the mind realising suchness; thus, all forms seen and sounds heard  
  were appearances of the mind. Within that, one was as if listening
to  
  the mantra repeated by oneself; hence, there still was a sense of a  
  listener and the listened. However, here in the concentration of  
  abiding in fire one's own basis of designation is as if dwelling  
  inside the tongue of flame, and it itself is
  appearing as the sounds being listened to in that same place.
  
  The external sign of proficiency with the concentration of abiding
in  
  fire is to become free from hunger and thirst meditative  
  stabilisation itself having become your sustenance.
  
  Then, you should pass on to the concentration of abiding in sound.  
  Here you imagine a subtle moon at the 

Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[Vaj]

On Jan 12, 2009, at 8:29 AM, raunchydog wrote:


Vaj, Do you actually practice these mental acrobatics or are you just
recommending techniques to produce a migraine? Simple, natural
effortless? Not so much. Barry's, recommendation sounds closer to the
TM technique than what you may be doing. What is the purpose of
complicating your sadhana?


These are quotes from the work Deity Yoga by the current Dalai Lama  
which was previously posted, thus the quotes from the same book  
Raunchy. I do not practice Action Tantra although it has helped many  
fortunate people to Buddhahood--so that is it's ultimate purpose is  
to attain complete and perfect Enlightenment. A salutary goal for  
some. The specific quotes you're referring to talk generally about  
practices of mantra in one aspect of Action Tantra, specifically the  
siddhi of mind stabilisation through samadhi (i.e. samadhi can be  
continued for as long as one wants, not mere blips) and then that  
union of the calm state with that of special insight so as to cognize  
ultimate reality without cognition, a basis for Buddhahood.


Many advanced practices may sound difficult to the inexperienced,  
however once learned they become as easy as walking. It's just your  
mind that makes it seem so. Of course I'm sure a lengthy explanation  
of TM and it's steps, etc, would sound complicated ( esp. if you have  
to remove the door on the south side of your house!).  So it's not  
that the sadhana is complicated, but it is the mind that fabricates  
the concept. But of course, it would also depend on your own level of  
experience. To a kindergartner, multiplication and division seems  
complicated.


From what I've observed in TM practitioners, and based on my own  
direct experience of mantrayana, even though TM practitioners  
meditate on the sound of the deity, none that I am aware of have ever  
realized any actual stabilization siddhi, so that's worth pointing  
out since that is the goal of yogic (mantra) realization: permanent  
samadhi. In fact their is no evidence of samadhi in TMers despite  
many attempts at research, although I understand they are still trying.

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[raunchydog]

If you don't practice Action Tantra, why don't you do it if you think
it's a good technique? Do you practice something better than Action
Tantra that gives you the experience of a siddhi of mind
stabilization through samadhi. If so, describe the technique you do
to experience samadhi and effect your sadhana has on the quality of
your life. I'm listening.

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradh...@... wrote:

 
 On Jan 12, 2009, at 8:29 AM, raunchydog wrote:
 
  Vaj, Do you actually practice these mental acrobatics or are you just
  recommending techniques to produce a migraine? Simple, natural
  effortless? Not so much. Barry's, recommendation sounds closer to the
  TM technique than what you may be doing. What is the purpose of
  complicating your sadhana?
 
 These are quotes from the work Deity Yoga by the current Dalai Lama  
 which was previously posted, thus the quotes from the same book  
 Raunchy. I do not practice Action Tantra although it has helped many  
 fortunate people to Buddhahood--so that is it's ultimate purpose is  
 to attain complete and perfect Enlightenment. A salutary goal for  
 some. The specific quotes you're referring to talk generally about  
 practices of mantra in one aspect of Action Tantra, specifically the  
 siddhi of mind stabilisation through samadhi (i.e. samadhi can be  
 continued for as long as one wants, not mere blips) and then that  
 union of the calm state with that of special insight so as to cognize  
 ultimate reality without cognition, a basis for Buddhahood.
 
 Many advanced practices may sound difficult to the inexperienced,  
 however once learned they become as easy as walking. It's just your  
 mind that makes it seem so. Of course I'm sure a lengthy explanation  
 of TM and it's steps, etc, would sound complicated ( esp. if you have  
 to remove the door on the south side of your house!).  So it's not  
 that the sadhana is complicated, but it is the mind that fabricates  
 the concept. But of course, it would also depend on your own level of  
 experience. To a kindergartner, multiplication and division seems  
 complicated.
 
  From what I've observed in TM practitioners, and based on my own  
 direct experience of mantrayana, even though TM practitioners  
 meditate on the sound of the deity, none that I am aware of have ever  
 realized any actual stabilization siddhi, so that's worth pointing  
 out since that is the goal of yogic (mantra) realization: permanent  
 samadhi. In fact their is no evidence of samadhi in TMers despite  
 many attempts at research, although I understand they are still trying.

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[Duveyoung]

raunchydog  wrote:
 Vaj, Do you actually practice these mental acrobatics? Raunchydog,

R-dog,

This should be a no brainer to any canine.

Consider that maybe Vaj digs the complexity because of the same reason
a dog licks his nether orbs..because he can.

I like thinking of Vaj having the mojo-skills needed to experience the
subtleties describedwhy not, eh?  Cuz, the dude posts cut-pastes
that are profound with a relentless consistency, and the hammer comes
down with a deafening whack -- beware, I say to anyone who would go
toe to toesies with a Buddhist on the intellectual fine points about
the thinking process.  If he's merely a spammer marketing the
spiritual rock group, HH D.L.  The Tibetans, he's at least
understanding his material enough to select pertinent quotes.

That said, my pet theory (Pet: something I like to scratch behind its
ears to make its leg shake) is that the below MERELY describes
anyone's daily, common stream of consciousness.  Any thought, any
experience must necessarily be of the same kind of processing.  After
all, it is axiomatic to Vaj that solely God ensouls each of us --
therefore, everything being yagya, at the ritam level of awareness, us
Gods do ordinary life as a holy ritual, and each thought is a mantra
precisely in harmony with the tenets below.  All that needs be done is
a practicing of hovering at the various levels of excitation until
the below becomes a ridiculously simplified expression compared to the
true glory that each of us experiences at every moment.

For those of society who would be regarded as, say, wastrels,
reprobates, losers, etc., it then turns out that these God-folks are
merely exploring the utter reaches of mentality's spectrum's other
end.  

Any and all experiences are sacred; therefore, a life of complete
indolence is actually a profound tapas by a God who eschews the
glories of ritam for almost complete silence (excitation to the
extreme yields a blocking out of the satva dynamic and thus, devoid
of truth, the hyper-stimulated outer realms of processing are, as if,
a scenario in which the experiencer is processing the silence of being
deaf to the real.)

The next homeless person slouched on a stoop with a bottled bag is a
challenge to most, but miss not that Buddha is meeting Buddha.  Or a
dog licking a spectrum of dogginess and doing it with some very white
teeth, eh?

Now, if you keep up this yanking at Vaj's pant leg, it is Vaj's
challenge to be or not to be -- what else, eh?  He can either flow
some identity into your words or not.  If he does, I guarantee he'll
be a processing partner who'll know every dance step ya gots.  But if
he walks away from your tapping foot -- know that it is but another
tune that presently calls him -- not that your offer isn't worthy of
awareness's spotlight or that tango-tangling with a Great Dame is
necessarily apostate to Vaj.

In our hearts, we know.

Edg 



--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, raunchydog raunchy...@... wrote:

 Vaj, Do you actually practice these mental acrobatics or are you just
 recommending techniques to produce a migraine? Simple, natural
 effortless? Not so much. Barry's, recommendation sounds closer to the
 TM technique than what you may be doing. What is the purpose of
 complicating your sadhana?
 
 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote:
 
  All very interesting, I'm sure. But being the
  simple boob I am, I tend to prefer Lao-Tzu's
  take on the situation. He managed to say it
  in 13 words:
  
  Just remain in the center, watching. And then 
  forget that you are there. 
  
  
  --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradhatu@ wrote:
  
   These are the three types of repetition: observing the forms of
the  
   mantra letters (1) in the heart of the deity in front, (2) in your  
   own heart, and (3) observing the sounds of the mantra. Each of
these  
   in turn has two forms, whispered and mental repetition. For each
of  
   the three types, whispered repetition is done first and then
mental  
   while the breath is held. The process becomes subtler and subtler
 and  
   should be done in order. If one knows how to meditate, the  
   meditations of Action Tantra are very profound, its progression of  
   stages accomplishing a withdrawal of winds [Skt.: vayus] which  
   enhances meditative stabilisation.
   
   The first type is said to have three objects of observation -- 
the  
   deity in front, moon at its heart, and mantra letters; the second  
   type, two -- moon and mantra letters at one's own heart; and the  
   third, one -- the mantra sounds. These refer to the main objects
of  
   observation on which the mind focuses and should not be taken as  
   meaning that the other factors do not remain vividly appearing to
 the  
   mind. One must remain undistractedly on whatever the object is at  
   that point.
   
   When facility is gained with those concentrations, you pass on to
 the  
   concentrations without repetition 

Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[Vaj]

On Jan 12, 2009, at 9:24 AM, raunchydog wrote:


If you don't practice Action Tantra, why don't you do it if you think
it's a good technique? Do you practice something better than Action
Tantra that gives you the experience of a siddhi of mind
stabilization through samadhi. If so, describe the technique you do
to experience samadhi and effect your sadhana has on the quality of
your life. I'm listening.


 I generally practice resting in the natural state as my primary  
practice. If you read meditation research, it's what would generally  
be called Open Presence meditation. Depending on my actual  
condition at the time I may practice some brief shamatha or samadhi  
style meditation or perhaps some vipassana. Rather than having any  
rote formula, I've learned to gauge practice based how my mind,  
energy and body are at a given period.


Unfabricated meditation forms, as they form an easier bridge to non- 
meditation, i.e. the practice of just resting in natural suchness  
without a technique or support, are a seamless bridge to non- 
meditation during activity, at least for me. In formal retreat  
setting they form an easier bridge to spontaneous cultivation of Wisdom.


Action Tantra contains many excellent techniques, of which the  
previous are just examples from a particular tantra. Action Tantra  
will tend to appeal to certain types of people, I'm just not one of  
them. Having said that, it is beneficial IME to practice some form of  
ishta-devata meditation (in Hindu parlance) and of course TM is a  
ubiquitous form of mental devata worship common in Asia. I tend to  
gravitate towards less formal and simpler forms of ishta meditation,  
as that's just what appeals to me. What's helpful with yogic forms of  
ishta meditation in both the Hindu and Buddhist outer and inner  
tantras is how they continue to refine the mind in increasingly  
subtle and skillful ways. For example, a tantric meditator wouldn't  
just stop with 'the gap', s/he would learn once they'd transcended  
through thought they need to transcend prana, which does not  
spontaneously occur. And thus they could jump to deep absorption very  
quickly. The advantage in waking life is that negative emotions and  
patterns tend to disappear very quickly. The signs of meditative  
purification begin to arise. One is less encumbered in life. One  
begins to gain control of the pranas, of the mind and consciousness  
itself.


But don't mistake my post for everyone should practice Action  
Tantra. It's more an appreciation than a recommendation. It's also  
fascinating to hear HHDL's experiential treatment of these tantras.  
It's a good read.

[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought

[TurquoiseB]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Duveyoung no_re...@... wrote:

 raunchydog  wrote:
  Vaj, Do you actually practice these mental acrobatics? Raunchydog,
 
 R-dog,
 
 This should be a no brainer to any canine.
 
 Consider that maybe Vaj digs the complexity because of the same 
 reason a dog licks his nether orbs..because he can.

Although I agree with Vaj that these practices
sound more complicated when explained than 
they are in reality, your dog metaphor makes 
me remember a great line that was once posted
on alt.buddha.short.fat.guy:

Given a choice between a dog biscuit and
a Buddha-nature, is there any question which
a dog would choose?

For those who don't get the joke, it's a play
on the old koan, Does a dog have Buddha-nature?

The correct answer to the koan, as far as I
can tell, is, Who the fuck cares? Certainly
not the dog.

On the whole, with the exception of people who
just mindlessly do what they were told to do,
one performs as a regular spiritual practice 
only those things that have paid off regularly
for them in the past. I no longer do TM, and
do meditations that might, if explained, seem
less effortless. But I do them and not TM 
for the very reason I suggested in the first 
sentence of this paragraph. YMMV.