Still not gonna do justice to what you've written here Zeno but want to share a few thoughts. I also love the story of how Byron Katie awoke cowering under the bed with a bug crawling across her leg. Similar to Tolle, she spent some time integrating, but rather than on a park bench, out on a mesa. The Native Americans called her She Who Listens To the Wind. And friends recognized something valuable in her and began asking for her advice. Thus The Work was born.
I LOVE when you say that enlightenment is the greatest joke in the universe. And also that it turns one into an apostate. Maybe that will happen to me. But for now, I'm grateful to Maharishi for giving me a technique that transcends its own activity. So that I do not feel bound to it or to him. The paradox is that this is exactly what makes me feel most grateful. Share ________________________________ From: Xenophaneros Anartaxius <anartax...@yahoo.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2012 9:07 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Apostate Meditators --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "seekliberation" <seekliberation@...> wrote: > ...the surprising aspect of Tolle, or some others like Alan Watts or Das > Goravani for example, is that there is no mention of them having anything to > do with TM, and yet they seem like they have more to teach about spirituality > than pretty much anyone I know of in the TMO. That being the case, I don't > see why the original post would want to ban non-tmer's from posting here. The > existence of people like Tolle, Watts, Goravani, Ravi Shankar, etc... > indicates that there can be a great depth of wisdom outside of our own > spiritual practices. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Share Long <sharelong60@...> wrote: > ...I agree that TMers are not necessarily more evolved or knowledgeable or > calmer in turmoil or overall better humans than others. However I also want > to bring up an experience that has puzzled me for years. It came up when, for > emotional healing, I got involved with non TM groups. BTW, both groups > contained ex TMers as well as long term practicing TMers and non TMers. To > me, the non TMers in general just did not feel natural, which is not exactly > the best word but comes closest. Maybe unstraining is a better way to say it. > Some subtle energy of settledness missing. Again, I'm fumbling for words and > thinking out loud here. But wanted to mention to get your feedback. > I also notice that a lot of people are familiar with New Age ideas and even > wisdom. But much of that sounds more like common sense to me. Which is very > good on that level. Or New Age knowledge often puts the cart before the > horse. My favorite example is Eckhart Tolle and his teaching to be in the > Now. It's my experience that being in the Now is a result rather than a path. > It's also my experience that the Now contains both past and future so no need > to avoid them. Anyway, I'm ever grateful to Maharishi for his teaching on > consciousness and its unfolding. --- > [L]aughing because I posted something from Alan Watts a few days ago. I love > his clarity and simplicity with depth. I also love the writing of Adyashanti. > And Byron Katie. And sometimes Gangaji. I use Lester Levenson's Sedona Method > form of inquiry which is very advaitic. And I recognize that Eckhart Tolle > has brought many to a so called spiritual path. I say so called because I > think just being alive is spiritual. No need to do anything more. >Tolle's awakening sounds so radical. Same with Katie's. And they both spent a >while afterwards integrating. On the other forum, there's a fellow who sounds >very realized. And he has pursued no so called spiritual practices. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb <no_reply@... wrote: > I think of an apostate as someone who's just walked away from their former > spiritual trip, period, for whatever reason. What they do with that walking > away is their business, as far as I'm concerned. I relate to them because > there is a certain power *in* walking away, a power I find often lacking in > those who have never had that experience. It's not a moral thing; more of a > personal power thing. Those people I meet who have walked away from a strong > spiritual trip are just more interesting than those who have not, that's all. ============ Teachers like Krishnamurti, Watts, Tolle, Adyashanti tend to speak from the level of their experience. TM teachers while they seem to have a certain flexibility, tend to be scripted, and are constrained by increasingly stringent doctrine. TM teachers do not normally talk of their personal experience - its all third person, and abstract, or just 'Maharishi sez...'. The teachers that had spontaneous awakenings that did not result from some traditional practice seem to have a bit more difficulty communicating their message than those that went through some kind of training (which usually consists of some kind of technique like meditation) that eventually resulted in awakening. For example Tolle, who has a really interesting kind of innocence about him, seems to be currently fishing around for things that people can do to get enlightened. At first, after a spontaneous and seemingly complete awakening that followed a strange night of intense fear, he just sat around for a couple of years in a kind of daze, and then gradually emerged from that to begin to find his voice for talking about his experience. On the other hand Adyashanti went through some 14 years of intense (often self-imposed) training in Zen, that involved a lot of meditation, and some very difficult experiences. He has written or said (as his writings seem to be transcriptions of his talks) that one cannot get enlightened by riding on the coat tails of an enlightened master. You have to find out for yourself what is what. In his years with his teacher he said he asked her maybe a dozen or so questions (that's all!) and at first it infuriated him because she would always answer the question with 'What do you think?' But this procedure forced him to look more into his own experience for an answer. Both Maharishi and Adyashanti have told the story of removing ignorance using the analogy of the thorn. One is in ignorance and suffering in a manner like having a thorn stuck in your skin. To remove the thorn (ignorance) one takes another thorn (the teaching) to pry it out. 'Words of ignorance to remove ignorance' Maharishi said. Adyashanti however added the end of the story. After you dig out the thorn, you throw both of them away. They are both thorns. This does not seem to happen in the TMO, where now there is increasing focus on fealty to Maharishi (as Buck described recently), that is, the remembrance of Maharishi. In other words, success in this business of enlightenment means that the stuff that got you there is not the Truth. Truth is a wordless experience that cannot be expressed, so the only way to describe it is to, well, lie. A fiction, a deception. But if constructed ingeniously enough, a deception that eventually undoes itself. If such a thing as enlightenment exists, and whatever method you may have used actually gets you there, of what use is the method once it has done its work? Like a taxi that drops you off at Grand Central Terminal in New York, once you are at the destination desired, the means that got your there have exhausted their purpose. Enlightenment automatically makes one an apostate, in all senses of the word, because what you previously thought was true is seen as having been rather far and wide of the mark, and that includes all you believed about everything, and in particular the 'teaching', whatever form it had for you that freed you. The problem with the teachers of TM is, enlightened or not, they are not in a situation where they can be free to express themselves without getting into trouble with the organisation. They have to act like parrots for quite a lot of what they do, and a certain spontaneity of expression is often lacking. If you have a problem not in the script, you are up the creek because they are unable to invent a response. A teacher that is not under a totalitarian authority is free to be inventive in this situation, as Maharishi was initially. Maharishi was free to invent, though I think he may have bogged himself down with his own inventions - he set up a system, and the system took over. It works really well for getting people to start meditating, usually without a lot of difficulty, but the further along you get, the system seems to run out of options for long-term meditators as most of the teachers typically available are basically trained to get you along the initial steps, and to funnel you into the 'product line', which mostly includes things not really necessary or even useful for enlightenment. Enlightenment can strike anyone at any time without any preparation, though that is unlikely; its a realisation, not some supernormal special state of experience; its the realisation that no seeking was ever necessary, that you had what you were seeking all along in its totality. It's the greatest joke in the universe. All teachings do, if they work, is wear down your mis-perceptions until you stand clear. So paradoxically, a teaching is probably required for most people, to trash your ideas of what life is about, including the very teaching that is wearing you down. In other words, the teaching of enlightenment and enlightenment itself ends up giving you absolutely nothing, and that results in fulfillment, because now you know, finally, there is nothing more. Having disciples, particularly an 'inner circle', I think may impose some interesting constraints in how a teaching plays out. People who are independent are not likely to to feel as needy to be around 'the master', and historically there seems to be a tendency for those who feel they must be around the teacher, and suck up to a teacher, to be a bit more dense in understanding. I am not saying this is always the case, but teachings seem to lose their vigour and seem to drift off on some unusual tangent by the next generation, now in charge of the followers of the original teacher. They are conservators of a teaching rather than necessarily living exponents of it. There also seems to be a tendency for the group to start focusing on the 'truth' of procedures and data and on glorifying the now dead teacher rather than on what the teaching was supposed to result in and aiming directly for that result. Ceremonies get created. Doctrines form from which deviations are not allowed. Maharishi himself described how a teaching over time decays into a religion. I recently talked with a former TM teacher who had an unusually difficult time with awakening experiences. Was from many years kind of like Tolle after his awakening. This person thought the TMO was rather like the Catholic Church. I found that interesting because I had come to a similar conclusion. Except what took 500 years for Christianity to morph into, has taken only about 50 years for the TMO, though to be fair, the main practice, TM, is still successfully taught, and that I would hope would save some at least. It is what TM is becoming embedded in that will become the main problem as time goes on.
