Is Advaita just another Cult??

NoVA101

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Nov 9, 2007, 4:44:28 PM11/9/07

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I had originally posted this on an Advaita board, but it basically
asks the same question of any philosophy that offers 'enlightenment'.

I would love your feedback!

*** Advaita ***
Advaita is one of a large number of teachings that offers "Spiritual
Enlightenment." You could substitute almost any other teaching of
"Enlightenment" in the discussion below.

*** Is Advaita a Cult?? ***
Do you really want to believe there is something more than just this
mundane, misery-filled, earthly life, and then that's it? Or do you
really WANT to believe there is something more? Advaita offers that
for which we have all been seeking: Enlightenment, Heaven on Earth,
the One True Way, Freedom from all suffering, and Oneness with God.
But is it just another Cult? Is it Brainwashing? Are its believers
Delusional or suffering from Psychosis? Is it just another religion?
There are zillions of people and zillions of groups who claim to have
"The Answer" to all your problems. Advaita is one of those teachings.
The people who "believe" in Advaita and claim that it has changed
their lives for the better say MANY of the EXACT same things that Cult
believers do. How can you ever know if THIS set of beliefs is finally
"The Answer"?

*** SUMMARY ***
Advaita can be seen as the ultimate self-help program because it
solves 100% of ALL of your problems. That is because you actually
transcend this life, there is no "you" any more, you are one with
everyone and everything in the universe. You now realize your "true
natural state," you "awaken from the dream" which was the entire life
you had lived up until this moment. You are now "One with God" (you
and everything else IS God, you just didn't know it before Advaita),
you reach "Nirvana", "The Real Truth", "Constant Bliss", "Innate
Happiness", "True Freedom", etc. This is truly the answer to all your
problems. Who wouldn't want all that?!

To achieve this, proponents often study ancient, obscure spiritual or
semi-religious documents, usually with guidance of a Guru, ideally
from India. What you have to get is "ineffable" -- it can never
actually be explained, it must be experienced. But once you experience
it you will never want to (or even be able to?) go back. Many cool
Eastern-sounding paradoxes abound: You must search for it, but you
can't get it until you stop searching for it.

You realize that there is no such thing as "time" any more. You
believe you are eternal, and this is just one of many of your lives.
If you are killed that is OK, that is just your body dying, that is
not the real you, you are Eternal. All of your thoughts and emotions
really don't exist, you realize there is no such thing as free choice,
you therefore have no responsibility.

Proponents of Advaita say that if you call them a cult, then you just
don't get it. Just like all cults do.

*** Reality, or Mental Disorder ***
Why do you believe what you believe? Most people don't even know WHAT
they believe, let alone the reasons WHY they believe those things.
SOME of the reasons WHY you believe what you believe are:
1. an authority figure you trust told you (parents, news reporter,
etc.)
2. you are afraid not to (authoritarian religious belief)
3. you really want to (there must be life after death, I don't want to
believe this is all there is)
4. you engaged in groupthink (everyone else believes it, so you do as
well)
5. you had an EXPERIENCE that convinced you something was true

Note that the strongest beliefs we ever have are #5 -- things we
believe because we actually experienced them ourselves. And the only
way a person can get Enlightened in Advaita is by having a particular
mysterious experience. Then they "know" it is true. But how can they
share an EXPERIENCE with you? They can't! Therefore the *ONLY* way for
you to "know" what it is like to be Enlightened in Advaita is to have
the required experience yourself. But once you have the experience,
there's no turning back!

It is 100% possible that believers of Advaita experience reality "the
way it really is", and are forever changed for the better, and they
know something that the vast majority of humans have never known and
will never know.

Also, it is 100% possible that the believers of Advaita have an
experience, and now they believe what they are experiencing, but they
are actually "Delusional" -- that is, they really, truly, totally
believe something that is in fact NOT TRUE. Obviously if you ask them,
they will say that is ridiculous, they "know" what is "true" and you
do not.

You have now entered the realm of Epistemology -- the philosophical
study of what is TRUE and what is REALITY and what are BELIEFS. You
will find NO definitive answers here.

SHOCKING Implication: It MUST be that EITHER people who are
Enlightened, or the rest of us, are DELUSIONAL. By classical medical
definitions, one group is mentally ill! And neither one can know which
is right. Ever. This may be a truly impossible problem.

But look at the amazing implications of this! First off, is it
possible to have an experience that completely screws up your sense of
reality? Are there other cases in regular medicine where this is known
to be true?
* Something you experienced, so you "know" it is true, but it
actually is not true at all, but you really believe it is, since you
actually experienced it? What is true reality? If it makes you feel
better, is that wrong? What if is actually right? But what if it makes
you feel bad, does that make it wrong or not true?
* Some people suffer a break with reality when traumatized by an
experience (shell-shocked, PTSD, victim of a crime) and they don't
know what reality is any more. Dissociation is a symptom of PTSD, and
it sounds shockingly similar to Enlightenment: "Dissociation is
another "defense" that includes a variety of symptoms including
feelings of depersonalization and derealization, disconnection between
memory and affect so that the person is "in another world," and in
extreme forms can involve apparent multiple personalities and acting
without any memory ("losing time")."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-traumatic_stress_disorder#Symptoms
* And since you now feel really much better about yourself, you stick
with that belief, even if the old "you" tries to pull yourself back
into the old belief of reality.
* If you had an experience that completely changed your view of
reality FOR THE WORSE, you would think you were sick and had a mental
breakdown, and would work really hard to get your old view of reality
back.
* So we seem to have a measure of what reality is: if our view of
reality changes for the better, than that must be the REAL reality,
but if it changes for the worse, then that can't be real and we have
to be cured.
* That is why you rarely hear of anyone who gets Enlightened and then
goes and seeks a "cure" for this ailment. But there is one REALLY good
(actually bad) example: Suzanne Segal, discussed below.

More implications: A Psychotic Break is a loss of contact with
reality, which is a mental disorder.

MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS: You should be alarmed that there seems to be a
growing trend of people who are seeking out this "enlightenment" thing
-- they are actively seeking to have a mental breakdown on purpose!
Here is a person writing about such an experience in a relatively
mainstream publication:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stacey-lawson/who-are-you-really_b_67506.html?view=screen

BELIEVERS IN ENLIGHTENMENT: If you are an Advaita believer, even
though you don't really feel compelled to Enlighten anyone else, if
you speak the language of medical professionals to show them that YOU
have the correct view of reality, and they and everyone else is
actually suffering a mental illness known as psychosis. They will take
it from there -- it is the job and responsibility of medical
professionals to cure people of their illnesses, so if you can
demonstrate to them that they are mentally ill, and cure them, then
they will also cure others. Then it will become the medical mainstream
to fix the mental illness most people suffer from, and "cure" them by
Enlightening them. Finally the world will be filled with people who
are cured of mental illness. A world of people who are Enlightened/no
longer mentally ill would be a entirely different world than anything
else in history.

Here is a scholarly work that compares Mysticism (such as
Enlightenment) and Psychosis.
"IT IS REFRESHING to read a paper that manages at once to be
interdisciplinary and intercultural in its range of reference, and
that also confronts a difficult and controversial question about how
we are to assess the similarities and differences between psychotic
and mystical experiences. Many psychiatrists have been skeptical about
whether there are any genuine differences..."
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/philosophy_psychiatry_and_psychology/v009/9.4mcghee.html

Here is the only guy I found who is a proponent of Enlightenment, yet
has any criticism of the potential psychosis of Enlightenment. But he
also makes fun of other teachers of Enlightenment, and you end up
having no idea what the heck is the "right kind" of Enlightenment at
all! http://www.infinitesmile.org/?p=172

Long paper comparing Psychosis and Mysticism. You will see that the
Enlightenment promised by Advaita isn't all that special after all...
The Relationship Between Schizophrenia & Mysticism: A Bibliographic
Essay
http://sandra.stahlman.com/schizo.html
"As awareness increases to include more external and internal
information, a sense of self, a boundary between self and environment,
expands, seems to dissipate. The experience is one of unity with
information formerly defined as non-self. This expansion of the self,
often referred to as loss of self, may not be beneficial for someone
who does not have a "strong" sense of self to begin with. To these
people, a mystical experience can be frightening and confusing, to say
the least."

"Addressing the concepts "unifying" and "ego-transcending" seems vital
because the sorts of phrases turn up again and again in literature on
mysticism. F.C. Happold (1975) writes "unless the idea of non-duality
can be grasped the range of mystical experience is
incomprehensible" (p.71). "Duality" describes the manner in which we
usually perceive our self in relation to the environment. A division
of "self" and "other" occurs. "Ego" can be used to refer to that self
which we are aware of. What happens during a mystical experience has
been described as transcending this ego, or going through a process of
temporary "ego-loss." As multiplicity ceases, the experience is of a
mode of consciousness often referred to as "the One." "

"Kenneth Wapnick (1980) explains that mystics tend to follow a very
structured, common process, culminating with the mystical experience.
He refers to an outline of this process created by Underhill in 1961,
in which the mystic moves from "an awakening of self" (p.323) to the
purgation of attachments to the social world and the self, resulting
in an experience of "a state of pure consciousness, in which the
individual experiences nothing" (p.324)."

*** Positives ***
Here are some POSITIVE things that Advaita proponents say, that makes
them sound like they are NOT a cult:

1. "Real" Advaita leads you to an understanding such that you do NOT
feel compelled to teach others at all. Therefore all those teachers,
Gurus, etc. are suspect and may very well be frauds.
2. Those who experience Advaita claim to see everything in the world
as "unconditional love," including themselves and other people.
Presumably they don't want to do anything 'bad' to things they love,
including other people, animals, the earth, etc.
3. There are proponents who say they have been "Enlightened" by the
teachings of Advaita, and they appear to live normal, productive lives
within the rest of society. They don't seem to do anything too extreme
like meditate on a mountaintop for the rest of their lives, or go kill
lots of people, or try to "convert" everyone around them.
4. There are only a FEW people whose teachings may be considered
Advaita who are obviously out to make money (such as Eckhart Tolle).
5. There do not seem to be any hard-core brainwashing techniques used
(google 'Scientology Brainwashing' if you want to see ALL the
techniques). Mostly it is up to every individual to seek out this
knowledge and continue to seek it out even when difficult.

*** ALL CULTS ***
ALL cults share a large number of these properties. (Longer
definitions of Cults are below, or search the internet for more
definitions. They all say and do the same things.)
1. They teach the "REAL" way to find God, bliss, enlightenment,
eternal happiness, etc.
2. They solve ALL of your problems.
3. They can't really explain it.
4. Only a select few ever get it.
5. There is a difficult journey to get it.
6. To get it requires resolve, faith, seeking -- often times for many
years or decades, or a lifetime.
7. Most followers got into it because of some pain in their life that
made them seek a solution to their pain, which makes them committed/
gullible.
8. There are always leaders that teach or have the special method that
followers have to seek out.
9. The leaders have special powers, and followers get a "feeling" just
being in their presence.
10. They use lots of weird language and mumbo-jumbo.
11. SEPARATENESS. Members are set apart from the rest of society
because they are special. <-- IMPORTANT!
12. There are often cool mystical, spiritual, or religious ancient/old
teachings and sacred documents.
13. Cult members "know" what is "true" and everyone else does not, so
they form groups to be able to interact with other who "know" the
"truth."
14. The actual destination is debated or mysterious, and is often
never really clear.
15. If you don't get it, that would be really bad.

*** NEGATIVE, Cult-like teachings of Advaita ***
Here are some NEGATIVE things that Advaita proponents say, that makes
them sound like they ARE a cult:

1. Look at the DEFINITION of a cult: they ALL offer the REAL solution
to your problems. The rewards for an Enlightened Advaita believer are
astonishing! Here are just some of the things you hear Advaita
believers saying you will get:

Awakening from The Dream, The Ultimate Truth, God, Bliss, Heaven on
Earth, Unconditional Love, Liberation, True Freedom, The Highest
Happiness, Perfect Peace, Nirvana, Salvation, Metamorphosis, Universal
Law, Paradise, Dharma, Dhamma, Bodhi, Satori, Kensho, Prajna, Death of
the Ego, Perfect Sanity, An Illuminated Soul, Ancient Wisdom, Merging
of the Human and the Divine, Brilliant Infinite Self of Awakened
Consciousness, The Vastness of all Being, the Enormity of who We
Really Are, One with the Universe -- to name just a few.

Everything that all ancient Eastern philosophies ever taught, and
arguably much of what Western religion teaches, is yours for free!

2. Very few self-help programs claim to ever be able to solve all of
your problems. Even New Age teachings often refer to the "spiritual
path" or your "journey towards Enlightenment" but they rarely if ever
claim any sort of final destination. Only cults and religions do: They
TELL you what you MUST do in order to be rewarded, and not punished.
Cults vaguely tell you that you must continue to follow their
teachings forever, because there is always something more, some higher
level to achieve, some mysterious secret yet to be revealed and
learned but maybe if you're really lucky you will be The One who
actually gets it. Many religions tells you that you must do certain
things here on this earth and struggle for an unachievable perfection
in this life, in order to get some reward or avoid some punishment
after death.

But not Advaita! They tell you that you will receive all rewards,
right now. All problems are solved. Heaven on earth. In an instant.
Well, maybe longer.

"When you see that that is what you are, then the very subtleness
expresses itself. That is the uncaused joy. Nisargadatta puts it
beautifully. He puts it in the negative. 'There is nothing wrong any
more.' "
http://sailorbob.net/home/books.html

3. All cults have some "difficult," "incomprehensible," or completely
"ineffable" concepts that only a very small, select-few people know
about or can explain. If you take The Landmark Forum they repeatedly
tell you that you will "get it" but they never, EVER tell you what
"IT" is. IT is inexplicable, apparently. All Cults use have concepts
that are somehow spiritual, they just can't be explained rationally,
and even trying to understand things rationally shows what problems
you have, and how much you need whatever they are offering. Why can't
you just "let go?"

Advaita is arguably the most intense in this respect. The whole
problem is that you are not really YOU. YOU are actually something
else. So whenever you try to understand YOU, you is just getting in
the way. Only when you -- in some absolutely indescribable,
incommunicable manner "lets go" can the real YOU be set free,
liberated, enlightened.

4. This Advaita Enlightenment is not widely known, so only a select
few special people are seeking it, and even fewer ever "get it".
Before you get it, you get to belong to a cool, small, underground
group of seekers-of-truth who study ancient manuscripts and wise old
spiritual guys from India who got Enlightenment spontaneously, so they
are really special.

5. Getting Advaita Enlightenment is also described as a paradox: It is
actually staring you in the face right now, all you have to do is see
it. But almost no one in history ever has. So getting it is really
hard, but once you get it (often times after decades of trying) you
will see how easy it was to have gotten it. The struggle and the fight
to get it is necessary, but you only get it when you stop struggling
and fighting.

6. Getting Advaita Enlightenment is sometimes (not always) described
as requiring great discipline and resolve. Which sounds a lot like
religious faith, or faith in the teachings of a cult leader.

Andrew Cohen - Embracing Heaven & Earth, Page 23:
To succeed, we must be convinced beyond any doubt from our own
experience that Liberation is a living possibility, that it is real.
But from that moment on, whether that which was directly experienced
in the spiritual revelation is apparent or not, we must choose to be
free in every moment no matter what. That's when we become true
spiritual warriors. That's when we have finally become serious about
attaining victory over ignorance in this life.

7. Like any self help program or group you can join that promised to
help you solve your problems, Advaita offers to solve ALL your
problems. And everyone who gets Advaita Enlightenment describes it in
incredibly colorful language, often in flowery poetry, and almost
always as an amazingly awesome, reality-changing experience for the
better. Now imagine you have some pain in your life, and someone comes
by and offers you all of this peace, love, happiness, eternal bliss.
Why wouldn't you spend the rest of your life trying to find Heaven on
Earth? I know damn well from personal experience that if you try to
sell this to people who are HAPPY with their lives, they will think
you are nuts. So therefore in my experience, the ONLY people who seek
out Advaita are those who are in pain, weak, gullible, open to their
teachings, etc. If you need to believe there is something more to this
life, Advaita offers all the answers, the Real Truth.

8. Advaita teaches that anyone can get Enlightenment right here, right
now, nothing special is required, you don't have to buy anything,
follow some teacher, or even do anything like meditate. And Advaita
teaches the ultimate Egalitarianism -- you aren't really you, you are
just part of all the universe, so the thought that any person is more
or less than any other is nonsensical.

Well, sometimes they say it really helps to learn from someone who is
already Enlightened, and is a master at teaching, known as a Guru or
Sage or something. Uh oh! In fact there is overwhelming praise for
their master teachers, they are revered as important historical
figures and spiritual leaders, and they have followers and some
Advaita students stridently argue their Guru is better than other
Gurus. And ANYONE who got Enlightenment *spontaneously* is extra-
revered! But people who get Enlightened by studying under one of the
special, well-known Gurus can and often do go on to become teachers
themselves. Then they set up a cool thing called a "Lineage" which
presumably shows how good/special they are because they are a teacher
descended from one of these revered masters.
http://www.gangaji.org/satsang/library/lineage.asp
http://nisargadatta.net/Navnath_Sampradaya.html
http://www.ex-premie.org/video/pages/lineage.html
http://www.realization.org/page/doc0/doc0097c.htm
http://www.advaita.org.uk/teachers/lineages.htm

Also there is a really strong feeling that these revered, wise,
mystical ancient old Indian dudes must know something the rest of us
don't know. They really figured out the mystery of life. Wouldn't it
be cool if you could know what they knew? How could those mystical old
guys be just some sort of cult? No way. They must know something
really special. Magical. Spiritual. Mystical. God-like.

9. There are many stories about how people tried to get Enlightenment
on their own for a really long time, but when they finally met with
their Guru they "felt" a special "presence" and shortly thereafter
their lifelong quest for Enlightenment was over!

10. Advaita is an ancient Hindu teaching. So modern Western
practitioners can -- and do -- use really cool kick-ass Sanskrit words
like Atman, Brahman, Prasthanatrayi, Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, and
Brahma Sutras. And there are cool words like Non-Dualism, Delusion,
Extraordinary Ordinariness, and the word Advaita itself. Now you get
to make up cool sentences like this one I found on the net:

"a. Brahman alone is real b. The world is unreal c. The world is
Brahman. This is an ancient quote from the Upanishads which was
echoed by Shankara. Appearances are only Brahman, short and sweet."

How do you like me now!!

11. SEPARATENESS -- Here we get into the culmination of a lot of
things that Cults do, and that Advaita does: separates people from the
mainstream. And yet another paradox: Advaita claims that when you get
their brand of Enlightenment, you will become one with all, but at the
same time you know damn well that very few other people actually are
Enlightened. So even though you now know we are all totally the same
thing, you are somehow different. Special. And get this: you now have
a cool new language to use -- JUST LIKE ALL CULTS DO, so when you talk
to people about what Advaita is and what happened to you, it will be
all cool sounding yet incomprehensible to them -- setting you APART
from the mainstream, just like ALL cults do. AND you have really cool
sounding concepts, but you really can't explain them to people, just
like ALL cults do. AND you know some sort of Ultimate Truth about The
Way Things Really Are -- just like ALL cult members ALWAYS say. The
only way for people to understand you is to join in, to get
Enlightened themselves, just like ALL cults. Otherwise, all those
people from your old life are now not as good as you because you know
what is real and they don't. You are now separate from the mainstream.

But that is totally OK, you know skeptics just say these things, and
that is fine. You *KNOW* what the truth *REALLY* is, and those OTHER
people are fine just the way they are. You aren't out to convert
anybody. You KNOW what the truth is, you are perfectly content at all
times, including when people tell you that you are bonkers. You know.
They don't. You are special. You are different. Just like ALL other
cult members.

12. There are ancient Advaita teachings, written in Sanskrit. They are
extremely sacred, opaque, and revered. Isn't it cool to be studying
some ancient mysterious wisdom that only a few people ever actually
"get" making them super-happy all the time? Dude, cool.

13. Enlightened people see almost everyone else as not-Enlightened
(or at best all other people are Enlightened they just don't know it
yet.) Therefore Enlightened people form groups of other similarly-
Enlightened people to interact with. How hard it must be to talk to
all those other people who "don't get it" and are living a "delusion"
and are "still dreaming". We Advaita believers know what is true, and
we have our separate concepts and language. It is just easier to hang
out with other believers in The Truth. Just like *ALL* cults that
provide groups that allow you to indulge your separateness from the
mainstream.

14. What exactly is the Enlightenment offered by Advaita? As best I
can tell, Advaita is NOT just another self-help program that offers
infinite incremental changes to yourself to make you a little bit more
happy all the time. It is a full on 100% transformation of the way you
see the universe and your role in it.

But it is completely "ineffable" and the way to get it is also
ineffable. Here is an illustration of ineffable:
Say a young woman tells a little boy that she is "in love." The boy
asks her what that means, and how did she get it. She will explain in
colorful language the process of falling in love (or she might even
say, "it just happened"), and in very colorful language what it feels
like to be in love and how great it is. The boy, never having been in
love, will probably say he sort of gets it, and it sure seems great.
But he certainly does not now actually feel what she feels. Then a
friend of the girls comes in and says she is in love too. So she
explains it to the boy, and this next girl uses totally different
colorful language, and again it all seems great, but yet again the boy
doesn't actually feel what she feels. Then the two girls turn to each
other and wonder -- are we feeling the same thing? The fact is they
can never know!

And that is what Enlightenment is like -- since no one can ever
explain it, no one ever knows if they really got it or not, or if
anyone else ever got it.

And there are some things that seem to offer Enlightenment, but it
just isn't clear. For example, lots of people say that "dissolving the
ego" is the definition of Enlightenment.
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&pwst=1&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=ego+death+enlightenment&spell=1

But believers in Advaita say you are "perfect" just as you are now, so
there is no need to dissolve your ego:

This is not about "giving up the search" or "transcending thought" or
"dropping the ego". No, this message is simpler than any of that: it's
about life as it already is.
http://www.lifewithoutacentre.com/index.html

Finally, there are MANY different possible meanings of Enlightenment,
so the Advaita version must be something specific, yet ultimately
indescribable.

In religious use, enlightenment is most closely associated with South
and East Asian religious experience, being used to translate words
such as (in Buddhism) Bodhi or satori, or (in Hinduism) moksha. The
concept does also have parallels in the Abrahamic religions (in the
Kabbalah tradition in Judaism, in Christian mysticism, and in the Sufi
tradition of Islam).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightenment_%28concept%29

15. Once you have tasted the promise of Advaita Enlightenment, how can
you stop trying to get it? Even though you didn't get it yet, you now
"know" that there is a whole magical world out there, and your current
life is just so small and meaningless. It isn't even "real",
everything you do isn't even real, your memories, beliefs and even
your thoughts are not real at all, you just need to "get it" and then
you will be free! How can you go back to your mundane life and just
forget about Advaita? This feeling that there must be more, just at
the verge of your knowing, will eat away at you forever. Think about
it all the time. Read books. Meet gurus. Join a group. JOIN US.

*** Cult Definitions ***
Here are some definitions of Cults off the internet, there are plenty
more. All that is really important is to notice that ALL cults have
similarities, and Advaita shares MANY of these traits:

1. Cult roughly refers to a cohesive social group devoted to beliefs
or practices that the surrounding culture considers outside the
mainstream, with a notably positive or negative popular perception. In
common or populist usage, "cult" has a positive connotation for groups
of art, music, writing, fiction, and fashion devotees, but a negative
connotation for new religious, extreme political, questionable
therapeutic, and pyramidal business groups. For this reason, most, if
not all, non-fan groups that are called cults reject this label. A
group's populist cult status begins as rumors of its novel belief
system, its great devotions, its idiosyncratic practices, its
perceived harmful or beneficial effects on members, or its perceived
opposition to the interests of mainstream cultures and governments.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult
CHECK: Advaita = out of mainstream, great devotions, idiosyncratic
practices, perceived benefits.

2. CULT - Any group which has a pyramid type authoritarian leadership
structure with all teaching and guidance coming from the person/
persons at the top. The group will claim to be the only way to God;
Nirvana; Paradise; Ultimate Reality; Full Potential, Way to Happiness
etc, and will use thought reform or mind control techniques to gain
control and keep their members.
http://www.culthelp.info/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=17&Itemid=5
CHECK: Advaita = does have revered leaders, offers ALL those great
rewards and a much more!

3. A group or doctrine with religious, philosophical or cultural
identity sometimes viewed as a sect, often existent on the margins of
society.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cult
CHECK: Advaita = totally transcending society.

BONUS Definition:
New Age - New Age is a recent and developing belief system in North
America encompassing thousands of autonomous (and sometime
contradictory) beliefs, organizations, and events. Generally the New
Age borrows its theology from pantheistic Eastern religions and its
practices from 19th century Western occultism. The term "New Age" is
used herein as an umbrella term to describe organizations which seem
to exhibit one or more of the following beliefs: (1) All is one, all
reality is part of the whole; (2) Everything is God and God is
everything; (3) Man is God or a part of God; (4) Man never dies, but
continues to live through reincarnation; (5) Man can create his own
reality and/or values through transformed consciousness or altered
states of consciousness.
http://www.watchman.org/cat95.htm
CHECK: Advaita = 1. Yes, 2. Yes, 3. Yes, 4. Yes, 5. Yes.

*** Enlightenment Gone Wrong ***
Almost everyone who experiences Enlightenment describes it as the most
wonderful experience ever. But there is a whole book by a woman who
described it as a nightmare -- she thought she had gone out of her
mind! It makes you wonder: how many other people think this completely
different way to see yourself and the universe is actually a BAD
thing? How many are sitting in mental institutions right now,
diagnosed with an illness, but actually are "Enlightened"?

The book is called "Collision With the Infinite: A Life Beyond the
Personal Self" by Suzanne Segal. I haven't read the book but
apparently she got Enlightened spontaneously, hated it, suffered for
10 years, then died a painful death. Now that doesn't sound so great.

Oh, and again we don't know if she got "real" enlightenment, or just
"lost her ego" or whatever!

Here are what a couple of reviewers have to say about her experience,
and "enlightenment" in general:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/1884997279/ref=cm_cr_dp_all_helpful/002-8140000-6531229?ie=UTF8&n=283155#customerReviews

1.
Most accounts of enlightenment deal with it from the perspective of
the blissful, exalted state it represents. Segal has given us a
roadmap of the potential suffering that can arise when such
transformations occur outside the traditional student teacher
relationship.

2.
OK, although I have found that most seekers are actually VERY DENSE
and have very ingrained ideas about what satori, or salvation, or the
enlightenment actually is, I am going to hope that my words above have
penetrated and you will not pick up and read this book lightly. It is
not interesting, amusing, entertaining, "a jolly good read", funny,
intriguing or anything else other than a book that will open your eyes
to the potential of the UNREMITTING HORROR, repeat HORROR that
spiritual awakening can be. Is that how you saw it when you started
your quest? Didn't you hope for deep inner peace and some kind of
personal transcendence? Well you are mistaken. The culmination of all
your meditation and insight and all the rest is this: NOTHING.
Limitless, eternal void.

Although it has different flavours, depending on the author, all of
the books that deal with non-dual consciousness tell you the same
thing, and when you read them you are left with an intellectual
choice. Are they right, and your ego is an illusion, or have they gone
insane? There is no middle ground.

Sitting on this side of the "enlightenment" I think that they are
insane.

Here is a guy who was "Enlightened" and nearly turned into a Zombie.
Of course he is HIGHLY REVERED by believers in Advaita. Just look at
how he "got it" so quickly... he is really special!
http://www.kktanhp.com/ramana_maharshi.htm

>From the above description, one realizes that Ramana Maharshi had
destroyed the ego and from thence onwards was constantly aware of his
Self, the Spirit, which is also the Spirit and Self of every man. In
other words he was enlightened in that half-hour of experience. While
before the event he experienced an intense fear of death, but after
that he had no fear of death for the rest of his life. This is because
he was constantly with his deathless Self even though he was talking,
acting or walking. This awakening would have taken many other yogis
many lifetimes, but he accomplished it in half an hour without
previous spiritual practice. This is unique and truly phenomenal.

His character had changed. He was no more interested in those things
that he previously valued. He felt that conventional life appeared
unreal. This must have been a very difficult time for a boy who had no
training in the spiritual path, and suddenly thrown into a realm of
constant awareness of bliss. He also had to remain in the family and
go to school as well. His family noticed this change in him. There was
no more interest in his former relationship with friends and
relatives. He went through his studies mechanically with his book
opened, but the mind far away elsewhere. His dealings with people were
meek and submissive: there was now no complaint or retaliation as
before. He preferred to be alone to meditate and to be absorbed in the
Self or Spirit, rather than to play with friends. Whatever food was
given to him was consumed indifferently.

Oh, and of course when he died "...in many places all over India,
there were independent reports of seeing a bright light rising into
the sky."
Cool! I want to be special like that! Where do I sign up?!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramana_Maharshi

Richard Corfield

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Nov 11, 2007, 5:26:00 PM11/11/07

to

On 2007-11-09, NoVA101 <NoV...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> I had originally posted this on an Advaita board, but it basically
> asks the same question of any philosophy that offers 'enlightenment'.
>
> I would love your feedback!

This would be Advaita the brand name, not Advaita the general idea. An
interesting question.

I scanned your post looking to see if you were part of a church or
something. Churches like posting cult warnings about other religious
groups. The thing is, when you apply the kind of questioning you have
applied it can be hard to come to the conclusion that any organised
religion isn't a cult. When it becomes big enough then the dynamics in
each individual church or temple will differ enough - unless it really
is a centrally controlled type of cult.

I'm afraid I know little about Advaita the brand name. I know about some
basic ideas but apply logical reduction. We are all part of the world we
live in and closely coupled with it. It seems simple. I have described
myself as Advaita sometimes because of two major streams in Hinduism -
Seperate God and No Separate God, that is the one that most closely
fits. Atheism is non-dual too.

- Richard

--
_/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/_/_/ Richard Corfield <Richard....@gmail.com>
_/ _/ _/ _/
_/_/ _/ _/ Time is a one way street,
_/ _/ _/_/ _/_/_/ except in the Twilight Zone

NoVA101

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Nov 12, 2007, 9:59:13 PM11/12/07

to

On Nov 11, 5:26 pm, Richard Corfield <Richard.Corfi...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> On 2007-11-09, NoVA101 <NoVA...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > I had originally posted this on an Advaita board, but it basically
> > asks the same question of any philosophy that offers 'enlightenment'.
>
> > I would love your feedback!
>
> This would be Advaita the brand name, not Advaita the general idea. An
> interesting question.
>
> I scanned your post looking to see if you were part of a church or
> something. Churches like posting cult warnings about other religious
> groups. The thing is, when you apply the kind of questioning you have
> applied it can be hard to come to the conclusion that any organised
> religion isn't a cult. When it becomes big enough then the dynamics in
> each individual church or temple will differ enough - unless it really
> is a centrally controlled type of cult.
>
> I'm afraid I know little about Advaita the brand name. I know about some
> basic ideas but apply logical reduction. We are all part of the world we
> live in and closely coupled with it. It seems simple. I have described
> myself as Advaita sometimes because of two major streams in Hinduism -
> Seperate God and No Separate God, that is the one that most closely
> fits. Atheism is non-dual too.
>
> - Richard
>
> --

> _/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/_/_/ Richard Corfield <Richard.Corfi...@gmail.com>

> _/ _/ _/ _/
> _/_/ _/ _/ Time is a one way street,
> _/ _/ _/_/ _/_/_/ except in the Twilight Zone

Richard -

Thank you very much for the thoughtful response.

I am absolutely not part of any religion or anything. I have simply
found myself, for the first time in my life, in an existential crisis,
or on a spiritual path, or whatever you want to call it. I am
searching for that whole Meaning of Life thing! :) Here's the short
story of my life: I am extremely 'successful', yet completely unhappy.
How was THAT for short!

So I started searching for answers. Do you have ANY idea how many
people say that THEY have THE ANSWER?? They know the way, the path,
the truth, the light, happiness, freedom, etc, etc, etc.

So I asked around. A bunch of my friends had done something called The
Landmark Forum. So I did their class. What a load of CRAP. It is a
mishmash hodgepodge messed up mix of some poor interpretations of
Eastern philosophies and borderline-criminal misinterpretations of
Western psychology. Dangerous and harmful and distorted, imo.

So now I don't want to run off and do every class, retreat, program,
etc that I hear of -- there has to be a better way!

So what have most people in history done when they have had an
existential crisis? They go to the **ONE** source available to them to
deal with this issue -- if you were (for example) a Native American,
you go to the local Shaman; if you were religious, you go to the local
priest/minister/rabbi or whatever; if you were in the East you go to
the local Guru/Swami, etc, etc, etc.

Me? I go to the gods of the Internet! :)

But seriously, for the first time in history you can sit in one place
and have access to every form of spiritual teaching in all of human
history. (This really is something amazing that I don't think most
people appreciate the gravity of.)

But... then how the HECK are you supposed to choose? Which "one" is
"right"?????

I stumbled on The Open Secret by Tony Parsons, read it, and it really
spoke to me. I found out it had something to do with this Advaita
thing. Those who speak of Advaita say things like it is The Way, The
Ultimate Truth, Oneness with God, etc, etc, JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE
DOES.

So I am just trying to be efficient here. I don't want to spend years
practicing what Landmark Forum teaches. It is crap. I know people who
have been into it for decades... what a WASTE! I know people who
think they experience "enlightenment" every time they do mushrooms. Is
that it?? Is that The Way? The Path?? Hard to believe. I know people
who became Jehovah's Witnesses -- don't mean to offend anyone, but in
my opinion, this is crap. You will NEVER EVER know what the folks who
believe the teachings of Advaita know if you succumb to JW -- they
*enslave* you, they do not free you. I was raised Catholic, which
means I have "The Santa Clause belief in God" -- some white guy with a
beard sitting up in heaven somewhere else, keeping a running tally on
your behaviors to decide if you are naughty or nice, and if you get
enough points you get to live all of eternity as a smooth-bodied angel
floating on clouds, if you are naughty you get to burn in Eternal
Churchlady Hellfires!!! :) So no, that doesn't work for me either.

So if I understand correctly "enlightenment" is something that
traditionally is achieved (I know, inaccurate) or 'realized' by
meditation, often sometimes for many many years. The Eastern teachings
of Buddhists, Sufis, Zen, Hinduism, Jainism, etc, etc. are all about
this.

So the questions I have -- and I think everyone who has ever existed
has had -- are:

1. What is the answer.
2. Who knows it.
3. How do *I* get to know it.

So here are my current answers to those questions:

1. Advaita, or Non-Duality, or Enlightenment, bodhi or satori, or
moksha or whatever you want to call it. But you *REALLY* want to know
what the definition is, before you spend the rest of your life seeking
something that is NOT it, don't you?? I *know* people have varying
definitions!!

2. Buddhists and all those other Eastern folks mentioned above.
Although there are MANY variations in their teachings, many with
ancillary teachings such as ethical stuff that has nothing to do with
simply enlightenment.

3. Follow one of their teachings, methodologies, or whatever. Again,
this is HUGE. If I understand correctly, traditional Buddhism teaches
that you have MANY years of practice ahead of you. And if I
understand, so called Neo-Advaita teaches that by reading enough
Pointing Out Instructions you can get it almost immediately. Wouldn't
that be cool!

Who is right? Are both of them? Why not do the quickie route??? Does
that really work? Do they lead you to the same place?? Is this even
the right place to be headed?? How do you know?? Do you have to have
"faith"?? YUK!! How do I know I am not going to spend the next 10
years doing THIS type of meditation when I should have been doing THAT
one??? Why isn't everyone else asking these same
questions?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?!!

brian mitchell

unread,

Nov 13, 2007, 12:41:18 AM11/13/07

to

NoVA101 <NoV...@gmail.com> wrote:

> But... then how the HECK are you supposed to choose? Which "one" is
> "right"?????

> I stumbled on The Open Secret by Tony Parsons, read it, and it really

> spoke to me...

If it really spoke to you, why don't you stay with that voice and try to
penetrate further into what it's saying? Why are you asking for outside
approval rather than following your own inner response?

> So the questions I have -- and I think everyone who has ever existed
> has had -- are:

> 1. What is the answer.
> 2. Who knows it.
> 3. How do *I* get to know it.

> So here are my current answers to those questions:

> 1. Advaita, or Non-Duality, or Enlightenment, bodhi or satori, or
> moksha or whatever you want to call it. But you *REALLY* want to know
> what the definition is, before you spend the rest of your life seeking
> something that is NOT it, don't you??

Yes, you do. Isn't that interesting?

> 2. Buddhists and all those other Eastern folks mentioned above.

> 3. Follow one of their teachings, methodologies, or whatever. Again,

> this is HUGE. If I understand correctly, traditional Buddhism teaches
> that you have MANY years of practice ahead of you. And if I
> understand, so called Neo-Advaita teaches that by reading enough
> Pointing Out Instructions you can get it almost immediately. Wouldn't
> that be cool!

> Who is right? Are both of them? Why not do the quickie route??? Does
> that really work? Do they lead you to the same place?? Is this even
> the right place to be headed?? How do you know?? Do you have to have
> "faith"?? YUK!! How do I know I am not going to spend the next 10
> years doing THIS type of meditation when I should have been doing THAT
> one??? Why isn't everyone else asking these same
> questions?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?!!

They may have progressed to questioning the questioner. There are some
large assumptions behind your questions. One is that there is a single
fixed truth to be found. Isn't that the same conceptual absolutism you
decry in Catholicism? Where does that idea come from? Then there's the
idea that there must be some single efficient method; some causative
levers you can pull so your candy drops reliably into the tray.

You describe yourself as successful but unhappy so have you considered
that you may just be looking for a better kind of success? The real one
this time; the one that WILL make you happy? How many times are you
prepared to run round that circuit?

Do you see what great vistas of absorbing fun open before you?

Resto...@gmail.com

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Nov 13, 2007, 2:02:01 AM11/13/07

to

> > I stumbled on The Open Secret by Tony Parsons, read it, and it really
> > spoke to me...
>
> If it really spoke to you, why don't you stay with that voice and try to
> penetrate further into what it's saying? Why are you asking for outside
> approval rather than following your own inner response?

Hmmm... I am not really seeking approval from anyone. (actually, I
have ALL of his books on order!) What I have been doing is hearing
about some new thing, it is all new and fresh and exciting, then an
hour/week/month later I find something "wrong" with it. So for
example the Landmark Forum thing -- I thought it was really cool and
hid some deep mystery that I had not yet gotten from the initial
class... and what do you know, then offer NEVER ENDING classes you can
take, in their for-profit corporation. That is NOT the type of "path"
I want to be on. That is the never-ending, financially-draining path
of Scientology, or the brainwashing path of a Cult, or the enslavement
of Jehovah's Witnesses, etc. I hate to spend a year, or 10, or a
lifetime then think to myself, OOOPS! That was all BS. I wish I had
heard that 50 years ago, or something. I think this is a legitimate
concern, and yes I do see that I could end up forever searching for
the right path, and never going down one. I don't know how to get out
of that loop. Well, read on...

> > 1. Advaita, or Non-Duality, or Enlightenment, bodhi or satori, or
> > moksha or whatever you want to call it. But you *REALLY* want to know
> > what the definition is, before you spend the rest of your life seeking
> > something that is NOT it, don't you??
>
> Yes, you do. Isn't that interesting?

Yes I do. I don't know the answer. "What is the definition of
Enlightenment?" Is it somehow wrong for me to ask?? All of this is
new to me, why is asking questions something to be derided?? I can't
seem to get a straight answer out of anybody. I know, some of these
concepts are "ineffable" -- they are literally impossible to put into
words. But you CAN compare difficult concepts, or the results of one
path vs. another. Or here, how about this. I have posted this question
all over the place and I can't get an answer. What is the difference
(is there a difference) between "enlightenment" and "self-
realization"? I *think* there is a difference after having read the
article below, but no one seems to know the answer. (and I wrote
directly to this website and never heard back)...
http://www.realization.org/page/topics/advaita_vedanta.htm

> > "faith"?? YUK!! How do I know I am not going to spend the next 10
> > years doing THIS type of meditation when I should have been doing THAT
> > one??? Why isn't everyone else asking these same
> > questions?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?!!
>
> They may have progressed to questioning the questioner. There are some
> large assumptions behind your questions. One is that there is a single
> fixed truth to be found. Isn't that the same conceptual absolutism you
> decry in Catholicism? Where does that idea come from? Then there's the
> idea that there must be some single efficient method; some causative
> levers you can pull so your candy drops reliably into the tray.

Absolutism is a symptom of ANYONE and EVERYONE who says the have "the
answer" -- which is nearly everyone, certainly not just Catholics.
Religions, spiritual leaders, cults, psychiatrists, LGAT training
systems, scientists, etc.

But with that said, I understand that there are a lot of people who
believe there is a particular or absolute "truth" or "answer" that
they heard about, somehow decided it was "good", are now seeking it,
hence the "path" they are on. I have read a lot of articles by people
who said they are now 'enlightened' and they describe it as something
they had heard about, then they went and sought it out, often times
for many years. What did they get? Well, it does in fact depend on
what one seeks.

If you hear about Buddhist enlightenment, and you think it is "good"
and you therefore put yourself on a "path" and "seek" it, you are not
likely to start by going to a fundamentalist Christian church, are
you? How about a Jewish Synagogue? If you go to a Buddhist temple
seeking enlightenment, you are not likely to end up smoking peyote in
the woods dancing and beating drums, are you?? Should all people
having an existential crisis go try every single possible "path"
thingey and see which one tickles their fancy?? So how do you choose
your path? Doesn't everyone make some assumptions, reject some things,
lean towards others, filter things out, become drawn towards still
others?

Or is there some clearly defined SPIRITUAL-PATH-DECISION-PROCESS that
everyone else knows about but no one has gotten around to sharing it
with me yet??????? :) :)

> You describe yourself as successful but unhappy so have you considered
> that you may just be looking for a better kind of success? The real one
> this time; the one that WILL make you happy? How many times are you
> prepared to run round that circuit?
>
> Do you see what great vistas of absorbing fun open before you?

Hmmm... I really appreciate your responses, but you honestly
completely lost me here. I don't know what you are saying/asking.
Please clarify!

Monkey Mind

unread,

Nov 13, 2007, 5:12:39 AM11/13/07

to

NoVA101 <NoV...@gmail.com> writes:

> So the questions I have -- and I think everyone who has ever existed
> has had -- are:
>
> 1. What is the answer.
> 2. Who knows it.
> 3. How do *I* get to know it.

The Buddha remarked that once people got going, they ended up either
bewildered or asking these questions. He was clever like that. :)

> So here are my current answers to those questions:
>
> 1. Advaita, or Non-Duality, or Enlightenment, bodhi or satori, or
> moksha or whatever you want to call it. But you *REALLY* want to know
> what the definition is, before you spend the rest of your life seeking
> something that is NOT it, don't you?? I *know* people have varying
> definitions!!
>
> 2. Buddhists and all those other Eastern folks mentioned above.
> Although there are MANY variations in their teachings, many with
> ancillary teachings such as ethical stuff that has nothing to do with
> simply enlightenment.
>
> 3. Follow one of their teachings, methodologies, or whatever. Again,
> this is HUGE. If I understand correctly, traditional Buddhism teaches
> that you have MANY years of practice ahead of you. And if I
> understand, so called Neo-Advaita teaches that by reading enough
> Pointing Out Instructions you can get it almost immediately. Wouldn't
> that be cool!
>
> Who is right? Are both of them? Why not do the quickie route??? Does
> that really work? Do they lead you to the same place?? Is this even
> the right place to be headed?? How do you know?? Do you have to have
> "faith"?? YUK!! How do I know I am not going to spend the next 10
> years doing THIS type of meditation when I should have been doing THAT
> one??? Why isn't everyone else asking these same
> questions?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?!!

People are asking these questions. I know I am.

But honestly, there are no good answers, only guesswork and pompous
make-believe and delusions of grandeur. Or worse, agenda-driven,
deliberate make-believe and delusions of grandeur.

That sucks, doesn't it?

The Buddha tried a few gurus inhis time and found they sucked. Which
is why he started to investigate suckage generally, in itself. At
least *that* wasn't guesswork and make-believe. Things plainly
sucked, no doubt about it, no faith required, no deep secret about it,
no special technique required to get it. No mumbo-jumbo, no
*language* required, even. Animals feel it. Plants react to it. If
there are extra-terrestrial life-forms, the best bet is, they are
experiencing it, too. We're all going to die - the entire *universe*
will wind down eventually, and *that* sucks, for everybody involved.

If you investigate the suckage, noticing it and its conditions - or
noticing its absence, and the conditions for its absence - you'll be
looking at it all from a slightly different angle than the one we're
used to: not the good/bad, right/wrong angle, since there's nothing to
be right or wrong about concerning the simple fact that something
sucks.

So the meditation technique is not important: all meditation
techniques suck. Choose one you're good at, one that sucks less. The
Buddha was good at breath meditation, and would go on and on about it
(read the Anapanasati Sutta for a famous example) - but he also taught
other forms: people differ. Meditation is the lab environment for
your observations - controlled factors and all that - and if you're
going to have a lab, it might as well be a good one. But the lab is
not the observation.

First and foremost, and the Buddha really, really stressed this,
you've got to figure it out for yourself. His teachings are helpful
tools, maps, used by one who claimed to have got to the bottom of it
all, and he was nice enough to let us have them, and tell us how he
used them. But he insisted that one only learns by doing, by
developing skills. Have you read the Kalama Sutta?

One remark on "advaita" or non-dualism: the other side of the medal is
not dualism but monism. It all goes in circles after a while, and
that sucks, which is why the Buddha didn't bother to teach it.

Cheers,
Florian

--
Every man passes out of life as if he had just been born.
-- Epicurus (Vatican Sayings 60)

Richard Corfield

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Nov 13, 2007, 6:19:42 PM11/13/07

to

On 2007-11-13, NoVA101 <NoV...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> So I started searching for answers. Do you have ANY idea how many
> people say that THEY have THE ANSWER?? They know the way, the path,
> the truth, the light, happiness, freedom, etc, etc, etc.

It's a long journey. I don't think anyone can give you The Answer
quickly. Even with what to me seem simple answers - appreciating
valuable things like friends and family more - take time and effort to
put into practice. You're changing your outlook on life.

It's good that you're checking for cults. It seems to need a balance -
careful enough to avoid the scams out there but maybe not so careful
that something good is rejected. That's a challenge. I've met people
who are in what some people would call cults and it seems to serve them
well making it a difficult question.

If it takes you from friends or family I'd be very suspicious. If it
demands money I'd be suspicious. (I'm suspicious of churches that demand
tithing). If it teaches that non-membership results in nasty things I'd
question it. Basic Buddhist practice does none of these things.

A nice thing about basic Advaita ideas for me is that I can reduce them
to say that God is just the beauty and complexity of the world we live
in. Oneness then is just recognising that we are part of that. I've
taken the idea and made it quite atheist in many ways though agnostic
would be better. If I went explicitly atheist I'd be accusing my family
of being deluded which is quite difficult. I avoid conflict this way.

I wonder if Enlightenment / Moksha is really just learning to live your
best here and now, making best of things like friendships and family.
Realising that it's those things that really make you happy rather than
expensive things. There'd be nothing mystical about that though many
people do believe in more mystical things.

Being just aware of the beauty of the world around you and how lucky we
are with what we have in comparison with other not so lucky people can
be quite something anyway. If you have a habit of striving for expensive
things or even striving for the religious answer that is a hard habit to
break and that is where longer practice comes in. Religion becomes just
a tool then. If you read the right translations of the right scripture
I think you find this kind of idea in many places.

I went to a temple of a major religion in order to make sure I got
something recognisable and general. In that way I also got to see
diversity. I was invited to join a couple of smaller groups but have
declined. There are people on this newsgroup who are part of what I call
smaller groups, following a guru, and they seem to do well out of it. If
you follow a guru then you place a lot of trust in them, so choose
wisely. I'd hope a guru would help you develop yourself and not expect
you to do things like drop critical thinking.

One thing I hold to is that no decision is final. Anything we do we can
learn from, but if we find a direction is wrong we can pull out, learn
from the mistake and look elsewhere.

I think Christianity can also work but it's a case of finding the right
group, avoiding the exclusivity. I think the answers are there even in
those teachings. You just have to concentrate on the loving others and
the example and not get caught up in the hellfire or the dogma.

I found Hatha Yoga useful.

> So if I understand correctly "enlightenment" is something that
> traditionally is achieved (I know, inaccurate) or 'realized' by
> meditation, often sometimes for many many years. The Eastern teachings
> of Buddhists, Sufis, Zen, Hinduism, Jainism, etc, etc. are all about
> this.

Maybe it's that feeling of being very lucky in just the plain things you
have.

I've not been able to find the answer after a lot of thought. There's so
much in life to balance and I think it is a balance that's needed. I'm
not sure there is a single answer.

Did you ever come across "The fruits of the Spirit" in Christianity?

> 1. Advaita, or Non-Duality, or Enlightenment, bodhi or satori, or
> moksha or whatever you want to call it. But you *REALLY* want to know
> what the definition is, before you spend the rest of your life seeking
> something that is NOT it, don't you?? I *know* people have varying
> definitions!!

I think conversely that the best thing is to drop it and move on.

> 2. Buddhists and all those other Eastern folks mentioned above.
> Although there are MANY variations in their teachings, many with
> ancillary teachings such as ethical stuff that has nothing to do with
> simply enlightenment.

The ethical bits are a good start. The 8 ways in Hindu Yoga start with
ethics towards others as stage one and self discipline as stage 2. Just
following and trying to understand those I think can help. They fit
together in interesting ways. I found the writings of Judith Lasater
good:

http://www.judithlasater.com/a/beginningthejourney.html
http://www.judithlasater.com/a/livingtheniyamas2.html

Cover the first two limbs of yoga. There's a lot more on that site. It
describes the author's journey.

There are some good books on the Buddhist angle too. "Buddhism Without
Beliefs" and "What the Buddha Taught" are often recommended. I found them
interesting. "Buddhist Psychology" was more technical but interesting
for someone who is technically minded. On the Hindu side, I found the
Easwaren translation of the Bhagavad Gita more suitable for my more
atheist/agnostic way of thinking.

> 3. Follow one of their teachings, methodologies, or whatever. Again,
> this is HUGE. If I understand correctly, traditional Buddhism teaches
> that you have MANY years of practice ahead of you. And if I
> understand, so called Neo-Advaita teaches that by reading enough
> Pointing Out Instructions you can get it almost immediately. Wouldn't
> that be cool!

I'd beware of greed and beware of quick fixes. I'm not sure how much of
the horror stories about people having trouble taking the quick routes
are just scare stories from people with agendas. I think patience is a
great virtue. There are 'paths' out there advertised that to me look
like greed, either greed for some kind of spiritual attainment or greed
for more material attainment. One of them comes from a group that will
take a lot of your money to get you there.

One thing I have learned is that it's good to come to accept where you
are now and work from that. It's there in Hinduism (Yoga), I think
Buddhism and also even in Christianity though Christians are often told
that it's Jesus that accepts them as they are now. It seems to have the
same effect.

> Who is right? Are both of them? Why not do the quickie route??? Does
> that really work? Do they lead you to the same place?? Is this even
> the right place to be headed?? How do you know?? Do you have to have
> "faith"?? YUK!! How do I know I am not going to spend the next 10
> years doing THIS type of meditation when I should have been doing THAT
> one??? Why isn't everyone else asking these same
> questions?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?!!

I wonder if it's because they all work in their way. If it helps you
then great. Different people need different things.

I hope at least some of that helps in some way.

- Richard

--
_/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/_/_/ Richard Corfield <Richard....@gmail.com>

brian mitchell

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Nov 13, 2007, 6:29:14 PM11/13/07

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Resto...@gmail.com wrote:

> > > I stumbled on The Open Secret by Tony Parsons, read it, and it really
> > > spoke to me...
> >
> > If it really spoke to you, why don't you stay with that voice and try to
> > penetrate further into what it's saying? Why are you asking for outside
> > approval rather than following your own inner response?

> Hmmm... I am not really seeking approval from anyone...

Not approval for yourself, but you're asking to have some path or method
or whatever given an external seal of approval so that you can set off
down it with confidence. It's as though you want to know how well the
stock has performed before you invest in it.

> . . . (actually, I

> have ALL of his books on order!)

ALL of them? Let's hope there's a pearl of great price buried in there
somewhere.

> > > . . . But you *REALLY* want to know

> > > what the definition is, before you spend the rest of your life seeking
> > > something that is NOT it, don't you??
> >
> > Yes, you do. Isn't that interesting?

> Yes I do...

I didn't mean to say that only you do that; we all pretty much do one
way or another. We want the reassurance of a map and a destination and a
path to it. So then there's the question of why something external and
formal and traditional trumps your own exploratory intuition?

> I don't know the answer. "What is the definition of
> Enlightenment?" Is it somehow wrong for me to ask?? All of this is
> new to me, why is asking questions something to be derided??

Not derided, but highlighted as a mechanism to be observed. What will
you do with a definition of enlightenment, supposing you find one that
satisfies you? The likelihood is that you will set it up as a goal, an
enshrined image, and set about re-defining yourself and your world
according to it as you try to achieve it. All of which, any Advaitist
would tell you, would be like rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.

> I can't
> seem to get a straight answer out of anybody... I have posted this question

> all over the place and I can't get an answer. What is the difference
> (is there a difference) between "enlightenment" and "self-
> realization"? I *think* there is a difference after having read the
> article below, but no one seems to know the answer. (and I wrote
> directly to this website and never heard back)...

Probably because no-one there knew either. It's a pretty abstruse
question for those who are neither enlightened nor self-realised to
engage in. The ongoing argument between Buddhist thinkers and modern
Advaitists centres a lot on the word and concept of 'self' and exactly
what it is that must be seen or realised or experienced to bring an end
to delusion. It's a nice, never-ending discussion to have if you enjoy
such things.

> . . . they went and sought it out, often times

> for many years. What did they get? Well, it does in fact depend on
> what one seeks.

Hold on to that thought! If you're serious about all this you will have
to look into the whole question of dissatisfaction and seeking and
finding. What is it which does all that? Can it do anything else?

> . . . Should all people

> having an existential crisis go try every single possible "path"
> thingey and see which one tickles their fancy?? So how do you choose
> your path? Doesn't everyone make some assumptions, reject some things,
> lean towards others, filter things out, become drawn towards still
> others?

Undoubtedly, all of which is to be the subject of inquiry. There is a
difference, though, between maintaining a movement of inquiry and asking
questions in order to receive answers. Inquiry is alive, realisation is
alive, answers are dead.

> Or is there some clearly defined SPIRITUAL-PATH-DECISION-PROCESS that
> everyone else knows about but no one has gotten around to sharing it
> with me yet??????? :) :)

Well, yes, there is, but you haven't given the secret password.

> > You describe yourself as successful but unhappy so have you considered
> > that you may just be looking for a better kind of success?

> . . . you honestly

> completely lost me here. I don't know what you are saying/asking.
> Please clarify!

You describe yourself early in your original post as successful but not
happy, so those must be significant terms for you. I've no idea in which
field you've been successful but it must have entailed desire, ambition
and striving, yet in the end you judge your success to actually be a
failure because it hasn't made you happy. There's quite a good chance,
then, that your current excitement and interest in enlightenment or
whatever is because you sense a new goal, a new definition of success,
for which all the old mechanisms of ambition and striving will get into
gear again. Only, of course, *this* success will be the real one, the
one that brings "true" self-fulfillment, happiness, etc.

This may not apply to you, I'm only speculating, but it's something to
watch out for. Is the same mind that pursued and attained success and
then found it was hollow, going to be able to do anything differently
than it did before? This is the question that both Buddhism and Advaita
are going to present you with. They both entail self-exploration,
self-knowing, down to the deepest level. Are you prepared to go there?

brian mitchell

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Nov 13, 2007, 6:50:52 PM11/13/07

to

Oh, and to answer your original question...

yes, the modern Advaita movement can be pretty cultic when it focuses on
individual, usually self-proclaimed, gurus and their supposed powers to
enlighten others.

Tang Huyen

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Nov 13, 2007, 7:43:26 PM11/13/07

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Nov 13, 2007, 8:39:55 PM11/13/07

to

brian mitchell wrote:
> Resto...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>
>>>> I stumbled on The Open Secret by Tony Parsons, read it, and it really
>>>> spoke to me...
>>> If it really spoke to you, why don't you stay with that voice and try to
>>> penetrate further into what it's saying? Why are you asking for outside
>>> approval rather than following your own inner response?
>
>> Hmmm... I am not really seeking approval from anyone...
>
> Not approval for yourself, but you're asking to have some path or method
> or whatever given an external seal of approval so that you can set off
> down it with confidence. It's as though you want to know how well the
> stock has performed before you invest in it.

And, of course, you're not.
So much for political parties.

Peter Olcott

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Nov 13, 2007, 8:40:28 PM11/13/07

to

"Déją Fu" <cha...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:hvGdnRwQs-iSzKfa...@adelphia.com...

Essence of mind says that it makes a lot of sense, and
direct seeing into self-nature agrees.

Déjà Fu

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Nov 13, 2007, 8:46:02 PM11/13/07

unread,

Nov 13, 2007, 9:58:11 PM11/13/07

to

Peter Olcott wrote:
> "Déją Fu" <cha...@gmail.com> wrote in message

> news:rsudnWOksqZmyqfa...@adelphia.com...
>> Peter Olcott wrote:

>>> "Déją Fu" <cha...@gmail.com> wrote in message

>>> news:hvGdnRsQs-jFzqfa...@adelphia.com...
>>>> Peter Olcott wrote:

>>>>> "Déją Fu" <cha...@gmail.com> wrote in message

>>>>> news:hvGdnRwQs-iSzKfa...@adelphia.com...
>>>>>> Peter Olcott wrote:
>>>>>> ...
>>>>>>> That makes a lot of sense.
>>>>>> ...
>>>>>>
>>>>>> ROFL!
>>>>> Essence of mind says that it makes a lot of sense, and
>>>>> direct seeing into self-nature agrees.
>>>> So you speak for "essence of mind"? Kool beans!
>>>> How about Hillary and Butter? Them too?
>>>> A "spokesman", so to speak?
>>> Pete Olcott says Hillary will win, Essence of mind does
>>> not care either way.
>> We're not playing dodge-ball, fluffy.
>> Schizophrenia is no excuse for plain old stupidity.
>>
> Is that statement from first hand direct experience?

nice try.

talk to jerry.
he doesn't bother with the
bullshit anymore, either.
well, not as much, anyway...

Peter Olcott

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Nov 13, 2007, 10:05:07 PM11/13/07

to

"Déjà Fu" <cha...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:l56dnU0CiYzc-afa...@adelphia.com...
> Peter Olcott wrote:
>> "Déjà Fu" <cha...@gmail.com> wrote in message

>> news:rsudnWOksqZmyqfa...@adelphia.com...
>>> Peter Olcott wrote:

>>>> "Déjà Fu" <cha...@gmail.com> wrote in message

>>>> news:hvGdnRsQs-jFzqfa...@adelphia.com...
>>>>> Peter Olcott wrote:

>>>>>> "Déjà Fu" <cha...@gmail.com> wrote in message

>>>>>> news:hvGdnRwQs-iSzKfa...@adelphia.com...
>>>>>>> Peter Olcott wrote:
>>>>>>> ...
>>>>>>>> That makes a lot of sense.
>>>>>>> ...
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> ROFL!
>>>>>> Essence of mind says that it makes a lot of sense,
>>>>>> and direct seeing into self-nature agrees.
>>>>> So you speak for "essence of mind"? Kool beans!
>>>>> How about Hillary and Butter? Them too?
>>>>> A "spokesman", so to speak?
>>>> Pete Olcott says Hillary will win, Essence of mind does
>>>> not care either way.
>>> We're not playing dodge-ball, fluffy.
>>> Schizophrenia is no excuse for plain old stupidity.
>>>
>> Is that statement from first hand direct experience?
>
> nice try.
>
> talk to jerry.
> he doesn't bother with the
> bullshit anymore, either.
> well, not as much, anyway...

The stuff makes great fertilizer.

jerry

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Nov 13, 2007, 10:10:28 PM11/13/07

to

"Déjà Fu" <cha...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:l56dnU0CiYzc-afa...@adelphia.com...
> Peter Olcott wrote:

>> "Déjà Fu" <cha...@gmail.com> wrote in message

>> news:rsudnWOksqZmyqfa...@adelphia.com...
>>> Peter Olcott wrote:

>>>> "Déjà Fu" <cha...@gmail.com> wrote in message

>>>> news:hvGdnRsQs-jFzqfa...@adelphia.com...
>>>>> Peter Olcott wrote:

>>>>>> "Déjà Fu" <cha...@gmail.com> wrote in message

>>>>>> news:hvGdnRwQs-iSzKfa...@adelphia.com...
>>>>>>> Peter Olcott wrote:
>>>>>>> ...
>>>>>>>> That makes a lot of sense.
>>>>>>> ...
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> ROFL!
>>>>>> Essence of mind says that it makes a lot of sense, and direct seeing
>>>>>> into self-nature agrees.
>>>>> So you speak for "essence of mind"? Kool beans!
>>>>> How about Hillary and Butter? Them too?
>>>>> A "spokesman", so to speak?
>>>> Pete Olcott says Hillary will win, Essence of mind does not care either
>>>> way.
>>> We're not playing dodge-ball, fluffy.
>>> Schizophrenia is no excuse for plain old stupidity.
>>>
>> Is that statement from first hand direct experience?
>
> nice try.
>
> talk to jerry.
> he doesn't bother with the
> bullshit anymore, either.
> well, not as much, anyway...

caught that thought did u
wondering when *I* was going to get a talking to

Déjà Fu

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Nov 13, 2007, 10:10:37 PM11/13/07

to

hmmm...maybe...

If you're trying to grow something...

g'nite Pete.

oxtail

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Nov 13, 2007, 10:11:53 PM11/13/07

to

You are just playing with big words.
But they are not toys for children.
People kill each other
for certain arrangements of them.

Why don't you go out
and play with real toys?

--
~Oxtail

Déjà Fu

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Nov 13, 2007, 10:12:30 PM11/13/07

to

u'll get it when it's due
until then u'll hafta make do with u'rs
gnite jer

Peter Olcott

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Nov 13, 2007, 10:14:39 PM11/13/07

to

"Déjà Fu" <cha...@gmail.com> wrote in message

news:xLqdnZNlQsep-qfa...@adelphia.com...

Good night.

oxtail

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Nov 13, 2007, 10:21:14 PM11/13/07

to

Gee, you are forcing me to read Tang!

Tang: The letting go is good enough

in and of itself to lead to awakening.

He does not appear to be
letting go of his own ideas.

Tang: The scope of the giving up is

total and universal. That is
the entire method (dharma).

Still, he does not appear to be
letting go of his own ideas.

Can you do any better?

--
~Oxtail

brian mitchell

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Nov 13, 2007, 10:29:52 PM11/13/07

to

Tang Huyen wrote:

To give up, thoroughly and unforgivingly...
Let me put a case:

Suppose one had a view, not just a rationally derived opinion on some
public matter, but a deeply-held view which underpinned one's whole
relationship with the world. For example, suppose one held that God
*must* necessarily exist because for a world of such violence and horror
as this to not be counterbalanced and redeemed by a greater good would
simply make life impossible to bear.

A view such as this would, in the first instance, probably not appear in
one's normal daily consciousness. Certainly not in its entirety or its
criticality, though parts or echoes of it might be woven into one's
rational dealings. And how would it come into consciousness? Because a
view such as this has to be *protected*, not examined or paraded.

Intellectually one may agree that the holding of views is an impediment
and that a belief in God can have no evidential support and is therefore
irrational. One may go through the motions of giving up views and
opinions, but that wouldn't touch the subconscious reality in this view
that to give up God would be to give up sanity and life.

So, how does such a view get brought into consciousness, and how does it
get given up without endangering the stability of the psyche in which it
is rooted?

An earlier, theoretical answer I gave was that the mind will only
relinquish what it no longer depends on, so the giving up --or
realignment-- may have nothing to do with any conscious act of
surrender, renunciation or whatever. That kind of supports your saying
that conscious exploration is unnecessary or redundant but does leave
the question (in my mind, at least) of whether mindfulness alone is
enough to really stir the nest.

oxtail

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Nov 13, 2007, 10:48:08 PM11/13/07

to

Faith without doubt is suspect.
God are too often worshiped as an idol.

That said, even the idea of giving up
should be given up.
You cannot even tell anyone to do so
unless you have already given up
even your own view of giving up.

Would anyone believe that life can be bliss
unless the messenger is happy?

--
~Oxtail

oxtail

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Nov 13, 2007, 10:54:40 PM11/13/07

to

Faith without doubt is suspect.

God is too often worshiped as an idol.

Message has been deleted

Hollywood Lee

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Nov 13, 2007, 11:09:08 PM11/13/07

to

I think this is a very interesting way of putting the question - "how

does such a view get brought into consciousness, and how does it get
given up without endangering the stability of the psyche in which it is
rooted?"

It seems that there a several approaches that make sense to me, though
none of them would involve a "just drop it" solution. One way, perhaps,
would be the investigative approach, looking at the patterns of thought
and action that give rise to suffering or unskillful behavior and then
adjusting thinking to the point where the unskillful ideas and views are
slowly dropped. Chan, if I get it right, comes from another angle,
trying to recreate a crisis in thinking that allows a person to suddenly
drop the thinking. But both seem to involve a bit of work, perhaps even
a lot of work.

The "just drop it" approach may just be an aspirational bumper sticker,
not a real prescription for practice. On the other hand, if it works
for someone, all the better.

Son of man

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Nov 13, 2007, 11:12:04 PM11/13/07

to

"Déją Fu" <cha...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:vbGdndf6rpsh0qfa...@adelphia.com...

Listen. I just took a shit. When I wiped my ass the toilet paper was clean.
I call it the Buddha-shit.

> W0W, d00d!

Invisible Lurker

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Nov 13, 2007, 11:26:02 PM11/13/07

to

It only looked clean.

--
Invisible Lurker
Really Not Here or There, Either

^@%>---*=#

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Nov 14, 2007, 12:16:06 AM11/14/07

to

"Son of man" <ever...@everywhere.net> wrote in message
news:OOOdnQrPaMZC6Kfa...@comcast.com...
> "Déjà Fu" <cha...@gmail.com> wrote in message

you're dreaming. wake up and
change the sheets.

Tang Huyen

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Nov 14, 2007, 6:59:07 AM11/14/07

to

Hollywood Lee wrote:

> brian mitchell:

One needs only be open to oneself, honest to oneself,
act in good faith to oneself, and drop everything that
emerges into one's consciousness. One does not need
to become conscious of specific items of one's mind
or whatever it is that shapes one's behaviour, including
whatever it is that shapes one's beliefs, for such an
insistance on pinning things down is already a refusal
to give up. (Remember the woman with her snacks?)
The attitude of giving up is its own Archimedian
platform and needs nothing further or more profound
to assure its stability. It doesn't care to drill down to
details about what it is that it drops. It simply drops
whatever it encounters. If God comes, it drops him too,
like water off a duck's back. The attitude is all that
matters. The content that it drops is fungible, which is
how it can drop it. It does not discriminate as to what
the content that it drops is, but merrily drops it,
without further consideration. The intentionality is
utterly simple: to drop everything that emerges into
one's consciousness. There is only one way of mapping:
to map everything that emerges into one's
consciousness into the bit bucket. Zap and it's gone.
One liberates oneself from it and walks free, whatever
it is, without any need to know what it is, even if it is
God (what is it about God that makes him so special?).
That's the deal. It quite lightens the deal.

Tang Huyen

Hollywood Lee

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Nov 14, 2007, 7:18:55 AM11/14/07

to

Sure. One only needs to drop a few pounds, one only needs to exercise
more, and one only needs to be nicer to the family. But the issue that
Brian suggested re,mains existentially real - that what one needs and
what one is mentally prepared to do is often blocked by that sense of
"I" that is nurtured by cravings, conceits, and views. And it just
doesn't feel like going off into the night without a fight.

So while some, like Bahiya, are ready to just drop it at the mere
hearing of a few words of the dhamma, others like myself may need
training wheels and encouragement. Yeah, the drop it approach would be
far easier, but damn that "I".

Tang Huyen

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Nov 14, 2007, 7:36:59 AM11/14/07

to

Hollywood Lee wrote:

> Sure. One only needs to drop a few pounds, one only needs to exercise
> more, and one only needs to be nicer to the family. But the issue that
> Brian suggested re,mains existentially real - that what one needs and
> what one is mentally prepared to do is often blocked by that sense of
> "I" that is nurtured by cravings, conceits, and views. And it just
> doesn't feel like going off into the night without a fight.
>
> So while some, like Bahiya, are ready to just drop it at the mere
> hearing of a few words of the dhamma, others like myself may need
> training wheels and encouragement. Yeah, the drop it approach would be
> far easier, but damn that "I".

The training course aims at pulling oneself together
in one piece so that one can drop oneself in one fell
swoop. It gradually builds up, and the more one can
pull oneself together into one piece the easier it is
for one to drop. It's a virtuous circle, a happy ride.
Enjoy.

Tang Huyen

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Nov 14, 2007, 11:19:45 AM11/14/07

to

"Son of man" <ever...@everywhere.net> wrote in message

news:qZGdnVF8boiSlaba...@comcast.com...

> "^@%>---*=#" <yom...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:13jl14q...@corp.supernews.com...
>>
>> "Son of man" <ever...@everywhere.net> wrote in message
>> news:OOOdnQrPaMZC6Kfa...@comcast.com...

>>> "Déją Fu" <cha...@gmail.com> wrote in message

go on dreaming then. eventually you'll
need to wake up and clean up your mess.

jfe...@googlemail.com

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Nov 14, 2007, 2:21:28 PM11/14/07

to

On 13 Nov, 16:43, Tang Huyen <tanghuyen{dele...@gmail.com[remove]>
wrote:
> brian mitchell wrote:
> > You describe yourself early in your original post as successful but not
> > happy, so those must be significant terms for you. I've no idea in which
> > field you've been successful but it must have entailed desire, ambition
> > and striving, yet in the end you judge your success to actually be a
> > failure because it hasn't made you happy. There's quite a good chance,
> > then, that your current excitement and interest in enlightenment or
> > whatever is because you sense a new goal, a new definition of success,
> > for which all the old mechanisms of ambition and striving will get into
> > gear again. Only, of course, *this* success will be the real one, the
> > one that brings "true" self-fulfillment, happiness, etc.
>
> > This may not apply to you, I'm only speculating, but it's something to
> > watch out for. Is the same mind that pursued and attained success and
> > then found it was hollow, going to be able to do anything differently
> > than it did before? This is the question that both Buddhism and Advaita
> > are going to present you with. They both entail self-exploration,
> > self-knowing, down to the deepest level. Are you prepared to go there?

> Tang Huyen

I think it gives itself up. It's like believing the earth is flat when
in fact it's round. To hold on to the belief that the earth is flat
would be silly. It's the same with the 'illusory self'. It sounds like
some abstract thing. But if we ask 'who am I?' All our ideas about
ourself come up. That's 'me'. That's who I am. There's a real belief
in it. But when it's looked at very carefully it doesn't warrant the
belief that's held in it. It's not solid enough. The belief is in
'stuff' that we collected along the way. There's no solid reason
behind it. There's also the feeling that there's alot more to us than
that. That it's not the whole picture, even if we believe it.

oxtail

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unread,

Nov 14, 2007, 5:14:43 PM11/14/07

to

On 2007-11-14, Peter Olcott <NoS...@SeeScreen.com> wrote:
>
> The thing that enabled me to give up my belief systems was
> in depth analytical reasoning that proved conclusively that
> the whole process of belief and disbelief formed a formal
> error of reasoning known as a fallacy. In other words the
> realization of the axiom that all beliefs are necessarily
> incorrect enabled me to drop all of my beliefs.

This thread has grown and changed since the original question, yet my
hostname still appears in its References header so it still get flags
up.

Could studying multiple beliefs help? Maybe you'd realise that they are
each held as strongly as any others by those that hold them? How do we
know any one if any is true?

- Richard

--
_/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/_/_/ Richard Corfield <Richard....@gmail.com>
_/ _/ _/ _/
_/_/ _/ _/ Time is a one way street,
_/ _/ _/_/ _/_/_/ except in the Twilight Zone

Hollywood Lee

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Nov 14, 2007, 5:26:20 PM11/14/07

to

Richard Corfield wrote:

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Nov 14, 2007, 7:39:25 PM11/14/07

to

The depth of realization would matter as well.
If yours is not deep enough
for you to give away all you got,
you better be humble and support monks.

--
~Oxtail

oxtail

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Nov 14, 2007, 7:42:18 PM11/14/07

to

heron stone wrote:
> In article <fhg2m2$7i1$1...@registered.motzarella.org>,
> Hollywood Lee <hollyw...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Perhaps. Again, I don't disagree with the statement (the story our mind
>> makes up about it meaning something about us is seen for what it is. It
>> has no substance to it) at the experiential level, if not the
>> ontological level. How to come to that "seeing" may vary.
>
> .i find the term "mind" too vague
> .i prefer to talk about the "language machine"
> .the story is made of language
>
> .without language, there is no story
>

We can be aware of a lot of things without language.

--
~Oxtail

Peter Olcott

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Nov 14, 2007, 7:54:50 PM11/14/07

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"heron stone" <her...@gendo.net> wrote in message
news:heronDO-F15DB1...@news-40.giganews.com...

> In article <MFK_i.7276$LZ7....@newsfe15.lga>,
> "Peter Olcott" <NoS...@SeeScreen.com> wrote:
>
>> I begin by studying most every major religion in great
>> depth. The NonDuality mentioned in ZEN is also present
>> in
>> every major religion of the world. Once this NonDuality
>> is
>> directly experienced it is unmistakable.
>
> .i don't think we can experience "NonDuality"
> .there is no such "thing" as nonduality to be experience
> .and there is no one to experience it
>

That's not what Advaita would say.

> .i can, however, see thru the illusion of duality and
> non-duality... both figments of the language machine

Anything and everything is a figment of some sort, that does
not mean that NonDuality is not real.

jfe...@googlemail.com

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Nov 14, 2007, 8:34:19 PM11/14/07

to

If you asked me I would say be very very curious about it. 'One
pointed'. Nothing is more important. Someone else would say something
different. IMO it all leads to the same place.

heron stone

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Nov 14, 2007, 8:36:46 PM11/14/07

to

In article <QfSdnSRM0YKUC6ba...@ptd.net>,
oxtail <oxt...@newvessel.com> wrote:

.i agree, there is awareness without language
.but i'm not convinced there is a "we" being
aware without language... or "things" either

.but i said, "without language, there is no story"
.i don't see how your comment related to what i said

heron stone

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Nov 14, 2007, 8:53:31 PM11/14/07

to

In article <wNM_i.7409$LZ7....@newsfe15.lga>,
"Peter Olcott" <NoS...@SeeScreen.com> wrote:

> > .i don't think we can experience "NonDuality"
> > .there is no such "thing" as nonduality to be experience
> > .and there is no one to experience it
> >
>
> That's not what Advaita would say.

.i don't understand why people grant so much authority
to texts written 100s or 1000s of years ago
.if i need a doctor, i want someone would is reading
current science... not an expert in Galen
.the history of medicine (or philosophy) is a fine
discipline for people interested in the history of
medicine (or philossphy)
.and it may even have some relevance to clinical
work
.but clinicians should be studying on the latest
discoveries

.i apply the same standards to the "spiritual" quest...
to understand what the hell is going on here

> > .i can, however, see thru the illusion of duality and
> > non-duality... both figments of the language machine
>
> Anything and everything is a figment of some sort, that does
> not mean that NonDuality is not real.

.then it's a real figment

.or i don't understand what you mean when
you use the word "real"

jfe...@googlemail.com

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Nov 14, 2007, 8:54:27 PM11/14/07

to

It doesn't literally mean a 'story'. Its the whole of your
conditioning. Alot of that is intangible and difficult to put into
words. It's the whole thing.

Peter Olcott

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Nov 14, 2007, 8:59:18 PM11/14/07

to

"heron stone" <her...@gendo.net> wrote in message

news:heronDO-6258F7...@news-40.giganews.com...

> In article <wNM_i.7409$LZ7....@newsfe15.lga>,
> "Peter Olcott" <NoS...@SeeScreen.com> wrote:
>
>> > .i don't think we can experience "NonDuality"
>> > .there is no such "thing" as nonduality to be
>> > experience
>> > .and there is no one to experience it
>> >
>>
>> That's not what Advaita would say.
>
> .i don't understand why people grant so much authority
> to texts written 100s or 1000s of years ago

People urinated thousands of years ago too, guess what it
still works!

> .if i need a doctor, i want someone would is reading
> current science... not an expert in Galen
> .the history of medicine (or philosophy) is a fine
> discipline for people interested in the history of
> medicine (or philossphy)
> .and it may even have some relevance to clinical
> work
> .but clinicians should be studying on the latest
> discoveries
>
> .i apply the same standards to the "spiritual" quest...
> to understand what the hell is going on here
>
>
>
>> > .i can, however, see thru the illusion of duality and
>> > non-duality... both figments of the language machine
>>
>> Anything and everything is a figment of some sort, that
>> does
>> not mean that NonDuality is not real.
>
> .then it's a real figment
>
> .or i don't understand what you mean when
> you use the word "real"
>

Realization will clue you in to these things.

Peter Olcott

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Nov 14, 2007, 9:00:38 PM11/14/07

to

<jfe...@googlemail.com> wrote in message
news:e94afb41-c734-49d4...@v4g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...

Who's story is history?

heron stone

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Nov 14, 2007, 9:05:34 PM11/14/07

to

In article
<e94afb41-c734-49d4...@v4g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>,
jfe...@googlemail.com wrote:

> > .but i said, "without language, there is no story"
> > .i don't see how your comment related to what i said

> It doesn't literally mean a 'story'. Its the whole of your

> conditioning. Alot of that is intangible and difficult to put into
> words. It's the whole thing.

.yes, i understand that
.but i'm talking specifically about the ongoing story
we have going on inside our skulls... the story that
we use to organize and make sense of our experience

.yes there is a lot more

.but seeing thru the illusions of language (maya) can
eliminate many of the obstacles to spontaneous
awakening

oxtail

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Nov 14, 2007, 9:05:29 PM11/14/07

to

heron stone wrote:
> In article <QfSdnSRM0YKUC6ba...@ptd.net>,
> oxtail <oxt...@newvessel.com> wrote:
>
>> heron stone wrote:
>>> In article <fhg2m2$7i1$1...@registered.motzarella.org>,
>>> Hollywood Lee <hollyw...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Perhaps. Again, I don't disagree with the statement (the story our mind
>>>> makes up about it meaning something about us is seen for what it is. It
>>>> has no substance to it) at the experiential level, if not the
>>>> ontological level. How to come to that "seeing" may vary.
>>> .i find the term "mind" too vague
>>> .i prefer to talk about the "language machine"
>>> .the story is made of language
>>>
>>> .without language, there is no story
>>>
>>
>> We can be aware of a lot of things without language.
>
>
> .i agree, there is awareness without language
> .but i'm not convinced there is a "we" being
> aware without language... or "things" either
>
> .but i said, "without language, there is no story"
> .i don't see how your comment related to what i said
>

The Buddha held up a flower.
Mahakashyapa smiled.

--
~Oxtail

heron stone

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Nov 14, 2007, 9:10:21 PM11/14/07

to

In article <YJN_i.4116$tK5....@newsfe24.lga>,
"Peter Olcott" <NoS...@SeeScreen.com> wrote:

> People urinated thousands of years ago too, guess what it
> still works!

> Realization will clue you in to these things.

ah...

so...

oxtail

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Nov 14, 2007, 9:12:07 PM11/14/07

to

Sounds good to me.
Does that realization help you anyway?

--
~Oxtail

heron stone

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Nov 14, 2007, 9:17:34 PM11/14/07

to

In article <1Iedneh_jq8XNKba...@ptd.net>,
oxtail <oxt...@newvessel.com> wrote:

> > .but i said, "without language, there is no story"
> > .i don't see how your comment related to what i said
> >
>
>
> The Buddha held up a flower.
> Mahakashyapa smiled.

.that's 1

jfe...@googlemail.com

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Nov 14, 2007, 9:21:48 PM11/14/07

to

I'm not sure I understand that question.

Peter Olcott

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Nov 14, 2007, 9:23:01 PM11/14/07

to

"heron stone" <her...@gendo.net> wrote in message

news:heronDO-7988CB...@news-40.giganews.com...

> In article
> <e94afb41-c734-49d4...@v4g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>,
> jfe...@googlemail.com wrote:
>
>> > .but i said, "without language, there is no story"
>> > .i don't see how your comment related to what i said
>
>> It doesn't literally mean a 'story'. Its the whole of
>> your
>> conditioning. Alot of that is intangible and difficult to
>> put into
>> words. It's the whole thing.
>
> .yes, i understand that
> .but i'm talking specifically about the ongoing story
> we have going on inside our skulls... the story that
> we use to organize and make sense of our experience
>
> .yes there is a lot more
>
> .but seeing thru the illusions of language (maya) can
> eliminate many of the obstacles to spontaneous
> awakening

There is much more to Maya than aspects derived through
language. For instance conditioning has convinced "many"
that the cause-and-effect relationship between actions and
the result of actions is backwards.

The root cause of actions is hidden behind Maya.

Peter Olcott

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Nov 14, 2007, 9:36:33 PM11/14/07

to

"heron stone" <her...@gendo.net> wrote in message

news:heronDO-620A7F...@news-40.giganews.com...

> In article <1Iedneh_jq8XNKba...@ptd.net>,
> oxtail <oxt...@newvessel.com> wrote:
>
>> > .but i said, "without language, there is no story"
>> > .i don't see how your comment related to what i said
>> >
>>
>>
>> The Buddha held up a flower.
>> Mahakashyapa smiled.
>
> .that's 1

Great now try and say the same thing without using any
words.

oxtail

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Nov 14, 2007, 9:58:33 PM11/14/07

to

Peter Olcott wrote:
> "heron stone" <her...@gendo.net> wrote in message
> news:heronDO-620A7F...@news-40.giganews.com...
>> In article <1Iedneh_jq8XNKba...@ptd.net>,
>> oxtail <oxt...@newvessel.com> wrote:
>>
>>>> .but i said, "without language, there is no story"
>>>> .i don't see how your comment related to what i said
>>>>
>>>
>>> The Buddha held up a flower.
>>> Mahakashyapa smiled.
>> .that's 1
>
> Great now try and say the same thing without using any
> words.
>

Oxtail holds up a finger.

--
~Oxtail

jfe...@googlemail.com

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Nov 14, 2007, 10:42:12 PM11/14/07

to

At first it was very freeing. Everything dropped away. But then the
mind comes back trying to take back control. But there's nothing to
control any longer. Nothing can be done with it. So it can create
problems. I wouldn't say it's been an easy thing to go through. Theres
a feeling of helplessness that goes with it. I can feel the direction
it wants to go in and just have to let it go there. It's not like it's
helping me. It's more like it's the only way.

brian mitchell

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Nov 14, 2007, 10:45:36 PM11/14/07

to

Hollywood Lee wrote:

> Tang Huyen wrote:
> > One needs only be open to oneself, honest to oneself,
> > act in good faith to oneself, and drop everything that
> > emerges into one's consciousness.

> Sure. One only needs to drop a few pounds, one only needs to exercise
> more, and one only needs to be nicer to the family. But the issue that
> Brian suggested re,mains existentially real - that what one needs and
> what one is mentally prepared to do is often blocked by that sense of
> "I" that is nurtured by cravings, conceits, and views. And it just
> doesn't feel like going off into the night without a fight.

> So while some, like Bahiya, are ready to just drop it at the mere
> hearing of a few words of the dhamma, others like myself may need
> training wheels and encouragement. Yeah, the drop it approach would be
> far easier, but damn that "I".

What to do in the face of a blizzard of blitheness? Just see through
your conditioning. Just stop clinging, identifying, thinking, breathing.
Just cultivate an attitude of giving up. Just observe, imbue, drop,
realise, beam friendliness upon.

I think there's a general tendency to underestimate the powerful
emotional tenacity of the mind, and the fact that it's largely formed by
the logic and force of feeling, rather than reason. The fears and needs
run deep and it's from here that the unceasing flow of thoughts arises.

To me, self and mind are the world we see. Not the physical world of
nature but *our* world of experience, the life we are living. And this
world has been built up at cost and is maintained at cost as a matter of
personal survival. Just give it up? You must be f---ing crazy!

Thoughts are patterns of response to perceived challenge, mostly
established and executed prior to consciousness. In fact our
consciousness, what is included in our scope of awareness, seems to be
largely fabricated by primal feeling-thought. And if a pattern of
response *works*, in the psyche's own terms, it would be
counter-instinctive to give it up.

Still, thinking about giving up, or changing one's thinking, it might be
handy to be able to get to grips with actual mechanisms, and here I
think the feeling quotient of thought might be helpful. I agree with
Tang that one's focus is better removed from content, what the thought
is about, and onto process or manner. I notice, for instance, that when
I give expression to a belief or value I hold there is an accompanying
feeling of assent, or agreement. And when I hear something contrary to
my belief, a feeling of repudiation, pushing away. Giving up may be to
stop automatically agreeing with oneself all the time, but agreeing with
oneself is something one can actually see/feel oneself doing whereas
giving up has no form.

Hollywood Lee

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Nov 14, 2007, 11:49:11 PM11/14/07

to

Nicely said. Simple. Not easy. Dang it.

Robert Epstein

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Nov 15, 2007, 12:45:12 AM11/15/07

to

Hollywood Lee wrote:

> Tang Huyen wrote:
>
>>
>> Hollywood Lee wrote:
>>
>>> brian mitchell:
>>>
>>>> To give up, thoroughly and unforgivingly...
>>>> Let me put a case:
>>>>
>>>> Suppose one had a view, not just a rationally derived opinion on some
>>>> public matter, but a deeply-held view which underpinned one's whole
>>>> relationship with the world. For example, suppose one held that God
>>>> *must* necessarily exist because for a world of such violence and
>>>> horror
>>>> as this to not be counterbalanced and redeemed by a greater good would
>>>> simply make life impossible to bear.
>>>>
>>>> A view such as this would, in the first instance, probably not
>>>> appear in
>>>> one's normal daily consciousness. Certainly not in its entirety or its
>>>> criticality, though parts or echoes of it might be woven into one's
>>>> rational dealings. And how would it come into consciousness? Because a
>>>> view such as this has to be *protected*, not examined or paraded.
>>>>
>>>> Intellectually one may agree that the holding of views is an impediment
>>>> and that a belief in God can have no evidential support and is
>>>> therefore
>>>> irrational. One may go through the motions of giving up views and
>>>> opinions, but that wouldn't touch the subconscious reality in this view
>>>> that to give up God would be to give up sanity and life.
>>>>
>>>> So, how does such a view get brought into consciousness, and how
>>>> does it
>>>> get given up without endangering the stability of the psyche in
>>>> which it
>>>> is rooted?
>>>>
>>>> An earlier, theoretical answer I gave was that the mind will only
>>>> relinquish what it no longer depends on, so the giving up --or
>>>> realignment-- may have nothing to do with any conscious act of
>>>> surrender, renunciation or whatever. That kind of supports your saying
>>>> that conscious exploration is unnecessary or redundant but does leave
>>>> the question (in my mind, at least) of whether mindfulness alone is
>>>> enough to really stir the nest.
>>>
>>> I think this is a very interesting way of putting the question - "how
>>> does such a view get brought into consciousness, and how does it get
>>> given up without endangering the stability of the psyche in which it is
>>> rooted?"
>>>
>>> It seems that there a several approaches that make sense to me, though
>>> none of them would involve a "just drop it" solution. One way, perhaps,
>>> would be the investigative approach, looking at the patterns of thought
>>> and action that give rise to suffering or unskillful behavior and then
>>> adjusting thinking to the point where the unskillful ideas and views are
>>> slowly dropped. Chan, if I get it right, comes from another angle,
>>> trying to recreate a crisis in thinking that allows a person to suddenly
>>> drop the thinking. But both seem to involve a bit of work, perhaps even
>>> a lot of work.
>>>
>>> The "just drop it" approach may just be an aspirational bumper sticker,
>>> not a real prescription for practice. On the other hand, if it works
>>> for someone, all the better.

>>
>>
>> One needs only be open to oneself, honest to oneself,
>> act in good faith to oneself, and drop everything that
>> emerges into one's consciousness.
>
>
> Sure. One only needs to drop a few pounds, one only needs to exercise
> more, and one only needs to be nicer to the family. But the issue that
> Brian suggested re,mains existentially real - that what one needs and
> what one is mentally prepared to do is often blocked by that sense of
> "I" that is nurtured by cravings, conceits, and views. And it just
> doesn't feel like going off into the night without a fight.
>
> So while some, like Bahiya, are ready to just drop it at the mere
> hearing of a few words of the dhamma, others like myself may need
> training wheels and encouragement. Yeah, the drop it approach would be
> far easier, but damn that "I".

It seems that Buddha was sympathetic to your view and to our usual
condition of inability to access the "I" with the usual devices. Seems
like most of the Buddha's sermons were directed to how to live and how
to practice to make a dent in this most difficult system. So to go back
to the beginning as if no skillful means were ever created by the genius
Gautama, and try to will ourselves into a condition that hardly anyone
can achieve through mere will, seems almost to reject Buddhism entirely.

Robert

= = = = = = = = =

Giggles Like a Girl

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Nov 15, 2007, 12:50:41 AM11/15/07

to

In article <oICdnfLsosZm46ba...@ptd.net>, oxt...@newvessel.com says...
>
>Richard Corfield wrote:
>> On 2007-11-14, Peter Olcott <NoS...@SeeScreen.com> wrote:
>>> The thing that enabled me to give up my belief systems was
>>> in depth analytical reasoning that proved conclusively that
>>> the whole process of belief and disbelief formed a formal
>>> error of reasoning known as a fallacy. In other words the
>>> realization of the axiom that all beliefs are necessarily
>>> incorrect enabled me to drop all of my beliefs.
>>
>> This thread has grown and changed since the original question, yet my
>> hostname still appears in its References header so it still get flags
>> up.
>>
>> Could studying multiple beliefs help? Maybe you'd realise that they are
>> each held as strongly as any others by those that hold them? How do we
>> know any one if any is true?
>>
>
>It all depends on
>what kind of truth
>you are looking for.

What do you mean? Truth is truth. When a thing is true
that is because it has truth, therefore it's true. The
kind of truth is true truth.

unread,

Nov 15, 2007, 7:48:51 AM11/15/07

to

brian mitchell wrote:

Intellectual analysis (mental masturbation) has very little
effectiveness in liberation. The intellect is a tiny part of
the mind and its use is mostly in justifying something
after the fact, to make one look good to oneself. The
major part of the mind that has to be dealt with in view
of liberation is affect, and as you say: "The fears and

needs run deep and it's from here that the unceasing flow

of thoughts arises." Plotinus, Enneads, V, 6, 5: "the
desire generates thought and establishes it in being along
with itself." One cannot reason one's way to liberation.
Liberation is liberation from desire, and desire creates
thought with all its norms and standards, so one can
work backward in dropping the norms and standards of
thought, and gradually pacifying desire.

I have not experienced the final liberation, far from it,
but from what I have observed so far, going from the
first level of the content of experience to the second
level of protocol is a powerful method (dharma) of
liberation, both from moment to moment and in the
long run. One has to switch from one level to the other
as the occasion requires, swiftly and without delay, or
the occasion is already gone. This is part of mindfulness,
which is not merely limited to observation of content
(I recently reproduced the teaching of the Buddha on
mindfulness of breathing, and it is very active and full
of activities other than mere observation, such as the
calming of the composition of body and the calming of
the compositions of mind, and this last encompasses the
complete calming of mentation, which is how the Buddha
defines Nirvana, and it also includes the liberation of
mind, so the mindfulness of breathing includes in its
scope the whole path from observing breathing to
liberation of mind and the complete calming of
mentation).

The raw content of experience at the first level is very
perceptible, it is what happens in us and to us, but when
we switch to the second level of protocol and operate
from there, there is very little perceptible content, firstly
because it deals with process and not content, and
secondly even as it deals with process, it attempts to
change process so as to minimise suffering. All this
balancing act requires much agility. Here something like
abstraction goes on, and it takes a lot of high-level
integration to finesse one's way around within oneself.

If I may resort to the case of the crashed people here, I'll
say that they operate only at the first level and rarely if
ever rise to the second level. They tend to be continually
angry, bitter and agitated, and are flat-out stuck there.
They are caught up in what happens to and in them
(including what they think, feel and do) and display
virtually no ability to stand back and take stock of their
situation -- detachment and equanimity. And without this
ability, they have no chance of even beginning Buddhist
training at all. The first level totally consumes them, and
leaves them no or little room to rise to the second level.
It is a vicious circle there, for with no or little room to
rise to the second level, they are locked up in the raw
content of experience and are blocked from developing
balance and perspective on their situation.

Tang Huyen

Charles E Hardwidge

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Nov 15, 2007, 8:26:51 AM11/15/07

to

"Tang Huyen" <tanghuyen{delete}@gmail.com[remove]> wrote in message

> Intellectual analysis (mental masturbation) has very little
> effectiveness in liberation. The intellect is a tiny part of
> the mind and its use is mostly in justifying something
> after the fact, to make one look good to oneself. The
> major part of the mind that has to be dealt with in view
> of liberation is affect, and as you say: "The fears and
> needs run deep and it's from here that the unceasing flow
> of thoughts arises." Plotinus, Enneads, V, 6, 5: "the
> desire generates thought and establishes it in being along
> with itself." One cannot reason one's way to liberation.
> Liberation is liberation from desire, and desire creates
> thought with all its norms and standards, so one can
> work backward in dropping the norms and standards of
> thought, and gradually pacifying desire.

Indeed, thoughts are infinitely malleable but emotions set like a rock.
Better thoughts and responses to emotions can help frame a better approach.
There's books on this stuff. One can brown nose scrolls and flap capes but
it's simple stuff. Doing is the hard part.

> If I may resort to the case of the crashed people here, I'll
> say that they operate only at the first level and rarely if
> ever rise to the second level. They tend to be continually
> angry, bitter and agitated, and are flat-out stuck there.
> They are caught up in what happens to and in them
> (including what they think, feel and do) and display
> virtually no ability to stand back and take stock of their
> situation -- detachment and equanimity. And without this
> ability, they have no chance of even beginning Buddhist
> training at all. The first level totally consumes them, and
> leaves them no or little room to rise to the second level.
> It is a vicious circle there, for with no or little room to
> rise to the second level, they are locked up in the raw
> content of experience and are blocked from developing
> balance and perspective on their situation.

Don't know. If professional bullshitters can be squeezed into a corner and
develop some cluetrain anyone can:

"I am not predicting that, as a result, the correct balance will be achieved
between civil liberties [desire] and security [rules]. For now I predict
only that, in terms of the political dynamics, we are moving on to a phase
in which the parties realise it is in their interests to reach agreement
rather than exaggerate the divide. When leaders have claimed they would like
to reach consensus, they have not always meant it. Now they do."

http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/steve_richards/article3160623.ece

--
Charles E. Hardwidge

Hollywood Lee

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Nov 15, 2007, 8:52:31 AM11/15/07

to

Richard Corfield wrote:
> On 2007-11-14, Hollywood Lee <hollyw...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> There is this wonderful passage in the Pali Canon that addresses this
>> issue, if only by setting it aside:
>>
>> 'Those who teach a doctrine other than this
>> are lacking in purity,
>> imperfect.'
>> That's what the many sectarians say,
>> for they're smitten with passion
>> for their own views.
>> [...]
>
> It's interesting, and to some things I do think that different things
> work for different people. It can become hard to judge things though, to
> work out what to do, to ask why something is good or bad and what good
> and bad are? Does it lead to net benefit? How do we measure benefit?

Yeah, these can be good questions in the sense that trying to follow
them all to the end may give rise to a sort of philosophical crisis of
the mind - who is right, what views are pure, which are evil, etc.? And
that crisis may help a person see the futility of such a pursuit, or,
that such a pursuit is diversionary from more useful inquiries.

Dead ends can be useful. Think how the Buddha walked up to the edge of
physical death by following Jain ascetic practices.

oxtail

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Nov 15, 2007, 11:25:42 AM11/15/07

to

> At first it was very freeing. Everything dropped away. But then the
> mind comes back trying to take back control. But there's nothing to
> control any longer. Nothing can be done with it. So it can create
> problems. I wouldn't say it's been an easy thing to go through. Theres
> a feeling of helplessness that goes with it. I can feel the direction
> it wants to go in and just have to let it go there. It's not like it's
> helping me. It's more like it's the only way.

Human minds appear to have more than one part
and their parts often conflict with each other.
Does your realization affect the conflict at all?

--
~Oxtail

oxtail

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Nov 15, 2007, 12:00:14 PM11/15/07

to

That's why I sometimes
called Tang a Catholic saboteur.
But his recent posts suggest
that he "lost" his faith in God
and now has a blind faith
in his own interpretation of Wu-Wei.

Anyhow, I sure hope he realize that
he has have to be at the right place
at the right time a whole lot,
say for decades, to be able
to "give up" without effort.

--
~Oxtail

oxtail

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Nov 15, 2007, 1:55:51 PM11/15/07

to

--
~Oxtail