 Re: Integral Aspects of Integral Yoga
Christopher Calder wrote:
> Dorwong wrote:
> Common Lies of the Phony World of Mystics
> "There is no one there to tell you you are enlightened." U.G.
> Krishnamurti
> The ancient religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Judaism,
> Christianity, and Islam, all started as campfire religions. The
> initial spark of the religion may have been a remarkable human being
> having an insight or a vision, but the religions themselves were
> formed much later by unenlightened disciples of the original teacher.
> All of the ancient religious myths, which strict fundamentalists
> accept as fact, began with disciples sitting around a fire at night
> and telling stories about the glory days of their long dead spiritual
> heroes.
>
> Imagine the world before the printing press and electricity. In
> ancient times nights were long, dark, and potentially very scary, with
> no television or radio for entertainment. Huddled around a fire,
> afraid of thieves, wild animals, disease, or starvation, story tellers
> would gain recognition by fabricating heroic tales of perfect saintly
> beings in order to entertain and comfort. Over the centuries
> religious myths became wildly grandiose and fact was lost in a sea of
> invention.
> Modern day gurus often try to market themselves as being
> reincarnations of ancient religious super-heroes, or at least being in
> a direct lineage of some infallible ancient knowledge. As in The
> Wizard of Oz, if you pull away the curtain of falsehood surrounding
> many gurus you will find an ordinary human being trying to make a
> dishonest living off the sincere spiritual aspirations of their
> followers. Below are some of the common big lies told by religious
> mystics to watch out for. Hold on to your wallet and your sanity and
> be aware that it is easiest to pick your pocket as you are being
> hugged by a guru selling cosmic love and compassion.
> Lie #1) "Surrender to me because I am enlightened and thus more
> intelligent and wiser than you."
> The Eastern esoteric definition of 'enlightenment' has nothing to
> do with intelligence or wisdom. The Western definition of
> 'enlightenment' is intellectual and artistic, as in the "enlightened
> age" of the great artists and thinkers. The Eastern esoteric meaning
> of the word has nothing to do with mind, talent, art, or wisdom. The
> true occult definition means to have no boundaries, thus you feel the
> infinite emptiness of the cosmic Void.
> There is no wisdom in the Void;..no art, no love, no hate, no
> compassion, and no good or evil. The Void simply is! All of the
> emotional and intellectual content is in the mind and the
> enlightenment is far beyond the ordinary mental level. Enlightenment
> is the consciousness of raw nature, formless and empty of definable
> content.
> Superconsciousness has subjective experiential benefit in that it
> makes you feel truly magnificent. Unfortunately, cosmic consciousness
> has no functional benefit and does not increase IQ or practical
> wisdom. Intelligence and pragmatic wisdom come from a complex
> interaction of genetics, education, and life experience. The opinion
> of the "enlightened ones" on politics, science, or economics is of no
> inherently greater value than the opinion of an unenlightened person
> of equal education and genetically derived higher brain function.
> Thus the undemocratic theocracies of the enlightened elite have always
> failed disastrously in the past and will always fail in the future.
> The violent history of planet earth proves beyond doubt that religion
> and politics should never be mixed.
> People who reach the Void can become corrupt, but the corruption
> is in their human minds and brains, not in the total Void itself. The
> total Void is not human and thus has no mind or potential for
> corruption. That is why Zen Buddhists say you should live in a state
> of "no-mind." A more accurate term would be no-thought, as the human
> mind-brain has other basic autonomic survival functions that continue
> even if the conscious thought process stops. Interrupting the
> constant stream of thought is enough, however, to allow cosmic
> consciousness to enter your body. You do not enter it. It is more
> accurate to say that the ultimate consciousness, the Atman, enters
> you. You can never own the Atman or put your personal brand on it,
> but it can save you from the pettiness and misery inherent to the
> limited human mind.
> The world of gurus and religion is a world of big business,
> politics, and lust for power. The more disciples a guru attracts, the
> more power and income they can generate. Teachers often say "stick
> with one guru" (themselves) because when a guru loses a disciple he
> loses a potential source of power and income. As the dishonest
> propaganda surrounding the teacher grows more fantastic, the quality
> of the guru's disciples always becomes more and more immature and
> corrupt. People who grow up mentally know there are no perfect human
> beings. Children can be fooled by incredible claims of divine
> infallibility. Adults who have lived a long life with alertness
> cannot be hoodwinked by such old tricks.
> Lie #2) "I am enlightened and I have no ego."
> Some humans do become 'enlightened,' but no living human being is
> without ego. If you lost your ego you would physically die within
> three days because you could not eat, drink, or have any activity
> other than basic involuntary movements such as breathing and heart
> beat. It is the same neurological mechanism that talks, walks, eats,
> and accomplishes tasks that we also call the 'ego.' You can have a
> centralized ego, as most people do, or you can have a decentralized
> ego as enlightened people attain. In the end, as far as behavior is
> concerned, it makes little difference.
> We feel a centralized ego vividly, so its suffering becomes a
> tremendous burden to us. Some may go on a spiritual path to get rid
> of ego, but in truth we can only push ego to the periphery of the
> mind. The human brain is vast, with many hiding places in its neural
> web where the ego function can hide without notice.
> 21st century science knows that the brain is highly adaptive. If
> one portion of the brain is damaged, it is often possible for another
> area of the brain to adapt itself to take over the lost function. If
> a centralized ego comes under fire from the brilliant light of
> meditation, it can simply shift its location to an area of the brain
> unaffected by the torch of consciousness. In fact, a hidden back-up
> peripheral ego center already exists, and this is because the ego
> function is essential to human survival. There is no such thing as
> total self-knowledge of the human brain. Even fully enlightened human
> beings have blind spots where they cannot see.
> Just because you do not feel an ego does not mean that you do not
> have an ego. The East deluded itself into thinking ego could be
> destroyed, but the entire East was wrong. The East has never been
> good at combining subjective feeling with objective provable fact, and
> thus the East was not the birthplace of real science and the
> scientific method.
> "Part of the guru is "enlightened," wise, knowledgeable, and he's
> mentally living in this enlightened part of himself. He believes that
> he *is* that part exclusively, ignoring the other parts which have
> been cut off and dissociated from his conscious awareness. He becomes
> identified with the guru aspect of himself exclusively. The other
> parts, however, do not disappear. They still exist, but are simply
> disowned and regulated to the unconscious." - Charles Morrison
> Objectively, by any measurement, enlightened people are as
> egocentric as anyone else. Quite often they become even more egoistic
> if they allow themselves to be put on a pedestal. Totally enlightened
> humans have become corrupt, self-indulgent liars, murders, and
> thieves. Do not accept the big lie of the egoless master. They do
> not exist now and they have never existed in the past. There was no
> "Lord Buddha," only an enlightened Siddhartha Gautama. There was no
> "Lord Jesus," only a carpenter who made extravagant claims. The only
> way to be egoless is to physically die and not come back into this
> world. If you are here, you have an ego. Do not fool yourself or
> allow yourself to be fooled by others.
> Lie/scam #3) "Do not judge the great masters. They are on such a
> high level of consciousness that they cannot be measured by normal
> standards of good behavior."
> This is a convenient old lie used by gurus to cover up lie #1 and
> lie #2 and to turn naive disciples into mental eunuchs, thus making
> them more useful as slaves. Of course gurus do not want to be judged
> by normal standards because that will destroy their business. The
> corrupt spiritual teacher always wants a blank check. If he seduces
> your wife, it is for your own spiritual benefit. If he robs your bank
> account, it is a test of your state of spiritual surrender. If the
> guru murders someone, it is for the victim's own good and the guru
> should not be prosecuted. When spiritual teachers start acting like
> Pharaohs, "enlightened" or not, they have crossed a line into the
> world of criminals.
> Lie #4) "Read my new book and it will help you find enlightenment."
> The German and Austrian Nazis of the 1930s were wrong to burn
> books. Books are a great way to learn about history, science, and
> art. Unfortunately books can also be an obstacle when it comes to
> matters of existential truth. Books often turn the search for truth
> into dogma and give people the false impression that by reading them
> you can know something about meditation without actually meditating
> yourself. In my opinion, the world would be better off if most of the
> books written by the famous mystics were used for fuel to keep us all
> warm at night.
> Meditation is basic good-clean-fun. It can make you feel filled
> with light and highly euphoric, but it will never turn you into a
> pedantic reservoir of borrowed intellectual knowledge. Reading and
> religion are both polar opposites of meditation. In meditation you
> clear yourself of thoughts and become more detached. Reading and
> religion fill your head with other people's thoughts, which are often
> more idiotic than your own thoughts, and you become attached to dead
> teachers, dead philosophies, dead shrines, and dead rituals.
> Meditation, by contrast, is thrilling real life, right here and right
> now.
> Meditation, like gardening, is a relatively simple affair that
> requires honest effort and patience. It is not a highly complex
> intellectual task, as the study of DNA or astrophysics. You can read
> all you need to know about meditation in just one hour. A few simple
> pointers are enough to get students meditating and on a path to
> growing awareness. You cannot read your way to enlightenment, but you
> can read your way to the loony-bin. Books stimulate the thinking
> function of the brain, making your mind spew out more thoughts at an
> even faster pace. Meditation means transcending the conflict and
> limitations of the world of thought and entering the naturally serene
> state of no-thought.
Top-notch! I can't agree more.
Bee.
--
[I have found my Shangri-La in ntlworld.]
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