Intellectualism is for wimps

[Marblehead]

This is my last post in this thread and I will not be viewing any further posts in this thread after this post of mine is established.

[johndoe2012]

.

Edited May 15, 2014 by chris d

[skydog]

pretty poniesssss

Edited March 27, 2014 by skydog

[soaring crane]

Skydog - But there are some very good people here, for whom I have a lot of respect, who find something valuable in her lessons. That's a bit of a conundrum for me.

 

PS - have you looked at your ppd recently? ;-)

[Starjumper]

I think the issue of anti-intellectualism in spirituality is actually quite an important one. The truth of what we are, pure nondual awareness, is beyond mind and intellect, yes...but the intellect is the vehicle that takes us to that realisation.

 

In other words, I guess, the intellect plays a vital role in Self-realisation because we use it to make sense of our experience and to come to the realisation..the knowledge...that we are pure awareness, the Self, or whatever you'd like to call it.

 

The fact is, actually, that realizations (intelectual understandings) have nothing at all to do with it. Therefore the intelect serves NO purpose in getting there. I think this idea of realizing things is a Buddhist trick word to get their students to meditate. Nondual awarness is beyond mind and intelect as you say, it's something you feel, you expereince, you live in it at least part of the time, it's not something you learn like in a book and store in your memory like a detail.

 

Knowing of non dual awarenss, as an intelectual understanding has a value of about 2 cents. It and $2 will get you a cup of coffee in some places. I mean you've all heard about it already, right?

 

I hope you don't think I'm picking on you, whenever people speak of intelectual realizations as above it sets of this soap box rant ... sometimes

[Starjumper]

HOWEVER, working intelectually on understanding your awarenesses will result in intelectual understandings that can sooth the troubled spirit. Understandings of the sources of emotional problems (which everyone has) can lead to the letting go of said emotional distress.

[joeblast]

I'd say the appropriate way to stand up against offenses, sorry, is to make a report if it clearly insults anyone.

Decibelle to me seems like someone who doesn't discuss anything anyway, so what's the point? She puts in some stuff, or thoughts, and then disappears, leaving the debate, fight, or whatever it is to those who care in some way. Care to take some of her points or "arguments", or care to "stand up" against it. I would say that standing up against persons who offend others is to not debate on the level where they want you to.

You're done with that sort of as soon as you leave out your own pride, and just act, I'd say.

But of course I just say that out of my own limited experience.

 

Have a nice day

luke didnt understand Ben's point of view on the treacherous pupil - did he have basis to say it was wrong, or to argue the merits of the point of view? most of deci's posts I have nada much comment, other than a smile, for I seem to understand the context. not that I'm special or anything.

 

The inability to see reality can be a survival skill and here's one example of how.... I work until 9 pm three evenings a week so driving home in winter is in darkness, roads close to home are country ' B' roads and unlit. So I round a bend going about thirty miles an hour and two sets of headlights on both sides of the road are coming at me fast then on top of me. No way can I avoid a crash. It is curtains time until, next thing I am pulled up safe on the grass verge hard against the hedge and what presumably were two boy racers tail lights are long gone. Had I thought about my actions logically I'd have been dead. I do not know to this day how I got from being toast in one split second to being safe but shaken the next. Pure instinct and maybe a friendly 'guardian angel' ( thanks if you exist buddy). So, whoever that 'mega poster' referred to in the OP is....IMO said 'mega poster' is 100% right if s/he said what the OP claimed s/he said.

if, you asked? well, have you?

[liminal_luke]

Edited March 28, 2014 by liminal_luke

[9th]

James Swartz, my aforementioned teacher, wrote the following. (it's vedanta specific because he's a teacher of traditional vedanta, but I think the logic of his argument is pretty clear )

 

"When we are confronted with existential problems, the tendency to become anti-intellectual and 'spiritual' often causes us to believe that we can just feel our way to reality. But this is like trying to see with our ears. If we have no means of knowledge to arrive at the already existing truth that sets us free, we live in a spiritual wilderness. In service of self ignorance, the intellect can never know the Self, but it becomes wise when it serves the teachings of a valid means of Self knowledge like Vedanta. A tool used for the wrong purpose is not a defective tool. It comes into its own when it is used as it was intended to be used. The intellect is designed for Self inquiry, not for making ignorance work.

 

The anti-intellectualism that sounds so loudly in the spiritual world is understandable because most spiritual teachers are self deluded and claim that the ignorance they speak is actually truth. This makes seekers turn to feelings or intuition or the belief in ego loss or fantasy that some kind of incredible experience will set them free. This anti-intellectual stance imprisons them within the confines of their senses, emotions and thoughts and makes them unavailable for the transforming action of a legitimate means of knowledge."

 

 

I read his autobiography once, sounds like an interesting fellow. However, he often comes across as being caught up in the competitive spirit of "the one true method", and regarding the vedantic approach as superior. Im not sure if he would say that outright, but he certainly makes statements that imply this.

 

As such its only reasonable to expect such a perspective from such a teacher of vedanta, as that path is directly based on a dialectic methodology, and very specific classifications of ideas and conceptual arguments. It is directly hinged on intellectual efforts. However, not all paths follow this approach.

 

I personally choose to balance between aspects, which requires us not to specifically focus on any one faculty alone (intellect, instinct, emotion) at the expense of another. They all have their strengths and weaknesses - and it is quite possible to become slanted and lopsided in terms of self-cultivation when focusing on one aspect to the exclusion of others. You can certainly produce results with lopsided, even obsessive methodologies - however they are not the results I am looking for.

 

The intellect has the power of abstraction, it can live for the future, plan ahead - whereas the body and emotions are not able to do this alone, as they live purely in the moment. But that abstraction can easily become a substitute for physical reality, which is where the problems begin. It is often easier for modern people to approach these things intellectually at first, because our modern world is built from a perspective which favors symbolic abstraction above all else.

 

Anyone who has broken through the "star gate" will understand why intellectual reasoning alone is not sufficient. Swartz is not a teacher of energetic methods, and as such his methods are useful only to a point, where energetic methods are not required. He seems to have strangely polarized views on this, simultaneously disdaining it in his own teachings and yet praising examples of it from his own teachers in his personal stories. Draw from that what you will.

 

 

"Our aim, on the contrary, is to learn to connect the necessary center with the large accumulator. So long as we are unable to do this, all our work will be wasted because we shall fall asleep before our efforts can give any kind of results.

 

"Small accumulators suffice for the ordinary, everyday work of life. But for work on oneself, for inner growth, and for the efforts which are required of a man who enters the way, the energy from these small accumulators is not enough.

 

"We must learn how to draw energy straight from the large accumulator.

 

"This however is possible only with the help of the emotional center. It is essential that this be understood. The connection with the large accumulator can be effected only through the emotional center. The instinctive, moving, and intellectual centers, by themselves, can feed only on the small accumulators.

 

"This is precisely what people do not understand. Therefore their aim must be the development of the activity of the emotional center. The emotional center is an apparatus much more subtle than the intellectual center, particularly if we take into consideration the fact that in the whole of the intellectual center the only part that works is the formatory apparatus and that many things are quite inaccessible to the intellectual center. If anyone desires to know and to understand more than he actually knows and understands, he must remember that this new knowledge and this new understanding will come through the emotional center and not through the intellectual center."

[soaring crane]

This is directed squarely at myself, not at Deci or any of her friends or followers. I'm quite possibly just too stupid to follow these discussions, but regardless, this is a good representation of what I see when I read the opening post to this thread:

 

 

 

[9th]

This is directed squarely at myself, not at Deci or any of her friends or followers. I'm quite possibly just too stupid to follow these discussions, but regardless, this is a good representation of what I see when I read the opening post to this thread:

 

Decibelle1.gif

 

Nice imagery. I see "something" at a right angle to "nothing".. separated by "directly" "present" "reality".

 

[soaring crane]

Wordle machts möglich ;-)

[Nungali]

I like that question. (I have never had it.)

 

Shit! I don't have any answers either. Oh well.

 

Evolution is a different horse. It is random (no intelligent designer). One mutation may lead to extinction while another may lead to the plant or animal that become the dominant species.

 

Sorry ... I used words that defined my thoughts to generally ... it appears to me that 'cultural evolution' (and devolution) has some type of intelligence behind it.

 

Ed; (Oh crap; he's gone now.)

Edited March 27, 2014 by Nungali

[Zhongyongdaoist]

I read his autobiography once, sounds like an interesting fellow. However, he often comes across as being caught up in the competitive spirit of "the one true method", and regarding the vedantic approach as superior. Im not sure if he would say that outright, but he certainly makes statements that imply this.

 

As such its only reasonable to expect such a perspective from such a teacher of vedanta, as that path is directly based on a dialectic methodology, and very specific classifications of ideas and conceptual arguments. It is directly hinged on intellectual efforts. However, not all paths follow this approach.

 

I personally choose to balance between aspects, which requires us not to specifically focus on any one faculty alone (intellect, instinct, emotion) at the expense of another. They all have their strengths and weaknesses - and it is quite possible to become slanted and lopsided in terms of self-cultivation when focusing on one aspect to the exclusion of others. You can certainly produce results with lopsided, even obsessive methodologies - however they are not the results I am looking for.

 

The intellect has the power of abstraction, it can live for the future, plan ahead - whereas the body and emotions are not able to do this alone, as they live purely in the moment. But that abstraction can easily become a substitute for physical reality, which is where the problems begin. It is often easier for modern people to approach these things intellectually at first, because our modern world is built from a perspective which favors symbolic abstraction above all else.

 

Anyone who has broken through the "star gate" will understand why intellectual reasoning alone is not sufficient. Swartz is not a teacher of energetic methods, and as such his methods are useful only to a point, where energetic methods are not required. He seems to have strangely polarized views on this, simultaneously disdaining it in his own teachings and yet praising examples of it from his own teachers in his personal stories. Draw from that what you will. (Emphasis mine, ZYD)

 

A very reasoned response. Some of the points you bring up are why I prefer the Platonic tradition. Plato certainly has his methods that are 'intellectual', such as described here:

 

The Experience of Sudden Enlightenment (Perseus Digital Library, Seventh Letter, 344a)

 

'. . . learn to the utmost possible extent [344b] the truth of virtue nor yet of vice. For in learning these objects it is necessary to learn at the same time both what is false and what is true of the whole of Existence, and that through the most diligent and prolonged investigation, as I said at the commencement; and it is by means of the examination of each of these objects, comparing one with another—names and definitions, visions and sense-perceptions,—proving them by kindly proofs and employing questionings and answerings that are void of envy—it is by such means, and hardly so, that there bursts out the light of intelligence and reason regarding each object in the mind of him who uses every effort of which mankind is capable.

 

but he also had teachings that were borderline tantric in their use of 'love', these are described in detail in the 'Symposium' and 'Phaedrus'.

 

This is an interesting quote because it illustrates that Platonism is based on the idea that there exists a fundamental connection between the human being and reality, usually called the Microcosm/Macrocosm anlolgy, and which arises out of Plato's theory of knowledge:

 

The experience of truth is the union of the self with being (Perseus Digital Library, Republic VI, 490a):

 

". . . our description of the nature which he who is to be c a scholar and gentleman1 must have from birth. The leader of the choir for him, if you recollect, was truth. That he was to seek always and altogether, on pain of being an impostor without part or lot in true philosophy.”

 

“Yes, that was said.”

 

“Is not this one point quite contrary to the prevailing opinion about him?”

 

“It is indeed,” he said.

 

“Will it not be a fair plea in his defence to say that it was the nature of the real lover of knowledge to strive emulously for true being and that he would not linger over [490b] the many particulars that are opined to be real, but would hold on his way, and the edge of his passion would not be blunted nor would his desire fail till he came into touch with the nature of each thing in itself by that part of his soul to which it belongs to lay hold on that kind of reality—the part akin to it, namely—and through that approaching it, and consorting with reality really, he would beget intelligence and truth, attain to knowledge and truly live and grow, and so find surcease from his travail of soul, but not before?”

 

And later the Middle and Late Platonists were to extend this with Theurgy, a practice which engages the whole person.

 

Obviously there is much more that could be said, but that at least points to a wider understanding of Plato and the Platonic tradition.

[Starjumper]

I understand where Decibele is coming from and what he/she is saying. Sometimes nice poetic descriptions. I also understnad how it's easy for a sage to lose patience with some (fill in the blank).

[Boy]

...

Edited April 6, 2014 by Boy

[GrandmasterP]

" cultivation" to me is whatever we 'do' .

So I cultivate QiGong Mrs GMP cultivates TaiChi.

When I did MA we said we 'played' our style.

We'd say " I play Bagua."

I see 'cultivation' as a similar word to that MA idea of 'playing' a style...just a catch all term for whatever style or practice it is that we 'cultivate'.

Bit like 'cultivating' a garden perhaps.... ' growing via tending'.

[Boy]

...

Edited April 6, 2014 by Boy

[johndoe2012]

.

Edited May 15, 2014 by chris d

[GrandmasterP]

Regarding insults in the Zen tradition way:

 

My understanding is from my own experience.

 

If we feel we really exist and are full / substantial then we unconsciously feel the need to defend ourselves.

 

If we feel we are transparent or empty then the guard goes down because what is there to defend?

 

It is just empty talk and we FEEL OK no matter what people say.

 

I like the book "The Enlightment Process" as a practical way to achieve that feeling.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Enlightenment-Process-Embodied-Spiritual-Awakening/dp/1557788731/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396008038&sr=1-1&keywords=the+enlightenment+process

 

That edition of the book by Judith Blackstone linked to is for the " Revised and Expanded" edition.

 

The Enlightenment Process: A Guide to Embodied Spiritual Awakening (Revised and Expanded) [Paperback]

Judith Blackstone (Author).

 

So how far did anyone get who bought the first edition I wonder?

 

:-)

 

[deci belle]

Someone said…

 

Intellectualism is the act of using intellect. No one said anything about clinging to it. Intellect is use to negate unknown fears, not as a support for fear. We fear what we do not understand. Intelligence offers us understanding and this removes fear.

 

Intellectualism is the concretized inability to rid habitual patterns of self-reflective identity from essential awareness in everyday ordinary activities. This is not emptiness~ so what's to be afraid of? (Besides, emptiness is not outside the nature of conditions and appearances anyway.) The unknowable is oneself in a selfless discourse with reality as is whether one knows it or not.

 

Of what consequence is the unknown? Obviously, that depends of circumstances. Ultimately, the unknown doesn't matter. Why? Because nothing matters. That's a fact. So the unknown is inconsequential until it's otherwise. In other words, it is outside of the ability of anyone to control. Nothing is wrong with the unknown~ forget it. What is essential to realize is the unknowable. That it is one's essential nature is so for no reason and no one knows why. Don't be such a wimp.

 

True emptiness outside the absolute is oneself not thinking good or bad in the midst of ordinary situations. Action based on true emptiness is spiritual, transcendent enlightening activity beyond the realm of those who insist on equating reality with selfish relative views based on ratiosynchretic patterns, i.e.: intellectual notions of conceptual understanding of what inconceivability could possibly be (or not).

 

IT IS INHERENT IN FORMS BEFORE ONE'S PHYSICAL EYES AT ALL TIMES YET KNOWLEDGE IS NOT VISIBLE.

 

Hasn't one seen the admonition that one is not to use what is seen and is to use what is unseen?

 

Knowledge is immediate, not requiring any deliberation. It is not a matter of employing the thinking apparatus. If one sees essence, reality looks no different than for one who is habituated to selfish views relative to self and other.

 

So what is this trumped-up instinctual self-preservational compulsion attributed to? One who cannot see reality as is by virtue of an inability to operate subtly within essential unity thinks this convenient invention up to justify one's fear.

 

Insistence on this habitual pattern is being locked in existential fear. What is this if not clinging? Again— as if this one had a choice in the matter. The term "wimp" is absolutely kind as used in this context. Impostor is closer to the truth.

 

THERE IS NOTHING TO UNDERSTAND SO THERE IS NO NEED TO BE A WIMP.

 

There is a bit of insincerity lurking in broad daylight here when one has no intention of abandoning one's exclusive dependence on an ego-propping use of mind. The true intent of the immaterial body of awareness is unity. Insistence on bobbing along within duality in terms of one's functional relationship with creation is just a stream of bad checks on your karmic account. That's what keeps the cycle of birth and death whirring. Do you think there is actually a point to the classic documents of taoism and buddhism? Just what has intellectualism accomplished in attaining the Way of Sages, hmmmm?

 

Until one can function in terms of nonpsychological awareness as a matter of course in ordinary situations, intelligence is just the seat of the false identity. It offers nothing outside of what is already a perpetuation of a whistling selfishly blythe ignorance of reality— AS IF, AT THIS POINT, ONE HAD A CHOICE IN THE MATTER.

 

As it is, there seems to be the practice of intellectualism en lieu of authentic self-refinement. I don't suppose THAT ever enters the realm of serious intellectual activity… much less actually accomplishing it. Then what about waiting for the time, which is, furthermore, beyond the realm of the intellectualist's sleigh-of-hand involving the glib use of an ineffectual device to guarantee being left out of the party that has been raging since before your parents were born.

 

"Intelligence offers us…" Who wants to buy a used philosophy from this one?

 

INTELLIGENCE OFFERS NOTHING. IT IS THE BEING THAT IS GOING TO DIE WITHOUT ITS FINE INTELLIGENCE THAT IS THE CONCERN OF THE WISDOM OF AGES.

 

I, for one, do not see the import of the intellectualist's survival strategy for dependence on intellect on this vital account. Death is the ultimate unknown, yet it is not unknowable. Sudden enlightenment bears this up quite effectively. Buddhism calls this the matter of life and death.

 

That last line in the quote is suuuuuch a intellectualism and sums up succinctly what I am referring to as the ultimate statement exposing the insincerity of the wimpery of intellectualism.

 

As for using the word "us"… do endeavor to speak for and otherwise refer everything to the self, alone.

 

I say this because the intellectualist's wimpy squeek amounts to squat in this void of reality— whereas the roar of selfless unity is something ya just gotta crash through to get down.

 

 

 

 

ed note: insistence not" insistance" in 8th paragraph

Edited March 29, 2014 by deci belle

[Nungali]

Is 'inability' 'wimpiness' ?

[deci belle]

Is 'inability' 'wimpiness' ?

 

Absolutely, Nungali, when the wimp determines to posit that inability as an instinctual survival skill-set AND has also never considered entering into any other functional property of mind; meanwhile extolling the imaginary virtues of an absolutely common and conditional set of parameters which only re-inforce the false-identity that only thrives in terms of words, thoughts, and the concept of thinker as existent.

 

This is a fallacy of the first order. What classics is this wimp reading? Perhaps he should actually endeavor to study them and stop talking about the words they use to make their description of completely wordless reality neither holy or ordinary nor outside the totality of one's self.

 

The refusal to consider entering into the recognition of unity of awareness of nonpsychological proportions in order to have this conditional identity survive is the ultimate of wimpiness.

 

There are no survivors. A wimp is one who makes it a pastime to talk about spiritual realities as described by the classics without ever admitting that they are beyond the scope of understanding itself— and also conveniently failing to turn the light of awareness within to discover for oneself the same source of the classics of which the ancients speak.

 

How people can go through a whole lifetime talking about the words in the classics without ever considering that the words are not even based on the meaning of the words. The source of the classics is the nature of the self, unattributable but by awareness no different that one's own mind right now.

 

It is necessary to abandon a mere pastime in order to discover the source of the classics, and not just feed off the joys of interpretive discourse. Why? Because life is short and the originators of the classics went beyond understanding to see reality for themselves and gave us clues to keep the knowledge alive.

 

Just talking about it and hiding behind the literalist's concept of some theoretic "survival instinct" to NOT see reality as is is utterly abusing the intent of the classics themselves by way of excusing oneself from the will to enlightenment as a virtual death-wish (that it is the effective truth is beside the point).

 

Didn't Jesus say that everlasting life (that would be immortality) is attained by giving up one's life?

 

This is making the source of the classics, being one's own mind, a triviality that one admits to fearing. What's not wimpy about that?

 

Moreover, to make up the notion of the necessity for the survival of the thinker as some basis in fact is the epitome of specious discourse— and the hallmark of recreational philosophy.

 

As I said above, to actually realize anything is tantamount to social suicide for those whose pastime it is to "shoot the breeze".

 

 

 

 

ed note: change "frame" to "posit" in first sentence; add last two lines

Edited March 29, 2014 by deci belle

[Nungali]

Refusal seems different from inability

[amoyaan]

I read his autobiography once, sounds like an interesting fellow. However, he often comes across as being caught up in the competitive spirit of "the one true method", and regarding the vedantic approach as superior. Im not sure if he would say that outright, but he certainly makes statements that imply this.

It is a great read isn't it! It's true, he's not a guy who's not afraid of sharing blunt opinions. It's not so much he sees vedanta as the "one true method" but the best, clearest and most concise method. This is of course up for debate, but in my experience of being around the spiritual block a few times, I would be inclined to agree. But we are each different. (on the apparent level, anyway!)

 

As such its only reasonable to expect such a perspective from such a teacher of vedanta, as that path is directly based on a dialectic methodology, and very specific classifications of ideas and conceptual arguments. It is directly hinged on intellectual efforts. However, not all paths follow this approach.

 

I personally choose to balance between aspects, which requires us not to specifically focus on any one faculty alone (intellect, instinct, emotion) at the expense of another. They all have their strengths and weaknesses - and it is quite possible to become slanted and lopsided in terms of self-cultivation when focusing on one aspect to the exclusion of others. You can certainly produce results with lopsided, even obsessive methodologies - however they are not the results I am looking for.

 

Well, vedanta encompasses jnana yoga, yes, which emphasises using the intellect to examine the unquestioned logic of our own experience and to see that we are in fact pure awareness. But it also offers karma yoga, bhakti yoga and meditation as means of dealing with the emotional and psychological levels and cultivating a reasonably still and pure mind, which is necessary for realisation. So it shouldn't really be a lopsided approach at all. It should integrate and balance all aspects.

 

The intellect has the power of abstraction, it can live for the future, plan ahead - whereas the body and emotions are not able to do this alone, as they live purely in the moment. But that abstraction can easily become a substitute for physical reality, which is where the problems begin. It is often easier for modern people to approach these things intellectually at first, because our modern world is built from a perspective which favors symbolic abstraction above all else.

 

Anyone who has broken through the "star gate" will understand why intellectual reasoning alone is not sufficient. Swartz is not a teacher of energetic methods, and as such his methods are useful only to a point, where energetic methods are not required. He seems to have strangely polarized views on this, simultaneously disdaining it in his own teachings and yet praising examples of it from his own teachers in his personal stories. Draw from that what you will.

 

I think one of Swartz's greatest contributions has been highlighting the difference between the path of experience and the path of knowledge. I'd guess that most spiritual paths, including many forms of yoga are experiential-based; they are still in the duality of subject and object...there's me, and some object or experience that I want to add to me. We tend to assume that enlightenment is an experience we can add to ourself, and there certainly is an experiential component to it. But experience is fickle, fickle, fickle.......experience is in maya and as such is always impermanent, changing and is not under our direct control. Breaking through the stargate as you said (i like that term ) is an awesome epiphany, and the important thing is not the experience (which like any experience comes and goes - 5 mins later we gotta take walk the dog or make dinner!), but the knowledge that we derive from that experience (i.e., that we are whole and complete, pure awareness - the stargate is not something we experience - it's what we are).

 

Vedanta defines enlightenment as the hard and fast knowledge that I am awareness (big Self and not little self). Energetic methods are helpful for preparing the mind for this realisation but are an indirect means of enlightenment. They create the right mindset for Self knowledge to take root. It's really the intellect that needs enlightening - if it's a nondual reality as the scriptures say, then we're already the Self, and we cannot be anything else. But the mind doesn't know that As Swartz says, we don't have an experience problem (since everything we're experiencing can only be the Self), what we have is an ignorance problem (we don't know it). So enlightenment is really getting the mind up to speed on the true nature of reality and ourselves rather than adding new sets of experiences to us. Of course, once this truth is assimilated then our experience of life will change, but that's kind of a byproduct of self knowledge rather than anything.

 

This article explains it really well http://www.shiningworld.com/top/files/satsang-2/(1)%20Experience%20and%20Knowledge%20-%20The%20Whole%20Argument.pdf James says it better than me -

 

"If somebody says that there is a special kind of experience that feels good and never ends, I am ready to sign up. If I have an experience of uncaused bliss, one that is not dependent on an outside event, I may be even more inclined to accept the idea of experiential enlightenment. Perhaps I reason that I can make the experience permanent, even though every time it happens, it ends. When the great sage Patanjali says that all I have to do to make it permanent is to remove my thoughts, I am ready to become a yogi. How hard can it be?

 

This is wishful thinking because samsara, the world of experience, is change. There is no special experience in samsara that does not change. The experiencer, me, is in time and the objects of experience are in time, including all states of mind. How is it possible for two things that are constantly changing to produce a state of mind that does not change?

 

.....The idea that I can obtain the experience of enlightenment means that I am not experiencing the self—the light of awareness—now. It so happens that the non-experience of the self is impossible because consciousness is eternal and omnipresent and non-dual. It is everything that is. How can I get what I already have by doing anything? If I am going to get what I already have, I am going to have to lose my ignorance of who I am. This is not to say that meditation, epiphanies, or other spiritual practices are not valuable. We will later argue that epiphanies are very helpful as they give us an idea of what we are seeking. And we will also argue that spiritual practice is essential, not because it produces enlightenment, but because it prepares the mind for enlightenment. Without a prepared, qualified mind, enlightenment will not happen."

 

 

Very nice post! I am personally very fond of James Swartz. He's not my teacher, but I've had some contact with him and apart from the fact that I'm prone to like characters a bit "rough around the edges", he is pretty much the only western teacher of traditional vedanta, as I'm sure you know. James's main guru was the mind-blowingly glorious Swami Chinmayananda (just thinking about him.. ), and he makes no secret of the fact that all esoteric/philosophical traditions are one and the same. I'm ..hopeful.. James wouldn't argue against that.

 

Haha, yeah he'd certainly rough around the edges! He calls a spade a spade, which sometimes shocks people used to the more cuddly and Eckahrty teachers. Swami Chinmayanada was indeed one awesome guy!! Indeed, all esoteric traditions have the same goal really (even if they don't know it), but James is pretty clear that not all paths are equal. It sounds horribly undemocratic but it's true. I mean, it'd be infinitely easier to 'get' enlightened with a good vedanta or buddhist teacher than, for example a fundamentalist Christian preacher, or a hardline Muslim, or a fluffy New Ager. Although I guess not entirely impossible...but not very likely. Finding very clear spiritual teachings is surprisingly hard. Maya is confusing. Spiritual maya is even more so.

 

James is also quite familiar with energetic methods and expressions; no doubt about it. Nowhere in vedanta will you find a deci belle-esque disdain* for anything apart from it, but its teaching is indeed very clear, precise and impressively effective (if you're "qualified"). For me personally, nothing comes close to the Upanishads. I think the vedantic approach is superior and it will most certainly take you through the "star gate". That's what it's for!

 

Yes! James's autobiography is a fascinating read. He had all manner of incredible energetic experiences and epiphanies in India during the late 60s, but once they wore off, he was just the same guy. Where was his enlightenment?! He almost gave up. It wasn't until he met his guru, Swami Chinmayananda that he realised with the greatest humility, that in spite of all his wild epiphanies and experiences, he didn't have a clue. I guess it's amazing going through the stargate, but even better is when you truly know who it is that's going through it. And the realisation that I'm not in the stargate, the stargate is in me (as awareness).

 

And I still don't know what cultivation is..

 

 

*sorry

 

Haha, I struggled with that word for a long time. It's not my favourite term for some reason.

Edited March 29, 2014 by amoyaan