the meditation card

[Jim]

Quotes from two posts by Charles in
this thread:

[neo]

Ciao Jim ope you are fine!!
Good posting

The hindu- tibetan story makes sense to me. I have had some experiences but it is difficult to corroborate them because we lack a so called a scientific criterion of reliabilty/validity.

The only thing that is left is a kind of intersubjecitve reliability which means sampling a number of people claiming having verifiable experiences ( for example the presence of empirical clues even sensory clues)and check the statistics then in a sense. See what I eman?

Kenny and his Dalai Lama argument is rather silly, If the Dalai Lama doesn´t report memories of past lives, it can be just because he is no psychically awaken as people would suppose him to be. There are probaly other kinds of tibetan yogis claiming the opposite. Muktananda,a kundalini yogi, has discusssed some of his previous births and otehrs.

Now I am not going into the talk style: what it is that is reborn? it is not my subject here.

Even Jiddu Krishanmurti has commented on the fact that there is an ongoing stream that takes form again and again. He called it "the stream of vulgarity".

I happen to agree with his view because what reborns is mostly junk and ignorance, and that is not so different from what the hindus and buddhists have said.

[Gadfly]

Wilber IMO is still locked in that 60's paradigm which assumes a person becomes enlightened due to some deep mystical experience - "I saw God so now I believe in him" ! Except Ken would have to substitute Spirit or the Absolute. (This is how we got into the drug thing, isn't it?).

Now it just sounds all too Adi Da like.

I would also say that this is why Ken can't find a correlation between this experience and morality & ethics, and why it must be a different wave. Hello.

Because some one can lucid dream, manipulate their brain waves, meditate for 20 years, yada, yada, does not really mean much. And why K called it a "play toy". (Parlor game too).

Also interesting, if I recall, Wilber calls reduced recorded EEG waves = deeper. Even the big Samadhi. But surely this is just regression, no ? A shutting down of the neo-cortex. Hardly higher cognitive development.

As John Hargan said, it all amounts to "I'm enlightened, you're not".

In his interview KW said the whole point is to change the thinker. On the next page Ken says that if you are a nerd before meditation, you'll be one after. So much for changing the thinker.

But here we can see Ken's obsession with cognitive neo-cortex development. Gad would say the whole point is to change the person, the whole INTEGRAL human being. Not just the thinker.

And that includes morality and ethics. (Wilber's big weak point).

Anyway, it's Xmas and time is getting difficult. And again, this is not a diatribe against meditation.

Gaddy

[Gadfly]

[Susan]

Ethics?

Is it ethical to make a business out of .... ?
Fill in your name For gODDsake

Jesus got REALLY pissed at those Money(mani)Changers....

Trungpa's real deal was the PRINTS-ah-pull of Spiritual Materialism

Just how much is the dogma through the Win-dough...



.........


God is found from within...
Meditate
Meditate
Meditate

TonGlen!
_________________
"It's all Ati. Now, let's be practical."
Chogyam Trungpa

[MarkDavid]

Hi Jim.

I think you are confusing some issues here. Namely, what constitutes vertical development in Wilber's model and what constitutes horizontal development.

Vertical development is about structure. Horizontal is about content. When discussing development, one must differentiate the two.

Here is the point: There are many issues of content that people at the same level of development can and will disagree on. However, certain, baseline structural issues will not be disagreed upon.

For example, two transpersonally developed people will never--or at least that I have seen--disagree about issues of body identification. No spiritual teacher says that identification with the body, or gratification of the body is the goal or highest state of human evolution. Or that the truth can be understood intellectually and that's it--no one disagrees on that. Those are structural issues.

Now they do disagree endlessly about sudden vs. gradual enlightenment, the exact nature of enlightenment, whether any such concept is useful, etc. So the structure opens up a host of detail issues which may be seen this way or that. These are surface or content issues.

Hearing Wilber say reincarnation is a "fact" is a surprise, because in most others places Wilber says that it is simply a hypothesis--I believe he said something like this: "How am I supposed to believe that Shirley Maclaine can remember her past lives and the Dalai Lama can't?" He also picks on the research on reincarnation that that one guy did, can't remember his name.

In other words, Ken probably had a hyperbolic lapse running counter to his actual theory--something he is prone to do now and again. But it shouldn't muddy the water too much--shouldn't make one lose sight of the overwhelming thrust of the theory.

Ultimately then, there are some basic, structural markers of deep transpersonal development that can't be ignored. Not to say that one need have every one described by every tradition, but one will at least have some.

And the fact is that very few people have these insights/experiences without meditation training. It is therefore extremely legitimate to play the meditation card. Or the spiritual practice/spiritual experience card. If a person had a sudden awakening, i.e. Tolle or Ramana, that will become apparent extremely quick.

Personally, I don't see what the issue of having standards is in this case--and this standard is hardly a cruel one. Likely a cultural thing--no one can stomach standards anyone because they are seen as intolerant and insensitive. Not even Gadfly likes standards apparently. That's my theory now: today, even conservatives are victims in our culture. The only people who whine more than people on the left are people on the right--especially those whiny-ass born-agains. What a group of victimized sissies!

Mark

[Gadfly]

[Jim]

Ciao Neo, I'll get back to you re reincarnation, in another thread.

[Coyote]

Jim:

[Coyote]

neo:

[bob]

Evening, Ky'ote! You wrote: "It seems, on the contrary, that taking up contemplation and inquiry, it will become perfectly obvious to us that reincarnation or the transmigration of souls is a fairy tale."


))) In the midst of it, any dream or fairy tale can seem real, so meditative inquiry is like a nudge towards waking. Even so, folks often resist the waking, prefering to linger a while in the infinitely modifying mind bardos between sleepy eyes and bright wide open vision. In these intermediate realms, which are nothing but the evidence of drowsiness, consciousness may seem to slip bodies/lives off and on, but nothing has really happened. You recognize this when you're fully awake.


LoveAlways

[templeman]

Hi, Jim

Let me put some piece to that jigsaw puzzle.
Gadfly's meditation card is a nice one to start with.

[Heru]

Hi Jim,
Good to read you again I like what MarkDavid said, but before I read his post the first thing that came to mind went something like this: If two different people go to Macchu Picchu there are certain things they will automatically agree on, some things they will probably agree on, and some things they will disagree on. The split seems to be on general vs. particular, although it is more of a greyscale than black and white.

The Macchu Picchu analogy doesn't quite work for transpersonal experience, but it illustrates the basic point. I mean in some sense we don't even have to talk about transpersonal experience or meditative injunctions but just look at life: there is one thing that we can all agree on, and one thing only: something is going on. That's pretty much it. What that Something "is" or "means," or why it is or who created it...well, that's where we have the Tower of Babel. We're all interpreting that Something differently, we're all subscribing to different idea-packets of the World Soul (which as a formulation is one the idea-packets I am subscribing to).

Another angle on this is parenthood: you simply cannot know what it is like until you actually experience it. You can "glimpse" it, and I think a non-parent can be more parental, more ideally loving and compassionate than a parent, but the day-to-day experience of being a parent, of raising and loving a child of your own loins is...well, nothing really prepares you. That is one of the things Leah and I learned rather quickly: that no matter what anyone says, it just isn't how it actually is; and usually, thankfully, it is much better!

To summarize, I can agree with Wilber that there are certain things that are only revealed through doing the injunction--that just seems self-evident, like saying "You won't know how it feels to dunk a basketball until you learn to dunk a basketball." But I also feel that the degree of interpretation--what Mark describes as content--can vary widely. But for each new level there will be different areas of disagreement, which would conceivably be "solved" at a higher level; thus there might be certain benchmarks that could define stabilization at each level (but then we have to get into the messiness of lines...). However, I also agree with you that there is a sense in the Wilber Inner Circle that the closer one's cognitive map is to Wilber's, the more enlightened one is. To me this is mimickry, that TRUE visionlogic is something that develops within, that isn't simply or only about how adeptly one can wield the Wilberian sword. Certainly, that is one way of training oneself: you apprentice with a "master" and learn their craft, copying them, but at some point there is a severence--just like a child leaving their parents--and one learns to stand on one's own, to wield one's own sword (or pen ). But I think some never stop becoming "apprentices" or devotees or children, really. Maybe that's okay? I don't know, really.
_________________

Quotes of the Day (or, Only on the Ken Wilber Forum):
"I am a fan of quality gibberish..." ~Theos

"do you see my rumi quote as passive-aggressive?" ~ Sunya

[Jim]

Hi Mark.

[Gadfly]