Liars, Lunatics or Liaisons

[boxy]

Fuck off spamming threads with your mod complaints, Aussie.

If Pierre wants to contribute (rather than just vote the way you tell him to), he's totally free to do so. But from your incoherent description, you just make him sound like some sort of druggy, which is not what AiA is talking about here

[Ned Kelly]

Fuck off spamming threads with your mod complaints, Aussie.

Fuck off ignoring the votes of genuine new Members, box head.

If Pierre wants to contribute (rather than just vote the way you tell him to), he's totally free to do so. But from your incoherent description, you just make him sound like some sort of druggy, which is not what AiA is talking about here

Well, he is a reformed druggy, and the product of that is exactly what AiA is talking about.

[AiA in Atlanta]

While memetics is useful for explaining much in our world, it is inadequate to explain the handful of individuals who have had a sudden and permanent breakthrough in consciousness.

Examples of the type of people you are talking about?

Ramana Maharshi comes to mind but need not go to India to find them.

[Hoosfahtz Schmelderwurst]

"Are all great spiritual teachers of history liars, lunatics, or liaisons to an objectively real and attainable awakened state of human consciousness?"

Before you answer, consider this:


If you answer "they're all liars," what larger worldview is supported by this belief? Is there a grand conspiracy out there with shady individuals inventing false stories to gain social advantage of the naive?

Hopefully the term "larger worldview" here does not refer to the ad populum argument. A billion idiots believing a ridiculous story does not add a picogram of weight to the validity of the story. The fact that all spiritual teachers, aka religious frootloops, have zero evidence to support their claims supports the belief that they are all liars. Apart from......

If you think they are nuts, then are these glimpses into reality a psychotic episode, mental breakdowns? Answering "Yes!" here supports a worldview in which "sanity" is defined by adherence to the mental norm and the social status quo.

....apart from the ones who are nuts. Or morons, cowards and/or egomaniacs.

What if enlightenment is real? If you answered "Yes" then why make anything more important than awakening to enlightenment?

What if the tooth fairy is real? What if every fictional character in every fiction book ever written is real? Life is too short to waste time pondering what ifs. There are dim sims out there that need eating.

[Swami Dring]

While memetics is useful for explaining much in our world, it is inadequate to explain the handful of individuals who have had a sudden and permanent breakthrough in consciousness.

Examples of the type of people you are talking about?

Ramana Maharshi comes to mind but need not go to India to find them.

Just did a wiki search ( yeah I know, wiki ) for this dude. Check this out:

"It was in 1896, about 6 weeks before I left Madurai for good (to go to Tiruvannamalai - Arunachala) that this great change in my life took place. I was sitting alone in a room on the first floor of my uncle's house. I seldom had any sickness and on that day there was nothing wrong with my health, but a sudden violent fear of death overtook me. There was nothing in my state of health to account for it nor was there any urge in me to find out whether there was any account for the fear. I just felt I was going to die and began thinking what to do about it. It did not occur to me to consult a doctor or any elders or friends. I felt I had to solve the problem myself then and there. The shock of the fear of death drove my mind inwards and I said to myself mentally, without actually framing the words: 'Now death has come; what does it mean? What is it that is dying? This body dies.' And at once I dramatised the occurrence of death. I lay with my limbs stretched out still as though rigor mortis has set in, and imitated a corpse so as to give greater reality to the enquiry. I held my breath and kept my lips tightly closed so that no sound could escape, and that neither the word 'I' nor any word could be uttered. 'Well then,' I said to myself, 'this body is dead. It will be carried stiff to the burning ground and there burn and reduced to ashes. But with the death of the body, am I dead? Is the body I? It is silent and inert, but I feel the full force of my personality and even the voice of I within me, apart from it. So I am the Spirit transcending the body. The body dies but the spirit transcending it cannot be touched by death. That means I am the deathless Spirit.' All this was not dull thought; it flashed through me vividly as living truths which I perceived directly almost without thought process. I was something real, the only real thing about my present state, and all the conscious activity connected with the body was centered on that I. From that moment onwards, the "I" or Self focused attention on itself by a powerful fascination. Fear of death vanished once and for all. The ego was lost in the flood of Self-awareness. Absorption in the Self continued unbroken from that time. Other thought might come and go like the various notes of music, but the I continued like the fundamental sruti note ["that which is heard" i.e. the Vedas and Upanishads] a note which underlies and blends with all other notes."

See the bolded bits? Fear of death. It's at the core of every religion ever invented. At least this guy had the dignity to be honest about his reason for inventing his fantasy.

[boxy]

While memetics is useful for explaining much in our world, it is inadequate to explain the handful of individuals who have had a sudden and permanent breakthrough in consciousness.

Examples of the type of people you are talking about?

Ramana Maharshi comes to mind but need not go to India to find them.

It sort of begs the question... did he become more "conscious" after his revelation, or just find a different way of looking at the world... no more, or less valid than the one he held before. He seems to have been a perfectly fine individual before his "awakening", he just changed his mind about a few things. Nothing all that mystical about it. That's what philosophy and self reflection is about.

[J.W. Frogen]

I bet Swami did not even get a pimple on his ass.

God just does not smite like he used to.

[AiA in Atlanta]

Swami has thrown the baby out with the bath water as atheists usually do.

[pierre]

sort of begs the question... did he become more "conscious" after his revelation, or just find a different way of looking at the world... no more, or less valid than the one he held before. He seems to have been a perfectly fine individual before his "awakening", he just changed his mind about a few things. Nothing all that mystical about it. That's what philosophy and self reflection is about.

Yes he did become more "conscious" after his revelation and yes he did just find a different way of looking at the world and no it wasn't more or less valid than the one he held before. The important thing that is learnt from such a revelation is that the "normal" consciousness is not absolute or the only one. Once this is understood experimentally a person is then open in a way which was not possible previously. This is what Aldous Huxley was alluding to in his "Doors of Perception". It is also true that reading or talking about these altered states of consciousness can not transmit its reality in the same way that a man born blind cannot have anything but a missunderstanding of what it is to see.
A person who has been opened in this way is extreamly vulnerable to manipulation and abuse as well as self delusion. Those of you who have no experience of these things no doubt see examples of this both in organised religion as well as in the "lunatic fringe". More later.
P.S. I haven't taken anything other than a double Black Label JW for more than 30 years.

[Ned Kelly]

Pierre.....I have read this sort of stuff before. Are you the illiterate twin brother of Wally Raffles???

What say ye Frogen?