SN thought that this might interest bloggers here as a string, and help thinking outside the box about the contouring of enlightened states.
Satyadeva comments:
Shantam, , in view of your scepticism concerning ‘enlightenment’ and other associated states, and your quite often expressed wish for scientific evidence for them, here’s a recent interview of Jeffery Martin, PhD, “a founder of the Transformative Technology space, and a technologist and social scientist who researches personal transformation and the states of greatest human well-being.”
The promo intro continues:
“Dr. Jeffery A. Martin spent the last 10 years conducting the largest international study on persistent non-symbolic experience (PNSE), which includes the types of consciousness commonly known as: enlightenment, nonduality, the peace that passeth understanding, transcendental consciousness, unitive experience, and hundreds of others. More recently, he has used this research to make systems available to help people obtain profound psychological benefits in a rapid, secular, reliable, and safe way.
His research began with over 1,000 individuals who claimed to experience PNSE. This resulted in the first reliable, cross-cultural, and pan-tradition classification system for these types of experience. It also led to the fundamental discovery that these were psychological states that had been identified and adopted for thousands of years by many cultures and belief systems. They were not inherently spiritual or religious, or limited to any given culture or population, and could be moulded in many ways to shape the experience.”
“SN thought that this might interest bloggers as a string, and help thinking outside the box about the contouring of enlightened states.”
Firstly, I would like to recommend the forwarding of the above statement to the editorial team of the Private Eye magazine, as I believe it is worthy of inclusion in their ‘Pseuds’ Corner’ section, if indeed that section still exists. Anyone know? In the event that it does not, p’haps we could start our own ‘Pseuds’ Corner’ on SN?
Secondly, before proceeding further, I would like to query SD as to whether his motives here are as stated? Or is it in fact possible that the entire post is just a ‘piss-take’ on his part?
Finally, if it is indeed the case that the Right Honourable Gentleman’s intentions are sincere, perhaps he would be kind enough to perform for the SN readership the service of paraphrasing all the salient points in the video link he so graciously provided. I, for one, found the presentation both strenuous and arduous, and only managed to endure the first 14 minutes before nodding off!
No, Ashok, it’s not meant to be a “piss-take”; as I state in the first sentence, I’m presenting this as evidence to Shantam (and anyone else who might be interested) of ongoing research into ‘altered states’ experienced by both meditators and ‘lay people’. Shantam in particular as he has quite often expressed scepticism both about ‘enlightenment’ and whether meditation has any verifiable effects, notably on the brain.
Personally, although I find these results interesting and convincing enough, and am impressed that from this extensive research further in-depth work is being done to provide new, technology-based avenues to engender significantly enhanced human well-being and even, apparently, to help reach ‘permanent higher states’, I suspect that such methods have inherent limitations, especially if they continue to rely upon technology once certain ‘higher states’ are reached.
Furthermore, the danger for scientists, even obviously sincere and open-minded ones as the man in the video, is that they become obsessed with their technological expertise and perhaps begin to lose sight of the spiritual wood for the super-brain-dominated, therapeutic trees (to coin a phrase!). I wonder how many of them, for example, have personally encountered a genuine living master?
Having said that, however, anything that helps lift us out of essentially unsatisfactory modes of being and increases our aliveness and personal power to realise our potential has to be embraced.. At the very least, that can be the value of this research and ensuing development.
Well, Ashok, you asked for it, so here it is! This is what 10 years of research and development has led to, something called ‘The Finders Course’, which is described as:
“The first universally effective course that helps people transition to Ongoing and Persistent Non-Symbolic Experience (O.N.E., ie oneness, non-duality, ‘the peace that passeth understanding’ etc.) rapidly, safely, and reliably. The course is 100% secular and built on data from the world’s largest scientific research project in this area, which included over 1,200 participants on 6 continents. Our research showed that using the Finders Course, 73% of people got there in 4 months or less. And, only 1% of people who took the program failed to experience it at all.
Through the Finders Course, we provide the most effective technologies for creating permanent positive shifts in peace of mind, mental balance, life satisfaction and happiness. From ancient practices to cutting- edge science, our programmes help you to assemble a personalised programme to reach your goals. In our courses, online platforms and mobile tools, you’ll find a community of like-minded adventurers on the same journey.”
The word ‘locations’ is used, rather than ‘levels’, which they feel is too ‘hierarchical’ and doesn’t do justice to a fluidity of movement between such states).
“Although all are rare, there are four varieties of O.N.E., which we call ‘Locations’, that are the most common. People in all Locations report high well-being regardless of life situation, reduced mental chatter and negative emotionality, greater love and compassion, freedom from self-critical thoughts, an increased focus on the present, increased mental capacity and decision making, a deep sense of connectedness, and an ongoing state of flow.
LOCATION 1
For most people, negative emotions like fear, anxiety and worry form the foundation of the way they experience the world. Evolutionarily, this makes sense. Humans developed in an environment that was hostile, and for most of our existence we were far from the top of the food chain. Today we are the dominant species, and this foundational part of our nervous system is out of date. The transition to Location 1 changes this forever by replacing it with a new, modern foundation centred in a deep and fundamental experience of peace and well-being, a sense that you are fundamentally safe, and that everything is ultimately okay.
LOCATION 2
The constant and underlying sense of well-being at the core of Location 1 becomes even more present at Location 2. As you deepen into it, your emotional state becomes almost always positive. Negative emotions, when they occur, are gone almost as soon as they arrive. The negative self-chatter in your head is dramatically weakened and has much less impact on you. You also experience a beautiful unification with the world at this Location. It feels as if you and it are not separate, that everything is ‘One.’ This Location is often referred to as ‘non-duality.’
LOCATION 3
In Location 3, almost all emotional experience relaxes into a single emotion that feels like a combination of love, gratitude, and compassion. Negative mental and emotional states are extremely rare and an even more complete well-being is revealed as the foreground of your experience. Some people experience a profound unity with the divine in this Location, while others experience a union with a deep sense of consciousness that seems to pervade Life, Nature, the Universe, and so on. This Location is often referred to by saints in religions like Christianity as the ultimate form of human existence.
LOCATION 4
Location 4 is impossible to understand without experiencing it, as it is even more different than our day-to-day experience. Strangely, the sense of the divine or an all pervasive consciousness vanishes at this point. So does any remaining scrap of need for approval from others, emotions that have been constructed up to this point in your life, and the sense of agency. These are replaced with an experience of freedom that is beyond any ability to imagine or describe. It comes as a surprise, because it doesn’t seem like it can get any better than Location 3, and yet this new Location is so far beyond that former level of well-being that it’s astonishing. Some Eastern religions consider this to be the penultimate form of human experience – though we have catalogued locations beyond even this one….”
Here`s some pretty mind-blowing follow-up to this research:
“10 years of tests conducted by Professor Brylcreem, leading quantum mechanic at the University of Flimflam has shown conclusively that states of Neurologically Ongoing Non-Symbolic Experience of Neuro-Scientific Eyewash (N.O.N.S.E.N.S.E.) have been recorded in 99.9% of all people, no matter what their location, who have been practising techniques devised by Willing Active Neuro-Kinetic Enlightenment Researchers (W.A.N.K.E.R.S).
Subsequent ceasing of basic brain functions has led, in a staggering 89% of the cases, to achievement of O.N.E.N.E.S.S.: Optimum Nugget Extraction from Newage E-jits and Spaced-out Sannyasins.”
You kind of surpassed yourself, Frank (at 6.47 pm ) today.
I would say, however, as well as, let us say, the very ways Brexit in the UK was brought on its way, or not so much unlike the inter-connected brainwaves of mass movements quite recently in America (and worldwide) were brought on their ways, this confronts sentient beings to the max and beyond the max with the emotional and mental flatliners following an algorhythmic, bio-technical approach to life as such (bio-technical doping of any conceivable and even inconceivable kinds included).
Time for jokes? Yes.
Time for cynicism? No.
Time for prayer to come to our senses? Yes!
Madhu
P.S:
When I responded to Ashok, I didn´t say that I simply found this guy speaking and performing unbearable. He seems to be quite an ‘average Joe’ in these matters, in terms of how man treats his fellow humans these days as a merchandise ‘object’, a product, to be ´enhanced´ as an ´enlightened´ human product.
Simply unbearable.
Same feelings arising from Satyadeva’s short summary about ‘locations’ lab-researches at 5.58 pm.
“Beloved Master,
If the brain of an enlightened man was transplanted into an ordinary man, would he start behaving like an enlightened man? Would he experience enlightenment?”
“No, because the brain has nothing to do with enlightenment.
If you put the enlightened man’s brain into some unenlightened man’s body, he will not behave like the enlightened man.
He will simply behave the way he had been behaving.
Perhaps for a few days he will be in a little difficulty, but soon he will get adjusted.
The brain has to be adjusted to the soul, not vice versa.”
‘From Death to Deathlessness’ (August 1985)
“The brain has to be adjusted to the soul, not vice versa.”(Swamishanti)
Thanks, Swamishanti, and what a good prayer in terms of ´Sammasati´ is THIS…
The first cold, frosty winter nights here.
Yesterday the gardeners came to plant a few trees and bushes in the courtyard.
I am wondering if they will make it.
They heard the children play yesterday afternoon .
Now, the night is utterly silent.
In my room here, I am looking into the void, where all life is coming from and going to.
In Gratitude to the Real.
Take care.
With Love,
Madhu
Dear Dr. Frank,
I would like to inform you that your recommended course of treatment seems to have done the trick and has consequently lifted my spirits to Location 5. Thankfully, I am now well on the way to full recovery after my recent and most unfortunate encounter with Brylcreem, which resulted in a nasty case of life-threatening coma, as you well know.
Yours sincerely,
Ashok (on-going patient)
Ta.
I`m not one to boast or labour the point but I must confess that I just had one of the deepest meditation experiences of my life when I completed the Losers Course at the Associated Researchers of Scientific Enlightenment (A.R.S.E.).
I was subjected to a complete programme of Techniques Of Scientific Spirituality (T.O.S.S.) under the auspices of Professor Brylcreem-Boye PhD. (Permanent Head Damage). I suggested to the Professor that he needs another PhD on the team (Professional Hair Dresser), at which point he threatened to have me moved to another location.
Seconded, Ashok .
Madhu
Breaking News from Shantam´s life:
My relation is broken with the woman who provoked and inspired me to visit Mother Meera´s event. I will say, wonder of blessings!
In the course of time, she felt repulsed by my way of life, I with her. She was speaking too much about her spiritual mentor, a Canadian woman called Aristhaia Cash, living in this area, running a very successful spiritual healing practice. I was talking about my life and times in Osho´s presence and commune. During our very first meeting, she mentioned that Aristhaia had said, “Osho was not a complete prophet. He has shades of ego.”
So in a way, it was clear, our life experiences won´t allow to go long way together. I was even thinking, “Why I should be with a woman who is dependent on this and that person, whereas I walk alone?” She too has her own reason for separation.
Matter of the fact connected with the string is, “Even if someone is enlightened, so what?” We all have to carry our own cross! Those who think by becoming enlightened there won´t be a cross to carry are like those who think enlightened persons don´t fall sick, they don´t die, and so on.
Shantam said, “whereas I walk alone?”
Shantam, you cannot survive without SN.
There is one German Ma who was a doctor and now some kind of enlightened one from the city of Munich where our fellow blogger Madhu lives.
Maybe Madhu can ask her about some kind of scientific information about this illusory yet most sought after experience.
Others can look at the website and find out – who knows? – Pyar is a western version of Mother Meera!
http://www.pyar.de
“Maybe Madhu can ask her about some kind of scientific information about this illusory yet most sought after experience.” (Shantam Prem)
No, Shantam Prem, I won´t ask her your question; to get an answer to your question you have to move yourself, the way you choose to move.
Madhu
I watched the video link SD posted, along with the article, for less than a minute. Too American for my taste. What I mean by American in this case is that it is an attempt to render the spiritual experience via technology, as far as I understand; as I said, I only watched the vid for less than a minute. I am not saying that this is an invalid approach, but rather that it is an approach that I have difficulty relating to.
My son just returned from the Munroe Institute in Virginia, where he had the most profound meditation experience of his life. To be honest, I did not enquire much about his experience, because it has to do with technology. At the root of my attitude lies my underlying belief that we do not need anything external to ourselves, including gurus, to reach the truth of our being. Nature, life, is, amongst many things, generous. Everything needed is supplied. My spiritual heroes had nothing to do with technology. If that is good enough for them it is good enough for me, and I follow their example.
I checked Pyar’s site, as suggested by Shantam. It is a German language site. I find that sort of thing pretty uninspiring. A few of my old pals have become gurus. After enlightenment some refuse to acknowledge they ever knew me in the past. I can relate to that. I think what lies behind their guru trip is the idea that “yes, I can do this.” After all, if us lot cannot do it, who else will?
Osho was a great teacher in respect to presentation, right down to “enough for today”. I am not entirely comfortable in a teaching role, because I can’t honestly say I have ‘got’ it, so how can I teach anyone? Over and above that, I am a very lazy man and could not be bothered with people’s expectations in respect to being a role model. In other words, I do not think anyone should be like me. One of me is enough…make that more than enough.
If you ask me, everyone will become enlightened if they get old enough. That is, if you equate enlightenment with dropping the mind. A scene from ‘The Godfather’ movie series comes to mind:
The godfather is now old. He has been responsible for the murder of many people. Yet, there is the godfather playing in the garden with a grandchild, replete with a tomato in his mouth to make himself appear more monstrous in the little boy’s eyes. The capo de capo has gone full circle and become a child again, along with the accompanying bliss and carefree reality that childhood harbours. The godfather is out of his mind and in that moment suffers a seizure and drops dead in the tomato patch.
That is life. Life is for living. We now live in a technological age. Personally, I find it fine, knowing I do not really need it. Technology will one day go. Life will remain and it is in the heart of life that enlightenment lies. Hence Osho’s insistence to live in the marketplace..
“The godfather is now old. He has been responsible for the murder of many people. Yet, there is the godfather playing in the garden with a grandchild, replete with a tomato in his mouth to make himself appear more monstrous in the little boy’s eyes. The capo de capo has gone full circle and become a child again, along with the accompanying bliss and carefree reality that childhood harbours.” (Lokesh)
It is completely normal for individuals to show different faces to different people, at different times. It’s involuntary. Some more than others.
I’ve got what you’re getting at.
I’ve met older people who have a degree of innocence, not much ego. They’re not articulate about their ‘inner spaces’; but at best they do have an innocence, a childlikeness about them.
Thanks for your November-Sunday-Morning-No-Sermon-On-No-Mount contribution, Lokesh, to-not-believe-the-not-Impossible (before or after breakfast).
I really enjoyed reading it.
The sky is bright here today.
Madhu
When I read something like this or meet someone who lives like this, it gives a feeling this moment is so poignant, so ripe. In these moments I feel like making chai for such person and drink with them.
From the bloggers on this site, with Kavita I have shared such moments many times during the years and also with Lokesh, sitting at the rocks with my son and looking at the eternity of ocean…
Thank you, beloveds. (Very seldom this word ‘beloved’ comes in my brain after the collapse of Commune).
@Satyadeva:
Once again, SD, many thanks for the sterling work put in and personal sacrifice made whilst performing what for me would have been an onerous and difficult task i.e. summarising the Finders Course video. You seem to have succeeded in getting the juices of several contributors, like me, for example, flowing one way or another! So well done!
In response, therefore, please accept the following video clip as contributing in some small way to your project re Shantam’s education on matters of current scientific research into ‘altered states’!
https://www.youtube.com/embed/Gx-OVdTkwvA
This clip provides an alternative view of enlightenment to that provided by The Finders Course and therefore will, I believe, greatly contribute towards the noble task you have so selflessly committed yourself to on Shantam’s behalf.
I hope you find it useful?
What is Enlightenment, in my opinion?
This is a state only gods of death can authenticate.
Let us presume someone dies without any idea of being enlightened or awakened but lived the life in such a way, gods of death look at the record and proclaim, “You did it, Sir/Madam. You are out from the life and death cycle.”
Similarly, another scene is also possible:
Some self-proclaimed enlightened one dies. Person has done enough touring work to bring peace and silence through Satsang and yet unbiased gods of death don´t find that impressive enough and give the judgement, “You got more than you deserved. Go in the world and try to be less spiritually smart.”
If enlightenment is part of mystery then mystery is always undefinable.
Hi Shantam!
Here is the veritable Dr Brad Blanton (PhD) expounding his very own scientifically developed technique for achieving ‘enlightenment’ within 3 minutes :
https://www.youtube.com/embed/OLpCU02Qijk”
Give it a go, Shantam? Can’t be any worse than examining Mother Meera up close, can it? I would then be very interested in hearing your further opinions on ‘enlightenment’.
I would also like to offer up this outstanding video clip to SD, in recognition of his ongoing research into ‘altered states’ for both meditators and lay people which he is undergoing in Shantam’s wider educational interests. Given his now well-known penchant for scientific-spiritual presentations given by U.S. males sporting Brylcreem and PhDs, I believe that SD will find Dr Brad’s (PhD), methods both credible and satisfactory.
At some point in the not too distant future, I thoroughly expect to find myself congratulating SD upon learning of his long-awaited-for admission into the Church of Scientology. Once there, there is no doubt in my mind that he has the potential of rising to elite ‘Sea Corps’ status, where I hear they are drowning in a sea of Brylcreem, designed to promote an altered state of unquestioning no-mind towards the church’s dogma. I sincerely believe he is now ready to take this important step.
Ashok, this video!
In few seconds I thought, if this chap is enlightened, President-elect Trump is beyond enlightenment. Somewhere both have similar facial energy, yet they are different. There are different kinds of narcissism too.
More and more I am getting the feeling, “It is a privilege to live and die as a common man.”
Ashok, I suggest you re-read my post of Nov 12, 2.30pm, as you appear to have misunderstood my standpoint on these methods (or wilfully disregarded what I said there).
Now, now, Satyadeva, I would counsel against getting over-excited – it’s not good for chaps of our age. A little bit of ‘non-seriousness’ is called for here, I believe, esp. as we are dealing with a case of ‘light-hearted banter’, in which I knowingly pursued a fantastical exaggeration of a certain possibility – or at least I hope and trust, it was such!
Ashok,
This magnificent guy in this video you posted is really enlightened! He was plugged by Yogi, our own very enlightened being in SN, and then reached Nirvana!
He is another blessed one! Great video, many thanks for posting it! Cheers!
He`s a winner!
At this game:
http://www.utternonsensegame.com/
“Just the other night, Vivek was asking me, “Should we go to the disco?”
I said, “I am going to the disco one day, but right now it is too late.”
My discos, my restaurants are called ‘Zorba the Buddha’. First I am a Zorba, and then I am a Buddha.
And remember, if I have to choose between the two, I will choose Zorba, not Buddha… because the Zorba can always become the Buddha, but the Buddha becomes confined to his own holiness. He cannot go to the disco and become the Zorba. And to me, freedom is the highest value; there is nothing greater, more precious, than freedom.
My enlightenment has freed me from everything, including enlightenment.
Now will be the crucial point. Those who trust me will trust me even when I am drinking champagne, because there was no condition. You had not told me, “I will trust you only until you start drinking champagne.” The trust is unconditional.
The heart knows different ways of seeing. The mind is linear, it looks only towards one line. The heart is multi-dimensional. And the more I feel my people’s trust, the more dimensions of my being I can reveal to them.
I would like you to know me in my total freedom, because that is what I want you to be – totally free, no strings attached.
Blessed is the sannyasin who can trust me without bothering about my statements or my actions.
His is the kingdom of God right now!”
Thanks, Swamishanti, for finding another quote.
I admit, I needed some of THIS stuff, and as far as the vids have been going (also the latest of Ashok), the stuff presented there either strongly repelled me (as I said already). and I have my reason for it, having experienced mental-intellectual fashions coming along the way; flatliners of youtube showbiz may be good for the laughter group section of the Mystic Rose meditation, week two…
However…I guess there is no doubt about it, that in the course of adapting what we call brain to the Soul Issue, where the mind (if needed) becomes a servant instead of the ruler, lots of changes are happening in the physiology too.
I sense much greed in an intellectual discussion about that issue; just the way cunning mind is functioning with the aim to stay the ruler of a game called ´enlightement’.
It´s a very male discussion then, where one wants to top the laboratory statements of the other in one way or the other.
Becomes a trap, in my view. A ´Labyrinth´.
Two significent aspects of the quote, you posted, Swamishanti, I liked best:
One is:
“My enlightenment has freed me from everything, including enlightenment.”
The other:
“The heart knows different ways of seeing. The mind is linear, it looks only towards one line. The heart is multi-dimensional.” (Osho)
To really understand what is spoken there and to embody that understanding may take a lifetime or more….
Madhu
P.S:
This very night, a full moon night special on this very tiny but blue planet circling: It is said that the moon, where humans stuck some flag into the stones some decades ago, has not been seen that close since 1948.
Then this planet moon, the nearest and uninhabitable for us, like most others we’ve come across through curiosity and ambition, will take again another more distant course, spreading its magnetism for ‘free’, so to say, to keep a balance for many of our very rarely existing conditions which allow us as a species simply to be alive.
1948 was the year the Declaration of Human Rights happened. A good night to remember that, isn´t it?
Madhu
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2XB8oHitDA
Thanks, Frank, and what a beautiful, surprising response is this!
Madhu
Yes, isn`t it crazy? A very bright moon last night, they say it won`t be as close to the Earth again for eighty years.
Will this moon energy affect us in some way?
And life on this world, isn`t it crazy? Human beings, with our heads and brains, brains need to be adapted to the `soul issue`. That`s what he said.
Osho used to get lots of headaches, migraines – perhaps his body was adapting itself to the influx of energy.
Swamishanti, how you will give meaning to these words spoken in a certain time-frame? Post master´s demise, when was the last time someone remembered Osho´s people?
And if I say my view, every word uttered by Osho has single-pointed agenda, ‘How to attract His own people from the crowd of others.’
When anyone wants to attract people from others there are only two ways:
Spread the thought of miracle healing. Millions of people want someone to create a push, start momentum in their lives.
Second type of people are educated and stable ones. To attract them, intelligent and wise words are enough if printed in book form.
I think Osho attracted both kinds of people: believer types and wisdom types.
“I don’t want you to believe in my statements, because my statements go on changing every day. If you believe in my statements you are going to be crazy. They are so contradictory, you will not be able to figure out what I actually want to say to you.
But trust remains the same – the same flavour, the same grace, the same beauty, because it is not a statement of the mind. It is not a statement at all. It is a silent communion between two hearts, a silent communion in which two hearts synchronise; their beats become a rhythm, their vibe takes the same colour and aroma.
I am not a man who wants you to believe in anything, including me. I am against belief as such.
That’s why I have been continuously contradicting myself, so nobody can make any belief out of my statements. No scholar, no theologian is going to make any system out of my statements. In thirty years I must have contradicted myself thirty thousand times. Anybody working on me for a Ph.D. will soon be found in a madhouse. And my reason for doing so is crystal clear. If I were making statements consistent with each other, you would not listen to me, you would make a belief system out of it. I am a little outlandish.
In the forty-two years Buddha spoke, you cannot find a single inconsistency, no contradiction. Now it is so easy to make the whole living religion into a dead belief, a dogma. The religion becomes a cult.
Religion is religion only when the master is there continuously watching that you don’t get into the head, that you remain centered in the heart. But when the master is gone, all that you have left with you is his statements. If they are consistent, then it is very easy for you to make a theology, a Christianity, a Buddhism, a Hinduism, Mohammedanism, and then cling to it. You have forgotten the master; now you have only words, which mean nothing. It was the man behind the words who had meant something to you. Can’t you see the difference?”
Osho (August 1985)
Osho says, “My enlightenment has freed me from everything.”
In retrospect, I find that statement difficult to take seriously.
Lokesh, don´t you know the definition of the followers?
These are the people who believe November can be hotter than May if their master recommends this suggestion to the Cosmic Ministry of Environment.
“In the forty-two years that Buddha spoke you cannot find a single inconsistency, no contradiction.”
Might that not have something to do with the authors/keepers of the written records?
Whilst working in Osho Multi-Media in Pune, several years ago, I clearly remember being told that Osho had left clear instructions that any factual errors found in his works were to be corrected.
Importance of Original Knowledge
Principle #1: Don’t trust re-tellers, get hold of the original sources.
A new monk arrives at the monastery. He is assigned to help the other monks in copying the old texts by hand. He notices, however, that they are copying copies, and not the original books.
So, the new monk goes to the head monk to ask him about this. He points out that if there was an error in the first copy, that error would be continued in all of the other copies. The head monk says, “We have been copying from the copies for centuries, but you make a good point, my son.”
So, he goes down into the cellar with one of the copies to check it against the original. Hours later, nobody has seen him. So, one of the monks goes downstairs to look for him. He hears sobbing coming from the back of the cellar and finds the old monk leaning over one of the original books crying. He asks what’s wrong.
“The word is celebrate not celibate,” says the old monk, with tears in his eyes.
Osho said, Osho said, Osho said..Don´t say it like this, always say, “Osho says, Osho says, Osho says…”
And then?
what kind of men are satisfied with words, howsoever beautiful they may sound? If beautiful words of a master are unable to create a beautiful world then something is missing…Something fundamental has gone missing!
Osho never spoke anything really. He was simply clearing the dust off the mirrors.
“What the hell am I doing here?
Persuading you every day that you should not agree with anyone! You should be yourself. You were agreeing with Jesus, you were agreeing with Moses, and now you have started agreeing with me.
But you remain the same – the agreeing fool. Your subjects change, but you don’t change!
I am talking to you in such a way that if you have a little intelligence you cannot agree with me. Every day I go on contradicting myself. How long are you going to put up with me? Sooner or later you will say, “I cannot agree with all these contradictions.” And that’s exactly what I want.
I want you to agree with yourself – a great agreement with whatever you are.”
(Osho, the Ranch period, 1985)
Very interesting video which ofc the usual pundits immediately have to criticise. Most of them without having bothered to see it – something they even proudly brag about. But that’s the SN style: I don’t wanna waste time on actually viewing something, it’s better just to pour out my usual fixed prejudices and ideas.
The video is interesting because it seems possible to scientifically ‘prove’ that something like Enlightenment actually does ‘exist’. Which can be important for anyone inclined to see science as an authority (personally, I am not one of those).
(And I am sure that Dr. Martin has a lot more credentials than the whole of the SN crowd combined. It takes a lot more to be a professor than just playing wise man on a small, unimportant chat site
).
Well, Bodhi, unimportant as SN might be in the world of chat sites, it is obviously important enough for you to drop in and deliver your tuppence worth. Your conclusion, “It takes a lot more to be a professor than just playing wise man on a small, unimportant chat site” is easy enough to understand, but you may be wrong. I very much doubt that you will give that much consideration. We all have our problems in life.
Have you always been such a negative chap?
“a small, unimportant chatsite”
Bodhi Heeren,
You are unjust.
Nobody here sees Sannyas News as an important chatsite. (Apart from Shantam, otherwise why else would he nag and carp in an attempt to manipulate us into making him manager of the Poona ashram?).
The site matters in personal terms possibly, certainly for me. (Not Lokesh, obviously, who despite having more to say about Osho and Sannyas than anyone else, is actually above all this).
Ok, Heeren, as you seem interested in this ‘spiritual technology’ stuff, here’s something else I’ve just come across today (with a 14 mins. sample from ‘Holosync’ at the end!).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZg1dR7tOWs&inf_contact_key=1b6ba657419c03beebcf7d299abf44dfe9f8efd71713373fdfadf36c13ea68c3
Thanks, Bodhi Heeren, for provoking the egos of great mystics from the world of ‘Still exists or no one knows when died’ cult called Sannyas. It is pity, not that Dr. Martin became Osho disciple but you, me and their kind of people.
Anyway, can I ask, have you passed High School or dropped out from the studies and went to India to catch a name from the language you have no idea about?
This is well worth a watch. You know, I tried to share this opportunity with bone-headed sannyasins in Pune.
I will say he has the VR tech backwards. HTC Vive is the platform setting the standard, it is already wireless and the adding of BCI, GSR, eye-tracking etc is well on the way.
If, like me, you have been there, done that…
Take off the headset, the Goose is free.
Frank, watch the video.
Bong,
I certainly go along with the idea that tech can speed up your spiritual experiences of ‘meditation’ and ‘transcendence’ by 8 times or more. It`s just that I no longer value these so-called ‘spiritual’ experiences. They are simply inflations of the ‘ego’. They are trips.
By ego, I mean the part which is just one of the many actors in the dramatis personae of your soul, but who wants to hog the limelight to the exclusion of all others. An ultimately futile task.
This results, in my view of soullessness, characterised by fantastical spiritual fantasies and loss of basic humanness. You seem to be in this kind of state, Bong. You come across to me as a guy standing there in heavily
soiled trousers discoursing loudly about the benefits of spiritual hygiene. You will have to excuse me as I have a little chuckle.
Tech is simply electronic drugs.
Call me when you come down.
Frank said.
“By ego, I mean the part which is just one of the many actors in the dramatis personae of your soul, but who wants to hog the limelight to the exclusion of all others.”
I see ego as all those ideas we have about ourselves that make us think we are special in an apart way, as villain, victim or hero; but I really like your remark. Rounds out my own perception most interestingly. Augments.
Getting identified with being ‘spiritual’ tends to make you override all other parts in the theatre of soul. ‘Spiritual’ always presents itself as the most important thing in life, which is exactly what the ‘ego’ does, too.
That`s why talking to spiritual people is so often like getting cornered by a drunken egomaniac at a party who goes on about how interesting he is. You`ve just gotta get away.
The only other way is to employ the techniques of Dr Marten – not the scientist mentioned above, but the shoemaker. Give the spiritual maniac a compassionate hoof in the lower chakra, a salutary dose of
soul/sole – and provide a bit of ‘grounding’.
It’s a big thing to recognise we can develop ego because we meditate, because of spiritual practice. Not comfortable. A lot of people don’t get there.
“Somehow we know deep within our souls the direction we are to take, but very often that buffoon which we call the ego makes such a fuss that we cannot hear the inner voice.”
Marie-Louise von Franz.
(I found this quotation in a tarot book about the Crowley tarot by Hajo Banzhaf, ‘Against the Chariot’).
Meditation made me think I had transcended everything.
It was only years later that I realised what a twat I still was.
“I am twat”- the ultimate medicine.
LMAO
Eventually we have to forgive ourselves for being twats.
Why not Resort people who meditate a lot in different coloured robes change their mantra for the evening meditation?
Raise the arms and say, “I am Twat.”
Who knows, such honesty gets rewarded by the heavens and people start pouring back in India´s emptiest property?
Went to art school as a ‘mature’ student, since I took Sannyas; and the place was really overcrowded, which caused problems.
Didn’t drink and do drugs anymore, and hadn’t for years, and was under a lot of stress to do with family I had no control over. Was working my ass off really intensely in a general sense and to deal with the family problems, and at painting; and I got my buttons pressed on a daily basis, at mach 25, by my fellow students, who I generally referred to as the brats, to their faces and under my breath, which for some reason made them act a bit sulky.
Was agony, and I recall on one memorable occasion, as I was huddled in a corner, trying to pull myself together, feeling like a raw wound; thinking to myself, “sometimes I get the horrible feeling the only difference between me and the kids is that I know I’m being a twat occasionally, and they never realise they are, but they are all absolutely certain I am”, because despite being art students they were mostly incredibly conservative and disapproved of absolutely everything!!!
Apart from whatever any one of them and their immediate cronies were into. (Still late teens and early twenties most of them. Not long away from mum and dad. Lot of them doing copious amounts of drink and drugs).
“Tech is simply electronic drugs.”
In a way this might be true, Frank, as long as in addition to the claimed increase in overall well-being, in psycho-physical health, we factor in that its purveyors make it clear that facing up to ‘resistance’ in the form of emotional blocks and negative patterns are par for the course, ie it’s not simply a ‘set and forget’ easy ride, one has to pay the price by being responsible.
For example, John Dupuy, the interviewer in the video, used similar methods starting about 10 years ago to overcome a lifetime of depression that had at times made him near-suicidal, and he has made a point of emphasising the ‘work’ he had to do along the way (alone, I think, not including normal therapy) as a result of what was brought up by an immersion in tech methods.
To whom is interested:
“Machines help but don’t create meditation.”
(‘MEDITATION, THE FIRST AND LAST FREEDOM’), page 25.
Cheers!
In my experience, Osho has not cared much about leaving behind an army of enlightenrd disciples. Those who are are self-proclaimed and many of them have not even seen Osho, were not even part of His communes.
]What Osho has cared is to leave behind a system, a way of life, a celebratory atmosphere where His people meet and meditate. From 1987 till Resort replaced Commune, on every food pass, it was written, “Meeting place of Friends.”
The concept of Buddhafield where cultures meet and merge on the foundation of Meditation is what I call Typical Osho. In such kind of surroundings, it matters not how many weeks, months, years or lives it will take….
By chance, I have seen this video. Really would like to recommend to the fellow friends. After few seconds, conversation goes in English.
For me, the touching thing is the day-to-day happening of spirituality-related work (talks, discussion, prayers, meditation) taking place in India for eternity.
And it makes me grateful multi-fold when I see people who are spiritual but have not adopted spirituality as profession.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuMExNGXwHk&feature=youtu.be
Well, I guess this sort of ‘talking about’ suits you, Shantam, it’s no doubt all very ‘entertaining’ for you, but there’s no practicality in this discussion, no sense of what to do or not do once it’s apparently established that ‘God exists’ (or rather, doesn’t ‘exist’ at all, being ‘Nothing’, ‘no-thing’, to quote the masters).
In fact, I find it all rather tedious, even a strain to listen to the main protagonist here.
It is true, Satyadeva. I have also found all these videos tedious, including the one I posted. Therefore I have listened just few minutes all together to taste the sample.
In the same way, I can say this whole circus around Mother Meera too I find not very meaningful. Her fan material has similar quotes: “Ask God, Trust God”.
How far one can fly on the soap bubble of mass generated Blessings? Alas, life is not simple. Inner life surely not.
So, having introduced this video in a very positive way a few hours ago, you now think it’s “tedious”, boring, useless!
You expect anyone to believe anything you say?! No wonder you think “life is complicated”…
Next time, try seeing whether you really think something’s worth recommending, believing or saying before you waste people’s time.