'dusty, this is the definitive word from Niz on personal reincarnation:
Q: Yet, you must believe in having lived before.
M: The scriptures say so, but I know nothing about it. I know myself as I am; as I appeared or will appear is not within my experience. It is not that I do not remember. In fact there is nothing to remember. Reincarnation implies a reincarnating self. There is no such thing.
dialog #56
You gonna' stand corrected or stay stubborn?
I have already said there is no reincarnating self.
Can you take a step back and discern the futility of going back and forth with this kind of exchange? It turns us into nothing more than a pair of bible thumpers cross-quoting apparently contradictory verses to one another.
This dialog you've put up is a common thread through what he said to peeps. Niz constantly pointed the seekers away from paying attention to either his or their appearance as people, because that was the false to be seen as the false. All conditioned attachments to the "I AM":
===
Q: The jnani -- is he the witness or the Supreme?
M: He is the Supreme, of course, but he can also be viewed as the universal witness.
Q: But he remains a person?
M: When you believe yourself to be a person, you see persons everywhere. In reality there are no persons, only threads of memories and habits. At the moment of realisation the person ceases. Identity remains, but identity is not a person, it is inherent in the reality itself. The person has no being in itself; it is a reflection in the mind of the witness, the 'I am', which again is a mode of being.
dialog #13
============
But seeing the personal for what it is doesn't negate the person in the sense of erasing or obliterating it, as the personal isn't, in the sense of what Niz is pointing to, the opposite of impersonal. The conditioned body and mind are still there as remnants of the life lived and to be lived. The cessation of the person that Niz refers to isn't the end of personal experience. The shedding of the person isn't the shedding of all personal conditioning:
===============
Q: You smoke? M: My body kept a few habits which may as well continue till it dies. There is no harm in them.
dialog #54
Q: I see you sitting in your son's house waiting for lunch to be served. And I wonder whether the content of your consciousness is similar to mine, or partly different, or totally different. Are you hungry and thirsty as I am, waiting rather impatiently for the meals to be served, or are you in an altogether different state of mind?
Maharaj: There is not much difference on the surface, but very much of it in depth. You know yourself only through the senses and the mind. You take yourself to be what they suggest; having no direct knowledge of yourself, you have mere ideas; all mediocre, second-hand, by hearsay. Whatever you think you are you take it to be true; the habit of imagining yourself perceivable and describable is very strong with you.
I see as you see, hear as you hear, taste as you taste, eat as you eat. I also feel thirst and hunger and expect my food to be served on time. When starved or sick, my body and mind go weak. All this I perceive quite clearly, but somehow I am not in it, I feel myself as if floating over it, aloof and detached.
dialog #57
Q: I see you living your life according to a pattern. You run a meditation class in the morning, lecture and have discussions regularly; twice daily there is worship (puja) and religious singing (bhajan) in the evening. You seem to adhere to the routine scrupulously.
M: The worship and the singing are as I found them and I saw no reason to interfere. The general routine is according to the wishes of the people with whom I happen to live or who come to listen. They are working people, with many obligations and the timings are for their convenience. Some repetitive routine is inevitable. Even animals and plants have their time-tables.
dialog #61
=============
You see, what Niz means by the "person" is something very simple, and doesn't refer to all body/mind conditioning, just to a very particular subset of it:
============
M: A person is a set pattern of desires and thoughts and resulting actions; there is no such pattern in my case. There is nothing I desire or fear -- how can there be a pattern?
dialog #46
============
So for Niz you see, his body and mind were something that he used rather than the other way around. He analogized his conditioned self once to a house that he could move in and out of freely:
============
M: A long as you are engrossed in the world, you are unable to know yourself: to know yourself, turn away your attention from the world and turn it within.
Q: I cannot destroy the world.
M: There is no need. Just understand that what you see is not what is. Appearances will dissolve on investigation and the underlying reality will come to the surface. You need not burn the house to get out of it. You just walk out. It is only when you cannot come and go freely that the house becomes a jail. I move in and out of consciousness easily and naturally and therefore to me the world is a home, not a prison.
dialog #92
============
So you see he didn't advise seekers to tear down and discard all of their conditioning. Just, instead, to see the truth about the person.
============
M: Self-realisation is primarily the knowledge of one's conditioning and the awareness that the infinite variety of conditions depends on our infinite ability to be conditioned and to give rise to variety. To the conditioned mind the unconditioned appears as the totality as well as the absence of everything. Neither can be directly experienced, but this does not make it not-existent.
dialog #39
============
Stop trying to imagine what life was like for Niz, because what he's pointing to can't be imagined. He was always very clear on this point to the seekers: "go find out what I'm telling you for yourself".
Very nice quotes. What does it matter to you what I think?
Why didn't you ask yourself that same question about me before you posted the first Niz quote?
Very nice quotes. What does it matter to you what I think?
Why didn't you ask yourself that same question about me before you posted the first Niz quote?
This started with, if you want to understand E, read Niz. I happened to have bought I Am That a while back, had looked at it a little, and had read a few quotes here on ST's. So I picked up the book and started reading, liked it, but from reading 26 pages (then) wasn't getting, Oh, this is E.....like...at all. So I posted some things I liked (without reference to E), and then posted some more. And I thanked you also. If I post more from Niz, you don't have to consider them directed at you. (BTW, I have liked some of jly's posting previously). ....Oh, also there is a certain resonance with my own tradition.
I anticipated getting another Niz book so did some exploring on Amazon Tues-Wed. I narrowed it down to two books, Pointers From Nis M by Ramesh Balsekar and Consciousness and the Absolute: the Final Talks. Both had very good reviews. I settled on Pointers, it came yesterday, I read 92 pages yesterday. I will have to finish I Am That to make a final comparison, but it seems there is a subtle difference between the Niz of the dialogues and Balsekar's Niz. I can see that E is more like Balsekar's Niz. (I have read some Balsekar before, not greatly impressed). ......Oh, and, I have read a lot of Stephen Wolinsky, who sat with Niz a lot and writes a lot about Niz. I wasn't getting the Niz of the dialogues from him either.
You cannot come to consciousness unconsciously. Directed attention supposes someone there to direct it--not just chariot without driver. All work begins with the control of attention. Madame Ouspensky
A man is unable to explain what he himself really is. The only thing you have to sacrifice is your suffering. No work can be done in sleep. You can't see above your own level of being. Gurdjieff
Gurdjieff said to Ouspensky: "You always think - I only now and then".
It amazes me to see that people assign some otherworldly qualities, lifestyle, abilities to those who have torn off the veil.
They did what all of us are doing: ate, slept, worked, f*^ked, admired nature, read books, interacted with others, loved, felt responsibility, wore silly or elegant closing, thought many thoughts, felt many feelings, travelled, sh*^tted... went about the usual business of living, being Life.
Keep in mind, that the veil you referred to there as being 'torn off' is what gives rise to the deep feelings of discord that oft are referred to as 'suffering.' So yes, as you say, all the same kinds of activities for the most part are engaged with, and indeed, feelings of many hues still are felt, post awakening, but if the veil truly has been torn off, there is no longer any anchor from which the lower range of feelings can gain any footing; (despair, rage, terror)...and if any of the lesser lower range feelings DO happen to arise (irritation, anger, sorrow, fear, boredom, restlessness, anxiety,) they arise and quickly fall away as absent that veil (which is comprised of ideas/attachments), they have no staying power....nothing from which to gain any footing.
After TR, especially when some reasonable time passed - TR people seem to become whimsical and playful. Nothing to fear and nothing to worry about, because it is past the 'I', the 'me', the 'us', even the 'we'.
Yes. and the difference between that absence of fear or worry and that presence of whimsy and play is actually quite monumental in terms of the difference it makes in the kind of experience had...not sure why some seem so intent upon downplaying it...
That said, those qualities while being different in terms of the kind of experience they parlay, are not being touted as being 'otherworldly' any more than the falling away of attachments is seen to be 'otherworldly.'
Why didn't you ask yourself that same question about me before you posted the first Niz quote?
This started with, if you want to understand E, read Niz. I happened to have bought I Am That a while back, had looked at it a little, and had read a few quotes here on ST's. So I picked up the book and started reading, liked it, but from reading 26 pages (then) wasn't getting, Oh, this is E.....like...at all. So I posted some things I liked (without reference to E), and then posted some more. And I thanked you also. If I post more from Niz, you don't have to consider them directed at you. (BTW, I have liked some of jly's posting previously). ....Oh, also there is a certain resonance with my own tradition.
I anticipated getting another Niz book so did some exploring on Amazon Tues-Wed. I narrowed it down to two books, Pointers From Nis M by Ramesh Balsekar and Consciousness and the Absolute: the Final Talks. Both had very good reviews. I settled on Pointers, it came yesterday, I read 92 pages yesterday. I will have to finish I Am That to make a final comparison, but it seems there is a subtle difference between the Niz of the dialogues and Balsekar's Niz. I can see that E is more like Balsekar's Niz. (I have read some Balsekar before, not greatly impressed). ......Oh, and, I have read a lot of Stephen Wolinsky, who sat with Niz a lot and writes a lot about Niz. I wasn't getting the Niz of the dialogues from him either.
Well, I'm glad you've found a new interest, and thanks for sharing that, but I could have done without the revisionist history.
This started with, if you want to understand E, read Niz. I happened to have bought I Am That a while back, had looked at it a little, and had read a few quotes here on ST's. So I picked up the book and started reading, liked it, but from reading 26 pages (then) wasn't getting, Oh, this is E.....like...at all. So I posted some things I liked (without reference to E), and then posted some more. And I thanked you also. If I post more from Niz, you don't have to consider them directed at you. (BTW, I have liked some of jly's posting previously). ....Oh, also there is a certain resonance with my own tradition.
I anticipated getting another Niz book so did some exploring on Amazon Tues-Wed. I narrowed it down to two books, Pointers From Nis M by Ramesh Balsekar and Consciousness and the Absolute: the Final Talks. Both had very good reviews. I settled on Pointers, it came yesterday, I read 92 pages yesterday. I will have to finish I Am That to make a final comparison, but it seems there is a subtle difference between the Niz of the dialogues and Balsekar's Niz. I can see that E is more like Balsekar's Niz. (I have read some Balsekar before, not greatly impressed). ......Oh, and, I have read a lot of Stephen Wolinsky, who sat with Niz a lot and writes a lot about Niz. I wasn't getting the Niz of the dialogues from him either.
a soon , as long as one is in the realm of mind, ego will be present and contaminate in some way or other.It happnes with Jed, you,me Tano everyone.I understood Jed as claiming it isnt so.That is one of my objections against him,or rather, his 3 first books.I never read the sequels
as for Peace to happen only after all chakras are opened, i did not mean to say that,i dont recall saying that.The more chakras are open, the more it ´´thickens´´ and expands.
maybe we should define Peace before we move on.But i have not the time for that.There may be different
´´levels´´(for want of a better word) of peace.I suspect there are, my experience there are.
I was on the way out of the forum,when your comment came.I´ll be back in some weeks or months.
the only peace i know of that can not be ´´described in words´´, is trance-like state beyond mind, but that leaves one impotent to act on-in the world, because, to do that, mind is indispensable.
so think you misunderstood me.
seeya´round
peace to all
There are days when Jed would say he has Ego, There are days when he would say 'There is no me'. Both are valid, and I can certainly say the same. In its rudimentary form, the very basic form of self preservation Ego - will always prevail. Other layers of it can be uncovered, seen and taken with a pinch of salt for what they are - an illusion of 'you'.
Peace that passeth understanding. That's peace. Not a trance like, zombified state.
Can you keep peace, BE peace inside when the world around you collapses? No, Laughter understood you alright, your shallow, misappropriated version of 'peace'.
Passeth understanding... UNDERSTANDING. Can you live without understanding and be at peace?
Most people can't.
your shallow, misappropriated version of 'peace'.
well i guess i have to concede-to keep the ´´peace ´´lol, who could argue with a jed parrot anyway-this here has turned into pseudo new age kindergarten spirtuality foodfight
Can you live without understanding and be at peace?
please--define understanding-cause i feel you dont quite understand, or perhaps you are blind to your own prejudices and read from a perspective that has to make me ´´wrong´´ no matter what i say...
a soon , as long as one is in the realm of mind, ego will be present and contaminate in some way or other.It happnes with Jed, you,me Tano everyone.I understood Jed as claiming it isnt so.That is one of my objections against him,or rather, his 3 first books.I never read the sequels
.nohe's quite honest with his readers about the fact that he's lying to them
as for Peace to happen only after all chakras are opened, i did not mean to say that,i dont recall saying that.The more chakras are open, the more it ´´thickens´´ and expands.
maybe we should define Peace before we move on.But i have not the time for that.There may be different
´´levels´´(for want of a better word) of peace.I suspect there are, my experience there are.
I was on the way out of the forum,when your comment came.I´ll be back in some weeks or months.
the only peace i know of that can not be ´´described in words´´, is trance-like state beyond mind, but that leaves one impotent to act on-in the world, because, to do that, mind is indispensable.
so think you misunderstood me.
seeya´round
peace to all
There is a peace available that's always the case, in motion or otherwise, unshakable, unassailable by any conditions, as it is independent of them. There's no way to describe the experience of it, because really, no peep ever knows or experiences it, but it's not simply a rumor or a fable. It is reality itself.
Yes, physical pain is as real as it gets, and as I said elsewhere, it can be mitigated but not escaped, depending upon where attention is placed. Placed outside the "meat suit" in service to others is one example of personal experience, and a first clue, I used where pain was almost forgotten/lost for a time in that service. Also, Niz claimed to have realized that his "body" was not the "meat suit" he wore at all, but rather was the Cosmos Itself...a Universal Body. Upon this realization he feared nothing and considered what ever was happening in/to the little "meat suit" he wore as less than a minor inconvenience. His attention therefore was on the Universal, and as such what was happening within his "meat suit" was only the tiniest, transient part of the Eternal Whole. The Realization of his cosmic nature is what I see as being behind his "ability" to suffer great pain with grace, and gave him ability, nearly to the day he died, to offer service to others in the finding for themselves that which he had found.
"Niz claimed to have realized that his "body" was not the "meat suit" he wore at all, but rather was the Cosmos Itself...a Universal Body."
It all sounds grand, doesn't it... Translation: Dust To Dust. Perhaps, at least one of the atoms which make up my 'meat suit' right now - will end up in the future Dalai Lama or an unknown street cleaner or an ISIS fighter.
I don't have a preference there. Neither do I have any preference for how long I'd live, ready any minute. To die without pain would be a bonus.
What Niz was pointing to leaves no room for even a speck of dust.
"The millions of forms are the manifestation of consciousness. It is the millions of forms that get created and destroyed, but universal consciousness itself is unborn and undying. You are this unlimited universal consciousness. Only that in which consciousness manifests itself is limited, and is created and destroyed. Creation and destruction is a continuous process. The total potential of consciousness remains. It is unlimited."
"I am that by which I know I am" - Nisargadatta Maharaj
No, I have never said sdp will reincarnate. I have said sdp will not reincarnate. I have said, what most people think themselves to be, thinking, feeling/emotions, bodily actions, is a false sense of self, aka ego/personality/cultural self/ mask/persona/imaginary I, dies when the physical body dies, or shortly afterwards. This has been my understanding for over 40 years.
So what's that stuff about karma and reincarnation?
What if a false sense of Self dies BEFORE SDP's physical body dies?
What I get from reading I Am That is that Niz lives from the deepest core of ~what~ he is. ~This~ is present to him, ~who~ he is. It was in some sense real and ~tangible~. This change is not some kind of psychological magic trick. It's a real change, like a caterpillar really becomes a butterfly, that's the sense I get from Niz.
We are born as essence, who we actually are. "sdp" is acquired in the circumstances of life from an early age, and eventually essence is covered over and we live through "sdp" instead of through essence. So life feeds "sdp" and not essence. The psychology of "sdp", who we think ourselves to be, personality/ego/cultural self is an obstruction. So if the false sense of self dies, before the physical body, then one can live through who the actually are, they can ~be~. This seems the case with Niz, from what he says, his manner, his language, some extraneous things he says.
What Niz says parallels some things from my tradition. The karma and reincarnation thing is more complicated. When I first got the Niz book (over a year ago) I poked around in it, I got curious about his teacher, looking into this. Turns out Niz took notes from his teachings in the 20's and 30's. So Niz has written several books directly from his master's teachings, Shri Siddharameshwar Maharaj. One of these is called Master Key to Self-Realization. Later this was translated into English. It's about 95 pages and can be bought alone or it is enclosed in two other longer works by Niz which are the teachings of his guru, written also from notes Niz took (These other two books which contain Master Key in whole, are, Master of Self-Realization: An Ultimate Understanding [this is direct teaching of Niz' guru], and Amrut Laya: The Stateless State [this is commentary by Niz' guru on an older work]). The point is karma and reincarnation are openly discussed in these books. Much of the language Niz uses came directly from his guru. The four bodies of man are the main discussion of Master Key (at least 75 pages). These are the physical body, the subtle body, the causal body and the great causal body.
There is a slow path which the majority of humanity travels, in Master Key this is called "The Ant's Way" (in the preface, page not numbered, but there's only two pages). Shri Siddharameshwar Maharaj taught that there is a way to attain "Final Reality" very quickly instead of the long arduous Ant's Way, which he taught and which he called "The Bird's Way". This basically is what Niz experienced after the three years of meditation and essentially what he taught and what he meant by staying with the I Am.
So upon the death of the physical body, the other three bodies do not die, they retain various "combinations" of the three gunas which constitute the samskaras. These are what ~demand~ a future incarnation unless they are completely ~burned up~ in any one incarnation, which would be the last necessary incarnation. When I first looked at I Am That I was skipping around and browsing. It wasn't until laughter's recommendation, that I started at page one and then came to the mention of the causal body, page 12. I have the context for what he meant. I cannot help it if others do not have the context to understand what Niz was saying, exactly. If you understand (even theoretically) it is quite clear what he was saying in that dialogue. It is also quite clear what Niz is saying in the other quotes you supplied, from the same book, one does not negate the other.
Basically, the samskaras are what ~cause~ our behavior, our thinking, emotions and actions. (This is why E and gopal are wrong in their views, and even ZD, wrong in one sense, but right in another sense. Yes, the Whole is one movement, but the Whole activates our samskaras until they are burnt up, the samskaras are actually an obstruction). If one doesn't burn up all the samskaras, one is still essentially on the Ant's Way. But one can be SR, in some sense, without having burned up all the samskaras. This is why I said in an earlier post that SR is just a little bump in the road. In the three years, Niz dwelt in the I Am, he was clearing up stuff in the physical body, subtle body and the causal body, by living in and through the I Am. After the three years, or some time later, Niz "put an ax" to the I Am, and lived through Self, this would be living through the great causal body. All this is discussed in Master Key. (And to laughter, yes, this is the other I talked about).
It's all rather complicated, but that doesn't mean it isn't the case. It very really rather seems that Niz was all he said, but he was it, he didn't merely understand it conceptually.
But the main point is that the complete journey can be ~done~ in any one life. But if one doesn't continuously live in the I Am, without interruption, one doesn't get to ~Being~ the Self. The caterpillar can be told all about the butterfly it will some day be, but it isn't, until It Is.
You cannot come to consciousness unconsciously. Directed attention supposes someone there to direct it--not just chariot without driver. All work begins with the control of attention. Madame Ouspensky
A man is unable to explain what he himself really is. The only thing you have to sacrifice is your suffering. No work can be done in sleep. You can't see above your own level of being. Gurdjieff
Gurdjieff said to Ouspensky: "You always think - I only now and then".
"Niz claimed to have realized that his "body" was not the "meat suit" he wore at all, but rather was the Cosmos Itself...a Universal Body."
It all sounds grand, doesn't it... Translation: Dust To Dust. Perhaps, at least one of the atoms which make up my 'meat suit' right now - will end up in the future Dalai Lama or an unknown street cleaner or an ISIS fighter.
I don't have a preference there. Neither do I have any preference for how long I'd live, ready any minute. To die without pain would be a bonus.
What Niz was pointing to leaves no room for even a speck of dust.
"The millions of forms are the manifestation of consciousness. It is the millions of forms that get created and destroyed, but universal consciousness itself is unborn and undying. You are this unlimited universal consciousness. Only that in which consciousness manifests itself is limited, and is created and destroyed. Creation and destruction is a continuous process. The total potential of consciousness remains. It is unlimited."
Precisely.
You cannot come to consciousness unconsciously. Directed attention supposes someone there to direct it--not just chariot without driver. All work begins with the control of attention. Madame Ouspensky
A man is unable to explain what he himself really is. The only thing you have to sacrifice is your suffering. No work can be done in sleep. You can't see above your own level of being. Gurdjieff
Gurdjieff said to Ouspensky: "You always think - I only now and then".
I have already said there is no reincarnating self.
Yes, but that's not all you've said.
Correct, the long post above goes into that somewhat.
You cannot come to consciousness unconsciously. Directed attention supposes someone there to direct it--not just chariot without driver. All work begins with the control of attention. Madame Ouspensky
A man is unable to explain what he himself really is. The only thing you have to sacrifice is your suffering. No work can be done in sleep. You can't see above your own level of being. Gurdjieff
Gurdjieff said to Ouspensky: "You always think - I only now and then".
I hold Mr. McKenna in high regard, because he had the guts to call a spade - a spade.He has never been my teacher, but he was the guide in the aftermath.
Teacher....Guide....why mince words? You admire those who have to guts to call a spade a spade, but then dance around the obvious. This is what I've been trying to point out in the majority of my discourse with you here.
This one phrase in the context you mention it (jed's books) tells me you don't have a clue what you are talking about, and it's not because of terminology.
Like it or not, one who insists he is adept at manifesting a personal reality to his liking, and who insists he is awake and clear, but who can barely stand to exchange anything deeper than weather talk with the majority of those appearing in his reality, is Neither awake or clear...he's obviously got a great big 'ol blind spot, or a couple we could say.
If he truly is adept at manifesting a personal reality reflective of his preferences...why did he not simply manifest more folks he could relate to? If he truly is awake and seeing clearly, how is he himself missing this bit?
And beyond the manifesting bit, why is he placing so much significance upon the surface differences of the others appearing to him, vs. the underlying, foundational 'sameness' that he says he has realized? Someone who looks at another and the first thing he sees is differences, as in "Wow...this dude is asleep and therefore, I have so little in common with him that I can't even share a bottle of beer & game of pool with him", is failing to see the underlying Truth in favor of separation. How is that happening if he truly is awake and clear?
You have a very rigid IDEA, a set of concepts about what enlightenment is. They are not 'it'.
Is it really so strange to equate enlightenment with 'being awake to' the foundation of Oneness that gives rise to All?
Estimation huh... So.. what is THIS? What is 'it'?
...difficult to put into words... but will try; The totality/completeness of all contained in this, red hot, right here, right now, present moment of being..is THIS. And "It" refers to "all that can be known."
Figgles, you are selling fake goods. It is not my business to tell you not to, if that's what keeps you engaged with life.
But I don't see the point in this discussion, it keeps going on in circle, and will do so indefinitely... unless you abandon the male, pride induced part of you and stay open.
I am more open than I think you realize...how about you?
What I get from reading I Am That is that Niz lives from the deepest core of ~what~ he is. ~This~ is present to him, ~who~ he is. It was in some sense real and ~tangible~. This change is not some kind of psychological magic trick. It's a real change, like a caterpillar really becomes a butterfly, that's the sense I get from Niz.
...........snip..............
It's all rather complicated, but that doesn't mean it isn't the case. It very really rather seems that Niz was all he said, but he was it, he didn't merely understand it conceptually.
But the main point is that the complete journey can be ~done~ in any one life. But if one doesn't continuously live in the I Am, without interruption, one doesn't get to ~Being~ the Self. The caterpillar can be told all about the butterfly it will some day be, but it isn't, until It Is.
It is not complicated, but I can't help, but feel that you interpret all of this literally, so may I ask you.... again: how do you, YOU - see reincarnation and what it is? Without using fancy Sanskrit words, for they all have a corresponding meaning in English...
Tell me (if you can) what StardustPilgrim sees. Not what Niz said. I don't care about what Niz said, and what Jed said and what Ramana said and what any of others say. What does SDP say?
Growing up, from as early as I can remember.....well, not true, say from beginning of school, first grade on, I was the most shy, inhibited and insecure person who ever lived. (Of course that's a slight exaggeration, but only slight). If there was structure, I could do that, work, study, interact with teachers, I could do that. I was perfectly happy and secure while alone, but if I had to interact with anyone, my head would be empty and I didn't know what to say. I didn't know how to carry on a conversation. I could play ball, play games, I could do things around a central activity, but if there was no central activity, I didn't know how to interact with people. I was fine alone, most comfortable alone, I was myself, alone. This was not too hard being young, but the older I got the more difficult it became. So I spent most of my free time alone. But as I got older I wanted to have friends, but didn't know how. I felt invisible, and was even surprised sometimes when someone said something to me in school. More times than not this was, You sure are quiet. I felt trapped inside myself.
In High School (late '60's) I began learning a little something about psychology, and as a Sr. began studying the metaphysical stuff. This, in the beginning, was mainly from a standpoint of why I am the way I am. It didn't really help to know there might be a reason for why I am the way I am. The Vietnam War was going on when I finished HS, so college was my only option. It continued giving me structure, plus it kept me out of the war, college deferment. But then I also had to think of, what about after college, what am I going to do with my life. Most everything I considered, nope, can't do that, you have to interact with people to do that. After two years of college there was the first draft lottery, my number was 360 (out of 366, I was born in a leap year). So, no chance of getting drafted, so I no longer had to have my college deferment. So I started dropping classes, mostly all my time was spent studying esoteric-metaphysical-type stuff. I finished only 17 more hours in the next year and a half. And things got nasty, I started getting depressed. And then ya-da, ya-da, ya-da, I've already told you some of the rest.
But basically, from 1976 onward, I have had little interest in life, outer life. My conditioning plays out. I have certain needs. I managed to get married along the way, have four kids (marriage lasted 15 years). I stumbled into a job I didn't really like, 1980, but turned out to be ideal for me. Most of the time I dealt with houses and tools, and to some extent my own boss and to a little more extent my building contractor. When I started running a crew, I usually trained my own helpers. I usually got stuck with the worst guy hired. I had a few very good helpers over the years, but these usually moved on after about two years. But even this was just work, just a work relationship. For over twenty years I worked mostly for the same contractor, he liked me and I like working for him. I did that for 33 years, and two years ago I retired from being an electrician. I have lived of SS for two years and a little savings.
I don't want anything to do with reincarnation, but I understand some things that you don't want to hear, you probably didn't even read my post. That's OK. I know, to some extent, what constitutes who-what I am, at the deepest level. I know what does not constitute ~my self~, IOW, what is imaginary. I know the difference, meaning, I know how to live through who I am in actuality. I also know to some extent what the possibility is for a man (or woman of course), and the way to that. Gurdjieff said, I can teach you how to make shoes, but you have to make the shoes. That's what I learned. And then many things are not taught, you have to come to understand by doing the inner work. You could say that there is a ladder, and sometimes you have to build the next step. If you don't, you don't get to the next step that's already there, IOW, some rungs are built by doing the inner work. And if you don't, you eventually drift on to something else. So, some of these things, in one way or another, are about all I have ever posted here on ST's for 5+ years. Not many people are interested, that's OK too. (But I get some kind words from time to time, that's appreciated). I sincerely wouldn't wish on anybody what I've been through the last 40 years, and even all my life, but I wouldn't trade them for anything.
But only so much can be said, and if what is said does not provoke any interest, then that's that.
You cannot come to consciousness unconsciously. Directed attention supposes someone there to direct it--not just chariot without driver. All work begins with the control of attention. Madame Ouspensky
A man is unable to explain what he himself really is. The only thing you have to sacrifice is your suffering. No work can be done in sleep. You can't see above your own level of being. Gurdjieff
Gurdjieff said to Ouspensky: "You always think - I only now and then".
well i guess i have to concede-to keep the ´´peace ´´lol, who could argue with a jed parrot anyway-this here has turned into pseudo new age kindergarten spirtuality foodfight
Can you live without understanding and be at peace?
please--define understanding-cause i feel you dont quite understand, or perhaps you are blind to your own prejudices and read from a perspective that has to make me ´´wrong´´ no matter what i say...
You are sensitive.... but only to your own subjective perceptions. I told you before you can never be 'wrong'. You are where you are, how can this be in any way wrong?
Understanding - mental comprehension.
See you in Portugal one day
either you use the word ´´peace´´ and are in mind and the realm of description, and (mis)understanding, or you use no words and then you are in zombieland.
so if you can say´´peace´´, describing something, why can i not say deep peace (f.i.)?
i can see Maya, and attach no meaning or label onto anything i see.But i have my ears,eyes and heart open and as such can never avoid the trappings of ego-the senses are subject to conditioning,which is different for everyone...might as well accept that and allow you and me to describe as closely as we can, what we experience. Some of it may filter through the -always indequate-words and actually convey something.Even to the other side of the planet.
