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Post by laughter on Jul 12, 2021 0:50:21 GMT -5
I think what we all can agree upon is that there is no freedom without having seen thru the SVP. And in Advaita, it usually stops right there. Mystery solved. Mission accomplished (or so it seems). I don't know what you took away from these discussions with Enigma and Figgles, but they taught me mainly this: 1) people can teach oneness and still (unconsciously/unknowingly) argue for separation; because 2) just seeing thru the SVP without having seen directly into one's true nature can result in a rather shallow or merely theoretical understanding of oneness; and so 3) seeing thru the SVP but not seeing directly into one's true nature may result in erroneous conclusions about what the true nature of THIS actually is; therefore 4) just seeing thru the SVP doesn't give the full picture in terms of the true nature of reality. Said that, it's just not possible to have realized oneness and then still argue in all earnestness that we can never know for sure if there are other perceivers. So I'd say, just having seen thru the SVP may only give an idea or hint of what oneness is and what it implies. In order to fully comprehend oneness and what it implies, it has to be seen directly, i.e. seen with the eyes of the Infinite, which happens non-locally. Yes. I totally agree. After "the little guy in the head" suddenly vanished, and it was realized that the whole SVP thing had been an incredible illusion, there was still the world/reality/the actual being seen, and before the question, "What is seeing if there is no SVP?" could fully arise, it was suddenly realized that what had been seen 15 years earlier during a CC was the whole shebang, and that THAT had been both the see-er and the seen. If there hadn't been a CC that revealed the Infinite 15 years earlier, I have no idea what might have been erroneously concluded. The other thing I remember mentioning during the discussions with E was the psychological effect of directly apprehending the Infinite. It left me in a state of awe and reverence (or adoration) for the vastness of what had been seen, and that seems to be missing in people who have only penetrated the illusion of the SVP. Unless the Infinite has been seen with the eyes of the Infinite, a sense of the spiritual or a sense of holiness seems to be absent. Seeing into one's true nature makes one feel like bowing down in worship of THAT. I even can get the sense from figs sometimes when she writes about emptiness, formlessness, and surrender. Yes, irony.
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Post by zendancer on Jul 12, 2021 5:55:59 GMT -5
Haha! Yes, I'm always telling people to forget the word "if." Things unfolded exactly how they unfolded, but it was the CC that changed everything for this character. Afterwards, I felt just like Kabir who said, "I saw the infinite for 15 seconds and became a servant for life." Yes, the non-locality of perception can't be understood without the reference for it. In my case the thought appeared, "Who is perceiving this?" and I discovered that I could not remember my own name. I had no idea who or what was perceiving because there was only a state of oneness rather than the usual divided-mind state of the observer and the observed. I have friends in TAT who discount Segal as someone who suffered from a pathological personality disassociation syndrome, but her book rings true to me, and I feel confident that she accurately described what happened to her. Her book made a profound impression upon me, and she hammered home the fact that there is no SVP so strongly that it took away "my" future. After reading her book 7 times, it suddenly dawned on me that whatever I was looking for could not be located in the future of a personal "me" because the personal "me" was an illusion. Whatever it was had to be here and now. That realization was profound, but it remained intellectual until a year or so later when "the little guy in the head" suddenly vanished, and it was finally understood what she was pointing to. Her story is definitely one of the most interesting accounts in ND literature. I’m about 2/3 done with the book and it seems I remembered some passages of the book incorrectly. Yes, her descriptions are spot on, very detailed and to the point. However, what doesn’t ring true at all is the constant fear, or even “terror” she experienced all day every day for more than a decade. And I think this is because she may have lost her identification with the SVP, but she still seemed to be totally identified with the mind, just minus the SVP. She definitely suffered from overthinking. And it wore her down. So what she describes in the first part of the book, even though technically correct, that’s not enlightenment. It may, however, be called awakening or mind-enlightenment, i.e. the witnessing is happening from the perspective of mind, not prior to mind. So there is clearly something amiss there. Because basically, the way she describes her experience, it does seem like some kind of zombie state or twilight zone between the personal and the impersonal. Clearly she is not centered in the personal perspective (aka SVP) anymore, but there isn't anything what she describes in the first part of the book that has the ring of impersonal perspective (aka prior to mind) either. Think about it, when you had your realization(s), did you shake and sweat in terror for days, weeks or even years because of your new perspective? And was one of the first thoughts that came to mind that you might have gone insane? But that’s what happened to her, so she went from psychologists to psychiatrists to – eventually - non-duality teachers. And I am not surprised that the psychologists and psychiatrists she had been seen over the years had no idea what happened to her or what to do with her, other than prescribing some drugs to ease the fear by making her numb, an offer which she always declined. What I found surprising though was that the non-duality teachers she was contacting in the beginning, while congratulating her on her experience of no-self, had no clue either and were obviously just speaking from book knowledge (check out chapter 7 if you have the book). For her, however, talking to these ND and Zen people was a major turning point because she realized that she hasn’t gone insane and that there may be a deeper meaning to all of this and that there are likely more realizations to come that would end this state of confusion and terror. But until she had that deep CC, it seems all mostly intellectual, I’m afraid. And these non-duality and Zen teachers not noticing the hyper-intellectual nature of her perspective doesn’t speak well for them or their own state of realization, IMO. I’ll go into more details in a separate thread. It’s worth going thru this book chapter by chapter because, IMO, it does show clearly the difference between actual enlightenment (down to the visceral level) and what we sometimes call mind-enlightenment (limited to the intellectual level). She’s an excellent case study for what we have been saying, that you have to feel it in your bones or else it’s worthless and that there's more to realize than that the SVP is an illusion. Also, let’s not forget that Suzanne was a master meditator and had been part of a hardcore meditation group (TM) for many years. So this may have contributed to her rather weird path to enlightenment and mental state. Agreed. FWIW I never thought of Segal's sudden loss of selfhood at the bus stop as enlightenment, and it was never clear to me that she ever became enlightened in the sense of living in the natural state. I saw it as simply the loss of the SVP perspective, and for some people this can be extremely frightening. Remember the young guy who tried the Mooji meditation one time and the same sort of thing happened to him? He came to this forum trying to get advice about how to get his usual sense of selfhood back. While discussing his case, one of us discovered some psychiatrists in England who treated or mentioned treating about a hundred people with the same sort of disassociation syndrome. People are different, and what's wonderful for some people can be horrifying for others. I remember a local meditator telling me that he talked his brother into trying meditation, and shortly afterwards the guy started meditating he had some sort of meditation-related experience that scared him so badly that he never meditated again, and never wanted to even talk about it again. Zen has a term--"makyo"-- which translates as something like "devil world," and many ZM's warn people that meditation can trigger all kinds of stuff in the subconscious that may rise to the surface. One ZM wrote about some horrifying image that regularly arose during his first years of meditation, and he would have to dunk his head in ice water to free himself from the image. Apparently that sort of thing is not too uncommon, and I once had a frightening experience of the same sort. ZM's advise people to ignore that kind of stuff and eventually it all bubbles up and goes away on its own. ZM Seung Sahn, while doing his 100 day retreat that resulted in a major kensho, wrote that after day 80 all kinds of strange stuff happened--angelic figures appeared as well as demonic figures--, but all of it finally ended shortly before his big CC. In Segal's case the sudden shift from a personal perspective to a totally impersonal perspective was extremely frightening and apparently sent her mind into overdrive, and her thoughts led her to think that her perspective was pathological long before psychiatrists came to the same conclusion, and reinforced that idea. I think it was Jean Klein who finally helped put her mind at ease twelve years after the sense of being a SVP disappeared. In my case, as I suspect is the case for most people who pursue ND, every time selfhood disappeared life became blissful, peaceful, simple, and was accompanied by a joyous sense of flow, but Segal was one of those people who fell into that smaller category of people who find the loss of the SVP perspective horrifying. I don't think I would consider Segal a case of mind-enlightenment because there was nothing about her loss of the SVP perspective that was remotely enlightening, but her story is certainly fascinating for a lot of reasons. I'll look forward to your discussion of her book. As an aside, I've always been amazed at her writing style. Her book flows in a way that makes reading it effortless, and I've probably read it 10 or 12 times--sometimes just studying her writing style in an effort to understand how she achieved that effect.
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Post by zazeniac on Jul 12, 2021 8:10:50 GMT -5
I’m about 2/3 done with the book and it seems I remembered some passages of the book incorrectly. Yes, her descriptions are spot on, very detailed and to the point. However, what doesn’t ring true at all is the constant fear, or even “terror” she experienced all day every day for more than a decade. And I think this is because she may have lost her identification with the SVP, but she still seemed to be totally identified with the mind, just minus the SVP. She definitely suffered from overthinking. And it wore her down. So what she describes in the first part of the book, even though technically correct, that’s not enlightenment. It may, however, be called awakening or mind-enlightenment, i.e. the witnessing is happening from the perspective of mind, not prior to mind. So there is clearly something amiss there. Because basically, the way she describes her experience, it does seem like some kind of zombie state or twilight zone between the personal and the impersonal. Clearly she is not centered in the personal perspective (aka SVP) anymore, but there isn't anything what she describes in the first part of the book that has the ring of impersonal perspective (aka prior to mind) either. Think about it, when you had your realization(s), did you shake and sweat in terror for days, weeks or even years because of your new perspective? And was one of the first thoughts that came to mind that you might have gone insane? But that’s what happened to her, so she went from psychologists to psychiatrists to – eventually - non-duality teachers. And I am not surprised that the psychologists and psychiatrists she had been seen over the years had no idea what happened to her or what to do with her, other than prescribing some drugs to ease the fear by making her numb, an offer which she always declined. What I found surprising though was that the non-duality teachers she was contacting in the beginning, while congratulating her on her experience of no-self, had no clue either and were obviously just speaking from book knowledge (check out chapter 7 if you have the book). For her, however, talking to these ND and Zen people was a major turning point because she realized that she hasn’t gone insane and that there may be a deeper meaning to all of this and that there are likely more realizations to come that would end this state of confusion and terror. But until she had that deep CC, it seems all mostly intellectual, I’m afraid. And these non-duality and Zen teachers not noticing the hyper-intellectual nature of her perspective doesn’t speak well for them or their own state of realization, IMO. I’ll go into more details in a separate thread. It’s worth going thru this book chapter by chapter because, IMO, it does show clearly the difference between actual enlightenment (down to the visceral level) and what we sometimes call mind-enlightenment (limited to the intellectual level). She’s an excellent case study for what we have been saying, that you have to feel it in your bones or else it’s worthless and that there's more to realize than that the SVP is an illusion. Also, let’s not forget that Suzanne was a master meditator and had been part of a hardcore meditation group (TM) for many years. So this may have contributed to her rather weird path to enlightenment and mental state. Agreed. FWIW I never thought of Segal's sudden loss of selfhood at the bus stop as enlightenment, and it was never clear to me that she ever became enlightened in the sense of living in the natural state. I saw it as simply the loss of the SVP perspective, and for some people this can be extremely frightening. Remember the young guy who tried the Mooji meditation one time and the same sort of thing happened to him? He came to this forum trying to get advice about how to get his usual sense of selfhood back. While discussing his case, one of us discovered some psychiatrists in England who treated or mentioned treating about a hundred people with the same sort of disassociation syndrome. People are different, and what's wonderful for some people can be horrifying for others. I remember a local meditator telling me that he talked his brother into trying meditation, and shortly afterwards the guy started meditating he had some sort of meditation-related experience that scared him so badly that he never meditated again, and never wanted to even talk about it again. Zen has a term--"makyo"-- which translates as something like "devil world," and many ZM's warn people that meditation can trigger all kinds of stuff in the subconscious that may rise to the surface. One ZM wrote about some horrifying image that regularly arose during his first years of meditation, and he would have to dunk his head in ice water to free himself from the image. Apparently that sort of thing is not too uncommon, and I once had a frightening experience of the same sort. ZM's advise people to ignore that kind of stuff and eventually it all bubbles up and goes away on its own. ZM Seung Sahn, while doing his 100 day retreat that resulted in a major kensho, wrote that after day 80 all kinds of strange stuff happened--angelic figures appeared as well as demonic figures--, but all of it finally ended shortly before his big CC. In Segal's case the sudden shift from a personal perspective to a totally impersonal perspective was extremely frightening and apparently sent her mind into overdrive, and her thoughts led her to think that her perspective was pathological long before psychiatrists came to the same conclusion, and reinforced that idea. I think it was Jean Klein who finally helped put her mind at ease twelve years after the sense of being a SVP disappeared. In my case, as I suspect is the case for most people who pursue ND, every time selfhood disappeared life became blissful, peaceful, simple, and was accompanied by a joyous sense of flow, but Segal was one of those people who fell into that smaller category of people who find the loss of the SVP perspective horrifying. I don't think I would consider Segal a case of mind-enlightenment because there was nothing about her loss of the SVP perspective that was remotely enlightening, but her story is certainly fascinating for a lot of reasons. I'll look forward to your discussion of her book. As an aside, I've always been amazed at her writing style. Her book flows in a way that makes reading it effortless, and I've probably read it 10 or 12 times--sometimes just studying her writing style in an effort to understand how she achieved that effect. It reminds me of Castenedas' warning in the guise of Don Juan regarding those whose tonal (wordly experience) was not in order approaching the nagual (the infinite). He warned those who hadn't a solid grasp in the tonal would lose their minds if they attempted to experience the nagual. BUT I have a different question for you regarding CC experiences. I don't discount them or their value. Neither do I believe their woowooness is a detriment. My question is that you and Reefs seem to belive they are a necessity. But clearly RM doesn't. Neither do the dzogchen masters I've recently read about. One speaks about "short moments" of peace "repeated many times". And that eventually this becomes continuous awareness of peace. It reminds me of Self-Inquiry where RM contends that over time the savikalpa samadhi becomes effortless and permanent. The other point of disagreement I have is regarding "seeing the svp as illusory." To me that's just another thought. It has no relevance in the living experience. In other words when I'm in the flow, it never surfaces. If someone brings it up, it has no meaning.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 12, 2021 10:01:11 GMT -5
I’m about 2/3 done with the book and it seems I remembered some passages of the book incorrectly. Yes, her descriptions are spot on, very detailed and to the point. However, what doesn’t ring true at all is the constant fear, or even “terror” she experienced [...] Agreed. FWIW I never thought of Segal's sudden loss of selfhood at the bus stop as enlightenment, and it was never clear to me that she ever became enlightened in the sense of living in the natural state. I saw it as simply the loss of the SVP perspective, and for some people this can be extremely frightening. Remember the young guy [...] I read that at the end of her life she changed her mind and said the experience was a psychological issue related to childhood abuse. (edit: that doesn't mean she's right. I have no idea. But the whole thing sure is weird.)
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Post by zendancer on Jul 12, 2021 10:15:15 GMT -5
Agreed. FWIW I never thought of Segal's sudden loss of selfhood at the bus stop as enlightenment, and it was never clear to me that she ever became enlightened in the sense of living in the natural state. I saw it as simply the loss of the SVP perspective, and for some people this can be extremely frightening. Remember the young guy [...] I read that at the end of her life she changed her mind and said the experience was a psychological issue related to childhood abuse. (edit: that doesn't mean she's right. I have no idea. But the whole thing sure is weird.) Yes. Definitely weird. She eventually died of a brain tumor and many people discount her story because they assume it was caused by the tumor. This seems doubtful to me because she was diagnosed with brain cancer more than 15 years after her "collision with the infinite."
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Post by zendancer on Jul 12, 2021 10:27:40 GMT -5
Agreed. FWIW I never thought of Segal's sudden loss of selfhood at the bus stop as enlightenment, and it was never clear to me that she ever became enlightened in the sense of living in the natural state. I saw it as simply the loss of the SVP perspective, and for some people this can be extremely frightening. Remember the young guy who tried the Mooji meditation one time and the same sort of thing happened to him? He came to this forum trying to get advice about how to get his usual sense of selfhood back. While discussing his case, one of us discovered some psychiatrists in England who treated or mentioned treating about a hundred people with the same sort of disassociation syndrome. People are different, and what's wonderful for some people can be horrifying for others. I remember a local meditator telling me that he talked his brother into trying meditation, and shortly afterwards the guy started meditating he had some sort of meditation-related experience that scared him so badly that he never meditated again, and never wanted to even talk about it again. Zen has a term--"makyo"-- which translates as something like "devil world," and many ZM's warn people that meditation can trigger all kinds of stuff in the subconscious that may rise to the surface. One ZM wrote about some horrifying image that regularly arose during his first years of meditation, and he would have to dunk his head in ice water to free himself from the image. Apparently that sort of thing is not too uncommon, and I once had a frightening experience of the same sort. ZM's advise people to ignore that kind of stuff and eventually it all bubbles up and goes away on its own. ZM Seung Sahn, while doing his 100 day retreat that resulted in a major kensho, wrote that after day 80 all kinds of strange stuff happened--angelic figures appeared as well as demonic figures--, but all of it finally ended shortly before his big CC. In Segal's case the sudden shift from a personal perspective to a totally impersonal perspective was extremely frightening and apparently sent her mind into overdrive, and her thoughts led her to think that her perspective was pathological long before psychiatrists came to the same conclusion, and reinforced that idea. I think it was Jean Klein who finally helped put her mind at ease twelve years after the sense of being a SVP disappeared. In my case, as I suspect is the case for most people who pursue ND, every time selfhood disappeared life became blissful, peaceful, simple, and was accompanied by a joyous sense of flow, but Segal was one of those people who fell into that smaller category of people who find the loss of the SVP perspective horrifying. I don't think I would consider Segal a case of mind-enlightenment because there was nothing about her loss of the SVP perspective that was remotely enlightening, but her story is certainly fascinating for a lot of reasons. I'll look forward to your discussion of her book. As an aside, I've always been amazed at her writing style. Her book flows in a way that makes reading it effortless, and I've probably read it 10 or 12 times--sometimes just studying her writing style in an effort to understand how she achieved that effect. It reminds me of Castenedas' warning in the guise of Don Juan regarding those whose tonal (wordly experience) was not in order approaching the nagual (the infinite). He warned those who hadn't a solid grasp in the tonal would lose their minds if they attempted to experience the nagual. BUT I have a different question for you regarding CC experiences. I don't discount them or their value. Neither do I believe their woowooness is a detriment. My question is that you and Reefs seem to belive they are a necessity. But clearly RM doesn't. Neither do the dzogchen masters I've recently read about. One speaks about "short moments" of peace "repeated many times". And that eventually this becomes continuous awareness of peace. It reminds me of Self-Inquiry where RM contends that over time the savikalpa samadhi becomes effortless and permanent. The other point of disagreement I have is regarding "seeing the svp as illusory." To me that's just another thought. It has no relevance in the living experience. In other words when I'm in the flow, it never surfaces. If someone brings it up, it has no meaning. Great questions! I'll answer the second one first, and come back to the first later when I have more time. The reason we say that the svp is illusory is because after SR, it's realized that there was never a svp in any sense. The sense of being a svp comes from identification as a body or identification as an endless number of things (human being, son, daughter, father, mother, scientist, artist, meditator, athlete, etc) held together by a story with a timeline of past events. If you ask someone who they are, they'll respond with something like, "I'm John Doe, a 35 year-old father of two, etc. etc." In most cases, unbeknownst to John Doe, who's never doubted that he's a svp, his sense of being John Doe appears and disappears throughout the day depending upon self-referential thoughts. If SR occurred for John Doe, he would then realize that John Doe had been a lifelong illusion and that no such person had ever existed separate from the entire field of reality.
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Post by Reefs on Jul 12, 2021 11:39:17 GMT -5
Agreed. FWIW I never thought of Segal's sudden loss of selfhood at the bus stop as enlightenment, and it was never clear to me that she ever became enlightened in the sense of living in the natural state. I saw it as simply the loss of the SVP perspective, and for some people this can be extremely frightening. Remember the young guy who tried the Mooji meditation one time and the same sort of thing happened to him? He came to this forum trying to get advice about how to get his usual sense of selfhood back. While discussing his case, one of us discovered some psychiatrists in England who treated or mentioned treating about a hundred people with the same sort of disassociation syndrome. People are different, and what's wonderful for some people can be horrifying for others. I remember a local meditator telling me that he talked his brother into trying meditation, and shortly afterwards the guy started meditating he had some sort of meditation-related experience that scared him so badly that he never meditated again, and never wanted to even talk about it again. Zen has a term--"makyo"-- which translates as something like "devil world," and many ZM's warn people that meditation can trigger all kinds of stuff in the subconscious that may rise to the surface. One ZM wrote about some horrifying image that regularly arose during his first years of meditation, and he would have to dunk his head in ice water to free himself from the image. Apparently that sort of thing is not too uncommon, and I once had a frightening experience of the same sort. ZM's advise people to ignore that kind of stuff and eventually it all bubbles up and goes away on its own. ZM Seung Sahn, while doing his 100 day retreat that resulted in a major kensho, wrote that after day 80 all kinds of strange stuff happened--angelic figures appeared as well as demonic figures--, but all of it finally ended shortly before his big CC. In Segal's case the sudden shift from a personal perspective to a totally impersonal perspective was extremely frightening and apparently sent her mind into overdrive, and her thoughts led her to think that her perspective was pathological long before psychiatrists came to the same conclusion, and reinforced that idea. I think it was Jean Klein who finally helped put her mind at ease twelve years after the sense of being a SVP disappeared. In my case, as I suspect is the case for most people who pursue ND, every time selfhood disappeared life became blissful, peaceful, simple, and was accompanied by a joyous sense of flow, but Segal was one of those people who fell into that smaller category of people who find the loss of the SVP perspective horrifying. I don't think I would consider Segal a case of mind-enlightenment because there was nothing about her loss of the SVP perspective that was remotely enlightening, but her story is certainly fascinating for a lot of reasons. I'll look forward to your discussion of her book. As an aside, I've always been amazed at her writing style. Her book flows in a way that makes reading it effortless, and I've probably read it 10 or 12 times--sometimes just studying her writing style in an effort to understand how she achieved that effect. Yes, I remember him. Poor fellow, we just couldn't help him. Right, makyo. I almost forgot about that. I've never experienced much of that, extremely positive or extremely negative hallucinations during mediation, so that's not really on my radar. The Chinese characters of makyo 魔境 are interesting. 魔 mo means devil and 境 jing has several meanings, it can mean border or boundary but also refer to a territory or a realm. So, "the realm of the devil" seems like a good translation. That this can be a real concern shows you the benefit of practice though. I have to say that after reading that Kriya yoga book, I am a lot more in favor of practices now. Not because they bring you closer to SR - they don't! - but because people nowadays are jumping head-on into all kinds of advanced yoga practices without the necessary preparations or supervision by someone who knows the territory and how to deal with all kinds of eventualities. And so what you often get is severely unbalanced individuals that may have discovered something profound in terms of ultimate truth, but who are still hung up on very basic psychological issues that they should have left behind a long time ago. So it does make sense that in yoga they would first give the student a solid moral foundation, strengthen their mind and body and only then introduce them to the practice of meditation. Suzanne mentions people going crazy during their intensive retreats as well. Some had to be carried out of the mediation room and locked up for a couple of days until they had sufficiently calmed down and the screaming, howling or sobbing finally subsided. Weird stuff! Jean Klein couldn't help her either. In fact, no one could really help her. These ND and also Zen teachers kept congratualing her for having achieved something amazing that didn't feel amazing at all to her. Which proved that these people had no clue either what Suzanne was actually experiencing. Basically, what Suzanne was asking was: "Is this it?" and these people kept saying, "Yes, Suzanne, that's it!" but unfortunately, that wasn't 'it'. What people like Jean helped her to see though was that there's a bigger picture to this. But no one could help her with that fear. It only ended after that big CC, in laughter, joy and awe, i.e. when she realized that there is not only no personal self, but there are also no others! That was the moment when the fear suddenly disappeared and when she actually had to laugh really hard because, how could she have missed something that obvious for so long?! Yes, self disappearing should actually be a relief, not a horror - unless you keep being identified with mind/thoughts. And that seems to have happened with Suzanne. She actually analyzed her situation quite well at the end of the book. Those ND teachers all tried to assure her that something wonderful had happened, something that many try to achieve and spend an entire lifetime on but still fail. But Suzanne was too much common sense oriented to see that these lovely people were only speaking from book knowledge in an attempt to cheer her up after she had been declared a pathological case by psychologists for so many years, but in reality, they didn't have a reference for what she was experiencing. She actually forced one of those Zen teachers to admit, who spoke with great authority about no-self, that he didn't actually speak from first hand experience, but rather from what he had concluded based on books and research. Quite a revelation! And that's what's so unique and so fascination about Suzanne's style, she's absolutely no-nonsense, brutally honest and exceptionally clear. And she doesn't waste words. She hardly ever repeats herself. Basically, the last two chapters and the epilogue which contains some Q&A material you could quote here in full without having to edit anything. The discussion of the book you can find here.
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Post by Reefs on Jul 12, 2021 12:57:10 GMT -5
I read that at the end of her life she changed her mind and said the experience was a psychological issue related to childhood abuse. (edit: that doesn't mean she's right. I have no idea. But the whole thing sure is weird.) Yes. Definitely weird. She eventually died of a brain tumor and many people discount her story because they assume it was caused by the tumor. This seems doubtful to me because she was diagnosed with brain cancer more than 15 years after her "collision with the infinite." Her fear came back, too. So that's doubly weird.
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Post by shadowplay on Jul 12, 2021 13:40:39 GMT -5
The other point of disagreement I have is regarding "seeing the svp as illusory." To me that's just another thought. It has no relevance in the living experience. In other words when I'm in the flow, it never surfaces. If someone brings it up, it has no meaning. I agree, it is a thought. And I think that it can sound as if seeing through the SVP is another arduous task that we have to strain towards but I would say that if you are in the living moment of the flow state, by default, a separate, volitional entity has no footing. Flow or THIS is what’s going on not a self-reflective little me. The self effortlessly recedes when the not-two sensibility arises. No need to work at seeing through a SVP - only a SVP would do that.
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Jul 14, 2021 8:04:21 GMT -5
Are these historical/legend stories, or modern stories? (I refer to the "one or two days" in NS.) That seems like an extreme feat, from a physiological view – to not sleep and to stay in a meditation position for that long without succumbing to back pain, etc. Yes. You forget you even have a body until the gong sounds, then you have the great realization that you do. Unwinding yourself is quite a chore. I meditated 4 hours a day for quite a long time. It becomes an Olympic sport. There's no benefit. My neck was the bugaboo. I tend to hunch at times. Also the legs fell asleep without proper preparation. You definitely need a good thick cushion. Forty minute sessions are quite enough for me now. It seems after thirty or so is when I can get into NS. Yes.
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Jul 14, 2021 8:11:49 GMT -5
Haha! Yes, I'm always telling people to forget the word "if." Things unfolded exactly how they unfolded, but it was the CC that changed everything for this character. Afterwards, I felt just like Kabir who said, "I saw the infinite for 15 seconds and became a servant for life." Yes, the non-locality of perception can't be understood without the reference for it. In my case the thought appeared, "Who is perceiving this?" and I discovered that I could not remember my own name. I had no idea who or what was perceiving because there was only a state of oneness rather than the usual divided-mind state of the observer and the observed. I have friends in TAT who discount Segal as someone who suffered from a pathological personality disassociation syndrome, but her book rings true to me, and I feel confident that she accurately described what happened to her. Her book made a profound impression upon me, and she hammered home the fact that there is no SVP so strongly that it took away "my" future. After reading her book 7 times, it suddenly dawned on me that whatever I was looking for could not be located in the future of a personal "me" because the personal "me" was an illusion. Whatever it was had to be here and now. That realization was profound, but it remained intellectual until a year or so later when "the little guy in the head" suddenly vanished, and it was finally understood what she was pointing to. Her story is definitely one of the most interesting accounts in ND literature. I’m about 2/3 done with the book and it seems I remembered some passages of the book incorrectly. Yes, her descriptions are spot on, very detailed and to the point. However, what doesn’t ring true at all is the constant fear, or even “terror” she experienced all day every day for more than a decade. And I think this is because she may have lost her identification with the SVP, but she still seemed to be totally identified with the mind, just minus the SVP. She definitely suffered from overthinking. And it wore her down. So what she describes in the first part of the book, even though technically correct, that’s not enlightenment. It may, however, be called awakening or mind-enlightenment, i.e. the witnessing is happening from the perspective of mind, not prior to mind. So there is clearly something amiss there. Because basically, the way she describes her experience, it does seem like some kind of zombie state or twilight zone between the personal and the impersonal. Clearly she is not centered in the personal perspective (aka SVP) anymore, but there isn't anything what she describes in the first part of the book that has the ring of impersonal perspective (aka prior to mind) either. Think about it, when you had your realization(s), did you shake and sweat in terror for days, weeks or even years because of your new perspective? And was one of the first thoughts that came to mind that you might have gone insane? But that’s what happened to her, so she went from psychologists to psychiatrists to – eventually - non-duality teachers. And I am not surprised that the psychologists and psychiatrists she had been seen over the years had no idea what happened to her or what to do with her, other than prescribing some drugs to ease the fear by making her numb, an offer which she always declined. What I found surprising though was that the non-duality teachers she was contacting in the beginning, while congratulating her on her experience of no-self, had no clue either and were obviously just speaking from book knowledge (check out chapter 7 if you have the book). For her, however, talking to these ND and Zen people was a major turning point because she realized that she hasn’t gone insane and that there may be a deeper meaning to all of this and that there are likely more realizations to come that would end this state of confusion and terror. But until she had that deep CC, it seems all mostly intellectual, I’m afraid. And these non-duality and Zen teachers not noticing the hyper-intellectual nature of her perspective doesn’t speak well for them or their own state of realization, IMO. I’ll go into more details in a separate thread. It’s worth going thru this book chapter by chapter because, IMO, it does show clearly the difference between actual enlightenment (down to the visceral level) and what we sometimes call mind-enlightenment (limited to the intellectual level). She’s an excellent case study for what we have been saying, that you have to feel it in your bones or else it’s worthless and that there's more to realize than that the SVP is an illusion. Also, let’s not forget that Suzanne was a master meditator and had been part of a hardcore meditation group (TM) for many years. So this may have contributed to her rather weird path to enlightenment and mental state. Yes.
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Post by laughter on Jul 15, 2021 17:46:29 GMT -5
Yes, I remember him. Poor fellow, we just couldn't help him. Midnight had made the rounds of at least three forums at the time. As to whether we helped him? Well, who knows, for sure, but this was the only forum he reported his recovery to.
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Post by Reefs on Jul 15, 2021 22:42:54 GMT -5
Yes, I remember him. Poor fellow, we just couldn't help him. Midnight had made the rounds of at least three forums at the time. As to whether we helped him? Well, who knows, for sure, but this was the only forum he reported his recovery to. That doesn't really sound like a recovery to me, more like a coming to terms with it and moving on.
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