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razorman
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Gopi Krishna Interview - Description of Enlightenment
#18835942 - 09/13/13 08:04 AM (10 years, 4 months ago) |
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When I first watched this, it really struck me how honest this man was. You really get the sense that he is trying to describe something amazing. I have read most of his books and they are very well written with great descriptions on his experiences with Kundalini and how it changed him.
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MarkostheGnostic
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Re: Gopi Krishna Interview - Description of Enlightenment [Re: razorman]
#18836332 - 09/13/13 10:29 AM (10 years, 4 months ago) |
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I have read a few of his books, beginning with Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man in 1973. Recently, my best friend sent me The Way to Self-Knowledge. He takes it wherever he goes (like his wife's native Cambodia where he reads it at Angkor Wat). According to GK, if one is not ready, no amount of meditation is going to trigger the classic experiences. According to Sir John Woodruff (The Serpent Power, Shakti and Shakta), as well as Sri Chinmoy (Kundalini: The Mother Power), the Tantric model is not the only means to the Real goal, which is Self-Realization. Like the Tibetan Buddhists write about the Yogas of Form, including the gTummo (Inner Fire, the correlate to Kundalini), and Formless Yogas (Mahamudra, Dzogchen, and similar to what Eckhart Tolle teaches) which are a LOT more accessible to most people.
When Ram Dass asked his guru Neem Karolie Baba how to raise his Kundalini, Neem Karolie said, "Love everyone."
My first exposure to Kundalini Yoga in 1970:
-------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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eve69
--=..Did Adam and ...?=--



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Re: Gopi Krishna Interview - Description of Enlightenment [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
#18836397 - 09/13/13 10:49 AM (10 years, 4 months ago) |
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Mark, I think you're really brilliant. Unfortunately ones intellect has little to do with kundalini, various energies, or their analogs, nor with their understanding.
My point is that tummo is not kundalini, nor is amanita mushroom soma, nor are all these things the same, related, by system, or analog. People want to understand. That's a given, but their understanding is also false.
I dare anyone to take a look at the world and people in this day and time and say any religion has been effective, or produced a better humanity.
I raise that point because endlessly chasing ones tail through reams of similarities and through catacombs of identifications hasn't helped humanity as a whole. The ideal outcome then is has it helped anyone, especially the person involved.
In science we have so many discrete elements some differ merely by one ion. You would not say for instance that helium and hydrogen are the same thing. So why then would the distinctly different spiritual systems of The Six Yogas and Kundalini Tantra be the same.
this point of everything being kundalini this and kundalini that merely ensures that kundalini will remain hidden.
Gopi Krisha 'sounds true?' WTF dies that mean? Eveeyone believes themselves and even Charlie Manson sounded true. Truer than Gopi Krishna. Remember, he is selling a product - his books. When money is involved in any way truth is a bit further distant.
-------------------- ...or something
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MarkostheGnostic
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Re: Gopi Krishna Interview - Description of Enlightenment [Re: eve69]
#18837865 - 09/13/13 05:34 PM (10 years, 4 months ago) |
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Mark, I think you're really brilliant.
Thanks. I don't often feel brilliant, but compliments are OK if one doesn't crave them or acquire a sense of self-worth from them.
tummo is not kundalini
Maybe yes, maybe no. There is a vastly different explanation. There is no Shakti in Vajrayana, but there is the Dakini that one identifies with instead of visualizing a voluptuous maiden of 16 with full breasts, as some of the Kundalini visualizations say, in order to 'arouse' the Kundalini. It is true that the production of psychic heat is not a common result of Kundalini arousal, but there seem to be a good many more yogis who can produce the gTummo, than there are people like Gopi Krishna making claims. Shoot, even Shirley McClain learned some rudimentary warmth-generating exercises.
I dare anyone to take a look at the world and people in this day and time and say any religion has been effective, or produced a better humanity.
Not en masse, but religion, or ar least spirituality, has produced a better me. (I wlll be lighting a couple of Sabbath candles shortly as it's Friday - the 13th no less).
Remember, he is selling a product - his books. When money is involved in any way truth is a bit further distant.
So, when I finally get around to publishing that book I've been working on for years, the hope that I will make some money is going to nullify the truth of what I have written? Much of what I've already shared here was published as my doctoral dissertation: A Phenomenological Adaptation of the Tibetan Buddhist Doctrine of Psychic Centers to a Metatheoretical Hierarchy of Human Motivation, 1983, Microfilms International, Inc. I received about $17 in royalties for 5 requests on paper and microfiche.
-------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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Kickle
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Re: Gopi Krishna Interview - Description of Enlightenment [Re: razorman]
#18837881 - 09/13/13 05:38 PM (10 years, 4 months ago) |
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-------------------- Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain
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MarkostheGnostic
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Re: Gopi Krishna Interview - Description of Enlightenment [Re: Kickle]
#18838196 - 09/13/13 06:55 PM (10 years, 4 months ago) |
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Quote:
Kickle said: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_percent_of_brain_myth
I never knew where that saying came from, but it always seemed just arbitrary. All areas of the brain fire, and the cortex, while separated by lobes, is also a global network, unless there has been profound damage to areas. I have never subscribed to this non-empirical statement.. Hell, I took a rigorous doctoral level course in 1982 in Neuropsychological Assessment, and even borrowed a physiology professor's human brain specimen for 'show-n-tell' for that class. Nobody had ever seen/touched a human brain before including me.
-------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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Mahananda


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Re: Gopi Krishna Interview - Description of Enlightenment [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
#18838757 - 09/13/13 08:53 PM (10 years, 4 months ago) |
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Quote:
MarkostheGnostic said: According to GK, if one is not ready, no amount of meditation is going to trigger the classic experiences. According to Sir John Woodruff (The Serpent Power, Shakti and Shakta), as well as Sri Chinmoy (Kundalini: The Mother Power), the Tantric model is not the only means to the Real goal, which is Self-Realization.
There are cautions in the literature about not pursuing practices oriented towards raising kundalini until the practitioner is well prepared (owing to the powerful and unpredictable nature of the experiences), and in my view those cautions are appropriate: the problem is rather stumbling upon the experience than never being able to attain it. I would also suggest that kundalini experiences are neither necessary nor sufficient for insight / self realisation etc.
-------------------- Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of living, it doesn't matter Ours is not a caravan of despair. Come even if you have broken your vow a thousand times, Come, yet again, come, come
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eve69
--=..Did Adam and ...?=--



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Re: Gopi Krishna Interview - Description of Enlightenment [Re: Mahananda]
#18840264 - 09/14/13 07:40 AM (10 years, 4 months ago) |
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Hey Mark, I wrote out a better response and must have hit the wrong button cause it's gone.
I just wanted to say that there are shaktis in TB. If in doubt peruse the Vimalaprabha or Stainless Light about Kalachakra.
Also, I weakened my point above when saying money interests reveal interest other than truth. We all know by now that money is not a person's only motivation, to publish, or to speak less than perfect truth. Self interest is a larger motive, and egoism, pride, desire for fame, power, wealth, sex, and so on are all equal motivators for publishing.
But a work which doesn't lend itself to any objective reenactment isn't really truth it's fiction or opinion. Gopi Krishna's works on kundalini offer no real observable key to dealing with the phenomenon.
I remember when I first experienced kundalini (after being initiated into TM), and I sought out other perspectives. Gopi's treatment was so over the top that he had me confused about what was really happening. I doubt he helped ME any. And others who experience anything from movement of prana or chi, to full blown psychosis each can take away a fully fantasized account of kundalini from Gopi, with little to actually help them.
Of course now I know that since the experience is wholly subjective the same rules will not apply to any two individuals.
That's it really.
But one could really and Existentially deconstruct most theoretical dissertations as not truth based as they are in one person's one moment vision. Truth is something one can bank on (at least during the same paradigm). For instance, gasoline into engine gives a certain amount of miles and so on and so forth, but kundalini, ___ ____ ____ ____ cannot be formulated, so no truth is really involved. Also since the term itself has little in terms of concrete definition it also is not truth.
I made a mistake again and I was thinking the OP wrote truthful, when he really said, 'honest.' It took me awhile to get it. At first I thought the OP was being serious, but after watching the smirky sallow and jowly countenance of GK in the video I am certain he was kidding. I do not see someone honest. I see the same anachronistic attention seeking that I find in many gurus. I say anachronistic because the kind of sloppy nonintellectual mystical jargonism is straight out of history.
I am inspired to speak to that point a small bit. A guru often doesn't add anything of value to the tradition. Some have. Most make stuff up. Very few live their own values. Moore and more totally rape everyone who come in contact. If not physically then intellectually, spiritually, emotionally, materially, and the rest.
Gopi Krishna has made up fiction like Castaneda, and Svoboda. Fascinating yes, honest, (in his own mind), truth - not!
-------------------- ...or something
Edited by eve69 (09/14/13 07:49 AM)
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razorman
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Re: Gopi Krishna Interview - Description of Enlightenment [Re: eve69]
#18840549 - 09/14/13 10:00 AM (10 years, 4 months ago) |
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"mystical jargonism" is prob the only thing that can be used to relate any of these experiences.
Quote:
eve69 said: Hey Mark, I wrote out a better response and must have hit the wrong button cause it's gone.
I just wanted to say that there are shaktis in TB. If in doubt peruse the Vimalaprabha or Stainless Light about Kalachakra.
Also, I weakened my point above when saying money interests reveal interest other than truth. We all know by now that money is not a person's only motivation, to publish, or to speak less than perfect truth. Self interest is a larger motive, and egoism, pride, desire for fame, power, wealth, sex, and so on are all equal motivators for publishing.
But a work which doesn't lend itself to any objective reenactment isn't really truth it's fiction or opinion. Gopi Krishna's works on kundalini offer no real observable key to dealing with the phenomenon.
I remember when I first experienced kundalini (after being initiated into TM), and I sought out other perspectives. Gopi's treatment was so over the top that he had me confused about what was really happening. I doubt he helped ME any. And others who experience anything from movement of prana or chi, to full blown psychosis each can take away a fully fantasized account of kundalini from Gopi, with little to actually help them.
Of course now I know that since the experience is wholly subjective the same rules will not apply to any two individuals.
That's it really.
But one could really and Existentially deconstruct most theoretical dissertations as not truth based as they are in one person's one moment vision. Truth is something one can bank on (at least during the same paradigm). For instance, gasoline into engine gives a certain amount of miles and so on and so forth, but kundalini, ___ ____ ____ ____ cannot be formulated, so no truth is really involved. Also since the term itself has little in terms of concrete definition it also is not truth.
I made a mistake again and I was thinking the OP wrote truthful, when he really said, 'honest.' It took me awhile to get it. At first I thought the OP was being serious, but after watching the smirky sallow and jowly countenance of GK in the video I am certain he was kidding. I do not see someone honest. I see the same anachronistic attention seeking that I find in many gurus. I say anachronistic because the kind of sloppy nonintellectual mystical jargonism is straight out of history.
I am inspired to speak to that point a small bit. A guru often doesn't add anything of value to the tradition. Some have. Most make stuff up. Very few live their own values. Moore and more totally rape everyone who come in contact. If not physically then intellectually, spiritually, emotionally, materially, and the rest.
Gopi Krishna has made up fiction like Castaneda, and Svoboda. Fascinating yes, honest, (in his own mind), truth - not!
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