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Enlightenment/Meditation: Emptiness or Awareness?
    #797970 -

This is something that i'm not sure about. As I understand it, the purpose of meditation is to transcend our perceptions. To be able to cut the chord between external stimuli and internal reactions. To be aware of only that place within us which is eternal. So it's about going within, forget about the external. This is why people use sensory deprivation as a tool for meditation, without external stimuli it is easier to go into ourselves. Okay?

Now if a person is born without all the normal senses..ie. complete sensory deprivation, it's my understanding that this experience would be the *same* as the experience of deep meditation - in other words, ego loss. I don't know how that jives with eastern thought..don't know what buddhism has to say about that..

I suppose I am asking 2 questions:

1. Is meditation the same as enlightenment? In other words, is enlightenment a permanent state of meditation?

and

2. Must enlightenment be a learned thing? Can it only be achieved through life experience? Is it about a) Growth and awareness, or b) Regression and emptiness?

Or is it a mixture of the two? Can total awareness only be brought about by going into ourselves? In which case, what is the deal with sensory deprivation?

This doesn't have to be a spiritual thinng, although I personally believe it is. I'm thinking that meditation is about going into ourselves, remembering the experience of total ego loss (be that the experience of being in the womb, or going back even further than that), rather than creating this experience anew. In other words, I'm thinking that a baby is "closer" to enlightenment than most middle aged people.

You know?



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Re: Enlightenment/Meditation: Emptiness or Awareness? [Re: Revelation]
    #798053 -

enlightenment is bridging the gap between universe and self into oneness. meditation opens the doorway to enlightenment as it quiets the illusions, and mastery is seperate from enlightenment, it is total awareness coming from a state of knowing or extreme faith which is created through enlightenment. i reached enlightenment couple nights ago, just forgot my diagrams and shit at home or i would be posting them, recieved them through a chanelling while doing energy work, most beautiful experience ever, saw shooting star and solar waves going across sky at very moment. hopefully get them up tonight. believe it or not you created the mushroom, thats probably why you enjoy it so much, its perfect, and where is that CWG voice coming from? the key lies in how fast light travels through the universe. remember time does not exsist but when you look into the sky whos past are you looking at? Are you CWG speaking from the centre of the universe? Rainbows? demensions? the prism? crown chakra, reflection of source. are you the universe, are you the only one in the room, are we god godding? 5th demension, blue, astral, blue sky, looking to the heavens. 8 demensions of the cosmic wheel or 8 states of rememberance. mushrooms, fourth demension, green.







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" liken this life illusory, for your sand castle will one day be adrift amongst the wind "



Edited by ViBrAnT (08/05/02 03:05 PM)

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Re: Enlightenment/Meditation: Emptiness or Awarene [Re: Revelation]
    #798086 -

Is meditation the same as enlightenment?

No. Meditation is simply a tool.

Must enlightenment be a learned thing?

It might be better to try and think of enlightenment as a forgotten thing rather than a learned thing. Of course better yet would be to not think at all.

Can total awareness only be brought about by going into ourselves?
It isn't so much of a going into oneself as an absence of everything. Only in the absence of thought can a smile be heard.




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Just another spore in the wind.

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Re: Enlightenment/Meditation: Emptiness or Awareness? [Re: Revelation]
    #798227 -

1. Is meditation the same as enlightenment? In other words, is enlightenment a permanent state of meditation?

I think zen would say that it is essentially the same. They emphasize ?satori? enlightenment, instantaneous awakening usually experienced from meditation.



2. Must enlightenment be a learned thing?

I would say that is better characterized as an ?unlearned thing?, unlearning the way that you have been shaped to perceive nature and yourself. But after a point, the knowledge and theory has to be abandoned as it is just a raft to get you across the river (After you cross the river with your raft, you wouldn?t continue to hike with the raft strapped to your back right?- "the parable of the raft")



Is it about a) Growth and awareness, or b) Regression and emptiness?

I?m not quite clear on these two categories. From what I know of intellectually understanding enlightenment as best we can, it involves each of these ideas in some sense.



I'm thinking that meditation is about going into ourselves, remembering the experience of total ego loss (be that the experience of being in the womb, or going back even further than that), rather than creating this experience anew. In other words, I'm thinking that a baby is "closer" to enlightenment than most middle aged people.

That is a very interesting idea. This kind of goes with what I was saying about unlearning.


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Concepts which have been proved to be useful in ordering things easily acquire such an authority over us that we forget their human origins and accept them as invariable.- Albert Einstein

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Re: Enlightenment/Meditation: Emptiness or Awareness? [Re: Revelation]
    #798342 -

Good questions. Unfortunately, questions about meditation will elicit different answers depending upon one's definition of meditation. For example: the inward, sense-withdrawing process has a particular name in classical Hindu Yoga, which is 'Pratyahara.' It follows the previous steps of [outer] behavior - the moral ethical Yamas and Niyamas; and the positions and breathing practices - Asana and Pranayama. Pratyahara, sense-withdrawal, is the step before concentration and meditation - Dharana and Dhyana. Lastly is Samadhi, or Enstasy, of which there are several degrees.

In Buddhist Yoga, the delineation is smoother, and the 'Jhanas' are the equivalent of the Samadhis. In Zen, the depth of meditative trance seems not to be as deep as the corresponding Yogic trances, when subjects were tested. Moreover, the 'concentrative, one-pointed meditation' of Yoga is different from the 'expansive' awareness-gathering meditation of Zen or Ch'an. The latter types are applicable to martial arts - we've seen blind martial artists, for example, draw upon this outer awareness which has been developed through meditation. Then again, there is the Vipassana form of Buddhist meditation that simply watches everything as it arise in awareness - each thought and feeling and sensation as well as chirping birds and breezes.

Meditation is NOT like babyhood. This is what Ken Wilber calls the "Pre-Trans Fallacy," which is a very important concept - perhaps his most important. Many Eastern books liken the state of enlightenment to the awareness of the neonate (infant) because they are pre-verbal and perceive things more immediately in the Here and Now. But babies are locked into the Sensory-Motor stage of development. They perceive, but do not comprehend. One must first develop an ego before one can transcend the ego. Ego development for the baby is a body-ego entirely. This body-ego only begins to develop when a baby realizes that biting his blanket doesn't result in pain, while biting his thumb does. Only gradually does the unconscious oneness with the universe begin to put forth a point of ego-consciousness that separates baby from Mother and the rest of the universe. Enlightenment is a highly conscious or superconscious Oneness.

Lots of people with certain specific mental disorders, like Borderline Personality Disorder, are attracted to Buddhism for example. These people do not maintain core values; their personalities (and ethics too sometimes) are changeable in a deep way. One doesn't wake-up one morning and say, "Ya know...I don't believe in God/Marriage/Family etc. anymore." These people have never developed healthy, resiliant egos, and think that they've transcended their's. In a psychotic episode, the ego may fracture, and the consciousness becomes flooded with unconscious processes. This is a horrible experience, not a blissful one.

Meditation is aimed at Trance in Eastern meditation (Samadhis, Satoris, Jhanas, Prajnas, etc.) In Christianity, the term Contemplation is used instead of meditation (which is usually a discursive reading of scripture). Contemplation is aimed as differing degrees of the Unitive State - of Being in Christ. Thus, being in Sahaj Samadhi [Hindu], or being in Christ [Christian] is the state of being in which one Realizes (makes real) one's [comm]union with Ultimate Reality (God, or Atman, etc.)

It was the atheist Freud who referred to mystical, unity experiences as "oceanic experiences," and who relegated the whole of Mankind's highest and most profound experiences to no more than a 'regression to the womb.' Freud did not understand spiritual experience, but forced it to fit his materialistic medical model. Mysticism trancends the Freudian model of consciousness completely. This is what former psychoanalytical psychiatrist Stan Groff discovered after using LSD in his great work.

Sorry for the long post. I'm still on holiday and can afford to ramble


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γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself

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Re: Enlightenment/Meditation: Emptiness or Awareness? [Re: Revelation]
    #800108 -

This doesn't have to be a spiritual thinng, although I personally believe it is. I'm thinking that meditation is about going into ourselves, remembering the experience of total ego loss (be that the experience of being in the womb, or going back even further than that), rather than creating this experience anew. In other words, I'm thinking that a baby is "closer" to enlightenment than most middle aged people.

I'm not sure. You bring up an interesting point though. The thing is, trying to remember, is like trying to re-attach. So that in it's self; is destructive if your aim is non attachment which leads to nirvana.


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"We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our
thoughts."

- Buddha in the Dhammapada -

ChrisC

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