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Sorry, what 'things'?
Many of the threads I take an interest in, and indeed the forum as a whole, are predicated on the notion that certain processes yield certain results. Those are the 'things' which 'exist' to many of the people posting there, from what I can ascertain - results, or a lack thereof, and the processes which yield them, respectively. You know, middle aged men being able to pull 25 tonne trucks with their testicles, that kind of thing. Practice and diligence working with discrete energies not recognised by Peer Review Papers in Western science. Using an oracle to gain insight into the nature of a problem or decision about to be undertaken. Considering the advice, and deciding whether or not to act upon it, etc.
The rest is often the fun stuff of the threads, people musing about what is possibly going on, using their logical capacity for structured thought and knowledge of many disparate disciplines, including science, to try to find working explanations for why action A yields result B, and how to go about exploring this...and what the meaning of the results is. Paramount.
Literalism doesn't really wash when involved in these areas of the practice, because the terrain can lead to extremely bizarre experience...and clinging to the rock of literalism will make you into David Icke in no time. Fluidity and open mindedness are pretty much everything. A willingness to entertain bizarre notions in order to deepen understanding of the human condition and the story-telling brain which is the only instrument available to make sense of it all.
It does seem to be a real sticking point for a lot of interested onbservers, whether or not the practitioner thinks it's *real*. I understand why, but it so is not the point, not at all...imo it betrays a certain arrogance in the mind of the interlocuter that their own view is true and based on facts...almost always handed to them by someone else...Nina complains that religion is a dangerous crutch because it entails creating an authority outside of the self and handing power to that entity...on the contrary, the teachings of every so called enlightened sage throughout history have insisted that there can be no knowledge, and no divinity, which does not originate from within the self...it is only the self, and inside of us, that true wisdom and holiness can be known.
Organised structures corrupting and suppressing these teachings for political gain and power are the unfortunate face of religion which most people simply never get past, and who can blame them? Whod've guessed that the teachings of Ishoa - Jesus - are in a large part concerned with cleansing and purification of the body? Colonics? That the suppressed Essene scrolls have diagrams of irrigation systems hung from trees in the desert, and Jewish and Aramaic punters having their botties and colon's washed out? That the Aramaic word translated from Greek to mean 'heaven', all abstract and after-life and Greek, shmaya, actually means 'the Universe', from the root shem meaning light, sound, vibration and name, itself taken from the root shm, indicating that which 'rises and shines in space', the entire sphere of a being...the ending -aya showing that this shining includes every centre of activity, every place ever seen or seeable, and the latent potential abilities of all things? It's not in plain view - esoteric.
You'll not get this from the KJV English translation of the pre-Medieveal Greek translation of the Hebrew translation of the words of that Sage. You have to be interested enough to make some effort to discover what the man said, and what was meant.
So, if it can just be established and logically demonstrated that the experience was 'nothing but' a product of the practitioners 'mind', then that'll be the end of that, because clearly then it's all just nonsense that 'exists' 'only' in the imagination -right?
A bit like colour, and temperature. You know, all that weird magic imaginary stuff.
Why should individual exploration of individual consciousness be somehow divorced from 'reality' because it relies solely on reportage from the experiencing structure of the explorer? If you are unable to corroborate the experience of another for yourself using your own senses, does this mean the experience cannot be a part of your definition of the term 'reality' (which is, when all is said and done, very easy to define : Reality is a word).
If this is, indeed, the case, clearly it leads to all sorts of conundrums. |
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