Thread: risks of meditation

^^ But isn't that the small irony of all this? That an actual guru -- one who has "been there" -- would likely never choose to make sharing his discoveries with others important?

Let's assume, though, that there are the occasional gurus who haven't "been there:"

I don't think a person who resolves to be a guru can avoid an unbiased opinion (because his experiences define what imagery reigns significant). But, when he's attributing his guru-thought to others -- or rather flexing his own thoughts to conform with the experiences of others -- and doing so in the context of his own defined reality, he may still be helping the others, as long as they understand and acknowledge the source of the guru's thoughts. Something, seriously, to think about there!

This of course presupposes that the guru is sincere and basing his instructions on experience, and not an self-serving interpretations of the apostle's questions/needs. Any "guru" who has blindly determined his superiority does not deserve anyone's attention, ever.

I don't agree that an actual guru would never choose to make sharing his discoveries important. I can imagine that he'd choose not to because he understands it to be counterproductive, but not unimportant. I think the blissful nihilism that often masquerades as enlightenment, and which may make the sharing seem unimportant, is actually one indicator of the limited wisdom of gurus.

Of course a guru may actually help people. I was probably helped by Ramana Maharshi, for example. People are complex, and I'm not suggesting he was Satan incarnate. But I still say that if we scale the presumption of knowledge down to what the individual actually knows, and he qualifies his message appropriately given that limited knowledge, then he no longer fits any standard definition of the word 'guru'.

If there is a man somewhere who has answers to questions about the origin and fate of the universe, and if it does not hurt others for him to share those answers, then he must share them. That is my opinion. A child deserves to know who his father is.

Here's my intuition about why these answers are not shared: That knowledge is a part of a wider context of knowledge, and there are other related truths which we are hiding from. This hiding is partially at an individual level, but there's a collective aspect to it also. We can't step outside of it any more than we can step outside of our human genome. Some truths get through, but they're distorted by the obstruction of the other things we don't want to see. And we can't deal with any of it well in our current condition. That condition will improve, god willing, then we will discover more. In the meantime, we move in that direction by making choices not to hide from what we do see, even while realizing that we're not understanding it correctly from our limited perspective.

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

I don't agree that an actual guru would never choose to make sharing his discoveries important. I can imagine that he'd choose not to because he understands it to be counterproductive, but not unimportant. I think the blissful nihilism that often masquerades as enlightenment, and which may make the sharing seem unimportant, is actually one indicator of the limited wisdom of gurus.

But wouldn't an actual guru handily recognize that blissful nihilism* and shrug it off, given the wisdom of true enlightenment any qualified guru would have experienced? You are consistently assuming that all "enlightened" folk are charlatans; try assuming,perhaps, that some of them actually got there, and are able to spot the simple charades that their impersonators necessarily adopt.

It may be that true gurus (assuming there are any) are not interested in sharing, but it could be more that they have a real understanding of how the recipients of their words will react than it is they have a smug or misguided assumption that what they "know" cannot be transcribed in a way these simple people (aka, everyone) could comprehend. True gurus may actually be at a loss for words to describe what they've seen, and sensibly choose then to describe nothing, rather than mislead gullible listeners.

In a sense, an enlightened guru might understand that there is no way to properly translate her experiences, so she finds it better to keep those experiences close, and simply wait for others to touch the same truths as her, and then share, for the sake of learning more, her experiences.

* Oh; and if a guru starts spouting exigencies of bliss, assume that he is full of shit. Bliss (and nihilism, for that matter) is a buzzword; a descriptor that shields ignorance behind a high wall of hope... yes, hope is a powerful tool, obviously, of the charlatans as well.

Of course a guru may actually help people. I was probably helped by Ramana Maharshi, for example. People are complex, and I'm not suggesting he was Satan incarnate. But I still say that if we scale the presumption of knowledge down to what the individual actually knows, and he qualifies his message appropriately given that limited knowledge, then he no longer fits any standard definition of the word 'guru'.

Agreed.

If there is a man somewhere who has answers to questions about the origin and fate of the universe, and if it does not hurt others for him to share those answers, then he must share them. That is my opinion. A child deserves to know who his father is.

Why must a person not be qualified as a guru until he can answer questions about the origin and the fate of the universe? Is there no middle ground? Are there no other facets of existence that are not quite so universal that beg to be understood and explained? Like the nature of our soul, or identity?

A child generally knows who his father is, intuitively; that's the knowledge we humans have already learned to absorb. However, whether a child must know the origin or specific metaphysical constructs from which his father emerged, and whether someone who knows as much is obliged to share, is far more arguable, I think.

Aside from that: someone who has seen (and remembered) the Truth about, say the origin and fate of the universe probably ought to share with the rest of us, but that someone must also consider whether his description of those things will be understood by anybody, and, worse, whether his descriptions will be misunderstood an converted into yet another useless religion.

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

Here's my intuition about why these answers are not shared: That knowledge is a part of a wider context of knowledge, and there are other related truths which we are hiding from. This hiding is partially at an individual level, but there's a collective aspect to it also. We can't step outside of it any more than we can step outside of our human genome. Some truths get through, but they're distorted by the obstruction of the other things we don't want to see. And we can't deal with any of it well in our current condition. That condition will improve, god willing, then we will discover more. In the meantime, we move in that direction by making choices not to hide from what we do see, even while realizing that we're not understanding it correctly from our limited perspective.

Well said; I tend to agree with all of that. It does not explain why gurus cannot exist so much as we are not yet programmed to allow them to exist, but the reasoning is sound, I think, if not, yes, truly intuitive. Perhaps potential gurus are those few who have enjoyed opportunity to digest the truths that get through, and from them are able to forge the paths to discover more. Yes, collectively we'll all walk those paths eventually, but what if an enlightened few are doing so right now? And what if they know this path is not meant for discovery just yet, that the collective "we" must -- for its own genomic good -- continue to hide, for now? And what if these few would be willing to share with individuals who displayed the fortitude necessary to single them out?

All existent gurus may be charlatans. Hell, all self-proclaimed gurus most certainly are charlatans. But that doesn't mean there is not a precious few enlightened beings living among us, who -- as they explore their own unique existences with the vision of their transcendental perspectives -- are either keeping to themselves or waiting for properly engaged explorers to discover them.

Originally Posted by Sageous

You are consistently assuming that all "enlightened" folk are charlatans; try assuming,perhaps, that some of them actually got there, and are able to spot the simple charades that their impersonators necessarily adopt.

I would expect those 'enlightened folk' to be the tail of a distribution of knowledgeable people. In my observation, the thicker part of the tail, not quite so many standard deviations out, is almost entirely missing. It seems more likely that the most knowledgeable we see evidence of are actually near the end of the tail, and the few that are further out are not that much further out. Beethoven has an audience, and the audience seems to me to be inadequate to support the existence of Beethoven. I agree that there must be wiser beings in principle. They just don't seem to me to be here, now.

Originally Posted by Sageous

It may be that true gurus (assuming there are any) are not interested in sharing, but it could be more that they have a real understanding of how the recipients of their words will react

Sure, that's part of what I had in mind when I said "if it does not hurt others for him to share those answers". But that's another reason for him not to be a guru.

I doubt he has those answers in any case though, since he lives as part of a context, and the context doesn't seem to me to support it. In other words, there's no reason for that guru to live in our world. In theory, his silent presence would stimulate us all, but if he has the depth of knowledge that is commonly assumed for gurus, then I think our collective spiritual imagination would be less barren. Its really not the idea that people can know stuff that I object to. If one chimpanzee is wiser than the others, we can call him a guru. But he is not a guru in the sense of having ultimate answers, which is the religious assumption I was questioning.

Originally Posted by Sageous

Why must a person not be qualified as a guru until he can answer questions about the origin and the fate of the universe? Is there no middle ground? Are there no other facets of existence that are not quite so universal that beg to be understood and explained? Like the nature of our soul, or identity?

Quoting myself: If a guy like Ramana Maharshi would temper his claims a bit, and say, OK, I don't have the ultimate answers to everything but I can help you with this one specific step in self-awareness, then he wouldn't be a charlatan.

Sure there is a middle ground. But the guru doesn't claim the middle ground, and it is generally not the middle ground that is claimed for the guru. That is my whole point.

I think it is also true though that it is difficult to answer ultimate questions about identity or the soul if you don't also have answers in relation to the origin and fate of the universe. Those are interrelated. The claim that the questions about the universe are not relevant to exploring identity is what I was criticizing earlier, when I said they explain away such questions as distractions.

Originally Posted by Sageous

A child generally knows who his father is, intuitively; that's the knowledge we humans have already learned to absorb. However, whether a child must know the origin or specific metaphysical constructs from which his father emerged, and whether someone who knows as much is obliged to share, is far more arguable, I think.

Other people can debate that then. I'm uppity enough to insist on the right to know.

One reason for that, is I think that such knowledge comes concretely into our minds in a broader karmic and subconscious context, that it is not just ours to decide what to do with.

Originally Posted by Sageous

It does not explain why gurus cannot exist so much as we are not yet programmed to allow them to exist

That's what I want to do, change the programming. Prepare the ground by clearing away our love affair the false gurus. But its not a subtler, more elevated abuse of power that I'm looking for. If it is inherently distorting for one man to be that far ahead of his fellows, then I want to go without gurus. Much of what I have seen makes me think it is inherently distorting, the way the whole concept of a sage bends the minds of aspirants. If one guy has a billion dollars while his fellows are poor, is that an ideal state of things? I think that condition can't exist unless something is wrong. And I think that looking to be uplifted by rich people is the wrong way out of poverty. It doesn't lead out of poverty.

I see you deleted your 'how is this relevant to meditation' question. The relevance to me is that the topic was dangers of meditation, and those dangers, real or imagined, are a primary reason given for why we need gurus. Also, my belief is that the doctrines presented by gurus as truths tend to act against common sense among their followers, making meditation more dangerous than it would be otherwise. Without those expectations about where it leads I don't think it is very dangerous at all.

Anyway, suppose my claim that we are obligated to share knowledge is true. If 'guru' is the best thought we have for a person who does that, then that would obligate people to become gurus. So they're right to do that. But my hope is to create a better thought, and meet that obligation in a better way.

'Thought' isn't quite the right word for what I mean here. Sometimes people have to act a certain way, they can't help themselves. Changing requires more than just changing our minds about it or substituting another idea, who we are has to change also. But developing ideas is a part of how we change, even if it is not the only part.

Oh yeah, I forgot....Here are a couple of my thoughts on the origin and nature of the universe, which I may have mentioned elsewhere. (These are 'mine' only in the sense that I think them and I haven't read them anywhere, I'm sure they're not original to me.)

The universe isn't as big as it looks. Physically it is that big, but we're seeing it through the lens of who we are. Worlds that are far enough away to be beyond our ability to acquire information about them are not objectively real for us. They are projections of other worlds, or interpretations of other worlds. If we were to somehow travel to them they would become real for us by our bringing them into relation with ourselves that way. But they don't necessarily exist for other people in the same sense that our world exists for us. In other words, when we look far away, in some way we're seeing into another universe, but we're seeing through the filter of our world. Their universe may be very different for them, even though we can see a limited interpretation of it in ours.

Our universe is a vessel of sorts. The direction of travel is not in time and space, those are both internal to it. But it moves in the sense of changing nature and relationships, and the direction we give it may change in time. Maybe our vessel is a little bit lost. But any kind of exploration has at least a small element of 'lost' in it. And it seems to me that any kind of life has at least an element of exploration in it. Maybe there's more of that element in our life than is inherent elsewhere.

These are just intuitions that sort of make sense given what I understand and experience. I'm sure they're not actually quite right. Getting better intuitions of this sort is pretty much my only interest in anything like meditation, along with changing my character, such as by uncovering anything that I may be hiding. For me meditation isn't enough though, most of it comes through life experiences.

This is interesting stuff, but I'm out of time, so here's a bit that caught my eye in particular:

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

I doubt he has those answers in any case though, since he lives as part of a context, and the context doesn't seem to me to support it. In other words, there's no reason for that guru to live in our world. In theory, his silent presence would stimulate us all, but if he has the depth of knowledge that is commonly assumed for gurus, then I think our collective spiritual imagination would be less barren. Its really not the idea that people can know stuff that I object to. If one chimpanzee is wiser than the others, we can call him a guru. But he is not a guru in the sense of having ultimate answers, which is the religious assumption I was questioning.

I think you nailed it here, or at least bent quite close to my view of the nature of a guru. I still do not think a guru must have all the ultimate answers, but I also do not think he need announce those he has found. Indeed, his knowledge may change his nature enough that he understands that there is no need to share, because our collective spiritual imagination would be less barren.

I think the gurus you wish us to live without are the literally uninspired guys who claim to have knowledge or the ones who were confused by little things they saw and decided must be important, even though they are wrong. In either case, these guys are compelled to gather a following, for reasons of greed, megalomania, or a misguided (mistaught?) religious bent. I couldn't agree more that we do not need their input... now if we could just get people to stop needing to follow them and believe their crap...

I also agree that it would be nice if there were a better way to disseminate transcendental knowledge/experience, that it both isn't productive or fair for just a few (or less) to gain greater knowledge while the rest of us can only follow in their wake, grasping what we can and screwing up the rest.

That's it; gotta go. I want to respond to more, and will, should I remember to do so later...

As a side note....For a distillation of one aspect of the guru/disciple relationship, consider Lebron James. In his case there's no misleading theology, and no acting as an intermediary between his fans and God. He just plays basketball, well. But the psychological impact is similar in some ways. I think the example is also fitting because he's absolutely the best at what he does, and we were discussing what 'best' would look like for a guru. Also, there's a mental part to Lebron James that has some similarity to the guru. He's not just a body, he has an exceptionally strong mind, even though its almost completely built and oriented towards being a sports icon. He has that body because of who he is. What is it that makes him stronger than his peers? How did his spirit get stronger, or maybe, why is it not yet quite as weak? Something to meditate on maybe.

There might be people in the world who have permanently reached higher states of consciousness because of meditation. I am agnostic on that. I have experienced higher states of consciousness, but they are very isolated, and they never last more than a few hours. I know that certain forms of meditation can work really well in the short term. I also know that there are a lot of scam artists out there pretending to be enlightened. Maharishi even called himself a prophet.

The Beatles made Maharishi famous. They went to India with him on a spiritual retreat (along with the Beach Boys, Donovan, Marianne Faithful, and Mia Farrow) and really put him on a pedestal. However, John Lennon and Paul McCartney ended up denouncing him though they said they still believed in transcendental meditation. I think Paul recanted on his recanting in recent years and has done a lot to bury the denouncement. He's a billionaire, and I think he has used his money to bury certain things in his past, not just this. I've run into a lot of trouble finding clips that show how much John and Paul turned on Maharishi. The song "Sexy Sadie" is about him, and it mocks him and his fraudulent charisma. It has the lines, "You made a fool of everyone," "She came along to turn on everyone" (which has a triple meaning), and, "We gave her everything we owned just to sit at her table."

This video exposes Maharishi pretty big time. I don't understand their points about how TM damages people, aside from sucking away their money when they treat it like some mysterious activity that only gurus can guide people through. In it, you can see somebody claiming to be enlightened getting angry and hostile when cornered with hard questions. I had never seen footage of that until just then when I found this video. It is really profound footage. He was really exposed in this.



This is a video for "Sexy Sadie."

Wait, did he have a school for children? Is that what I'm seeing? Damn it, if adults are stupid enough to follow your nonsense, that's their problem, but that's no reason to mess up the minds of the kids.

Originally Posted by Virtualucidity

Wait, did he have a school for children? Is that what I'm seeing? Damn it, if adults are stupid enough to follow your nonsense, that's their problem, but that's no reason to mess up the minds of the kids.

What they talk about in the video is a university in Fairfield, Iowa. It used to be called Maharishi International University, but he ended up changing it to Maharishi University of Management. However, he does have a grade school in Fairfield called the Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment. It starts at elementary school. Apparently, it is shown for a moment in the video. The university and the grade school are part of a bigger system called Vedic City. Yeah, it's really messed up. He was such a con artist.

Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Maharishi died in 2008. I guess he didn't really reach immortality. He also apparently never made a video of himself flying.

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

I ran across this today and thought it would be worth posting. I only skimmed it.

The Dark Knight of the Soul - Tomas Rocha - The Atlantic

A couple of quick comments:

For myself personally, the goal of knowing myself is pretty much non-negotiable. Maybe some people have trouble dealing with knowing who they really are, and maybe they shouldn't go there too deeply. But I want to know.

I think part of the problem is that when people teach meditation, there are always other beliefs and goals in the background, and those have effects that self-inquiry would not have by itself. When people inquire 'Who Am I' as a part of a meditative tradition, for instance, they always have assumptions about what the question means, an ideological position on what the answer is going to be, and a motive that circumscribes what kind of answer is acceptable. That's not quite the same as really asking. To some extent its a kind of deciding who to be, but often with an unseen internal contradiction in what is being decided.

Like I said, I didn't take the time to read the article carefully, so I'm not saying I think its good or bad.

shadowofwind


I read the whole article. Thank you for posting it.

In 1995 I woke out of a pleasant, clear dream about 2 little ducklings. Within about 4 hours the dream happened in waking life. I decided to ask my GP to recommend a psychiatrist. I said "normally, I I'd seek out a guru or mahatma about this but I'm 25 now and I'm wondering if the cause of these dreams is a life long mental illness". My GP sent me to a long time colleague of his.

Two unusual things happened with that very ethical psychiatrist. On our third appointment I plucked up the courage to say,

"I have an inner World and some ofmy dreams come true"!

He replied, very firmly,

"And I am not interested!"

A few weeks later I told him that I was thinking of taking up meditation again. He looked gently at me and said something like,

"I don't want you to do that Debbie." He explained that it is good for some but not for others.

Since then I never deliberately meditate (focuss on one thing) for more than a few minutes. If I'm lucky enough to have a dream game to participate in, I just focus as I drop off to sleep.

After reading your link I think my first ever psychiatrist was a wise man.


Here is the last bit of that article:

There are parts of me that just want meditation to be all good.

I find myself in denial sometimes, where I just want to forget all that I've learned and go back to being happy about mindfulness and promoting it,

but

then I get another phone call and meet someone who's in distress, and I see the devastation in their eyes, and I can't deny that this is happening.

As much as I want to investigate and promote contemplative practices and contribute to the well-being of humanity through that, I feel a deeper commitment to what's actually true."

You're unlikely to even get as far as the Dark Night if you only practise mindfulness meditation - which is all you need to do if you're meditating for lucid induction alone. For more advanced practices, just find your nearest buddhist centre for guidance.

Thanks for sharing Havago. It seems to me that 'shared dreaming' is at least as confusion inducing as premonitory dreaming though, and is almost the same thing. So I wonder if your psychiatrist would have wanted you to lay off that also.

For myself, its almost as if I'm not even in my personal mental space when I sleep any more. All of my dreams for a year or two now are like the "having other people's dreams" experiences that Sageous describes. I still get some arguably useful insight about people I know that way, but identity is all blurred together, I don't dream about specific people. Its like having a radio tuned to several at once. Kind of hard to make much sense out of anything that way.

Over at the 'mystic dreams' subforum at dreammoods, the most prolific posters are into xenophobic prophesying about wars and disasters. I believe that they have some real prophetic ability, but most of their predictions are both wrong and passive-aggressively hateful. I don't really get why they don't learn from that and move on. I don't know if these means that cultivating dream premonitions are a bad idea, or just that doing it dishonestly is a bad idea.

I do think that excessive premonitions are a bad idea in that they limit or crystallize our future potential. The problem isn't so much with physical outcomes, it is more of a spiritual constriction, like freezing the heavens into manifestation or something. At the same time, the ability that premonitions are a part of must be good for something, if we do the right thing with it.

I think analogous comments must be applicable to shared dreaming, even if we haven't yet worked out quite what 'mental health' is in that context. The human status quo of personal isolation can't be right. But we already have severe problems with group-think as it is, so breaking down the walls can't be the solution either. Maybe we have to center ourselves in our moral ideals or something.

Ctharlhie

I agree. This monk explains things pretty clearly for me.

At the (5:20) point he says:

It is possible, truly, that if you follow after any state it can lead you to states of insanity. You could drive yourself crazy chasing after and developing these states. People who develop special states of trance and so on can actually ... um ... there are cases where they actually, so to speak, drive themselves crazy.

There's nothing dangerous with these states in and of themselves, it's the attitude of the meditater,

thay become so wound-up and so caught-up and so interested and keen and attached to something that it ends up releasing an explosion of temporary insanity.

So

There is that warning. Mostly what's going to happen instead is that people will just become affraid or that it's just too much or that they don't understand it.

These things should be understood as they are. There is nothing dangerous or special in these things in and of themselves. And we shouldn't treat them like that. Or, for sure, it will lead to suffering and discontent when they dissappear. Or suffering when we chase after them and therefore drive ourselves crazy or any number of things can happen.

☆☆☆
Watch "What Meditation Is Not" on YouTube
What Meditation Is Not: What Meditation Is Not - YouTube

☆☆☆(6:55) 6,589 views

Originally Posted by Ctharlhie

You're unlikely to even get as far as the Dark Night if you only practise mindfulness meditation - which is all you need to do if you're meditating for lucid induction alone. For more advanced practices, just find your nearest buddhist centre for guidance.

Cthatlhie

Here is that monk's meditation practice

Here is a 10 min Youtube from that monk who said U can drive your self insane , meditating.

(2:34) - ... So, in these videos it is important to understand that sometimes during the meditation it may not feel peaceful and calm. Sometimes, the meditation is dealing with the very deep unpleasant states that exist in our mind.

States of stress
States of worry
States of anger
States of addiction, and so on. (...)

(4:00) - And the way we do this is, we use an ancient technique which is called Mantra. (...) But instead of focusing the mind on some out-of-the-ordinary word (mantra), we are going to focus on an ordinary word (mantra). (that will help us focus) on the reality around us as we experience it.

(4:28) - ... we'll be using a mantra, a word for the experience, which brings the mind to focuss, to clearly experience that phenomenon, as it arises.

In the last five minutes of this YouTube he explaine the meditation.

The above is from his 1st of 3 "How to meditate" 10 minute YouTube's. But at the bottom of this post I'll link his 2nd becaues it explains the "How-to"

But, basically

When I'm sitting I say to myself, "sitting, ... sitting, ... sitting.
When I'm standing I say to myself, "standing, ... standing, ... standing.
When I'm walking I say to myself, "walking, ... walking, ... walking.

If my mind wanders I say thinking, ... thinking, ... thinking. This mantra stops me getting involved with my thinking and soon the thinking stops (for a while).

If I get bored with the practice I say to myself, boring, ... boring, ...
If I get frustrated at the practice I say to myself, frustrated, frustrated
If I get peaceful or blissful or happy then I say to myself peaceful peaceful peaceful and so on.

Basically I'm not to get carried away with "liking" or "dis-liking" any feeling I get. And by simply saying the corresponding "mantra" the mind soon disengages from "liking and disliking" leaving only reality.

Buddha said that only the senses are real. But my liking or disliking what I sense causes the delusion of the "self" the "me".

To dissolve that delusion I need to practice letting go of liking and disliking every thing I sense. He said that sound is just sound, seeing is just seeing.

Here is the monks second YouTube on his meditation practice. He gets right down to the practice.

I don't think there is any danger in this meditation practice.

★★★

How To Meditate II - Sitting Meditation: How To Meditate II - Sitting Meditation - YouTube

★★★(10:00) 293,771 views

This is the text under the Youtube:

Uploaded on Jan 23, 2009

Second (of six) in a series of videos on how to practice meditation without the requirement of religious dogma or spiritual mumbo-jumbo. This video discusses a simple technique of sitting meditation.