I'm a long-time daily meditator. I did the closed-eyes introspecting thing almost every morning for over forty years. During that time my practice was focused on "going inside."
Inside what?
Good question, one which I never gave much thought to during my true-believing spiritual phase. The guru I followed used those words going inside a lot, so I assumed they meant something.
Now it seems to me that reality doesn't have an inside and an outside.
I've given up the goal of concentrating on the interior of my cranium, which many meditators believe leads to an experience of wholly other-worldly phenomena — divine lights and sounds, that sort of thing.
Over on the Yahoo RadhaSoami Studies Group (I used to be a member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas), I came across a posting called "How deep inside your self can you go." It starts out by conveying the standard dogma of what it means to go inside.
How deep within can you go is the fundamental question to all who do meditation. It means how deep have you gone. To what level have you transcended your mind from your body. Do you know your own Soul. or after years of trying you can only guess!
When we ask these simple questions the forum wall goes mute! Why? It is because no one ventures that deep within them self. And no one knows how deep anyone can go. There is no way of knowing even with intuition how deep a person has achieved and how much a person has uncovered at all. WE cannot tell from any outside means who has and who has not.
Well, I have several disagreements with what's been said here.
First, it isn't true that "all who do meditation" seek to go deep inside their own self or consciousness, transcending the body.
Buddhist meditation usually involves paying attention to one's body and/or the outside world. Following the breath, either by mindfully observing inbreaths and outbreaths, or counting breaths, is a core Buddhist meditative practice.
Second, the soul is a hypothesis of only certain religions and spiritual philosophies. Most Buddhists and Taoists don't believe in a disembodied soul — an immaterial drop of consciousness, or whatever, that is separate and distinct from our physical nature.
Third, the author of this piece assumes that it is possible to "go inside" even though he/she admits there's no way of knowing whether anyone has been able to do this. How could there be, if the deepest inside of us is totally transcendent from the outside?
The notion of going inside is strongly dualistic. As noted above, it presumes that some part of us is capable of experiencing a level of reality that is utterly detached from the physical body and material world.
Neuroscience tells us that there is no distinction between "inside" and "outside" in human consciousness. Meaning, we have no direct contact with reality. All of our experiencing occurs through the brain, which filters, processes, and otherwise manipulates raw sensory perceptions in complex unconscious ways.
So the idea that it's possible to detach one's consciousness from the brain is just that: an idea. And ideas are produced by the brain.
I like how Alan Watts looks upon our human situation in his book,"The Wisdom of Insecurity."
For among the things that give man pleasure are relations with other human beings — conversation, eating together, singing, dancing, having children, and cooperation in work which "many hands make light."
Indeed, one of the highest pleasures is to be more or less unconscious of one's own existence, to be absorbed in interesting sights, sounds, places, and people. Conversely, one of the greatest pains is to be self-conscious, to feel unabsorbed and cut off from the community and the surrounding world.
…The meaning of freedom can never be grasped by the divided mind. If I feel separate from my experience, and from the world, freedom will seem to be the extent to which I can push the world around, and fate the extent to which the world pushes me around.
But to the whole mind there is no contrast of "I" and the world. There is just one process acting, and it does everything that happens. It raises my little finger and it creates earthquakes. Or, if you want to put it that way, I raise my little finger and also make earthquakes. No one fates and no one is being fated.
…For the mind must be interested or absorbed in something, just as a mirror must always be reflecting something. When it is not trying to be interested in itself — as if a mirror would reflect itself — it must be interested or absorbed in other people and things.
There is no problem of how to love. We love. We are love, and the only problem is the direction of love, whether it is to go straight out like sunlight, or to try to turn back on itself like a "candle under a bushel."
I'm certainly no Christian, but I think this supposed saying of Jesus contains quite a bit of wisdom. Our "enlightenment," whatever that may mean, is to be directed outward — toward other people and the world.
We shouldn't hide away within ourselves, which isn't even possible, because there is no "within" and no "without." It's all one. Whatever the heck it is.
Discover more from Church of the Churchless
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
There is a problem with so called
internal progress. Such is usually made
by transformation of sexual energy.
Or, rather, not ohas, but moving the
sexually supressed energy to the brain.
Uaually via the spine. But, the fact is all
supressed energy finds its way to the brain.
This same sexually supressed energy can
cause insanity. The drug Prozac stops
this sexual energy from the brain.
The mental institutions are loaded with
schizophrenics. They see and hear things
that are not there.
Same with Radhasoamis. In Yogananda’s
surat shabda group, they move he energy
up and down the spine before beginning
the shabda practice. The chakras have
their own sound and light, according
to theory. Radhasoamis, except for
Agra groups, are usually unaware they
are practising kundalini yoga.
The people whom can actually go inside
do not think its a big deal. They KNOW
it is not real and all manufactured by
the brain.
The question is, why do Gurus tell us
it is real ????
No sane person could believe it is real
for very long.
Yet, insane people in hospitals do believe
it is real.
That is why a good Guru is always nuts
and has a far off look in their eyes,
which are usually glazed.
Add religious rhetoric to explain
karma and rebirth and people will follow
you.
The guru is a Madman.
The end result of meditation is being
one with the highest levels.
You can feel as if you are one with
your being.
But, this does not prove this oneness
will outlast the body. It does not
prove God and rebirth, nor heaven.
All these are dogmas the Guru has no
proof of himself.
That is why Faquir Chand was UNKNOWING.
That’s also why Faquir called gurus criminals,
for telling people they know the answers
and have experienced them for themselves.
When they in fact have not.
There is ‘going inside’ if ones
personal mental creations are
considered real.
The problem is, anyone whom thinks
this is delusional. ‘Going
inside’ is a delusion.
Over many years and many groups
I asked many people about their
experiences ‘inside’.
One very strange word kept coming
up. Believe. They almost all said the
same thing.
You must ‘believe’ it is real.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgfxcuWq4oA&feature=related
Mike, i tried to get you to explain what you mean by sexual fluids in the body and so on. You talk about raising the ojas to the brain (which is physically impossible) and about energies in the body, and then you talked about pranahuti, which is a supernatural phenomenon. In the next breath you criticise meditation and claim there is no such thing as “going inside” but basically say that it is possible to go inside but that such things a delusional.
Hi David,
Yes. the world of the occult
is filled with paradox.
Both the true and the untrue.
It comes down to a matter of perception.
Does one BELIEVE what what sees INSIDE
is real, or not ?
Since no hard scientific, or even logical reasons exist for the soul, Inner Planes,
Karma and rebirth, the matter hinges
totally on BELIEF.
Therefore, the believers BELIEVE the inner
worlds are real. They believe the Guru
will save them. They BELIEVE the occult
THEORY.
None of the things the BELIEVERS believe
can be verified.
Therefore every single time an exsatsangi
debates a believer, they must automatically
win.
The satsangi can never win.
THE ONLY LOGIC OF THE SATSANGI IS
THEY ‘BELIEVE’.
PERIOD.
So, no debate is even possible.
Are you a believer or a non believer in meditation.
poonam, I’m obviously a believer, since I’ve meditated every day since 1970 — 42 years.
It’s nice to see Alan Watts quoted
instead of Suzuki and other quacks.
An interesting meditation is to imagine
the color yellow. Then track it back to its
source.
See what happens when you try to consciously
visualize yellow in meditation.
There are over 30 places in your brain
you are conscious of. By visualizing blackness and peeping inside, you continually only go to one place.
If it doesn’t work, why keep going
back ?
Do you return to a dry waterhole when
you are thirsty ?
Do you need to even meditate to see
for yourself that the self is an illusion ?
If there is a Positive Force, does it
want you to waste your time meditating ?
Meditation is the fertile ground for
sublimation of the self.
Meditation does not get rid of the self,
it continues the delusion.
The idea we have a self is the basis
of sin.
Is there anything in the world which can
be personalised ?
Without mistaken personalisation of
thought, can a self even exist ?
Can thought ever be personalised ?
Is there a WHO in your machine ?
Mike Williams aka Zakk knows his stuff lol.
Surely if you experience it, it is there…
I see a lot of words and analytical conversation, but where is the mystery?
You are what you believe, maybe?
Why can’t there be a soul…
What if you are, in fact….. wrong?
On the 4th of June 1889 Albert Pike wrote a letter to the supreme councils of the Freemason illuminati:
“To you, Sovereign Grand Instructors General, we say this, that you may repeat it to the Brethren of the 32nd, 31st and 30th degrees: ‘the Masonic Religion should be, by all of us initiates of the high degrees, maintained in the purity of the LUCIFERIAN Doctrine. If Lucifer were not god, would Adonay (Jesus)… calumniate (spread false and harmful statements about) him?…Yes Lucifer is God…”(Albert Pike, A.C. De La Rive, La Femme et l’Enfant dans la Franc-Maqonnene Universelle, page 588.)
http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/uspresidentasmasonspt2.htm
The most interesting website. Incredible.
Pike was chief Freemason in America.
Vast amounts of Freemasons governed America.