Gimmah the evidence

[Rahul]

First you should be careful about the food that you put in your mouth or in your brain.
Even in good faith people eat tons of steaming manure.

[Whateverist]

Did it ever occur to you that the word "union", its definition and the thing itself may not be precisely the same thing? It is all too common for we humans to squeeze their experience through the filter of language and then inject that understanding back out into the world they think they experience. I'm just wondering if calling it "union" may not be unnecessarily constraining your understanding of yoga. I'll stop there so you can decide if this means anything to you at all. (There is always more.)

You can give the meaning that you like to this word.
As far as i am concern the meaning of the word UNION within yoga means to merge into the cosmic consciousness and become one with it.
Like a drop of water that when reach and merge in the ocean become one with it. It become the ocean itself.
Capish!

Well yes, one can give whatever meaning they like to words. The metaphor you use to understand yoga is nice, richly suggestive in so many rich ways. (Though whether all of them are useful remains to be seen.) But can we leave aside yoga as the topic of discussion?

Let us say you know more about yoga than I do. I'll concede the tenets of yoga to be whatever you say they are. So we need have no more factual arguments about what yoga does or does't say about a topic. Please do draw from your knowledge of yoga in our discussion. All I ask is that you refrain from using the orthodoxy of yogic dogma to justify any point. Surely your understanding of yoga should give you such an advantage that you would not need to cite it as an authority. Whatever wisdom it bestows should be enough to allow you to hold your own on other topics directly with someone who lacks that knowledge.

Is your idea of union the same as mine?
If so then you can say that this is a union of thoughts.

Perhaps but I would need to know more. But before we begin, do you accept my terms? You may draw on yoga as you please, you just will not cite it authoritatively. I in turn will refrain from arguing with you what yoga is or should be about. Deal?

[downbeatplumb]

An example is about one nurse that drop a child fracturing a leg.
The nurse did not tell anyone for fear of getting in trouble.
When the NDE experiencer came back to life he point out this to the people in the hospital so they could fix the fracture and of course understand why the child was crying so much.hock:

And I just saw a purple elephant fly by reciting the most exciting parts of the twilight saga over and over.

See I can make unsubstantiated claims to.

I find your story unconvincing is what i am trying to convey

[Little Rik]

can we leave aside yoga as the topic of discussion

Sure but would that make any difference?
Let me explain better.
Suppose we are all try to reach the summit of a mountain.
I follow a certain path while you follow a different path.
Now you can say that my choice is not good while yours is good or you are not interested in it.
Ok. but what is the forum all about if not to compare the different choices?
Anyway in this case it would be interesting to know from you why you post in the philosophy forum?
What is the meaning of philosophy and why you try to learn more things all the time?
Is not that someone try to draw you to the top of the summit so you can finally go back in the dimension where you can put an end to the thirst for the unknown that want leave you alone?

[downbeatplumb]

can we leave aside yoga as the topic of discussion

Sure but would that make any difference?
Let me explain better.
Suppose we are all try to reach the summit of a mountain.
I follow a certain path while you follow a different path.
Now you can say that my choice is not good while yours is good or you are not interested in it.
Ok. but what is the forum all about if not to compare the different choices?
Anyway in this case it would be interesting to know from you why you post in the philosophy forum?
What is the meaning of philosophy and why you try to learn more things all the time?
Is not that someone try to draw you to the top of the summit so you can finally go back in the dimension where you can put an end to the thirst for the unknown that want leave you alone?

And this is you explaining better!
What are you on about?

[Severan]

I would have to partially agree with this post. Christians are on their way out. As are other religions. They do not understand the evidence given to them. However, as a theist posted this, I must disagree with their ideas. If you are a theist, you live in communism already. Your god threatens to torture you for eternity unless you do what he says.

[Simon Moon]

Let me explain better.

By using a false analogy? That is not what qualifies for a better explanation.

Suppose we are all try to reach the summit of a mountain.
I follow a certain path while you follow a different path.
Now you can say that my choice is not good while yours is good or you are not interested in it.

Here's where you analogy fails.

We KNOW that the summit of every mountain on earth actually exists. We also know that there are likely to be different routes to the summit. And in the end, it is provable that they can be reached.

None of this is true for your claims.

All you have is your claims of personal experience and the claims of personal experience of others. There is no possible way to prove that your experiences map to anything in reality.

I've explored altered states of consciousness for decades, yoga for 10+ year(it really helped my surfing!), meditate for 10+ years, binaurel recordings, fasting, and other methods. I've had some pretty 'profound' experiences, none of which I have any evidence that they are anything more than drastic changes in brain states.

Is not that someone try to draw you to the top of the summit so you can finally go back in the dimension where you can put an end to the thirst for the unknown that want leave you alone?

Yeah, sure, an anonymous Internet poster has all the ultimate answers

No thanks, I'll think I'll pass on your unsupported claims.

[Little Rik]

I would have to partially agree with this post. Christians are on their way out. As are other religions. They do not understand the evidence given to them. However, as a theist posted this, I must disagree with their ideas. If you are a theist, you live in communism already. Your god threatens to torture you for eternity unless you do what he says.

Strange indeed but you are quite correct when you say that my God not much threaten but torture me for eternity unless.........
Why is that so?
Because he is the master player and i am part of his playing.
It is only when my consciousness merge in his cosmic one that the play end and is possible to realize that you really were not a separate entity as you were thinking for so long but himself in his game.


PS. i will answer the other posts as soon as the time allow. Ciao

[Whateverist]

I'm afraid I've lost my train of thought on this thread. I guess my question for you enrico is whether you first experienced what union means in the context of yoga while doing yoga, or, if you first had been conditioned to understand it in a certain way. If you can honestly say you were practicing yoga first with out instruction in what to expect or how to interpret it, then I'd be more interested to hear what you have to say. But I suspect you were instructed quite explicitly on what to expect and how to interpret that. Do you see why the second scenario would be more questionable for those of us not looking to buy into any spiel?

[Little Rik]

I'm afraid I've lost my train of thought on this thread. I guess my question for you enrico is whether you first experienced what union means in the context of yoga while doing yoga, or, if you first had been conditioned to understand it in a certain way. If you can honestly say you were practicing yoga first with out instruction in what to expect or how to interpret it, then I'd be more interested to hear what you have to say. But I suspect you were instructed quite explicitly on what to expect and how to interpret that. Do you see why the second scenario would be more questionable for those of us not looking to buy into any spiel?

It was and still is all about attraction which as i discussed in the previous post is also a form of torture.
Torture does not necessary means pain that can be associated with masochism.
You may not agree but we are ALL attracted by him (God) and if we do not move toward him we feel pain (mental torture).
That is why i try to understand from you what it means to come here in this forum and try to learn new things from other people.
What philosophy means to you?
There are two way to go ahead.
One is consciously like admitting that you see a goal to reach (like me) the other is going ahead without caring whether there is a goal or not (like you).
You are here in this forum, you care about your health and your family, you would like to see a better world you try to learn more and more and so on.
This is going ahead in your own way in your own path and this lead you to enter higher form of consciousness that eventually will lead to the summit of everything. This way is a lot longer and more hard.
Now you may not feel a connection between you and human emancipation but as the time goes by and you advance then you will understand better what i am talking about.
Coming back to your question in the past when all started i realize that the best way to go ahead was to let go my mental if and buts and surely i will find the solution.
It is said that when the ...........the student is ready the master appears.
That is exactly what happen. The master was waiting for me.
Now any master would tell you........if you do this or that then you will achieve this or that.
This is how the system works.
It is like when you want to become a doctor, you got to do this or that according to your teacher instruction.
This is the best way or you can gain the knowledge a bit at the time but it will takes a lot longer just as you do in your life regarding reaching the summit of human emancipation.
In other words before i started yoga i did feel unconsciously that something in my life was missing and that was the union with the infinity but that become more clear as i was initiated into tantric yoga.