Bindi

I'm getting my lower and upper case 's's mixed up again, I get what you're saying though, and completely agree.

Interesting link, thanks Trunk. I found this of particular interest: I spent 20+ years working on the lower centers, before i even knew that there were lower centers

I understand from this that after the transmuted jing, qi and shen merge, the Spirit Embryo is then formed, and it is instead these merged energies circulating that then nourish the Embryo? And the matured Embryo is then 'born' into the void?

Yes, I meant the small 's' self has to develop, and look within, to find the capital 'S' self. I didn't realise you were talking about the capital 'S' Self, which of course has passed through all the stages it needs to. But some of those stages and attainments were surely necessary on the way.

Master Choa Kok Sui describes 3 permanent seeds or pearls, the Emotional Permanent Seed, the Physical Permanent Seed, and the Mental Permanent Seed. According to him, the Emotional Permanent Seed is located in the LDT, the Physical Permanent Seed or Seed of Destiny is in the MDT, and the Mental Permanent Seed or Seed of Consciousness is in the UDT.

I feel emotional and karmic issues are what we are here to learn from, not to try and have someone else wash away and deprive us of our lessons.

This is just a cute sort of notion though, because the Self does need to develop, and figuring out how to do develop it is the issue. And there might be many paths, but the underlying method is to seek within methinks, not to look from the inside-out.

Any chance you could suggest a good one (or two)? After a year on the fringes of Daoism and TDB, I find that I am finally familiar enough with Daoist terminology to take on a whole book

Jeff, you seem to change your story depending on which way the wind is blowing. Today, there's "no need to compare to the Buddhist tantric Yidam practice." Yet in August, Buddhist tantric Yidam practice was a valuable part of your 'teaching'.

When you say I disagree, because this has not been my experience of healing. My experience simply does not involve merging. Energy flowing through a conduit versus merging makes a world of difference to me in the context of healing. I have never done long distance healing, which was neither specified nor assumed in your statement, and I wasn't answering to long distance healing. But I seriously doubt all long distance healing involves merging. Developing a spiritual body to travel in space need not require that body to merge for energy to pass into another person, the spiritual body should be able to heal in exactly the same way as when the healer is in the physical body, which doesn't necessarily involve merging.

The Daskalos information T_I posted about healing may be relevant here. Is Daskalos merging, when he isolates the 'etheric double' and changes things energetically on that level? This is a question, not a statement. He does interact with the person's energy body, certainly. In my personal experience, i direct energy that comes through me from my connection to 'spirit' to the place where healing is needed, and this energy allows the physical or subtle body to do what is needed to heal, with no conscious intention on my part. So i 'channel' energy i guess, but i wouldn't consider this to be merging. edit: This for me is an example of Jesus sending energy in healing, but not an example of merging - The Healing Touch of Jesus Mark 5:27-31 27after hearing about Jesus, she came up in the crowd behind Him and touched His cloak.28For she thought, "If I just touch His garments, I will get well."29Immediately the flow of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction. 30Immediately Jesus, perceiving in Himself that the power proceeding from Him had gone forth, turned around in the crowd and said, "Who touched My garments?"31And His disciples said to Him, "You see the crowd pressing in on You, and You say, 'Who touched Me?' The whole healing topic as an example of merging i think needs to be examined more. Is energy passed on in hands on modalities, and is merging then seen as a necessary basis of long distance healing? I've never been motivated to attempt anything long distance, so i have very little idea about the nature of it. And is either form, hands on or merging, more effective for the same healer?

What I am attempting to say is: Gnosticism is a re-interpretation of Christian teaching... all but transformed beyond recognition. As such I neither take the gnostic additions in the Gospel Of Thomas as proof of anything, nor do I see the point of discussing the gnostic aspects of the Gospel of Thomas as a valid argument for any point.

Did Thomas Know the Synoptic Gospels? (2014) I respond to those who align the hypothetical Q with Thomas in a bid to establish the latter’s primitivity and independence. It is an argument that is endemic in the literature, but it is no more persuasive for its frequent repetition. In the cases I document, the scholars in question are making the case that the hypothetical Q is so similar to the Gospel of Thomas that both should be anchored in the first century. Far from being an argument about the pervasiveness of sayings collections in antiquity, the alignment between Q and Thomas focuses on these as special representatives of a unique, primitive sub-genre of first-century sayings gospels. The argument runs that they are different from and more primitive than the narrative gospels that found their way into the canon. But the argument is weak not only because of the key differences between Q and Thomas, differences that make better sense on a source-critical rather than a genre-critical approach (Goodacre 2002: 170-85), but also because sayings collections are so pervasive in antiquity that one does not need to isolate Q and Thomas as allegedly special first-century cases. There is, after all, a control. One can ask whether there are any extant literary works that focus on Jesus’ sayings or discourses that date from the second to the fourth centuries and there are, of course, plenty of them (Goodacre 2012: 10). In other words, the argument that Thomas’s genre demands a first-century setting is without merit.6 It is one of those ‘first impressions’ (Goodacre 2012: 1-25; cf. Goodacre 2002: 1-18) that sounds persuasive in the introductory level sketches but which evaporates on closer examination. Moreover, the idea that Thomas pulled his Synoptic parallels from pre- Synoptic ‘pools’ of oral tradition runs into difficulties when it comes to conceptualizing this model. The difficulty with the multiple ‘pool’ theory is that Thomas has parallels to material from every single strand of Synoptic material, double tradition, triple tradition, special Matthew, special Luke, even special Mark, something that creates a serious anomaly for the notion of Thomas’s independence (Goodacre 2012: 20-24; cf. Meier 1991: 137). If Thomas did not know the Synoptics, the author was able to access material from every pool of tradition that fed them, a striking phenomenon given Thomas’s social location and idiosyncratic theological profile. It is much more straightforward to suggest that Thomas simply knew the Synoptics. http://jnt.sagepub.com/content/36/3/282.full.pdf+html

It's late here, I will come back to this.

Their is no acknowledgement that the GOT is the oldest teachings of Jesus. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Thomas [The Gospel of Thomas] is composed of 114 sayings attributed to Jesus.[2] Almost half of these sayings resemble those found in the Canonical Gospels, while it is speculated that the other sayings were added from Gnostic tradition. Scholars generally fall into one of two main camps: an "early camp" favoring a date for the "core" of between the years 50 and 100, before or approximately contemporary with the composition of the canonical gospels and a "late camp" favoring a date in the 2nd century, after composition of the canonical gospels.

Tom, you have done this practice daily, for an extended period of time, while some in your group have been doing it for decades. The quote was "As with the other subtle experiences this... is set aside with non-attachment." Not "practiced daily with non-attachment." This is from your source, not mine.

A couple of scholarly interpretations of Thomas 22... R. McL. Wilson writes: "The idea that only the childlike can enter the Kingdom of God is, of course, familiar from the canonical Gospels. It may be added that this saying is one of the few which have anything in the nature of a narrative setting, although whether the words which introduce the saying derive from genuine tradition or were constructed for the purpose is matter for debate. Certainly all that follows the disciples' question is far removed from the canonical portrait of Jesus. Yet even here there is a basis in the New Testament: as Grant and Freedman note, listing passages cited by Doresse, the unity of believers in the body of Christ is based on New Testament teaching. They also quote Paul's words in Galatians iii.8: There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. Such a passage as this must serve to confirm the view that one element at least in the development of Gnosticism is a re-interpretation of Christian teaching." (Studies in the Gospel of Thomas, p. 31) J. D. Crossan writes of 22b: "Robinson has shown most persuasively how the original Kingdom and Children aphorism has moved along two hermeneutical trajectories. One is the 'orthodox' baptismal interpretation represented by John 3:1-10 and developed in later patristic texts (1962a:106-107). The other is the 'unorthodox' and gnostic interpretation represented here by Gos. Thom. 22b: 'When one considers that repudiation of sex was a condition to admission to some Gnostic groups, somewhat as baptism was a condition of admission into the church at large, it is not too difficult to see how a logion whose original Sitz im Leben was baptism could be taken over and remolded in the analogous Sitz im Leben of admission to the sect' (1962a: 108). Thus Jesus' reply in Gos. Thom. 22b involves a fourfold 'when you make,' each of which contains the obliteration of bodily differences, and each of which is known by itself or in various combinations from other gnostic sources (save the fourth). Thus 'when you make the two one' reappears in Gos. Thom. 106 and combined as 'when the two become one and the male with the female (is) neither male nor female' in the Gospel of the Egyptians (Hennecke and Schneemelcher: 1.168). These, and Robinson's more detailed examples (1962a: 108, 281-284), show that the setting and saying in Gos. Thom. 22a have been redactionally expanded in typically gnostic terms by the dialogue of 22b. 'The result is a logion all but transformed beyond recognition, were it not that the hint provided by the basic structure is confirmed by the introduction, in which it becomes clear that the logion grew out of the saying about the children' (Robinson, 1962a: 109)." (In Fragments, p. 323) http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/thomas/gospelthomas22.html

This is the next paragraph to follow your quote above: Attainments and obstacles: As with the other subtle experiences this is seen to be both an attainment and an obstacle, and is set aside (3.38) with non-attachment (1.15).

Tom, I can see why you value it.

And yet... …everyone was marveling at all that Jesus did… Luke 9:43 Teaching and healing (and performing miracles occasionally) involved a lot of doing. In the gospels, Jesus was very active, he didn't just sit around 'receiving', and having faith and trust. But the doing would have been for the sake of the Father, not for the sake of his ego. He also sent the Twelve out to do... Luke 9:1-2 When Jesus had called the Twelve together, he gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal the sick.

From the thread 'with any realisation' Jeff, on 27 June 2015 - 10:14 AM, said The "light" that is being described cannot seen as a color, shape or picture, it is clear (or pure) light. Any "seeing" is a translation (and hence then attached) in (local) mind. But as it can apparently be seen with the 3rd eye, even if you haven't personally seen it and don't value that level of seeing, I would still like you to describe what this 3rd eye perception of transmission light looks like from what you have been told.

I read that you experienced an illusory vision tinged with reality. Probably a quick jaunt in the astral layer that you are quick to dismiss other peoples visions as, but you don't see the similarities between your vision and unicorns and wings (where size matters), where a robed figure from Assassins Greed with a bar of light in his right hand fits right in. Also you experience a merging of your sense of self with your friends, and the things around you, because you actively cultivate merging. So really no surprise there. You are getting what you want. And you see value in this.

There was someone else there, it would be interesting to hear what he remembers then. And who even said that I have 3rd eye pursuits? Maybe good luck with my blue pearl pursuits, or my golden embryo pursuits, but 3rd eye pursuits? Really? And still no description of Light transmission from someone with the ability to perceive (see) light at light level. Why not???

I think the exact level of openness is very relevant. But other things are also highly relevant, such as where your consciousness is in relation to the chakra, and if the chakra has been activated by kundalini, and if so in which channel kundalini activated it. To my understanding a chakra may be fully open but still not 'online'. It's a whole integrated system.

The thing is, what does a fully open and activated 3rd eye ability really look like? More than your example here for sure. My mother sees beings, energy, consciousness, the subtle body including chakras and channels, mind, inside the physical body, she sees subtle 'wind' blowing and feels its temperature, she saw the future energy 'life stories' of both my kids... and she hasn't even got to her 6th chakra yet. One can only imagine what else she might have access to if she did get there. Maybe experiencing her abilities first hand and knowing first hand how incredibly helpful her information is to my path is what makes me so cranky when 3rd eye sight is dismissed as inferior.