freeform

I really like the first part of your post. I know the concept pisses a lot of people off - but I believe everyone is constantly manifesting... I dont mean this in just the physical sense, I mean it in a broad sense. People come out with 'the starving children in africa' argument - and to be honest I think that's just an example of that idea - that people are already manifesting everything in this universe - no need for some magic process - it's already happening all the time. In the case of starving african children - the manifestation works both ways - we see children in africa as starving and impoverished - they see westerners as rich and healthy - this is a system of perpetual manifestation... we each asign ourselves and others a role to play - it's much easier to just play the role than to break free from it. I think things like live8 and all those charities are part of the problem - we're fed a cultural meme... that africans starve, they're impoverished and have aids - that's their role, they have to play the role in our eyes, if 'reality' as we colectively know it, is to remain intact. All these charities do is continually bombard us with the same message - they're starving! they're poor! They reinforce this manifestation constantly. Seriously - just do a little thought experiment - imagine in your mind - one after the other - 7 different africans... how many of them were not poor and starving? I had a lengthy conversation with a priest from africa about this - he ofcourse presumed that all I thought about his country was 'starvation', and he was very angry about that - because if so many millions of people focus on one thing, then what's the likelyhood of something completely in opposition to that happening? The africans believe themselves to be poor and starving - that's their reality because that's our reality. Yes - I am saying that we colectively manifest starvation in africa, and in other countries. tumoessence said that to really manifest something new one needs to be free of all opposition to that happening. This is very true - manifestation takes the road of least resistance - in terms of starving africans the least resistance is for it to stay as it is... and in fact get worse - because we've and they've been so brainwashed in accepting their role and our role - as the rich and the poor. The thing is microcosmically we're just like that - we have little roles that we play... we have little opposing polarities that force us to swing back and forth - or to try and hold and grasp on to one end hoping you will never reach the other end.... that's what creates tension - thet's what creates resistance. If you want to be rich - you dont want to be poor - so you end up clinging to money sources in a constant struggle to stay away from poverty - this is a polarity of tension - this person would never be able to willfully manifest money without serious repercussions. You first need to bring all your inner tensions to neutrality before trying to manifest things that will have a powerfull 'ecological' effect (as in benefiting everyone!) because if you have any egoic tensions, then they'll manifest in your outer life too!

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Yup... although Americans have now caught up in the 'start 'em young' stakes... with (*drumroll*) a breakdancing baby!

go to bugmenot.com and type in "www.youtube.com" and it'll give you a free username and password, so you dont have to register... it's an awesome tool - works for most sites requiering registration!

Your apology is totally accepted I think you've probably read enough of my ramblings to know that your interpretation of what I said is rather shallow. I'm suggesting a map that covers a lot of ground... covers the topic in a more objective way (i.e. taking into account the systemic nature of cults)... it's obviously not the only map, and it's obviously not 'the one and only true map'... the reason that I suggested this particular one is that when I look at the subject from your point of view (or at least my interpretation of your point of view) I feel myself getting emotionaly involved in the whole thing... and to be honest imo an emotional consideration of this is not going to help you or me or anyone learn anything new. so what do you really want to get from this? I still don't understand.

I really think that the social dynamics of pack animals plays a huge role in this. You say it's not just pack hierarchy... but 'just' implies that pack hierarchy is not one of the most significant parts of our life. Where do you live? How do you know you live there? What nationality are you? Where do you buy your food? where do they get your food? Who grows your food? Where did you buy your computer? why didn't you buy a different computer? How did you afford the computer and the food? who gave you the money? How did they get the money? Everything from agriculture to commerce, to the economy, to any kind of politics is based on pack hierarchy... We as humans tend to create artificial borders, genres, and separations in things... So 'spirituality' is such a division... spirituality is like an area, many alpha-spiritualists control parts of 'spirituality' - different people get drawn towards different packs within spirituality... and at the time it seems osho was a big super-alpha spiritualist, people felt his strength, and thus drew energy from it (why else do people submit?). Yes you probably could go 'deeper'... but in those depths you would only find yourself. "Why?" tends to lead people into their own inner map of the world - which is good if that's what you want... but you're suggesting you want to learn something new about this - something outside your current map - no? We could take the guy apart all day - but in the end isn't that 'just' bitching? oh and btw - you're reading the ramblings of a monkey right now!

Cloud - you're missing my point... I believe you when you say he had manipulation in his blood from a young age (and all pack animals do to a certain extent!) and I dont doubt that.... what I'm pointing to is the "Osho and followrs" system! You need to take a step back from this and see it as "A dominant animal and his pack" type view... that's the only way you can understand the dynamics. This is only if you're interested in how something like this happens, otherwise this is just a discussion that gets emotional energy moving... which is fine, but you said you're interested in how it all works... There is no manipulator without the manipulated! [edit] Oh and when you say he was activly trying to create such a cult, it implies some kind of free will... or at least a range of choices... I'd suggest that very few people have true free will.

I dont think he was trying to create such a system.... By system I'm talking about an objective process... as objective as I can get. Like 'mind' and 'body' are only linguistic separations, and I'm suggesting 'Osho' and 'his followers' are only linguistic separations - because they form one, whole system! To understand it you need to understand animal behaviour... and you already do - you're an animal... "intelligence" has very little to do with 'behaviour'... you can make logical, intelligent reasons for wiping out an entire race of people... but in the end the behaviour that actually occured was the behaviour of an animal... With every animal pack you have power... power works in terms of rewards and punishments... the power structure works in terms of domination and submission. You cant have domination without submission, and you cant have punishment without rewards... and you cant have osho without his followers - do you follow my line of thought? If he wants to dominate, then others want to submit... they might not think they're submitting - but then I've already mentioned about 'thinking' and 'intelligence' - it makes us forget we're animals. The rewards - punishments duality is perhaps the reason he has some merit in some people's eyes... if he was to dominate - he would have to reward people with spiritual insights, that may actually have been very helpfull... but he also had to punish...

what did he do to the homless and mentally ill? somehow that group doesn't seem like a great source of sex and money. Again the point is, you can't take little bits out of a context... like taking a wing mirror off a Ferrari and deciding the merits of the car. The fact is the ferrari, the owner, and the enviroment it's in is a single system yes you can separate it into parts, but you wont possibly get the whole story. I'm not excusing Osho for what he's done... I'm just pointing out that if you want to find out what happened and how it happened you need to study the whole system (and the other systems it interconnects with). Admitedly I've no emotion invested in this discussion... I've only ever read a few quotes of stuff he said - seemed ok... and that's it. I think the emotional charge for others comes from the fact that he was advertising himself as a sipritual man, but was... just a man. An inbalance of power makes people tyranical... it's been tested in many different studies... it's just what happens... and guess what - our whole world functions on a bedrock of inbalanced power! so how can you be so surprised when Osho starts mistreating his 'students', when soldiers start mentaly torturing prisoners, when lions at the head of the pride kill the young cubs? We're mamals, and we behave like mamals! It's 'natural'... Some of us become 'the universe' and behave like 'the universe'... but that's very rare...

I really dont think he was that sociopathic... if you take the average guy off the street and place him in a situation that gave him as much power, I think he would ultimately behave in the same way. You cant think of the dude just as himself having this following - him and his following is a single system... a kind of yin and yang. I think it's naive to think that he controlled the whole crowd, I think the crowd and him played a sort of game with each other, he provided the stimulus (yang) and his crow accepted it with open arms (yin) and provided him with a subtel impulse... they got what they need and he got what he needed. it's just that as a system it did not propel either end towards higher levels of spirituality... but it may be the case that some indivduals acted as a whole system themselves and took what they needed from him and developed along their own path... and perhaps these are the successfull people plato's talking about?

you really need someone who regularly drives manual to show you... you cant learn it out of the book... you need to get the feel for it and to hear when the engine is reved just right and when it all connects... and a book cant teach you that!

Yup - also she has great massage techniques to get the lymph flowing...although i dont have breasts... I still do the lymph massage every now and then, and amongst other benefits it seems to really help my flexibility! Oh and the chi roller massages all the neurolymphatic points on the back... and i do that every evening before sleep.

huh? you wont believe this... I've been watching this program about big cats in africa... and just as I read your post ("tito!") the guy on the TV decided to name one of the new leopard cubs 'Tito'!! (apparently it means something like 'little baby' in the massai dialect. lol ok... (sorry for the picture flood!) The ones I've seen recently have been Kate Moss, Keira Knightley and Sienna Miller (although the last two are actress' not models) actually Keira's girlfriends were even more attractive than her!

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what's even more interesting is that we are the instruments that are able to travel through this non-space. In terms of the collective unconcious, or 'genetic memory' (circuit 7) it seems connected with our DNA (and jing/ bone marrow) and the heart centre (middle dan tien - not the hear chakra, or the organ itself)... Neimad was speaking of being able to connect with a part of his body behind the heart which brought abundant bliss... this is similar to when I connect to the middle dantien... I can also meditate in it for a while and start getting impressions of 'past lives' (I dont always believe in 'past lives') or at least some kind of genetic memories and archetypal images... this is a clear jungian correlation (at least for me). I love reading Robert Anton Wilson, Leary, John Lilly, Alan Watts and so on... but there is a problem I've found with them... it's all in the head! it's information! it's usefull, but it wont get you there, if you know what I mean. Like reading books about the beautiful mountainous lakes of Uzbekistan instead of getting a plane ticket there! They propse that certain drugs are the tickets to such experiences... but again... I think it's more of really good experience of 'what it's like'... you dont 'own' the experience you cant connect to it at will, and the benefits of it are just the entertaining experience and then perhaps lots of great mental philosophy after... I think the Taoist practices are a more 'ecological' way of opening the doors to all your circuits and functioning on all the levels at once...

I think to make a thread like this very usefull we have to examine 'how it all went wrong'... rather than 'why it went wrong'. Because if we ask why we get a stream of interesting and entertaining oppinions but not much use out of it. I also think that if we have strong feelings about the manipulativeness of others we should find in us the polarity that exists and creates this strong feeling against such spiritual manipulators - because whether we're conscious of this or not, it is very likely that on the other end of the polarity there is a supressed part of us that enjoys controlling others... and our dislike for for this part causes us to seek it outside of our selves and then denounce it 'out there' (so that we dont have to deal with the one inside of our selves!) I use the collective 'we' because I've been reading the other thread denouncing osho and I found myself firstly angry at the man for using people's trust for his egoic means and secondly I found it fun reading cloud's expose of just how terrible this guy is! And I wondered - why do I automatically feel angry about this? and why do I automatically feel good about denouncing this cause of anger. And the answer was that there is a little dark part in my own ego that wants to control others, this part - I don't accept in any way, which in turn supresses it, and my automatic feeling of gratification that came with denouncing this was because I really want to hide this part away as far as I can... Ofcourse now I've done something about it - the little dark part has been brought into the light, loved and embraced and using a technique I brought it to complete Emptiness, which is where it was trying to get to by behaving like that... Then I did the same with the part of me that feels manipulation is a 'bad thing'. Now when I try to get the feeling (of disgust, or anger against manipulativeness, and pleasure for 'letting things be') I just get emptiness... there is nothing there... SWEET! ... I frame everything as a chance for me to learn about myself, and to bring to Emptiness another part of my ego... and I'm suggesting that this could be a usefull frame for others, especially if you get strong feelings about something that seems outside of you. so yeah - let the guru bashing commence!

Great to have you here, Christoph! It's great that you had such a profound transformation! How long have you been doing the Taoist practices for? Feel free to post anywhere - we're a great bunch here and I'm sure you'll be warmly welcomed!

oh and I just read this very relevant quote on the HT forum... it's a piece quoted by matblack from the hua hu ching (so if you visit this forum - thanks mat!): "does one scent appeal more than another? do you prefer this flavour or that feeling? is your practice sacred and your work profane? then your mind is seperated from itself from oneness from the tao keep your mind free of divisions and distinctions when your mind is detatched simple and quite then all things can exist in harmony and you can begin to percieve the subtle truth"

I've just about finished reading Slavinski's book "Return to Oneness"... and all I can say is: it's fanatastic! The guy is very erudite and obviously very experienced, and 'get's it'. The premise is the same as Taoism and pretty much all other spiritual practices - to become whole again! He has several methods that he has adapted from other psychological practices but each tool has the ultimate goal of 'integration'. Every 'good' behaviour has a 'bad' counterpart, and every bad behaviour has a good counterpart. This creates a duality of tension... we might want to be 'perfect' but as a result constantly procrastinate... well, perfection and procrastination are just opposite sides to the same problem.... most methodologies attempt to suppress one part and strengthen the other... so we would empower the quest for perfection whilst disempowering our procrastination... this would work to some extent because we strengthen the pull of perfection whilst slackening the pull of procrastination... but soon enough the problem comes back... and then you follow the same pattern - so throughout your life you seesaw between these two polar opposites procrastinating->perfecting->procrastinating->perfecting etc. obviously this applies to any duality, and every problem has a dual nature to it. So slavinski's tools enable you to integrate the opposites, so that there is no tension between them. This is like kan and li for the ego! You start off with simple problems and over time move onto bigger polarities, eventually coming to the big-boss ones: I - other, concious - unconcious, body - mind etc... once you've integrated a duality (whether big or small) slavinski says that you enter this non-dual void which is the goal of many of the meditations around. He also says that each of us has a 'primordial polarity' - a polarity that is very deeply ingrained, whether from past life, or karma, or whatever - but everyone has a different prime polarity, and once this is integrated life becomes less autonomous. And once all your polarities have been integrated, that's when you become spiritualy imortal, and in a state of wu wei... your ego becomes a huge playing field rather than a little prison. I've always found Taoist self-improvement methods a little 'cultural' - it is obvious that the reason they took the 'body first' route is because that requires much more dedication, perseverance, and the changes are very gradual... this reflects chinese culture - at the time this knowledge was very 'powerfull' and secretive - so if it took only a couple of years to reach a decent level of acomplishment, then it would be far too easy for people to master and so lose its power. Also gradual changes reflect the chinese tribe mentality - individualism is a very western notion... so all the changes that come with Taoist spiritual work are designed to come slowly and generaly when you're in your old age - making the transition much easier and smoother for the rest of the tribe... I must admit that I do find the Taoist 'embodied enlightenment' method the 'right way to go', but I think there needs to be additional training for the ego! and this material is it!! (at least for me) anyway - fantastic book, and seemingly fantastic body of work from this guy - I highly recomend it from my experience so far! I'm now looking to find a workshop or a practitioner of Slavinski's main method called PEAT...

PS - Sean - thanks so much for that - I've literally been laughing about this all day yesterday - and infected some friends with it too... we've been quoting Napoleon all day... so thanks again!... maybe I'll build you a cake or something...?

(that was a good 10 minutes of giggling! thanks!)

LOL hadn't noticed that!! where did you find it?