goldisheavy

Can you get rid of "getting rid of everything" and then what's left is real? If that's not a valid option, then why not? Also, how do you "get rid of everything" in practical, down to earth terms? I don't think it's possible to get rid of anything, not even one thing.

Ok, I was worried that not everyone understood the problem. I guess I have to explain what I think the problem is when the scope of gratitude expression exceeds the scope of that which you are grateful for. The problem arises because of how we currently build reputation within conventional reality. When people are well spoken of, they rise in reputation. So if someone is praised once, then again, and then again, eventually that person gains some stature. I would like this "gain" in stature to be fair, which means it needs to be reasonably transparent. So for example, if someone is thanked for vague or abstract reasons over and over there is a very real possibility that this person will gain in stature for dubious reasons because the reasons are not available for inspection. This allows people who are inappropriate for those roles to assume authoritative roles in society. This problem can be alleviated by disclosing in very precise terms what it is you are thanking someone for. This is not an ideal practice, because this allows an exchange of a private benefit for a public benefit. So to use your example, when someone recommends you, that's a private benefit to you, but when you thank the recommender in public, that's a public benefit to them. Exchanging a private benefit for a public one is a kind of unfair upgrade of benefit. So for example, if I scratch someone's back, and then this person goes around saying I am a great person who will do anything to help anyone, that's inappropriate, because the aura I get from such praise is not commensurate with my action. Is this clear now? Further, while feeling grateful is a wonderful thing, thanking people is generally bad no matter what. Why is that? That's because when you thank someone, you are very likely inflating that person's ego whether you mean to or not (unless the person you are thanking is a saintly person who has the spiritual wisdom to disregard your thanks and ignore them). It takes a tremendous amount of work to become immune to thanks. It's possible to be kind and supportive of a person, to be friendly and helpful, without ever thanking the person explicitly. I don't include simple cultural "thank you"s like what you would say to someone who holds the door for you. I find those particular kinds of thanks to be harmless. If you must thank someone, doing so in private is the best option because it has the least chance to inflate the ego.

I think that's largely true when you were thanking people other than Vajra. For example, Ya Mu also seems to be selling something, but he posts pretty openly all kinds of engaging stuff. Agree with it or not, but he is sharing openly, in my opinion. I don't get the sense that Ya Mu is holding back on us, but then again, I've been deceived in the past, so I can be wrong about this. It's a fine line to toe. You can be selling services on one hand, and freely give away the same services on the other hand. It's not easy, but it's possible. I just don't see a lot forthcoming from Vajra on this forum. Maybe he PM's a boatload of good info to all of you guys? That's fine. Then PM your thanks to him. As far as Vajra's open involvement, there's been a paucity of output there. Please don't get me wrong. I don't have anything bad to say about Vajra (at least not right now or any time recently). I think he's a cool guy who is polite and friendly and I have all kinds of good things to say about him. He's mostly just being "nice". But being nice and being wise is not the same. Giving and giving freely are not the same. Business transactions and friendship are not the same. I respect free will. I ask people to respect certain guidelines which I believe are reasonable. If someone believes they are not reasonable, I would like to hear arguments to the contrary. Upon receiving such good cogent arguments I will then modify my opinion. I do feel free to ask though. You don't have to do anything I ask. And I don't have to do anything you ask. However, there is a possibility that, wait for it! .... wait for it... you might WANT to do what I ask you to do? Wow??? Ever thought of that? That it might coincide with your own interest? How about it? Maybe what I am asking for is actually quite reasonable and if you give it some thought you may enjoy doing it. I don't put a proverbial gun to anyone's head. At the same time, I believe I have good reasons for what I am asking. Well, jee golly wiz?!!! No kidding???! That's all there is to it. Imagine this: you think so and you follow this advice, not because it is the "I" who asks, but because you find it to be reasonable. Someone else does the same. And someone else does the same, and that's all I want. I don't want to institute some groupthink in here. Not at all. If anything I like a diversity of opinions. I just make a suggestion. I invite and welcome criticism and dissent. And if anyone finds my suggestion eminently reasonable, I ask people to please follow my suggestion. Let's discuss these differences then, OK? I don't think just because everyone is different everyone is entitled to be excluded from any sort of critique. The job of police is to enforce. If you absolutely insist on comparing me to some social role, then I am more like a priest than police. I preach the good news. I don't enforce. At least not right now and not on this forum. My job is to ask and give reasons when needed when I want something, and when people want something my job is to help them to the greatest extent possible. Enforcement is one thing I don't do. There are people who actually police this forum, and I am not one of them, so you have nothing to fear from me in terms of real hostility. I sometimes may say something you don't want to hear, but I'll never ban you from this forum because I am not a policeman. Yes, I found it very offensive. I have utmost faith in your good intentions. That's why I discuss things with you. Had I not thought you had good intentions, I wouldn't bother discussing anything. Had I thought you had ill intentions then I'd either leave, if I thought you were not causing too much damage to society and if I thought you represented a mere splinter or a deviation, or I would organize real and tangible resistance to whatever you were doing if I thought that you were part of a larger pattern and not just some oddball crazy. It is because I, perhaps foolishly, believe that all or most people have good intentions that I don't jump to brute force as my first option, and not even my 5th or 10th option. I understand, and such sweet intention is generally commendable. But are you familiar with the concept of flattery? Flattery can be defined simply as "excessive praise". Flattery is a poison for spiritual development. Flattery hurts the person you flatter more than yourself. It's a cruel thing to do to someone. You got one post from me! I would have let the issue drop after that one post had people not decided to get deeper into it. I'm glad people want to discuss it though. Let's shine more light on it.

All of them? I don't think so. I am unhappy about some things, and happy about others. In any case, is being unhappy about something a sign of ignorance in your opinion? Should one control one's feelings? If you want to go in-depth about it, please start a new thread. If not, please PM me your answer, because we're getting off-topic here. Why do you hope so? That's fine! Like I said, I have nothing against businesses or businessmen. If you provide a great value for your customers, how is that bad? I only ask that business transactions not be confused with "freely giving". Is that really a lot to ask? I don't buy this bullshit and I explained why not. In ancient societies many sages were not wandering, but held down jobs, just like they would in this society. When you make selling spiritual wisdom your job, there is a problem though. Can you see what that problem might be? For example, how does a "for-profit" motive affect health services do you think? How is spiritual instruction similar or dissimilar when compared to health services? Have you considered these issues in depth? Wonderful. I don't suggest that anyone become a homeless wanderer, although I do see plenty of homeless people surviving just fine, if that's your cup of tea. I do think that spiritual truths should not be sold. However, if they are sold for a modest price in a way that doesn't rip anyone off, that's not too horribly bad. I won't be happy about it, but I won't be sad about it. But if someone then goes ahead and calls business transactions "freely given gifts" then I have a problem. That's over the line. Sure, I've been at it for a long time. I've read Gurdjieff's and Ouspensky's books too. And I've considered their contents. I mean, I didn't just mindlessly read them. I read them while being mentally and spiritually alive.

You like that name too? It's one of the Taoist immortals. It's a very meaningful name. I love it. Right here. We all interact here on this forum, don't we? You can see what I post. Everyone can see what you post. There are no secrets. Nothing is hidden. When I saw you post advertisements for classes. By the way, are you offended? Is it evil to be a businessman these days? I guess what with all the bailouts and Wall Street scams, it probably is. Ooopsey daisey. Jee golly wiz. But it's not always like that. Businessmen can be honest people too, if they want to be (unfortunately many of them are of the opinion that honesty doesn't pay for the bills, the coke and the hookers). Anyway, you won't see me nag you when you advertise KAP, I promise. When you post an advert, I don't reply to it with any negativity, do I? Of course not. I only responded when someone publicly thanked you in an inappropriate manner. Normally I don't care about things like that, but in a spiritual forum where topics close to my heart are often discussed, I do care. I consider this to be a sacred space and dishonesty is not easily tolerated by me here. It's especially so when it comes to things I truly care about, like freely giving of oneself. I don't want anyone to get confused about what it means to freely give. When the train hits you in the face, do you ask what gives it the authority to claim so much weight? Of course not. You just get splattered. Do you ask the Sun what gives it the authority to shine? Where do the birds get their authority to sing? Where do ants get authority to burrow under ground? Do they buy that land? Do birds have a singing certificate? I have what is called the authority of a Lord. And if you want to know where I get it, you can come visit me and train with me. Alternatively, stay where you are and engage me in discussion right here. If you are sincerely interested in issues of authority, I welcome, I welcome your inquiry -- let's start a separate thread. It's a topic I love discussing. On the other hand, if you just want to wave your hands in an attempt to discredit me, well... what can any of us do about that? Anyway, Santiago, I don't think you're a bad man or anything like that. You're just not a saint and not really a Guru in my book. Just a polite and most likely decent fellow. How is that bad? Being polite and decent is a commendable thing.

You may be better off if you examine how the meaning in general arises. I am talking about the process of meaning-making. If you examine this process for some years in contemplation, all such questions will become resolved for you. If someone feeds you a particular meaning as a response to your question, that's like giving you a fish. If someone shows you how to look at the field of meanings comprehensively, that's like teaching you how to fish. As they say, "Give man fire and he's warm for a day. Set the man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life."

No shit? So you notice this too? And did you notice how mystics often have to talk positively about religion and give props to it, even though what they teach contradicts religion in every important way? For example, Sufis talk positively about Islam, and Christian mystics talk positively about the Bible, and the Tibetan yogis talk positively about the Pali Canon and so forth. At least when speaking publicly. They say different things behind the closed doors. Why do you think that is, eh? I'll spell it out for you -- "fitting in with the establishment". The therapies that qi gong brings are not established so all kinds of reverence has to be paid to the establishment when you make claims that compete with the claims made by established practices. This phenomenon occurs in many areas of life. It's called "I will do what I want, but I will lick the establishment's ass so that they will leave me be in peace." There are not that many people that are fearless enough and grounded in the truth of being enough to say straight up what's on their mind without paying heed to the establishment. They exist, but they are rare. They often become legends.

That's exactly what I am saying. I believe you understand me perfectly well. That's fine, and to my eye, as long as you unhesitatingly call the usual waking experience fake, all is fair n square and good under the heavens. The problems begin when people set fake against real, then take such distinction matter of factly and refuse to look at one's own distinction-making process honestly and consciously. Me typing this message to the forum is a fake experience in the same way that enlightenment experience is fake. If delusion is real, then the absence of delusion is real as well. If delusion has the nature of a brilliant appearance, then the absence of delusion is just the same -- an insubstantial appearance. Listen I want to make this perfectly clear. Being a businessman doesn't make the person evil. If you provide a fair service for a fair value, that's good for the world. However! To mislabel the process of doing business as "free giving" is wrong, and is harmful for everyone involved in such mislabeling. That's because there is actual honest to God free giving going on in this world, and to call what businessmen are doing "free giving" is an insult to people who actually give freely. Further, there is a huge difference between being given a certain "system" with many conditions on its use, and being given truly free information without any (!!!) intention to restrain its use. I don't want to spell this one out, because I don't want to reveal the naked Emperor even more plainly than I already have. I am not here to ruin people's business, but at the same time, there is only so much bullshit I can tolerate before I have to say something. Look, Tilopa was a fisherman, Jesus was a carpenter, Namkhai Norbu is a college professor, Lao Tzu was a librarian, Saraha was a fletcher, and so forth. Many sages of the past and present of stature (arguably) infinitely greater than Mr. Santi had to hold down real jobs and help the world in material ways. And those sages that had no job, often ate as little as one meal a week or as much as one meal a day, and lived in a cave or a similarly humble dwelling. They owned one robe and one bowl and not much beside that. Those guys took donations, but they had modest lifestyles that made donation-taking a non-business activity. This was the case with someone like Milarepa for example. One time someone tried to give a horse to Milarepa and he refused, saying that he rides the horse of yoga and has no need for horses. But then again, Milarepa survived on nettle soup according to stories. Cheers!

According to "Seven Taoist Masters: A Folk Novel of China" as translated/related by Eva Wong, the answer seems to be "yes." But if you ask any died in the wool Tibetan Buddhist, the answer will be "no", no matter how similar the practice may be (even if it is identical, still "no"), and that's because those people are so proud of their tradition that they cannot possibly see a similarity to anything else, ever. That's my personal experience from interacting with hundreds of them. In fact, this kind of question may even be slightly insulting to them. You might be implying that tummo yoga may not be unique and special.

It might have been the gremlins or the Boltzmann brain, who knows? Why are you asking this? Which issue or concern will become settled for you once you get an answer to this kind of question? Can you elaborate on it? What if it reached the crown and then danced around your head in circles? What if potatoes grew in my mouth? Then it wouldn't be a mouth, but it would be a garden patch, wouldn't it? Exciting "what if" scenario, isn't it? A human being is not a machine and it's not operated like some machinery by applying some procedure to it over and over, with scientific precision and dogged repetition. Please look into your heart for real answers.

Please do not exaggerate. Guru Santi does not freely give anything. Everything he gives has a price and strict conditions on use. When you get some knowledge from him, you may do certain things with it, but you may not do certain other things, and so forth. And to receive it, you have to fulfill some conditions. Conditions are everywhere when Guru Santi is involved. And you have to pay money. I don't see Guru Santi say anything more than posting a smiley face, or a winkey face, or a one liner, or advertisement for a KAP class. In particular I haven't seen any in-depth elucidation or free sharing of real information. For all I know he sells a great product, but he's a businessman and not a fount of free compassion that just oozes love in every direction with no strings attached.

There is a difference between prayer, which is a kind of supplication that starts with "please" or "may I" or "may there be" or "may..." etc., and a hymn, which is a celebratory pronouncement to the effect of how beautiful and great everything is, and how thankful you are. Prayer is not a hymn. I mean, we have these words for a reason. Many mystics have composed hymns. In India or Tibet (borrowed from India) these may be called doha, for example. A hymn cannot be answered. A prayer can be answered. When the person sings a hymn, it's a one way street, like a monologue. A prayer is like a dialogue where you expect to be hearing something back. A prayer of "thanks" is really a perversion of the meaning, to my mind. A hymn of thanks is more correct in that sense, and hymns have a place alongside the prayers. I would venture to say that those of you who think you have it all are strongly deluded. Perhaps you are thinking of the material wealth and health as the only things to ask for. I mean, I was speaking specifically about that, but I guess it went right over the head. Very nice. I call this a hymn. P.S.: Here's one of the hymns I like: http://www.keithdowman.net/mahamudra/saraha.htm

I think one should only pray relatively few times in life. Why is that? Because first, God, spirit, source, subconscious mind, zero-point field, everyday mind, whatever you want to call it, knows exactly what your intention is. There is a direct link at all times, so there is no need to yammer to the deity about this and that. Second, if you constantly nag about retarded shit (and most shit is retarded, no doubt about it), then God stops listening. On the other hand, if you only speak a few times in life, God listens carefully. Also, praying few times makes you really put thought into it and makes you talk about something that actually matters. Also, if you're going to pray for something, don't ask for a candy. Go in all the way. Ask for the crown jewel. If prayer works, there is no sense wasting it on a triviality. If you go for something important, then if prayer works, it's enough to get just 1 prayer granted in your life time and you are set forever. On the other hand, if prayers do not work, you've only wasted 5 seconds. The time spent thinking about what is really important to you is never a waste. Just think logically and watch how much pain is removed from your life.

I wouldn't go so far as to call one of those realities fake. That would imply there is a true reality waiting to be discovered. I'm afraid there is no such thing. Instead, the best we can hope for is to come up with a good story that is even half-way coherent and decent. The word you might be looking for is "baseless" (without basis) instead of "fake". It is said that both samsara and enlightenment are the products of mind. If you call samsara fake, then enlightenment is also fake.

Sure, but I have no problem admitting to this. This is like admitting that I've been expelled from the death row.

Leeching happens all the time. The most important thing to realize is that it's never done against your will. You consent to being leeched at all times that leeching can be said to occur, usually unknowingly, because you may not realize you have other options. Leeching is what happens when a person believes in a social system that's not good for that person, for example like a slave believing in the validity of slavery, or like the owned believing in the validity of ownership. One can even say that convention of any kind by itself is the essence leeching. Stopping the flow of one's energy toward the machinations that are counter-productive to one's own deepest intent is not that easy. First you have to know what your deepest intent is. Second, you have to have the willingness to carry through with your decision, completely and without reservations. A disease can be viewed as a form of leeching. Diseases are powered by our own energy. We are what makes us sick, and we are what can make us well too. If we cannot make ourselves well, then we cannot make ourselves sick either. So the focus with leeching is not on other people, but on one's own mind. Is your own mind giving love and weight to dynamics that are your undoing? There are 2 possibilities here: perhaps your undoing is a good thing and you secretly want it. Or perhaps it's not, and you really need to put an end to self-sabotage. Either way the problem is within you and not in other people. Other people have no power to leech anything from you if you don't consent to it.

This shows to me that you don't really understand what mind actually is.

I must respectfully decline the designations of "higher" and "lower" selves. This places undue graces on the subconscious mind and undue deprecation on the conscious mind. The relationship between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind is not known. Why not? Because the boundary between the conscious and the subconscious is drawn purely speculatively and purely for the purpose of discussion. Such discussion can generate insights only if the person remembers that the mind is not really separated into areas or regions. To call one functioning of mind lower and another one higher is just pure ignorance. Subconscious mind is vast, and is the repository of wisdom as well as limitless amounts of garbage. This is what some of you call "higher self". For shame. At the same time, conscious mind can be really stupid and plagued by all kinds of limiting beliefs, or it can be a vehicle of contemplative wisdom, none other than the embodiment of Lordliness, the grand overseer of all mind, and the ruler of the subconscious, rather than its slave. What is good and what is harmful is a very tricky question. This is something that's considered with regard to what it means to be oneself, to be one's whole image of oneself. An example comes to my mind that I either read or heard (might have been an audio book) in one of the books on hypnosis. Once there was a client who needed a corneal transplant, but he kept rejecting the transplants. A hypnotist put the patient into a state of hypnosis and asked the patient "Will you accept the transplant?" And he said, "No I will not. It's not me, so I cannot accept it into me." So the problem was that he was viewing the flesh of another person as "not me" and was rejecting it. Then the hypnotist had a long discussion about possibility changing this point of view, over the course of many sessions. He suggested things like "this is a family, not an enemy", "acceptance", "cooperation" and so on. After a while the answer to "Will you accept the transplant?" changed to "yes", and the operation went successfully. Something like this makes a lot of sense to me and is completely congruent with my own experience. So is that person healed or not? I think it depends on what we mean by "to be whole". In some sense, his body is not whole, since there is a chunk of it that's not his anymore. In that sense it may be better to die than to "get better", because what "gets better" may be someone who is not exactly you. In another sense, it can be said that this transplant becomes you, if not immediately, then some time after the operation, so the new person is as much you as the old one was. A starker example is one of lobotomy. If someone complains about severe symptoms of a disturbed mind, and you remove a chunk of the patient's brain, and suppose the symptoms stop, then is the person healed, or is the person destroyed? I think the answer is far from obvious and it depends on what it means to be the essential person.

I see some confusion going on here. A state of mind that's engaged in suppression of something is not what I would call "blank". But then again, I don't define darkness as "the absence of light" either -- that would be a cognitive bias in my biased view. With that out of the way, I would answer "yes" to the first question and "no" to the second. To understand why I say that, please contemplate the nature of meaning. For example, what is the meaning of breath? Can you know what a breath is, without knowing what a lung is? And can you know what a lung is, without knowing what a human is? And can you know what a human is, without knowing what a humanity is? And can you know what a humanity is without knowing what a universe is? Thus, to be aware of breath, as a meaningful experience, you must be aware of the entire context -- this is obvious to me. However, what happens when you are asked to focus on the breath? You are asked to ignore some of the context. How far will you go? Well, you can put the universe on the back burner, or perhaps forget it completely. If you forget the universe, the meaning of humanity will alter subtly but significantly. Can you go further? Sure! You can forget humanity -- then the meaning of what it means to be human will alter subtly but significantly. And so forth. By the time you forget what a lung is, the meaning of breath has been so removed from its context, that it's no longer a breath at all. The resulting experience is then described variously depending on the mindset of the person contemplating said experience. Person A says the resulting experience is a distortion, because instead of seeing the truth of breath, you see something that's been warped by removal of the context. Person B says the resulting experience is the essence of the breath. Person C says Person A and B are both right, and there is paradoxically no contradiction. And there are more possibilities. So, if a person produces a tear within the context of meaning by using intent, the person experiences a "mystical" experience. It's called mystical because, obviously, it has no place within the ordinary context (duh!). This experience is short lived, because the change in the context is not authentic at the ground level of being, but it is instructive, especially for a contemplator! For a contemplator this kind of experience should aid with insight into the nature of phenomena. For a non-contemplating meditator this is potentially an attractive bait that will seduce the person to seek more and more of these experiences without understanding even an iota of the wisdom behind it. So, I'm answering "no" to the second question, because context can be changed in ways that are more subtle and more gradual and more well-integrated than a momentary tear produced via an intense intent on suppression of thought. To suppress thought means to essentially reduce an ordinary scope of consideration, which can be instructive for a contemplator, but useless for everyone else. Contemplators can get similar wisdom from other approaches, however. There is also a little bit of confusion over the meaning of "thought". Depending on what you mean by the word "thought," it may be that thought cannot be suppressed at all. Suppression itself may be viewed as a thought.

I agree with what you say there Joe. I believe the person is the Lord, and if the person declares, from a deep place within oneself, that some healing modality is nothing but hocus-pocus, then it really is. I look at these "light" phenomena as lipstick on a woman. Can lipstick be pretty on a woman? I think so! But is lipstick the essence of beauty or does every beautiful woman wear lipstick? I think not (read: not even close).

It's fun watching various reality validation frameworks colliding like this. Is it real? Is it a hallucination/fake? How you answer will depend on your mindset. In my opinion, whatever your answer is, it is fine as long as you consciously realize or at least attempt to consciously realize how your reality validation framework (a core subset of the mindset) is operating. What matters is not so much your choice, but that you don't get your choice chosen for you unconsciously by the so-called "reality". It would be terrible if your dreams chose their own meanings -- a lot of garbage can enter into "reality" in that way. This reminds me of the time when I was going around looking for auras. I could see a faint aura around things, but then I wasn't happy that it wasn't colorful and so I was just trying and trying to see those. Then I met someone and this person wisely said to me, "Are you sure you want to see them? I have a friend who sees them and finds them annoying. He wishes he'd stop seeing them." I was like "Whaaa???? I never thought of this!" I thought seeing auras is what all the spiritual people had to do. It didn't occur to me that I had a choice. That I could be spiritual and see what I want to see instead of what the spiritual people were "supposed to" see. Wow. Amazing. I'm all for the mystical experiences, but I don't go for copying. There are all kinds of ways to see. Maybe instead of seeing auras you hear people, or sense them in your mind, or feel them as part of your intent. Or all of the above. Or some of the above. Appearances are the ornaments of reality and not the determinants of it.

Master Yoda, If we take some greedy and ignorant people and toss them all in a box, some will end up controlling more "stuff" and possibly others along with the stuff. So in that sense, you're right to point out that a person with the same lack of virtue can be either poor or rich. However, if we take a mix of 90 percent of greedy and ignorant people and 10 percent spiritual people, and toss those in the box, what are the chances the spiritual people will be the richest ones in that box? I would say -- low to none. It's quite possible that some of the spiritual people will become moderately or even somewhat rich, but they'll never have the same material footprint as their ignorant cousins and aunts. That's because the spiritual person never makes material wealth an end goal, and further, does not like people working FOR them, and rather prefers working WITH people, and there is a huge difference. So in this sense, you are evading the real issue at best, or just plain wrong.

Dear Lin, what is proper? A fundamentalist is someone who cannot step outside his own doctrine, not even for a second. It is someone who refuses to look for wisdom in any place other than a single established doctrine. It is someone who cultivates an mind that's impervious to new information if that new information does not match or does not fit well into one's pre-existing system. A fundamentalist is someone who cannot bear the thought of losing one's system. You can easily be a fundamentalist who practices some odd-ball system, and at the same time, you can practice something conventionally well known, and yet not be a fundamentalist. None of this saddens me as much as when this stuff spills into physical violence. It's one thing when fundies just yup-yup-yup about how great their religion or path is, but it's another when they kill you because their religion or path says it's a good thing to do. That, to me, is what's sad. But just getting into some disagreements is the spice of life. That's not sad. Respect is for the ego. Kindness is for the heart.

GROUP HUGS!!! Just kidding! Excess sentimentality is the root of all evil. But as for the caste system in India, it is ancient. To argue that it's something that been introduced by the West is not just ignorant, I believe it is a hostile and an aggressive act, because I don't think anyone can be accidentally ignorant to such an extent. http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/dn/dn.09.0.than.html There, and in many other ancient Suttas the caste system has been immortalized. There is absolutely no doubt and no contention about it. The caste system is something very, very old in India.