Cueball

Lovely Manitou. Secret or not, that is something to aspire to.

At least in the UK, taking the oath isn't a requirement. It's mostly been superceded by agreeing to good medical practice as outlined by the GMC (General Medical Council). I suppose the sharing of money with patients has fallen out of favour with docs since Hippocrates' time, amongst other requirements. https://www.bmj.com/content/355/bmj.i6629

Just adding to what Michael and 3Bob and others have said, on the heads/eyes facing each other — why this is always the case on the caduceus (but maybe not always shown as such in the yogic illustrations) is Hermes role is the reconciler and the mediator in wars, trade negotiations and relationships of various kinds. He embodies the ’solution of antinomies’, especially between male and female (e.g. Two of Cups in Tarot), and the copulation of the snakes is the "secret intercourse”. Here is Hermes talking to Asclepius (he of the one-snaked staff):

ilumairen, interesting... when is rebooting a willful choice? Can you saw off the branch you're sitting on through an act of will? Given the choice, don't we end up just doing a bit of gentle topiary around the twigs and leaves to make things look tidier?

jadespear / Steve, I feel the paradox is important... even though the undertaking requires effort the fruit of the undertaking does not. In terms of Krishnamurti in particular, I do think he was a very rare being but it was dialogue and observation that he hoped would bring about the necessary shift from self to self-less and he didn't refer to anything about his own ‘process’. Which I find curious... I am not sure one arrives at that insight through mundane methods and indeed perhaps K himself didn’t either. (Even he wondered towards the end of his life whether, despite 60 years of talking and teaching, anyone else had really ‘got it’) It might be that the raft can be discarded when you reach the other shore, but it is an extraordinary thing to claim no raft is needed for your own crossing. Anyway just an oddity I find myself returning to these days.

What Krishnamurti tried to awaken in people via serious dialogue and looking seemed (to me at least) at odds with the process which he underwent and which look to be rather extraordinary and high level initiations. There is some criticism on this point that the guruless approach and freedom from the known wasn’t the whole story in terms of his own evolution. In terms of dzogchen master / pathless land advocate, if you haven’t seen the videos of CTR and K there's a series on YouTube. I find them quite odd... not least because it's hard to tell if they were relating to each other in any way, an audience, both or something entirely other.

Great stuff, thanks Yueya and Rex.

Mark I did read your piece with interest but I’m no mathematician so sets and completed infinity went a bit over my head I’m afraid. What makes a completed infinite as opposed to, say, ’incomprehensible or immeasurable’ which may not be equitable in mathematical or logical terms? My understanding of the Pali excerpt is that perfect wisdom — if it can be said to be grounded at all — is grounded in the non-phenomenal. It is knowing/seeing that is not borne of the aggregates/skandhas. So cessation is realisation of, or realisation beyond, the illusory nature of the aggregates…. thus only intent and action which appears to originate from a self (atta vs anatta) is said to cease. But I’m not a Buddhist practitioner so these are just my interpretations. In terms of cosmogony (and also praxis) there’s more in common with Mahayana and Vajrayana than Theravada. Obviously in those vehicles you have both action through intent and accomplishment. E.g. generating merit and tantra / deity yoga etc form the core of various practices, and are aids to realisation. This seems to hold true for both lay practitioners enmeshed in samsara, and also enlightened beings. So I suppose some of these same conflicts must also arise when comparing the original Pali texts to the later turnings of the wheel…? “Eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge (of good and evil) is precisely acting through intent, for good or for evil”… well the gnostic approach of which GThomas is a part does have a very different view on the tree of knowledge compared to the canonical version — especially with respect to realisation. And in the nitty gritty it really does become difficult to say much about who, or what, is doing the accomplishing.

The womb that has not conceived is the perfect power, the eternal aeon etc which precedes all but nevertheless does not give birth... "the incomprehensible Womb, the unrestrainable and immeasurable Voice..." (Trimorphic Protennoia). Also: "Wisdom, who is called barren, is the mother of the angels." Parallels here with the perfection of wisdom in the Prajnaparamita sutras where wisdom also is attributed to the female, but it is not conditioned phenomena, thus it doesn’t conceive or procreate in any conventional sense. And yet it is the mother of all… ‘perfect wisdom’ that “gives birthless birth to all buddhas.”

Yes the 'body' in 80 refers to the material body. Translation from the Coptic: "Whoever has come to know the world has found the (dead) body. But whoever has found the (dead) body, of him the world is not worthy." It’s the same as logion 56.The one who has discovered the world has in fact discovered death — a theme repeated throughout the scriptures (e.g. "This world is a corpse-eater" / Gospel of Philip).

On the subject of nothing to do, no one to do it after experiencing an 'awakening'... the situation could be quite the opposite:

Rome defeated by Mohamed? It's a fair kop.

If I recall correctly, according to David Godman, Ramana Maharshi insisted that Arunachala was Shiva himself. Not a manifestation, an emanation or a domicile... he was quite clear that it was Shiva. I particularly like the story of Mastan Swami and the gate to Arunachala: http://sri-ramana-maharshi.blogspot.co.uk/2008/09/discovering-mastan.html

That made me laugh! Maybe you could enter this: https://www.theonion.com/monk-gloats-over-yoga-championship-1819563855

Lovely thread... power comes in many different forms, so it's a very individual thing. Delphi in Greece and Glastonbury are always really special to me. I managed to spend 6 weeks in Glastonbury at the end of last year — here's a couple of pics from when 'red sky' appeared, as Hurricane Ophelia hit the UK. It was a great time to be there.

Commenting on 60 and 7 together: The lion is the demiurge — it is described across multiple gnostic scriptures as the lion or lion-faced one (its form may have been inherited from Egyptian or hermetic sources) e.g: “And when Pistis Sophia desired to cause the thing that had no spirit to be formed into a likeness and to rule over matter and over all her forces, there appeared for the first time a ruler, out of the waters, lion-like in appearance, androgynous, having great authority within him, and ignorant of whence he had come into being.” — On the Origin of the World The demiurge can not devour man if he is alive. Only once he has become trapped in corrupted, corporeal life — life which is actually dead — can he then be consumed. Man consuming the lion is a good thing for all — a blessing. At the least though, try to avoid becoming dead in this life.

A huge amount of energy can be bound up in denial of the negative, the unkind, the violent and maintaining the illusion that those forces are under control. But that may go out the window at some point, because the control is not some external faculty to switch on or off according to one's own moral precepts: it literally makes up the one that is undergoing dissolution. Otherwise the path becomes a partial approach, and increasingly lopsided. Jung said, "One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious." Amongst all the goodies that are unwrapped, opening Pandora's Box is possible and even necessary. Irina Tweedie’s training in the Sufi tradition — the path of the heart, the path of love — led to a point where she beat a mouse to death. Her teacher came back with something like “Yes, that sort of thing can happen.”

Yes I think in other models though it is an energy body which is perceived in such cases — one which is still functioning even in cases where the physical limb has been removed. It can also be seen by those who see such things. If your view is that our perception comes through multiple subtle bodies, then for sure meditation and 'spiritual' work can and does affect the other bodies/vehicles. (And explains why certain phenomena are often not picked up by medical diagnostics even where the pain or sensation is very tangible.) Just my 2 cents.

For some years of practice I was experiencing sensations in the solar plexus and heart. It culminated in a period of several days where I was waking up with tingling and numbness in my left arm as well as shortness of breath. This was enough for me to head to my doctor, especially as I had had a heart murmur diagnosis a long time back. I ended up having a battery of tests (EEG, EKG etc) — everything returned as normal, and I was also checking in with my teacher. There is interpenetration between all the bodies so absolutely no reason that spiritual practices wouldn’t trigger a process that manifests as a medical condition. And vice versa. E.g. issues can be felt in the etheric body or ‘etheric double’ before they come to manifest in the physical body (a good example of this is in cases of phantom limb syndrome). I don’t know how this model would relate in nei gung but there might be something similar? It's difficult to make ad-hoc diagnoses oneself based on energetic sensations alone. What is painful may not be a problem and what sometimes feels pleasurable or 'strong' may nevertheless be an issue in the bigger picture. It all depends on one’s own practices and situation and the more diagnostics you have available, the better. Hope it all goes ok!

I think it is inevitable that at some stage — and at repeated stages over time — to become overly enamoured with our own thoughts and viewpoints. Actually even more so as experience and awareness grows. The forces that are uncovered cause a real condensation of mental ideation, which seemingly works against the aspiration for more tolerance and openness. So it is quite a useful (I would say even necessary) thing to experience, but this kind of rigidity, this crystallisation needs acknowledging. Not so much to not piss people off on the internet (although people tell me that's also important), but for the more pernicious effects e.g. "[…] people are frequently slain (in the occult and therefore in the more important sense) by their own thought-forms. Thought creation, through concentration and meditation, is a potently dangerous matter. This must never be forgotten. There are forms of thought, unencumbered by much desire matter, which, failing to pass downward, poison the man on mental levels. This they do in two ways: 1. By growing so potent on the mental plane that the man falls a victim to the thing he has created. This is the "idée fixe" of the psychiatrist; the obsession which drives to lunacy; the one-pointed line of thought which eventually terrorises its creator. 2. By multiplying so fast that the mental aura of the man becomes like unto a thick and dense cloud, through which the light of the soul must fail to penetrate, and through which the love of human beings, the lovely and beautiful and comforting activities of nature and of life in the three worlds equally fail to pierce. The man is smothered, is suffocated by his own thought-forms, and succumbs to the miasma which he himself has engendered." — Alice Bailey: The Soul and Its Thought-Forms

There's a Reggie Ray talk somewhere where he quotes Trungpa Rinpoche as saying progress on the path is marked by becoming "more uncertain and less obnoxious". (I'm paraphrasing, but that was the gist.)

On the subject of separation — the Tao may include the 10,000 things/manifested worlds, but isn't there a lot of talk in the Tao Te Ching of 'returning'? If separation and aberration was not possible, there would be no return to speak of.

Working on the premise that to get help you need to request it, one account has it that aid was not forthcoming because (although available) none was needed. That version also has it that Jesus did not suffer, and that no one else was responsible for his demise. e.g The Apocalypse of James: “Never have I suffered in any way, nor have I been distressed. And this people has done me no harm. But this (people) existed as a type of the archons, and it deserved to be destroyed through them.” Taking it further, not only was there no worldly retribution causing pain, but even the crucifixion wasn’t a big deal, since he didn't "die in reality". And Judas, rather than playing the role of the great betrayer, was in fact of such high merit that Jesus entrusted him to be the one to hand him over, telling him: “But you will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me.” (Gospel of Judas). Which turns on its head any sense that a mission had gone awry, or that help was needed. Perhaps in this case — as well as others — if you don’t need help, you don’t ask... and you don’t get.

The question of having a lineage and a teacher is an interesting one to me... a good teacher may actually make things 'worse', as they won't be interested in providing a safe place for you to retreat to. You might well find — at the critical juncture — that they encourage you to step off that precipice into the abyss, rather than come down from the cliff edge. Which obviously runs somewhat contrary to the idea of practicing a nice, orderly spiritual path at your own leisure.