Beyond the spiritual heart

[Jetsun]

From your description above, it sounds like you and Tom are talking about completely different things. Also, since you did not seem to respond to the tradtion/source question, I assume that there is no lineage or tradition to support your position?

 

It is possible that me and Tom are talking about different things, I mentioned that myself in what I wrote.

 

You were not specific in your question, the main proportion of what I wrote comes from the tradition of developmental psychology.

 

The parts about awakening and non-duality comes from all of the traditions I have studied such as Vedanta, Buddhism etc, and my own experience. The part about my own training come from my training in Vortex Healing and my own experience

[Jetsun]

Please show me a reference in physiology where it references merging?

 

Then show me how it is even close to vajrayana deity practice.

 

I didn't say anything about physiology. And you were talking about merging with other people as much as anything else. 

[Jeff]

It is possible that me and Tom are talking about different things, I mentioned that myself in what I wrote.

 

You were not specific in your question, the main proportion of what I wrote comes from the tradition of developmental psychology.

 

The parts about awakening and non-duality comes from all of the traditions I have studied such as Vedanta, Buddhism etc, and my own experience. The part about my own training come from my training in Vortex Healing and my own experience

 

Sorry if there was any confusion. Words/descriptions are alway challenging. Here is a description that is similar to the concept that Tom was trying to convey...

 

http://www.rigpawiki.org/index.php?title=Yidam

 

[gatito]

Sorry if there was any confusion. Words/descriptions are alway challenging. Here is a description that is similar to the concept that Tom was trying to convey... http://www.rigpawiki.org/index.php?title=Yidam

 

So this is now a Buddhist lineage...

[gatito]

It was a Kashmiri Shaivist lineage for a while - until i proved that it wasn't...

[Jonesboy]

We find truths in all of them or haven't you been paying attention?

[Nikolai1]

Please show me a reference in physiology where it references merging?

 

Then show me how it is even close to vajrayana deity practice.

The only physiological counterparts are in utero, and more roughly, in coitus.

 

Psychologically, emotionally the most obvious prefiguring of spiritual merging is love.  When a man loves a woman he can experience self-transcendence directly.  Likewise for the devotee and the guru.

 

All these are transient preparations for the merging into the divine, but are only possible because we are already merged. 

[gatito]

We find truths in all of them or haven't you been paying attention?

 

Why would anyone (in their right mind) pay attention to this hodgepodge...?

[gatito]

You were claiming that it was dzogchen earlier until CT put you straight...

 

This all has nothing whatsoever related to the authentic practice of Dzogchen. 

 

Sorry. 

 

Just as one example, in Dzogchen, there is never a need to 'let go of emotional upsets'. 

 

One simply go into that, whatever that upsets, or anything resembling an arising of something, good or bad, and directly, instantaneously, and effortlessly, liberate whatever it is that arises within the range of the mind-body field. 

 

The training of this, or the process of training in this effortless seeing, is trekcho. It transcends even the slightest experiential trips one may be susceptible to. How its done one has to first engage with an authentic lineage. 

 

When the training has been exhaustive (like, for example, after completing multiple 3 year retreats) then the next phase of Thogal is introduced by one's root teacher, and gradually, with the lineage blessing through the guru, the habituation of lhag tong effectively takes over by suffusing one's being with perpetual clarity.  

 

There is no other way of approaching it as far as authentic Dzogchen practice is concerned. 

 

@ Jonesboy - Unless you can verify your past participation in long term Dzogchen retreats before, it will be unwise to speak as if you know what Dzogchen entails, and therefore out of respect should try to refrain from making references to it, just as i respectfully acknowledge claims of what you say you have achieved here. 

[Apech]

Correct.

 

 

I find myself agreeing with my friend Gatito.

[Jonesboy]

[Apech]

Why would anyone (in their right mind) pay attention to this hodgepodge...?

 

 

I am reading it ... but then I haven't claimed to be in my right mind.

[gatito]

 

You need to learn to read.

 

 

In fact, you need to learn to spell because you're coming across as illiterate..

 

 

Anyone who has been following the thread knows we/I have never said we follow a specific tradition.

 

 

That's blindingly obvious...

Edited December 11, 2015 by gatito

[Apech]

Just a couple of points on yidam practice and 'merging'.

 

During (most) Buddhist tantric sadhana - following a process called the development stage of building up the visualisation of the deity and its mandala, making offerings and so on , there is a completion stage at which the yidam either dissolves into shunyata or into light and merges with you and you with it - you become inseparable.  The reason this is possible is that the nature of your own mind and the yidam are the same.  Or to put it another way the yidam is an aspect of your buddha-nature (enlightened mind) with which you reconnect and then become.  This is considered a very powerful way to realise the true nature of your mind.

 

In some practices such as lojong (which is not tantric) you do exchange with others by taking in their suffering and giving in replace your merit - but in no sense do you merge with them.

[Jetsun]

The only physiological counterparts are in utero, and more roughly, in coitus.

 

Psychologically, emotionally the most obvious prefiguring of spiritual merging is love.  When a man loves a woman he can experience self-transcendence directly.  Likewise for the devotee and the guru.

 

All these are transient preparations for the merging into the divine, but are only possible because we are already merged. 

 

Exactly, there are examples of merging all over the place both positive and negative, you don't need a tradition to verify it, in childhood, when falling in love, in relationships where one person dominates. When you go to a sports game you merge with the crowd to some extent and when you go into nature you can merge with nature. Many carers get exhausted and break down because they merge with their patients emotional problems too much.

 

Merging with a Yidam or a Guru is still the same fundamental process, hopefully it is coming from a healthy place and will end up with a healthy result, but if the object of merging isn't pure or the subconscious intention is avoidance then who knows. 

[Jonesboy]

Just a couple of points on yidam practice and 'merging'.

 

During (most) Buddhist tantric sadhana - following a process called the development stage of building up the visualisation of the deity and its mandala, making offerings and so on , there is a completion stage at which the yidam either dissolves into shunyata or into light and merges with you and you with it - you become inseparable.  The reason this is possible is that the nature of your own mind and the yidam are the same.  Or to put it another way the yidam is an aspect of your buddha-nature (enlightened mind) with which you reconnect and then become.  This is considered a very powerful way to realise the true nature of your mind.

 

In some practices such as lojong (which is not tantric) you do exchange with others by taking in their suffering and giving in replace your merit - but in no sense do you merge with them.

That is what I am calling merging.

 

You become one.

 

The difference being that we don't use offering or use visualization.

 

Thank you for that.

Edited December 11, 2015 by Jonesboy

[Nikolai1]

Spiritual circles are littered with people who have merged authentically with their guru, and it is tragic.

 

It's not often said. but to merge successfully we have to have first individuated successfully.  A healthy robust individuality is the perfect springboard into the divine.

 

For those with a weak sense of self, who cannot function autonomously, the guru is so often the one who brings the person to everyday happiness and work.  Nothing trasnscendental results, but the person is saved from suicide and is an eternally loving and grateful devotee as a result.  Do not diss this person's guru!!  They will get very angry at you...they are now strong enough to get angry, they know what they hate, and they love it!

[Jeff]

Spiritual circles are littered with people who have merged authentically with their guru, and it is tragic.

 

It's not often said. but to merge successfully we have to have first individuated successfully.  A healthy robust individuality is the perfect springboard into the divine.

 

For those with a weak sense of self, who cannot function autonomously, the guru is so often the one who brings the person to everyday happiness and work.  Nothing trasnscendental results, but the person is saved from suicide and is an eternally loving and grateful devotee as a result.  Do not diss this person's guru!!  They will get very angry at you...they are now strong enough to get angry, they know what they hate, and they love it!

 

I think you are describing something dramatically different than what is being described. Here is a description touching on it by Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas...

 

22. Jesus saw some babies nursing. He said to his disciples, "These nursing babies are like those who enter the (Father's) kingdom." They said to him, "Then shall we enter the (Father's) kingdom as babies?" Jesus said to them, "When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the kingdom]."

 

The "when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the kingdom]" is describing the point. Additionally, you will see the order is after one has realized that the inner and the outer are the same.

 

[Bindi]

And yet Bindi I and others are able to do the following:

 

Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: http://www.swamij.com/yoga-sutras-33949.htm

 

3.39 By loosening or letting go of the causes of bondage and attachment, and by following the knowledge of how to go forth into the passages of the mind, there comes the ability to enter into another body.

(bandha karana shaithilyat prachara samvedanat cha chittasya para sharira aveshah)

[Note: In some renditions this is sutra 3.37 or 3.38]

 

bandha = bondage, attachment

karana = cause

shaithilyat = relaxation, letting go, loosening

prachara = passages, means of going forth, moving through

samvedanat = by knowledge of

cha = and

chittasya = of the consciousness of the mind-field

para = another, other

sharira = body

aveshah = entering into

Entering another body: By loosening or letting go of the causes of bondage and attachment, and by following the knowledge of how to go forth into the passages of the mind, there comes the ability to enter into another body. The advanced yogi may use this power to operate through another body in service of others, such as for guiding sincere students of meditation.

 

Because I know there is no difference between you and I. I know there is no seperation between me and a diety like Jesus or chenzirig for example. Because I know there is no seperation between me and you and Jesus I am able to merge others to Divine beings.

 

Jeff, me and other's do this daily. We have demonstrated this here and at our site.

 

Is it beneficial?

 

 

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).

 

 

 

[Jeff]

Hi Bindi,

 

Back to your original topic of the blue pearl.  I thought this fitting from the Gospel of Thomas...

 

76. Jesus said, "The Father's kingdom is like a merchant who had a supply of merchandise and found a pearl. That merchant was prudent; he sold the merchandise and bought the single pearl for himself. So also with you, seek his treasure that is unfailing, that is enduring, where no moth comes to eat and no worm destroys."

 

Best, Jeff

[Jonesboy]

That is very correct Bindi.

 

The goal is non-attachment. If you are a attached, need or desire a thing in order to be happy you are barking up the wrong tree.

 

It means you have work to do.

 

I am not attached to it. Just saying it is a level of non-attachment many of us have achieved.

 

I use it to help people and only to help people.

[Apech]

That is what I am calling merging.

 

You become one.

 

The difference being that we don't use offering or use visualization.

 

Thank you for that.

 

You have to be careful here with terminology.  There is one version of 'merge' which might mean to dissolve or even muddy the boundaries between two separate things.  E.g. you and someone/thing else.  This of course is not a good idea and would produce some kind of nebulous mess.  For instance a baby in utero has less identity than an adult person.  Should that adult person then want to 'return to the womb' then this would be an example of just falling backwards into the soup.

 

However if you affirm that all beings are in fact separated by their skins into unique individuals - but that the core nature of their beings is not essentially different one to another - then you could affirm the 'not-twoness' of them.  This is what happens in yidam meditation - you do not merge as become lost in the deity or something like that - you realise that you and it are not different in the way I explained above.

[Nikolai1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folie_%C3%A0_deux

 

Maybe even shared psychosis can feel blissful?

[Bindi]

I think you are describing something dramatically different than what is being described. Here is a description touching on it by Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas...

 

22. Jesus saw some babies nursing. He said to his disciples, "These nursing babies are like those who enter the (Father's) kingdom." They said to him, "Then shall we enter the (Father's) kingdom as babies?" Jesus said to them, "When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the kingdom]."

 

The "when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the kingdom]" is describing the point. Additionally, you will see the order is after one has realized that the inner and the outer are the same.

 

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

[dawei]

Just a couple of points on yidam practice and 'merging'.

 

During (most) Buddhist tantric sadhana - following a process called the development stage of building up the visualisation of the deity and its mandala, making offerings and so on , there is a completion stage at which the yidam either dissolves into shunyata or into light and merges with you and you with it - you become inseparable.  The reason this is possible is that the nature of your own mind and the yidam are the same.  Or to put it another way the yidam is an aspect of your buddha-nature (enlightened mind) with which you reconnect and then become.  This is considered a very powerful way to realise the true nature of your mind.

 

In some practices such as lojong (which is not tantric) you do exchange with others by taking in their suffering and giving in replace your merit - but in no sense do you merge with them.

 

Interesting, thanks.  Have you / do you practice with a yidam?   Or more reading of the topic?

 

I'm not looking for a history lesson but do you know when/how these lineages formed? Are they older or arose from older traditions?