Satsang culture is fake

[Aetherous]

Just saw a video on here of a guy doing a satsang type presentation on a youtube video.

Here's a thought for everyone to ponder: every single person who gives satsangs is just a normal human being, who at one point decided they could make money and get some people to listen to them, if they put a vase with flowers up and talked about things like consciousness and enlightenment. Some are more clever than others.

Literally every one of these people is less advanced spiritually than you are (the reader of this). They are all unattained spiritually. We can find nothing of lasting value in their presentations.

[Kar3n]

Share the video with us?

[C T]

Saying they are ALL unattained spiritually is a very strong assertion.

 

They are all unattained spiritually. We can find nothing of lasting value in their presentations.

 

Edited April 22, 2017 by C T

[Aetherous]

Share the video with us?

 

It's in another recent thread...I didn't want to speak poorly of a video that another daobum was posting. I'm sure they like the teacher. It wasn't the video in particular, but really all of those types of videos.

[Aetherous]

Saying they are ALL unattained spiritually is a very strong assertion.

 

True, it's really casting a broad net that might not always be accurate. I haven't seen every satsang type teacher...I've just seen enough. In my view, giving them the benefit of the doubt is what perpetuates their fraudulent teachings.

 

Anyone can sit on a chair, upon a stage, with flowers near them, smile and talk about spiritual sounding things, and gain a following. Bonus points if they wear a strange article of clothing or a mala. My point is that these people are literally just like anyone else...they're as attained as the cashier who last rang up your groceries, as the homeless person in the alley, as the businessman who doesn't look that way, as the local firefighter. They are not more attained, and giving the impression that they are is the stuff of conmen.

 

A good measurement of whether they're legitimate spiritual teachers or not is to see whether they've produced attainment in the people who watch the videos or attend the talks. Or if it's just like candy for the spiritual brain...you get a little hit of something, maybe you get a slight insight you didn't think of before...but there's no further benefit from it. Real benefit produces a lasting change, or contains a truth that's immutable. Fake benefit keeps the followers coming back for the carrot on the string.

[C T]

I will view most of these individuals as opinionated, like everyone else basically, but i will not go so far as to label them fakes.

 

Almost everyone has a message to share. For some, holy book in hand, they stand on street corners and yell at the top of the their voice a message purportedly from God, others head to the park each Saturday afternoon and stand on wooden crates to deliver a message of defiance and doom, or one of hope and beauty, yet some others in this new age choose a more digital platform to present themselves with an opportunity to learn... about themselves, most of all.

 

Richard Bach, in The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, said, "We teach best what we most need to learn."

 

sometimes this can resound ever so true. Remembering words like these can help stave cynicism. 

Cynicism is best avoided for those who journey within. 

[Aetherous]

Almost everyone has a message to share.

 

I agree. Any member of the audience could just as well get up on the stage, and the teacher sit down in the crowd. The followers might leave if that were to occur, but it'd be just as legitimate.

[Bindi]

I will view most of these individuals as opinionated, like everyone else basically, but i will not go so far as to label them fakes.

 

Almost everyone has a message to share. For some, holy book in hand, they stand on street corners and yell at the top of the their voice a message purportedly from God, others head to the park each Saturday afternoon and stand on wooden crates to deliver a message of defiance and doom, or one of hope and beauty, yet some others in this new age choose a more digital platform to present themselves with an opportunity to learn... about themselves, most of all.

 

Richard Bach, in The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, said, "We teach best what we most need to learn."

 

sometimes this can resound ever so true. Remembering words like these can help stave cynicism. 

Cynicism is best avoided for those who journey within. 

 

Cynicism might be best avoided, but discernment is an absolute requirement.

[dwai]

Just saw a video on here of a guy doing a satsang type presentation on a youtube video.

 

Here's a thought for everyone to ponder: every single person who gives satsangs is just a normal human being, who at one point decided they could make money and get some people to listen to them, if they put a vase with flowers up and talked about things like consciousness and enlightenment. Some are more clever than others.

 

Literally every one of these people is less advanced spiritually than you are (the reader of this). They are all unattained spiritually. We can find nothing of lasting value in their presentations.

 

Are you sure YOUR biases are not making you say that?

 

Satsang is not about one person preaching or teaching etc. satsang literally means company of the true/real. If you have two spiritual minded people communing, it becomes a satsang

 

The Daobums is a form of satsang.

[gendao]

What about Mark Griffin, who seems to have garnered a lot of hardcore fanbois around here?

Edited April 22, 2017 by gendao

[Jetsun]

It all depends on where they are speaking from.

[Bindi]

Aetherous is only echoing a very common analysis of 'Western Satsang' and neo-advaita.
 

[Neo-advaitan] teaching is mainly presented by question and answer at meetings called ‘Satsangs’. The teacher invites questions, and then answers them in his own particular way. There is no overview of the basic advaita principles. So those who attend are left with no full understanding of the complete bases on which the Teaching stands.

...The main Neo Advaitin fallacy ignores the fact that there is an occlusion or veiling formed by the vAsanas, samskara-s, bodily sheaths and vritti-s, and there is a Granthi Knot forming an identification between Self and mind which has to be severed. If this were not the case then the whole of humanity would be living from Absolute Consciousness. As it is humanity still lives from Reflected Consciousness, including the Neo Advaitin Teacher with his or her active vAsana-s, still identified with the mind.

....The subtle part of the ego believes itself to be ‘enlightened’ but the vasanas are still active, so the awakening is conceptual, and possibly imagined, rather like the ‘born again’ experience in evangelical Christianity. No j~nani ever claims to be Enlightened. It remains for others to recognise his qualities. To say ‘I am enlightened’ is a contradiction, as the I which would make such an assertion is the ‘I’ which has to be destroyed before Enlightenment can happen. The Neo advaita teacher is still talking from the mind in reflected Consciousness not from the ‘no mind’. To claim to have awakened others’ prematurely in this tentative way then becomes further proof of a teacher’s ability. This builds up a false sense of expectation in the mind of the naive and gullible adherents that they may become awakened too, if they are lucky.

This then becomes a vocation, and in many cases a very successful means of earning a livelihood. Pupils gravitate to the teacher with this kind of agenda which confirms what he or she wants to believe, that no effort is needed. The result is that the Teacher, still living from the ordinary mind, with vasanas active, can never go back on the promise that he is ‘awakened’ and therefore forfeit the right to teach. That the vasanas have been accumulated and consolidated in previous ‘life dreams’ is not examined, and if raised, the teachings about ‘samsara’, ‘maya’, jiva, karma and re-birth are often considered too metaphysical to explain or grasp .They are invariably dismissed as old superstitions. Teaching from the ‘no mindstate’ or ‘silence of the Sage’ can never happen while the powerful vasanas are active. They have to die down and become harmless, and this means self-enquiry and surrender, until the mind, through Grace, when the Real Self recognises the Jiva with a one pointed mind, has fully turned inwards. The nervous system has been prepared and The Self then draws the mind into the fully opened Heart. This is Self Realisation.

http://advaita-academy.org/advaita-and-western-neo-advaita/

[Jetsun]

It all depends on where they are speaking from.

 

I should also say it also depends on where they are pointing towards in their words.

 

The words and what someone says in Satsang is just the surface and isn't the important part. If you go see anyone give a talk whoever it is they will resonate with you in some way, for example if you go see Adolf Hitler give Satsang the parts within you which are in rage and fear are likely to be stirred up, whereas if you go see someone who is an intellectual and all their energy is in their head it is likely to bring you up into your own intellect. But what happens when the person giving Satsang is speaking from and to the deepest part of their/your being it is completely different and isn't the same as just a regular person from the street saying the same words. Where the person speaks from will evoke the same place within you, if the one giving Satsang is speaking from eternal being is will evoke that in you. They even have a concept of this principle in science now with "mirror neurons".

 

I have been to plenty of Western Satsang's including seeing Rupert Spira who I assume Aetherous is talking about, the majority of them I have got more out of than just mental knowledge. Adyashanti is someone who I consider as a Western master of them, he was trained in it since his early twenties to be able to speak spontaneously from being, in almost every sentence he speaks in Satsang he is pointing you back to somewhere, the words are a means to point there rather than fill up the brain with more knowledge. He has helped evoke awakening to many people this way with Satsangs, probably hundreds. 

Edited April 22, 2017 by Jetsun

[silent thunder]

some people feel the rain

others just get wet

[Aetherous]

What about Mark Griffin, who seems to have garnered a lot of hardcore fanbois around here?

 

I have no idea.

 

Edited April 22, 2017 by Aetherous

[dwai]

I should also say it also depends on where they are pointing towards in their words.

 

The words and what someone says in Satsang is just the surface and isn't the important part. If you go see anyone give a talk whoever it is they will resonate with you in some way, for example if you go see Adolf Hitler give Satsang the parts within you which are in rage and fear are likely to be stirred up, whereas if you go see someone who is an intellectual and all their energy is in their head it is likely to bring you up into your own intellect. But what happens when the person giving Satsang is speaking from and to the deepest part of their/your being it is completely different and isn't the same as just a regular person from the street saying the same words. Where the person speaks from will evoke the same place within you, if the one giving Satsang is speaking from eternal being is will evoke that in you. They even have a concept of this principle in science now with "mirror neurons".

 

I have been to plenty of Western Satsang's including seeing Rupert Spira who I assume Aetherous is talking about, the majority of them I have got more out of than just mental knowledge. Adyashanti is someone who I consider as a Western master of them, he was trained in it since his early twenties to be able to speak spontaneously from being, in almost every sentence he speaks in Satsang he is pointing you back to somewhere, the words are a means to point there rather than fill up the brain with more knowledge. He has helped evoke awakening to many people this way with Satsangs, probably hundreds.

.

 

 

Like this one --- it put me in deep samadhi.

 

 

https://youtu.be/df9YPTe14nU

 

I shared with my wife who went into a pretty deep place (and she doesn't practice). My regular practice partner and friend saw it and had the same experience of deep stillness/samadhi!

Edited April 22, 2017 by dwai

[wstein]

Just saw a video on here of a guy doing a satsang type presentation on a youtube video.

 

Here's a thought for everyone to ponder: every single person who gives satsangs is just a normal human being, who at one point decided they could make money and get some people to listen to them, if they put a vase with flowers up and talked about things like consciousness and enlightenment. Some are more clever than others.

Wow, you seem to know every single Satsang poster on YouTube. I find this hard to believe.

[Bindi]

Essays from both camps on the differences between and the value of traditional Advaita versus Neo-Advaita/the Western Satsang movement: http://www.advaita.org.uk/discourses/trad_neo/trad_neo.htm

[Jetsun]

Essays from both camps on the differences between and the value of traditional Advaita versus Neo-Advaita/the Western Satsang movement: http://www.advaita.org.uk/discourses/trad_neo/trad_neo.htm

 

Some good essays here, thanks. I quite like Tony Parsons "The Divine Misconception:

Traditional Advaita (Oneness) versus Neo-Advaita"

 

"It has recently been argued that Traditional Oneness is somehow better than Neo-Oneness, or even Pseudo-Oneness. The strangeness of this idea exposes the foolishness of trying to give title to that which is limitless.

 

The cunning and manipulative guru mind inevitably objectifies verbal expression, and out of that objectifying arises a plethora of dogmatic movements all claiming supreme understanding of that which cannot be understood.

 

As a consequence, so-called Traditional Advaita, for instance, is just another established religion with a proliferation of teachings and literature, all of which very successfully and consistently miss the mark. It stands alongside Christianity and Buddhism as one of the many systems of personal indoctrination promising the eventual spiritual fulfilment. To quote from The Open Secret “To translate the inexpressible into the doctrinal is to attempt to transform a song of freedom into a dogma of limitation. When the bird has flown, the essence of its song is often mislaid and all we are left with is an empty cage.”

[dwai]

Some good essays here, thanks. I quite like Tony Parsons "The Divine Misconception:

Traditional Advaita (Oneness) versus Neo-Advaita"

"It has recently been argued that Traditional Oneness is somehow better than Neo-Oneness, or even Pseudo-Oneness. The strangeness of this idea exposes the foolishness of trying to give title to that which is limitless.

The cunning and manipulative guru mind inevitably objectifies verbal expression, and out of that objectifying arises a plethora of dogmatic movements all claiming supreme understanding of that which cannot be understood.

As a consequence, so-called Traditional Advaita, for instance, is just another established religion with a proliferation of teachings and literature, all of which very successfully and consistently miss the mark. It stands alongside Christianity and Buddhism as one of the many systems of personal indoctrination promising the eventual spiritual fulfilment. To quote from The Open Secret “To translate the inexpressible into the doctrinal is to attempt to transform a song of freedom into a dogma of limitation. When the bird has flown, the essence of its song is often mislaid and all we are left with is an empty cage.”

Actually traditional Advaita Vedanta is quite effective in the results. The problem is that the practitioners tend to get bogged down in tradition for the sake of tradition, liken it to Confucian ethics get mistaken for daoist idealism (crappy labels but that's what I can use since I don't have much time now).

[sagebrush]

when I need to open a can of whoop a-- on myself I reach for Vernon howard.

 

I begin to think of many expert climbers on Himalayas. World renown mountaineers are scattered and frozen up there-

 

its best to take advice from a unassuming snail in a garden. although I do not necessarily think the trill of a bird is Truth.

 

but it sure beats a lot of noise.

 

I watched a video my sister sent over whats app. It was of a street performer. He had a boombox and a miniuature wooden chair, and a skeleton puppet on strings that he danced along and it lip sync to a song like singing in concert. It deserved a coin or bill in the hat. It was unique and I smiled. the music was chubby checker twist like we did last summer. maybe you can internet search the video.

 

 

we have people in the world with lots of information, theories, like Einstein and steven Hawkins and then the homeless women on the street with no teeth.....

 

I guess it depends on where you want to place attention and study.

My dreams last night translate to being close to someone amid anger(someone else got to set up the instruments) and strangers.(some from the asylum) and I will continue to point it out that it was her(you). and then its just me. :-)

good day

and just so I am not off topic I will say satsang in the last sentence

Edited April 23, 2017 by sagebrush

[Bindi]

Some good essays here, thanks. I quite like Tony Parsons "The Divine Misconception:

Traditional Advaita (Oneness) versus Neo-Advaita"

 

"It has recently been argued that Traditional Oneness is somehow better than Neo-Oneness, or even Pseudo-Oneness. The strangeness of this idea exposes the foolishness of trying to give title to that which is limitless.

 

The cunning and manipulative guru mind inevitably objectifies verbal expression, and out of that objectifying arises a plethora of dogmatic movements all claiming supreme understanding of that which cannot be understood.

 

As a consequence, so-called Traditional Advaita, for instance, is just another established religion with a proliferation of teachings and literature, all of which very successfully and consistently miss the mark. It stands alongside Christianity and Buddhism as one of the many systems of personal indoctrination promising the eventual spiritual fulfilment. To quote from The Open Secret “To translate the inexpressible into the doctrinal is to attempt to transform a song of freedom into a dogma of limitation. When the bird has flown, the essence of its song is often mislaid and all we are left with is an empty cage.”

 

 

More from Tony Parsons:

 

In the meetings, one of the questions I keep getting is: “So what you’re saying is that I can’t do anything, and that I have no responsibility?”. And I keep on repeating: no, I’m not saying you can’t do anything, because that would imply that there’s someone who can’t do anything.

 

But the reality is: there is no one. That is something totally different.

 

Lots of so-called Advaita people just hate this message. They keep coming back to the argument that what I’m saying promotes laziness, that it’s a terrible, awful thing to say. They don’t comprehend what’s basically, fundamentally being said, and that is that there is no choice, there is no free will. There is no one. They totally and utterly still believe in the reality of individual choice. For them to hear that there is no one….it’s impossible for them to hear that. So they’ll go on arguing in duality.

 

On the other hand: I know of people who have come once and seen it totally. Others come to the meetings a few times, and then the whole idea of individuality simply disappears. It falls apart.

 

Awakenings are happening all over the place at this time. And what people say is that when it happens, they realize that it’s absolutely natural and ordinary. No big deal, in a sense. In another way, it’s absolutely wonderful.

[doc benway]

One objection I have to this message is that it does not acknowledge the value of our relative experience in favor of the absolute. While we may be able to directly experience the self as an illusion, we nonetheless live with it throughout our lives on earth. To deny the relative in favor of the absolute is an error, in my opinion. Both perspectives have equal value and legitimacy. The key IMO is to see and feel the presence of the absolute in the relative. In that way we can let go of aversion and attachment without sacrificing the opportunities life presents.

[Jeff]

One objection I have to this message is that it does not acknowledge the value of our relative experience in favor of the absolute. While we may be able to directly experience the self as an illusion, we nonetheless live with it throughout our lives on earth. To deny the relative in favor of the absolute is an error, in my opinion. Both perspectives have equal value and legitimacy. The key IMO is to see and feel the presence of the absolute in the relative. In that way we can let go of aversion and attachment without sacrificing the opportunities life presents.

 

 

Well said.

[Aetherous]

http://traumadissociation.com/depersonalization