Taoist Enlightenment : UG Krishnamurti

[rideforever]

Just got this amazing book.  I have it on good authority and I agree that he has achieved a Taoist enlightenment although he is an Indian man.  This book detailed his very strange life of seeking and the unusual events that led to his enlightenment including energy emanations from his penis to his crown, and phosphorescent energy on his skin, and other things.   After his enlightenment he had incredible health for the rest of his life and describe his state as something like the body is the real aliveness there is no mind.  But you would have to read it.

His radiant effortless health was undoubtedly because his LDT was in fully communion with the Source and is different to Indian Sages who cultivate Consciousness in the headspace and have no such health benefits.

He was always very skeptical of spirituality but he also seemed to have arrived.

He was very confusing to listen to, mystifying a bit like Chuang-tzu.

 

[Walker]

On 2/11/2020 at 9:38 AM, Starjumper said:

Why do you say Taoist enlightenment?   Was he a Taoist?  Was he a master or adept of a rue Taoist Nei Kung lineage?

 

I read a couple of his books about 12 or 13 years ago. He never claimed to be a Daoist or an adept in a lineage with neigong teachings. He said he had a spontaneous enlightenment experience in India after spending some time with the other famous Krishnamutri. This spontaneous process induced pronounced physical changes, including temporary but pronounced color changes on his skin over the location of some of the chakras and some spontaneous movements that reminded him more of taijiquan than Indian yoga. I don't think he kept doing those movements once this spontaneous transformation process was finished, though. 

[idiot_stimpy]

Will daoist enlightenment make the physical body immortal?

 

Or just the soul will survive intact after death?

[rideforever]

He had an unusual enlightenment.  From what I understand he did the practices of the Theosophical society which are multifarious.  But it is certainly not an Indian enlightenment.

Different cultures developed different parts of the inner being.  For instance in Islam and Sufism, they have a tradition of poetry of love, of the sweet sounds of the Quran sung in the early morning, or roses made of mosaics.  This is totally different to the type of experience that is held in the TTC.

What is the cause of the difference?  It's because they are working on different parts of the inner being.  Islam on the heart (meaning the centre in the sternum between the nipples) and Taoists on the Dantien (ldt).  These organs of the real being receive different aspects of the Source.  The love aspect or the energy substrata aspect.

UGK had no idea what happened to him, he spent most of the time saying there is no enlightenment and there is no difference between me and you ... (apart from all these differences !!!)   I think that almost all enlightened people have no idea what really happened to them.  They just triggered the thing, they don't really understand how or why.  Not only that but people often teach practices different then the ones they did themselves.  Another strange thing.

So, in this world where most people don't care about such things and there is great confusion, what can be said for certain?  Certainly the inner being has many different centres each which can be individually enlightened, and that different cultures have specialized in.

Why would that be ?  It has ancient origins, the Indian cultures flowed into intellectualism, the middle east perhaps more into the heart, and china into a grounded belly orientation.  Who knows exactly.  Perhaps different immortal beings came to earth and gave a transmission of different parts of the inner being.

I don't really know about physical immortality, but the Dantien is the reception/ transmission point of the energy of the Source that flows into the "physical" body and so enlightenment there produces very positive results.  The Heart if awakened also heals the body in a different way as the divine energy flows in.  Do you really want to be "physically" immortal in this body forever ?  Perhaps a little down the road you will not wish this.  Perhaps it is the confrontation with your own death that leads your identity to be beyond death.

In China and India they did so many practices it is impossible to say what they all mean or where they all went.  Is a "lineage" going somewhere different to what is available in the inner being (that is made by the source) ?  Perhaps people in a particular lineage add a certain flavour to their awakenings but their awakenings must be about activating one of the possibilities that existence has placed within you already.  Perhaps only pure awakenings (without lineage) are .. pure.  I don't know.
Existence is rich with possibilities, choose your way and succeed.

 

 

[Walker]

42 minutes ago, idiot_stimpy said:

Will daoist enlightenment make the physical body immortal?

 

Or just the soul will survive intact after death?

 

There is a response to this perennial question in the fourth chapter of the 《文始真經》, which comes in the following two lines: 

 

關尹子曰：「人之厭生死、超生死者，皆是大患也。譬如化人，若有厭生死心、超生死心，止名為妖，不名為道。」 

Guanyinzi said: "Humans' aversion to life and death, [or hope of] transcendence of life and death, both are great afflictions. For instance, when ["transforming," implying teaching] people, if [a teacher] is of a mind averse to life and death, or of a mind to transcend life and death, this can only be called demonic, this is not called Dao."

 

and

 

關尹子曰：「計生死者，或曰死已、有；或曰死已、無；或曰死已、亦有亦無；或曰死已、不有不無；或曰當幸者；或曰當懼者；或曰當任者；或曰當超者。愈變識情，馳鶩不已。殊不知我之生死，如馬之手，如牛之翼，本無有，復無無。譬如水火，雖犯水火，不能燒之，不能溺之。」

Guanyinzi said: "When discussing life and death, some say after death there is existence; some say after death there is no existence; some say after death there is both existence and no existence; some say after death there is no existence and no non existence; some say [death] should be celebrated; some say [death] should be feared; some say death should be accepted; some say death should be overcome. The more these ideas and emotions change, the [more] one gallops off in seeking. [People] simply do not understand that their own life and death are like hands on a horse or wings on a cow, fundamentally they don't exist, nor do they not not exist. For instance, with water and fire, though you may attack water [with water] and fire [with fire], [fire] cannot burn fire, and [water] cannot drown water." 

 

Something to meditate upon.

Edited February 12, 2020 by Walker

[rideforever]

Existence is exploring by dividing into new forms.  If any of these forms become self-realised it then becomes permanent because it is like a tunnel from the source to the source through a vessel.  If the form does not become self-realised it is discarded.

This explanation ... explains why we are here.

The idea that we are undoing everything so that we can not exist is not very good, is existence so stupid?  And are we, monkeys, smart?  Why should we follow the path so that we don't exist any more?  These are all bad ideas.

Humans live in a "world" formed by the partial development of the "mind" organ.  Because it is partially developed it gives rise to many wrong ideas that are ancient and wrong.

 

But ... if you can imagine evolution gradually developing species then there is a point where a species gets the beginnings of the mind organ and starts to think a lot and have ideas, and all those ideas are ignorant and have wrong things in them, due to the mind organ being just the beginning, like the beginning a new kidney.  This is unavoidable.  This is where the human exists.  Evolution cannot give a species a fully cooked mind.  It gives them just the beginning.  Because such a mind allows them to murder everything else on the planet and so this species feels confident.  But in fact its ideas although sometimes being very good ... all carry within them delusion, delusion due to the mind being a very provisional beginning of the mind organ.

Imagine a species that is blind and one day gets 1/8th of an eyeball.  Now it can see. ... something.  And so it can get more food and mates than other species because it can see a little bit.  It feels very good about itself.  The species becomes excited and rushes about a lot.  It falls into ditches and is a bit surprised.  It runs into trees and is also a bit surprised.  The species has only developed 1/8th of an eyeball.

 

Such a species may develop a religion based on cutting out the 1/8th of an eyeball, or that the world seen through it should be killed or is not real.  Kill the ego, you don't exist.

 

 

 

[doc benway]

UG always referred to his experience as “the catastrophe.” I think it’s a mistake to call his transformation enlightenment. The nihilistic aspects of his experience seemed to far outweigh the spontaneous expression of enlightened qualities that are the hallmark of enlightenment, at least in a Buddhist context.

[freeform]

1 hour ago, steve said:

I think it’s a mistake to call his transformation enlightenment.

 

Completely agree.

 

He had an awakening experience.

[rideforever]

I would say it must be considered enlightenment, he died during the process and says it clearly in his memoirs.  He is clear that "you don't want this", because seekers do not really understand what such things mean.  They imagine it is an awakening thing that can be added to what they are already, they don't really want to go through death.

His enlightenment is the same as the death described in Zen , which is described as the withered tree, followed by the withered tree grows new shoots.  You give up breathing and stop breathing, until something else revives you without your will.

My definition of the difference is that awakening is any number of objective states that you may embody on this side.  But enlightenment means that you have died to the manifest world and are on the other side, and live from the source.

 

Edited February 12, 2020 by rideforever

[thelerner]

He always struck me as what happens when a grumpy old man gets enlightenment. 

 

Its still 'Hey you Hippies, get off my lawn' but done with such directness and depth you end up nodding in agreement. 

[silent thunder]

Re-minded of something Adyashanti said that utterly describes the intensity of my own awakening.  

 

“Enlightenment is a destructive process.

It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier.

Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth.

It's seeing through the facade of pretence.

It's the complete eradication of everything

we imagined to be true.”

― Adyashanti

[silent thunder]

I'm also re-minded of this quote, shared by John Blofeld, regarding his take on what was revealed to him in his meeting with revered Taoist Sage Tseng Lao-weng.

 

I recall the first time i read Sage Tseng's words, @rene shared it here on the Bums.  It struck me like a bolt of lightning on a clear day...

 

The sense of the words settling in awareness was akin to stumbling upon a previously unknown meadow in the valley of my innermost self and finding, that although I'd never been there before, it was my original home... utterly familiar and reflective of the most core aspects of my path and its subsequent affect on process, sense of self, reality... all of it. 

 

Spoiler

Quote

Tseng Lao-weng:  'Your going to such trouble to visit me is flattering.  How may I best be of service to you?'

    'You mean, why have I come, Venerable?  I have been longing to meet you ever since I heard our mutual friend describe you as an illumined sage.'

    Tseng Lao-weng sighed and answered resignedly: 'Why to people talk so?  Such words are tedious.  You will find no sages here, just this old fellow and four or five other very ordinary men who are students of the Way.  It must be dissappointing for you.'

    'Do not blame Yang Tao-shih, Venerable.  He wished only to make me see for myself that Buddhists do not have a monopoly of wisdom.'

    'And does seeing an old man distinguished by nothing more than an unusually bushy beard convince you that they do not?'

 

    What could I say that would not sound like flattery, which he obviously disliked?  "Venerable, it is just that, as most of my teachers are Buddhist, I am ignorant about what Taoists mean by such terms as wisdom and illumination, and about their methods of approaching the Tao.'

    He laughed.  'How strange.  Can there be two kinds of wisdom, two kinds of illumination, Taoist and Buddhist?  Surely the experience of truth must be the same for all?  As to approaching the Tao, be sure that demons and executioners, let alone Buddhists, are as close to it as can be.  The one impossible thing is to get a finger's breadth away from it.  Do you suppose that some people -- this old fellow, for example -- are nearer to it than others?  Is a bird closer to the air than a tortoise or a cat?  The Tao is closer to you than the nose on your face; it is ony because you can tweak your nose that you think otherwise.  Asking about our approach to the Tao is like asking a deep-see fish how it approaches the water.  It is just a matter of recognizing what has been inside, outside and all around from the first.  Do you understand?'

 

    'Yes I believe I do.  Certainly my Buddhist teachers have taught me that there is no attaining liberation, but only attaining recognition of what has always been from the first.'

    'Excellent, excellent!  Your teachers, then, are true sages.  You are a worthy disciple, so why brave the bitter cold to visit an ordinary old fellow?  You would have learnt as much at your own fireside.'  (His harping so much on his being just an ordinary fellow was not due to exaggerated modesty, being a play on the words of which his title, Lao-weng, was composed.)

 

    'Venerable, please don't laugh at me!  I accept your teaching that true sages have but the one goal.  Still, here in China, there are Buddhists and there are also Taoists.  Manifestly they differ; since the goal is one, the distinction must lie in their methods of approach.'

 

    'So you are hungry not for wisdom but for knowledge!  What a pity!  Wisdom is almost as satisfying as good millet-gruel, whereas knowledge has less body to it than tepid water poured over old tea-leaves;  but if that is the fare you have come for, I can give you as much as your mistreated belly will hold.  What sort of old tea-leaves do Buddhists use, I wonder!  We Taoists use all sorts.  Some swallow medicine-balls as big as pigeon's eggs or drink tonics by the jugful, live upon unappetizing diets, take baths at intervals goverened by esoteric numbers, breathe in and out like asthmatic dragons, or jump about like Manchu bannermen hardening themselves for battle -- all this discomfort just for a few extra decades of life!  And why?  To gain more time to find what has never been lost! 

 

    And what of those pious recluses who rattle mattets against wooden-fish drums from dusk to dawn, groaning out liturgies like cholera-patients excreting watery dung?  They are penitents longing to rid themselves of a burden they never had.  These people do everything imaginable, including swallowing pills made from the vital fluids secreted by the opposide sex and lighting fires in their bellies to make the alchemic cauldrons boil -- everything, everything except -- sit still and look within.  I shall have to talk of such follies for hours, if you really want a full list of Taoist methods.  These method-users resemble mountain streams a thousand leagues from the sea.  Ah, how they chatter and gurgle, bubble and boil, rush and eddy, plunging over precipices in spectacular fashion!  How angrily they pound against the boulders and suck down their prey in treacherous whirl-pools!  But, as the streams broaden, they grow quieter and more purposeful.  They become rivers -- ah, how calm, how silent!  How majestically they sweep towards their goal, giving no impression of swiftness and, as they near the ocean, seeming not to move at all!  While noisy mountain streams are reminiscent of people chattering about the Tao and showing-off spectacular methods, rivers remind one of experienced men, taciturn, doing little, but doing it decisively; outwardly still, yet sweeping forward faster than you know.  Your teachers have offered you wisdom; then why waste time acquiring knowledge?  Methods!  Approaches!  Need the junk-master steering towards the sea, with the sails of his vessel billowing in the wind, bother his head about alternative modes of propulsion -- oars, paddles, punt-poles, tow-ropes, engines and all the rest?  Any sort of vessel, unless it founders or pitches you overboard, is good enough to take you to the one and only sea.  Now do you understand?'

    Indeed I did, though not with a direct understanding firmly rooted in intuitive experience that matched his own; but I pretended to be at a loss, hoping his voice, never far from laughter, would go on and on and on; for, just as his mind when lost in the bliss of meditation had communicated a measure of its joy (on my arrival), so now it was emanating a warmth, a jollity that made me want to laugh, to sing, to dance, to shout aloud that everything is forever as it should be, provided we now and then remember to rub our eyes.

...

Tseng Lao-weng's talk of rivers flowing into the ocean had put me in mind of Sir Edwin Arnold's lovely expression of the mystery of Nirvana, 'the dew-drop slips into the shining sea', which I had long accepted as a poetical description of that moment when the seeming-individual, at last free from the shackles of the ego, merges with the Tao -- the Void.  This I knew to be an intensely blissful experience, but it was Tseng Lao-weng who now revealed its shining splendour in terms that made my heart leap.  Afterwords I wondered whether Sir Edwin Arnold himself had realized the full purport of his words.  At a certain moment in our conversation when Tseng Lao-weng paused expectantly, I translated the beautiful line for him and was rewarded by a smile of pleasure and surprise.  Eyes glowing, he replied:

 

    'My countrymen are wrong to speak of the Western Ocean People as barbarians.  Your poet's simile is penetrating -- exalted!  And yet it does not capture the whole; for, when a lesser body of water enters a greater, though the two are henceforth inseperable, the smaller constitutes but a fragment of the whole.  But consider the Tao, which transcends both finite and infinite.  Since the Tao is All and nothing lies outside it, since its multiplicity and unity are identical, when a finite being sheds the illusion of separate existence, he is not lost in the Tao like a dew-drop merging with the sea; by casting off his imaginary limitations, he becomes immeasurable.  No longer bound by the worldly categories, 'part' and 'whole', he discoveres that he is coextensive with the Tao.  Plunge the finite into the infinite and, though only one remains, the finite, far from being diminished, takes on the stature of infinity.  Mere logicians would find fault with this, but if you perceive the hidden meaning you will laugh at their childish cavils.  Such perception will bring you face to face with the true secret cherished by all accomplished sages -- glorious, dazzling, vast, hardly conceivable!  The mind of one who Returns to the Source thereby becomes the Source.  Your own mind, for example, is destined to become the universe itself!'

 

 

Edited February 13, 2020 by silent thunder
added a missing word to a sentence

[silent thunder]

3 hours ago, thelerner said:

He always struck me as what happens when a grumpy old man gets enlightenment. 

 

Its still 'Hey you Hippies, get off my lawn' but done with such directness and depth you end up nodding in agreement. 

I deeply appreciate his authenticity and his utter disregard for softening his take on truths as he experiences them.

[silent thunder]

one more and I'll stop spamming...

 

even though not from a 'taoist'... it resonates harmonically and deeply for me

 

“If you prefer smoke over fire
then get up now and leave.
For I do not intend to perfume
your mind's clothing
with more sooty knowledge.

No, I have something else in mind.
Today I hold a flame in my left hand
and a sword in my right.
There will be no damage control today.

For God is in a mood
to plunder your riches and
fling you nakedly
into such breathtaking poverty
that all that will be left of you
will be a tendency to shine.

So don't just sit around this flame
choking on your mind.
For this is no campfire song
to mindlessly mantra yourself to sleep with.

Jump now into the space
between thoughts
and exit this dream
before I burn the damn place down.”

 

~ Adyashanti

[thelerner]

Sometimes

the dharma is sweet

Othertimes

it's a slap

[doc benway]

20 hours ago, rideforever said:

I would say it must be considered enlightenment, he died during the process and says it clearly in his memoirs.  He is clear that "you don't want this", because seekers do not really understand what such things mean.  They imagine it is an awakening thing that can be added to what they are already, they don't really want to go through death.

His enlightenment is the same as the death described in Zen , which is described as the withered tree, followed by the withered tree grows new shoots.  You give up breathing and stop breathing, until something else revives you without your will.

My definition of the difference is that awakening is any number of objective states that you may embody on this side.  But enlightenment means that you have died to the manifest world and are on the other side, and live from the source.

 

 

Living from the source is not a depressive, painful thing. It is spontaneous and effortless and generally associated with spontaneous arising of enlightened qualities. I don’t get that from UG... And I could certainly be mistaken.

[freeform]

13 minutes ago, steve said:

Living from the source is not a depressive, painful thing.

 

Classically there's a stage very much like that... It just means he had a certain level of awakening - and not complete enlightenment. With a decent teacher and lineage behind him he could've gone quite a bit further it seems.

[rideforever]

35 minutes ago, steve said:

Living from the source is not a depressive, painful thing. It is spontaneous and effortless and generally associated with spontaneous arising of enlightened qualities. I don’t get that from UG... And I could certainly be mistaken.

 

No, when you talk about enlightened qualities you are still trying to get something.  You are not ready to die.  That's how most people approach spirituality, they want to stay themselves and then add something to it.

The strange thing is that half of spirituality is based on people trying to add something to what they are; the other half of spirituality is genuine.

He did not say he was depressive or in pain, he lived in exceptional health his whole life.

The process of change though was very painful, he called it the calamity, the sudden shattering of his identity.

 

In my experience people who talk of qualities they have are in shallow states.  They sort of get to live the dream, they remain as they are but are able to experience so aspect of awakening and feel great.  They can broadcast quite a lot of noise about their discoveries and powers and discuss different energies and faculties and whatever.  Then those who are surrendered are different they are quieter, they are absorbed, they don't care which qualities they have because they know it's meaningless.  And then there are those who are finished and aren't really alive in the ordinary sense.

 

Some teachers play a sort of act, like J. Krishnamurti.  He gives them what they want, polite English spoken very sweetly saying lots of nicey nicey things all above the line.   Others promise energies and healings in big gatherings, again this kind gives them the spectacle that they want.  Some like Sadhguru answers any question on earth, because being enlightened means you can do that of course. 

 

Anyway, for me I like those like Nisargadatta, oh he makes me laugh.  Sitting in his crappy little brass lamp shop selling crappy string-wrapped packs of beedi cigarettes to the bums of Mumbai for 1/2 a ruppee, with the smog and stink of Mumbai streets coming through the door.  He sits with some students and screeches like a saw hacking through steel ... he screeches his Advaita teaching.  Him, I like !!!!

 

 

Edited February 13, 2020 by rideforever

[doc benway]

21 minutes ago, rideforever said:

 

No, when you talk about enlightened qualities you are still trying to get something.  You are not ready to die.  That's how most people approach spirituality, they want to stay themselves and then add something to it.

 

 

Not what I am talking about. The qualities I’m talking about are spontaneous and arise in response to whatever is needed in the given moment. They come from the source. Nothing is done but nothing is left undone... Wu Wei. 

[rideforever]

22 minutes ago, steve said:

The qualities I’m talking about are spontaneous and arise in response to whatever is needed in the given moment. They come from the source. Nothing is done but nothing is left undone... Wu Wei. 

 

There are indeed people who are like this.  They cannot take responsibility for the awakening that has happened because their intelligence cannot capture the meaning of it.  The awakening has happened only energetically, and due to this may not be permanent.  Such people normally have a partial State of Awareness, which is the shallowest of states and occurs behind the front of the forehead.  That state has a very faint energetic body which is very difficult to feel.  Because of this such people say they are everything and everywhere because they can't sense where they are at.  Such people can quote any lines from any scripture in any tradition and think that's them.

There are a lot of people like this on the internet monetizing.  Such is the world.

 

In the same way as nobody knows how to run the economy nobody really knows what they are doing in spirituality.  I have heard several high profile internal arts teachers say that the real spirituality is the same kind of awareness that they have in India and that internal arts  are of a lower practice.  Which is an honest thing to say, but it also means they don't understand the difference between awakening of Awareness, of   consciousness and of the LDT.  They think it's all the same.  Many people seem to be attracted to Taoism because they think it means go with the flow or something.

Anyway it's a mad planet, believe me or not !

 

Edited February 13, 2020 by rideforever

[doc benway]

We’re talking about different people.

I agree that it’s a mad, mad planet!

[johndoe2012]

I think his pain in the neck was the cause of his grumpiness

 

http://www.bodysoulandspirit.net/mystical_experiences/read/notables/krishnamurti.shtml

 

I seem to recall a Tai Chi teacher saying that the neck channels are extremely hard to open / purify.

 

See also Actual Freedom where the founder found the nape of the neck instrumental to his version of enlightenment.

 

http://www.actualfreedom.com.au/

 

My own opinion based on personal experience is the nape of the neck symptom is the end of the thinking mind and thus causes extreme grumpiness at times caused by triggers. So passing this will result in the elimination of the thinking mind and enlightenment = complete absence of suffering.

 

 

 

 

[rideforever]

41 minutes ago, johndoe2012 said:

neck channels

 

I have some personal experience of this actually.

Why do awakened teachers sometimes die of terrible diseases or have corrupt behaviour or ... mention that their mind is "still" talking in the background ?

The answer is that although a part of them is awakened, the rest is not.  And due to lack of understanding of their inner structure, they don't care.  Part of them is in the light and they identify with that part and forget everything else.

Which is fine because it's a big achievement.

But ... neck tensions etc... body disfunctions ... inner corruptions etc.. these are often in the subconscious layers of the being ... the mind also is a subconscious part of the intelligence, eventually everything must be integrated so that the entire iceberg is one, with its many parts.

 

When people talk of the difference between Xing and Ming they probably refer to the approach of cleaning the whole house, or just sitting in the room that is awakened.