Bliss and Enlightenment by James Swartz

[old3bob]

1 hour ago, stirling said:

 

My bold: There is a lot there that is very much like enlightenment, if we add insight to that list.

 

: in some ways but such is passing 

 

 

IMHO, "self", "Self", "mind", and "Mind" are all delusions ultimately. 

 

: such is not Sat, 

 

[C T]

4 hours ago, Lairg said:

 

I usually show those interested how to push light out of the heart into most situations of congested energy and relationships

 

The light in the heart is usually the most pure light in a standard human

 

 

First time hearing of the feat (pushing light out from the heart). 

 

Can you substantiate this rather outlandish claim?

[Lairg]

I have taught the method to people having difficulty with physical health and relationships.  They usually feel an immediate energy change and are happier

 

 

The other day I spent a hour on internet video with a doctor dying from bone cancer.  After he did the heart work with me, he said he felt much better.  I have had to do a bit since then remotely but he is still improving the light in his bones

 

In the Roman Catholic tradition, Jesus has a flaming heart that radiates light.  Perhaps all humans have such.

 

 

 

Edited July 14, 2023 by Lairg

[C T]

1 hour ago, Lairg said:

I have taught the method to people having difficulty with physical health and relationships.  They usually feel an immediate energy change and are happier

 

 

The other day I spent a hour on internet video with a doctor dying from bone cancer.  After he did the heart work with me, he said he felt much better.  I have had to do a bit since then remotely but he is still improving the light in his bones

 

In the Roman Catholic tradition, Jesus has a flaming heart that radiates light.  Perhaps all humans have such.

 

 

 

 

This is what you claim. 

It's easy to make claims. 

Over the years, this forum have heard it all. 

[Cobie]

2 hours ago, Lairg said:

... In the Roman Catholic tradition, Jesus has a flaming heart that radiates light.  Perhaps all humans have such. 

 

I think so, yes. 

[manitou]

7 hours ago, C T said:

 

First time hearing of the feat (pushing light out from the heart). 

 

Can you substantiate this rather outlandish claim?

 

 

I don't know if this qualifies as pushing light out from the heart, but if I concentrate on feeling the steering wheel under my hands, I can actually feel love for my little car!  I feel warmth actually radiating from my heart.  It is a great little car, a 2007 Prius. I will drive it until the wheels fall off.  But it does feel like pushing light....

 

P.S. On rare occasion, I feel this for a human being too

 

 

Edited July 14, 2023 by manitou

[mcoolio]

6 hours ago, Lairg said:

I have taught the method to people having difficulty with physical health and relationships.  They usually feel an immediate energy change and are happier

 

 

The other day I spent a hour on internet video with a doctor dying from bone cancer.  After he did the heart work with me, he said he felt much better.  I have had to do a bit since then remotely but he is still improving the light in his bones

 

In the Roman Catholic tradition, Jesus has a flaming heart that radiates light.  Perhaps all humans have such.

 

 

8 hours ago, C T said:

 

First time hearing of the feat (pushing light out from the heart). 

 

Can you substantiate this rather outlandish claim?

 

There is a lot of emphasis on lower dantien work all over online and in these forums, but from what I have been reading lately in books, seems like heart is really the key that makes all of this work ...

[C T]

16 minutes ago, manitou said:

 

 

I don't know if this qualifies as pushing light out from the heart, but if I concentrate on feeling the steering wheel under my hands, I can actually feel love for my little car!  I feel warmth actually radiating from my heart.  It is a great little car, a 2007 Prius. I will drive it until the wheels fall off.  But it does feel like pushing light....

 

P.S. On rare occasion, I feel this for a human being too

 

 

 

Yes, we all have that empath thing to some degree. With time, some lose it for various reasons. Something that relates to degrees or the gradual seeping in of cynicism or simply being jaded with life. But what was claimed is quite different. 

[C T]

1 minute ago, mcoolio said:

 

 

 

There is a lot of emphasis on lower dantien work all over online and in these forums, but from what I have been reading lately in books, seems like heart is really the key that makes all of this work ...

 

I'm with you with regards to heart work, but claiming to have the ability to 'push light out from the heart' of a third party takes some believing. I'm not buying it. 

[old3bob]

1 hour ago, manitou said:

 

 

I don't know if this qualifies as pushing light out from the heart, but if I concentrate on feeling the steering wheel under my hands, I can actually feel love for my little car!  I feel warmth actually radiating from my heart.  It is a great little car, a 2007 Prius. I will drive it until the wheels fall off.  But it does feel like pushing light....

P.S. On rare occasion, I feel this for a human being too

 

 

I've told my wife to talk nice to her vehicles and she just laughs .   Anyway I do believe there can be some sort of connection between mankind and machine but no one can measure it.  Not unlike that there can be some sort of connection between mankind and rocks...

[old3bob]

2 hours ago, C T said:

 

I'm with you with regards to heart work, but claiming to have the ability to 'push light out from the heart' of a third party takes some believing. I'm not buying it. 

 

True Masters, Saints, Sages,  Gurus,  Buddha's,  and Deities blessings., radiate compassionate warmth and light energy from their whole being and can be felt and even be seen  if we are not totally asleep or blind to it...I don't know about seemingly confining it to just the heart either, which is obviously part of the whole being.  In India depending on context such is called Darshan.  (which is mostly not understood in the west being many eastern religions have very valid connection to what some scoff at and discount as just being idols of Deities)

Edited July 14, 2023 by old3bob

[Mark Foote]

11 hours ago, C T said:

 

First time hearing of the feat (pushing light out from the heart). 

 

Can you substantiate this rather outlandish claim?
 

How about just clarify, in whatever symbolism a Westerner and non-occultist like myself can understand.

[Mark Foote]

1 hour ago, old3bob said:

 

I've told my wife to talk nice to her vehicles and she just laughs .   Anyway I do believe there can be some sort of connection between mankind and machine but no one can measure it.  Not unlike that there can be some sort of connection between mankind and rocks...
 

I used to work in a room that had old machines.  One of the people I worked with used to say, "first, benedict the machine."  He also routinely would repeat "be nice to the machine... they're all in the same union", meaning ill will toward this machine might result in a break-down in that one.

All very true, in my experience.

[Mark Foote]

19 hours ago, stirling said:

 

 

Yes. Somewhere past 6th jhana or so into the formless realms. I stopped eventually, as it isn't insight into actual things, but rather into states that resemble insight.

(As far as what the jhanas are, ) I'm fine with this:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhyana_in_Buddhism#The_jhāna/dhyana-stages
 

 

I did look at the Wikipedia article.  I think that article misses the point of the concentrations, entirely.  

I can't blame them.  The relevant teachings are in different places in the Nikayas.  Here's what I believe to be relevant (from a post on my own site):

 

Gautama’s teaching revolved around action, around one specific kind of action:

 

…I say that determinate thought is action. When one determines, one acts by deed, word, or thought.

 

(AN III 415, Pali Text Society Vol III p 294)
 

 

“When one determines”—when a person exercises volition, or choice, action of “deed, word, or thought” follows.

 

Gautama also spoke of “the activities”.  The activities are the actions that take place as a consequence of the exercise of volition:

 

“And what are the activities?  These are the three activities:–those of deed, speech and mind.  These are activities.”

 

(SN II 3, Pali Text Society vol II p 4)

 

Gautama claimed that a ceasing of “action” is possible:

 

And what… is the ceasing of action? That ceasing of action by body, speech, and mind, by which one contacts freedom,–that is called ‘the ceasing of action’.

 

(SN IV 145, Pali Text Society Vol IV p 85)

 

He spoke in detail about how “the activities” come to cease:

 

“…I have seen that the ceasing of the activities is gradual. When one has attained the first trance, speech has ceased. When one has attained the second trance, thought initial and sustained has ceased. When one has attained the third trance, zest has ceased. When one has attained the fourth trance, inbreathing and outbreathing have ceased… Both perception and feeling have ceased when one has attained the cessation of perception and feeling.”

 

(SN IV 217, Pali Text Society vol IV p 146)

 

(A Way of Living)

 

 

Gautama speaks of the cessation of speech, but instead of speaking of the cessation of "deed", he speaks of the cessation of inhalation and exhalation.  Since action by "determinate thought" is "action" by his definition, the cessation of inhalation and exhalation he's referring to is actually the cessation of "determinate thought" in inhalation and exhalation.

It's clear that he's not talking about an actual cessation of inhalation and exhalation.  He tried that, in the days when he was hanging with the five ascetics, as an ascetic practice:

 

So I, Aggivessana, stopped breathing in and breathing out through the mouth and through the nose and through the ears.  When I, Aggivessana, had stopped breathing in and breathing out through the mouth and through the nose and through the ears, I came to have very bad headaches… very strong winds cut through my stomach… there came a fierce heat in my body.  Although, Aggivessana, unsluggish energy came to be stirred up in me, unmuddled mindfulness set up, yet my body was turbulent, not calmed, because I was harassed in striving by striving against that very pain.  But yet, Aggivesana, that painful feeling, arising in me, persisted without impinging on my mind...
 

(MN I 244-245, Pali Text Society vol I p 298-299)

That's not what's happening in the fourth rupa jhana.  I would describe what's happening as:
 

When the location of attention can shift anywhere in the body as a function of the movement of breath, and the activity of the body in inhalation and exhalation follows solely from the location of attention, there is a feeling of freedom.

Similarly when neither '(determinate thought" in) feeling and perceiving, nor yet not "(determinate thought" in) feeling and perceiving' is transcended, '(determinate thought" in) feeling and perceiving ceases.  Then "what was to be done, is done"--"there is no more of being such and so."

That transcendence happens, according to Gautama, by means of "lack of desire".

Gautama described the jhanas in terms of what ceases and what remains, but he also provided metaphors for the feeling of each of the four rupa jhanas, and a practice of extending the mind around the world, above and below, leading to the excellence of the heart's release and each of the first three arupa jhanas.  That I think is missing from the Wikipedia article.
 

 

 

Edited July 14, 2023 by Mark Foote

[Mark Foote]

18 hours ago, stirling said:

 

You remind me of philosopher Riccardo Manzotti.

 

That video is 3+ hours!

From Wikipedia:
 

Another radical form of phenomenal externalism is the view called the spread mind by Riccardo Manzotti. He questions the separation between subject and object, seeing these as only two incomplete perspectives and descriptions of the same physical process. He supports a process ontology that endorses a mind spread physically and spatio-temporally beyond the skin. Objects are not autonomous as we know them, but rather actual processes framing our reality.
 

 

I do believe that the arupa jhanas depend on including what lies beyond the senses in the placement of attention.  Gautama spoke of the extension of the mind of friendship, and likewise the extension of the minds of compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity:
 

[One] dwells, having suffused the first quarter [of the world] with friendliness, likewise the second, likewise the third, likewise the fourth; just so above, below, across; [one] dwells having suffused the whole world everywhere, in every way, with a mind of friendliness that is far-reaching, wide-spread, immeasurable, without enmity, without malevolence. [One] dwells having suffused the first quarter with a mind of compassion… with a mind of sympathetic joy… with a mind of equanimity that is far-reaching, wide-spread, immeasurable, without enmity, without malevolence.

 

“The excellence of the heart’s release” through the extension of the mind of compassion was "the plane of the infinity of ether"; “the excellence of the heart’s release” through the extension of the mind of sympathetic joy was "the plane of the infinity of consciousness"; and “the excellence of the heart’s release” through the extension of the mind of equanimity was "the plane of No-Thing".  Those are the first three arupa jhanas.

I like the way Kobun put it:
 

When you sit, the cushion sits with you. If you wear glasses, the glasses sit with you. Clothing sits with you. House sits with you. People who are moving around outside all sit with you. They don’t take the sitting posture!

(“Aspects of Sitting Meditation”, “Shikantaza”; Kobun Chino Otogawa; http://www.jikoji.org/intro-aspects/)

 

 

When I extend the mind of friendliness to the people who are moving around outside, zazen can dance.


 

[Lairg]

5 hours ago, manitou said:

It is a great little car, a 2007 Prius.

 

I drive a 1989 Mazda wagon.  It is a most obliging car.  If it must break down it does it at the most convenient places.

 

I bought it used and have owned it 31 years so far, and other than regular maintenance it has cost about $3000 in non-routine repairs.  I always ask it what it wants.

 

 

Edited July 14, 2023 by Lairg

[Lairg]

4 hours ago, mcoolio said:

seems like heart is really the key that makes all of this work ...

 

Quite so.  Until third stage enlightenment, the heart is the center of human functionality.

 

 

[Lairg]

1 hour ago, Mark Foote said:

How about just clarify, in whatever symbolism a Westerner and non-occultist like myself can understand.

 

In humans functioning as designed: the Light from on High descends as a white line through the brain (making a consciousness anchor there) down to the heart where it anchors generating life force and providing access to divine intent.

 

(Many humans have interferences to that flow and its anchors)

 

The Light anchored in the heart is commonly "seen" as a flame.  

 

If the human works well with that Light, the flame it will increase in size.   The colors in the flame are significant.

 

Eventually the heart flame may extend to merge with the flame of consciousness in the head.  Then the human will have united the head and the heart

 

Some humans have two vertical lines and those lines have slightly different frequencies.   When I notice humans with two lines I ask them if they have an irregular heart beat.  So far they all have that.   The line of light drives the heart.  Having two lines produces a pulsation in the life force in the heart.

 

The Light from on High may come from a star rather than the planet.  Some humans are under two stars.

 

Too much information?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Lairg]

3 hours ago, old3bob said:

Not unlike that there can be some sort of connection between mankind and rocks...

 

Visualize a hill/mountain you know well and slide your consciousness back to 2010 to sense how it felt then.

 

Now slide forward to 2018 and sense its feeling then.

 

What is the difference?

[manitou]

21 hours ago, old3bob said:

 

I've told my wife to talk nice to her vehicles and she just laughs .   Anyway I do believe there can be some sort of connection between mankind and machine but no one can measure it.  Not unlike that there can be some sort of connection between mankind and rocks...

 

 

Yes, it's all stardust.  Rocks, cars, and whoopie cushions.  There's enough intelligence in all of them to keep the atoms from falling apart.    If water can be changed by speaking to it (Dr. Emoto and his electron microscope), then wouldn't any other substance respond as well?  

 

 

 

 

Edited July 15, 2023 by manitou

[manitou]

23 hours ago, C T said:

 

Yes, we all have that empath thing to some degree. With time, some lose it for various reasons. Something that relates to degrees or the gradual seeping in of cynicism or simply being jaded with life. But what was claimed is quite different. 

 

 

Maybe the degree depends on how we addressed inanimate objects in childhood.  I remember that I was terribly attached to my stuffed animals, and would often cry into them after being punished for something.  My attachment was so great that it was truly traumatic when a stuffed animal passed on...

[old3bob]

18 hours ago, Lairg said:

 

Visualize a hill/mountain you know well and slide your consciousness back to 2010 to sense how it felt then.

 

Now slide forward to 2018 and sense its feeling then.

 

What is the difference?

 

Simon and Garfunkel got older?

Edited July 15, 2023 by old3bob

[Lairg]

It is not a hard experiment.  Everyone I have told it to in real time, has been able to do it

 

 

[stirling]

On 7/13/2023 at 9:05 PM, old3bob said:

 

: such is not Sat, 

 

It absolutely is. Hinduism isn't some unique view of absolute reality, and neither is Buddhism. Enlightenment doesn't belong to any particular tradition or conceptual construct... it COULDN'T.

 

The nature of satcitananda is empty - this is why it is referred to as Satcitananda. None of the 3 aspects wholly captures it. It is all 3 at once, just as emptiness is form and form is emptiness, OR the Father, Son and Holy Ghost are merely 3 ways of looking at God.

[stirling]

On 7/14/2023 at 1:25 PM, Mark Foote said:

I did look at the Wikipedia article.  I think that article misses the point of the concentrations, entirely. 

 

It meets with my understanding and teaching perfectly. It is worth looking at at the referenced texts and authors, IMHO. Shankman in particular is a great resource on this topic. 

 

Have you practiced the jhanas with a teacher?