Petals

is it not intuitively right to think that all love contains an element of sacrifice / losing sth? what kind of love is it in which you do not lose sth - it is no love at all because it does not affect you. since Leo says that God is Love, the question is - what does God lose in his Love, what does he sacrifice, how is God affected? I think Leo has not talked about it, but somehow intuition says that there must be 'real-world consequences' of God's Love. What do you think? And, @Leo Gura, did you ever experience in your trips that 'God is sacrificing himself/itself / something of himself/itself'?

@Leo Gura how about Bernardo Kastrup? He is interviewed by channels much smaller than Actualized.org. He has his PhDs but is not dependent on academia for his money or reputation. In fact, he criticizes academia quite a lot. He is an advocator of idealism, he's open to psychedelics, etc. I think he is a very good fit (if you think about an interview at all).

go to the youtube channel. there is much more to explore.

Make no mistake, when it comes to Consciousness/spirituality Jourdain is one of the most remarkable beings to have lived in the West.

@Zigzag Idiot Thank you! I am going to have a look at AH Almaas. One other almost funny aspect is that G is about attaining some kind of individualized immortality whereas Hinduism/Vedanta is trying to avoid just that. But I get the sense that there is some kind of significance to the term 'self-remembering', that it has levels to it that are hard to understand from below a certain level of development. Maybe on a higher level it is somewhere near 'enlightenment' or 'self-realisation'. This may be a book that can give some clarity on all the different teachings and traditions.https://www.amazon.com/Womans-Gurdjieff-Maharshi-Krishnamurti-Anandamayi/dp/1879514079 but I haven't bought it yet.

@Zigzag Idiot I saw you in the Ralston book thread. I often thought that Ralston is sometimes somewhat 'Gurdjieffian' if I may say so. I was just thinking - with all these other teachings around, where does one put Gurdjieff? One can't help but try to fit teachings into some scheme. So Ralston is ultimately about understanding that the self is a conceptual fabrication and thereby going beyond it and realizing your 'true nature'. But Gurdjieff is not about that. What do you think when I say that Gurdjieff is not about Ultimate Truth as is Ralston but about self-development, self-mastery, ego-development, maybe ego-transcendence (plus a lot of 'science' and cosmology)? Isn't it interesting that he contradicts the 'highest teachings'? G says we should forge our individuality while Buddhism is about 'no-self' and Hindu masters say that the individuality is due to false identification. G says we should have 'will', while Christians or bhaktas proclaim 'Thy Will be done'. G says we should be able to 'do' while Hindu sages say that taking yourself to be the doer is bondage. In short, I get the sense that G is not about the Absolute but about the relative, not about Being but about Becoming? How plausible is it that he never heard about Advaita Vedanta or didn't care about it? What to make of G and all this? What do you think about this? Maybe I am wrong in my assessment. It would be nice to read what you think. (But that's also so appealing about G. He doesn't say 'it's all illusion, get over it'. He sees a purpose to life on earth which is embedded in an overall cosmic evolution/involution.) (ps.: I am not at all an expert in G's teachings, I mostly just read Lee van Laer's blog which I like.)

I have found this site if one wants to read the whole Commentaries: https://selfdefinition.org/gurdjieff/maurice-nicoll-directory/ On it there are also some of his other books.

a beautiful piece of writing: https://thewordfoundation.org/hlib/early-editorials/Christ.html

I heard Shinzen Young once say that he has a thyroid condition and if he doesn't take his medication he is unable to think, literally. so he tried it out to see whether the equanimity and deep happiness continue. and they did continue. now, this is not directly dementia, but it seems appropriate to mention here.

https://www.jgbennett.org/chapter-4-mow/ J.G. Bennet on Divine Love and the (surprising) role of Judas.

seems like Murray Stein's Jung's Map of the Soul is well liked as an intro. or if you want to read Jung himself e.g. The Essential Jung by Anthony Storr.

maybe you should first ask yourself why you have written this post. whatever we tell you is basically useless. you can't devise a way to a 'place' you don't know. who is it that wants mahasamadhi?

@Samuel Garcia I think Leo didn't talk about states. but I think you are right in saying that the waking state and the deep sleep state are both states and they are therefore both temporal and limited and are both seemingly limitations. but that which underlies all states is what is important. that is you. and you are indeed there in deep sleep. but not the you that arises in the morning and subsides in the evening - that you is temporal, too - but the you that is the Self. that's at least what Ramana Maharshi would say. http://ramana-talk-mailer.appspot.com/read?post_name=Talk&index=609 "For the Self is Pure Consciousness. No one can ever be away from the Self."

Is anyone here familiar with the Pathwork Lectures? what do you think about them? https://pathwork.org/lecture-categories/pathwork-lectures-1996-ed/

@Mafortu it makes one wonder, but messenger and message can and maybe must be distinguished. no messenger is perfect. I'm not trying to defend the Ra material, it's just sth to keep in mind.

the following is (just) metaphysical speculation. Leo made clear in another thread that 'Will' is the case and that Consciousness is Will. Will seems to be the attribute of a 'person'. I have recently come across a few sources which seem to say that God is a 'Person' (of course not in the sense that we think, while our personhood might be a reflection of God's Personhood) whereas before I had the idea that it was not, just undefined and 'enlightenment' would be the 'merging' with that Undefined/Undefinable. As an example - Stephen Jourdain. He is somebody who openly says in the same book from which I quote that he is God. Quote: "My story isn't that of a fusion into a great, anonymous mass, but that of the birth of a new person. It must be well-understood: A spiritual person, an entity without either features nor contours yet definitely a person." What do you think/understand about this? especially @Leo Gura and others who have had direct experience.

@Nak Khid yes, could be that Ralston thought that his personal will is meant. then of course he must disagree. @Leo Gura thank you. an absence of Will would also seem to not make much sense. how could blind and undirected 'force' make/imagine this intricate universe?

Leo often mentions Will if I am not mistaken. E.g. in the mail to Ralston he writes "are you conscious that your will creates the entire Universe?". And Ralston answers "there is no will". The Will is also big in Christianity - "Thy Will be done". what does 'Will' mean precisely? do you have any direct experiences which can clarify this word or why Ralston denies its existence?

@WellbeingSeeker if you are looking for an account of the spirit realm in the Christian context, I recommend you google 'Emanuel Swedenborg'.

came across this Talk with Ramana Maharshi (28) just now actually looking for sth else. maybe it explains the discrepancy between Leo and Ralston. I don't know. D.: Why then is samsara - creation and manifestation as finitised - so full of sorrow and evil? M.: God’s will! D.: Why does God will it so? M.: It is inscrutable. No motive can be attributed to that Power - no desire, no end to achieve can be asserted of that one Infinite, All-wise and All-powerful Being. God is untouched by activities, which take place in His presence; compare the sun and the world activities. There is no meaning in attributing responsibility and motive to the One before it becomes many. But God’s will for the prescribed course of events is a good solution of the free-will problem (vexata quaestio). If the mind is restless on account of a sense of the imperfect and unsatisfactory character of what befalls us or what is committed or omitted by us, then it is wise to drop the sense of responsibility and free-will by regarding ourselves as the ordained instruments of the All-wise and All-powerful, to do and suffer as He pleases. He carries all burdens and gives us peace.

Hesychasm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hesychasm has Emanuel Swedenborg already been mentioned? https://swedenborg.com/

Dream-consciousness, characteristically, has a quality which may be called 'blurred' or 'smudged'. It is quite lacking in crystalline sharpness or the quality of precision. The logical capacity is weak in the dreaming states. There is also a lack of firmness of will. The dreamer floats along in his consciousness, instead of being an achiever in it. He may dream in terms of ideality and beauty and be highly freed from the gross and the sensual, but the dreamer, as such, lacks character and strength. On the whole, his equipment is peculiarly poor for breaking from bondage to subject-object consciousness. He may be a good man and earn long periods of dreamlike bliss, but all this is less than the Liberated State. So, all in all, it should be quite obvious that for him who would attain the Higher Consciousness, one of the first necessities is the mastering of dreaming tendencies. To effect this mastery, there are several useful disciplines that can be devised, all of which cultivate the qualities that are the opposite of the dream-like consciousness. Thus, all activities that require a strong, positive, and incisive use of the mind, and all will-directed efforts, particularly if in directions that are more or less distasteful, are highly helpful. Strong intellectuality affords one of the best resistances to the dream-like state. Its danger is that it may develop egoism to such a degree that it becomes a serious barrier. But my judgement would be that it is easier to master an overly developed egoism - for here we have strength to work with - than it is to build the necessary strength in the too dreamy consciousness. So I should place somnambulism, rather than egoism and evil, as the first among the problems that must be mastered in this humanity if it is to progress toward Liberation. End. I just thought all this fits so well with Gurdjieff's ideas that it is worth sharing here.

(...) Those men who have not mastered cross-correlation while still embodied go into a state of essential sleep after death. Sooner or later they have a kind of experience in a dream-like consciousness, and these states constitute the ordinary heaven worlds, when they are of the better sort. The dream is a continuation of consciousness in the subject-object sense, but in the heavenly worlds the quality is entirely blissful. There is practically no opportunity for the exercise of discrimination in such states. It is the contrast of pain and joy, united with their appropriate causes, that tends to shock the dreaming consciousness into wakefulness. This contrasting condition is found in ordinary earth-life, and thus constitutes an important part of the reason why the vital determinative steps can be taken only here. Dreaminess is the great barrier. But most of haman consciousness even in this world is in a sort of waking-dreaming or somnambulistic state. However, we have here the instruments that can shock to wakefulness, while such is not the case in the after-death states of the ordinary individual. Unquestionably, pain is one of the very greatest of these instruments, and thus is much less an evil than a beneficient agent. The more I have studied the problem, the more I have become convinced that it has been a great mistake to concentrate so much attention upon evil. The real difficulty is the almost universal somnamnulism in which men pass the bulk of their lives, some spending many lives without leaving that state at all. It is, in effect, an hypnotic sleep, and the real problem of religion is not the saving of human souls from evil but a dehypnotising of the mind. FMW goes on to recommend the practice of lucid dreaming to achieve 'cross-correlation'. (...) the dream-state casts a glamour, which may be painful or pleasant, but in any case tends to produce a drug-like effect both upon the will and the reason. In addition to drugs, the light of the moon often produces a somewhat similar effect. The hypnotic state is a dream-state par excellence. This consciousness has the property of possessing a man, instead of the individual possessing and commanding it. It tends to lead him away from the decisions made in the light of dear and discriminating judgement. It is very characteristic of the consciousness found in psychological crowds and affords the reason why the control of crowd-consciousness is effected most successfully by psychological devices rather than by appeal to rational judgement. I will continue later. He makes some more interesting points.