Frank Yang on TOE with Curt Jaimungal Interview

[Leo Gura]

4 hours ago, bazera said:

@Leo Gura But you need to have an altered state of consciousness to have the kind of understanding you are talking about, and dogmatic practices supposedly produce those (maybe much milder versions than psychedelics, but still). And if you don't have access to psychedelics, maybe due to your country's strict rules, stricter than USA or Europe, isn't your best bet some Buddhist practices or some Yogic practices?

1) There is no guarantee those dogmatic practices will get you any ultimate understanding.

2) Manual practices are still useful and important.

3 hours ago, The Blind Sage said:

@Leo Gura I would advise you to make a clearer distinction between spirituality and mysticism. 

Spirituality=liberation (i.e what bhuddism focuses on)
Mysticism=pure exploration of existence (i.e understanding)

I don't agree with such a distinction/framing. I consider what I do and teach to be the highest form of spirituality, the very heart of it.

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Whether Buddhist processes are 'worth the risks' is not my place to say, but it is a misunderstanding of what Buddhism is designed to do if you are criticizing it for its lack of results in understanding the nature of consciousness.

Any spiritual practice which doesn't result in a deep understanding of what Consciousness is, is criminally negligent. And people need to be made aware of this.

It does no one any good if you get tricked into doing 40 years of Buddhist practice, only to finally be told: "Ah, well, but it was not designed to produce and understanding of Consciousness."

If your spiritual practice doesn't produce consciousness into the nature of God, then it's a bad practice, regardless of how much is frees you of suffering or any other perks.

2 hours ago, Salvijus said:

U could've just sayed. "I'm not sure, i don't understand the subject well enough. The rabbit hole of what yoga has to offer goes so deep

The yoga rabbit hole is deep. However, all I said is that doing dogmatic practice offers you no guarantees of understanding. If you want to gamble on it, that's up to you.

My fundamental problem with such spirituality is that it's based on blind adherence to a set of practices for decades without any idea what the result will be and what gaps you will end up with in your understanding. It's equivalent to stumbling upon a map and deciding to devote your whole life to following it, because you believe it will bring you to the promise land. But in fact you have no way of knowing where that map will take you. It might take you to stupid land.

1 hour ago, ValiantSalvatore said:

How does a workshop look like when you attend it what do you do there? From watching videos and checking the webpage, it's not really clear. Do you do martial arts and meditation and the contemplative talks more like dharma talks of his teachings?

I have never taken his martial arts workshops. His consciousness workshops are a combo of theory and a bunch of class exercises with partners. Each workshop lasts about 1 week. They are very good.

56 minutes ago, Davino said:

Could you please tell me what are the other few teachers you respect?

I don't know. I'd have to think about that.

I like Vernon Howard. I like David Hawkins. And others. Although that doesn't mean I agree with everything they teach.

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I am very interested towards understanding too, however I sometimes feel it may be a bias of mine. Could you elaborate further upon why understanding is at the center of your path? And specially understanding applied to metaphysics or Consciousness? Doesn't the path of understanding end in omniscience? Is your goal omniescience or God-Realization or both I assume? What are the downsides of focusing on understanding?

This is a real question and it is important for me to understand the importance of understanding and it's blind spots

My claim is that the entire purpose of Consciousness is self-understanding. There is no other game in town. Everything else is just entertainment until you die.

Yes, eventually Consciousness's understanding of itself becomes so high that it reaches Omniscience and physical existence itself becomes unnecessary.

The downside of the understanding path is that there is no guarantee that you will become free of suffering and full of bliss. In fact, without training for those things I pretty much guarantee you won't get them.

Edited March 2, 2023 by Leo Gura

[Latham]

24 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Yes, eventually Consciousness's understanding of itself becomes so high that it reaches Omniscience and physical existence itself becomes unnecessary.

Do you know why conciousness bothers playing this game of reaching omniscience?

Doesn't it already have a complete, total understanding of itself? 

[Leo Gura]

3 minutes ago, Latham said:

Do you know why conciousness bothers playing this game of reaching omniscience?

Doesn't it already have a complete, total understanding of itself? 

How did it acquire total understanding in the first place?

Consciousness has to explore itself to achieve it.

Consciousness is like a computer program that has to execute in order to see what the program does.

So here you are, executing.

Edited March 2, 2023 by Leo Gura

[Sincerity]

57 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

The downside of the understanding path is that there is no guarantee that you will become free of suffering and full of bliss. In fact, without training for those things I pretty much guarantee you won't get them.

Don't You think suffering fundamentally comes from misunderstanding?

Do You have in mind any other paths worth exploring for purposes other than yours, for example the complete eradication of self, all concepts, mental framings and suffering/misunderstanding? What would You say their guiding value would be? Do You find value in/appreciate any other paths than understanding?

Edited March 2, 2023 by Sincerity

[The Mystical Man]

9 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

My claim is that the entire purpose of Consciousness is self-understanding. There is no other game in town. Everything else is just entertainment until you die.

Understanding is great -- it's certainly better to understand than not to understand. But you can't really enjoy life, if you don't dissolve your karma. I think true spirituality is not really about understanding but about accelerating a process that is natural.

Sadhguru talks about the dissolution of karma here: 

"A spiritual path means we want to set your karmic process on fast-forward. We want to take a bigger load of karma than the allotted load because we don’t want to come back and do the same thing again and again. We want to finish it off right now. This is a conscious choice one has to make – do you want to slowly work it out or do you want all the nonsense to be over as quick as possible." - Shut Down Your Karma Factory – Part 1 (sadhguru.org)

More resources on the dissolution of karma:

• Death and Dissolution: The Role of a Master (sadhguru.org)
• ET_Mar2008.pdf (ishafoundation.org)
• Karma

People like Adya, Hawkins, and Jed allude to the same thing, but they don't talk about it in detail like Sadhguru does.

"You tell the universe you want some sort of spiritual achievement – awakening or enlightenment or higher consciousness or whatever – and instead of your life becoming wall-to-wall bliss, it turns to shit." - Jed

Edited March 2, 2023 by The Mystical Man

[Breakingthewall]

2 minutes ago, The Mystical Man said:

A spiritual path means we want to set your karmic process on fast-forward. We want to take a bigger load of karma than the allotted load because we don’t want to come back and do the same thing again and again. We want to finish it off right now. This is a conscious choice one has to make – do you want to slowly work it out or do you want all the nonsense to be over as quick as possible

Stories imo. karma disappears the moment you realize that the temporal process is illusory, and returns when you lose yourself in it again. That to eliminate the need for sex you have to do a lot of sex does not work. when you realize that you are the present moment of infinite depth, and that all of the past and future is a mental construct of now, karma dissolves

[Carl-Richard]

10 minutes ago, The Mystical Man said:

Understanding is great -- it's certainly better to understand than not to understand. But you can't really enjoy life, if you don't dissolve your karma.

I submit that enjoying life and understanding life are synergistic. If you're carrying a heavy backpack, and it hurts and all you can think about is wanting to put it down, you don't have much time for proper understanding, and even if you think you do, your understanding is filtered through the constant aching. And your understanding can help you to put the backpack down.

Edited March 2, 2023 by Carl-Richard

[The Mystical Man]

1 minute ago, Breakingthewall said:

karma disappears the moment you realize that the temporal process is illusory, and returns when you lose yourself in it again

You lose yourself in it again, because there's more karma to be worked through. And some karma can be worked out only through difficult situations.

[ValiantSalvatore]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Any spiritual practice which doesn't result in a deep understanding of what Consciousness is, is criminally negligent. And people need to be made aware of this.

It does no one any good if you get tricked into doing 40 years of Buddhist practice, only to finally be told: "Ah, well, but it was not designed to produce and understanding of Consciousness."

If your spiritual practice doesn't produce consciousness into the nature of God, then it's a bad practice, regardless of how much is frees you of suffering or any other perks.

What would you say then is Shinzens paradgim? I don't really like the idea of following it not understanding what consciouness is, yet I will clearly be able to get to non-duality. That is for me personally worth it. Yang and Jammal talked about the expansion and conctraction paradigm, which is as far as I know from Sasaki Roshi and Rinzai-Zen and the "molecule" type of small object moving to larger object type of phenomena experience and it's very effective in deconstructing the self. I heard also other reports from others doing stuff like this

Is Shinzens paradigm a fools errand? I received a message from you saying he is a lovely teacher and I can learn a lot from him, yet it's not god-realization, my BUT! Question is, what if I introduce more psychdelic interventions, does this help? My current path would move me to causal -> non-dual, yet that is not God-Realization is that correct? 
 

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

I have never taken his martial arts workshops. His consciousness workshops are a combo of theory and a bunch of class exercises with partners. Each workshop lasts about 1 week. They are very good.

What kind of exercises are these? Could you give a brief example that would be very cool! Even better is a 10 day solo retreat more effective than his workshops? If I introduce for example 2h of deep reading and contemplative practices, mixing with psychdelic days, that would be a f*ing dream currently to do smth. like this. 

Ex: Retreat would be: (For me/Raw Structure)

Day 1:
Morning Meditation:
Breakfast
Meditation & Spiritual Practice 4h session with or without breaks
Bio-Break
Reading: 90 mins - deep texts (Ralston, Wilber, Your Videos etc. somewhat systematized beforehand)
Psychdelic intervention: Cannabis, LSD, DMT etc.
Meditation & Spiritual Practice - 4h
Winddown: Brief Contemplation Notes
(Eventually shadow work daily for prevention... of kriya type experiences) I do get them

Day 2 .... Dayn:
Repeat Day 1 with and without psychdelics and take hikes for example, as nature is quiet psychdelic at times for me and serves insight generation.

Adjusting also for example 10h of spiritual practice minimum etc. 

Would that be more effective than a month long Ralston retreat? I do get a lot from beign with others, especially if they are working consciously I absorb a lot of it and give a lot of it back I feel. 
 

Edited March 2, 2023 by ValiantSalvatore

[Salvijus]

How can there be so much confusion about everything here. It's just noise ? 

MADNESS

Edited March 2, 2023 by Salvijus

[The Mystical Man]

28 minutes ago, Salvijus said:

MADNESS

To be enraged with a dumb thing seems blasphemous.

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, Sincerity said:

Don't You think suffering fundamentally comes from misunderstanding?

I'm not sure about that. If I shoot you in the foot, I wouldn't call your suffering in this case a misunderstanding of anything. You understand it all right, but that doesn't remove the suffering.

Removing suffering requires retraining your nervous system. Period.

Quote

Do You have in mind any other paths worth exploring for purposes other than yours, for example the complete eradication of self, all concepts, mental framings and suffering/misunderstanding? What would You say their guiding value would be? Do You find value in/appreciate any other paths than understanding?

There are many spiritual paths and practices which no doubt will bestow benefits to you. Various kinds of benefits, from better sex to more money to less suffering, etc. I'm not telling you that my way is the only way.

1 hour ago, The Mystical Man said:

Understanding is great -- it's certainly better to understand than not to understand. But you can't really enjoy life, if you don't dissolve your karma. I think true spirituality is not really about understanding but about accelerating a process that is natural.

To understand the stuff I am talking about you will have to work out a lot of your karmic crap.

1 hour ago, ValiantSalvatore said:

What would you say then is Shinzens paradgim?

I consider Vipassana to be a form of reductionism. There are benefits to that, but ultimately it's gonna be limited. You will not get the big picture understanding of God. You cannot understand God through any kind of reduction. Which is why these Vipassana monkeys can't speak about God very well, and will even dare to deny that God exists. God doesn't really exist for them because they have spent 20 years reducing Consciousness down into component parts. This doesn't generate high-level comprehension.

Quote

Is Shinzens paradigm a fools errand? I received a message from you saying he is a lovely teacher and I can learn a lot from him, yet it's not god-realization, my BUT! Question is, what if I introduce more psychdelic interventions, does this help? My current path would move me to causal -> non-dual, yet that is not God-Realization is that correct?

Depends on what your goals are. Again, there will no doubt be benefits to his path. Will you understand God the way I do? No.

If you add psychedelics, that changes things significantly.

Quote

What kind of exercises are these? Could you give a brief example that would be very cool! Even better is a 10 day solo retreat more effective than his workshops? If I introduce for example 2h of deep reading and contemplative practices, mixing with psychdelic days, that would be a f*ing dream currently to do smth. like this. 

Would that be more effective than a month long Ralston retreat? I do get a lot from beign with others, especially if they are working consciously I absorb a lot of it and give a lot of it back I feel.

10 days of non-stop concentration in total silence, without any other humans, is about as powerful a practice as there can be.

Although you still will never be as conscious that way as through a psychedelic.

But you can do both.

A Ralston workshop works in a different way. It gets you thinking about reality in new ways. This is handy. But it doesn't replace a solo meditation retreat.

Ideally you'd do all the above and optimize it to suit your tastes and needs.

Edited March 2, 2023 by Leo Gura

[The Blind Sage]

 

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

I don't agree with such a distinction/framing. I consider what I do and teach to be the highest form of spirituality, the very heart of it.

No. Your work is not at all spiritual. Your work is about mysticism. A lot of people will awaken following your methods (not me because my physiology unfortunately cannot handle psychedelics), but no one following your methods will transcend suffering.

You can claim mysticism>spirituality (and I mostly agree with you btw) but that does not in any way change what they are.

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Any spiritual practice which doesn't result in a deep understanding of what Consciousness is, is criminally negligent. And people need to be made aware of this.

Of course, wrong expectations about methods you employ will fuck you in the ass.
Which is why making the distinction between spirituality and mysticism is so crucial.

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

It does no one any good if you get tricked into doing 40 years of Buddhist practice, only to finally be told: "Ah, well, but it was not designed to produce and understanding of Consciousness."

No shit. Forget 40 years they must know this before they even begin, nobody that isn't ignorant ever said otherwise. Many other practices lean towards spirituality rather than mysticism

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

If your spiritual practice doesn't produce consciousness into the nature of God, then it's a bad practice, regardless of how much is frees you of suffering or any other perks.

Being freed of suffering is not a 'perk'. It is the very function of such practices. I'm not saying it's not a waste of time because I simply don't know but am committed figuring things out as I grow.

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

The downside of the understanding path is that there is no guarantee that you will become free of suffering and full of bliss. In fact, without training for those things I pretty much guarantee you won't get them.

"The downside of pursuing only mysticism and not liberation is that there is no guarantee that you will become free of suffering and full of bliss. In fact, without training for those things I pretty much guarantee you won't get them."

I reiterate; 

Spirituality=liberation
Mysticism=understanding

This distinction is not only accurate but very useful. It did not come from me, it was observed thousands of years ago.
Do not ignore its value.

[Leo Gura]

16 minutes ago, The Blind Sage said:

No. Your work is not at all spiritual. 

Lol

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Your work is about mysticism.

This is YOUR framing. You are defining those words in your own quirky way.

Nothing about "spirituality" means that you must transcend suffering.

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no one following your methods will transcend suffering.

You are right that that is not a focus of my work.

At least as this time. Maybe in the future I will focus on that more, but right now I'm just not interested in that.

Quote

I reiterate; 

Spirituality=liberation
Mysticism=understanding

No.

This is a highly misleading frame which will cause problems for you down the road.

In your mind, disconnect spirituality from suffering. You can be spiritual with suffering, you can be spiritual without suffering. You can be mystical without suffering, you can mystical with suffering.

BTW, I can pretty much bet you that any spiritual teach you know, if I hit him in the head with a hammer, he will suffer. Don't kid yourself. I don't think I know of a single person on this planet who has transcended suffering. Maybe a few exist, but they are so rare that it's highly unlikely you'll ever reach that. To me this is a silly goal. You're gonna be chasing something you'll never truly attain, and ironically you'll create enormous suffering for yourself in the process.

Properly speaking, spirituality is the pursuit of God. Any suffering along that way is just a sideshow. It is irrelevant when it comes to connecting with God. What you really want isn't to end suffering, it's to connect with God. Generally speaking, as a byproduct of connecting to God, you will suffer less and experience more joy.

Edited March 2, 2023 by Leo Gura

[Sincerity]

18 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

I'm not sure about that. If I shoot you in the foot, I wouldn't call your suffering in this case a misunderstanding of anything. You understand it all right, but that doesn't remove the suffering.

Well, that's debatable. I think one can feel something but have no idea what it is on a "deeper level". 

But fair enough. 

* * * * * * * * * *

I suppose it's really that You get what You shoot for. If You shoot for infinite understanding, You get understanding. If You go for eradicating suffering, You eradicate much of suffering. Etc.

I'm just wondering whether I could go simply for BEING and only that. Become the highest states of God without understanding/interpreting in the way. I'll try at least...

Edited March 2, 2023 by Sincerity

[The Mystical Man]

14 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

To understand the stuff I am talking about you will have to work out a lot of your karmic crap.

Karma doesn't preclude understanding. Actually, a higher understanding can lead to the avoidance of lower karma. Sometimes we have to let go of our understanding to face our karma -- that's humility.

[Sincerity]

36 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

You're gonna be chasing something you'll never truly attain

Isn't the pursuit of understanding infinite as well...

It's not about 100% perfection I think, with either understanding or suffering. With understanding I feel like it may feel always perfect and then even more perfect because it always seems infinite and whole. But is it ever really, if there's always more?

I think one could have a high and satisfactory level of peace/eradicated suffering. Like with understanding.

Thank You for your responses.

Edited March 2, 2023 by Sincerity

[UnbornTao]

30 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

I'm not sure about that. If I shoot you in the foot, I wouldn't call your suffering in this case a misunderstanding of anything. You understand it all right, but that doesn't remove the suffering.

Removing suffering requires retraining your nervous system. Period.

That sounds more like pain to me. Suffering seems to be an added conceptual activity that, if grasped, can be mostly done away with. Probably not so much when it comes to extreme physical harm.

Personally haven't done it, I just hear tell that it's a possibility.

Edited March 2, 2023 by UnbornTao

[ValiantSalvatore]

53 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

10 days of non-stop concentration in total silence, without any other humans, is about as powerful a practice as there can be.

Although you still will never be as conscious that way as through a psychedelic.

But you can do both.

A Ralston workshop works in a different way. It gets you thinking about reality in new ways. This is handy. But it doesn't replace a solo meditation retreat.

Ideally you'd do all the above and optimize it to suit your tastes and needs.

I see this is enough clarification without getting into the nitty-gritty thank you! All I can say from personal experience, burning through karma, doing khanika-samadhi (style) meditation and psyches and weightlifting maybe long-distance run, dissolves a lot of karmic cravings, especially when you also exhaust them to some extend. 

Structure wise it also resolves the karmic rebirth cycles. (khanika-samadhi) There are schools arguing about this. All I can say is this definitely takes longer, and I like Yangs approach of using expansion and contraction and the auto-paradigm from Shinzen, it's not you and when you break it down further, it's also not the automatism of the body anymore. I can't get to these stretches physically lol, otherwise I'd have more evidence "empirical evidence". 

53 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

I consider Vipassana to be a form of reductionism. There are benefits to that, but ultimately it's gonna be limited. You will not get the big picture understanding of God. You cannot understand God through any kind of reduction. Which is why these Vipassana monkeys can't speak about God very well, and will even dare to deny that God exists. God doesn't really exist for them because they have spent 20 years reducing Consciousness down into component parts. This doesn't generate high-level comprehension.

What about the expansion and contraction paradigm? What is your take on this? (From Sasaki Roshi & Shinzen's overtaking of it) as far as I understand (I legit have no time to dive into the technical depths of clarity), it leads to non-dual type of flow experiences and has a very psychdelic component to it even under the influence of psychdelics, it has an expansiveness paradigm to it, so nothing is reduced everything is expanded and the paradigm integrates, even the reductionistic perspective in that sense. 

Instead of soto-zen type sitting, beign aware and doing nothing, it's like an active form of the same paradim from my feeling and personal experience with both. Expansion and conctraction feels more percise, and karmic dissolving (although more risky...) than just soto-zen sitting. I like both very much! Although I prefer expansion and contraction (rarely anyone teaches this...)

From a more personal experience from the reductionistic compressions, there will be expansive flavours that show you the contraction and reduction of whatever is, has a total opposite to it. More like union type of experiences, moving fully into femininty especially feeling full. The opposite of Yang moving more into Yin nature... beauty, fullness, love. There is just more of it in that paradigm, yet it goes no further than non-duality in that sense. This is sort of the stopping point of the roshis roshis of the roshis... 

Also at integral there is an understanding that Vipassana and I received a tip, goes no further than causal = white light, archetypial sorts of understanding, and that the zen practices all deepend the understanding to non-duality. They get stuck on the emptiness idea. 


Thanks in advance for claritifcations! Also for the optimization point, this takes serious effort, time and work. Guess sticking around is the name of the game.

Edited March 2, 2023 by ValiantSalvatore

[Breakingthewall]

@Leo Gura

It's really good to see you stronger than ever, it brings me real joy, seriously, I thought you'd gone...senile. you are a cunning fox man