Meditation experiences: What do they mean?

[Rick O'Shez]

I would say it's more than just one's active imagination, or "all in your head" sort of nonsense.

It's all in the mind.

 

[Windwalker]

It's all in the mind.

Is the world you encounter only in the mind?

 

[Rick O'Shez]

Is the world you encounter only in the mind?

No, but the mind is where I experience it.

 

[YmirGF]

Is the world you encounter only in the mind?

It certainly is for some folks. Jus' sayin'

 

[Windwalker]

No, but the mind is where I experience it.

Yes, but you said it's all in the mind, in response to me saying it is more than just "all in your head", that what we are experiencing is ontologically real, just like the world is real. The world is not all in the mind, but how we see, experience, and interpret the world that is in fact actually there is what happens in the mind. The world itself is not "all in your head", and the sorts of spiritual experience I was speaking of is the experience of something that is actually there too. It's not just all the head. How we see, experience, and interpret that is however what our minds do with the experience.

Is the thousand-armed avalokiteshvara an actual being? Is the blue Krishna of a vision an actual being? Is Jesus Christ standing before you really there as you see him in the depths of religious ecstasies just the way your mind sees it? Not literally as it appears to the mind, of course. But then neither is the actual world you look at day in and day out! That's a grand illusion. All of these forms, taken literally, as is, as they appear to the mind, are appearances. We give them names as we touch them. They become real to us. But is "chair" the reality of a chair? We are in fact touching some actual object, but the form it takes, what it becomes to us, is what our minds supply it with. We are taught it is a chair. And when we see or experience anything resembling that form, it is seen and experienced as a chair.

And so it is with the experience of the subtle. It is a layer of what is really there, the way the "chair" is, but when the mind's conscious state is such that it becomes aware of it, it becomes an object to it which language and symbolic representation put into a form. Rather than it being a gross-object form to the mind, it is a subtle-object form. The experience of material reality becomes a gross-object form, it becomes a "chair" through language which was taught to us (or that we supplied ourselves if we somehow grew up outside of society and culture). And the experience of subtle reality becomes a subtle-object form, becoming a "Jesus" though language which was taught to us through our culture.

But here's where it gets really fuzzy however, because the awareness of subtle reality, is an awareness of our higher Self, in the nature of subtle form, liberated from material reality. When we experience "Jesus" we are experiencing who we are beyond the gross-level reality with conscious awareness. The level of distinction between us and other, such as in the gross material realm, becomes less apparent. But it is still experienced as "other" to the mind, and hence why it sees it as an object outside of us. It sees it outside of us, because we see ourselves as outside of it! Our identity is still the small self, albeight moving beyond simple material and mental self-reflective egoic identifications. Like the dream state where we are freed from the constraints of the body, we move into more and more subtle states of our own being with our conscious awareness, as we are both within ourselves and within the world itself. It is still a state of separation, of self and other, but it becomes and awakening to the nature of self and other beyond the gross material limitations. It is still "the world", but beyond the gross or material world.

Finally, the separate self dissolves, both the gross and the subtle fall away and all that is left is the Self. Then we know ourselves as the world, both gross and subtle in nature. We are not separate, but at the same time we are. We are both unique in the form, and yet one as all that is. One with, and one as. That's the nondual, which is aware of all levels of reality, and holds them unproblematically, without contradiction, within both Freedom and Fullness.

So, as we image what is real and what is not, I hear the words of Yoda, "So certain, are you?"

 

[mystic64]

Quote=Windwalker quoting Yoda:
"So, as we image what is real and what is not, I hear the words of Yoda, "So certain, are you?" "

What you say sir is the "kicker"

Are you so certain that you are right? Am I so certain that I am right? Are others so certain that they are right? "Might is right," now that is a certainty because it is a natural law.

If one is so certain, then where is the evidence? Proof? I and anyone else can say things but if there is not any evidence then it is all just speculation stated as fact. All of the great ones, at least relative to legend, were living proof that what they were saying had some fact to it. They could do things that were unexplainable/miraculous and their teachings if followed properly enabled others to do the same things. So we follow the versions of their teachings that we have recieved down through time in the hope of achieving what these or one of these great ones have achieved. And to experience the rewards that were promised us if we followed their teachings. But we are all flying blind because non of us have ever sat with one of these great ones so we actually have no idea what their teachings actually were. And as evidence to that, we can not do the unexplainable/miraculous. We can not prove that it is not all our imagination.

And then along comes the little yogi fellow from India a while back and he didn't have to eat food or drink fluids. He claimed that a goddess poured nourishment down through the roof of his mouth which he swallowed and that that was what he had and does live on, for years. Science studied him for a while and came to the conclusion that he did not have to eat food or drink fluids. Was the goddess his imagination? Nobody knows. But the fact that he did not have to eat or drink, was fact.

Of course, the question, "If we can prove it, should we?" always comes to mind . After all who wants to deal with the hassle and conflict that the "proof" creates? I don't. So ? Where is the proof? Because without the proof we are all speculating and any of us could be right.

"How should Orbit deal with/approach his experience?" Explore it some more, just to see what happens .