To: K-list
Recieved: 2002/08/22 15:48
Subject: [K-list] Re: Ida, Pingala debate
From: Joseph Miller
On 2002/08/22 15:48, Joseph Miller posted thus to the K-list:
> > And as I said several thousand years of experience shared > by
>millions of people is worth much much more than one > person's imagined
>experiences.
>It's always dangerous to presume another's experience is imaginary!
Hillary,
Not if it is at odds with knowledge gained by serious work by individuals
who have devoted their lives to the study of a field and they have achieved
repeatability in their studies and experiments. That is the case here.
>Some might say Ida and pingala shushuma are imaginary also.
Some might. But since I'm taking a stand for thousands of years of wisdom,
I'd be the one telling them they didn't know squat. So I don't see how that
argument fits here.
>Certainly if we feel parts of our body merging with other parts, or
>"disappearing" entirely, it is not for others to gainsay it.
So every body is not only unique in terms of the soul in it but each has its
own unique make up and there are no universal things that can be said about
it. Like the opposable thumb helps in picking up things?
We don't get to make up our physiology, physical or energy bodies. We have
to go with what is there, regardless of what one "feels" about an
appendage. Those people with phantom limbs after an amputation don't have
that limb regardless of what they "feel" at the end of their stump.
There is a science of Kundalini. It is a vast body of work. It is discounted
in the West. But then I've not seen our culture falling over itself to honor
any wisdom from the ages. Probably because the Church worked so hard to
destroy the European wisdom sources and now the best ones are from people
with darker skins and we just don't listen to them very well even today.
>Shankar's interpretation and experience seem perfectly reasonable.
Except it flies in the face of thousand's of years of work and he has
NOTHING to back it up except some feeling he has and is unqualified to judge
that comes from just north of his ass.
> > The energies in Ida and Pingala, lets call it what is it, prana,
> > can be used to control sushumna, but they don't merge with it.
>
>Don't they? I think you are being rather literal here.
No, I am not being "rather literal here," I'm being TOTALLY literal here.
Ida and Pingala don't merge with Sushumna. They literally don't do it. That
is all I've been saying.
>Moreover, I certainly don't see why prana in the ida and pingala shouldn't
>be able to leave the boundaries and merge into the shushumna.
Prana can move through any nadi.
But you are arguing a different question than was the topic before. The
issue was about the literal merging of Ida, Pingala, and Sushumna. That was
what he stated and what I disagreed with. Let's stick to the topic please or
start a new subject without an "Re".
>[From Kurt Keutzer's FAQ's "The second opinion, espoused by Swami Shivom
>Tirth for example, is that prana and Kundalini are absolutely
>equivalent and that it is not meaningful in any way to describe a
>difference between Kundalini rising and prana rising." ]
I've never read anything by Swami Shivom Tirth stating that. Not saying it
doesn't exist but if you can tell me where he said it and not where someone
printed his interpretation of what he thinks the Swami said I'll be glad to
look into it.
> > How does ANB work? Well if all of those teachers over the last > few
>thousand years who informed us of the existence of Kundalini
> > knew anything (and if anyone thinks they didn't know their stuff,
> > what the hell are you doing on this list because the idea of > Kundalini
>would be nothing but bunk, right) one might listen to
> > their explanation.
>
>Non sequitur! There are many people on the list who know little and care
>less about the ancient teachers.
Why would they think ancient teachers, about which they know nothing, are
full of bunk/know nothing about the topic. I believe our list mates are more
reasonable souls than that. I think my oft repeated remark about new age
stuff applies to how most of us do things. I don't know anything about it so
I have no real opinion whether a particular new age statement is dumb or
very much on target. If I have no conflicting knowledge on it so the polite
thing to do is assume it is right. Most people act that way I think, I
certainly hope they do.
To not know about a topic does not mean one believes those who do know about
it are wrong. Or that is the case unless one is closed minded and
egotistical in the extreme.
>The term Kundalini is now used pretty universally as a description of a
>group of "symptoms"
If true it shows a true stupidity on the part of people "universally." To
use "kundalini" for a "group of symptoms'" is like saying one has "sun" when
one is describing the "symptoms" involved in conditions that have perfectly
good and useful names, like "sunburn," "sun stroke," "skin cancer," "sun
bleached hair," etc. even when a car's hot vinyl seats burn your legs when
you sit on it in shorts.
I realize there is a serious trend in our society to render written and
spoken language nearly useless by never using clear terms and relying on a
lot of intellectually lazy terms that have less or even no meaning instead
of words that can clearly state a thought. Don't expect me to go along with
that trend either. I'm a tad traditional you know. ;-)
>IMO, to hold only to tradition means lack of growth. We learn most
>from actual descriptions of our experiences.
I've addressed the last sentence in part above. We should use meaningful
terms to describe them.
As to the first sentence, I'm not just standing up for tradition. There were
traditions and laws that wouldn't let people like me vote at one time. I'm
not for tradition for tradition's sake. I'm supporting ***traditional
wisdom.*** Knowledge that individuals have devoted their very lives to
discovering, refining, and developing.
Abandoning traditional wisdom for a "feeling" or "thought" from every Tom,
Dick, or RK that has one, and whose other known qualifications are they can
breath air and drink water, can be summed up in a shorter phrase than
"abandoning traditional wisdom". It is just "abandoning wisdom". IMHO,
abandoning wisdom is never a good idea, certainly not just because it wasn't
discovered today by someone with no known qualifications.
> > If Ida and Pingala ceased to exist, the statement I was objecting
> > to, and no Kundalini Master in history has ever said that happens,
> > this control mechanism, the one taught for thousands of years > could
>not and would not work. Hence, all of those teachers who > taught about
>Kundalini would have had all of their students > wasting their time trying
>to perform the impossible. Logically > when those students used this
>technique and obtained results > they would have been delusional.
>
>Again a non sequitur. One can use many different visualizations to balance
>the energies.
Again not. Please stick to the topic. This started over whether three nadis
merge and become one nadi. They don't. This isn't about energies that may
flow through them.
As to what was said it holds together perfectly. It isn't that there are or
are not other ways, there are many. The issue is that the masters taught A
way that our departed member said could not happen by saying that the tools
the masters taught to use (for this method) did not exist.
If that were true the entire system falls apart. I will need a lot more than
his "experience" to cause me to abandon thousand's of years of knowledge and
the experiences of dozens of my friends as well as my own experiences. That
is not a non sequitur.
> > So we are left with the choice that thousands of years of > students,
>some of whom have gone on to enlightenment, some > even to be great
>teachers, have been delusional and RK Shankar > knows more than all of them
>put together, or he could possibly > be mistaken.
>
>Not at all. We have no idea how many students/teachers have used this
>general method to balance the energies or even how many have needed it to
>balance them.
Now who's asking for serious support. Over thousands of years.... where do
you want me to try to get that head count? It isn't available through
Google.com. The practice has been used for thousands of years. Can we agree
in that time it is more than one gets when one counts up all of Mr. Shankar.
In other words at a minimum several thousands of times the number one,
probably several millions of times.
Namaste,
Joe
http://www.kundalini-gateway.org
http://www.domin8rex.com/serpent/spirit/kindex.htm
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