25.06.10
Posted in Uncategorized
at 3:25 pm
by nemo
Dalai Lama asks Japanese priests to produce Buddhist scientists
By Email[Monday, June 21, 2010 10:16]
By Tsering Tsomo
http://www.phayul.com/news/article.aspx?article=Dalai+Lama+asks+Japanese+priests+to+produce+Buddhist+scientists&id=27548
Nagano (Japan), June 20: At an informal discussion with over 200 Buddhist priests, His Holiness the Dalai Lama said Japan with its highly developed scientific knowledge combined with its ancient Buddhist tradition can produce Buddhist scientists.
Dozens exist already, but you don’t see them.
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Posted in Uncategorized
at 3:23 pm
by nemo
All this naive sufism. None of these innocents have a clue.
[Some of it is manipulated by the American State Department]
A divine evening of Sufism
Indian choir Malhaar will perform a musical combining Sufi music, theatre and art this weekend.
By Reena Amos Dyes
http://www.business24-7.ae/the-business-of-life/entertainment/a-divine-evening-of-sufism-2010-06-24-1.259011
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Posted in Uncategorized
at 3:19 pm
by nemo
I have removed all the fake “James” comments at Darwiniana, and will do same here asap.
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Posted in Uncategorized
at 3:12 pm
by nemo
This situation reaffirms my warning to the original James to be careful and stay anonymous.
The vulture Gold must have been trying to uncover his identity with this sly trick, which backfired.
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Posted in Uncategorized
at 7:41 am
by nemo
This was perhaps my mistake for letting the original James post anonymously, but I didn’t want anyone to find out who he was (note what happened with Sillykitty from way back revealed his identity). He was a very intelligent student of Pali Buddhism, and wouldn’t have given a figure like gold the time of day.
Anyway, not too much harm done, since the fake tried to clone James’ views. I will try and go back to indicate the posts/comments he has fraudulently put up.
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Posted in Uncategorized
at 6:30 am
by nemo
This fake ‘James’ keeps muttering about ‘getting a life’, undoubtedly a projection from his own experience with the Gurdjieff and Gold rackets, where there is a severe danger of losing the little life that you have and ending up a phantom person reborn as a slave to the ‘work’. It is a terrible fate and you would be lucky to find anyone who could liberate you from that.
I recommend staying away the Gurdjieff work, the fake school of Gold, and finally from sufism entirely here. There are too many crooks and not enough real sufis who can spot them. Very few devout Islamic sufis know anything whatever about the Gurdjieff brand, least of all about Gold. And thieves of baraka are everywhere among the few who can grasp what is happening.
[Thieves of baraka are a blessing, however. You don't want to take any free gifts from sufi land. Depart naked as you began. Don't be a sufi Faust, and beware of false spiritual gifts. If someone steals your baraka, smile. And hit the road, jack. You are free of sufism forever. ]
After you have wasted all your time with Gurdjieff brochures or song and dance artists like Gold you need to declare your autonomy, flip the bird and tell these fakes to go to hell, and start over, looking over your shoulder all the way, dealing with con men who will declare your ‘spiritual surrender’ binding. Bullshit. Give them the finger, Fuck You. There is no spiritual surrender. It was a good idea once, maybe, but with so many crooks and confused and overlapping traditions, it is out of the question.
You are still stuck with you ego, no doubt. But I can’t imagine Gurdjieff et al freeing anyone from ego.
You and you alone must transcend ego. It isn’t hard!
To ‘get a life’ enter a known procedural path toward enlightenment declared at the beginning with a clear tradition and that respects autonomy, and doesn’t promote the fetish of guruism. Yogis in India by the thousands enter this path while sufi devotees twiddle their thumbs or reread Rumi. After a certain point ‘spirit guides’ will find you and you can dispense with these celebrity assholes from guru samsara on the hustle.
A spiritual guide is one thing, a life fixated on a guru another. The type of the dominating guru is especially rife in the Hindu/Brahmin tradition, with its bogus caste, and the rest of it. So there is no safe path in Indian religion either. But India has produced tens of thousands of success stories where sufism has only a few propped up fakes like Rumi, who are pampered celebrities running on borrowed baraka.
The Indian tradition, outside of the Hindu/Brahmin/guru deviation, holds the real set of paths, now mostly lost, something almost impossible to find or join, and yet right out in the open. And even Buddhism is problematical because of boddhisatwa politics, and the Tibetan game. But the obvious indications in the Buddhist tradition are canonical, although their terminology no longer makes sense.
You have to start and end alone, an orphan of civilization.
Our remarks over time here on the classic tradition of Indian religion outside of Hinduism are an indication of that. Consider the example of Rajneesh, whatever you think of him. He declared very clearly that he had no guru, ever. And tried to recreate, as a Jain, a classic brand of the great stream of primordial Shaivism. This says nothing whatever about his own guru game and ashram, about which I am unable to comment. Could be another snare. But he pointed to something real, if only as a rough terrain of many possibilities.
You have to do the work.
Hanging around ashsrams for some kind of instant higher consciousness (look at the pathetic Andrew Cohen case) is futile.
The point is that the ‘path to enlightenment’ is a clearly marked path, however treacherous, and that overrides the allegiance to any guru or cult. Although help would be ideal, it is hard to come by, and it is entirely OK to proceed without a guru.
Look carefully at the Gurdjieff legacy. The path to enlightenment is never referred to at all. That should make you suspicious indeed.
In fact, no path is referred to at all by Gurdjieff. Look carefully. It is all promotion of a few disorganzed ideas. Gurdjieff’s real aims were different, and never included dealing with disciples except as showy theatre.
Getting your life back after vampires like Gold, and devils like Gurdjieff requires being clear about your situation and some very loud and clear ‘Stare down my gunbarrel, asshole’ declarations to people like Gold. You must achieve your autonomy against their ability to indulge in occult invultuation. It is dangerous, and the technique is to get people on his premises long enough to declare their allegiance and consent, after which they are discarded but ‘held’ as frozen zombies.
It is hard, at least, for them to pursue you into a next life, as long as you are clear and have affirmed your autonomy. (Go study Kant on religion and autonomy if you are unclear of the usage).
DON’T be an eternal groupie in a treadmill of phantom existence because of your ‘surrender’ in a past life.
If you freely accept the role of being a disciple slave, who can help you, as these vultures lick their chops at your stupidity.
The very few real disciples, his ‘family’, of Gold never appear at his so-called school. And I pity those poor supersuckers. Stop being an idiot. In forty years of bad books and complete bullshit by the hour it should be obvious that he doesn’t promote a path.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Uncategorized
at 5:43 am
by nemo
Which James
This fraudulent “James” has just confessed.
I am sorry he has been around this long. His attempt to clone the original James
was suspicious from the beginning, but he was clever in aping his views
in short segments.
I will comment further here, and remove his comments as soon as possible.
As usual this is clear evidence of the need to be wary of the constant
and unending dishonesty of all of Gold’s activities and students
eager to do his bidding. Nota bene.
I think the urging to ‘get a life’ applies to these pathetic pseudo-disciples most of all
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Posted in Uncategorized
at 12:56 pm
by nemo
Failure of magic as a tool to promote skepticism
We have promoted skepticism here, but not of ‘magic’. The whole point of the Gurdjieff Con is the abuse of occult tactics to exploit gullible beginners, gullible enough to spend good money to be cured of gullibility.
The skeptics gang hasn’t a clue.
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22.06.10
Posted in Uncategorized
at 1:53 pm
by nemo
Fourth edition out!
The fourth edition of World History And The Eonic Effect is out.
Readers here should find the account of interest for the way it outlines the ‘evolution of religion’ in world history.
Note: the publication date is not April 27, but today June 22! (Idiot publisher)
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Posted in Uncategorized
at 12:07 pm
by nemo
Note: the James comment here is not clearly from the James who commented here in the past. I have no proof these are the same person.
Update: apparently this fake James gave himself away.
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Posted in Uncategorized
at 4:57 am
by nemo
http://www.gurdjieff-con.net/2010/06/21/more-on-primordial-shaivism-james-comment/
I am a little puzzled here: what is the alternative? To call statements about the Puranas as translations speculative is fine. But it is equal speculation to propose the standard view of Indian religion.
But in general the standard view of the development of Vedism and Hinduism makes no sense.
To deny the earlier history of Indic religion produces a confusion that doesn’t add up.
It seems to say that the Indo-Europeans entered India, wrote the Vedas, invented yoga and tantra, and then produced the Upanishads. The Buddhists were those weird people on the side who corrupted the great Hindus tradition, etc…
That view in many forms is a very ancient set of untruths.
In that sense the corrected view of Danielou makes sudden sense by changing the gestalt. Hindu propaganda has triumphed here in a fearsome way. The whole thing is a shitty lie.
I am surprised someone interested in Buddhism would remain stuck in this distortion. Danielou’s thinking, despite its flaws, points to the obvious.
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21.06.10
Posted in Uncategorized
at 12:42 pm
by nemo
I am reposting here the (surprisingly popular) post on Cohen and evolutionaries here: http://darwiniana.com/2010/06/20/andrew-cohens-muddle-over-the-evolutionary/
Enlightennext magazine in endless issues peddles the idea of the ‘evolutionary’, and the connection between ‘evolution’ and the ‘path to enlightenment’. About once every few months I try to scotch this confusion, not created, but amplified, by Cohen, who seems confused about spiritual teachings in general. He is a strange manufactured pseudo-guru with no spiritual practice who is running on empty after the interacton with an Indian yogi who must have pointed his shakipat ray gun in the wrong direction and zapped Cohen by mistake.
To say that ‘spiritual practice’ is a form of evolution is, in some ways, understandable, since we naturally tend to think we ‘evolved’ our consciousness somehow. But the promotion of a spiritual path as evolution, and this promoted by a guru who is self-interested in the equation, financially and organizationally, is sly, and possibly dishonest. In fairness the confusion has sourced elsewhere long ago, and we can see the confusion already in Blavatsky.
Evolution brings complexity into time at the species level (although Darwinists wouldn’t agree necessarily), while the path of enlightenment is the process whereby an individual proceeds beyond time, and rebirth cycles. (Leaving alone the really hard question of how man evolved that potential)Of course, you might think that ‘evolution’ might bring into being an organism with a different potential for consciousness. But as Gurdjieff noted, ‘consciousness’ tends to flee such mechanical achievements. The issue is to produce ‘self-consciousness’ through the tools already given by nature. Note the ordinary confusion over and equation of consciousness and self-consciousness. Man’s mechanical consciousness arises as function of birth and organism, with a dose of self-consciousness given by his powers of attention. Beyond that his behavior is mechanical, until the will awakens, whatever that means.
To confuse the two, spiritual practice and evolution, is a modern fallacy, for the word ‘evolution’ in the modern sense didn’t exist in ancient times, and wasn’t used to describe spiritual paths. Correct me if you disagree and have some counter-facts.
Also note the way that the term ‘evolutionary’ is a crypto-rightwing piece of invented verbiage to counter the term ‘revolutionary’. Suck up to Andrew Cohen, an pay your monthly asskissing tithe and may be you will evolve.
Bullshit.
Again, it might be the case that man is ‘evolving’ toward a greater awareness complete with psychic extensions to his current state. That would not be Darwinian evolution, and would imply directionality and some kind of teleology in the stages of ‘man’s evolution’. Could be so, but it wouldn’t follow that individual effort here would be the same as species level emergentism.
Perhaps man is evolving with respect to consciousness. I am not in the position to deny it. But most New Age thinking here is confused. I doubt this New Age mythology is correct.
The strange case with man is that he has all the pieces in his kit to do all that from scratch, as he is. He doesn’t need to evolve that because then it would be a mechanical appendage to his organism, of no value for the development of consciousness. It is nonetheless true that man has a poor percentage here and rarely achieves his potential. To evolve to a better starting point that made these things easier can’t be ruled out, but it is not likely: man is already there, so to speak. He just needs to activate his freedom to be who he is already. You can’t sell fire. You sell matches.
Still, the confusion here is not surprising, but beware of gurus who think they understand evolution. They don’t.
Note that Gautama began to sense the Axial Age but couldn’t quite make it out, not surprising. The ‘evolution’ on the species level of religion and the spiritual paths of individuals intersect in the spectacular Axial Age phenomenon, but they are not the same.
You can see the difference there between individuals, and groups of individual, complete with gurus, buddhas. But the period of the so-called Axial Age was far larger in scope, and was ‘evolving’ civilization at a macro level.
Gautama thus by inference could not understand how man had evolved his ‘consciousness’. The point is obvious, and alarming. But the issue is inevitable, ‘evolution’ is a process of prodigious scope stretching over billions of years. And the complexities of organisms, and their potentials for consciousness couldn’t be unraveled by a man in the age in which Gautama lived. By inference the same would still be true of our time.
For example, ….
Noone can grasp how man evolved from homo erectus to homo sapiens, most probably the canonical case of evolution that had a by product of so-called spiritual evolution, i.e. an increase in consciousness AND one that became a mechanical product, up to a point, of the organism. Note the catch.
But we have no idea how that happened, or, in fact, what happened.
I can’t rule out that a kind ‘evolution agent’ appeared like an avatar to guide human evolution here, as some have said, protesting that the term ‘evolution’ breaks down at this point. They may be right, but most probably wrong here also. Buddha was such an avatar (a Hindu word that has turned into junk thinking, so also unusable finally) in the sense that his appearance seems strangely timed to the revolution of ages we called the Axial Age, but he couldn’t produce evolution in the true sense any more than he could control cosmic forces. His basic message, btw, wasn’t evolutionary, but started with the First Noble Truth: the whole mess is a huge mistake. So goodbye to all that. Adios.
I don’t know. period. Noone else does either. And to promote the idea that you are guiding evolution here with New Age muddle is a disservice.
Unless these ‘gurus’ can speak there to that they have few grounds to claim knowledge of evolution. (I should note the discussions at The Gurdjieff Con of J.G. Bennett’s borderline wacko science fiction speculations there: the task required the gift of consciousness from beings beyond the body level of organism. In his scheme ‘consciousness’ is a cosmic energy that doesn’t interact easily with the life energies of the organism).
The term ‘evolution’, btw, is not present in the Yoga sutras. What sanskrit words were mistranslated into the word ‘evolution’?
Check out that text, without modern embroidery.
Again, noone has a monopoly on the term ‘evolutionary’. That some should make this ‘mistake’ after essentially redefining the semantics of the word would is not something I could forbit, since it would mean I am a central authority on other people’s verbiage. That I am not. So this new usage is not something I can absolutely negate. But I should note that this usage arises from confusion, not clarity.
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Posted in Uncategorized
at 12:37 pm
by nemo
Comment on Summary re: Danielou
James said,
21.06.10 at 10:12 am ·
I understand your desire not to connect Indic spirituality to the Indo-Europeans, but I would caution you that the primordial Shaivism theory is extremely speculative and scanty on the evidence. The problem is that most of this theory is derived from the Puranas (they are the least reliable of the Indic texts and while they do contain ancient material, they also contain much that was only derived well into the common era). It is also not clear that the caste system as it is perceived nowadays had the same character in its primordial form (the irony may be that the most repressive form was developed by the Tamils – supposedly the purest Dravidians). Undoubtedly, the theories expressed in this book are not 100% correct, but it does a good job of outlining the current state of Indological research:
http://www.amazon.com/Origins-Yoga-Tantra-Religions-Thirteenth/dp/0521695341
The considerations of early Shavism may be speculative but at least they are likely to be roughly on track, unlike the confused legacy of the Vedic tradition. The issue of the puranas, who cares. Throw it out. We don’t need to try and resurrect primordial Shaivism. We can simply put the legacy outstanding in later times in perspective by seeing that it is not a successor to Vedism.
Whatever the case with the later history of the Tamils you refer to I think it is correct to say that the caste system is a confusion created by the Aryan tribalists.
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20.06.10
Posted in Uncategorized
at 12:50 pm
by nemo
http://darwiniana.com/2010/06/20/andrew-cohens-muddle-over-the-evolutionary/http://darwiniana.com/2010/06/20/andrew-cohens-muddle-over-the-evolutionary/
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