Get Happy, Be Happy, Stay Happy

Lana, have you read it yet? There used to be a chapter by chapter summary on the site, but I don’t think it is there now. As far as I remember it the idea is that as our hominid ancestors left the forest in Africa, the change in diet from leaves and fruit to meat and whatnot upset the hormonal chemistry of the brain, and as a result we are all stuck in a left brain consciousness. Part of the answer, they say, is to pig out on raw veg. Excellent results have been reported (folks I know are into raw), but I am unconvinced.

I’ve started reading it. It’s very, very interesting so far. Cuz when you think about it, WHY has the human brain evolved to have such a problem with naturally accessing the right hemispheric functions? Why did we evolve to suffer the tyranny of the thinking mind, which is quite destructive? Why do we have two separate “selfs” in our brains?

It doesn’t make a lot of sense based on current evolutionary theories.

I think (sorry, I seem to think a lot!) this theory that an evolutionary glitch caused by a massive change in diet has merit. We’re definitely a glitched bunch

Boy are Tolle and Oprah going to be shocked when they find out that all they’re doing is learning how to live more from the most powerful but suppressed part of the brain! Has nothing to do with Spirit or enlightenment, IMNSHO.

Nah, I think T&O already know the theories, and it does have to do with spirit and enlightenment.

Right, they would think it has to do with spirit and enlightenment. Is that what you believe as well? Sorry if I’ve missed your point!

I’m lost.

In what way?

I just didn’t know wether you were joking or ironic about T&O, or what.
s’all.

I’m poking fun at T & O. It’s not nice of me, I know.

I really like Oprah, actually. I don’t relate to Tolle one bit. He had a psychotic break, which enabled him to experience consciousness without the thinking brain doing its normal thing. But he translated that into “enlightenment” and spirituality, and became a guru.

Come on, people! There’s nothing mystical or magical going on!

Well, I just looked at a medical dictionary definition of psychotic break, and it didn’t seem at all like what Tolle describes (and I have read it).
The medical dictionary says that psychosis involves delusions and a mixing of reality with fact.

http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/A+psychotic+break

What Tolle says happened is that he was relieved of depression and had his senses cleansed- with beneficial results. He also heard an inner voice telling him to surrender, which is odd, but that doesn’t seem to me to be much of a psychosis.

Who is the enlightened one we need to compare him with to show he is a phoney? What is the officialy recognised path to non-duality as taught to all psychiatrists ?

By psychotic break, I mean a sudden break from normal processing of reality for whatever reason. This can be experienced as terrifying or blissful. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychosis

Tolle’s extreme mental agitation and distress caused his brain to activate a survival mechanism. And I say, fine. I’m happy the brain can do that Tolle was in that blissed state for, what, two years? He was having a wonderful time, but he couldn’t take care of himself.

For another interesting account of extreme stress leading to a “break” in normal consciousness, see Billy Clyde’s comment at:

http://stuart-randomthoughts.blogspot.com/2008/03/is-enlightenment-brain-state.html

The brain is amazing. The different types of consciousness are amazing. Humans trying to understand all this is amazing.

I’m not saying that Tolle is a phoney. I am saying that severe mental distress leading to an altered state of consciousness is a natural survival mechanism. It’s not anything special upon which to build a new philosophy or cosmology, like Tolle has done.

Nah, it still doesn’t seem like a psychotic break, from the descriptions presented, although it was definitely a break from a previous state of mind. I know the shamblog guy called it a psychotic break and what have you, but if Tolle didn’t think he was Jesus or talk to his potted cactus it doesn’t seem much of a psychosis. Maybe he is a bit autistic like that other lady said, I don’t know.
I haven’t seen anyone who said they were enlightened who didn’t also seem at least a little bit crazy, and the contradictions and bumfluff they come out with gets to me, too.
Being in a state of enightened bliss seems like more than just a survival mechanism- if it was so, why isn’t everyone like that? You survive, are you enlightened? I’m assuming you are not, maybe I’m wrong.
I also think that that is an excellent place to start to make a new philosophy or cosmology. In physics classes at school and college they taught me about stars, necleii(?), gravity etc., but they didn’t say much about unitive states or a deep pool of immortal life inside me.
Why were they keeping it from me if they knew? Maybe it is so ordinary the teachers just assumed I knew.
You should try asking a few physicists if they have ever felt like they are one with life, that the substance of life is bliss itself and every form shares in this, that the inanimate world is truly alive with the same life as oneself, and how they factor that into their cosmology.
They are likely to say, ‘do you think you’re fuckin’ Yoda, or wot?’ Looking through the Richard Dawkins site shows me that there are a lot of science freaks who don’t have a clue. As long as the electricity keeps coming to my computer, and the aeroplanes stay in the air, I’ll know science has validity, but I’ll also know it has something missing, or the scientists are missing something.
The folks involved in the making of the ‘left in the dark’ book, above, are very interested in the old philosophical cosmology that tells of the golden age. Now, if you have no conception of what it is to live with a sense of deep connection or oneness then those old stories of the golden age and the garden of Eden are meaningless. Yet if you have had a dose of it then at least one part of the old cosmologies (like the Hindu and Greek ones), seems credible- to me anyway.
Even by reason, one could say that at a time in the past mankind would have been unburdened by much of what we have today, and had a much clearer perception of life. Does that mean the full multi-yuga scheme is true, I dunno.
I also don’t know, really, what Tolles cosmology is, but for a few vague things he has written regarding a coming golden age. All the gurus seem to have a version of that.
Maybe one day they will press the button on the HAARP control panel that says ‘global bliss out’ and they will say,
‘well done, agent Tolle, you have served us well, we are promoting you to senior flock-leader’, and we’ll all be walking round in Lala land. I don’t know, shall I ask my cactus? Shall I? Shall I Lana? He’s very knowledgeable you know.

I’m surrounded by cacti. They are very smart, especially the saguaro. I’ll talk to them tonight…

There is nothing new under the sun. Tolle is traveling a well-worn path. What it all means, I dunno either.

But I do like the idea of a Global Bliss Out button.

GBO, baby!

I have found that inner life was effectively pointed to by this man.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBMl0HKM7X0&feature=related

He makes some interesting observations.

I wonder what we’d be like if the mind/brain/body were completely whole and integrated? Not the hodge-podge that we are — which leads to innumerable teachers and gurus attempting to straighten us out.

So do I.

I followed the link to Todd Murphy’s site and he relates his experience of Heightened Visual Acuity, and it is very similar to what Tolle says about his enlightenment.

I still think that is not psychotic.

( I was going to copy/paste the relevant passages, but I don’t know about copyright and whatnot. )

Okay, you might be right I read “The Power of Now” a few years ago. My reaction then was that Tolle had a psychotic break, and I wasn’t impressed with the book.

My main point is that all kinds of things can lead to the brain state Tolle experienced. And that my own opinion is that having such brain states doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a so-called spiritual state or enlightenment.

Of course you are free to call it whatever you want.

Well, you’ve confused me now. If living in a state of non-dual bliss isn’t enlightenment, what is?
He may be potty as well, I still don’t know.

Do we get the term enlightenment from the story of Buddha?
The sex addict opium puffing prince, who (according to the version I read) wandered off willy nilly, lived in the woods, became suicidally anorexic, then got into self flagellation, then just packed it all in and sat under a tree talking to demons. Talk about a whacko.

Later, when someone asked him what enlightenment is, he just waved a flower at them.
If he did that today, people would try and sue him, I think.
‘Hey I paid good money for a gold seat, and you just wave a flower at me, hey you’re not Buddha, you’re Bozo. Come on honey lets go, guys a fruitcake.’

What would a psychiatrist make of that?

Maybe Tolle isn’t as high grade a buddha because he hasn’t done enough nutty stuff.

I’m not very familiar with buddhist scripture, but there seem to be a lot of different versions of samadhi, enlightenment, bliss etc that have been described by the easterners. What Tolle says he knows, must be on the list somewhere.

So OK, the buddha story may be just a teaching fable, and whoever wrote it may have been a serious philosopher with a definite clear cut conception of enlighenment.

Or Buddha may have been a serious, seriously and properly enlightened teacher about whom legends have accumulated.

What do the buddhists say about Tolle?

We might have different definitions of enlightenment.

Eastern philosophies view enlightenment as spiritual.

I regard “enlightenment” as a physical brain state. That’s it.

I like you.

I like you too.

a physical brain state ..

I knew you’d just love that assessment, gregory

I read a Christian website the other day that defined “paradigm” as “an occult word that means Christians need to change their worldview”. I thought…”that’s a bit harsh”.

I wonder how much change can come about when the wagons circle when there are no indians are coming?

It makes me want to define religion as “those things you are not supposed to question”.

Hi Bill. First paragraph — I’m not surprised

My endless hope is for everyone to question everything.

Doubt is the natural state of the human mind…

bill ferguson, love the phrase, wagons circle but no indians … fabulous

about christianity someone once said, they kept the banana peel and threw away the banana

fundamentalism is a disease, just not named yet

enjoy all … i don’t want to write here anymore becasue lana is getting fed up with words, much to her credit

A friend of mine is fond of the proverb:

❝Civil Christians are seldom committed. Committed Christians are seldom civil.❞

My Unitarian friend bemoans the fact that the UUs never seem to get any evangelical personalities to spread the word.

Its a shame really, as never before has there been so much good Biblical research, yet we find people retreating into 17th century patterns. It never seems to make it out of the seminary into the congregations.

i have been thinking about the differences in book vs. experience in terms of religions .. book = christian, judiasm, islam ,,, and experience = buddhism and hinduism

i know they both have books, and both have mystics, but at the fundamental level, the two just dont seem to meet

it is like, pick your path, go with the mind, or go beyond the mind (or beneath it, prior to it, however one might say that)

i will look at your site… ekklesia … i live in india, and sometimes in hotels i can get evangelists .. they are pretty cool .. i forget herbert w armstrong, but love gene scoot, and t w jakes, and benny hin, the king of shaktipat

ok, later. hi lana, dont mind me, just talking to bill … if you get disqus, http://www.disqus.dom, threaded conversation are possible, and all your wacky readers can simply carry on without you

enjoy, gregory

Gregory, I’m not an apologist for Herbert W Armstrong. I grew up in his church and my site is dedicated to exposing the man for the fraud he was.

As to my religious affiliation now, all I can tell people is I am a fan of Jesus and Buddha sayings. Most dogmatic Christians would call me a heretic for my lack of dogma.

I do have a new section on my web site which will eventually be spun into a web site of its own, its called “Top Secret” on the navigation bars. Its my attempt to answers some questions I have had about religion, sectarianism and the pitfalls Western thinking (Greek, Arab, Jewish, European) falls into from a reliance on Aristolean binary logic. Binary logic rewards the extremes and excludes the middle.

Russell Targ, JJ Hurtak, Seth Lloyd of MIT and others have noticed that the quantum world operates on a 4 value logic system. True, Neither True nor Not True, Neither False nor Not False, and False. These are the states the qubit operates in. We’ve known for years DNA is a digital encoding, but why the 4 base pairs instead a 2 (a binary encoding)? I suspect its because of quantum logic. The Buddhists under Buddha’s disciple Nargajuna formulated a 4 value logic system 2000+ years ago.

All ideas of a fall from grace are fundamentally human hating. Death entered the world of dinosaurs long before there was an Adam or Eve.
The question is not whether we are predators, we are. The question is whether we emerge from the animal brainstem and become fully human.
The events since 9/11 seem ideally positioned to force people into fear based animal brainstem thinking. Shutting down the amgdlya and higher thinking and consciousness.

What so many blame on humanity, is really the inhumaness of our corporate world and the political system it has purchased. Entities which are given the same rights as humans, but not subject to our mortality. Corporations can’t be jailed or killed.

A biological fall from grace is no different than others who claim Gaia is turning against mankind in an environmental version of the book of Revelation.

The Christian fall is an attempt to stave off mankinds curious search for knowlege from sources outside the Church. The dark ages kind of got us over that idea that science and art was evil. But we’re still stuck with the Christian apocalyptic 2000 years after Christianity borrowed it from Judaism. The good rabbis outlawed it in Judaism after the havoc it caused. At least the Christian apocalypse (and I grant its imagery has spawned a good many lunatic preachers) ends in a redemption of mankind.

I reject the apocalyptic entirely, Christian or environmental. As a thinking species we deserve to survive. On this planet, mankind is the only buffer against an often very cruel mother nature. We are the ultimate adapters.

Everything we need we have already. But its gonna take some rethinking. We’re going to have to unhook ourselves from crude oil slavery. Human nature, is just human habit.

bill, thank you for your comments. i find your focus and concepts inspiring. please contact me when your site goes live, at gregorylent at gmail dot com

i am sure i would enjoy a conversation with you, and i would probably “push” for the view that all historical concepts, especially religious ones, are metaphors for the nature of consciousness and its embodiment. i would argue the metaphorical thing even for science, but i am weird that way

thanks for your time, i will look at that section on your site.

and what is that small scrap of voice that comes through, i think from the main page? is that herbert, from the grave?

Its my sense that we need “stories” to make sense of the world around us. Just as each one of us has our own personal story of our lives. Joseph Campbell has many good books on that kind of thing.

Religion is just really really old stories that people found helpful. They get encrusted with something called “belief” and “respect” and before long they take on “holyness” which just means you get killed (or maimed, belittled, ostracized) if you question it. Which is not a very scientific way to approach the search for truth.

I think many of the western traditions are exhausting their stories. Yet simultaneously some eastern traditions like Buddhism are finding a renaisance in the nuts and bolts way Americans like to look at things.
We’re not much on ritual, unless its baseball and the 4th of July. We like what works.

I started re-examing my own beliefs in 1990 after a good friend of mine at NASA’s JPL division told me UFOs were real. I started wondering, what sense my beliefs made if humans were not the only sentient beings in the universe, and it turned out, they didn’t make much sense at all. It was the inability of my former beliefs to work outside of an anthropocentric framework that got me rethinking everything. And that was a good thing.

I like bouncing ideas off of Lana. She likes to ponder similar things.

PS: The voice you speak of is of Herbert Armstrong, its cut from a sermon where he basically said if you don’t like he taught, leave. In 1995, much to their chagrin, 40,000 of us did exactly that. We left. We said so long and thanks for all the fish!

I also have a hip-hop version of another Evangelist, Rod Meredith, a protege of Armstrong, at the bottom of my history page. Its quite funny. It needs to be set to a good beat though.

ritual, stories, culture, beliefs … you are already an outsider from any tradition if you can look at it from a viewpoint outside of the tradition … lots of people east and west cannot yet do that

i would imagine that this process has been intense for you, as it perhaps has been for lana, and for me ..

my hunch is that this journey of letting go of past understandings never stops, that there is no final resting point, that there is no final understanding in terms of words that can be written or spoken and that we eventually simply abide in a “place” that is not describable … and that we all go through this journey to some degree or another

the more interesting people i meet have somehow left off the fundamental certainty of knowing and embraced the mystery of not knowing, something like an eternal state of becoming (an here words are too much, maybe we would agree there is some value in the saying he/she who knows doesn’t speak, etc>…)

a society that allows this seems more mature than one built on certainty

herbert armstrong may have been a pretty cool guy, (and also demonic, they are not incompatible!) and he was right, if you don’t like it, leave! what a blessing. islam cannot say that yet

and we haven’t talked about suffering yet ..

ok, enjoy

gregory

Outsider. I know that feeling.

Does a one man taboggan ride classify as intense?

Awe at the universe, and not many answers. Yes that is very much me.

But I meet so many others!

PS: You have to be first to call HWA cool. He’s been called many things but that is a first.

CD said, “Doubt is the natural state of the human mind…”

For some, yes. For others, they have no doubts (unfortunately).

gregory said, “i don’t want to write here anymore becasue lana is getting fed up with words, much to her credit.”

You crack me up! I miss blogging. I’m really busy with work projects and don’t have time for fun

gregory also said, “…all your wacky readers can simply carry on without you.”

Please do carry on here! I hope you and Bill felt my smiles Bill is an old friend and we recently reconnected through Facebook.

Bill said, “A biological fall from grace is no different than others who claim Gaia is turning against mankind in an environmental version of the book of Revelation.”

You’ll have to read the book. The authors have no ax to grind. They are simply trying to understand why we evolved to have the major problems we do. They make a very compelling case, and it actually gives me hope for a better world! I agree that we have what we need — it’s a matter of gaining access to it.

Bill also said, “You have to be first to call HWA cool. He’s been called many things but that is a first.”

ROTFLMAO!!!!!!

gregory and Bill,
Note the book I’m reading now, “Living Deeply: The Art and Science of Transformation in Everyday Life.” You might enjoy it.

I’m beginning to wonder if transformation, enlightenment, waking up, and so forth, are descriptions of the act or process of the right hemisphere finally coming out from under the suppression of the left. It’s people being able to live fully and deeply because the brain is integrated.

yes, for me one way “enlightenment” is registered in the body is as the unification of the brain hemispheres …

it is also useful to remember that this is a model, a description that works to explain some observed differences, but may not be fully true …. scientists get all excited about observations dealing with the bumps on the skin of an orange, and have no inkling of the fruit that lies below, an entirely different order of matter, and no inkling at all of the seeds in the fruit that can make more oranges)

and, esoteric physiology posits that enlightenment is something that happens in the subtle body, not the physical body (as example, chakras are a subtle body phenomenon)

i like to think of enlightenment as being a question of awareness … being aware of who is having the experiences while the experiences are going on, and not simply reacting from conditioning

Right, awareness that comes from the whole brain. Awareness that is no longer being suppressed or filtered by the thinking brain and conditioning. Just pure sensing of everything.

About the subtle body and chakras experiencing enlightenment: I can see how it could be understood that way. Who knows? Everything is a form of information, and we don’t know how it all works yet.

we don”t even know yet what is a “we”!

You are so right! I think

Everything is information. Patterns of information come together to form a human with so-called consciousness. And somehow this “information pattern” attempts to decipher itself and all other information patterns.

Bill mentioned Seth Lloyd and the quantum world’s four value logic system. Seth Lloyd says the universe is a quantum computer. Totally mind-blowing. I’ve asked in other posts, who or what created the quantum computer and its programs? And why? Will or can “we” ever know? What if a program won’t allow us to? (I’m scaring myself!)

Quantum application to macro events is a bridge unbuilt.

Bill - Our crude oil “enslavement” is less than 100 years old and it looks like it is coming to an end - a pretty short addiction in my book. It’s far shorter than the deforestation we still practice.

Quantum application to macro events is a bridge unbuilt.
one leg pedals my bicycle, the other strapped to a stilt
macro, micro, whatever is in play
doesn’t really matter, we all live another day

Still working on the Grand Unified Theory in my spare time…

Everything is information.

and was it gregory bateson who defined information like this? ….

information is any difference which makes a difference

good luck