2009.10.30 01:00 - Yogic psychology

Wol Euler was guardian for this session.

Bolonath Crystal: hallo wol :)

Wol Euler: hello bolo, good morning

Bolonath Crystal: my first 1am session :) very peaceful

Wol Euler: they often are :)

Wol Euler: I'm sorry t have missed your second theme session last night

Bolonath Crystal: np, we will probably have a third one

Wol Euler: good :)

Wol Euler: raeding the logs is somehow different to being here

Bolonath Crystal: sure

Wol Euler: even though people who don't know SL might say "it's all just reading"

Bolonath Crystal: hm. of course it is just reading, but by being here ppl have a possibility to give a direct feed back

Bolonath Crystal: asking questions...

Wol Euler nods

Bolonath Crystal: give comments

Wol Euler: interactive, not read-only :)

Bolonath Crystal: yes :)

Bolonath Crystal: we talked about raja yoga

Wol Euler: mmm?

Bolonath Crystal: advaita vedanta is a philosophy. to come to some results one needs a practical technique

Bolonath Crystal: otherwise it just remains 'wishful thinking'

Bolonath Crystal: so i introduced raja yoga as a method to realise what philosophers only talk about

--BELL--

Bolonath Crystal: wb wol. did i scare you away? ;)

Wol Euler: hello again.

Wol Euler: hah.

Wol Euler: crashed, and couldn't get back in.

Bolonath Crystal: you look funny. i can only see your clothes, not your body

Wol Euler: I'm on holiday, very slow internet connection in the hotel.

Bolonath Crystal: oic

Wol Euler: that's probably the reason I crashed, just not enough bandwidth

Bolonath Crystal: what a pitty :(

Wol Euler: you were telling me about a kind of yoga?

Bolonath Crystal: yes, raja yoga. you heard about it before?

Wol Euler: no, but that means nothing as I am very poorly informed :)

Wol Euler: what is it about?

Bolonath Crystal: like all yogas it is a way of self-realisation

Bolonath Crystal: the most important thing in raja yoga is meditation, but it involves many points of view

Bolonath Crystal: a raja yogi tries to gain control over mental processes which usually happen unnoticed

Wol Euler nods

Bolonath Crystal: you can call it yogic psychology

Wol Euler: hehehh

Bolonath Crystal: yesterday we found out, that raja yoga methods are at least in parts very similar to buddhist practise

Wol Euler: when you speak of controlling mental processes, what does that mean? Stilling the monkey mind, or controlling the ego?

--BELL--

Bolonath Crystal: well, both. if we percept something, for example, then many processes happen subconsciuosly, before the perception reaches our consciousness. in raja yoga the yogi tries to see deeper inside the mind to know what exactly happens there

Bolonath Crystal: with this knowledge the raja yogi tries to avoid unwanted reactions, before they happen

Wol Euler: interesting.

Wol Euler: that sounds like watching the mind rather than "clearing" it.

Bolonath Crystal: watching is a very important part of it, yes

Bolonath Crystal: it is quite similar to the vipassana meditation in buddhism

Bolonath Crystal: anyway i think, buddha would have been a great raja yogi or advaita vedantin, if advaita vedanta would have existed during buddhas time

Wol Euler: :)

Wol Euler: is htat generally true, perhaps?

Wol Euler: that enlightened beings are generally enilightened rather than specifically? :)

Bolonath Crystal: hehe, what do i know about general truth? ;))

Wol Euler: well, yes :)

Bolonath Crystal: but i think you are right

Bolonath Crystal: imo enlightened beings don't care much about -isms

Wol Euler nods

Wol Euler: truths that work outrank theories that ought to be correct.

Bolonath Crystal: sure!

Bolonath Crystal: swami sivananda used to say that 1 gram of practise is more important than 10 tons of theory

Wol Euler: mmhmm

Bolonath Crystal: but sometimes people need lots of tons of theory to come to 1 gram of practise

Wol Euler: yes, I agree, they seem to need to see it proven in theory before they will risk trying somehting

Bolonath Crystal: but that is something very typical 'western'. in india the yoga disciples don't expect that. they just rely on their guru

Wol Euler: as long as they get to do that practice, though, then why not have both?

Bolonath Crystal: true

Wol Euler: I think we are conditioned to think of truth as something outside of our perception, something that has to be explained from above

Wol Euler: anything that I can perceive must be too small to be a Truth

Wol Euler: so we hesitate to trust our experiences, to listen to our bodies

Bolonath Crystal: truth is truth. explanations can be right or wrong. but in any way any explanation only gives us a glimpse of a certain part of truth. imo experience is much more important

Wol Euler nods

Wol Euler: which is what we try to do here (ideally :)

Wol Euler: why Pema keeps saying "try it and see for yoursself"

Bolonath Crystal: :)

Bolonath Crystal: as far as i know buddha said about the same :)

Wol Euler smiles

--BELL--

Bolonath Crystal: i don't like people just believe me and thats it. i prefer them becoming curious and start experimenting

Wol Euler: mmhmm

Wol Euler: which in a way brings us back to wanting guarantees.

Bolonath Crystal: does it?

Wol Euler: the guru offers a guarantee: this is absolutely true, because I am right and I say so.

Bolonath Crystal: oic

Wol Euler: (simplifying things slightly :)

Wol Euler: once people have that, they feel able to test things

Bolonath Crystal: but that only works if a guru isn't simply a teacher. he must be a living example

Wol Euler nods.

Wol Euler: I don't mean that they are liars or exaggerators, but that there is no way to speak of *my* experience that will let *you* feel it too.

Wol Euler: so they say "I did this, and that happened because of it."

Bolonath Crystal: if a teacher expresses a state of deep inner peace, ppl percept that and like to reach the same condition

Bolonath Crystal: words alone wouldn't be enough

Wol Euler: right

Wol Euler: this is the dilemma that I think many Western people fall into. We want proof in words of someting that cannot be expressed in words

Bolonath Crystal nods

Wol Euler: many of my friends are curious about meditation, but won't try it because they don't undesratnd how it can work, and will not "risk" doing it without that understanding

Wol Euler: what is the risk? feeling foolish, wasting time?

Bolonath Crystal: hm, what are they afraid of?

Bolonath Crystal: the worst case is that nothing happens

Wol Euler: mmmmmm, from our point of view yes :) From theirs, and I can think back to myself about 20 years ago, the worst that can happen is that I feel like a fool

Wol Euler: or fear that others think that I am a fool

Wol Euler: for doing somehting like this that isn't proven :)

Bolonath Crystal: that can easily be avoided by simply meditating secretly, without telling anybody

Bolonath Crystal: i remember my first experiments in meditation. i was sitting there and thinking something like 'hm... so... and now?'

Bolonath Crystal: but i kept trying until it worked

Wol Euler: :)

--BELL--

Bolonath Crystal: after a while i found out, that really something happened. not during my meditation sittings, but between. i became calmer, more concentrated. and as my ability to concentrate grew, my meditation got deeper step by step

Wol Euler nods and smiles.

Bolonath Crystal: oh well, time to go. i have to get some things settled today, because i like to visit a friend in switzerland over weekend

Wol Euler: oh, very nice!

Wol Euler: thank you, bolonath, this has been a very good conversation.

Bolonath Crystal: thank you, too. and please enjoy your holiday :)

Wol Euler: I hope you have a good weekend in der Schweiz :)

Bolonath Crystal: ty :)

Wol Euler: bye for now

Bolonath Crystal: om shanti