My answer: as with alcohol and gambling I think that if it's a compulsion then it's potentially toxic to mind and relationships. It's also interesting to see how many drinkers and gamblers subsequently find satisfaction in mysticism. One explanation is that mysticism 'cures' them, but another is that it's a substitute.
According to Advaita the compulsion is to simply BE what one really is. Nothing mystical in that.
This discussion developed because you wanted me to agree that this particular claim would surely pass my skeptic's test. My response is: please demonstrate with Alzheimer's patients, brain trauma patients. If you can show any sort of recovered function in the face of organic damage and neurological deterioration, and if it works at least as well as ordinary therapies then I'll agree that it passes my skeptic's test. If there's no such demonstration then it goes in my 'mysticism' basket.
Again, I never spoke of a "recovered" function. It takes long years, decades even, of intense practice to access the function of which I speak. You can't just go to an Alzheimer's patient and ask them to find it. It requires the will and the strength to turn the mind to an inner source, and that is only possible in a healthy mind.
What you are doing, Ruv, is putting words into my mouth, interpreting everything I say to fit it into into your own pre-conceived theory . I think that's a result of your tendency to believe you already "know" what a person means, to jump to conclusions and then run with them. I'd watch that tendency if I were you. It is not rational.
Your gentle but inexorable pressure that I must conform to your thinking.
Not at all. I am asking you to not misinterpret my words. That is all. Not once have you listend properly, because always your next statement is a complete shambles; you cannot be clear in your arguments unless you know what you are discussing.
I see this forum as a place to exchange ideas and discuss each other's chosen philosophy, religion, etc. I don't know much about Kabbalah but have always been intrigued by it, so I am glad that semi is here. I can learn, as well as do what I can to describe me own practice for those who ar einterested. It's not always easy, putting into words matters which are, in effect, not decribable by words. But it takes an open and neutral mind to first listen, and only then to question. You are critisizing before you have all the facts. Again, that is not rational. It is a kind of youthful megalomania...
A discussion is impossible with someone who does not listen and already thinks he has all the answers, which is how you come across.
In the versions I've read she thought her death was inevitable, but Gandhi didn't consult her on treatment.
I know people who knew Gandhi. She did not want to live. If I was so ill I did not want to live I hope that my love ones would do whatever they could to reject treatment that could only prolong my suffering. He did what he thought was best.
I have Hindu friends and have discussed marriage at length. I didn't suggest that pampering was required. I think he abandoned her and his children emotionally and socially.
Anyone who is married to an activist for social change knows that there are none of the personal rewards usually expected in a marriage. It goes with the territory. The goal is a bigger one than one's own little problems and safety. In this case, Kasturba joined him in his struggle and stayed at his side thorugh thick and thin. I would imagine that as a Hindu wife she was one heart and one soul with him in his goal; in such a momentous struggle all the emotions are gathered up into the larger picture. I doubt that she would share your assessment of her family, and frankly you are in no position to judge.
I personally know, and am the appointed biographer (one day!) of, a woman in just such a position -
Janet Jagan, one-time President of my country, who died earlier this year. She married the leading political revolutionary in my country and was at his side in all his struggles. They had two children, who obviously did not get the attention normal children get in family life. I know those children; they are of my generation, and they grew up to be extremely well-adjusted adults proud beyond belief of what their parents did for the country. They protect and preserve their parents legacy. I'm sure they were neglected in some ways; I know at one stage they had to be evacuated because their parents' lives, and their own, were threatened. One was sent to Barbados, one to the USA. How TERRIBLE for them, you might say? But it's all part of growing up in such a family. A cozy family life flies out the window, in its place comes the privilege of being close to history, and having an unusual story to tell.
Not forever, I hope.
Yes, but it's much more than that. These people are telling other people how to live, what food to eat, what medicines to take, how many children to have, how to deal with traumas, how to organise their families, whom to have sex with and how and when. .
"These people". There you go again! FYI a teacher of Advaita does none of those things. He or she teaches meditation and that is all. The student is left to live his or her life as he or she finds fit, in accordance with his or her practice.
