As a practical program it introduces you to a good set of nicely embodied work, but it's mixed in with some misinterpretations (including "meditation means sitting still without thinking"), some bizarre pseudo-scientific theories about why the practices work, and weird sidetracks like "if you master breathing with the fire element you can set a piece of paper on fire with your mind." Altogether I'd say if you hold it very lightly and look at it as a handbook you can pick up or put down, it's not bad. With what results? What are its drawbacks?Īs Shinzen puts it in his book "The Science of Enligtenment", I'm attracted to "an oblique path (.), where you move into the realm of power and toward the Source simultaneously and at the same speed".Īny thoughts will be appreciated. Has any of you used that training system as a means to cultivate the powers? I was wondering what you guys thought about Franz Bardon's book "Initiation Into Hermetics". Culadasa and Shinzen have that, and that is the reason they reached so many people, including us. I think that everyone needs a healthy dose of skepticism and scientific mindset. It seems to me that many people who chose to take the "magickal" route fall in some kind of void - they start seeing everything as supernatural, become paranoid, delusional and detached from stability of the "normal" perception. However, as Buddha said, magick is an off-track - it doesn't lead to the end of suffering, it is just a skill like any other (if it exists). Every world view is a fabrication of mind afterall. So I decided to let go of attachment to strictly materialist framework whether it is "correct" or not, it is better not to cling to it. You mentioned Bardon - his book is written with sincere and methodic style very similar to TMI. Maybe it's all superstition, but I am not so sure anymore - most skeptics would write-off entire Visuddhimagga as a superstiton in the same way. Ancient texts such as Visuddhimagga describe how to develop siddhis (magick) in the same detailed manner like they describe how to meditate. When you read their stories, it is hard not to at least consider whether there is something to them. Just like we share our meditation experiences here, there are people that share their experiences with magick on other forums, with a similar level of dedication and seriousness. I am not saying that I believe all of that right now, but there are things that made me think about that. Shinzen mentions demons in his book like it's a totally normal thing, Culadasa said he is not sure whether entities are real or hallucinations, but regardless he spent years communicating with them, doing shamanic practices etc. and my reaction was - wtf is this? I could somehow swallow things like interconnectedness of minds (because you could assume that maybe quantum physics can explain it), but magickal entites, angels, demons, gnomes, fairies? I felt scared of the possibility that my world view could fall apart. You can read in MCTB2, Daniel talks about f-ing demons. Especially the fact that they don't promote or sell these ideas - they just mention them sporadically, in very convincing anecdotes. So, when I realised that all of the leading members in the meditation "community" I currently follow actually believe in parapsychological phenomena, that shook my world view. My materialism was rooted in my confidence in the scientific community, but that confidence has been weakened by the fact that most of the academic elite is unaware of importance of meditation and spirituality for a person's well-being. So, adding meditation into a skeptic/materialist framework of reality. That was a fundamental shift - I realised that I could bring together my old deep passion for spirituality, on the one hand, and scientific approach on the other (like Sam Harris did). Then, years later, being interested in psychology, I stumbled across meditation, and eventually TMI. After some time I became a hardcore atheist and skeptic. I tried to practice IIH, without much success. Bardon used to be what Culadasa is for me now. Here's what I wrote a year ago on Reddit, concerning the same topic:Īs a teenager I got interested in spirituality through books like the one you mentioned.
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