E wrote:

There is no point in allowing Buddhism or any other philosophy to disturb
my peace.

I completely agree!!

I no longer believe I have any need to go further.

For this self, I completely disagree! There always seems to be FURTHER....
yes? More dissolved, more awareness'd-out... greater cataracts of
grace... more flavors of amrita to quaff... Epiphanies to forget so that
one has the joy of rediscovering them again. I know I've forgotten
more states than are in any Union... We're not nouns, but verbs, as
Bucky Fuller liked to point out.

Sometimes when we reach our bliss tolerance level we mistake it for
Nirvana, but bliss tolerance levels can always be raised... and
raised again...

Why do we incarnate? Not for the physical pleasures that are so
evanescent. I think we plunge into the Pool of All Possibilities
through the Veil of Forgetfulness just for the intense delight of
reawakening again, of rediscovering we are Just That, of returning
Home to our Friends.

Then there's the amazing Master Aziz's warning (somewhat edited.)

The Dangers of Pseudo-advaita
by Aziz Kristof

We would like to express our concern regarding the recent phenomenon of
'satsang-culture,' which in our opinion has impoverished seriously the
Original Spirit of Advaita. These days many individuals, who have very
little or no knowledge at all about the Process of Awakening, feel
qualified to give satsang and lead other souls on the Path. Enlightenment
has become very cheap these days. Nobody actually really knows what is
the meaning of this term as it virtually means everything and nothing.
Nowadays it is sufficient to say, 'I am awakened' in order to give satsang.

Because of the unverifiable nature of Enlightenment, this term has been
much manipulated. Satsang has been Americanised. In an average
satsang gathering, everybody is laughing, showing signs of euphoric
and unauthentic joy, while the teacher tries to look like he or she is
in bliss. Just like a TV show. Very few actually meditate. Why meditate
if we are already all awakened? But is this really Advaita? Is Advaita
a poor repetition of a several slogans like 'There is nobody there,'
'You are That,' 'You are already awakened' or 'There is no Path', etc.?
Has this anything to do with teaching of great masters like N. Maharaj
or R. Maharishi? Ramana sat in caves for 20 years before he could be
really complete. In his presence, disciples had to meditate for months
and years before they could receive from him the glimpse of the Self.
[SNIP]
We would like to clarify, for the sake of general knowledge, that there are
actually several levels of expansion beyond the mind. There are three basic
types of Inner Expansion:
1) Awakening to Pure Awareness (the State of Presence behind the mind).
2) Awakening to the Absolute State (unity with the unmanifested).
3) Awakening of the Heart (expansion into the Divine).
In each of these levels there are three stages: Shift into a state,
Stabilisation and Integration. For instance, many satsang-teachers do not
experience the same state outside of teaching. This is because they are not
established permanently in the state they have attained. For that reason,
they can have a deep state during satsang, but when they leave the
satsang room, they return back to ordinary consciousness. In such a case,
only conscious cultivation of the particular state can allow one to
establish it permanently. However, if one does not believe in an actual
process of awakening, how can one consciously cultivate anything? One
does not even know that one is in a State. Here we see the importance of
correct understanding. If one just follows in a dogmatic and unimaginative
way the Advaita idea that 'I am already That,' how can one cultivate
anything?

We recommend to all students and teachers of Advaita to be more critical.
Follow Advaita if you wish, but know that Reality is simply much more rich
than any linear philosophy, Advaita included. The Practical Advaita
and the Theoretical Advaita are very different. In the Theoretical Advaita,
the Self is the only reality, there is no Path and we are all already
awakened. But Practical Advaita knows that there is a long way to go
before the truth of these statements can become our living truth.

We would like also to create a few practical anti-pseudo-advaita
statements:
'You are not awakened unless you awaken!'
'You are not That unless you reach unity with Universal I AM!'
'There is no Path but only for those who complete it!'
'There is nobody here, but only when somebody has dissolved!'
[SNIP]
Blessings to Seekers of Truth and Clarity who have the courage to renounce
the False.

[end quote]
For a complete copy, see
http://www.raysender.com/aziz-falseadvaita.html

Breath-holding and Ramana's rigor

I’ve been looking again at Ramana Maharshi’s ‘death’ experience
as a youth, and am now pretty sure he included ‘body rigor’ i.e. a
full body contraction to duplicate rigor mortis - (see quotes below
from “Happiness and the Art of Being” by a Michael James who spent
some years at Ramana’s ashram with his main disciples.) See:
http://www.happinessofbeing.com/resources/happiness_art_being.html
for an online copy of th 500+ page ebook. The two words in
bold below are my edits.

Ramana:
'All right, death has come! What is death? What is it that
dies? This body is going to die – let it die.' Deciding thus, he
lay down like a corpse, rigid and without breathing, and
turned his mind inwards to discover what death would
actually do to him. He later described the truth that dawned
upon him at that moment as follows:
"This body is dead. It will now be taken to the cremation
ground, burnt, and reduced to ashes. But with the destruction
of this body, am I also destroyed? Is this body really 'I'?
Although this body is lying lifeless as a corpse, I know that I
am. Unaffected in the least by this death, my being is shining
clearly. Therefore I am not this body which dies. I am the ‘I’
which is indestructible. Of all things, I alone am the reality.
This body is subject to death, but I, who transcend the body,
am that which lives eternally. The death that came to this
body cannot affect me."
Although he described his experience of death in so many
words, he explained that this truth actually dawned upon him
in an instant, not as reasoning or verbalised thoughts, but as a
direct experience, without the least action of mind. So intense
was his fear and consequent urge to know the truth of death,
that without actually thinking anything he turned his
attention away from his rigid and lifeless body and towards
the innermost core of his being, the pure consciousness 'I am'.

His use of the word 'rigid' in describing how he lay down and
duplicated the death experience makes me think I'm intuiting
correctly that he included the rigor mortis he had observed in
corpses. Keep in mind that in India, as in many third world
countries, exposure to dead bodies is much more common than in
our over-sanitized -- and death-phobic -- culture.

Breath-holding is a very ancient technique in mystical circles - in
fact, some levels of samadhi in yoga are defined as 'breathless' --
and of course there are those occasional fakirs who allow themselves
to be buried alive, etc. Also, as I've writen on this blog before,
the original Christian baptism involved suffocation - the baptizer
clapped one hand over your nose and mouth so that you wouldn't inhale
water while being held under. The idea was to keep you there until
you passed out but not until you died. I've checked this out with a
couple of ministers and they agree with me (!). Of course the baptizer's
skill involved knowing when to let you up - probably when you ceased
struggling. At that point the body probably had released various near-
death, endorphins and the baptizee had 'seen the light,' so to speak.

Native American warriors also were remarkably stoic when captured and
tortured, and here again there were probably some NDEs triggered by
initiations that involved breath-holding.

As children, many of us experimented with hyperventilating and then
stiffening the body and holding the breath - and thus passing out -
so I'm pretty sure I'm onto something with all this. In fact, in 1977
I was visiting a bar in Oakland, and demo’d to a bunch of guys,
mostly African-American, how a combination of the bellows breath, a
toke of MJ and the Camel asana will take you out. About three guys
tried it, and each passed out to come back, eyes shining. I figured
we could’ve started a new religion on the spot, and beat a hasty
retreat.

Someone responded to the above regarding breath-holding as follows:

"The technique about holding the exhale is also used in Magical
Work to power a thought form. As for the "reset"....holding the
breath,inhale or exhale,gives the cells a feeling of oxygen
deprivation. They start to freak and can be programmed in
that agitated/moving state. Similar to pointing an iron bar to
magnetic north and striking it with a mallet. It becomes a
weak magnet. With the cells,you want to align them to a
mantra or visualization while resetting with the held breath."

Interesting!

By the way, all these 'on the edge' exercises that I post here and
elsewhere are for your general interest only. You try them at your
own risk.