Some questions - curiousity, skepticism and intrigue

I think even wanting to have the answers to such a huge and diverse array of questions in one post is expecting miracles. I would like to know the answers to some of those questions too but I know that after reading the C's for many years, those answers have to be sought and pondered deeply before anything beneficial is revealed. You cannot ask others to do the leg work all the time. The search function on the forum will give you heaps of previous posts about the subjects you seek to gain knowledge in. Reading and networking is the key.
 
Hello, Erowid. I'd like to share something with you that I share quite a bit here for people who are wondering about, or enamored of, various things such as astral travel and other higher realms.

From The Sufi Path of Knowledge by Chittick, Ibn al ‘Arabi says:

Nowadays most people interested in the spirituality of the East desire the "experience," though they may call what they are after "intimate communion with God." Those familiar with the standards and norms of spiritual experience set down by disciplined paths are usually appalled at the way Westerners seize upon any apparition from the domain outside of normal consciousness as a manifestation of the "spiritual." In fact there are innumerable realms in the unseen world, some of them far more dangerous than the worst jungles of the visible world. No person familiar with the teachings of Sufism would dare lay himself open to such forces...

And, then, there is this that Laura discusses in The Wave I (which I strongly agree with Aiming's suggestion that you read that series if you haven't already) speaking of the experience of a woman who is talking about The Beautiful Lady:

She puts the robe around me and then my mind separates from my body. I can look back and see it lying there. Then we go up through the ceiling, pop out the roof, and fly into space. One night the Lady took me back in time. We were in a foreign country and the people wore old-fashioned clothes. The Lady took on the appearance of a beautiful woman in a blue robe. She performed miracles for them..."

Suddenly Ann's face turned ashen and she asked to be excused. Her scream of pain was heard from the bathroom where she had taken refuge. When Ann came out, she was sniffling and holding her abdomen. The Lady had savagely attacked her for revealing that down through history, creatures like the Lady have taken the form of saints. They then use the gullibility of humankind to misguide and misinform people so that they believe they are seeing miracles performed. Ann begged the newsman to delete that portion of the interview." (Osborn, 1982)

I think that it is very important to know about the forces that inhabit other dimensions and densities because they are not all wonderful spiritual beings that want to guide and help us. Knowledge protects and ignorance endangers could not be more applicable than in cases like these.

As has been suggested by others, if you want to understand what this forum is all about, reading The Wave series is a must.
Laura discusses these things, and much more, in her The Wave series. You can purchase them on Amazon, or from Pilule Rouge or from Red Pill Press. Which gives back to Laura for all of her hard work on these books; or you can read The Wave series for free starting here.

We understand here that there are no free lunches. There are no sort cuts in learning, that is, really learning. So reading the materials offered here on the Recommended Books List will go a long way to building on your base of knowledge.

Also, just as an aside, "enlightened" doesn't mean spiritual or that one is a good person; it simply means that you have a lot of knowledge. That knowledge can be used for good or evil depending on the person who has it.
 
Thanks for all the responses, i agree i have only just arrived expecting answers to everything. I'm going to begin this new journey of discovery and return in the future. Peace.
It's very difficult to unpack years worth of reading, studying and assimilating to answer all the questions, but it is good that you're asking. Your best bet, imo, is to start with the Cassiopaea website, there's an intro, and The Wave series is available there too. Have fun :-)
 
Hello Erowid,

A much overlooked source of knowledge especially suited for quick references to unfamiliar terms and concepts, can be found here:

FOTCM Casswiki

As you can see at the top of the left column, it starts with a list of abbreviations (pages 19, 20 and 21) which you asked for here.

I think you best bookmark this source for easy access every time you need it.

Happy hunting! :-)

Edit: typo.
 
From your first post here on the forum:


I am reasonably well read on Eastern esoteric teachings and the supposed true nature of reality, though I feel there is so much more to learn, much more than can be learnt in one life. I see people who have taken up a certain spiritual belief and run with it for their whole life but I can't do that, one belief system cannot know everything there is to know. Subscribing to one set of beliefs limits your realm of possibility.

I have had personal experiences with what is commonly referred to as kundalini energy and I have experienced a toe dip into the astral world, these experiences have given me irrefutable evidence that the world we experience is hidden with mysteries that are not common knowledge, that the majority of the populace has no idea exists nor would they believe is possible if they were told about it.

Is the search for truth in literature a lost cause? How can one know what is real and what is made up nonsense? Does the answer lie within us? Is meditation and yoga the vehicle to finding this truth?

The quest for the truth seems like a sick joke at times, which way am I meant to go, who am I meant to believe, which practices should I follow. Is life just one endless search, are we meant to just constantly seek until we find something and decide to settle with it?

Please don’t take this as patronising because I know it could definitely come across that way, but you remind me so much of myself when I first came to the forum. I wanted to know the secrets and mysteries of history and religion, life after death, the future. I had read certain books that gave me glimpses of ancient secret knowledge, and I wanted to know all of it.

But, why? What for? It was a yearning inside me. It was like I’d tasted a bit of truth and now I craved it. But there was no end goal... no aim or reason for it.

Some would say that’s fine. That’s actually for the best. That the purest way is the search for knowledge for the sake of knowledge.

But the things you talk about - that there’s truths that are not seen by the majority of the people of the planet, and never have been; the most shocking and real truths that people can’t see, that are hidden from them, are really about themselves.

It really doesn’t matter how many spiritual teachers you read or practices you follow, because like you say, how are you supposed to know what’s true and what isn’t?

Well, one of the keys to that, is by learning about who you really are and what you’re really like. To learn all the stupidest, dumbest, most arrogant and narcissistic aspects of yourself and your personality and what makes you tick. To be awakened to what you’re really like as a person and to see where that has got you throughout your life.

And here I don’t mean all the times you were mean and selfish. I mean re-looking at all the times you’ve thought you were doing the right thing, the best thing, being good, being nice, being kind... giving to others with no thought for yourself.

And being struck down with shock for days, that all the time you were motivated by selfishness, arrogance, vanity.

We here can’t just instantly facilitate that kind of shock for you, but by following the various reading recommendations you have been given, while at the same time networking here on the forum about it all, you might just start to get a glimpse of what I’m talking about; a “glimpse of the deep secret realities that most people never know about”. You may even get the full-force of it in one go, who knows?

But what good would that kind of ‘terrible’ knowledge do for you?

There’s a lot of different answers to that, but a big one is: you will learn that this way of being, who you have been and what you have been like, it will teach you to see the difference between the truth and the lies in yourself. And what that then grants you is the ability to better discern the truth from lies in the world because you’ll understand how that invisible barrier was built between your eyes and seeing the real you, you’ll understand how it works, and you’ll be able to apply it to everything else that you want answers to.

All that will matter then is whether you put in the effort to read and research the things you want answers to, because you’re not just going to find the answers to your questions out of thin air. You need to read and you need to think.

So what we’re really in the business of here on this forum is helping people wake up. That’s what Gurdjieff was about, that’s what The Wave is about, and from there, that’s what the psychological reading and historical reading builds on and fortifies. And every bit of it involves learning to see what’s right in front of our faces that other people can’t see.

So you say you ordered In Search of the Miraculous, and you should really order the The Wave series of books. If you’re really serious about learning to see the unseen, take your time and read those books. At the same time, keep thinking about your life, yourself, your past, in light of the ideas presented.
 
My understanding is that the "Wave" teachings are based on channeled knowledge? I have a book called Ra The Law of One, have not read it yet but it is also channeled knowledge. What is the general belief here regarding that book?

Hi Erowid,

Welcome.

While Joe's commentary has made my day, personally I'd also second Temperance's advice. The Ra material can be a bit of an acquired taste and (the 5 books) could possibly wait until a later date?

Your best bet, imo, is to start with the Cassiopaea website, there's an intro, and The Wave series is available there too. Have fun :-)

'Amazing Grace' as a starter, followed by 'The Wave' and a sampling of a couple of others (the Grail Quest and the Destiny of Man is cracker imo) perhaps not a bad way to wet your feet?

Cheers

J
 
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