Month: August 2024
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Does A Sage Suffer Or Experience Pain?
Dear Sara (not her actual name), The Direct Path Teaching In A Nutshell In this teaching: 1. The only thing we’re investigating is the nature of direct experience. 2. For analytic purposes, we can see experiential understanding unfold “in three ways”: Difference? What’s the difference [you ask] between embracing any felt experience that arises vs…
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Why It’s Good To Be Careful During Psychological Investigations Of Alleged Egos
One reason to be especially careful when it comes to examining and exposing ego-selves is that you can invariably “reify” them. Whatever framework you learn can, in fact, lead you to believe that the names it includes refer to real entities. Take Internal Family Systems (IFS): suppose that you come to see that certain patterns…
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Ramana Maharshi’s Stunning Answer To The Skeptic’s Problem Of The Criterion
The problem of the criterion, which is discussed in Pyrrhonian skepticism, states that in order to determine whether a claim is true there needs to be an appeal to a criterion by which the veracity of this claim can be known. However, once we call into question whether this criterion is that by which we…
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Is There Something Deeply Wrong With Me?
Question: Since the last meditation, I’ve been exploring the idea that there’s something wrong with me, something that will be surfaced or exposed. I didn’t realize the extent to which I’ve been living with this sense of dissatisfaction within myself and with the fear of being seen. There’s a very simple method to apply here.…
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‘Is Consciousness Fundamental–Or Has It Sprung From Matter?’
Question: When I use thought to drill down about, “What am I?“ I ultimately arrive at: “I am consciousness.” However, the question I cannot answer is: “Is consciousness fundamental, or has consciousness sprung from this self-replicating system of matter?” It seems to me that my brain supports consciousness and that when this physical body dies,…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 