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Jim and His Karma
2111 Posts |
 Posted - Feb 14 2008 : 01:22:55 AM
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You may want to have a look at this (but read my posting, below, first, for warnings!)
http://www.svabhinava.org/Dia-Gnosi...ss-frame.php
I've read it multiple times, and have lots of thoughts. Let me fling them forth:
His writing is horrendously unreadable. The worst sort of pointy headed academic-speak. I just scan through fast, hoping to grab the gist even if half of it evades me. Like I'm reading middle english or something
But it's worth it. First, I'm sort of dumbfounded and amazed by how right he is, at least re: kundalini and yoga in general (I don't try to follow all his academic points). There's even some poetry there, and some buzzy wisdom.
Forgetting academics, this is someone with real insight. Though I think we may NEED to forget academics, because while the guy is brilliant and has a PhD and sounds right out of a Harvard post-doc conference, his field seems to be jive pseudo-science, if I understand correctly.
But he's organized things uncommonly well, makes some really wonderful leaps and connections, and will hopefully be the guy REAL scientists go to one day when they get serious about trying to model yoga. I really like his distinction between "genital puberty" and 'postgenital puberty". And I like how he brings the alchemy concept usually found in Taoism into the yogic model. Don't miss the stuff under the heading "The Postgenital Pubescent "Alchemies"". And check out his 14 reasons why kundalini and other yogic phenomena have remained so obscure and esoteric to westerners (or, as he puts it, "How could maturational phenomena worthy of such a genetic characterization as I assert be so unknown and rare?"  ) |
Edited by - Jim and His Karma on Feb 14 2008 01:35:42 AM |
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AYPforum
351 Posts |
Posted - Feb 14 2008 : 10:10:01 AM
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| Moderator note: Topic moved for better placement |
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scottfitzgerald
USA
65 Posts |
Posted - Feb 14 2008 : 2:05:35 PM
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Jim-
Good call on that paper. I liked it very much, however, I agree, mostly, his style of writing, though filled with excess parentheticals, all designed to add further support for his argument, is at once, and on second reading, both an excuse to re-read and bring out the dictionary...with that said the information very interesting.
I am going to have to read it a few more times to truly get a handle on my thoughts. First gut check says it does bring quite a few threads together in a neat package.
I'd like to see the stack of books and papers he used for source material.
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Suryakant
USA
259 Posts |
Posted - Feb 14 2008 : 2:59:02 PM
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| Interesting treatise - thanks for posting that link, Jim. |
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Jim and His Karma
2111 Posts |
Posted - Feb 14 2008 : 3:17:53 PM
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Scott, just fwiw, I get a very strong intuitive feeling there'd be an extremely steep curve of declining results if any of us tried to really bear down and grok every last phrase.For one thing, he's not talking to yogis. He's talking to academics, and the more treacherous bundles of syntax are about pleading his point to THOSE guys (i.e. "there's something to this yoga stuff, and don't believe what you've heard!"). It's not necessary for us to track him closely on his argument, since we're already bought in.
I read him like a laboratory mouse would read the report on his behavior. That is, with 1. a sense of amused recognition, 2. a few insights of the "I never thought of it THAT way!" sort, and utter perplexity about passages of little interest to me as a mouse. :)
I'd recommend reading it like you'd read Beowulf or some other archaic text...not expecting to get every last detail, just skating the surface, picking up the gist, and scooting ahead when things get knotted up. |
Edited by - Jim and His Karma on Feb 14 2008 3:22:14 PM |
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scottfitzgerald
USA
65 Posts |
Posted - Feb 14 2008 : 8:47:00 PM
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Jim-
I find Shakespeare the same way, except for the parts meant for the farting groundlings. :) My crowd.
It may all mean nothing but it is just more source for the wave of things to come.
Yankees or Mets?
sf
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Stuart Sovatsky
