Dear James Swartz,
During my last visit to Rishikesj/Laxumanjhula, a Swami suggested me to stop blogging. And I did.
(Report in Dutch: hansvandergugten.nl/?p=4129).
This lasted for quite some time, yet is was temporally.
It is one of the reasons that this mail to you took so long to surface.
Buble, buble, blup: here it is.
I want to bring to your attention a biography. For two reasons.
For one thing, it is one of the most inspiring life stories that I have read since long.
And, second reason, in it the author describes how the ongoing attacks by his opponents, his collegue medical doctors in France (at least the representatives of their organisations), in some strange way were supplying him with the energy to withstand those attacks. (He even based some later reseach on this noticing).
I am speaking of the biography of Alfred Tomatis.
(The Conscious Ear: My Life of Transformation Through Listening).
As this man was a workaholic, his biography is basically a detailed description of his work and of all the discoveries he made about our hearing ability.
And also of all the methods that he developped to help people benefit from this.
I myself ‘discovered’ Tomatis when I read about him in Peter Sloterdijk’s magnum opus the Spheres trilogy.
At some point, as one does nowadays, I walked over to the computer and searched for Alfred Tomatis. And there a whole new world opened up for me.
(Report in Dutch: hansvandergugten.nl/?p=1947).
I got goose bumps and knew: this is for me.
It brought me a lot. Drawings, amongst other things. (Examples).
For some reason Alfred Tomatis was strongly opposed by the medical world. They sued him time and again. As he says: “The College of the Order of medicine called me regularly to account for professional or behavioral errors that I was accused of committing.”
His description of this ongoing suing ends with this: “By what my professional colleagues brought forward during the memorable meetings of the Disciplinary Board, I was not put down, but I just got energized by it.”
When I read this description, it suddenly dawned on me that it was strongly your way of answering my emails, that gave me the energy to give it another try.
I just share with you that this is something I have seen.
It was your out of proportion and extreme answers that geared me up.
(Two examples of your anwers that fired my brain up: Advaita vedanta is only for
mentally healthy people and people who can’t stand my way of critiszing colleques
are unfit for advaita vedanta).
So, now I am aware of this mechanism, there is also more choice in dealing with this way of being met.
For the rest: thanks for all you learned me during the ride. And also for bringing to my attention the existence of the ongoing discussion about neo advaita.
Here is the best page on this that I have found so far:
http://www.enlightened-spirituality.org/neo-advaita.html
Oh and by the way, this blog is a reply to your last answer to me.
You replied to my remark that I did not have the impression that you had read my review on your article on neo advaitins.
Your answer was clear and rather entertaining: “I didn’t read it, Hans. Honestly I am not interested in what you think of James, Vedanta, etc. Somehow your mind has created a relationship with someone that I don’t know. If it is a kind of catharsis for you, if it makes you feel good, please keep up this imaginary conversation. For me it is a complete bore. I am way less interested in me than you are. In fact the ‘me’ that you see is only a ‘me’ in your mind. Please don’t write me about this ‘me’ any more. If you do, I will mark your emails as spam. If you want to have a constructive conversation about Vedanta you can write Shiningworld and you will be assigned a teacher by someone other than me and you can begin a genuine inquiry. If you want to know what Shiningworld is about read the satsangs on the website with an open mind, meaning without the ‘James’ filter distorting everything. To repeat: this conversation is very tiresome. Don’t keep it up or you go into the spam box.”
Yet, it was not about what I thought about James, Vedanta etc.
It was a serious investigation in what you called your good arguments.
And yes, that was somewhat disappointing.
And an informative experience again.
Your way of answering had geared me up in the direction of also having my review published officially, preferably at the same page where your article appears.
Yet, having seen this above described mechanism gave me the choice to cool down.
And to leave it as it is: published on my very own website.
The Nirvana Fallacy
Ramji and Meji 1
Ramji and Meji 2
Ramji and Meji 3
Ramji and Meji 4
Ramji and Meji 5
Ramji and Meji 6
Ramji and Meji 7
Ramji and Meji 8
Ramji and Meji 9
Ramji and Meji 10
Ramji and Meji 11
What I see is an obsession with this guy Ramji, who however had made it clearly clear not wanting to be bothered anymore. So why not simply honour his wish?
Hello Derek,
You clearly did not understand the mechanism that I described.
The essence of this mechanism is that when someone suggests that you are not mentally healthy, this very fact unleashes the energy to oppose this ridiculous statement. That of course proves in the eyes of the beholder that you are nuts.
What can we do about this? Play the role of the idiot, or leave the playground.
From my generosity I did both.
Fine! But up to now I didn’t see you leave the playground yet.
By the way, I think you took the term mentally healthy rather emotionally, understandable since it was put in a challenging way, but there’s no need to be challenged even while being challenged, that actually is life’s whole trick. James was actually referring to the famous/notorious Vedanta qualifications who actually leave almost all of the world’s population fall short, unfortunately. So in this sense the whole world is kind of mentally disturbed. Well, you’ve only got to watch the news to have this confirmed. So for you no special reason to upset.
May love and peace dawn upon all!
Derek, it is important to me that you, rather sooner than later, come to understand the mechanism that I described.
Cause your behaviour in our past communication(s) is simular to that of James:
ignoring the content and reacting on supposed underlying layers of meaning and then playing the man instead of the ball (I trust that this translated Dutch expression is clear in English too), or more formally said: using Argumentum ad hominem.
(Ik schreef je dat nog geen week geleden al: “Je manier van reageren op
mijn berichten door de jaren heen en op mijn laatste bericht in het
bijzonder doet me denken aan een mechanisme dat Alfred Tomatis
beschrijft in zijn boek Het bewuste oor.
Oh, ik kan nu niet bij dat boek, het ligt in mijn bezette gastenverblijfje.
Maar ik ga binnenkort dat mechanisme beschrijven in een nog te creeren
blog/brief aan James Swartz. James deed namelijk iets soortgelijks als jij.
Als het af ik stuur ik je de link wel.”).
Also in the reply above, you pretend to know what was going on in James’ head when he wrote his first reaction to me a few years ago. Also here is no way that one can react on this, except by noticing what you are doing. My pleasure.
So, please, speak for yourself.
Oh, and about not leaving the playground: I mean with having left the playground, that I have abruptly stopped attending the lectures of James. And only after having done that, I wrote him my first open letter. And then, as I just have discovered and shared, it was the way he was responding that kept it going. Up till now.
And as long as there are things to be cleared up and to be understood, I will keep acting on the need for clarification and understanding that is quite strong in me.
The combination with my stamina in this, might have been the blend that made Isaac Shapiro call me the most persistent motherf*cker on earth.
(You can see this in context here: https://hansvandergugten.nl/?p=4307).
And, to be clear, this is just a guess for fun: actually I do not have any clue about what was going on in him/his mind/his brain/etcetera.
To begin with : In order to respond to you thoroughly, I tried to get into your communication with Shapiro. However, the sound quality there was so poor, that I had to give up. I suggest that you either tune up the quality or discard these items all together.
Furthermore I guess that our discussion could lead us somewhere, meaning that both of us could benefit from it, provided however that both sides keep an open attitude, this however is not sure at all.
Now, concerning the playground, I guess the topic has been cleared, clarifying however that even a stupid detail like this can give ground to a profound miscommunication, so what to say about the more serious topics?
Entering those then, I think I can clarify something, I hope you can stay here with the ball:
I hear you complaining that I – like James – do not answer the content of your words, but rather switch to another – meta – level assuming what you mean with your words. Well you’re right there and I’ll try to explain you why:
When – for example – I here someone say ‘When I see a rose, I am happy’ , honestly I am not in the least interested in that statement, instead I regard is as a part of the stupid ‘story’ through which people generally communicate. What I am rather interested in however is why seeing a rose makes that person happy, but what I’m really interested in is the compulsion that is behind the statement. So my investigation will be in that direction, since that is for me the topic i.e. the person making the remark is the ball and not the content of the remark. So, if you complain I’m playing the man instead of the man, I can understand that, but I hope you can understand my viewpoint now as well. This may also clarify the continuing discussion on ‘details’ , I hope.
So now actually it is up to the two of us to decide what we want from/with each other and this will be demanding. I only can share what I would like, ie a mutual sharing of our inner processes with a mutual open mind, taking an individual responsibility for ourselves, leaving out mutual complaints or accusations.
So frankly, Hans, I am not at all interested in your ideas, ideals or complaints but solely in you, in what drives you and in a mutual investigation in that field and exactly that I call self-enquiry and nothing else.
If you can find the same interest in me, then a wonderful meeting could take place and if not, nothing can be done about it.
It’s all fine with me anyhow,
Love to you.
Al voor het in het nieuws kwam als winnaar van de Ig Nobel Prijs 2015, had ik al een verslagje gelezen over het betreffende onderzoek.
http://nederl.blogspot.nl/2015/09/geen-5-minuten-zonder-dat-er-iemand-om.html
Vanmorgen zag ik de director’s cut van een interview met de winnaar door Marc van Oostendorp: http://nederl.blogspot.nl/2015/09/huh-movie.html
Zoals je in die video kunt leren is de naar informatie vragende onderbreking er op gericht zo bescheiden mogelijk te zijn.
Ik zou dan ook willen beginnen met een welgemeend “Huh?”
Maar in mijn al gememoreerde gulheid zal ik het hierbij niet laten. Later meer.
Gedetailleerd meer. Meta meer. En wat al niet meer meer.
Steeds als ik bijleer over hoe taal werkt zit er in mijn achterhoofd de vraag of ik iets kan vinden dat mij meer doet begrijpen van jouw manier van communiceren. Momenteel lees ik het prettige en leerzame boekje ‘Heb je nou je zin!
een zoektocht naar de mooiste, langste, diepste en laatste zinnen’ van ook Marc van Oostendorp
Huh?
Wat precies begrijp je niet aan mijn uiteenzetting over huh?
Maar nu eerst mijn precisering van mijn eigen gelegenheidshuh, dat mijns inziens duidelijk bedoeld was om aan te geven dat het vragen om verduidelijking iets is waar ook wetenschappelijk over is en wordt nagedacht.
Mijn precisering.
Vooraf de opmerking dat je antwoord voor mij herkenbaar van struktuur is. En je brengt meerdere nieuwe onderwerpen in.
Nu leg je me uit waarom je niet op mijn inhoud ingaat.
Dat doe je overigens door er een spiritueel sausje over uit te smeren. En het is weer de bekende valkuil voor mij, om in te vallen. Hoe ik ook reageer, jij hoeft daar natuurlijk nooit op te reageren. En zo gaat (ging) het ook steeds. En als ik dan eens niet op jouw inhoud reageerde, kwam er het verwijt dat ik niet op jouw inhoud reageerde. (Onze communicatie is zelfs op mijn blogs zo goed gedocumenteerd, dat je als je wilt zelf de voorbeelden kunt opzoeken).
Ook zie ik af van de extra energie die het kost om in het Engels te schrijven. Het is toch vooral aan mezelf gericht, en ook een beetje aan jou. Dat wel. Ik sla het tamelijk lege en speculatieve begin maar over. Ik reageer op een paar zinnen.
Daar gaat ie:
Je schreef: “I hear you complaining that I – like James – do not answer the content of your words, but rather switch to another – meta – level assuming what you mean with your words. ”
Ik heb je al eerder en vaker de meester van de kleine verschuiving genoemd. Hier doe je het weer.
Ik neem James niet kwalijk dat hij switched naar een meta level. Hij kwam slechts met een in algemeenheden verstopte aanval op de man. Geen enkele reactie op de inhoud, ook geen metareactie. Ik zei dat jij speculeerde op wat er mogelijk in James’ hoofd omging.
Ik vind je uitleg over de bal en de man, de man de bal zijnde, getuigen van een ongrijpbaar type arrogantie. In feite hanteer je een soort zelfonderzoekmodel dat je op de ander toepast. Zonder de ander daarin te betrekken. Een soort zweefmolen met in elk stoeltje een stukje speculatie van eigen deeg. Dan heb je natuurlijk altijd gelijk. En het zweeft zo lekker.
Je schrijft ook: “So frankly, Hans, I am not at all interested in your ideas, ideals or complaints but solely in you, in what drives you and in a mutual investigation in that field and exactly that I call self-enquiry and nothing else.”
Je interesse in wat je mij noemt, los van alles wat ik communiceer, wordt erg op prijs gesteld. Al heb ik geen idee wat je ermee bedoelt. Voor mij is zelfonderzoek iets dat zich in jezelf afspeelt. Dat jij dat bij mij denkt te kunnen doen, zonder met mij te communiceren is interessant, maar wordt door mij ervaren als een manier om de communicatie te laten voortduren zonder communicatie en daarvan de bal/de schuld steeds bij mij te leggen. Waarop ik dan, up till now, steeds reageerde. Met dank aan Alfred Tomatis voor het inzicht in dit mechanisme wil ik het hier verder bij laten.
Wellicht tot ziens in India.
Of om de hoek of zo.
All is well.
Het ga je goed.
My dear Hans,
I am very happy to let you know that I share your final conclusion grosso modo.
Also I am happy that I engaged in this last exchange, since for me personally it has now become clear that we have been ‘communicating’ all these years from completely different levels, with consequently all due misunderstandings. At least this has become clear now, so there’s no more need trying to explain or convince.
I wish you all the best and repeat my invitation to share a cup of coffee in relative mutual silence, whenever this might happen, be it here or indeed in India. I always felt you closest when words were less spoken.
Be well, love to you.
https://hansvandergugten.nl/?p=4362