Doc:

You said: "Seraphis mentions a man named Hawkins who was "self-realized" (i.e. Buddha on earth?).  First off, it always stuck me that those who are highly evolved in love or spirit would rarely claim to be so - but I digress."

I believe that you make a key point.  My feeling is that if a person really had spiritual wisdom he wouldn't claim to be enlightened for two main reasons:

1. He would be well aware than many people end up following supposed enlightened ones like mindless sheep, and wouldn't want to contribute to such spiritual error.
2. Related to what you said about Swedenborg, he would understand that when souls rejoin the spirit world levels of being become available in a way where it isn't reasonable to conclude that there are some so-called enlightened people who know the totality of truth.

David Hawkins has this calibration system set up where he measures how enlightened different people are (supposedly). Below is some of the people he has graded. I am familiar with many of them and they are  not masters of spiritual wisdom. Some of them are quite unethical, yet Hawkins rates them as being more enlightened than Mother Theressa. He's also a big supporter of ACIM.


Huang Po                   960
Gandhi                       760
Mother Theresa           710
Meister Eckhart          700
Chief Detroit               650
Karmapa                    630
Muktananda               750
(Had young female disciples housed in his ashram close to his room so he could have sex with them.)
Vivekananda               610
(visited brothels)
Ramakrishna              620
Rabbi Moses de Leon  720
Nisargadatta Maharaj  720
Ramana Maharshi      720
Ramesh Balsekar       760
(Used his position as a guru to make sexual advances towards his disciples)
Confucius                   590
St. Patrick                 590
Wallace Black Elk      499
John Calvin                580
John Wesley             360
Martin Luther             580
Dalai Lama                570
Maharishi                  410
Robert Powell            575
Joel Goldsmith          455
HWL Ponnja             370
(Claimed that he had enlightened a number of his students, and later came up with differing versions of who is enlightened. Some of his students that he labeled as enlightened ended up being very unethical people.)
Wei Wu Wei             475
Charles Filmore         485
Padmasambava          595
Satchitananda           605
Meher Baba              240
Sri Karumay              221
Tenzin Gyaltsen         599
Alice Bailey               445
Vernon Howard          660
Peter Ousepensky     335
Robert Schuller          405
Thich Naht Hahn        460
Nostradamus             220
Yogananda                540
(Had affairs with his married disciples and claimed they were lovers in past lives.)
Lao Tzu                     520
Alan Watts                485
John Blofield              465
Poonjaji                     520
(This is the same person as HWL Poonja, yet a different rating.)
Bernadette Roberts    445
Ram Das                   420
Chungliang Al Huang  405
C.W. Leadbetter         485
John Bradshaw          460
M Scott Peck            475
Gangaji                     475
(Her husband was supposedly an enlightened disciple of HWL Poonja just as she was, yet he had an affair with a young disciple for several years.)
Joseph Smith            520
Emmett Fox              470
Thomas Merton          520
Hazrat Khan              499
Sant Thahar Singh     315
C.S. Lewis                390
Sri Siva (Sri Guruji)    220
Joseph Campbell       410

I could  say more about some of the above people, but you probably get the point.

P.S. Hawkins calibrates Jesus at 1,000 and himself at 990.

Just a note of caution:

Unless you read Hawkins work and it is best to start with 'The Eye of the I" and evaluate his description of his enlightenment experience on the basis of the three works in which he explains his life experience which ends up with self-realization you won't be able to evaluate his claim... which is all it is a claim... one thing that is interesting he seems not to have made this claim until 30 years after the fact and after many years in seclusion... but, as with Ramakrishna and others there is no way to know for sure if they say the did what the say they did... but the work and teaching does give one a clue if one knows what one is looking at... there is a consistency that is more than coincidence... but 'self-realization' is a tricky thing to identify... it is personal, experiencial and not transferable... it is a matter of grace that it occurs at all... so no amount of intellectualizing about it will advance the issue... it is immutable... you either believe or you don't... what they say is instructive as to what the absolute experience is all about... but, YOU... still have to cross that Rubicon yourself... you come alone and you go alone...

As far as the teachings of these beings are concerned they can be very problematic because there are no absolutes in the physical plane... every system developed breaks down under picyune analysis and every concept can be twist out of all proportion to its original intent...

But it still remains incumbant on YOU to find the truth... luckily you have ETERNITY to do it.

S.




recoverer wrote on Mar 24^th, 2011 at 1:24pm:

Seraphis:

Perhaps some people will listen to their inner master and understand that a genuine person of wisdom wouldn't come up with such a rating system.

Regarding reading his books, there have been many fraudulent gurus that have been able to come up with words that impress people.

Also, once a person has developed some discrimination and has learned to listen to his intuition, in many cases it isn't necessary for him to read many of the words a person said (or wrote) in order to get an accurate feeling for what that person is about.

If a person has changed from the inside to an extent where he is able to live according to qualities such as love, honesty and integrity,  it is rather meaningless how good he is at discoursing in a supposed profound manner.

Perhaps the most insidious deceivers are those who seem profound as they deceive. Some are so clever that they mislead people in a way where the misled believe they are being benefited.

Sometimes information is presented in a way where it is partly true, yet its overall effect is limiting. I believe it is worthwhile to post the below again (from the  Robert Bruce thread).

----

The  below is from J.M. Pardy’s book “Awakening to the Reconnection” (pages 184-185). Balance recommended it at the below thread. I believe it relates to some of what we discussed.

http://afterlife-knowledge.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1287573466

-When I first saw this man, I could see as he stood in front of me that behind him were hundreds of  souls, followers of his. They were all asleep. They looked like zombies. They were awake, yet they were asleep. This man had taken a position of leadership, yet he himself didn’t have the answers to help them awaken. It was like the blind leading the blind, so to speak.

Actually, I had another dream along the same lines as this one where I was taken to another well-known leader in the spiritual community. This was a much nicer encounter, but the same message was in it. In the dream I was taken to this man. He was holding meditation classes. I do use his meditation CDs; I love them and have ever since I started using them.
He walked up to me, and we were facing each other. Once again I noticed that the souls he was training were all walking around as if they were asleep, just wandering aimlessly.

He asked me, “How did you get the code?”

I said I couldn’t tell him.

“But how did you get it? I need that code,” he said.

I said, “I’m sorry, I just can’t tell you.”

He then handed me his meditation CD, saying, “You have changed it.”

“Yes,” I said, “I have changed a few things.”
He said, “That’s fine.”

With that, the dream ended. The code they were looking for was the one to awaken the soul to the dream world. I don’t know why during this encounter my higher self would pass it on, but I know there must have been a reason and I will leave it at that for now.

Albert, it is not even worth talking about further.  Anyone who looks at that list knows he is not truly enlightened.  It is basically a guarantee.  None of the earnest explorers I've met or conversed with would rate the state of enlightenment with a point system, give Jesus 1000 points and themselves 990.  It is so far fetched and so ridiculous that, as I said in my first post about it, there is nothing more to say.  Who could ever take anything this person says seriously?

recoverer wrote on Mar 24^th, 2011 at 2:46pm:


Give me a break. Your suggestion of what a true measure of one who would help humanity is ludicrous and amazingly dimwitted from some one who knows all the answers like yourself.

S.

Compared to what there is to know, yes, I am quite dimwitted. It'll be quite a while before I can claim I'm a 990. This being the case, I certainly don't have all of the answers. I do feel a little wackadoodle now and then.


Seraphis1 wrote on Mar 24^th, 2011 at 3:50pm:

Seraphis:

When you say people become one with God, do you mean that they still exist in some way?

If so, in what way do they exist?