By Anthony Garner (zenothestoic.com)
and Keith (mysticexperiences.net)
This is a correspondence by Anthony Garner and Keith on their first impressions of an interview by Dr. Robert Lawrence Kuhn on Closer To Truth, YouTube, of Dr Ananda Guruge Ananda Wahihana Palliya Guruge, known as Ananda W.P. Guruge, who was a Sri Lankan diplomat, Buddhist scholar and writer.
Dr. Guruge was the former Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Sri Lanka to UNESCO, France, and United States during the period from 1985 to 1994. Guruge was adjunct professor of Religious Studies at Cal State Fullerton and was the dean of academic affairs at University of the West.
KEITH: I thought this might trigger your interest, Anthony.
It seems to outline a profound analysis of the stages of MERs I experienced.
It’s a welcome serendipitous validation as my human experience wanes …
ANTHONY: It is an interesting interview . I always find it somewhat amusing to have transcendence described in “digital” or separable stages. In my own experience it has been analogue and incremental, continuous in other words.
K: According to Dr. Grunge we have to be qualified in one stage before going on to the next ‘stage’. That’s how I took his explanation.
His ‘stages’ might have gone that way with me actually, but I never noticed. There is much I wouldn’t know now without the earlier foundational revelations.
A: I also find it conspicuous that Buddhists remain fairly quiet on the existence of a soul or some sort of life after death. In this talk, logically some entity must exist which has sloughed off human frailty and personality but it is not very clear what is left.
I have sometimes seen nirvana translated as a “snuffing out” and I am sometimes prone to think that indeed once the “person” and all his failings are gone, pure consciousness may equate to nothingness. Not that I am opposed to nothingness.
K: He did refer to a state above the mundane, (ie, all matter and biological sentience?) where we are finally un-“fettered”.
He said we either come back from there for our final qualification, or we progress fully un-“fettered” – (ie., pure spirit? cosmic consciousness?). So, there is no after death human ‘life’ as we know it according to Dr. Gurunge.
A: He did. Perhaps that is the right way to look at it. Although I always have a feeling that the ultimate aim of Buddhism may be to cease to exist at all. Which, in a Schopenhauer sort of way, may not be a bad ending!
K: If the words of one Sufi guru were true, there are no failures – so we’ll soon find out – if we haven’t already, Anthony!!
I also notice he never mentioned whether his take on the Buddhist way was from his school’s dictum, or some buddhists’ actual experiences of MER, or from what The Buddha is reported to have said … How did he know these things? Did he experience them?
His curriculum vitae suggests his lifetime of outward scholarly study of this subject might merit some caution …
A: Coming back to Dr Gurunge’s claim, “we have to be qualified in one stage before going on to the next ‘stage’.
I do have a strong sense that he is right in that. Somehow. Whether there is an afterlife or whether it’s just about escaping misery on earth, I have found great truth in the necessity of abandoning such things as anger and greed. It just seems right – and I certainly feel better, deeply better, when the human emotions are far distant. I still have work to do on “anger” – particularly if I am taken unaware like with somebody nearly running me over or suffering aggression on the roads. I just feel better and indeed “above” or transcended when I can remain on the other side of such emotion.
K: Yes, but how did he know these things? Did he experience them?
By the way, did you notice the interviewer, Dr. Robert Lawrence Kuhn’s facial body language, his sceptical, patronising and even silent closed eyes of tolerant rejection at one point? I’ve never seen any of these reactions by Dr. Robert Lawrence Kuhn in any of his multitude of scientific interviews.
A: I always wonder that with these talking heads. And indeed is he “just” a scholar! Quite possibly. Perhaps that is why the interviewer was less than friendly towards him.
But in any event, it was a useful and interesting video. And there were strong elements of “truth” there, I felt.
K: Yes, I agree …
Mystical Experiences of Reality 