Spiritual Teachers who Debate vs Spiritual Teachers who don't.

[Leo Gura]

3 hours ago, Nak Khid said:

Do seriously awake people do publicity stunts  ?

They could, if they seek publicity.

Osho was great at it.

Sadhguru got nothing better to do than fly around and charm people. He already finished his spiritual awakening process.

Sadhguru is just executing his life purpose of awakening the ignorant masses. Publicity can be useful for this. Ignorant masses love stunts. If Sahguru shot a fireball out of his ass, they'd all be impressed and start doing his yoga.

[Nak Khid]

2 hours ago, Nahm said:

@Nak Khid Solid post. Nicely done. 

thanks

 

[Nak Khid]

4 hours ago, Nak Khid said:

Do seriously awake people do publicity stunts  ?

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

They could, if they seek publicity.

Osho was great at it.

Sadhguru got nothing better to do than fly around and charm people. He already finished his spiritual awakening process.

Sadhguru is just executing his life purpose of awakening the ignorant masses. Publicity can be useful for this. Ignorant masses love stunts. If Sahguru shot a fireball out of his ass, they'd all be impressed and start doing his yoga.

this is an awakened teaching ?

[Derek White]

@Nak Khid The videos you point to are not debates and Sadhguru has criticized debating himself.

They are very very limited and won't take you all the way to Ultimate Truth.

You cannot teach people swimming, or connect them to being with debates. You cannot debate people properly with different experiences than you.

Reality cannot be put into mental models. Point of a debate is to pit one mental model against another. 

I recommend you watch the dialogue between J. Krishnamurti and David Bohm to see how much better a dialogue is than a debate.

[Derek White]

Also, it is pretty obvious you can never win a debate with Zakir Naik no matter how hard you try. Contrast him with any Spiritual person (Jk, Sadhguru).

Good Debater =/= Actualized

Also, (lol) you cannot articulate your experiences to people who haven't had them. So you may be saying something but people won't get it because in their experience it is not true. Debates require logic and logic relies on old experience. Their logic would be different than yours because of experience. 

Debates = Logic = past experiences/info. (shared; both debaters need to have similar experiences)

Therefore, debates don't lead to new experiences. They can utmost inspire you to seek what you don't know, but even that needs pretty high level of development. 

Edited November 18, 2019 by Derek White

[Nak Khid]

6 minutes ago, Derek White said:

@Nak Khid The videos you point to are not debates and Sadhguru has criticized debating himself.

 

they are debates

6 minutes ago, Derek White said:

 

They are very very limited and won't take you all the way to Ultimate Truth.

I didn't say the debates would take you to the ultimate truth

6 minutes ago, Derek White said:

You cannot teach people swimming,

yes you can

6 minutes ago, Derek White said:

You cannot debate people properly with different experiences than you

 

.The best and most proper type of debate is with people with different experiences than you

6 minutes ago, Derek White said:

. Point of a debate is to pit one mental model against another. .

yes

 

 

 

[Derek White]

1 hour ago, Nak Khid said:

The best and most proper type of debate is with people with different experiences than you

@Nak Khid Did you read my 2nd post? That refutes this and most of what you wrote. 

Saying Yes or No to my questions is not debating or productive. You need to have an explanation.

No, you can absolutely not learn swimming by debating. You need to practice in the water to do that. Can't believe this isn't common sense lol. 

Your definition of a debate is quite low if you consider that debating. That wouldn't fly in a scientific university setting. Only way you would win a debate with a person with different experiences is if that person has bad debating skills or you two agree to disagree. 

Anyway, moving beyond your mental model should be the goal. That's when real spiritual work begins. 

Edited November 18, 2019 by Derek White

[Nak Khid]

1 hour ago, Derek White said:

@Nak Khid Did you read my 2nd post? That refutes this and most of what you wrote. 

Saying Yes or No to my questions is not debating or productive. You need to have an explanation.

No, you can absolutely not learn swimming by debating. You need to practice in the water to do that. Can't believe this isn't common sense lol. 

Your definition of a debate is quite low if you consider that debating. That wouldn't fly in a scientific university setting. Only way you would win a debate with a person with different experiences is if that person has bad debating skills or you two agree to disagree. 

Anyway, moving beyond your mental model should be the goal. That's when real spiritual work begins. 

You did not say

you can't  learn swimming by debating.

you said this

1 hour ago, Derek White said:

You cannot teach people swimming, or connect them to being with debates.

I didn't understand what you meant because you put a comma in the sentence that doesn't have to be there and the fact that it is there suggested to me the two statements were unconnected.

However I see you meant this:   " You cannot teach people swimming or connect them to being with debates"

But it is said a little oddly.  Most people don't use "connect them to being" as a general term

If you just said

" You cannot teach people swimming by debating"

That is nice and clear. 

But if two swimming teachers were to debate the best way of teaching people to swim they could challenge each other and learn from each other as to what was the best method or one might learn one small improvement on their own method but not necessarily change their overall method.  It would be the same situation if they were spiritual practitioners representing different methods

1 hour ago, Derek White said:

You cannot debate people properly with different experiences than you.

 You said this but did not explain or prove why.  In fact it is wrong. The whole point of debating is to be exposed with an opposite point of view made by a person with different experiences yet addressing the same topic.

Edited November 18, 2019 by Nak Khid

[Derek White]

42 minutes ago, Nak Khid said:

You said this but did not explain or prove why

I think I did in my 2nd post here I'll quote it.

3 hours ago, Derek White said:

Also, (lol) you cannot articulate your experiences to people who haven't had them. So you may be saying something but people won't get it because in their experience it is not true. Debates require logic and logic relies on old experience. Their logic would be different than yours because of experience. 

Debates = Logic = past experiences/info. (shared; both debaters need to have similar experiences)

Therefore, debates don't lead to new experiences. They can utmost inspire you to seek what you don't know, but even that needs pretty high level of development. 

Yes, I agree with you that 2 swimming instructors can learn from a debate about improving their methods. This requires a lot of similar experiences and is sort of like pointing out a problem with someone’s math proof. However things become difficult once experiences are vastly different.

Debating is a problem when say for example, you get into a debate about colour with a group of isolated blind people who have never met anyone who can see except you. In a debate the blind people will not believe you, tell you there are no colours, and they’ll call you a liar. To prove to them colour exist they need to see, otherwise it’s just a belief, they don’t know.

 If they say “maybe you’re right” it ceases to be a debate, it become a conversation. Root of the word debate is ‘to fight’ and root of the word conversation is to converse.

J Krishnamurti does good conversation or if you prefer very high quality debates with people which you should check out. if you’re interested in spiritual debates.

[JustThinkingAloud]

Excuse my ignorance, I didn't read the whole thread, I got a bit lost in it. But isn't this whole forum about a debate/conversation? Leo doesn't get involved in all of it but he does get involved.

[LfcCharlie4]

@Leo Gura This is so true, he's such an advanced being he has to find ways to relate to the masses, his marketing is top-notch though and more and more 'normal people' seem to open up to Sadhguru and his events, a businessman combined with his awakening and mystic side is a lethal combination in a stage Orange society and the more people he helps awaken the better! 

[Leo Gura]

4 hours ago, LfcCharlie4 said:

and the more people he helps awaken the better!

After his death Isha will turn into a cult.

[Harikrishnan]

13 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

After his death Isha will turn into a cult.

Will moderators here turn actualized.org forum into a cult if u die now ?

[Thewritersunion]

@Harikrishnan no

[Scholar]

I find that debates, from the perspective of an intellectual humble observer, can be a great tool to reveal obvious flaws in a teachers way of thinking and therefore their general comprehension ability.

If I for example would see Leo commiting major logical fallacies in conversations related to the world I would get suspicious of the validity of his claims regarding politics, science and so forth. This is however not as much related to spirituality.

 

I get suspicious of people who desperately avoid debates because they might be attempting to control their environments so flaws in their thinking cannot be revealed and therefore their authority be upheld. I know this mechanic to well because I used to do so myself.

When there is a skilled debater they will be able to formulize a flaw in thinking and reveal it to a larger audience. There is a very fine line as to when someone can say they are beyond orange and when they are actually avoiding orange so that they do not have to deal with something intellectually.

 

Anyways, debates can happen very playfully to test each others ideas and be great tools to exercise and learn formal operational thinking, which even nowadays most people lack, including many advanced spiritual teachers.

Just because someone is beyond orange does not mean they have integrated all of the aspects that can be learned in orange. Someone who studies logic and the like for example will be far more masterful at these aspects of orange than any Yellow teacher will. A Tier 2 teacher would always do good to work to integrate more aspects of orange instead of simply disregarding them.

 

This is the very reason why Leo is Leo. He has a sophisticated integration of Orange and for that reason has advantages over many spiritual teachers who did not bother to integrate these aspects as well.

The "optimal" human being would be someone who fully integrates all stages to a masterful degree. Someone who fought in wars and killed people, who then realized the value of honor and religion, then spend decades studying reason, science and philosophy, then proceeded to open his heart to all creates and expanding his empathy and so forth and so forth. This is obviously beyond the capacity of any modern human being, so we will lack in many stages of the spiral. Today it is especially things like red and blue that are lacking in us, which is the typcial "The civilized man could not survive a week in the wild".

 

This arrogance of being a higher stage and therefore having authority in all aspects of life is very misleading.

[LfcCharlie4]

@Leo Gura or a religion ? what can he do to prevent that? 

[VeganAwake]

12 hours ago, Nak Khid said:

this is an awakened teaching ?

I love that you posted this...❤

His words cannot even begin to paint the picture of his deep understanding...

He spoke about what he knew and he was wise enough to not speak about what no one knows. ❤

His words were golden bricks laying the path home...

Thank you!!?

 

[Nahm]

It’s not even a debate if Sadhguru is involved. It’s like seeing Santa, and there’s this other stuff going on.

[Apparition of Jack]

I think we have to distinguish between "debating someone" (i.e. pointing out flaws in someone's reasoning, which even Leo does), and "having a debate" (i.e. setting up an argument between two sets of people with a pre-agreed upon position which needs to be supported/opposed), which is usually nothing more than mental masturbation for people with too much time on their hands. The first one can be a useful tool for awakening (assuming you're doing it with the intention of getting the other person to critically examine their worldview and aren't just trying to puff up your own ego), the other is pretty useless.

[Nak Khid]

49 minutes ago, Apparition of Jack said:

I think we have to distinguish between "debating someone" (i.e. pointing out flaws in someone's reasoning, which even Leo does), and "having a debate" (i.e. setting up an argument between two sets of people with a pre-agreed upon position which needs to be supported/opposed), which is usually nothing more than mental masturbation for people with too much time on their hands. The first one can be a useful tool for awakening (assuming you're doing it with the intention of getting the other person to critically examine their worldview and aren't just trying to puff up your own ego), the other is pretty useless.

A presidential debate is not only for entertainment it is to test a persons ideas by hard questions, things they might avoid or spin otherwise