Namaste!

I welcome you with great love and great respect. As a sivite Swami and of a variety of tantric yoga, I must agree with the previous post on this subject. Even after full enlightenment and seasoning into Sahaj Samadhi, the body is still subject to pratabhada karma until mahasamadhi where the physical body no longer exists. My Guru, Swami Muktananda had a heart condition and diabetes. This Swami has many physical problems and much pain frequently. In the highter chakras, you still feel the pain, but it bothers you less.

Swami Swarupananda Sivadass Giri

> I don't know how that particular quote really propogates that.
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It propagates the idea that enlightenment renders one an uncritical idiot who doesn't care about anything.

>I want to be at a point where I could watch my finger rot off and beam fucking love for the Mother at it.
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Not to make light of your personal situations at this time, but a pre-frontal lobotomy would probably do the trick nicely.

The fact is that these kinds of stories are myths which have propagated through time, propelled by the tendency of spiritual types to believe anything that gets shoved down their throats. I'm sure Babajan was an awesome individual who inspired many, but it's just as likely that she suffered from a nervous disorder that prevented her from feeling pain as it was the fact of her enlightenment which allowed her to watch her finger drop off.

The bottom line is that self-realization is a recognition of an EXISTING state, not a new one. Anything you get from self-realization you have RIGHT NOW, regardless of whether this has been noticed or not. The Magic Gift Bag From God theory of enlightenment, while sickeningly prevalent, is straight-up, unmitigated bullshit and the biggest impediment to realization that God has ever devised.

This is a group about Ramakrishna. He's regarded as the pre-eminent saint of the last 100 or so years. Look at how much he suffered through his throat cancer. Enlightenment is no guarantee of anything save the direct and experiential understanding of your own nature as the Self. The body is still the body and will behave like a body, including experiencing severe pain just as Ramakrishna did during his illness just before his mahasamadhi.

I'm not trying to be mean and belittle what you and your friends are going through, Saul. These are the things that suck about life. I'm just not convinced – based on my research into the real lives of saints and my knowledge of the lives of realizers I know personally – that realization gets you out of suffering. It gets you out of being the one who suffers, but as long as there's a body, there's going to be suffering, short of some kind of mental illness that prevents the perception of pain, hagiographic representations to the contrary notwithstanding.