Tom Carr:
In the Vedanta tradition, which comes out of the teaching of RamaKrishna and Vivekenanda, they say that the only measure of spiritual experience or attainment is how it changes your behavior.
Do you agree of disagree with this?
I think doing that is kind of like judging how well off somebody is by how much they spend. While it's true that richer people tend to spend more money than poorer people, not everybody who spends a lot is well off - they might just be spending beyond their means. Likewise, while having certain insights might change your behavior, not everybody who acts in the way someone with certain insights does has those insights.
This presupposes that what actually distinguishes level of attainment is insight into the nature of reality, not behavior.
That being said, the only noticeable thing, from somebody else's point of view, is behavior.
It depends what your goal is. What's the reason you ask the question? If it's as a way to orient your practice, then I think it is not the best way - just like spending money won't necessarily make you richer, behaving a certain way won't necessarily lead to attainment.
If it's to determine whether somebody is attained, then I enjoy the DhO/KFD approach: there are maps to awakening, certain stages are marked by certain things, certain things become impossible at certain stages, so, based on how somebody describes their experience, you can get a good idea of where they are at, if you know what to look for.
Tom Carr:
If you agree, even partially, what changes in your behavior have you noticee connected with your attainment?
i would say the changes have been mostly internal, for me. i get less attached to things, it seems... i dnno, this question might best be answered by people who interact with me. anyone noticed any changes in my posting patterns over the past year? hehe...