Welcome to this site where those interested in non-duality, specifically in the Direct Path Method of the Advaita Vedanta Nonduality Teachings, can submit questions and where discussions focus on “our” original nature and on dwelling in the natural state. The Nisarga or natural system of yoga, as presented by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj of the Navnath sampradaya lineage, is offered.
FROM A SITE VISITOR: (Reference is to the 17 February 2008 posting) Today you wrote about the re-purified (or unblocked) consciousness. Which is it, or do those mean the same thing?
F.: First, please understand this: many persons residing in the neighborhood from which these posts are offered commute to work in a large nearby city. Some drive a car to work; some travel via mass transit; others pool in large, company-owned vans.
Conservation and environmental issues notwithstanding, it matters less to them how the journey is completed and more that the journey is completed. The same is true for those seeking to complete the “journey” to Full Realization. The suggestion is, don't become so focused on wording used at one step of the "journey" that you stop moving along the "path."
The word “dilemma” (Greek, “di”=“two” and “lemma”=“alternatives, choices or propositions”) refers to a “difficult situation” where a person is forced to choose between two propositions, neither of which is a satisfactory alternative.
(For example, in some “relationships,” dictatorial types lay out this ground rule that is rooted in the reasoning fallacy called “impossible conditions”: “It’s either my way or the highway.” Related reasoning fallacies that dominant human thought include “abandoning discussion”; “affirming the consequence”; “apriorism”; “post hoc”; and “false conditions and alternatives.”)
The “relative dilemma” is that persons, programmed with concepts of duality, are limited to “impossible conditions” and thus face “difficult situations” throughout the entire relative existence. A “dilemma” that certain women born into one particular religion face is either (1) continue to live and continue to be beaten if you show an ankle in public or (2) die and become a sex slave to martyred males in your religion.
The most common dilemmas have all been generated by those who claim to be “religious” or “spiritual” and who claim that those roles allow them to define clearly what is right or wrong, what is good or bad, and what is moral and immoral. In the process, they claim those categories can be applied absolutely throughout a relative existence.
The caution here is to avoid being trapped in a seeker’s dilemma such as this: either (a) there must be one correct set of words that I must find to explain what happens to the consciousness after programming or (b) I cannot complete the “journey” to Full Realization.
The fact is, several views of what happens, as relates to the consciousness post-manifestation, have been set forth by various Advaitin teachers:
(A) Some Advaitins consider the consciousness to have been warped or distorted via programming and conditioning and thus capable of being re-purified via the Advaita Teachings which can purge the beliefs which result in distortion.
(B) Some consider the consciousness to be pure but blocked from knowing ItSelf in its purest state because of learned concepts and ideas that have been accumulated in “the mind.”
In this regard, you may have seen postings here that referred to the “miasma” (Greek, “pollution” or “contaminated air that leads to sickness” or “a thick vaporous atmosphere or fog that prevents clear seeing”). An accumulation of concepts is like an accumulation of fog that prevents the consciousness from seeing clearly.
The related Advaitin pointer is that concepts (learned ignorance) generate a fog that prevents the consciousness from functioning as the Pure Witness or True Self.
(C) A more exact view of “the relative dilemma” is that it is a consequence of persons being programmed, being conditioned, being taught ignorance, and having learned ignorance, after which the consciousness no longer knows ItSelf only but is distracted (by dualistic concepts) from its originally-singular awareness of its Pure, True Self.
The relative result is that persons do not understand their original nature and are thus prevented from dwelling in a natural state during the consciousness’s period of manifestation. That is the more relevant pointer for the seeker on the "path." Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)
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