Monday, May 19, 2008

THE “HEAVEN-HELL” DEBATE: How Religion Has Always Generated Dualistic Beliefs, Part Four

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An Advaita Vedanta realization, enlightenment, nisarga yoga site discussing non-duality (nonduality), your original nature, and dwelling in the natural state as revealed by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.

FROM A SITE VISITOR: Hey Floyd, I love your site!! Well, I was programmed by catholicism and I'm still having trouble realizing that there is no heaven/hell... I still have a fear that I may create my own hell or that there might be a hell.. How can I deprogram myself from this fear?

F.: Since the leaders of the earliest pagan religions began talking of mortals “here” and gods “there,” duality has been the stock and trade of religious and spiritual movements. No single source has contrived and then perpetuated the dissemination of duality more than religious and spiritual movements.

(“Maybe religious movements, floyd, but surely not spiritual movements, right?” If you take yourself to be spiritual but “others” are not doing what you do, then that will lead to your dualistic thought that “others” cannot be as spiritual as you. That is duality. If you take yourself to be spiritual now when you were not earlier, then that is duality and will also block you from knowing You.)

The pagan religions evolved into modern religions that adopted many of their teachings and practices. Included is the pagan tale that preceded the version plagiarized by Moses, a tale of a god who freed his enslaved people, who led them through a desert to a land of “milk, honey, and wine,” and who then returned to his home.

Included too is the modernized version of the ancient pagan sacrament of virgin sacrifice; of cutting out a beating heart; of passing it among the crowd as all ate the body and blood and thereby supposedly communed with the rain god to appease him.

This week across the globe, some two billion self-proclaimed Christians reenacted that vampirism-cannibalism ritual after hearing messages that were steeped in duality and never considered once how perverted an example they are modeling. Yet all three of the Abraham-based sky cults are preoccupied with blood:

the Jews killed animals and smeared blood, the Muslims beat themselves until they bleed, and many Christians display a wooden replica of Jesus with blood oozing from his hands and feet and side along with claiming that they are drinking his blood. They even sing that they have been “washed in the blood.”

After years of being exposed to such bizarre conduct, it becomes normalized in the “minds” of children conditioned in that environment. Is it any wonder, then, that persons programmed and conditioned to think all that is normal can arrive at an adult age and submit questions to this site that reek of naïveté?

Yet their questions are welcome and addressed since the greater wonder is that they have found the wherewithal to question even slightly the nonsense that they were taught and since, in some rare cases, the readiness has manifested to transcend belief in the dualities they were taught, including:

An angry god “there” punishes bad mortals “here” for being bad; god withholds rewards when people are not good; he uses “special, holy people” such as priests and preachers and imans and spiritual guides to define for followers what is considered right and wrong…what is considered moral and immoral…what is negative and positive…and what is decadent and what is proper. They even try to dictate which type sex is okay and which type is not.

Persons who identify themselves as being “religious” or “spiritual” are capable of discussing what they have been told and what they have read in so-called “holy books,” but the Realized Advaitin will ask,

“What do You know that You have never been told and that You have never read in any religious or spiritual book?”

“What have You come to realize via pointers that re-directed your attention away from what you have been told and from what you have read in religious and spiritual books to what You can be aware of by tapping into the inner resource?”

All that said, the religious and/or spiritual steps are the third steps of seven on the “journey” from body identification to Realization. “The Religious One” and “The Spiritual Giant” are the last two of the false personas that are adopted but finally forfeited among those who are eventually to realize.

Understand too that they are merely illusory upgrades of illusions: “I am a man/woman” becomes “I am a religious man/woman” or “I am a spiritual man or woman” leading to “I am a better man/woman” or “I am a good man/woman as a result of my religious and spiritual beliefs and behaviors.”

To work with a Fully Realized Advaitin teacher that understands the freedom available via the nisarga yoga system is to be guided to that which can reveal the truth that You know but cannot access since logic and reason have been disengaged by programming, conditioning, enculturation, and domestication.

It is also to be guided away from the unnatural and supernatural fiction that entraps the persons of the planet and it is to be guided to an understanding of one’s original nature. Please enter into the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION ON THIS TOPIC:

  • Click IT’S ALL BULLSHIT

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  • Click SPIRITUAL SOBRIETY
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  • Click WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I DIE?
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  • Click THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS “PEACE OF MIND” (There Is Only Peace If You’re Out of Your Mind)
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  • Click LIBERATION
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