An Advaita Vedanta philosophy site, focusing on Realization, enlightenment, nisarga yoga, non-duality (nonduality), your original nature, dwelling as your natural state, and the teachings of Maharaj.
FROM A SITE VISITOR: Would you talk more about how humans can live by instincts when what we have to do is far more complicated nowadays than what the deer in your area have to do. (Not trying to be smart or smart aleck--just trying to understand Thank you. Jonathan
F.: Hello Jonathan, and thank you for the question. The fact is that you are living by instincts every waking moment but have not yet recognized that. Everyone on the planet either lives (1) in a fashion that happens naturally, instinctively, intuitively—as do the Realized or lives (2) in a fashion that is driven by a herd instinct and/or lives (3) in a fashion that is driven by instinctual variants.
If living in fashion #1, then what happens…happens, and it happens "automatically" without thought. There is no do-er with attachment. If housing and transportation and clothing are paid for by a school district, for example, then teaching can happen, but there is no fear-based, desire-driven ego-state called “The Teacher” that takes itself to be real and that stays embroiled in the egotism and game-playing that always accompany the acceptance of a false identity.
As an example of the herd instinct in fashion #2, note the insanity of the chaotic shifts by those alarmists who work in the stock market or who participate in the madness of commodity trading. If you have ever witnessed them in action, then you have seen at play the lunacy that generates unsubstantiated "bear markets" or "bull markets." Some investors or psychoanalysts cite such behavior as an example of the “herd mentality.”
Those frenzied rallies or sell-offs adumbrate the turmoil of the relative existence which is like the misery or joy that can be experienced by a commodity day trader: for most persons on the planet, there is often an ever-shifting, never-stable, constantly fluctuating experience that is characterized by dualistic highs and lows. There is no “individual choice”…only a series of fear-based, desire-driven behaviors that are determined by the external influences of the panicky or controlling masses.
That "lifestyle" can also serve as a microcosm of “the world” which most people take to be real and which they struggle to try to navigate each day, yet they are trying to navigate in their sleep and thus generate more and more chaos.
Among persons, the term “herd instinct” can refer to a “mind”-set that prevents them from marching to the beat of a different drummer and, instead, inspires them to think and talk and behave like everyone else in the general population of the planet. Some call it the “sheep syndrome” which inspires persons to behave like sheep, always following a leader, even when the path leads to destruction.
Interestingly, those who sing “I once was blind but now I see” provide another example of the herd instinct, believing that they have been fully awakened and can see clearly; in fact, they are only seeing their newest personas and not the truth at all, bogged down as they are at the third of seven steps to Full Realization. Here is an e-mail received several weeks ago that provides an opportunity to look at an example of such blindness as well as what the relative existence is like when driven by the herd instinct:
FROM A SITE VISITOR: The religious and the spiritual are unnatural? You are wrong. I find peace when visiting the temples in my country that are dedicated to the gods. I feel I amn not fellowing the crowd but am finding a way to walk a sprortual path that allows me to sdepartae me from the craziness of the world of non-spriritual people.Sandeep
As usual, those entrapped in their religious and spiritual ego-states do not understand the Oneness but feel separate instead, as in “better than.” That might mean “I’m better than the non-religious and the non-spiritual people” or it might means “I am better than I would have been if I had not begun playing these roles.”
Yet what better example is there of herd mentality behavior than the frequent temple stampedes which have been occurring for years during the religious pilgrimages to those temples referenced in that e-mail? In 2008 alone, there have been four fatal stampedes at temples in India that have already claimed nearly 170 lives this year.
The herd mentality can also be seen when persons walk into "self-help" group meetings to be free of insanity but mimic some of the most insane conduct on the planet; when people blindly walk into churches and temples and synagogues on days that they are told are “different” and “special”; or when persons feel they must arrange crystals in certain formations to tap into “special energies.”
Whether driven by the herd mentality in regards to finances, religion, spirituality, “self-help,” temple visits, politics, or any other aspects of the relative existence, persons (the non-Realized) are walking about the planet in their sleep, dreaming that they are fully awake, following the leader...following the herd. They think they are making their own decisions and choices when in fact they are being driven by mass influences, mass ignorance and/or mass hysteria.
Yet there are behaviors that evolve from a source that is even more bizarre than a herd mentality and that result in relative thoughts and words and deeds that are even more bizarre, namely, instinctual variants.
Those personality subtypes result when the natural instincts are disengaged via programming and acculturation and conditioning and domestication and when personality is taken to be a real identity; afterwards, those unnatural variant instincts unconsciously and subconsciously drive all thoughts and words and deeds.
similarly, you cannot know how the relative existence can happen via the auspices of the natural instincts until you see how other distorted instincts are presently controlling the thoughts and words and deeds of the persons of the planet. Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)
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