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FROM A SITE VISITOR yesterday: Floyd, it seems to me you present M as inerrant in all he said and wrote. That all his statements were "true" and appropriate for each particular situation and that if there is any inconsistency, it is caused by a faulty interpretation of M. Exactly like the Fundamentalists view the Bible. Am I correct in this observation?
F.: First, M. wrote nothing. As for your question, though, you were provided with a pointer in today's post (29 March 2009) that would answer the question you raise, if you were to transfer the point and find how it applies here.
What M shared, he shared as a result of his own inner awareness and thereby led seekers to the discarding of beliefs. The fundamentalist group (a group that has FUN DAMNING anything that is MENTAL) with which you are comparing him speak only of what they have collected from outer sources in their effort to spread their beliefs.
M. was not an outer source, and neither am I. He pointed toward the inner guru; I point toward the inner resource. Further, neither M. nor I would make any claim about being “inerrant” or not, though the group you referenced does make such a claim about their “scriptures and teachings.” M. never claimed to speak truth, as they do, and neither has this speck ever claimed to speak truth.
To the contrary, the message from the loft and the message from here is that truth cannot be spoken. Everything M. offered was a pointer to truth, not Truth itself, so where is any possibility of being “right” or “wrong”? Quite different from the group you mention that claims their writings and words are inerrant, yes?
Here and in that loft, any pointers that are offered are level-appropriate so there will be paradoxes on occasion, but not contradictions in the long haul. Dennis Waite explained the approach thusly: “It is the perennial problem of the teacher to be able to judge where the student currently is in his or her understanding and lead them onwards from there.”
Also, “As ever, in the philosophy of Advaita, the teaching is graded to suit the level of understanding of the student, and it is no use trying to 'jump levels' if we have not yet grasped the lower level principles.”
Therefore, unlike the fundamentalists you mentioned, with Advaita there are never any statements such as “this is the truth” or “this is what is right” or “this is what you need to know because it is the truth”; instead, you might hear, “All of what you have learned you might consider unlearning.”
Your entire premise reveals that you are still operating from a position of duality, implying, “Surely M. could not have always been ‘right.’ Surely he must have sometimes been ‘wrong’.”
If you were a student walking through the woods with a teacher, and if the teacher paused to point toward a bird that is rarely ever seen by persons, would you proclaim, “You are so very wrong about that!” If you were to do so, the teacher might respond: “Hey, it’s not about right or wrong…I’m just pointing, you #%@*&#^*!”
Now, to continue with the series:
1. FROM A SITE VISITOR: What does it matter if I use the term “God” as long as I know it refers to Brahma or even Brahman?
2. FROM A SITE VISITOR:My wife’s sister in law, a real nut if I were into labeling people and things, has hit a financial crisis since her husband just lost his job. She said the weird thing is that she "turned it all over to God" and now is not worried. You know, when I have "bottomed out" I have done that in the past and felt relief. What has happened, I realize, is that she simply stopped her mind from driving her crazy / from worrying.
F.: The old adage is that if you want to manipulate someone to think about an elephant, tell them to “do everything possible right now to avoid thinking about an elephant.” Boom. They’re thinking about an elephant.
Using a far more direct but still manipulative approach, the puritanical minister Jonathan Edwards delivered his “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” sermon time and again throughout the New England area of the U.S. in the late 1700’s in order to influence persons to think about what he wanted them to think about and to think the way he wanted them to think.
[Some claim the influence of those early Puritans is still the prevailing force in the U.S., which has admittedly looked quite like a theocracy in recent years. The fact is, it is not just the groups that are the modern day descendants of the Puritans—groups such as Baptists and Presbyterians and Evangelicals—that yet cling to the beliefs expressed in those early teachings; most among the “super religious” and even some claiming to be “super-spiritual” still believe the same nonsense that Edwards taught, still talk in a way that Edwards would approve of, and still behave in ways that he would endorse.]
And that is exactly why those who would control the masses plant nonsensical thoughts in the “minds” of persons and inspire them to speak nonsensical words, because nonsensical thoughts and words—selected from “The Vocabulary of ‘Mind-Language’”—will behave exactly as programmed and conditioned and acculturated via the use of emotional constructs and mental implantations.
In that sermon, Edwards reminded congregants that “there is no want of power in God to cast wicked men into hell at any moment in time”; that “the wicked deserve to be cast into hell, so…divine justice never stands in the way [and] makes no objection against God's using his power at any moment to destroy them”; that “they are now the objects of that very same anger and wrath of God that is expressed in the torments of hell”;
that God is “very angry with them, as he is with many of those miserable creatures that he is now tormenting in hell”; and that “God has laid himself under no obligation by any promise to keep any natural man out of hell one moment.”
Is it any wonder that children hearing his words screamed in reaction to the fear that the minister was using to manipulate them or any wonder that adults fainted during the presentation of the sermon delivered in the verbiage of “mind-speak”?
While the content of that sermon is used nowadays in some university-level courses on reasoning fallacies (many of which are evident in the sermon), other right-wing religious colleges still use the sermon as an example of what should be contained in an effective religious message. Either way, the point is that reasoning fallacies can be heard daily as they come from the mouths of persons who talk like Edwards about their “God” or “gods” while speaking via the vocabulary of “mind-language” today.
Such persons are as trapped in magical thinking and psychological manipulation as the members of the Puritan congregations were in the 1770’s. The obstacles that block clear seeing—that prevent the pure consciousness from recognizing nonsense and seeing truth—are as dominant today as they were two and three centuries ago in the U.S. and as dominant as they were four and five thousand years ago around the globe.
Thus, the “mind-speak” in e-mail #2 above, providing modern-day examples of the type of reasoning fallacies used by Jonathan Edwards: a woman has “turned it over to god and is not worrying” and “I have done that in the past and felt relief.” Please enter the silence of contemplation. (The sharing of the transcript of the dialogue will continue tomorrow)
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