Saturday, October 15, 2011

"There Is A Little Niggerhead In All of Us" if Full Realization Has Not Happened, Part Seven

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An Advaita forum focusing on Realisation, enlightenment, non-duality, Real Love, peace, freedom, Your original nature, abiding naturally, the Oneness, the Nothingness, and Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.

As for Maharaj, you will find here some of his early pointers for beginners but some of his later pointers that are for seekers farther along the "path." During his last years, he said of I AM THAT: "That book and whatever was expounded at that time was only relevant for that period. I am speaking differently today" and am "emphasizing different aspects." What he offered later differed considerably from his earlier talks, making clear that the pointers in I AM THAT will take you to the midpoint of "the race" but that his final talks point the way to "the finish line."

F.: This pointer was offered yesterday:

As with most things relative, it is mere chance - far more than conscious anticipation and forecasting and planning - that determines the sequence of events that happen as one's relative existence unfolds.

As noted, many will disagree ...

including persons who have a belief that there is an external force (or forces) that are watching over them;

including persons who have bought into the concept that there are those who were formerly human and who died and subsequently sprouted wings and are now half-human and half-bird and are invisible and are hovering over them and guarding them;

including persons who have accepted the idea they heard from someone else that there is something referred to broadly and innocuously as "the universe" that is guiding and directing all things on planet earth and leading individuals in the way that they "need to go," as if something as unstable and ever-changing and chaotic as this universe is can bring order to their lives;

and

including persons who have a belief in a particular definition of "destiny" which suggests that it supposedly functions in tandem with "karma," the result of which is the assumption that natural events - such as Hurricane Katrina which brought such destruction to New Orleans in its aftermath - is believed to be a supernatural event (as explained most nonsensically by the Dalai Lama who claimed that the hurricane was sent by the universe to destroy that city "because of the negative karma of the people there").

The point is that, after having been programmed, indoctrinated, brainwashed, conditioned, domesticated and acculturated to believe in such nonsense, only a few will ever cast off their prejudices, learned ignorance, and insanity; those among the non-Realized masses will cling to all three with pride ... feeling special ... feeling different from ... feeling better than.

Yesterday, the pointer was offered in that regard:

What self-deceiving nonsense, yes? Yet so it is, and through no choice of their own.

Meaning? Meaning that if Full Realization happens, then the functioning of the totality is understood, and when the functioning of the totality is understood, it is understood that all is merely happening, and happening spontaneously.

No one who is not among the fraction of a percentage of the Fully Realized can avoid being driven by nonsensical concepts and beliefs and ideas that cultures pass on in regards to a god or gods or "the universe" or "destiny."

No one who in not among the faction of a percentage of the Fully Realized will have any ability at all to choose anything; all of the thoughts and ideas and emotings and beliefs and actions of the non-Realized will be driven by personality as their personas' agendas drive them to do "this" out of fear or "that" out of desire.

If personality is the hidden motivator of all thoughts and words and deeds - and it is - then how could any god or gods or universe affect thoughts or words or deeds? It cannot happen, especially since there is no god, since there are no gods, since that is no "force or will of the universe" in a universe that is not the least bit occupied with any one, particular (and surely "special"?) individual out of billions of humans on a single, obscure planet that is one of trillions of planets in an ever-expanding universe.

So, to the concept of destiny, which has two completely different definitions. (Note that the masses are for the most part aware of only one of the definitions, specifically, the bogus one):

1. "Destiny" refers to the hidden power believed to control what will happen in the future, or to the predetermined, usually inevitable or irresistible, course of events; it is the power or agency that determines the course of events.

2. "Destiny" refers to the events that will necessarily happen to a particular person or thing.

Note that the former is the one that the masses believe to be accurate, though it is the latter that actually is.

Post-Realization - if the functioning of the totality is understood, including - as Maharaj said - an understanding of some basic scientific facts - then it becomes clear that there is no "hidden power" and no "one" and no "One" and no thing that is "in control" (and if there were, how could any person possibly be even remotely impressed with the results?)

Also post-Realization, it becomes clear that there is nothing "predetermined" except when personality is driving a person;

that there is no "inevitable course of events"; and

that there is no "power or agency that determines the course of events."

It becomes clear that there is no "Single Cause" and no "Single Causer" but that the cause of all is all ... all that has happened prior to any particular event.

Maharaj: "Destiny is the result of causes, mostly accidental, and is therefore loosely woven."

It was further explained during a satsang session that is shared in the book FROM THE I TO THE ABSOLUTE. The following from a transcript of a recorded satsang session addresses the “no single cause” teaching:

***

Floyd: "Upon Realization, another duality disappears: the credit-blame duality. The Realized know that assigning credit to one source or assigning blame to one source is to ignore the reality of an infinite chain of happenings. Here’s a simple example that might be relevant. Last week, driving along the road that leads out here, the rear tire of a car ahead of me threw a pebble against my windshield and cracked it. You’ve all probably had a similar experience? [Nods in agreement] What caused that?”

Questioner: “The rear tire of the car ahead of you.”

Questioner 2: “Actually, the driver of the car was responsible. I think people who do that should have to pay for the cost of the repair.”

F.: “I’m glad you said that since your comment will let us see how wrong that type thinking is and let me offer the pointer about ‘cause’.” [Participant displays a mock frown. Laughter from group] As I passed that car and drove farther along the road, I caught up with a truck that was hauling gravel … and spilling it all along the roadway. The pebbles in the road, one of which was thrown into my windshield earlier, most likely came from that truck. Now who’s to blame for my cracked windshield?”

Questioner 2: “The driver of the dump truck.”

Questioner 3: “The manager of the hauling company who allowed the truck to haul gravel without a cover over the top to prevent slippage.”

F.: “The manager? Or could it have been the owner of the hauling company who was too cheap to provide covers or too negligent to be certain that covers were being used?”

Questioner 4: “I’ll play along: it was the fault of the highway patrol that is not efficient enough to pull over those creating hazards on the road.” [Laughter from group]

F.: “Or the legislators who misappropriated funds to their pet projects and underfunded the highway patrol? [More laughs] Okay, enough. You get the picture. A series of events evolved in a way that, at a particular moment, a particular set of circumstances also evolved that resulted in a broken windshield on my vehicle.

"And if we wanted to play this game a little longer, you’ve already shown that we could trace the cause back millions of years to the circumstances that resulted in a boulder being broken down into pebbles, one of which millions of years later struck my windshield. But billions of years before that, an atom appeared in a vacuum, maybe even spit forth from an adjacent universe.

"And that atom split and then split again and then formed a mutated atom and those two collided and … bang … that collision caused a chain reaction that resulted in our boulder being formed billions of years later. And then millions of years after that, the boulder atrophied into huge stones and then rocks and then pebbles, and because of that happening and because of a truck and an owner and a manager and a driver and a construction project and an inefficient highway patrol and a driver and a car ahead of me, my windshield broke. Ha.

"Look at the billions of events that had to occur over a period of billions of years in order for my windshield to be damaged. Yet arrogantly, persons want to claim that they know exactly what's causing any particular happening. Persons want to tell you the one cause that they think is behind whatever is happening. They want to credit one thing or one entity or one power. Or they want to blame one thing or one entity or one power.”

Questioner: "We’re back to the pointer you offered before.”

F.: “Specifically?”

Questioner: “About over-simplifying the ‘cause’ of anything. You said something like ‘the cause of everything is everything that’s happened before’.”

***

The point being offered there is that to limit cause or to assign blame to one factor is to ignore the many deterministic factors that drive events or that drive human thoughts and words and deeds. If persons would be freed from being driven (a condition which removes choice) then they must understand the expansive assortment of contributory sources that drive them to think and talk and behave as they do.

Recently, a person in the news said that understanding the cause of global warming doesn’t matter … that we just need to solve the problem. How can any problem be solved without knowing the cause(s)? How can a repetition of the same problems be prevented if the cause of the problem is not known?

To say, “I don’t care how the car got in the ditch, just get it out” is a setup to allow the same circumstances to be repeated and to allow the car to continue ending up in ditches.

So too is the case when persons do not understand what determines (what drives) their thoughts and words and deeds. If one would move beyond the levels of determinism that rob the non-Realized of choice and logic and reason, then they must understand the varieties of determinism that control the non-Realized on the planet.

Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)

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