From Steve in Chicago, IL USA
“You referred to Christ’s link with the Advaita Teaching, mentioning ‘Before Abraham was, I AM’ and ‘When you speak of me, speak of me as I AM.’ I worked for a time with a teacher who said that my ultimate goal should be to attain what he called ‘Christ Consciousness’ and then allow that consciousness to guide me through life. I tried that for a period of time and yes, I thought I was ‘doing better’ when guided by that Consciousness. But I never stabilized. Now, I’m not so sure that any of what I thought was going on was really happening. What I’ve read on your site makes more sense. Anyway, I see that some ego-state is clinging to an old belief, but I haven’t broken that attachment completely. Can you help?”
“You referred to Christ’s link with the Advaita Teaching, mentioning ‘Before Abraham was, I AM’ and ‘When you speak of me, speak of me as I AM.’ I worked for a time with a teacher who said that my ultimate goal should be to attain what he called ‘Christ Consciousness’ and then allow that consciousness to guide me through life. I tried that for a period of time and yes, I thought I was ‘doing better’ when guided by that Consciousness. But I never stabilized. Now, I’m not so sure that any of what I thought was going on was really happening. What I’ve read on your site makes more sense. Anyway, I see that some ego-state is clinging to an old belief, but I haven’t broken that attachment completely. Can you help?”
F.: “Hello, Steve. Thanks for the comments and question. The answer is, ‘No, I cannot help.’ The reality is that there is conscious-energy. What could I do to ‘help’ conscious-energy? Of course, some will claim that they can 'help you' by helping you become free of the influence of impure consciousness. Okay, but any 'help' is still about a person in the relative. That said, you’ve mentioned several concepts, all of which can be tossed. Yes, on the site I mentioned Christ and I mentioned Khrisna and I quoted other sages such as Maharaj. The words of that space called ‘Maharaj’ played a key role in helping me understand my vision and that led to full realization, but if the food-body known as 'Maharaj' were still breathing and speaking, it would be the first to say, ‘Hang Maharaj, hang Christ, hang Khrisna, hang Floyd and hang Steve.’ The Seven-Step Journey to Reality, if completed in its entirety, would make clear to you that there’s no such thing as ‘Christ Consciousness.’ There is consciousness, period. Christ was a manifestation of consciousness in a food-body called ‘Jesus.’ That’s it, period. You Are that same consciousness. Early on, that food-body called ‘Jesus’ fought with friends, talked back to parents, taught concepts from texts deemed holy, believed in a heaven and hades, and experienced rage in a temple, kicked over tables, and beat other humans. But he retreated from society and was exposed to the Advaita Teaching. How do we know the Teachings were being offered in the Middle East in that day? Because we know that at least two thousand years earlier, Moses had plagiarized the Teachings and had a bush express the basis of the Advaita understanding: I Am That I Am. In the final years of that food-body called ‘Christ,’ he spoke of ‘heaven and earth fading away,’ talked about the fact that ‘no one would ever see heaven because it’s within,’ and spoke of the ‘I AM.’ No heaven? Then no geographic place for a body-mind-personality continuum to float about in bliss. Also, no geographic place for a body-mind-personality continuum to burn while never burning up. Christ spoke of ‘Gehanna’—the 24/7 valley of fire where Jerusalem’s trash was burned—not of the ‘hades’ or ‘hell’ handed down from the earlier mythologies. After decades of existing with the corrupted consciousness of a person programmed in a theocratic state, and thus fighting and trying to force his religious beliefs on others, Christ received the Advaita Teaching. At that point, he left organized religion, left the temples, talked to groups in homes and on hillsides, and shared a totally different message from that of his earlier talks. He abandoned the dualistic concepts of heaven and hell, reward and punishment, and belief in dogma and rituals deemed holy. He became one of the thousands of teachers that tried to share the Advaita Teaching, and his earlier conduct—fighting and beating and ranting—indicate that he was not a sage with a higher level of consciousness and that he did not have an early grasp of the understanding but that realization came at the end of a relative existence. If the plant-body ‘Steve’ wants the same kind of life that the plant-body Christ lived at its end, then garner the same understanding. Next, you mention being ‘guided through life.’ Who is being guided through life? There’s another concept to forget, along with the ‘ultimate goal’ concept mentioned to you. Abandon all concepts and then natural, intuitive living will happen. Being in touch with reality, the conditioned and programmed and corrupted consciousness will dissolve. Just being can then happen.” Please enter the silence of contemplation.
TOMORROW: Rachel from the United Kingdom asked, “What is the difference between advaita vedanta and buddhism in their views of ultimate reality?”
