From a site visitor: “I’m up to page 54 in From the I to the Absolute where you say that the spiritual state is only the 3rd of 7 steps. I take the spiritual state to be the Ultimate State.”
F.: WHO takes that to be the ultimate state? One curious behavior among persons (a behavior that leads to suffering among them and other persons dealing with them) is their propensity to form rigid opinions about experiences which they have never had. You are barely more than 25% of the way on the “journey” through the book, but you believe you have arrived. For comparison, you are on the West Coast of the U.S. and journeying to New York for the first time, having heard it is “the ultimate state.” You are only in Utah, but persons around you have convinced you that you’ve already arrived in the ultimate state of New York. You’re likely telling others all about New York and how wonderful your life is after having arrived in that ultimate state when in fact you’re not even halfway to the state you speak of.
On the journey from the false “I” to Full Awareness, you’re using worldly concepts and believing that they’re spiritual concepts. (That’s what learned ignorance is.) You Are That which is non-phenomenal, but you have only experienced yourself (or selves) in a limited, phenomenal existence and in a limited, phenomenal way.
Only by actually reaching New York can you truly know the state, but so far you are mistaking Utah for New York. That is, you are mistaking your spiritual ego-state for the True State of the Absolute. In reality, they are as different as Utah is from New York.
Why are you making that mistake? Because you have been programmed by “religious persons” or by persons in some “spiritual group” to believe that you have arrived. You have been programmed (or re-programmed) to believe that you are among those who have all the answers and that you now have all the answers as well. That is why you think you’ve reached the “ultimate state.” Now, you likely parrot their slogans or teachings, so nothing you offer is original or Your own truth or your own awareness of That Which Is beyond the ego-state in which you have fixated. Your comment above shows that you now try to indoctrinate others and give them your knowledge/learned ignorance. What you need is not their programming or re-programming. What you need is de-programming. You do not need more; instead, you need far less.
F.: WHO takes that to be the ultimate state? One curious behavior among persons (a behavior that leads to suffering among them and other persons dealing with them) is their propensity to form rigid opinions about experiences which they have never had. You are barely more than 25% of the way on the “journey” through the book, but you believe you have arrived. For comparison, you are on the West Coast of the U.S. and journeying to New York for the first time, having heard it is “the ultimate state.” You are only in Utah, but persons around you have convinced you that you’ve already arrived in the ultimate state of New York. You’re likely telling others all about New York and how wonderful your life is after having arrived in that ultimate state when in fact you’re not even halfway to the state you speak of.
On the journey from the false “I” to Full Awareness, you’re using worldly concepts and believing that they’re spiritual concepts. (That’s what learned ignorance is.) You Are That which is non-phenomenal, but you have only experienced yourself (or selves) in a limited, phenomenal existence and in a limited, phenomenal way.
Only by actually reaching New York can you truly know the state, but so far you are mistaking Utah for New York. That is, you are mistaking your spiritual ego-state for the True State of the Absolute. In reality, they are as different as Utah is from New York.
Why are you making that mistake? Because you have been programmed by “religious persons” or by persons in some “spiritual group” to believe that you have arrived. You have been programmed (or re-programmed) to believe that you are among those who have all the answers and that you now have all the answers as well. That is why you think you’ve reached the “ultimate state.” Now, you likely parrot their slogans or teachings, so nothing you offer is original or Your own truth or your own awareness of That Which Is beyond the ego-state in which you have fixated. Your comment above shows that you now try to indoctrinate others and give them your knowledge/learned ignorance. What you need is not their programming or re-programming. What you need is de-programming. You do not need more; instead, you need far less.
The path you have followed so far is a path of accumulation: you have accumulated spiritual knowledge and you have accumulated new ego-states. Spiritual Giantism will soon arrive if it has not already, and its constant companion of spiritual arrogance cannot be far behind. The Advaita path is a path of de-accumulation. The closer one moves toward being back in touch with reality, the more spiritual knowledge will fade; ego-states and labels will fall away; the irony of the perception that you need to “work in order to be able to rest” is seen; ideas and concepts and emotionalism will fall away; chaos ends; fighting for your beliefs will stop; reactions and over-reactions will end. Then, as you see that the “I-Amness” in which You currently abide is temporary and as You Realize that You can abide in the bliss of the Absolute even NOW, then the identification with "the Am-ness" even falls away. A sense of lightness is known as You are relieved of the heaviness of past accumulations. You will carry less and less until nothing remains to be carried...including the weight of all those past selves or roles or personas and all the burdensome stress and work and egotism that come with them.
Escaping the insanity of all indoctrination only happens when you take all seven steps of the "The Seven-Step Journey to Reality," not just the first three. Complete the “journey.” Get to New York. That is, get to the end of the book you’re reading, reach the end of the “journey to Reality,” and then you’ll not only understand New York (the Absolute) but you’ll also understand how you “got to the West Coast” to begin with, where You Were “prior to the West Coast,” and where You Were even “before there was a West Coast” or even a planet earth. Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
