[Please note: The “journey” to Realization has seven, clear-cut steps that must be taken in an exact order. The third step requires that persons first play a religious role or a spiritual role. Both must be transcended to continue, but either (or both) can serve as a step; however, it is far easier to move beyond a spiritual persona than a religious persona.]
F.: As predicted, pointers on the current topic always seem to generate e-mail. What they really generate most often are reactions from ego-states and evidence of emotional intoxication from personas. A pause in the postings shall be taken to respond to two comments received yesterday that are typical of what has been arriving:
1. FROM A SITE VISITOR: "Read a few paragraphs and you’re correct. Religions do make it seem normal to maim in the name of their teachings today! However if you look into the modern day religion of Jehovah's Witnesses, they take no part in any warfare. I have learned quite a bit about them also at the Holocaust Museum in DC. They were one of the first groups to detect and speak out against Nazism as well as be put in the camps and die for it. None of their active members are responsible for any bloodshed or genocide!"
F.: First, do not allow the short title at the top of the postings to distract you from the content of the postings below. Readers have been invited to abandon everything that fosters not only tolerance or endorsement of murder and genocide but also any teachings that inspire “rigidity, anxiety, judging, imagined separation, suffering, misery, internal conflict, outer conflict and fighting, and war.” Secondly, all of the pointers from the series of postings dealing with the effects of worshipping the god of Abraham apply as equally to Jehovah Witnesses since they have separated themselves from other religions and denominations and since they claim that “heaven” is only for select Jehovah's Witnesses. How much more exclusion and separation can you get than by claiming that only 144,000 shall make it into an afterlife and that only those few Jehovah's Witnesses will spend eternity with god? Separation. Ego. Duality. It's as prevalent among the JW's as with any others assuming a religious persona. In fact, while most religions claim that the number of people who will make it to their paradise is limited, none claim such exclusivity and limitations as the JW’s. When the disadvantages of worshipping and/or modeling the god of Abraham are seen, know that the killer god of the Old Testament is also the god of the Jehovah Witnesses, the “Jehovah” in their name referring to that O.T. killer god.
But that is not the key point either. Few religious people would claim that their religion endorses murder, though the facts show that is the result; however, all claim that they can teach the truth from their holy writings when in fact (a) the truth cannot be spoken and (b) their writings are not “holy.” (“Holy” literally means “different.”) Their writings are not different but are writings that have been adapted from earlier pagan authors. Next, the masses cannot be guided to the truth, so corporate worship is useless. All of the lies, and then the Understanding of the Functioning of the Totality, can only be realized by one individual at a time, when alone. (Thus, Advaitans offer pointers and then the invitation to go into the silence and consider the point.) Advaita teaches that freedom comes when all concepts that are taught by any religions, groups, parties, and philosophies—including Advaita—are seen to be concepts that are to be discarded so that the consciousness that I AM and that YOU ARE can be re-purified. Any religion that is separate from other religions and proclaims itself "different" is perpetuating the myth of duality and apartness when there is only the unicity and the Oneness...the At-one-ment if you will. The consciousness is only pure and can only know the Oneness after it is purged of the last concept, be it a concept generated by religion, politics, nations, individuals, races, “relationships,” and all other contributors to dualistic teachings and thinking. As the Advaitan teacher Christ pointed out, "A dual-minded person is unstable in all ways." Know the I AM and the I AM THAT to be free of all sense of separation, all sense of "better than," and all sense of “apart from.” Advaita is your invitation to discard all duality and to know the unicity that You Are. Thanks for taking the time to read and to write. Peace and Light, f.
1. FROM A SITE VISITOR: "Read a few paragraphs and you’re correct. Religions do make it seem normal to maim in the name of their teachings today! However if you look into the modern day religion of Jehovah's Witnesses, they take no part in any warfare. I have learned quite a bit about them also at the Holocaust Museum in DC. They were one of the first groups to detect and speak out against Nazism as well as be put in the camps and die for it. None of their active members are responsible for any bloodshed or genocide!"
F.: First, do not allow the short title at the top of the postings to distract you from the content of the postings below. Readers have been invited to abandon everything that fosters not only tolerance or endorsement of murder and genocide but also any teachings that inspire “rigidity, anxiety, judging, imagined separation, suffering, misery, internal conflict, outer conflict and fighting, and war.” Secondly, all of the pointers from the series of postings dealing with the effects of worshipping the god of Abraham apply as equally to Jehovah Witnesses since they have separated themselves from other religions and denominations and since they claim that “heaven” is only for select Jehovah's Witnesses. How much more exclusion and separation can you get than by claiming that only 144,000 shall make it into an afterlife and that only those few Jehovah's Witnesses will spend eternity with god? Separation. Ego. Duality. It's as prevalent among the JW's as with any others assuming a religious persona. In fact, while most religions claim that the number of people who will make it to their paradise is limited, none claim such exclusivity and limitations as the JW’s. When the disadvantages of worshipping and/or modeling the god of Abraham are seen, know that the killer god of the Old Testament is also the god of the Jehovah Witnesses, the “Jehovah” in their name referring to that O.T. killer god.
But that is not the key point either. Few religious people would claim that their religion endorses murder, though the facts show that is the result; however, all claim that they can teach the truth from their holy writings when in fact (a) the truth cannot be spoken and (b) their writings are not “holy.” (“Holy” literally means “different.”) Their writings are not different but are writings that have been adapted from earlier pagan authors. Next, the masses cannot be guided to the truth, so corporate worship is useless. All of the lies, and then the Understanding of the Functioning of the Totality, can only be realized by one individual at a time, when alone. (Thus, Advaitans offer pointers and then the invitation to go into the silence and consider the point.) Advaita teaches that freedom comes when all concepts that are taught by any religions, groups, parties, and philosophies—including Advaita—are seen to be concepts that are to be discarded so that the consciousness that I AM and that YOU ARE can be re-purified. Any religion that is separate from other religions and proclaims itself "different" is perpetuating the myth of duality and apartness when there is only the unicity and the Oneness...the At-one-ment if you will. The consciousness is only pure and can only know the Oneness after it is purged of the last concept, be it a concept generated by religion, politics, nations, individuals, races, “relationships,” and all other contributors to dualistic teachings and thinking. As the Advaitan teacher Christ pointed out, "A dual-minded person is unstable in all ways." Know the I AM and the I AM THAT to be free of all sense of separation, all sense of "better than," and all sense of “apart from.” Advaita is your invitation to discard all duality and to know the unicity that You Are. Thanks for taking the time to read and to write. Peace and Light, f.
2. FROM A SITE VISITOR: "I tried to read all of the postings on religion before responding, but I have to write to tell you that millions of people cannot be wrong. Cassandra in St. Louis."
F.: Hello, Cassandra in St. Louis. Thanks for sharing your opinion. Now, please consider this pointer: the greatest detriment to progressing along the path to Realization is the willingness to be influenced by the masses or to be impressed by numbers. Should you experience "The Awakening" someday, should you have your moment of peripetia, one truth regarding the relative existence that will flash across your consciousness is, "Oh my gosh! Not only were millions wrong. Trillions have been wrong!" The moral foundations of the laws and the dogma of the western world are based in lies. For example, there was no "exodus" from Egypt, no forty-year trip through the desert undertaken by millions, and no handing down in stone of the commandments that now serve as the basis of western jurisprudence. Moses took an ancient pagan tale about a pagan god who used a magic rod to strike rocks in the desert in order to provide water for the followers he was leading to a paradise on earth. Then Moses substituted himself into the god-role as he re-wrote the pagan tale into his own fictional story. He plagiarized the ancient Advaitan teaching “I AM THAT; I AM,” left out the semicolon, and claimed the words came from the god of Abraham via a burning bush. How many Jews or Judaeo-Christians have a clue that the Torah’s report of the first words ever heard verbally from that god were really the ancient Advaitan message? How many Judaeo-Christians have even the slightest clue that Christianity was not the first religion based on a virgin-born savior but was the 23rd? How many know that Christ taught the Advaita message (“When you speak of me, speak of me as I AM” and “Before Abraham was, I AM”)? That statement alone was his invitation to his protégés to forget Abraham, and therefore to forget the killer god he described to you. It’s all fiction. No such murderous or genocidal god exists, and if he did, why would anyone worship and glorify such a mass murderer/god? Find the I AM, Christ said. Speak only of the I AM when you speak of me and my teachings, he taught.
So Cassandra, the consideration for you is this: is it really possible that millions and trillions not only can be wrong but have been wrong? Can that many have been wrongly programmed and conditioned? Could that many have suffered the bastardization of the consciousness that They Are? The only hope for Realization—for purification of the contaminated consciousness—is to know that one in a million might realize. The other 999,999 will likely remain trapped in the contaminated consciousness and the belief in the lies that always result, and that is why millions and trillions have been wrong. Thanks for writing. Please enter the silence of contemplation.
NOTE: A pause in these postings will begin tomorrow as the body has been called back for more accident-related surgery. [You may see
http://advaitavedantameditations.blogspot.com/2005/11/why-have-you-not-been-posting.html for details.]
Should the consciousness continue to be manifested, then postings should continue in a matter of days.
