CONCEPTS: Begin to “Question Them All” by Questioning the Most Prolific, Part Two

[Continued from yesterday]

F.: A third definition of “concept” is:
3. A concept is a scheme or a plan.
As the consciousness devolved as humankind evolved, more and more concepts were dreamed up. The corruption of the consciousness reached higher and higher levels of bastardization which eventually led to the widespread insanity that is now the trademark of all persons (i.e., of all of the non-Realized who take their personas and images to define who they are). No concepts? No insanity. No insanity? No being out of touch with reality. Conversely, to be in touch with reality, all concepts much go. According to definition, then, persons can begin to see what must be discarded if they would be Fully Realized, totally sane, and completely in touch with reality. They must discard all general ideas, all thoughts and notions and ideas that are derived from the mind, and all plans and schemes. And what originally inspired persons to accept concepts as facts and what still inspires them to cling to those ideas and notions and plans and schemes that have been dreamed up by controlling men over the ages? The master addiction of persons (the desire to control) and their secondary addiction (the desire to have power in order to control) combined with body identification and the desire for its continuity.

When persons became so identified with body that they wanted the body to have eternal continuity, they began coming up with “schemes and plans” to “save” the body. Not only did mummification and burial and respect for corpses become widespread, but so did the “scheme and plans” that would be used to try to make the body last forever. Several concepts had to be believed in order for the “schemes and plans” to take hold of the “minds” of the masses: (a) there had to be a general belief in gods that exist in other worlds but that make things happen or not on the planet earth—things such as rain, thunder, plant growth, and crop failure as well as blessings or miseries, dependent upon whether one has pleased or displeased those gods; (b) there had to be a widely-held belief that the gods were always either pleased with or angered by humans, creating a belief in duality and in codependent gods whose unstable moods are determined by humans; (c) there had to be a belief that when the gods were happy they would bless persons with rain and successful harvests but that when the gods were angry they would destroy crops and thus let people die; (d) there had to be a belief that persons could do all possible to please the gods and keep the gods from being angry and in turn would get rewards now and forever; and (e) there had to be a belief that persons could avoid punishments now and forever. And acceptance of all of those concepts as truth was tied to the notion that (1) the body can and will last forever and that (2) the gods can love you while simultaneously being willing to end your existence on earth prematurely and being willing to torture your body eternally.

Tie all that into the concepts of “eternal body continuity” and "avoidance of bodily pain" and several new dualistic concepts emerged: “There can be punishment or reward now”; “there are gods that will save us now and forever, or not”; “since that’s the case, a ‘scheme or plan’ needs to be formulated that can assure reward now and reward forever, that will give us rain and crops to sustain the body now, and that will assure eternal reward and continuity for the body.” Thus, new concepts developed that provided a “scheme or plan” for assuring reward and not punishment now, reward and not punishment later, power and control now and forevermore, and body continuity now and forever (vs. destruction and torture of the body now and forevermore). And the billions of parents who now believe that such is the way that “The Father in Heaven” works also mimic that style in their roles of father or mother on earth. As a result, the planet is filled with children who are in fear, who want reward, who dread punishment, who identify with body, and who will take all of that into adulthood and transfer the same neuroses and psychoses to their offspring; hence, the current cycling of insanity and programming and bastardization of consciousness among humans.

Fast forward to the 21st century. Now, see the false “world” that has resulted from the insanity of ignorant, superstitious people who dreamed up concepts and ideas that were “derived or inferred from specific instances or particular occurrences”; see the false “world” in which persons are controlled by “thoughts or notions” that were “dreamed up from the minds” of ancient, ignorant persons who took myths and superstitions to be true and who began to allow those “thoughts and notions” to control the masses; see how the masses think and what the masses do or refuse to do, all in the fashion of sheep; and see the “world” where “schemes or plans” are being used to try to make bodies last forever and to earn reward and to avoid punishment. [Eclipses once sent persons running for their priests. In 1948, when ice blocked the flow of water from Canada and caused Niagara Falls to run “dry” for a day, special church services were held all over the U.S. in the belief that if a waterfall dries up, it is a signal of “End Times.” The same happened after 9-11 when persons rushed off to churches and temples and synagogues because they believed that if two tall buildings could be knocked down, then surely that was a sign of the “End Times.” Now, the End Timers are sure that events in the Middle East are harbingers of "The End" and are calling those in fear for their bodies or in fear of eternal body torture back to church once again, to "get right" before their die. Thus is the lifestyle of persons who are trapped in superstition, who believe tales that are rooted in ancient myths, who are identified with the body, and who suffer from the fear that results when concepts converge with events that are natural—but assumed to be supernatural—by persons identified with body and in fear of loss now or torture forevermore.]

The result is this: persons now inhabit the planet and suffer all of their neuroses and psychoses and the many mental illnesses that are produced by belief in concepts and ideas and thoughts and notions and plans and schemes. Such is the insanity that concepts produce, and such is why concepts are to be discarded if persons would be free rather than trapped in the only “hell” there is, namely, the mental and emotional hell that is at the root of all insanity and misery and suffering and fighting and feelings of inferiority as well as widespread ignorance and body identification and paralyzing fear and the never-ending longing for reward. Those combine with all of the other dualities that eventually make the experiences of programmed and conditioned persons either miserable or boring or unfulfilling.

To begin the process of questioning it all, ask: “From whom did I get that concept, that belief? From whom did they get it? Is it possible that all concepts have been handed down from one uninformed, ignorant generation to another? Is it possible that there is an inner resource that I could tap into that could allow me to see the lies as lies, to see the truth as truth, and thereby understand (1) Who/What I Am, (2) to understand where I was in the days prior to conception, and (3) to understand what happens with THAT Which I Truly Am when this manifestation is no more?” Might the understanding of the functioning of the totality result in the only real freedom, namely, being concept-free? Please enter the silence of contemplation. [To be continued]

CONCEPTS: Begin to “Question Them All” by Questioning the Most Prolific, Part One

[Two questions came in recently about concepts]

From a site visitor: “You said we should question it all. How? I’ve had 30 years of involvement with religion and 18 years of schooling to get a masters degree. How could I even begin to question it all? I’ve probably been exposed to a million concepts or more. I could start now and spend the next 50 years and probably not be able to even remember them all, much less get rid of them all. Help!”

From another site visitor: “Floyd, What exactly is a 'concept'? Is it something that can be spoken or imagined or THOUGHT of? I ask b/c in the thorns teaching tool, I'm not quite sure if i have let go of all. The tendency is to hold on to the ‘I AM THAT; I AM’…the beyond both beingness and nonbeing, etc. It seems the ‘thinking mind’ just turned to Advaita pointers to obsess about.”

F.: To begin with the second e-mail first, your assessment is correct: rather than using the thorns to remove thorns, you’ve hanging onto the Advaita thorns now instead of using them to be rid of all concepts, Advaita teachings included. Concepts are the components of all knowledge, that is, of all learned ignorance. Most who get “as far as Advaita” are stuck at the spiritual or religious level but do not know they are stuck there. Those at the religious or spiritual level—one or both of which are vital steps along the “path”—think they finally “got it all” so they never transition to Full Realization. At least you realize you’re stuck. So to address your question about what concepts are, look to the origin of the earliest (and still most prolific).

When did conceptualizing begin? It started even before languages evolved that could be used to express, and then pass on, concepts. And the first concepts were rooted in ignorance and fear, just as are all concepts to this day. Imagine the fear when the earliest ancestors of humans heard storms rolling in, accompanied by strong winds and booming thunder and lightning so bright that it turned the night into day. Such “magical” events inspired "supernatural" thoughts…thoughts about some powerful, “super humans” that could make such “miraculous” and frightful things happen. Even before those ancestors had words to express concepts, concepts began to be conceived via consciousness that was even then being corrupted with the first superstitious beliefs and the earliest concepts: magical, supernatural, superhuman, miracles, etc. Thus the beliefs in supernatural beings and supernatural events were conceived and had hundreds of thousands of years to circulate and gain credibility among humans. Those concepts eventually evolved into the pagan religions, which eventually evolved into the modern religions and then modern “spiritual” movements. Being the first concepts—and therefore the “longest running” concepts—those of a supernatural nature now exert the most powerful influence on persons and are used most often in an effort to control the masses. If one wants to begin to question all concepts, begin with those that are now the most prolific and that now have the greatest relative impact across the globe.

While the concepts set forth by political leaders or business leaders can sway thousands or millions within any so-called "nation," their influence is always less than that of religious concepts. Six billion persons on the planet are not declaring themselves to be “democrats” or “capitalists, or “republicans,” but 6 billion of the planet’s 6.5 billion persons do proclaim an affiliation with one of three religions of Abraham. See that and you’ll see why religious concepts are the most widespread of all concepts (and thus the ones that most often need to be cast aside if the consciousness is to be re-purified). How dominant are those concepts, relatively speaking? Those concepts are so influential that religious leaders can program followers to avoid engaging in perfectly natural acts, can condition them to give away their money for the leaders to use as they see fit, can inspire them to die for a religious cause, or can incite them to kill themselves or others for some cause conceived by their leaders. So let the most influential concepts be used as examples to understand how concepts—which have no basis in fact—have come to be taken as fact on a widespread basis. Once the effects are seen, then it should be clear why concepts must be abandoned if one's relative existence is to be marked with peace and sanity. There are three standard definitions of “concept”:

(1) A concept is a general idea derived or inferred from specific instances or particular occurrences; or (2) a concept is something formed or conceived in the mind; a thought or notion; or (3) a concept is a scheme or a plan. Consider examples of each definition in regards to the most prolific concepts in order to see how the consciousness of humans devolved over the ages, to see how "minds" came about, and to see how the consciousness reached its current state of bastardization in persons:

1. A concept is a general idea derived or inferred from specific instances or particular occurrences.
For example: At some point, one of the earliest humans heard thunder. That was a “specific instance or a particular occurrence.” Then, that human, or another, began wondering about the source of a sound so frightening. Eventually, someone dreamed up an explanation: “That sound came from somewhere else. We can’t make a sound like that. There must be more powerful humans than us and they must be beyond the earth because we’ve never seen them here.” Thus emerged the concept that “More powerful beings than us actually exist, they live in another world, they control what happens in this world, they are powerful, and they are to be feared.”

2. A concept is something formed or conceived in the mind; a thought or notion.
The de-evolution of the consciousness continued with the descendants of those humans who first began to believe that super-powerful beings live beyond this planet but control everything on this planet...even down to weather patterns. [Remember "Katrina was a message from God to sinners"?] Those descendants eventually settled and formed communities. They had been taught (programmed) by their forerunners to believe that there are superpowers that make lightning and thunder and rain, and they then taught (programmed) their children with the same concept. When agricultural skills were developed and when the Anglo-Saxon language developed, people began to refer to those superpowers as “guds” (named for the A-S word “gud” which meant “good” because those powers did "good things," such as providing water for crops). In settled communities across the globe, corn was being grown and used to provide a steady supply of food for sustenance. The “guds”/“goods” would eventually be called “gods” in some cultures as the A-S language spread (along with “thoughts and notions” called “concepts"). For several seasons, the crops may have been plentiful and the gods were thanked for rain and for the crops harvested. Programmed persons thus began to thank the gods for their food before each meal. Then a drought hit. Believing that those superpowers from beyond were human-like, and believing that the one in charge of all that noise and thunder and rain must surely be a male, those humans that feared starvation decided that the male god must be angry and was therefore withholding the rain they needed. They began to ask the rain god to provide rain, much as religious farmers do today when they pray for rain in the same fashion as the ignorant ancients did thousands of years ago.

Then the ancients came up with “a thought” from their “minds” that said: if a male god is angry, he can probably be appeased in the same fashion as males on earth, that is, by having sex and getting gifts. So the “notion” came from their “minds” that it would be a good thing for a rep on earth to have sex with a virgin and then sacrifice her as a gift to the angry male god. So after the symbolic sexual act of a “union” between the rain god’s rep on earth and a virgin, her heart was cut out and passed among the crowd and those persons participated in the forerunner to the communion service as they ate her body and drank her blood. Another concept was conceived that would still be practiced 5000 years later all across the planet although the belief was nothing more nor less than “something formed or conceived in the mind”…amounting to nothing more than “a thought or notion” conceived by ignorant men who wanted control over everything…even including the weather. But today, all across the planet, certain religious persons will gather on this Sunday, as they do on all Sundays, and reenact that brutal, religious act of killing virgins, eating flesh and drinking blood. That is the power that concepts hold over persons. Concepts have the ability to inspire persons to behave in ignorance ways without being conscious of what they are really doing or why they are doing it; the ability to inspire them to do something because “it’s always been done that way”; the ability to make them behave in a perverted manner while believing they are acting in a "holy" manner as they drink blood and eat body; and the ability to put persons to sleep so that they walk about the planet believing they are awake to the truth when they are actually trapped within the lies of their culture. And that is why concepts must be questioned and rejected if one would reach Full Realization and be restored to sanity. Please enter the silence of contemplation. [To be continued]

ONE ANSWER TO THREE SIMILAR QUERIES

F.: Three e-mails were received last week that all had similar queries. Let the readers determine what the primary question was by seeing what the common response was that was sent to them all:

All ideas or thoughts are products of a "mind." [To the one seeking more “knowledge” about “how the brain works,” forget that nonsense. It matters not how the brain works—it matters only that you realize that the “mind” does not.] Since the “mind” is a composite of false concepts (merely the accumulation of all that your programmers have told you) then all of the ideas and thoughts that are generated by it are also false. (When it is said that Realization leads to de-accumulation, that does not refer only to getting rid of all the extra possessions that end up owning you; it refers even more to getting rid of all ideas and concepts and beliefs...being rid of the "mind" once and for all.) Consider instead what happens when “experiences” stop. The next phase of your “journey” is entered into after it is understood that there is no “one” to have any experiences. YOU are beyond all experiences. Is the energy running through the space of a vacuum cleaner experiencing anything? No, so whatever energy is cycling through any other given space—included that which is taken to be “you”—is not experiencing anything, either. Realizing that, the beingness happens as the doingness ends...when it is seen that there is no “do-er” so there can be no doingness.

Next, notice how far along the "path" the seeker must “journey” before that “beingness” is actually understood and then you'll see which steps have yet to be taken by you. If there is no WHO, WHO is having ideas and thoughts? Only some false identity. The re-purifed consciousness thinks no ideas or thoughts. The next stage is merely witnessing in a subject-object fashion without thoughts or evaluations. After that, the subsequent step allows for the Pure Witnessing of the unicity—of the Oneness. Then, there are neither subjects nor objects and the last trace of duality ends.

Relatedly, from a fourth visitor last week: “How can there be no do-er?”

F.: There can be no do-er via Realization. When the role of “The Teacher” was accepted as an identity, then egomania immediately promoted that persona to “The Super Teacher.” And what does “The Super Teacher” think that it must have in order to exist? (1) Super lessons that are being sought wholeheartedly by (2) “Super Students.” And when students were not doing what “The Super Students” were expected to do, then “The Super Teacher” felt as if he were dying and began to fight for his life by attacking “the not-super-students” who weren’t paying attention. [Such attacks come as often from “The Super Spouse” who is not getting the respect desired, from “The Super Performer” who is not getting the attention that is wanted, or from “The Super Employer” whose employees are not paying adequate attention or “doing” what “Super Employees” are expected to do.]

When that ego-state of “The Teacher” dissolved (post-Realization), a shift resulted after the understanding became, “Teaching might happen today…or not.” No role and no do-er was fighting for its imagined life any longer. A shift in perspective happened as mere witnessing began. Truth was differentiated from the false. Emotional intoxication ended. When the illusion of do-er disappears, then the witness begins to merely observe what happens…or not. Peace manifests alongside that process. Then, the Pure Witness can emerge and see the Oneness and realize the truth of the unicity.

To forfeit the illusion of a do-er with power and control allows You to sit back, to relax, and to take it easy while witnessing all of the insane conduct of personas (embroiled in their “going and doing and zooming”). The witness will not be caught up in their chaos and will not be pulled under by the relative existence maelstroms that the egotism of personas always generates. Please enter the silence of contemplation.

BODY-MIND-PERSONALITY: Your “Rope-in-a-Snake,” The Conclusion

F.: In regards to “the snake of personality” which is the third of three snakes being discussed, the Sufis identified nine personality types. Each specific type drives persons to behave distinctively, and each type leaves persons without any choice regarding how they “unconsciously” act…and react:

When the non-Realized are driven by their personality types, Type One’s will be perfectionists; Two’s, with their inordinate need to be seen as loving and valuable, will be driven to help others (often to the Two’s own detriment since Two’s gravitate toward needy or exploitative persons); Three’s will be driven to over-perform and over-achieve and to invent and cultivate a false image more than any other type; Four’s will be prone to emotional intoxication and Fives will suffer analysis-paralysis; Sixes will deteriorate to Threes and display the same negative traits as Three’s; Seven’s will ignore responsibilities as they seek adventure; Eight’s will alienate by trying to be the Boss to all; and Nines will be sluggish as a result of their extraordinary laziness. Though persons will spend their lives without even knowing what their dominant (and dominating) personality type is, they will nevertheless be driven by that personality type. And to be “driven”—just as when you’re being driven in a car—means that you are not in control of where you’re going or in charge of what you’re doing. Living under the influence of personality means you have no ability to choose anything. Thus, not only are personas to be discarded if one is to be in touch with reality but one’s personality type is also a “snake” whose influence you must be rid of. In order to discard the snake of personality, persons must first realize that it’s a snake and that it’s driving them through life, leaving them with no ability to make choices at all.

But this snake is of a multi-headed variety, and when you remove one head, another springs up in its place. For example, the ego-state of “The Lover” might dis-appear after a breakup, but immediately “The Victim” shows up. When “The Awful Sinner” is thought to have been abandoned, then “The Religious Extremist” takes its place. When “The Appalling Alcoholic” dis-appears, “The Spiritual Giant of A.A.” rears its even uglier head. Short of Full Realization, if one persona is forfeited, then one (or more) newly-conceived ego-states will be assumed as an identity. That which is called “ego” (the false “I”) can never be fed enough to feel satisfied and content.

A woman said, “The reason no husband can make us happy is that we each really need four husbands, not one. We need one to be a great lover, one to serve as a repairman, one to be the successful breadwinner, and one that can sit down and communicate with us.” It was asked of her, “WHO said that?” She answered, “I don’t know. I read it somewhere along the way.” The response was, “No, WHO said that? Which of your ego-states was talking?” Her reply: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The answer was, “So accept some clarification in identifying all the splits in your personality. I heard “The Great Lover” claim that she needs a great lover as a counterpart to sustain that role. I heard “The One with a Sense of Entitlement” claiming that she deserves to have a man provide a house and economic support for her. I heard the ego-state of “Her Royal Highness” saying that she deserves to have men come to her home—the home provided by the breadwinner—and to maintain it for her, to "serve" her you said. No one person can please you because there are too many you’s to try to please. There's no one You that you have become conscious of. That is, you’re driven by so many ego-states that you’ll never be satisfied because your unmet desires and your sense of need are generated by so many false personas. And guess what. The men you meet—if they’re as embroiled in their role-playing as you are—they’ll be the same way. They’ll need at least four women at any given time to try to be satisfied, and even that won’t do the job. Or, they’ll settle for one and be unconscious of the misery that their personas will generate. They’ll have a constant sensation of want, but their ‘minds’ will be plagued with the noise that is used to try to drown out the truth that is fighting to reach the surface of consciousness because they’ll not want to face the truth...the truth of their boredom, of their life-in-death existence, of their denial, of their longing, of their unhappiness, of their lacking a sense of fulfillment. Ego always wants more. The joy of de-accumulation begins when ego ends, when the shift ‘FROM THE I TO THE ABSOLUTE’ happens.

"Are you seeing why ego-states sabotage “relationships” and generate the misery and suffering that always accompany the dissatisfaction of never having all of the wishes, hopes and dreams of all of your ego-states met? So you WANT. You WANT a lover, a handyman, an economic provider and a sustainer. You WANT. You WANT to accumulate. You WANT more. That is always the case with personas: ego-states want and desire and are never fulfilled. How could they be fulfilled? They’re just mirages. Do you think a mirage in the desert can be happy or fulfilled or satisfied? Of course not, and neither can the ones that are being conceived by your 'mind' or assigned by your culture."

Finally, if you want an astronomical divorce rate or if you want “relationships” that are marked with conflict and disappointment, then create a society in which persons are preoccupied with the duality of a concept called “relationships” instead of understanding the unicity. Train persons to believe that “relationship” is not a dualistic concept but is something that is actually possible. Train them to believe that they are two instead of “not two.” Train them to adopt multiple personalities and to be at the mercy of their personality types and the adjacent types and the type they regress into when stressed or “holy.” (The historical record shows that one of the deadliest snakes on the planet is “The Holy Snake.") So if it's chaos that's desired, create a "world" of persons and then sit back and watch how the illusions of personas can actually generate misery and suffering in the relative existence by trapping persons in their multiple, false identities.

Is all of this “relative-existence stuff”? Of course. But the relative existence is what the corrupted consciousness “experiences,” so those who would be happy must first be free. To be free of body identification, mind identification, and personality is the prerequisite for moving through the remainder of the steps that lead to total freedom and toward some degree of happiness, relatively speaking.

If the three snakes discussed over the past few days are not abandoned, then persons cannot enter the next phase—playing their religious and spiritual roles (the third of seven steps along the “path”). And until persons play one or both of those roles for a time, they will not be in a position to transition those roles—those last snakes—and then continue on the “journey” to being in touch with reality/Reality completely. And if they are not in touch with reality, then they cannot be free of the influence of all the snakes dreamed up over the ages by persons who WANT to have power in order to provide the control they WANT. And persons who are not free cannot possibly be happy, their claims to the contrary notwithstanding. Please enter the silence of contemplation.

BODY-MIND-PERSONALITY: Your “Rope-in-a-Snake,” Part Six

F.: After body and “mind,” personality is the third snake that persons ignore but which generates much of their misery and suffering in the relative existence. In fact, persons seek—sometimes subconsciously and sometimes with deliberate effort—to concoct personality and to calculate ways to maintain personality. They take false roles as identities, work to make their images seem real to self and to "others," and then are driven by what their ego-states think is required to be “sustained.” Yet persons are driven not only by the perceived needs and desires of their ego-states, of their personas. They are also driven by the influences of their personality type and by the adjacent types (such as when a Type Three shows traits of the Two and the Four as well). Also, they are driven by the alternate personality type to which persons regress when stressed or when assuming a pious stance (a religious or spiritual Three, for example, regressing and exhibiting the worst traits of a Type Nine).

That should make clearer why you’ll never “know” or “understand” any person: you’ll never know “which person” (which persona or which personality type) you’re dealing with on any given day. Have you ever met someone and thought you “really knew” him/her and began sharing accommodations, only to scream someday later, “I don’t even know who you are!” Millions in “relationships” eventually feel like fools, like they were “fooled” by someone who put up a false front, a false image, only to discover that their mate, friend, lover, spouse, etc. is a fraud. Of course that will happen, because all personas are fraudulent. Of course, the person is right in saying “I don’t even know who you are.” Persons don’t have a clue about Who/What They Truly Are, much less what “others” Truly Are. And of course, they're all fools, fools being those who do not understand that I Am the Absolute (which is beyond beingness and non-beingness) and that They Are the Absolute as well. Only fools believe that they are defined by their personality traits and their personas.

As an example of the instability brought on by personality, ask whether or not (on any given day) if you are dealing with the Type Three personality traits that were exhibited when you met, or are you dealing with the persona that is influenced by the negative traits of a Type Two or the negative traits of a Type Four? Or, are you dealing with the negative traits of a Type Nine that Threes regress to when under stress or when playing a pious role? Persons, absorbed in personality, are in a constant state of flux and ambivalence and instability and chaos and insecurity. If you're living with a person, then last night you went to sleep with a "persona type A"; this morning you awoke with a "persona type B"; tonight, you'll be greeted by a "persona type C"; and tomorrow "those" will all be gone and you'll find that you're living with a "persona type D." And as for that partner living with you, the same applies. When two personas share one domicile, there are not two people living together; those two are really living with dozens and dozens of "other persons." Talk about a case for misery and suffering, trying to live with "self's" internal instability each day and with the same type of instability in friends or spouses or employers. Talk about maddening, and such instability and turbulence and chaos in persons become the standard in most cultures, underscoring why most societies are overwhelmed with insanity and unrest and dis-ease. Such is the state of the “human condition” when marked with personality and marred by the assumption of personas. And of course it will all eventually be noted, but seldom understood, with two comments: "I don't even know who you are" and "I don't even know who I am." Please enter the silence of contemplation.

BODY-MIND-PERSONALITY: Your “Rope-in-a-Snake,” Part Five

F.: Again, Advaitans speak of the “snake-in-a-rope” to illustrate how persons perceive incorrectly, but persons also see many "snakes" as "harmless ropes"—failing to see the things in their relative existence that actually account for their misery and suffering. The discussion of the snake called the "mind" continues:

Prior to the time when the persons of the earth became absorbed in dualities, children were not taught concepts that resulted in fear and discomfort and anxiety. There were no dual gods, so there were no “God-fearing” children because there was no concept of a god that wanted to be feared. There were no “souls,” so there was no “God of Good” engaged in a universe-wide battle with a “God of Evil” in a struggle for souls; therefore, there was no eternal reward or eternal punishment, so there was no internal conflict going on in a “mind” that could foster preoccupation with such notions as, “Will I—The Child—mess up with my parents, teachers, preachers, etc., and will I be punished…or even killed? The looks they give me at times certainly show they could kill me” or “Will I—The Employee—lose my job and thereby die?” or “Will I—The Spouse—lose my mate and thereby die?” or “Will I—The Good Person—still not be good enough and will I thus not be saved and, as a result, will I have a soul that is actually a body since it can experience physical pain and a 'mind' since it can suffer mental suffering...for eternity?” Yet persons living under the influence of their programming and ego-states will accept their programming as “truth” rather than taking an objective look at the actual facts and the actual results of believing their beliefs. That will lead to the assumption of ego-states such as "Employee" and "Spouse" and "Good Person" that will struggle throughout the manifestation for "their" very survival--which is always dependent on being considered "good enough" by a co-dependent counter role. Meaning? Meaning that Employee cannot survive without an employer who believes that Employee is "good enough"; meaning that Spouse cannot survive without a spouse who believes that Spouse is "good enough"; and that the "Good Person" cannot survive without constant effort to convince others that she or he is "good" and "good enough" in order to attain the acceptance and reward that is required for that image to be sustained in the "mind" of the role player and in the "minds" of "others" dealing with that role player.

Certainly there is no need to hate any parent for teaching what was taught as a result of blind ignorance, but only arrogance will continue to try to justify, and even boast about, the results. Instead, that arrogance will lead persons to believe that they are separated from the animals by being more noble, that they are separated from “others” by virtue of being more noble, that they are separated from the followers of other religions by virtue of being more noble, that they are different from and can separate from their spouses by virtue of being more noble, that they are separated from the citizens of other countries by virtue of being citizens of a more noble nation, ad infinitum. Duality leads to perceived separation and to a sense of "self" being separated from "Self," a condition which leads to the sense of brokenness, incompletion, and longing that marks the relative existence with its misery and suffering or boredom or discontent or sadness or malaise or tension or anxiety...or all of those combined.

Recall those tribes mentioned in past postings who were the ancestors of "modern man" or who live today in some remote jungles? What was the significance of pointing out that—at least early on—they had no words for “stress,” "peace," “restless,” “good,” “bad,” “punishment,” “reward,” “discontented,” “work,” “purpose,” “meaning,” “irritation,” “rush,” “speed,” “hurry,” “busy,” “business” (“busy-ness”), “noble,” or “important”? Words come into existence after conditions exist that have not been labeled and that require labeling if they are to be taught and discussed. If you study the South American jungle tribe that was only “discovered” in recent years by anthropologists, you will see that their group had no need for the words “stress” or "peace" since they experienced no stress and were not, therefore, absorbed in any "search for peace." Their lifestyle reflected the lifestyle followed by humans and their ancestors for millions of years when a few hours per day were required to meet basic, survival needs. The rest of the day was spent in recreation. Even today, that modern tribe has no word for “restless” because their days are marked by relaxation. Since their children are raised in a society that has no words for “good” or “bad,” the children and adults have no hang-ups, fears, or anxiety about “punishment” if "bad" or “reward” if good enough. Thus, they have no need for the words “discontented” or “irritation,” and they engage in no daily struggles to prove to others and to themselves that they are "good enough." They do not suffer the sense of low esteem or no esteem because they had no demanding parents that were absorbed in their dualitistic concepts and thus sent the message that "You are not enough, and you are not good enough, and therefore you will never have enough. You'll always be in need and wanting and lacking."

They have no word for “work” because they enjoy doing for free every day what most persons pay to do during the two weeks of vacation that they get per year: fish, hunt, forage while walking through the woods, taking time to relax or to cook and enjoy mealtimes that extend for hours rather than eating fast food in a fast manner. Logically, it follows that those tribe members have no words for “rush,” “speed,” “hurry,” “busy,” or “business” (“busy-ness”). They are not preoccupied with “purpose” or “meaning” because their existence is marked by beingness rather than doingness. Sensing intuitively the unicity, they have no sense of separation that could inspire coming up with dualistic terms such as “noble” or “important.” At least that's the way it was early on before some of their members came up with concepts and did what persons do: create a pecking order with a “chief” at the top and with whomever the culture least respects at the bottom. Pecking orders are about dualities, separation, and division, and across most of the globe today, that concept of division is dominate because persons have had the understanding of the Oneness programmed away by being taught to view all in a subject-object fashion. The "us vs. them" mentality (the "us vs. them" mind) sets the stage for the beliefs in "better" and "different from" and "right" that paves the way for all conflict that happens.

Even if it were their stated goal, most parents in modern cultures couldn’t do a worse job of raising children to be in touch with reality. And if persons cannot move beyond the egotism that prevents seeing that truth, then they cannot move beyond the insane results of their upbringing that was steeped in duality. Therefore, they will have no ability to choose anything in their relative existence and will live—not in an AS IF fashion—but in a style that is marked by rigidity and a level of blindness that drives them to claim that they are happy when they could not be more miserable or bored or exhausted or disgusted or driven. Only when it is realized that there’s no such thing as a “my mind”—and only when it is seen that there is only “their mind” that has been taken to be one’s own—can one begin the “journey.” And it is only via completion of all of the steps in that “journey” that the end of the false "mind" can happen. And it is only via the understanding that all misery is rooted in the “mind” that persons can begin to transcend belief in the lies and belief in their false personas and then seek true peace rather than the illusion of “peace of mind” which is merely a concept...a mirage...and thus totally unattainable. Peace comes only after "mind" goes. Please enter the silence of contemplation.

BODY-MIND-PERSONALITY: Your “Rope-in-a-Snake,” Part Four

ourF.: At the end of yesterday’s posting, the following pointer was offered: “See how the false ‘I’ is at the core of all personal conflict and why the only chance for peace—which can only be experienced during the manifestation—is via Realization.” Reference was made to one ego-state assumed by some personas: “The Gift from God,” but all conflict is rooted in one or more of the thousands of ego-states that persons can assume and then feel driven to defend: “The Spouse,” “The Employee,” “The President,” “The Soldier,” “The Homeowner,” “The Christian,” “The Muslim,” “The Jew,” "The Spiritual Giant," etc. And with each ego-state adopted comes the egotism and other ego-state defense mechanisms that personas use to try to protect their false images. And the insanity of assuming false identities is seldom seen.

Take as an example a “spouse” who thinks it’s dying and thinks it must take action to defend itself because its counterpart spouse is leaving. To suggest it’s just a role that is perceiving the attack, and that a person walking away is nothing close to a real attack, seems to be a nonsensical point to the spouse who thinks it’s dying. But that same person would think you truly insane if you stood on a long desert road in mid-afternoon, looked at a mirage, thought that the mirage could attack you, and thought that you needed to defend yourself from an assault by the mirage. He would know that you are truly out of touch with reality if you claim, “It was my mirage. I thought it would never leave me. I can’t believe it’s gone. We had such good times together, me and that mirage.” You’d probably be told that “Your memories are distortions of what you thought was real but your ‘relationship’ with the mirage was never at all the way that you had perceived it. What your ‘mind’ came up with regarding you and the mirage was pure fiction and total distortion. Things were never the way you perceived them…the way you thought they were. It was just a mirage.”

Also from yesterday’s post, which was clearly identified as a discussion of relative existence “stuff” that can lead to a lifetime of misery during the manifestation, another pointer was offered which has—in the past—annoyed personas to no end; namely; suggesting that their parents did not do a perfect, or at least a near-perfect job, of raising them. FROM THE I TO THE ABSOLUTE is a book containing transcribed talks from the last sessions done face-to-face. One part not included in the book involved an exchange with a person who became upset over the suggestion that the teaching of dualities by parents sets their children up for misery and suffering since “dual-minded persons are unstable in all ways”:

Questioner: How can you say anything about my parents? You weren’t there, so you don’t have a clue what they were like. They did a wonderful job raising all of us.
F.: It need but be asked, “Did they avoid the inconsistency of using dualities during your upbringing? Because—if they did not—then understand that inconsistent parents are maddening. They literally drive their children mad. Did they never introduce even one maddening, dualistic concept to you, or did they often teach you dualistic concepts and in that process madden you? To be maddened is to be out of touch with reality, and your being out of touch with reality can be detected after listening to you speak a few words that reveal your dualistic thinking. You did claim that they were “wonderful.” That means that some other parents can be “horrible.” And that’s evidence of your dualistic, thinking “mind.” Next, did they tell you when you were “good”?
Q.: Of course. All good parents reinforce their kids when they behave. I do the same.
F.: So you had “good” parents and you were “good” since you got their reinforcement. But if they told you that you were “good” at times, then surely they must have told you at other times that you were “bad,” right?
Q.: No kids are perfect. Kids’ll be kids…parents reward the good behavior, punish the bad.
F.: Children would be children if they were allowed to be children. That is why they pass some days in that Child Ignorance stage where the peace really happens because they haven’t yet been programmed with such dualities as “good vs. bad.” And what always accompanies those dualities? Exactly what you mentioned: “reward vs. punishment,” both of which instill layers of fear and anxiety in children and their fears and anxieties will drive them throughout their entire existence if they don’t Realize. As adults, those same children are anxious to get approval and acceptance and reward and are also in fear of getting punishment. And parents don’t limit that to “this life.” You were taught the difference in “good” and “bad” and “right” and “wrong” and how you can “earn rewards” or “avoid punishments” not only in this life but for eternity as well. Right?
Q.: They took us to church. We learned right from wrong.
F.: So if you know right from wrong and you know what's required to be rewarded in this life and in some eternal life, what are you doing wanting to discuss anything with me, seeking something but still not even being close to finding it? If you believe that your existence can be one reward after another if you do what is right, then go do right and enjoy rewards, now and forevermore.
Q.: No one’s always perfect. We all fall short…must seek to improve constantly. I’m here trying to improve myself.
F.: Then you have come to the wrong place. There is no “one” to improve and no “one” to fall short and no “one” to whom your “perfect vs. not perfect” duality applies. It should be obvious to you that the parents’ or guardians’ “good-bad” labels and the threats of punishment and the dangling carrots of reward were all about parental ego. I know one mother who would put her finger in the face of her three-year-old before going into the grocery store and through narrowed eyes and tightened lips that sent the unspoken message that “I can kill you if I want to,” the mother said instead, “Now don’t you dare do anything that embarrasses me in there. If you throw a fit, I’ll beat you within an inch of your life.” I still know that child, now in her twenties, and she’s still practicing repression, still refusing to show what she’s feeling, still burdened with a sense of hyper-vigilance regarding her behavior, and still refusing to face and reject what is resulting in discomfort. There is within her a slowly-brewing volcano. The pressure becomes intolerable at times, but still she has no release because that’s the way she was programmed: to repress her feelings and to avoid showing feelings and, eventually, to not feel at all. But, she never embarrassed her mother, so that makes her a “good” girl, right? And someday she won’t embarrass her domineering, super-critical husband whom she’ll marry, and the reason she’ll marry him is because he will seem “familiar” and “comfortable” since his cruel nature will appear “normal” to her.

Such is the type of programming that has become the standard after 5000-7000 years of the acceptance and transmission of dualistic concepts via the false ego-states assumed by parents. And those concepts were simply dreamed up by superstitious, ignorant, controlling men who wanted power over people, over their “minds,” and over their bodies. And such is the misery that results when parents or adults or spouses or employees or employers or neighbors or persons in traffic or any of the many other ego-states take their false identities to be real and when they take lies to be truth and when they take the bastardizing of the consciousness manifested “in children” to be “their proper parental duty” and “the right approach to take in raising children.” So they take them weekly to gatherings where the discussions focus on “what they should not do with their bodies” and on “how they must keep their ‘minds’ clean and pure.” Then some wonder why they become adults with neuroses and psychoses, why so many are miserable, why persons are obsessed with body and mind and personality, and why persons haven’t a clue about Who/What They Truly Are. If you would be free, look to the dualistic teachings that were dreamed up thousands of years ago by self-appointed medicine men, high priests, spiritual leaders, etc. See how others like them still exist nowadays and still believe that it is their job to make people “better” by focusing on their bodies and minds and trying to control their bodies and minds. Then, reject everything that has evolved out of their bogus teachings if you would be released from their maddening influence. Please enter the silence of contemplation.

BODY-MIND-PERSONALITY: Your “Rope-in-a-Snake,” Part Three

F.: Advaitans speak of the “snake in a rope” to illustrate how persons perceive incorrectly, but persons also see many "snakes" as "harmless ropes"—failing to see the things in their relative existence that actually account for their misery and suffering.

Today’s continuation of the discussion of the “mind” is geared to the relative existence only. Ultimately, none of this is real and none of it matters, but for the Realized—being At One with all—the misery and suffering of persons on the planet is not ignored. The “not ignoring” just happens after the Atonement (the “At-one-ment,” the “unicity”) is understood. Maharaj was often asked something like, “Do you really care about your protégés?” The answer was usually something like, “More than you are ever likely to know.” For those who care not a wit about the impact of relativistic living on persons, skip today’s reading, but unless persons (the non-Realized, the corrupted consciousness) can see the relative impact, then release from the relative influences will not be sought and abidance as the Absolute will not happen. With that disclosure, the posting follows:

Who trained your parents to raise you? Next, who trained those trainers? And then, who trained those trainers of the trainers? Is it possible, (1) with the lack of training (2) with the accumulated nonsense being passed down from one generation to another and (3) with the influence of enculturation, parents couldn’t be doing a worse job if that were their stated intention, relatively speaking? Despite the small number of persons who will ever Realize fully, to monitor the sales of non-duality books, to see the plethora of Advaitan website springing up from across the globe, to see the number of seekers who are traveling here or there to sit with possibly enlightened jnanis is to see how many millions were raised in a fashion that prevents their even being able to answer the simplest question about “Who Am I, really?” or “What’s this all about?” or “How did I get here and what happens later?” Google “Advaita Vedanta” and you’ll get 406,000 hits. Those at peace search for nothing.

Why were so many persons raised in a style that prevents understanding and sends so many off on a life-long search for answers? What is the effect on children when the Original Understanding has been lost among adults? It produces children who are programmed with the Fake Understanding. Why are so many persons reaching a point where they are seeking something, feeling empty, questioning old beliefs and concepts? And why are far more—the majority, in fact—not seeking but are instead feeling full of themselves and questioning nothing while blindly accepting it all?

Egotistical persons make comments such as, “Well, my parents were ____, but they did a heck of a job raising us.” Why not just shout, “Look how great I turned out, even against all odds!” Arrogance leads persons to think, “If one of my parents is great, I’m 50% great, but if both parents are great, I’m 100% great. So my parents did a heck of a job.” The reality is that there’s no training for parenthood and that the ones being modeled by parents are those persons from a previous generation that had no training. Moreover, that pattern can be traced back for the thousands of years since arrogant, controlling men began introducing concepts that directly contradicted the Original Understanding. “Well, Floyd, my parent did the best they could.” Yes, and so did Hitler. That's just more justification and minimization which further blocks Realization.

The reason that so many will never Realize is that Realization is the process whereby all false personas are abandoned as one comes to know Who/What She or He Truly Is. That requires the abandonment of ego-states (false images, false identities), and the abandonment of ego states requires the abandonment of the use of ego-defense mechanisms that foster egotism and arrogance. And ego and arrogance do not inspire self-Inquiry, much less Self-Inquiry. In many cultures, egomania is reinforced, not challenged. Who that has been trained up to believe egotistically that he is a “Gift from God” could possibly question whether there is a male entity in another world that is micro-managing every major and minor event in this world? To question “the God-ness” would be to question the value of “the Gift-ness” that persons take themselves to be. (For those who wonder why there’s a 62% divorce rate in the U.S., imagine the challenge of living with one who is a “Gift from God” and therefore a “gift that any spouse would be damn lucky to have.” Who could ever be truly deserving of such a gift? The ego of the ego-state known as “The Gift” says “No one, really, can ever be good enough to deserve me.” With such a distorted view of “self,” let the ego-based fighting begin. Then, apply that to national and international conflicts and see how the false “I” is at the core of all personal conflict and why the only chance for peace--which can only be experienced during the manifestation--is via Realization.) Please enter the silence of contemplation.

BODY-MIND-PERSONALITY: Your “Rope-in-a-Snake,” Part Two

F.: The pointer was offered yesterday that humans are born with brains and that consciousness manifests within the space for a time but that no one has ever been born with a "mind.” In fact, there is no such thing as a “mind,” so there is most certainly no such thing as a “my mind.” What a person will refer to as “my mind” is really a collection of “their” concepts that form the illusions of “their minds” that become the illusions of “your mind” after exposure to their programming and conditioning. So who are “they”?

Typically, they are your parents or guardians. They might be your relatives. They are teachers you listened to in schools. They are the politicians you hear on television. They are the religious people you’ve met or heard. They are the authors of all the books you've ever read that contained their concepts and their efforts to teach you more rather than to help you get free of all the nonsense in the culture. They are everyone who has ever told you anything that either gave you a concept that you now believe in or that gave you a counter-concept that you now believe in because you disagreed with them. Each concept is a thread, and each thread became another part of a huge net that eventually envelops the consciousness, shrouding it in greater and greater darkness as the threads are overlaid one layer upon another.

Eventually, all those threads result in a mass that eventually blackens the consciousness to such a degree that no light can enter. From that point forward, everything you have ever thought about, emoted over, or believed in was determined by the learned ignorance within that shrouded, clouded “mind” that no light could penetrate. After reaching a state in which no light can penetrate, that corrupted consciousness blindly determines everything that you think or believe or do. One tiny thread could not have imprisoned and taken from you an ability to choose rather than to be driven by the forces of unconsciousness and sub-consciousness, but millions of threads have done just that.

In Gulliver’s Travels, the lead character finds himself struggling to regain consciousness. Coming to, to some degree, he finds himself utterly immobilized by a series of threads that have been used to imprison him. A group of six-inch-high humans called “Lilliputians” have used what they take to be ropes (but which amount to nothing more than threads to the full-sized Gulliver) to bind him completely. The Lilliputians are described as being “mean and nasty, vicious, morally corrupt, hypocritical and deceitful, jealous and envious, filled with greed and ingratitude—they are, in fact, completely human.” And during the time that Gulliver was unaware, those mean, vicious, corrupt, hypocritical, deceitful, jealous, envious, and greedy humans used their threads to tie Gulliver down to take away all choice and all freedom. Where one thread would have had no effect, the accumulated mass of threads left Gulliver completely under their control.

So it is with that mass of threads that have covered your consciousness and—as a result of being left in darkness—have also left you bound and imprisoned. One tiny thread could not have trapped you, but millions of threads have done the job. As with Gulliver, you have been struggling to regain consciousness. You find yourself utterly immobilized by a series of threads that have been used to imprison you and to bind you completely. You think you are making choices when you are merely being driven by the force of their concepts which give them control over you, though they may be "long gone." But your programmers have been hypocritical and deceitful, telling you that you are free, that you live in the land of the free, that you can do anything you want. But you can’t do anything you want.

Instead, your history shows that you have not been free, and you cannot even find a way to sustain the few, fleeting moments of what you call “happiness.” And as with Gulliver during the time he had been unaware, those corrupt, hypocritical, and deceitful humans have used their threads to tie you up, to cloud your consciousness, to inspire you to accept “their ideas” and to adopt their concepts as “your own.” Where one thread would have had no effect, the accumulated mass of threads have left you completely under their control. Recall scenes from “The Night of the Living Dead” and see the zombies staggering through life, a hypnotic glaze across their eyes, preventing them from seeing clearly but leaving them able enough to stumble through life.

For Gulliver to be free, the removal of a thread or two would have no effect. He had to rip loose all of the bindings to be free. The threads of concepts that form the mind are your bindings. To allow the light to come and to provide the opportunity for clarity, the web of ideas and beliefs that you think of so proudly as “your mind” must be ripped away. Full Realization comes when the last thread goes. Please enter the silence of contemplation.
[TOMORROW: The "mind," continued]

BODY-MIND-PERSONALITY: Your “Rope-in-a-Snake,” Part One

F.: Advaitans use the snake in a rope metaphor to illustrate the way that persons misperceive all that they see (or think they see). Persons (the non-Realized, the corrupted consciousness) suffer from the effects of fears that are based in illusion. On the other hand, persons also suffer as a result of not seeing what is really causing their misery. Even as they are alarmed by misunderstandings that should not alarm, they ignore the other factors that should be focused on and understood, relatively speaking. They ignore “the snakes in the rope” that cost them so much money and work and restlessness and discontentment and boredom and exhaustion in the relative existence: body identification, mind identification and personality.

First, those identified with body will fall prey to other persons identified with the body. Some are raised with the belief system that since they are attractive—per the standards of their culture—they can use those looks to be taken care of. They develop a sense of entitlement. They need not “work.” Someone else needs to work to pay for all their expenses because they have a beautiful body and face. And someone similarly identified with body will do just that, will work 60 or 70 or 80 hours a week, for a lifetime, to meet all the financial obligations required to buy the body they like. In addition to basic drives, chemistry, the sensory cortex and the limbic system (the “emotional brain”), how is it that body identification can blind so many persons, then trap them in a state of emotional intoxication, and thereby retard the process of Realization? [Note: Please see earlier postings this month that make clear that enjoyment of physical pleasures need not end with Realization, but being a prisoner of such pleasures will end.]

Realization results in natural living, and for millions of years, the natural lifestyle required only a few hours a day to fish or forage or, later, to tend to a small amount of crops. Eventually, societies were formed and accumulation—a totally unnatural act—gained in popularity as ego-states and their supporting egos “needed” more and more to impress. The more hours that persons work today, the farther they remove themselves from what was a natural style of living for millions of years. As a result of accumulation, persons then become submerged even farther in unnatural living. The more that persons work, and the more that allows them to accumulate, the more they must work to maintain their accumulations. And those identified with body will exert most of their energy—and most of their accumulating—in their efforts to try to accumulate other bodies…or another particular body. Nothing in the entire relative, human experience has proved as costly and destructive as the combination of ego (the false “I”) and hormone-driven desires.

In that de-evolutionary process, misery has become the new standard, so you might interview 100,000 persons and you’ll likely find 100,000 who claim to be happy and enjoying their lives. In reality, you’d be fortunate to find one among the lot who is truly happy and not overworked and overstress or bored by decades of following the same routine, day after day after day. In their frustrations, persons often eventually turn to super-natural living to try to find the peace that they are blocked from by living their unnatural lifestyles. [Those methods never provide more than a temporary respite, requiring that the persons who follow that course return weekly—or even daily—to maintain their reprieve.] Among persons, much of their relative-existence misery is rooted in body identification and the desire to purchase what their egos and body identifications inspire them to try to accumulate, including those with the bodies they desire.

The next snake is the “mind.” In the cases where “normal births” occur, humans have a brain and the consciousness manifests in a space; on the other hand, no human has ever been born with a mind. The brain is that which taps into the inner resources—those intuitive skills and an accompanying sixth sense—that allow for survival for some period of time in this relative existence. The “mind” (a set of bogus ideas, beliefs and concepts) results via programming, conditioning, enculturation and all of the other methods that are employed to convey lies as truth. Myths and superstitions have dominated humankind’s existence, and belief in fiction today is as widespread as it was among those early, most ignorant human ancestors that first began to believe their “leaders” who assigned erroneous, super-natural causes to try to explain the completely natural happenings that they did not understand.

[For example, dozens have been heard to explain that Hurricane Katrina and its destructive forces were “sent by God as a message.” The Dahli Lama claimed that the storm was a result of “the past negative karma of the people of New Orleans.” Let the culture force a “mind” upon you, along with super-natural explanations for natural events, and you’ll be trapped right along with them in their ignorance.]

The “mind” is a snake that results in misery and suffering. There is no such thing as “peace of mind” because the “mind” is the source of all mental and emotional dis-ease. And since the “mind” is not real, neither is mental and emotional dis-ease. Be rid of the former and you’ll be rid of the latter. If not, the resulting psycho-somatic illnesses will be real enough, relatively speaking. The “mind” must end for peace to begin; that is, the belief in all of the lies and false concepts and myths and superstitions must be discarded for peace to begin. Please enter the silence of contemplation.

WHY DO THE REALIZED SEEK THE SILENCE?

From a site visitor: “You’ve mentioned that most of your day is passed in silence. Why do the realized seek the silence? Why did you stop offering satsanga?”

F.: First, satsanga has not stopped. It has only taken a different form that allows the silence to happen for the majority of the day, the sound of the tapping on a keyboard for 15-minutes per morning notwithstanding. Some Realized enter total silence...some Realized continue to welcome seekers into the presence. Whatever. Next, the silence was not sought. After Realization, nothing is sought. The silence just happened. Why do some stop the “face-to-face” satsanga and why do some enter the silence? That should be simple to understand:

WHO would the Realized talk to? Once sanity is restored—once being in touch with Reality happens—the Realized no longer are attracted to the insanity and chaos that marks the existence of persons prior to Realization. Nor is the re-purified consciousness inspired, as persons are, to demand an audience, to talk merely to talk, to escape their lack of tolerance for the quiet, or to constantly seek an audience. Ego-states have agendas, and personas use ideas and beliefs and concepts to forward the agendas of those mirages and to sustain their false identities. If persons run short of topics, they will even complain about it being too hot, too cold, too dry, or too wet. The chatter of a thousand monkeys that plagues the “mind” of all persons cannot be tolerated, so persons use external talk to try to drown out the internal chatter. Persons will rise and turn on a television but not watch it, merely using it to provide background noise to drown out the rattlings of their "minds." With no internal chatter, what need for the Realized to talk, talk, talk or to hear the noise coming from persons? Since it happens that the Realized are no longer seekers of pandemonium, they are automatically moved away from about 95% of the population, just as the deer moves away from the noise of chaotic humans when they overrun the woods. Ego-states, even in adults, operate with their childish "look-at-me-mama" needs. The Realized have no needs at all.

The Realized were, at some point, just as asleep as the general population of the planet. They spoke with the insane; they debated with the insane; they fought with the insane; they pontificated with the insane; they, too, were insane. Post-Realization, the re-purified consciousness becomes aware of how useless that entire process was. Why would the Realized want to go back to that? The pure consciousness cannot. There is no choice being made. It has just happened. In the Child Ignorance stage when there were no concepts (and thus no agendas to promote or images to sustain) noise was anathema. The child hated loud noises and disturbances. Only after the consciousness was contaminated did the loud, the noisy, and the disturbing become sought out rather than avoided.

So that leaves about 5% at the most who are seeking truth (or who have found the lies and thereby uncovered the truth). But some 6.2 billion are closed to the truth, clinging to their false beliefs, loving their dogma, acknowledging proudly their “affiliations” and being trapped in religious or spiritual personas that prevent their completion of the “journey” to the Full Understanding. Why would anyone continue to seek the truth if he believes he has found it? Those personas cannot hear because they have been so fooled by their “leaders” that they can stand in the morning sun but believe their leaders when they tell them that it is high noon. Why would the Realized waste the breath that flows through the space by trying to talk to the deaf? So the Realized live out the manifestation in an AS IF fashion on a planet with 6.2 billion persons who live in the fashion of fools...in the fashion of those who do not know but are fully convinced that they do. What could the Realized possibly talk about with such personas? Would the Realized ever walk into the Arizona desert at midday and talk to a mirage? Such insanity becomes impossible, post-Realization. Now, will the consciousness speak to one who approaches the Realized while thinking he is a mirage that is real? Sometimes, if the consciousness detects that the one who is accepting an image as a false identity might be prepared to escape the misery of such foolishness.

Next, consider the case where the Realized cross the path of the Realized. Why would the Realized want to talk to the Realized? To try to impress by sharing how much is understood? Impossible. Advaita chat rooms are inundated with persons sharing all of their Advaita knowledge—which is simply their most-recently learned ignorance—to impress other Advaitans with what they take to be a mastery of a wealth of information. All they are revealing is how far removed they are from Realization. The consciousness cannot impress the consciousness. All knowledge dissolves with Realization.

So that only leaves (as a potential audience for which the consciousness would break the silence) those seekers who have not Realized but who know that they have not Realized but who seek to Realize. Even then, though, factor in the odds against seekers ever crossing the path of the Realized. Are you seeing how very small the odds are for the Realized to be in a position to speak? Instead, they live in the style of the animals mentioned in yesterday’s post, living in an AS IF-fashion throughout the day, minding their own business, witnessing the happenings without attachment to the happenings, and taking a few moments to reply if the path is crossed with a seeker who truly wants to get in touch with Reality.

Finally, the Realized can listen to persons for a few minutes or seconds and know if they are wet beyond awakening or if they are at the wet charcoal, dry charcoal, or gunpowder stage. That eliminates all who are “wet beyond awakening” as candidates that could trigger the abandonment of silence. With the odds outlined above, how could the Realized not be silent for the majority of any particular day? How could the Realized not refuse to enter into dialogues with those who want to debate rather than to understand…who want to impress with all their knowledge rather than forfeit it to find the truth? This week, two visitors have been informed that no further communication will be entered into with them since they have a personal (persona) desire to share all that they think they know rather than to seek the understanding that they do not have. The Realized, on the other hand, seek out no one to speak to. If a seeker comes, the consciousness may speak if it detects the presence of one who is ready or who is becoming ready. The consciousness may speak via a forum such as this site, and it is never known if any reader ever reads a posting or not unless some e-mail is received. Consciousness speaks without any perceived “need” to be heard. Conversely, someday this consciousness will not speak. In either case, so what? Again, no one by which the silence might be broken is being sought, so the breaking of the silence seldom happens. Too, the truth cannot be spoken, so why speak? Notice the many persons you meet in a day who talk, talk, talk, believing they are expressing the truth. Most personas even believe that they are expressing the truth profoundly and in a way that it has never been expressed before. They repeat the concepts they have heard or read from other persons, but they never find what they know intuitively but have forgotten as a result of enculturation.

Thus, for all those reasons, the case among the Realized (that is, with the re-purified consciousness) is that the silence is never sought but usually happens automatically and spontaneously, just as everything else just happens automatically and spontaneously for the Realized. Please enter the silence of contemplation.

EGO-STATES, EGOMANIA AND THE “HUMANS-ARE-WONDERFUL-I-AM-WONDERFUL-WE-HUMANS-ARE-BETTER-THAN-ANIMALS” DEBRIS, Part Two

TO CLARIFY: The purpose of this site is to share with those seeking Realization certain pointers (all of which are rooted in the Original Understanding) and to offer an invitation for readers to sit in the quiet and contemplate the pointers until clarity comes. On-going exchanges do happen with some site visitors, namely, with those who are trying to grasp the understanding and who have questions—or yes, even challenges—in regards to Advaita pointers. It is not a site for those who want a forum for expressing their beliefs which are rooted in body-mind-persona identification and who have a desire to cling to those beliefs and to spread those beliefs. The site is for those who are starting to realize that they live in a culture where lies are universally-held as truths and who realize that they cannot be free of suffering or misery or arrogance or a sense of separation or disconnect or incompletion except via the truth…a truth that cannot be stated but that can be grasped via the inner resource. This site suggests de-accumulating (including the de-accumulation of concepts and all so-called “religious or spiritual knowledge” which is nothing more than learned ignorance), not the accumulation of more knowledge and “mind”-clutter. This site does not promote being “open-minded.” It provides a route to being “no-minded.” To those who are proud of their accumulated beliefs and their intelligence and their learned ignorance and who have an agenda to try to convince people to accept their beliefs (rather than to discard all beliefs), a different forum must be sought. Now, to complete the response that began yesterday:

[After a lengthy discussion about moral humans and altruistic humans and about how they are so much better than animals.]
Visitor: “This ability is what makes humans distinct from animals who have no such abilities.”

F.: The only distinction between animals and humans is the human "mind" which drives unnatural and super-natural behavior—including “killing, hoarding, stealing, etc.”—while animals live naturally and do none of those unless they are among the carnivores that must kill to survive. Next, there are many cases where animals have put themselves in harm’s way and risked their lives to enter dangerous situations, fires, etc. to save their owners. Unlike persons who are driven by their personalities (and who act in that manner to gain status, notoriety, respect, love, etc.), those animals are the only ones acting in a truly altruistic manner, relatively speaking.

More to the point of being free of ego and ego-states is this pointer: evidently, you’ve dealt with too few persons or too few animals to know that only the members of one of those two groups consistently behave in a way that you would probably think is more like your definition of “moral” (and it’s most certainly not the humans). If you want to reach “logical and rational conclusions” about your “humans vs. animals” beliefs, consider what humans did when they annihilated 98% of the inhabitants of the Americas to establish “Christian nations”; what humans did during the religious Inquisitions in terms of torturing and murdering millions; or what humans did during the Christians vs. Jews Holocaust of WWII when millions of humans were killed by humans. Then contrast those millions of humans killed by self-proclaimed godly humans in those three instances alone vs. the number of people killed by bears, cougars, lions, etc. After that exercise, you should be able to reach a “logical and rational conclusion” about why it is suggested to persons that they set aside the unnatural and super-natural concepts and dogma that drives them, that they stop acting like humans, and that they act more like the animals that live naturally instead. [It has always only been the animals in the Middle East that have never been at war, and that is because only the animals have no religious or spiritual personas or agendas to try to sustain.]

Visitor: “Animals, therefore, are not moral creatures.”
F.: Agreed, and neither are humans—there being no “moral” or “immoral” behavior that can be defined in Absolute terms in a relative existence. Who is to define “moral” as opposed to “immoral”? I'm sure you would claim to have that knowledge, but all knowledge is learned ignorance. Or would the definition be one that is based in the concepts of a man who lived thousands of years ago and whose concepts became the foundations of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam? How much credibility should be given to ideas that were (1) dreamed up by a man who claimed to hear voices in his head and (2) by a man who believed that a male living in another world told him to tie up his son and stab him to death as an “act of faith” and (3) by a man who was willing to do what voices from another world told him to do? (Today, six billion persons worldwide honor that man, praise him for his faith, accept his concept of a god and what is "right" and what is "wrong" and thank him for their religions which came from his teachings, but if sane people witnessed such behavior as his nowadays, they’d call Child Protective Services and demand that they incarcerate the lunatic.) Or should what is “moral” be defined by evangelicals and politicos in the U.S. who believe that the earth is only 6000 years old? More importantly, though, is the fact that once again a person has visited the site and written to proclaim how much more noble he and his fellow humans are than animals. And once again someone has ignored the fact that if there were a contest regarding who or what is “more moral” per religious or spiritual definitions, humans would lose to the animals, hands down, even time. A philosopher said years ago that one illogical belief that is popular among humankind is the notion that you can elevate yourself by lowering other humans, but how needy is an ego-state that thinks it is elevating itself and all humans by lowering animals in comparison? Leave the animals alone. They’re minding their own business and, by doing so, are setting an example that humans would do well to emulate.

[After a lengthy discussion of programming and other concepts.]
Visitor: “But what give us this added ability to make a choice to ignore our programs?”

F.: Persons have no choice. They are programmed and then behave accordingly. Rare are the ones who will see the lies they believe in because of their enculturation, will reject them all, will become truly free, and will then have the ability to choose or not.

[The rest of the lengthy e-mail seemed at a glance to set forth more beliefs, concepts, and ideas without any Advaita-oriented questions at all, so the reading stopped. The final response was sent…]

F.: The remainder shall not be responded to since there are no questions of the type that persons submit when they realize that they don't have the answers and are seeking the teachings that provide freedom from all the nonsense that they have been taught and from all the learned ignorance that they are so proud of. Here, there is no goal to provide more knowledge. Here, concepts are used only to free persons of what they have been taught rather than to provide a forum for persons to show what they think they know. On this site, the consciousness speaks, it has no spiritual knowledge, and it suggests to those who would be free to also discard their learned ignorance. The only "relative benefit" of anything on the site is be free of all ANALysis and rigidity and knowledge and beliefs and then live in an AS IF, natural style.

Your earlier praise of a woman’s “heroic” act comes because you identify with someone who was willing to forfeit her life and to forfeit the lives of her children, thinking that is a measure of how "altruistic" and "divinely moral" both of you are. You think that you are so noble and so altruistic and so helpful to people that you think it's sane to be willing to forfeit your life and the lives of one's offspring to help someone. That is a perfect example of the way that religious or spiritual programming, along with personality, drive unnatural thinking and unnatural conduct. Is the willingness to kill your children “noble” (a la Abraham), or is it self-serving…serving to sustain some “self” image? You are not really praising her. You are actually praising your “self,” praising some ego-state that you think defines who you are: "The Altruistic One" or "The Noble One" or any other number of ego-states that are being assumed as (false) identities. Further, those twins that the woman was willing to let die were not just “her twins.” Any interest in their safety by the man who fathered them was never given any consideration at all, so what looked to you to be a selfless, giving act was in fact really a very “self”-ish act. All acts that attempt to sustain a false self and to meet the false, perceived needs of a personality actually provide evidence of insanity and arrogance and self-absorption and self-deception. You may as well try to sustain a mirage in the desert. That, too, would be insane and would also provide evidence of how arrogant and self-absorbed and self-deceived a person would be to think that such could be possible.

As long as ego-states are taken to be an identity, you will fixate there, you will fight to sustain that false identity, and—as a result—you will never find Who/What You Truly Are. The portion of your writing that I read shows that you’re very intelligent. That’s your first handicap on the “journey.” You are also very knowledgeable. That’s your second handicap on the “journey.” You are also very proud of your intelligence and knowledge. That’s your third handicap on the “journey” (and likely a handicap in all your relative existence “relationships” as well). As a Type Five—or as a Type Four with a strong Five wing—you have the potential to think independently. You have the potential to be independent of all the knowledge that you've accumulated and to stop quoting others to impress and to then be truly independent and stop thinking at all. That “thinking mind” is your fourth handicap on the “journey.”

If you forfeit that desire to display all of your intelligence and knowledge and thoughts, then, you can live as well as the animals. Your great regard for yourself and for humans, and your lesser regard for animals, might change. You may, in fact, find that You and the animals are One and that You and any persona or not One. On the other hand, if you never reach that understanding, it’s irrelevant. If you run into a burning building and don’t come out, that’s also irrelevant—though you’d likely be spoken of at your funeral in the same glowing terms that you used to describe the woman you admire. If that appeals to you, you are the corrupted consciousness. If you reach a point where being admired and complimented by personas couldn’t mean less, and if you reach a point where you are sane enough to see how selfish it is (relatively speaking) to disregard the safety of one’s own children while being unconsciously driven by personality, then you will be moving toward a state of being the re-purified consciousness. Please enter the silence of contemplation.

EGO-STATES, EGOMANIA AND THE “HUMANS-ARE-WONDERFUL-I-AM-WONDERFUL-WE-HUMANS-ARE-BETTER-THAN-ANIMALS” DEBRIS, Part One

F.: The Realized would never visit a porn blog and write to explain how trapped those persons are in body identification. The Realized would never visit a mental health chat room and write to explain how trapped those persons are in assumed roles that create such misery and suffering. The Realized would never visit a religious blog and write to explain how trapped those persons are in ancient myths that they take to be true. People found Maharaj’s small loft for decades though he sought no one out, invited no one in, and advertised not at all. Yet persons find this Advaita blog and write to explain what is wrong with Advaita or what their theories or concepts are that differ from Advaita or that have nothing to do with Advaita. Imagine the degree of egotism involved in such unsolicited acts as personas solicit an audience. So why should the consciousness even speak in response? Seldom does it. For each one responded to, dozens are deleted without being read or responded to. When a response happens, it only happens so that true seekers can see the evidence of ego-states that must be uncovered and discarded, only so seekers can see the egotism and arrogance that always accompany ego-states and that are used to sustain those false roles, and only so seekers can receive again the pointer that knowledge is useless. Some of the lengthier diatribes and pontifications come from highly intelligent persons, from those persons who have accumulated a huge reservoir of debris called “the mind.” For the earnest seekers, movement along the “path” can only happen when the ego-states dissolve, when the debris field of the "mind" is eliminated, and when the arrogance and egotism are set aside with the Realization that trying to “be something or somebody” is the hindrance to finding the peace of the Void, of “being nothing” except the one thing which All Is. So, the consciousness speaks:

[The visitor described—as evidence of “divine morality” and “altruism”—how a woman pregnant with twins risked her life, and the lives of her unborn twins, to save another person from a burning building.”]

F.: There is no such thing as “divine morality,” and what you describe was not an act of altruism but was an act of personality, which is influenced by programming, genetics, and conditioning. Of the nine personality types, Types Two's would do what you describe and Type Fours (who degenerate to Two under stress or under strong religious or spiritual influence) would do the same. Type Eights would take charge of the scene and shout orders, telling onlookers what they should do. Nines would take no action and would even find a place to sit to watch the show, usually being too lazy to stand for very long. Type Threes would take action, but only if an audience had gathered, only if the cameras were rolling, and only if they could be in the spotlight and get some praise afterwards during an interview for the home audience. Fives, like you, would analyze the event and write a lengthy article about it.

What appears to be altruism is always personality, and personalities/personas are always false. As far as "self-sacrifice," Type Two's have such a perceived “need” to be loved and admired and needed that they WILL die in an effort to try to get all that. They’ll spend money they can't afford to spend in their efforts to try to gain love and approval from people, even from a stranger. They are the martyrs of the planet, and if they die helping others, it will be their personality—not some fictional “altruistic spirit”—that drove them to it. They believe they are on earth to help others, and they wonder why any others are here unless it is to be helped by them. The cause of all actions are all of the actions that came before, and the power of the psychological forces that play upon emotions and that effect conduct cannot be overemphasized in a culture so dedicated to programming EACH to behave like ALL. Once the understanding of the functioning of the totality is understood, such erroneous assignment of cause will not happen; in fact, no assignment of cause will happen, it being understood that the cause of all is…all.

[After a lengthy recounting of the theories and beliefs set forth by other persons.]
Visitor: “I attribute in part to innate programs and in part to divine morality. Since we know little if anything about the brain and how it operates, I'd say our respective theories could each be as equally correct. But I also believe my theory is based upon logical and rational conclusions.”

F.: You are correct in calling it “theory.” You quote others and what they know, but what do YOU know...about "you" (the phony you) and about YOU (the True Self)? Can you ignore theories and find the Original Understanding? And have you ever considered how attached you are to their concepts that you now think are your concepts? The invitation is to stop quoting “experts” and find that which is truly original and which is already within. Next, the duality of “morality vs. immorality” is false enough, but you take it to a further level of separation by creating a category called “divine.” Add to that such artificial, dualistic concepts as “correct,” “believe,” and “my theory” and the actual degree of entrapment in the effects of enculturation becomes clear.

Visitor: “I suggest you try to suspend your beliefs.”

F.: No need. There are no beliefs that remain. There is no "one" that remains to believe anything. No beliefs are “in suspension.” They are all gone. They all seemed to appear as a result of programming, but all “dis-appeared” as a result of the de-bastardization of the consciousness.

Visitor: “At some evolutionary plateau, we suddenly learn that killing, hoarding, stealing, etc. can be substituted by love, self-sacrifice, sharing, caring, etc.”

F.: And where is your evidence? In Israel? Lebanon? Palestine? Iraq? Iran? Syria? Africa? Afghanistan? India? Pakistan? Houston? New York? LA? Or in your hopes and dreams? Please enter the silence of contemplation.

[Tomorrow: Part 2 of 2]

PS to the visitor: Your second e-mail of counter-response was deleted without being read. [On Thursday, a question about why such responses are ignored will be addressed to explain why.] No engagement in dialogue is being sought. No engagement in debate will be entered into. Discussions continue only when follow-up questions are submitted from visitors who are seeking the Advaita understanding. The singular purpose of the site is made clear at the top of the page.

THE MYTH OF “DESTRUCTION”

From a site visitor: “The elements of my body cannot be destroyed, but the unique combination of energy that manifested into my unique personality will someday be gone forever, right? I understand what you are saying about nothing being created or dying, but I would suggest that something is destroyed, and, as you say, will never come back again: that particular temporary unique manifestation of energy that resulted in a persona. Or, that unique vacuum.”

F.: “Unique personality”? Ha. That energy which manifested was distorted by your parents/guardians/teachers/priests/culture. Then, from that bastardized state the consciousness came to believe that some "unique personality" exists. The entire goal of the first three steps on the “journey to Realization” is to be rid of the illusions of body-mind-personality. Say you saw a mirage in the desert that was no longer visible at nightfall. Would you say that “something was destroyed,” or do you realize that it never was to begin with? Every persona—every false “personality” that is adopted—is the illusion that is at the very heart of all self-deception and lack of Self-Awareness, including notions about creation, destruction, the “I” being real, the “I” being unique, and the “I” coming to an end.

Neither matter nor energy can be created nor destroyed. If you truly understood “about nothing being created,” then you would realize that there can be no such thing as “destruction” either, any more than there can be any such thing as “unique” or “different from.” Too, there is no “unique manifestation of energy that resulted in a persona.” The conscious-energy manifests but soon becomes bastardized and then that bastardization results in the assumption of personas as identities. Yet that’s not unique. That’s the case with 95% or more of the persons who wander about the planet.

Matter, such as what some might call a steel girder, is really a swirling mass of energy. Since neither matter nor energy can be created nor destroyed, how could a steel girder or anything else be destroyed? It can't. The beam might be left to rust, and eventually the elements that seemed to form a space will return to their original “state,” but again, nothing was created and nothing was destroyed in the cycle. So it is with “humans.” Air, elements and energy merely cycle, but persons assume that false appearances are real. Few ever realize that appearances and perceptions are never real. When the consciousness is no longer manifested, then all that is "gone" is an image that was once in the "mind" of certain persons who were witnessing inaccurately. Thus, few will ever understand THAT which really is. Most bodies will be placed in graves or cremated without persons ever having realized that the “dangerous snake” they thought they were seeing and that caused such discomfort or fear or anger or a sense of threat was nothing more than a “harmless rope.”

Finally, to understand the unicity is to be free of all false sense of uniqueness that the ego generates. To understand the functioning of the totality is to be free of the notion of creation and destruction. To be free of the notions of creation and destruction is to be free of other notions about “creators” and about “creators that also punish or reward or destroy,” but since billions on the planet are attached to the dogma that evolved from the concepts of Abraham, few will ever be truly free. They will, instead, be dependent on leaders who tell them what to think, what to believe and what to do, unquestioningly. The power of programming is revealed when it is seen how many billions do what they're told to do by a very few.

Persons exposed to those teachings will have tremendous difficulty reaching Full Realization and knowing that nothing is created nor destroyed and that nothing can be sustained. THAT which is…is, period. It needs no "one" to sustain it. It will sustain. The desire of those who identify with the body, however, is to “have faith” that they were created, to “have faith” that they can be “saved” or “sustained” forever, and to “have faith” that they can escape destruction or punishment if they are “good” and not “bad” (as variously and varyingly defined by their leaders). See that 6 billion of the 6.5 billion people on the planet adhere to one of the three sets of dogma that evolved from the concepts of Abraham and you’ll see why few will ever understand that the concepts of “creation,” “destruction,” “punishment,” “good,” “bad,” “reward” and “uniqueness” are all lies. And in their arrogance and attachment to their beliefs, they will continue to be miserable and will continue to do all possible to kill “others” so that their particular group can gain influence and control and power across the planet. So it is, but you have the opportunity to re-purify the consciousness by casting aside all ideas and emotions and beliefs and then live in an AS IF fashion until the consciousness unmanifests. Please enter the silence of contemplation.

WHY COMPLETE THE ENTIRE “JOURNEY” TO THE ABSOLUTE?

From Jim: “Hi Floyd, Time for another Saturday email. This time a question. Wondering about the worthwhileness of surpassing the Child Ignorance stage. What's the utility in contemplating the remainder of the steps? [NOTE: The “remainder of the steps” include the witness, the True Self or Pure Witness and THAT which is beyond beingness and non-beingness.] Remember all of those tribes you mentioned from thousands of years ago who had the "Original Understanding" but had little or no language and no need for ideas and beliefs? How many of them grunted and made motions on the fire-lit cave wall about beingness, non-beingness, beyond beingness, and beyond non-beingness? They witnessed that everything that arises passes away (which encapsulated a huge understanding).”

F.: Agreed. [By the way, those tribes aren’t all from thousands of years ago. Many are living right now in that same AS IF fashion in remote South American jungles or in remote island jungles across the globe, “protected” by that remoteness from exposure to the insane concepts of persons who think they are the “advanced” ones living in “First World” countries. The arrogance of the duality of that concept of “We’re First World but you’re Third World” would require an entirely separate discussion.] But here’s the pointer: none of those tribal people you referenced could have witnessed anything if fixated at the Child Ignorance stage. That's the point. The witness stage and the Pure Witness stage must be reached after transcending the Child Ignorance stage if you are to be able to differentiate real from illusion, if you are to understand that You Are the Absolute, and if You Are to abide as the Absolute. Now, your point could be relevant if the original manifestation had only "moved" as far as the Child Ignorance stage from the Absolute. If the bastardization that follows that stage had never occurred--the bastardization that results in the assumption of religious and spiritual roles, in a "mind," in all other false roles, and in body identification--then the other "steps" might not be needed, relatively speaking. That being rare, the requirement is that you must be as a child (for a time) to come to Me, the Absolute.

To understand the movement from body-mind-personality identification and the passage “back to” the understanding of the Absolute, you much see each step, in reverse, that resulted in body identification. The Absolute manifested as the True Self. The True Self began functioning as a Pure Witness but soon a “subject-object witness” began to dominate as the child became more and more consciousness of its physical self by witnessing a hand and an arm and a leg; then it became more consciousness of "others" as the “mind” began to form with exposure to concepts and programming and conditioning and enculturation. But it was not until the child was erroneously told what it is—which is not at all what it is—that spiritual or religious dualities were accepted: "You were a gift from god"; “you are bad when you do that; “you are good if you do this”; “this is what is moral and that is what is immoral”; “for that you will get a punishment”; “for this you will get a reward,” etc. Then, the mental machinations really began, a “mind” began to form (merely an accumulation of the lies of enculturation), and then the digression into limited, body ID set in and once again another cycle from the Absolute to the belief in the “I” was completed. To be free of all that, you must repeat the entire "journey" back to the Absolute, and the “journey” must be completed in reverse and in toto. The most direct route out of the illusion is the direct route in reverse that got you into the illusion.

Jim: “But they had no codified concepts about the Absolute that is beyond beingness and non-beingness and about hydrogen atoms splitting into helium atoms and other such concepts. In other words, the Original Understanding was "No Understanding"; at least not an understanding that required expression. Today, those who choose to verbalize their version of the process "as gurus" seem in many cases to be Super-Duper Level 3's who may have been "misguided dogma peddlars" in years past but have now graduated to still being Spirtual Giants but not labelling themselves as such because they don't believe in labels and after-all, they're pointing to the Truth in their satsangs; right? So they can't be Spiritual Giants. They're Realized! Jim”

F.: Agreed. When there was the universally-held, Original Understanding, how could there be any “need” to teach the Understanding? When no persons/personalities existed with thorns in their hands, wherefore any need for thorns that can remove thorns? That is, when there were no concepts, there was no need for other concepts to be used to remove all concepts, so your point in that regard would be completely accurate, if it applied to persons today. But it doesn't.

The only “need” for “codification” or "teaching" now is to remove the contamination that is obstructing the view of the Original Understanding. Hence, the snake in the rope. If all saw that the rope is a just rope, then there would be no need to mention a snake at all. What’s to teach in that case? If the reality were seen, then the illusion would not have to be pointed to by one who knows the rope to be a rope and who understands the “not snake.” And the only reason for mentioning "not snake" or "not truth" or "not two" is to allow protégés to see the rope clearly (as is), to realize that each role they assume is more self-deception, to realize the lie of multiplicity, to realize the truth of the unicity, and to grasp the Original Understanding. Finally, those in ignorance aren't in bliss—they're in misery; however, do not confuse “the ignorant” with the "severely retarded" who are totally out of their minds and therefore can be in a more blissful state than those being driven by learned ignorance. That is the pointer for all seekers: only persons who are out of their "minds" can be sane and in touch with Reality.

Finally, to your term “huge understanding.” Even if protégés happen to miss “Full Realization” or “the Original Understanding” or “the understanding of the functioning of the totality,” it would be a “huge understanding” even if they never saw the truth but at least saw all the lies. Again, though, that would still require that the Child Ignorance stage be transcended and that the witnessing stage and Pure Witnessing stage be attained. Please enter the silence of contemplation.