[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]
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]
