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.”
[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.
