F.: It has been said that “those who are not enlightened live in the darkness,” but what does that mean? Several e-mails recently have asked, “If it’s all relative and only the Absolute is real, why should anyone concern himself with trying to Realize?” Only those in darkness would ask. To Realize means to re-purify the bastardized consciousness, to stop believing lies, to be free of ignorance, to stop living under the blind influence of programming and conditioning that makes persons behave like Pavlovian dogs, to be free of beliefs—and fighting about beliefs—that are based in ancient myths and superstitions, to be in touch with reality, to stop being insane, to know What You Are instead of believing that you are something that you are not, to be free of all fears, and to be free of the misery and suffering that are the result of the arrogance and egotism that accompany adopted, but false, identities. So you may stop asking “Why Realize?” and understand that you are really asking:
· Why should I not want the consciousness bastardized and corrupted?
· Why should I want to stop believing lies?
· Why should I not want to stay ignorant?
· Why should I want to stop living under the blind influence of programming and conditioning that makes me live like a Pavlovian dog?
· Why should I want to give up beliefs that result in so much fighting across the planet?
· Why should I want to give up the nonsense that is rooted in ancient myths and superstitions that were dreamed up by ignorant people?
· Why should I want to be in touch with reality?
· Why should I want to stop being insane?
· Why should I want to know What I Really Am instead of believing that I’m something that I’m not?
· Why should I want to be free of all fears?
· Why should I want to be free of misery and suffering?
· Why should I not want to continue to be arrogant and egotistical?
· Why should I want to give up my phony image and be genuine and Real?
“The Dark Ages” in Europe was that period in which the popularity of superstitious, religious and supernatural beliefs inspired fools to burn at the stake the intellectuals, the scientists and the intelligentsia in their communities. It was a period when the ignorant gave value to traditions (doing things based on the argument that “we’ve always done it that way”) and characterized by widespread irrationality, superstition, and tyranny among the population. It was a period in which the artists and their arts were repressed and when education was seen as the enemy of humankind rather than as an asset in the relative existence. It was an age when logic and intelligence were scorned, when stupidity was prized, and when widespread ignorance resulted in wars and killing and death and disease that obliterated 40% of the population of Europe. It was, in short, a period when Realization was ignored and reification and hypostatization became popular.
Conversely, “The Age of Enlightenment,” or “The Age of Reason” was an intellectual movement in which a renewed interest in aesthetics and logic returned after “The Dark Ages.” Leaders with some degree of awareness set out to free their cultures of the constraints of tradition, irrationality, superstition, and tyranny. In that period of enlightenment were sown the seeds of all the democratic movements that eventually swept across Europe and then to other continents, supporting the fact that enlightenment and realization are about being free…totally free. A study of history shows that the periods of purified consciousness and corrupted consciousness have moved like a pendulum as one age prefers the ignorance and another prefers something different and swings back toward enlightenment. During the periods of darkness, humanity’s most popular instruments for perpetuating distortion and preventing Realization have been fallacies in reasoning, and it may be that no other time in history has seen as many persons roaming the planet with no ability to reason clearly as now.
Realization is about realizing when a lie is a lie as well as about realizing what the truth actually is. Persons (the non-Realized) are irrational and illogical, and their reasoning is marked by one fallacy after another. They believe lies and do not know the truth, and two related types of reasoning fallacies that are at the heart of the ignorance in which persons are trapped include hypostatization and reification.
Hypostatization is the process whereby a conceptual entity is construed to be real and believed to actually exist. Hypostatization in ancient Greek and Rome, for example, inspired the masses to belief the stories about gods from other worlds that were in charge of all events on this planet…including rain, wars, human fertilization, hurricanes, plant fertilization, crop successes, healing, death, and crop failures. It is hypostatization that inspires even intelligent person—made into fools via programming—to consider abstract concepts to be real.
The considerations for today are (1) Can you find any legitimate reasons for following the steps to Full Realization? (2) Can you find any instances when you’ve allowed your programmers and conditioners to convince you that their abstract ideas are actually real? Please enter the silence of contemplation. [To be continued]
