SITE VISITOR Lisa asked for responses to certain questions as part of an assignment for a college course in religions and philosophies:
LISA: Do you have a title or position?
F.: Freedom comes with being free of every title, position, persona, ego-state, false identity, role, or assumed personality.
LISA: Do you have a title or position?
F.: Freedom comes with being free of every title, position, persona, ego-state, false identity, role, or assumed personality.
LISA: Please briefly define Advaita Vedanta. Is that your philosophy and can anyone live by it?
F.: Advaita Vedanta is considered by most to be a philosophy, though nowadays it has been warped into a religion by many. And it is not even a philosophy that is to be "lived by." It is a set of teachings that can shift a person from not having a clue about the real answer to "Who/What Am I?" to the understanding of knowing exactly THAT Which I Am. After that understanding is reached, AS IF living merely happens spontaneously.
"Vedanta" refers to that which is at the end of (or, for some, that which is "beyond") the Vedas, so the philosophy is often associated with Hindus and the Far East. Such associations have distorted the truth since the “Vedanta” part of the title refers to a modern tradition that began with Shankara/Shankaracharya in the 8th century; conversely, the “Advaita” part (meaning "not two," “non-duality”) points toward the ancient, Original Understanding of the unicity, the oneness, the non-duality. Mixing "modern parts" with the "Original Awareness" has resulted in an irony: the original, innate understanding of non-duality has taken on a dualistic aspect itself as many teachers now combine the modern additions with the Original Understanding.
The expression of that unicity may have first happened tens of thousands of years ago, but the sense of the unicity is timeless. Originally, on this planet, non-duality was intuitively understood. There was no language that could be used to bastardize the pure consciousness, but that changed. Those with agendas over thousands of years have introduced concepts steeped in dualities in order to judge and to control people: good/bad, right/wrong, moral/immoral, reward/punishment, heaven/hell, etc. Advaita provides a means by which the consciousness can be re-purified and by which persons/personas can be free of belief in the lies of duality.
LISA: How did you find Advaita and what got you into it.
F.: When on the "quest" described to you in an earlier e-mail, all of the so-called "big-hitters" were being studied. Their seminars were attended, their tapes were watched, their recordings were listened to, and their books were read: Wilde, Tolle, Chopra, Dyer, etc. When it was learned that they had all been exposed to the Advaita teachings, and were all quoting different parts of the Advaita teachings at times, that common source was investigated. It was seen that each had taken one part of the entire teachings and made it a money-making theme. None offered the entire teachings in a fashion that leads to Full Realization. (You can't keep 'em coming back for your concepts if you teach them to be rid of all concepts, right?) When the full teachings were found, the Full Understanding soon followed.
LISA: How has the book of revelations effected or influenced religion?
F.: The Book of Revelation, singular, actually. Its effect or infleunce on religion is to provide one more instance where religions dream up concepts or explanations that are rooted in myths, lies and misunderstandings, disseminate those concepts, and thereby generate more religious or spiritual teachings, (also known as "learned ignorance"). The effect or influence of distorting the original intent of Revelation has been to generate the kind of misinformation that characterizes all movements that are plagued with concepts (Advaita included, nowadays). The book influences, as is often the case, those who claim to live by the precepts of their "special" or "holy" books which they, in fact, have never even read, in most cases. That book was written by a Christian who had been disenfranchised by the Romans and the Book of Revelation was nothing more than his rant.
He was predicting the fall of the Roman Empire, not the end of the world. He was anticipating the end of that Empire with glee and anger and resentment and rage. The content of Revelation was topical, written about events in the author’s day. It has no relevance today at all, but it is a perfect example of why the Advaita teachings suggest that persons ignore all of the so-called “holy” writings, tap into the inner resource or the inner guru, and find the truth within. Yet look at the learned ignorance that interpreting/misinterpretating Revelation has generated among the masses by their misunderstanding of something as simple as “666.”
The number "6" in that day meant "evil," and among Christians the Roman Emperor was called "evil-evil-evil." In order to avoid beheading, the writer coded his rantings about the emperor by referring to him as "6-6-6," the enemy of Christians who was taking their possessions and othewise abusing them. The reference was to an emperor, not to a "Satan" ("satan," Hebrew = "enemy.") Christians in that day knew that the author was referring to the emperor. That message has been distorted so that the masses for centuries have bought into the lies about Revelation predicting the end of the world. Many live their lives under the influence of allowing words that predicted the end of the Roman Empire to affect their entire “worldview” nearly 2000 years later. His predictions about a final battle between the dualities of "good" and "evil" that would defeat the Romans has been distorted into a forecast for a final battle that will see the destruction of Jews, the destruction of "the world" as it is, the return of Christ, etc. A message written for that time has been distorted into a message about some future time. As with all concepts dreamed up by persons and then interpreted and reinterpreted by other persons, Revelation is just much ado about nothing. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, "Never have so many been so fooled by making so much of so little for so many years." Thus, you can now see Revelation's effect/influence that you asked about: it has generated religious nonsense and spiritual ignorance, and it have provided "leaders" with the power to control the "minds" and behavior of persons, and that is what religions (based as they are in myth, superstition, and the desire to have power and control over people) have done since they were first dreamed up by men.
LISA: How can a child be raised to avoid buying into beliefs that could eventually harm that child?
F.: Cultures have created systems that now prevent that possibility almost completely. The consciousness will be contaminated and bastardized. The child that is not filled with such nonsense as Santa and a Great Flood and Hell (though Christ spoke of Gehanna, not Hades) will be the oddball. The harm of that contaminating process (relatively speaking) will never end unless the child happens to be one of a small minority that in later years finds a process by which she/he can reject all ideas, emotions (but not feelings), beliefs, concepts, dogma, and all of the other effects of learned ignorance and programming and conditioning and enculturation and becomes free, Realized, enlightened, actualized, or whatever term you prefer to describe the condition of completing the manifestation as the re-purified consciousness. Please enter the silence of contemplation. [To be continued]
