From a site visitor: [Received yesterday] Today you said history shows religion leads to separation and judging and even killing. That’s not true. For me, my religion leads to peace and power. I stay in conscious contact with Him with prayer all day, every day, and He empowers me and gives me guidance and peace so I can be happy for as long as, BY HIS GRACE, I am allowed to live. I hope you can find your way to Him so that you can have peace in this life and joy forever. Signed, John (as in 3:16)--A Child and Agent of God
F.: Hello John. It is a wonderment that persons like you find a site such as this at all; however, it is no wonderment at all that when they do, they are driven by ego to submit a prescription for the “right” way that “others” should think and feel and behave (namely, the exact same way that you think and feel and behave). Evidently, you failed to relate to the content in the series on narcissism. It is also no wonderment that those programmed the way you have been programmed will assume that no one is happy or at peace if they do not believe what you believe. At the core of all dogma is the notion that “our way is The Way…the only way.”
You would have everyone add to their knowledge base those things that you believe, whereas Advaita invites you to discard all concepts and beliefs. There will never be an invitation from Realized teachers for you to think the way they think (because they do not think). There will never be an invitation for you to attain more religious or spiritual knowledge (for they have discarded all learned ignorance). You, on the other hand, have an “agenda of addition” rather than a plan for subtraction or de-accumulation.
At any rate, you did find the site, so your opinions and beliefs will be addressed since they provide an opportunity to share certain Advaitin pointers in response; however, your comments will addressed in light of a point offered by Dennis Waite in his most recent book: “Opinions and beliefs may be more dangerous than ignorance….”
[For more, visit: http://www.advaitaquotes.blogspot.com/]
First, a few remarks in general today before addressing later the specifics in your e-mail:
1. The religious and/or spiritual stage is one of the seven stages to Full Realization. There is no suggestion to skip that step, only an invitation to transition beyond a stage that most take to be the final step of the “journey” and that causes them to mistake the dawn for the noon.
2. You have ignored the historical record and claim that a pointer is “not true.” Look, then, at the current events that are resulting in separation and wholesale killing and see the prime identifier that the combatants have adopted and which inspires their conflict. Nowadays, combatants around the globe are not divided along national lines as much as along religious lines. As with all who are out of touch with Reality, the theory behind your beliefs does not match the actual practices.
The Advaitin Douwe Tiemersma—a member of the Philosophical Faculty at Erasmus University in Holland at the time—explained it this way in the 1980’s in his Foreword to the book I AM THAT:
F.: Hello John. It is a wonderment that persons like you find a site such as this at all; however, it is no wonderment at all that when they do, they are driven by ego to submit a prescription for the “right” way that “others” should think and feel and behave (namely, the exact same way that you think and feel and behave). Evidently, you failed to relate to the content in the series on narcissism. It is also no wonderment that those programmed the way you have been programmed will assume that no one is happy or at peace if they do not believe what you believe. At the core of all dogma is the notion that “our way is The Way…the only way.”
You would have everyone add to their knowledge base those things that you believe, whereas Advaita invites you to discard all concepts and beliefs. There will never be an invitation from Realized teachers for you to think the way they think (because they do not think). There will never be an invitation for you to attain more religious or spiritual knowledge (for they have discarded all learned ignorance). You, on the other hand, have an “agenda of addition” rather than a plan for subtraction or de-accumulation.
At any rate, you did find the site, so your opinions and beliefs will be addressed since they provide an opportunity to share certain Advaitin pointers in response; however, your comments will addressed in light of a point offered by Dennis Waite in his most recent book: “Opinions and beliefs may be more dangerous than ignorance….”
[For more, visit: http://www.advaitaquotes.blogspot.com/]
First, a few remarks in general today before addressing later the specifics in your e-mail:
1. The religious and/or spiritual stage is one of the seven stages to Full Realization. There is no suggestion to skip that step, only an invitation to transition beyond a stage that most take to be the final step of the “journey” and that causes them to mistake the dawn for the noon.
2. You have ignored the historical record and claim that a pointer is “not true.” Look, then, at the current events that are resulting in separation and wholesale killing and see the prime identifier that the combatants have adopted and which inspires their conflict. Nowadays, combatants around the globe are not divided along national lines as much as along religious lines. As with all who are out of touch with Reality, the theory behind your beliefs does not match the actual practices.
The Advaitin Douwe Tiemersma—a member of the Philosophical Faculty at Erasmus University in Holland at the time—explained it this way in the 1980’s in his Foreword to the book I AM THAT:
There are various religions [that] suffer from certain inherent limitations. They couch into fine-sounding words their traditional beliefs and ideologies, theological or philosophical. Believers, however, discover the limited range of meaning and applicability of these words, sooner or later. They get disillusioned and tend to abandon the systems, in the same way as scientifc theories are abandoned, when they are called in question by too much contradictory empirical data.
3. Your own words support the link between religion and killing when you explain that you are alive by your god’s grace, the implication being that “he” is going to kill you someday, whenever “he” chooses. And most certainly “his” propensity for killing is well-documented in Jewish and Christian writings.
4. Now, to your hearing guidance from a god: the fact that an uncle was Chief Administrator of a state-run hospital for the clinically-insane afforded an opportunity to observe first-hand the effects of certain mental illnesses. Many of those suffering psychosis had lost the ability to differentiate the real from the symbolic, as you have. The schizophrenics often had hallucinations and self-reported imaginings, just as you report when discussing the guidance you claim to hear. You are less in "conscious contact" and more in "unconscious contact."
So, one result of the religious programming that you have been subjected to—and which you are now trying to subject others to—is faith-based psychosis and faith-based schizophrenia. Those mental illnesses will get you some Crusades; will get you some Inquisitions; will lead to decimating entire populations in order to establish religious nations; will lead to the gassing and incineration of the members of one religion by members of another; will get you 1,400 years of sectarian violence; and will inspire many among the faithful to strap on and detonate vests made of bombs. Again, variances in noble theories and actual practice are a “call to question” it all as a result of “too much contradictory empirical data.”
Yet your programmers accompany their promises of “peace and power” and their promise that “you” shall not perish with the perfect hook: if you question, you lose all that has been promised.
5. As for the two new ego-states that you have adopted (“Child of God” and “Agent of God”), remember in the verse you reference (3:16) that the best plan “he” could come up with involved killing “his son.”
6. If my 23-year-old daughter called me "all day, every day" for guidance, it would be clear that she is suffering a dependency disorder and has not realized that she has all of the provisions needed for completing her relative existence "journey" from a state of total freedom. Nisarga Yoga is about living naturally, not unnaturally or supernaturally. The deer calls on no one and does just fine.
Now, there is no assumption that any of that can change your “mind” (your warped consciousness) but there might be those who have reached the point mentioned by Douwe Tiemersma and who understand what it is to “suffer from certain inherent limitations” of their dogma; who have discovered “the limited range of meaning and applicability” of those teachings; who have become “disillusioned” and are ready “to abandon the systems”; and who are ready to “question” those teachings as a result of “too much contradictory empirical data.”
While fixated at the third of seven steps to Realization, the dawn is often mistaken for the noon. Persons think that they have arrived and haven’t a clue that they have not traveled even one-half of the “path” to Full Enlightenment and Complete Liberation. It was while trapped in two ego-states (a religious persona and a spiritual persona) that disillusionment finally allowed “floyd” to begin to question. The willingness to question led to a search for something beyond the distortions of programming and conditioning and enculturation, and it was then that the Advaita Teachings were found.
It was those teachings that led to the re-purification of the consciousness which, in turn, led to total freedom. This series will be offered for those who might be in that state of disillusionment, who might find the wherewithal to question, and who might find the notion of “total freedom” to be a saner option—relatively speaking—than the appeal of “total dependence.” Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)
THE FEATURED BOOK FOR THIS WEEK’S SALE IS CASTING LIGHT ON THE DARK SIDE OF RELATIONSHIPS (which identifies problems and their causes and offers suggestions for creating healthier relationships—relatively speaking. 15% off through June 17th.)
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Now, there is no assumption that any of that can change your “mind” (your warped consciousness) but there might be those who have reached the point mentioned by Douwe Tiemersma and who understand what it is to “suffer from certain inherent limitations” of their dogma; who have discovered “the limited range of meaning and applicability” of those teachings; who have become “disillusioned” and are ready “to abandon the systems”; and who are ready to “question” those teachings as a result of “too much contradictory empirical data.”
While fixated at the third of seven steps to Realization, the dawn is often mistaken for the noon. Persons think that they have arrived and haven’t a clue that they have not traveled even one-half of the “path” to Full Enlightenment and Complete Liberation. It was while trapped in two ego-states (a religious persona and a spiritual persona) that disillusionment finally allowed “floyd” to begin to question. The willingness to question led to a search for something beyond the distortions of programming and conditioning and enculturation, and it was then that the Advaita Teachings were found.
It was those teachings that led to the re-purification of the consciousness which, in turn, led to total freedom. This series will be offered for those who might be in that state of disillusionment, who might find the wherewithal to question, and who might find the notion of “total freedom” to be a saner option—relatively speaking—than the appeal of “total dependence.” Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)
THE FEATURED BOOK FOR THIS WEEK’S SALE IS CASTING LIGHT ON THE DARK SIDE OF RELATIONSHIPS (which identifies problems and their causes and offers suggestions for creating healthier relationships—relatively speaking. 15% off through June 17th.)
