FROM A SITE VISITOR: Teachers sometimes speak of “impressions.” Are there not some impressions that are real or truthful in basis? Thank you for the site.
F.: It was shown yesterday how the sense of presence becomes bastardized and how a false (dualistic) sense of separation and sense of differentiation now account for a lack of peace, a lack of consistent happiness, fighting and war as well.
The “I AM” sense of presence has been corrupted into such beliefs as “I am present as a man” which soon becomes “I am a great man” which can become “I am a great leader” which can become “I am the most powerful leader on the planet” which can lead to “I, the most powerful man on the planet, will use my power in discretionary ways to destroy others.”
The results of that type thinking that is rooted in body-mind-personality identification has, relatively speaking, had international consequences over the last several thousand years and right up to the present. It also has produced results that have impacted persons, again relatively speaking, on the national, state, and local levels as well as creating tension, anger, fighting and even murder within private homes. It accounts for much of the suffering and misery that persons often experience even if they are alone and not dealing with "others" but are trapped within themselves...their false selves.
For those who would be free of those effects, the “journey” begins when a teacher invites protégés to attempt to view the sense of presence and the impression of continuity from the original stance, that is, from the platform of the pre-corrupted consciousness.
To do so can allow even persons among the non-Realized to realize this fact: “I would still be ‘Me,’ even if parts of my body don’t continue to exist.” That impression can open the door to a shift beyond identification with body and mind and personality.
In FROM THE I TO THE ABSOLUTE, the reader can see in detail the exercise that is used to move seekers beyond body identification. In short, a consideration similar to this can be read in the transcripts of sessions that are shared in that book:
“If you were to lose both arms and both legs and also undergo a heart transplant, would You still be You, even without the presence of those limbs and that organ?” Those who are totally asleep or totally identified with nothing other than the body always answer, “No”; however, in those cases when even the slightest degree of pure consciousness surfaces through the haze of distortions and illusions, a different conclusion can be reached. In those cases, persons can pause and the effects of programming and conditioning can be cast aside at least for a few moments. If that happens, persons willing to consider clearly for a moment have answered, “Well, yes…I would still be me.”
At that point, the novice seeker may take that “me” to be the “mind” or the “personality,” but if the re-purification of the warped consciousness begins to happen at all, a sense that there is a “Me” beyond this “me” happens; later, if the consciousness becomes fully re-purified, the sense of “Am-ness” and “me-ness” and even “Me-ness” are abandoned as the consciousness understands that the Absolute is beyond the beingness and the non-beingness as well.
Among those specks of consciousness that have been subjected to religious or spiritual programming, the sense of continuity has set them up to be easily convinced that it is the body and mind and personality that can “have continuity.” That belief has allowed trillions over the last several thousand years to be convinced that the body and mind and personality will either experience eternal life in paradise or eternal punishment in hell.
Among those specks of consciousness that have been subjected to religious or spiritual programming but who take “the continuous part” to be a subtle body and “more,” many of them assume that the “Me” is a “soul” or some such; however, if they can transition that man-made concept, then they can begin to understand that the “I” which knows itself / ItSelf is…the Consciousness.
The re-purified consciousness comes to know the consciousness which is that “Me beyond the body-mind-personality” that is answering the question above and sensing that, "Yes, whatever I Am is beyond physical body parts and body organs." Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)
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