FROM A SITE VISITOR: [Please see the 9 March 2008 posting for the e-mail which is being responded to in this series]
An Advaita Vedanta realization, enlightenment, nisarga yoga site discussing non-duality (nonduality), your original nature, and dwelling in the natural state as taught by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.
F.: [Continued form yesterday] Sociopaths are just one of the many unnatural results of personality assumption in the relative existence. They have been discussed in order to understand the role that personality played in all of the relative issues raised in the 9 March 2008 e-mail, including wars and disasters and killing along with all of the pain and suffering that mar the relative existence.
Few sociopaths will ever Realize and become Enlightened, as will few of any of the persons living under the influence of personality. Personality sustains the darkness that manifests when specks of consciousness become corrupted or blocked and incapable of seeing truth.
The Advaitin relevance is that the Sociopathic Personality Disorder is just one of many disorders that are rooted in personality and that mar the relative existence, and that is why Advaitins suggest being free of all personality identification.
Next, for an understanding of the working of personality in the relative, it is necessary to see that all personas can only appear to exist if a co-dependent counterpart is being played.
“The Husband” cannot be assumed as an identity unless a person is willing to undertake the role of “wife” in the fraudulent game of “persona assumption” that is played out by individuals and cultures across the globe.
Likewise, “The Employer” or “The Boss” cannot be played without a counterpart that is (1) willing to play the role of “The Employee” and that is (2) willing to play the part with unquestioned attachment.
Similarly, the role of “The Pathological Leader” and the role of “The One Ordering Others to Kill” cannot be played without persons willing to assume the role of “The Unquestioning Follower of Orders” and “The One Willing to Kill on Demand.”
For example, Lt. General William Caldwell recently commended U.S. soldiers for “their willingness to serve every day, without questioning,” a comment which supports the Advaitin pointer that all ignorance and all belief in lies continue because persons (trapped in personality) refuse to question the teachings of so-called "authority figures."
Those types of scenarios, as referenced in your e-mail, unfold because dictators and prime ministers and preachers and mafia godfathers and priests and presidents and imams and generals are always dealing with populations wherein 50% are of that Personality Type Six which is driven by fear and by their desire for a powerful or inspirational leader to “save” them and protect them.
Their fears about not surviving sets them up to desire salvation and continuity of their bodies and “minds” and personality/personalities.
Are you seeing, Danny, that the widespread abandonment of personality which would lead to a Realized population would not prevent sociopaths from trying to assume the roles they assume; however, Realization would preempt persons from willingly and unquestioningly assuming and playing the counterpart role that is required for sociopaths to fulfill their pathological missions.
Ralph Klein, in offering pointers about personality and treating personality disorders that any Realized Advaitin would understand, suggests that a short-term goal is for persons “to understand that they are not the way they appear to be.”
Why does the process of challenging the ego and ego-states seem so painful? Consider the reaction of “The Director” in this series’ case study. He was invited to consider his disintegration into “The Boss” personality. He later described the session to a co-worker as being “anger-provoking and distressing.”
Klein notes that eliminating personality and addressing the accompanying disorders “involves a mourning…for the loss of the illusion…for the loss of an identity, the false self, which the person constructed and with which he or she has negotiated much of his or her life. The dismantling of the false self requires a relinquishing of the only way of being that the [person] has ever known….”
In western cultures, children really don’t want to be told there is no Santa. Most non-Realized adults feel the same way about their illusions. Klein notes that persons prefer the familiar “experience of the self, no matter how false, defensive, or destructive that identity may be.”
The experience of assuming false, defensive and destructive selves is rooted in personality. This is all relative, all of the issues mentioned in Danny’s e-mail and all of the pain and suffering. Yet prior to differentiating true from false, prior to Realization, and prior to abidance as the Absolute, nothing seems more real. Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)
