An Advaita Vedanta realization, enlightenment, nisarga yoga site discussing non-duality (nonduality), your original nature, and dwelling in the natural state as revealed by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.
From Greg Iles newest novel, Third Degree: He looked down at her like some Old Testament judge. He slapped her with his left hand, driving her down to the floor. [She] stayed on the floor, trying to recall a dark religious strain is [his] childhood but she didn’t remember one. But the way he was talking…it was like he’d been possessed by some wild-eyed minister from another age. Or by her father on his worst day. But not even her father would have resorted to violence. He would have gotten her down on the floor to pray until God sent some sign that forgiveness was at hand. But [her husband] wasn’t waiting for a sign. He saw himself as the instrument of God’s punishment.
[A large volume of e-mail is coming in daily as visitors read and consider the content of this series. Some of the e-mails will be shared each day]:
FROM A SITE VISITOR: Reading the post, this morning, I imagine you take
They would likely find the dispensing of said “beatings” to be rapturous, yet they know not “where” I dwell. Are some already writing? Oh yes. Interestingly, they are visiting an Advaita site while seeming to prefer the programming of their childhood days. (P.S. To Jim: please abstain from any additional comments or inquiries at this point; instead, you are invited to take into quiet contemplation all the pointers that will be offered in the entire series before responding. Thank you.)
FROM ANOTHER SITE VISITOR: I agree with what you're saying and can see that Advaita became something for me to be “spiritual man” again just like I had done with other organizations in the past. I would love to be free from all personas, false roles, states of being, ETC... I understand that when they are gone there will be nothing left to be hurt, threatened, or interfered with, nothing to defend. All I can say is I am willing to take the next step. Thanks again, Walter
To continue now with the e-mail that began the series:
FROM A SITE VISITOR YESTERDAY: It seems to me the consciousness which you say is the cause of nonsense is also the cause of all that is accomplished in the relative. like Steven was saying we have to work if we don’t have someone to pay our bills. We have to contribute if we want to have some sense of purpose and meaning and betterment. You have said Christ was an Advaitin. I am combining Advaita Vedanta and Christianity to live by. My religion lets me serve others. What is wrong with that? what’s wrong with trying to live like Christ and help others. That is not nonsense. Jim
F.: Next, Jim, you speak of a sense of purpose and meaning and betterment and serving and helping others. Understand that there is neither “accomplishment” nor “doing” nor “do-ers” nor “accomplishers.” You are trapped in the bondage of concepts and playing the game of accumulating identities.
Such seeking of multiple, relative identities is the stuff that dreams, and insanity, are made of. Practice your religion all you want, but you are invited to understand that those calling themselves “Christians” do not understand that before Christ was, I Am and They Are.
Wherefore the practice of worshipping a speck of consciousness that manifested and then unmanifested? That which the space called “Christ” was, You Are, but not in the way that most believe.
Further, if his “Followers” have such regard for that speck called Christ, explain why they meet weekly to find out how to guarantee body-mind-personality continuity when his words discount that notion.
Explain why they seek to guarantee that “they shall be with Christ in heaven one day” while at the same time ignoring his words that stated clearly and unequivocally that, “Heaven and earth shall fade away” and that “No one shall ever see the kingdom of heaven for it is within.”
It is like telling a man, “There is no central governing body for Advaitins,” only to have him ask, “OK, that’s all well and good, but tell me, where can I send a financial donation to the central governing body for Advaitins? I really think I will be helped in the long-term if I give money to that group, and I eventually want to spend eternity in the place where that body is located.”
How contradictory. How insane, not unlike a politician who reported five years ago that he had prayed to “The Father” and that God told him to bomb another country, yet yesterday he said, “In a world where some invoke the name of God to justify acts of terror and murder and hate, we need your message that ‘God is love’. We need your message that all human life is sacred. Some no longer believe that we can distinguish between simple right and wrong. In a world where some see freedom as simply the right to do as they wish, we need your message that true liberty requires us to live our freedom not just for ourselves, but in a spirit of mutual support."
Again, the words of Advaitin Douwe Tiemersma: They couch into fine-sounding words [their dualisitic beliefs] yet their words can be called in question by too much contradictory empirical data.
The Advaitin understanding functions as an antibiotic when it encounters the infection of duality and self-contradiction; however, six billion+ members of Abraham’s sky cults organize themselves into “nations” across the planet and cherish their sickness.
Then, those nations combine their politics with organized religion, Jim, just as you are trying to combine Advaita and your religion.
They label themselves as “the Jewish state” or “a Christian nation” or “an Islamic theocracy”; then, (having been so thoroughly indoctrinated) they will be blind to their duality, to their contractions, and to the false identities assumed; thus, they will not know peace during the manifestation.
They will know instead the duality of their false sense of separation; they will think they know their enemy, who is considered to be the enemy of their God; and they will fight to the end (of the manifestation) in order to spread their beliefs. Do you see, Jim, why Advaita invites you to cast aside all beliefs? Please enter the silence of contemplation. [To be continued]
