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 A SITE VISITOR: Hey Floyd, I love your site!! Well, I was programmed by catholicism and I'm still having trouble realizing that there is no heaven/hell... I still have a fear that I may create my own hell or that there might be a hell.. How can I deprogram myself from this fear?
Are you positive there is no hell?? peace and love alex
F.: First, Alex, before you try to deal with your concerns about the heaven-hell debate, look at the plethora of e-mails you have sent subsequent to this one, ignoring the assignment to go into quiet contemplation; adding more and more questions that you want answered; wanting your questions answered immediately; and wanting to be moved ahead of all others who had submitted questions before you.
When advised to stop writing and to return to the assignment for contemplation, you even ignored that and were driven to respond and explain your “self.” See that when you feel driven to “explain yourself,” (or your selves) you are attached to one or more ego-states that feel threatened and feel that a response is not an option but is a necessity.
Your question will be addressed, but before you try to deal with the no-concept, non-dual Reality, you might consider addressing a few relative issues: obsessiveness, compulsiveness, dis-ease, impatience, control, and the use of ego-defense mechanisms to support all of the things you think you are but which You are not.
(Does “peace” still apply after reading those remarks? How about “love”? Does that still apply? If not, maybe neither has yet manifested truly.) Now, to your original query.
First, what I am “positive of” is no concern of yours. All that matters in your case is what you, what “your mind,” believes that it is positive about (even prior to objective consideration) and what You (the True Self in touch with the inner guru or inner resource) could reveal in terms of Truth.
Next, understand that everything that is of a concern to you is an illusion to the degree that…
nothing is as you perceive it and
it is all illusory to the degree that…
the specific illusions of “heaven” and “hell” are just secondary illusions which are an upgrade or a downgrade—just illusions that are thought to be either “better than” or “worse than” an original illusion. For example:
“this world” is nothing like what you think it is, but persons took the concept of “this world” and upgraded that to a better world (“heaven”) or downgraded it to a worse world (“hell”).
Next, since you were programmed with Catholic dogma, turn first to the teachings that are ignored by their own pope (the one prior to the present one) as well as to the words of Jesus after he was taught the Advaita teachings:
Pope John Paul II said that people need to understand the geography of Gehanna, declaring accurately that there is no physical heaven or physical hell and that both are mental states and that all persons are currently in one or the other, NOW.
After learning the Advaita teachings, Jesus said, “No one shall ever see the kingdom of heaven. It is within.”
He said, “Heaven and earth shall fade away.”
He was programmed in the temple with Jewish doctrine and talked that talk, but after learning the teachings, he abandoned organized religion, went to the hillsides or homes, and shared the teachings to the few who were ready.
He came to understand that Moses had plagiarized the summative statement about Advaita that had been shared in the
When Jesus tried to correct the misperception that he was “the son of God,” he advised persons: “When you speak of me, speak of me as I AM,” meaning, not as “I am…the son”; not as “I am…a god incarnate”; just, I AM, period.
He said, “Before Abraham was, I AM.”
How many of your Catholic instructors understand any of that, much less teach it? (That is rhetorical…do not send an e-mail with your thoughts. They are totally valueless. You need not express them and certainly there is no willingness here to read them.)
Instead, take the above into quiet consideration and begin tapping into the inner resource that can reveal the answers to your question. Yet those answers can only come when all personality (all persona-identification) goes. Why?
Because personality blocks logic and reason. Because dogma and programming and conditioning disengage logic and reason. Because logic and reason—as generated by the sixth sense, by the intuitive knowingness—are the antidote to your accumulated religious and spiritual knowledge, (a.k.a., “learned ignorance.”) Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)
