An Advaita Vedanta philosophy site, focusing on Realization, enlightenment, nisarga yoga, non-duality (nonduality), your original nature, dwelling as your natural state, and the teachings of Maharaj.
FROM A SITE VISITOR: Why do so few ever realize?
F.: [Continued from
A FEAR-BASED AND A DESIRE-BASED ADDICTION TO POWER THAT PREVENTS NATURAL LIVING AND THAT ENCOURAGES EFFORTS TO LIVING SUPERNATURALLY INSTEAD
The addiction to power is (1) associated with fears and desires and (2) is related to the ignorance discussed earlier. Consider the various types of power that persons desire:
Persons today want economic power, so some will use money to attract persons whom they desire but that they might not be able to attract otherwise;
some will use sexual power to attract money to alleviate their fears about having their housing and food and clothing needs met; some will use money to control others, threatening to withhold funds that others desire.
Some want military power to control other nations; some want political power to reform the world and enhance their “influence”; and some want physical power to feel physically safe in the world they take to be a physical world only.
But of all of the addictions to the various types of power, none is more aligned with desire and fear and ignorance than the personal desire to have a relationship with a celestial power that will be at their beck and call to provide protection and gifts and control over others.
Early humans were afraid of such natural phenomena as eclipses. In their ignorance, they believed the tales told by self-appointed “spiritual advisers” who explained that such events were “signs from the angry gods.”
They believed tales told about an angry rain god withholding rain; about an angry god of fertility withholding pregnancy; about gods of all types that managed from afar (and usually with anger) the day-to-day happenings of this relative existence. The level of modern ignorance and conditioning was illustrated this way in an excerpt from The Twice-Stolen Necklace Murders as a mother repeated the prayer she has prayed every day for five decades:
“Dear God from whom all power and life comes, we thank You for watching over us during the night. As our troops prepare for battle overseas, please give them strength and victory over the evil forces.
“We pray to you God, and in your son’s name, to protect our boys and women and give them the strength needed. We ask Your blessing on my grandson and his wife, that they might become pregnant if it is in Your will. Now bless this food that You have given to us for the nourishment of our bodies. Amen.”
Notice all of the types of power that she desires: she wants a power to protect her while she sleeps; she wants the power to affect the outcome of wars; she wants those whom she takes to be children of her god, those who are serving in her nation’s army, to live while she wants those serving in an opposing army (are they children of god or not, in her “mind”?) to die; she wants supernatural power in order to control natural breeding processes; and she wants whatever she eats—no matter how harmful certain foods can be to her body—to nourish her.
The ignorance is that the prayer which she takes to be a Christian prayer in really a compilation of the prayers that Romans prayed to their pagan gods, one prayer each day for seven days before the rotation began again. The solicitations are to the gods for whom the days of the week are named, including prayers to…
…the Sun god, supposed giver of power and life; to the Moon god, supposed dispeller of darkness, giving thanks for protection during the night; to Tiw, the supposed god of war and personal strength and victory over enemies; to Woden, the supposed god of gods; to Thor, the supposed son of god, in charge of war and thunder and personal strength, object of the ‘in-Your-son’s-name-we-pray’ tag; to Frigga, supposed goddess of fertility; and to Saturn, the supposed goddess of agriculture and giver of food.
Consider how asleep and how ignorant persons can be when they think their religion is different from all others and has nothing to do with ancient pagan gods when in fact (a) the name of the day they call “holy” is named for a pagan sun god or a pagan Saturn god and when in fact
(b) their most typical prayer is a prayer originally prayed by ancient pagans to their pagan gods (who were later all rolled into the one god of Abraham who would take care of all the issues that the multiple pagan gods had supposedly controlled).
And all of that today is part of the quest for an ability to manipulate the ultimate power, or “The Power,” or “The Higher Power” or “The Supreme Power” to provide supernatural power to persons rejecting an opportunity to live naturally; instead, they prefer to try to live supernaturally so that they can tap into a celestial power source that their magical thinking takes to be real.
To Realize is to abandon concepts regarding power and control and desire and fear. Few persons will ever consider that worth seeking. To Realize is to abide as the natural state, but most persons prefer to try “supernatural living” which their magical thinking convinces them is a real possibility. Again, therefore, another obstacle to Realization is seen.
Also, it can be seen that the obstacles cannot be compartmentalized but that there is a linkage to all other obstacles. In this case, the linkage here is to the obstacles of religion and spirituality and learned ignorance and and plain, everyday ignorance and accumulation (of power and concepts). Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued
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