THE RETURN TO SIMPLICITY, Part Four

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.

[Visitors: You may use the link to the right to submit your Advaita-related questions]

F.: [See the 20 November 2008 post to read the entire e-mail being answered here from a visitor trying to understand how to “keep it simple”] The farther back you go, the more simple it becomes. Eventually, if you move beyond your current (third level) spiritual stage, you might make it back to the (fourth level) Ignorant Child stage where nothing was known and nothing was desired except food and dryness.

But as it is now, accumulations are complicating your existence. You have accumulated dogmatic beliefs. You have accumulated countless desires and fears, and those have complicated your relative existence. You are playing many false roles so you have accumulated a myriad of identities.

And everything you accumulate requires money and/or effort and/or time and/or game-playing to maintain, and that complicates your relative existence and displaces the simple life that could otherwise be.

For simplicity, go back. De-accumulate. You are carrying a heavy load, so of course your relative existence is complicated. You must lighten the load—you must reduce the burden and reduce the load—by tossing out the baggage you carry:

There is the baggage of religious dogma and spiritual practices and dogmatic rituals; there is the burden of desires and fears; there is the burden of attachment to the body; there is the burden of personality and role-playing and role-maintenance; there is the burden of excessive accumulations of various sorts and all of those require maintenance.

There was the burden of living unnaturally, followed by a desire to stop living unnaturally, followed by trying to replace that style of living with the new burden of trying to live supernaturally. That approach has resulted in the accumulation of new “good” roles to replace the old “bad” roles. The playing of your new roles has resulted in nothing more than a different kind of complication. Only nisarga (natural) living is light and easy.

If you can give up all of your roles and go back as far as the pre-concepts, pre-beliefs child stage, you might be able to move back even further to levels that are even simpler. For that level of simplicity, go back to the pre-child stage.

Then, go back to the pre-fertilization stage. Go back to that state prior to conception. Go back to the no-mind, no-body, no-personality quietness that was prior to consciousness, prior to manifestation and prior to concepts and beliefs that are always followed by complicated debates about whose beliefs and concepts are “right” and whose beliefs and concepts are “wrong.”

How much breath is wasted among those attached to their ideas? How much simplicity is lost and how many complications arise as a result of belief in concepts and a desire to spread those beliefs...to "loved ones," to the persons in your community, to the people in your nation, to the entire population of the planet?

How many global conflicts are underway at this very moment that are rooted in conflicting beliefs? How many individual conflicts are underway at this very moment that are rooted in conflicting beliefs? Very complicated, is it not, the type of existence that follows the accumulation of, and attachment to, concepts and ideas and beliefs?

If you complete the seven-step journey as outlined in FROM THE I TO THE ABSOLUTE, then you will understand the quiet, simple, no-concept, no-belief, non-dual, pre-manifestation state as well as the functioning of pure consciousness while manifested.

You can come to understand that there is no body that “has” consciousness but that consciousness temporarily “has” a body. Then you can understand the unmanifesting of consciousness and the simple peace that happens as a result.

If you complete all of the steps to Realization, then You can function as the unmanifested…NOW, and only the unmanifested state can be simpler than that. After Realization, natural, AS IF living can happen NOW. (Search this site for AS IF to understand that type of functioning.)

In fact, simple living can only happen if natural living is happening. Simple living is modeled for you by the deer, the bear, the bird. They live in a mindless fashion, so they face none of the complications that you wrote of. If you would be as free as a bird, you—too—must be mindless.

Maharaj made clear that he was void of mind…beyond the mind (and the body and the personality as well). Yet he was totally aware, evidencing the fact that awareness has nothing to do with a “mind.” In fact, pure awareness can take place only in the absence of a misperceiving "mind."

All but a fraction of a percent of what lives on the planet—that fraction called “humans”—live without the complications of a “mind.” With the exception of that same percentage, mindless living is the norm. Mind-full living is the perversion of the norm. Again, the main problem centers in the mind.

Mindless living is natural and simple, but there is nothing more complicated in this relative existence than living unnaturally or trying to live supernaturally, both of which happen because of the complications that come along with a belief-filled “mind.” Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON TODAY’S POST:

Click SPIRITUAL SOBRIETY (RECOVERING WHAT RELIGIONS LOST)

Click THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS “PEACE OF MIND” (There Is Only Peace If You’re Out of Your Mind)

Click LIBERATION

Click FROM THE I TO THE ABSOLUTE (A Seven-Step Journey to Reality)

TWO OTHER OFFERINGS ARE AVAILABLE:

More and more seekers are requesting an understanding of how a personality formed in childhood is still determining and controlling everything that is thought or said or done in adulthood. Others have inquired about an opportunity to speak one-on-one about the seven-step “path” to Realization.

Thus, two opportunities are being offered from now until Dec 15^th at 50% off:

PERSONALITY TYPING:

Here’s what is included in the package that is available for the next two months (the service available to international visitors but these price being only for the Continental U.S.):

A copy of the personality test (B) Priority mailing of the test (C) Analysis of the test results (D) a one-hour telephone session to discuss the results (E) the cost of the telephone conference. Cost is US$95.

ONE-ON-ONE SATSANG VIA TELE-CONFERENCE

For the next two months, a tele-conference to discuss any aspects of the Advaita teachings one-on-one will be offered. [Rich from the U.K. completed this package recently and was able to make a low-rate international call from his home in the U.K. to the office here in the U.S. for his conference.] The cost covers the income that cannot be earned as a result of being unavailable for regular retainer contract income during your conference time.] Cost is US$75.

To arrange either package, >Click ARRANGE PACKAGES provide all of the information requested, and in the message box at the bottom, indicate that you want to make arrangements for the PERSONALITY TYPING or for the ONE-ON-ONE ADVAITA SESSION or both.