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FROM A SITE VISITOR: Any tips for somebody who is pretty new to Advaita Vedanta? Trying to wrap my mind around the idea of dissolving that some of you are talking about is boggling Thank you
F.: Now, review the pointers and questions from yesterday:
1. Consider that which you call “your mind” and see what it really is.
The following was offered in a February 2009 posting that addressed that question:
Understand that the “mind” is a part of the brain that human-like beings have only had for a tiny fraction of the fourteen million years during which they have walked about on the surface of the planet.
Prior to the brain having evolved from its long-standing one-cup size to its more recent three-and-a-half-cups size, and prior to the brain having developed an area for storing information and an area for retrieving parts of that stored information, human-like beings lived naturally under the auspices of the mind-less brain.
The same is still happening with the deer and the birds and the fish and the insects, so they have no means by which to attach to (and be impacted by) the nonsense and disorders and learned ignorance that have come to plague the relative existence of humans.
If you would be free of living under the influence of that which is the seat of every lie you believe (which is to say, is the seat of every belief...all of which are lies) then you must be done with giving any credibility to the content of the “mind.”
2. What does it contain?
The “mind” is a repository of every idea and concept and belief and attitude that you have ever heard or read. You have never forgotten anything that you have ever witnessed or heard, but you can only pull into awareness a fraction of all of that; nevertheless, all of that remains, stored and exerting a subconscious influence, highly influential over your thought and words and deeds without any awareness of that influence among the non-Realized who are walking about in their sleep while believing that they are fully awake.
The “mind” is also the storage area of what you take to be “memories” of events and persons, yet you misperceived what was happening and who you were and who they were, so all of those “memories” and “impressions” are, by default, misperceptions as well.
3. How did those contents come to be there?
Along with the faulty memories and impressions contained therein, the “mind” also contains all that was placed there by everyone who participated in “educating you” (which means, everyone involved in the process of domesticating you, programming you, conditioning you, acculturating you, and robbing you of a comfort level that can only manifest when natural or nisarga living happens). That robbery is why persons develop attachments to that which is supernatural (that is, magical) and that which is unnatural.
Examples of things totally natural that have been warped via dogmatic teachings into the unnatural include their telling you not to masturbate, not to have sex until married under their jurisdiction, and to engage in unprotected sex only so that you do not waste the seed, even if it kills you. The distribution of nonsense by the dogmatic still runs rampart as evidenced by the current pope announcing last week during a visit to AIDS-ravaged
The Advaita teachings invite You to overlay Reality on the relative existence, as opposed to that example where a nonsensical lie based in magical thinking was overlaid on fact.
“Their education of persons” also included lengthy lists explaining what is good or bad, moral or immoral, right and wrong, OK or not OK, etc., the result being that duality is unquestioningly accepted as the standard, as truth, among the non-Realized. So much for "Their Savior's" warning that a "dual-minded person is unstable in all ways."
If you look at the sources of the content of the “mind” and do not feel a chill rush through you, then you might not be ready for this “journey.”
4. Do you really believe that you have ever independently come up with even one totally original thought or idea or concept or belief on your own?
You have never come up with even one original thought or idea or belief.
5. If not, where did you get those thoughts and ideas and concepts and beliefs?
Again, they all came from everyone who participated in “educating you” (which was really not educating you at all but was really a process of pumping into the storage area of your brain a conglomeration of what is now nothing more than a composite of all of your learned ignorance).
6. And where did the source that passed those on to you come up with them?
The source of the ideas and attitudes and beliefs and concepts that were passed on to you can be traced to the times prior to the use of investigative techniques which would later evolve into the sciences that provide concrete evidence and proof that the commonly-held beliefs among the superstitious and ignorant masses amounted to nothing more than fictional nonsense.
7. How many of them can be unequivocally proved to be true or factual or beyond question?
None. All of the evidence they offer to support their unnatural and supernatural / magical beliefs has not one shred of empirical proof. Their teachings are theoretical, abstract, hypothetical, suppositional, notional, and speculative.
Using conjecture alone, they have programmed and conditioned you to believe what you hear without question, and they also taught you that questioning would be evidence of your lack and faith and would be your ticket to an eternity of physical and mental and emotional pain and suffering.
They cite so-called “miracles” as evidence of the existence of a supernatural power that intervenes and controls everything that happens. They cite “acts of kindness or unselfishness” as evidence of the influence of a supreme being, ignoring the fact that self-ishness ends when the belief in all (false) selves and the effects of self-absorption end. They assign to events such supernatural “causes” as “karma” or their dualistic theory about “the cosmic re-balancing of bad things and good things.”
It is all nonsense. Because the Realized came to know what—it turns out—they knew all along, they will never suggest that there are any theories or abstractions or suppositions or notions or concepts that they know that you must also know (and “live by”) if you would Realize and be free of the influence of learned ignorance.
They know as a result of having tapped into the inner resource, a process that only happened after the discarding of all of the concepts and beliefs that were blocking the pure consciousness from seeing truth. They also know because science has advanced to a point where empirical evidence can be cited that supports these teachings.
Now, you are invited to sit in the silence and contemplate this: all actions are preceded by words that are expressions of thoughts and beliefs that are generated by a nonsense-filled “mind.” Thought-to-word-to-deed is the continuum along which all insanity and disorder and distortion and delusion drive the destructive behaviors of non-Realized humans.
If you can be objective, identify the actual impact on your relative existence of being driven by the thoughts that are generated by the fiction-filled “mind.” Is there really any justification for allowing the influence and the impact of "the mind" to continue? Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)
FOR AN IN-DEPTH TREATMENT OF THE SUBJECT:
