Today's Considerations
Also, Douwe Tiemersma (author of the “Foreword” to “I AM THAT”) asked this: “Have you practiced [slowing down] recently?” He noted that, post-Realization, "you begin to walk slower and slower and your speech slows down;" however, “if you maintain the old ‘I’-structure, there is a constant motion which continues, and the speed of it always increases. Everything continues to spin. People are running here and there and back again. There is no moment of rest."Regarding such constant motion and ever-increasing speed, note that in the U.S., the only “crime” which the police consistently "solve" is “speeding.” The coffers of the governments of small towns are most often filled with money gained through the writing of speeding citations. (How? The average annual speeding ticket revenue brought in by each and every U.S. police officer is $300,000.00, year in and year out.)
The total up-front annual profit from speeding tickets ranges from $3,750,000,000.00 to $7,500,000,000.00. The average annual income from speeding tickets a few years back was averaging $6 billion but has increased to the $7.5 billion figure following the economic collapse.
The biggest variable in the $3.75 billion dollars which police rake in some years vs. the $7.5 billion they bring in other years correlates with prevailing economic conditions: during period of recession when local and state revenues are lower, the police issue more tickets to make up for the shortfall. When the economy is booming, less pressure is applied to officers to “meet quotas and bring in money.”
One former officer said some years ago that he was told that, if he did not start writing more tickets, then there would be no money to cover his monthly paychecks. He became quite disgruntled when he realized he was bringing in about $24,000 a month in ticket income for the city but was only being paid $24,000 a year. In the U.K., the number of speeding tickets issued since the most recent recession began has doubled. Annually, one million more drivers are paying fines than in the pre-recession days.
As in the U.S., there are some areas in the U.K. where the increase is far greater: in Northamptonshire, the total number of speeding tickets being issued has rocketed from 4,000 to 100,000. In Essex, 100 new cameras saw penalties leap from 1,000 to 70,000.
Many drivers are playing $650 to $2000 for radar detectors which they hope will allow them to speed without being caught and fined, the notion of slowing down being totally alien. While there are many psychological factors at play, one of the most significant causes of speeding – whether that speeding happens while driving, walking, talking, playing, working, whatever – is a prevailing lack of any sense of coherence (that is, an absence of any internal sense of unity or harmony or concord or unanimity) between the plant food body and the racing mind.
Instead, there is a prevailing sense of incongruity and disjointedness which characterizes the existence of the non-Realized, and that lack of a sense of connectedness - along with a predominant sense of derangement and disorder and incoherence and disunion and insatiability instead - drives persons to race about physically. Why?
Say the mind is racing at “80 miles per hour” while a non-Realized person is having to sit still in a meeting or in traffic or during a boring conversation. The body-mind ratio which is generating an internal sense of incongruity is 1:80. That is a huge disparity, and if a person is experiencing a 1:80 sense of imbalance, then there will be an unconscious, subconscious attempt to reduce that unevenness and attain some degree of balance.
Among the Realized, that state of equilibrium manifested when the mind was eliminated (by purging that part of the brain of all beliefs which had been stored therein) and thus being rid of the source of the internal sense of disparity which is at the heart of duality and which marks and mars the relative existence of the non-Realized; otherwise, insanity and chaos will prevail.
That is why one Advaitin some 2000 years ago was reported to have observed that “a dual-minded person is unstable in all ways.” Widespread instability and the pervasive addiction to chaos will drive persons into a go and do and zoom mentality.
Again, Maharaj, pointed to the solution while discussing the results which calm witnessing rather than hectic doingness will have on the mind before one finally Realizes Fully and is freed of the mind’s constant churning - and the resultant agitation which that churning produces: “Observation slows down the mind till it stops altogether.”
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
