Today's Considerations
30. From yesterday: Is there any empirical evidence to suggest that a "full-blown, global awakening" is happening? Hardly. Can anyone
or anything produce "a new type of consciousness"? Absurd. Yet there are
such cases happening nowadays where persons are being exposed to some
version of non-dual pointers (as evidenced in some of the lyrics in such
well-received songs as "I Don't Want to Be Anything Other Than Me" and
"I Just Want You to Know Who I Am").
Also included in the eBook of quotations below are hundreds of examples of movies, plays, novels, and songs which offer non-dual messages. Consider from the two songs mentioned above if Maharaj might have offered some of the same pointers as are offered in those two songs.
Gavin DeGraw wrote the lyrics of the song "I Don't Want to Be Anything Other Than Me" which he never thought would be popular and which he never thought would sell but which he wrote and recorded anyway, not as some sort of "personal declaration of independence" but more as a "declaration of independence from things personal." He stated that he was more surprised than anyone that it became a hit.
Consider some of the lines: "I came from the mountain . . . the crust of creation . . . my whole situation, made from clay to stone." [Certainly those familiar with Maharaj's teaching that the body is nothing more than a composite unity in which certain earth elements which have come together temporarily can understand DeGraw's point.]
Consider the song's call for an end to modeling and mimicking and posing and posturing and its call for authenticity: "I'm tired of looking 'round rooms, wondering what I've got to do or who I'm supposed to be"
and
"I'm surrounded by liars everywhere I turn; I'm surrounded by imposters everywhere I turn; I'm surrounded by identity crisis everywhere I turn."
Also included in the eBook of quotations below are hundreds of examples of movies, plays, novels, and songs which offer non-dual messages. Consider from the two songs mentioned above if Maharaj might have offered some of the same pointers as are offered in those two songs.
Gavin DeGraw wrote the lyrics of the song "I Don't Want to Be Anything Other Than Me" which he never thought would be popular and which he never thought would sell but which he wrote and recorded anyway, not as some sort of "personal declaration of independence" but more as a "declaration of independence from things personal." He stated that he was more surprised than anyone that it became a hit.
Consider some of the lines: "I came from the mountain . . . the crust of creation . . . my whole situation, made from clay to stone." [Certainly those familiar with Maharaj's teaching that the body is nothing more than a composite unity in which certain earth elements which have come together temporarily can understand DeGraw's point.]
Consider the song's call for an end to modeling and mimicking and posing and posturing and its call for authenticity: "I'm tired of looking 'round rooms, wondering what I've got to do or who I'm supposed to be"
and
"I'm surrounded by liars everywhere I turn; I'm surrounded by imposters everywhere I turn; I'm surrounded by identity crisis everywhere I turn."
[Too harsh to withstand comparison with Maharaj's take on the state of those among the non-Realized masses? Many also thought at times that Maharaj was too harsh, kicking people out of the loft. But WHO was actually banned? Those who came to flaunt a religious or spiritual image which they had assumed; those showing up in special robes being worn as an outward token of their notion that they had attained some deep philosophical understanding and some higher-level-of-enlightenment than all "others"; those seeking a captive audience; and those seeking to dominate the conversation and show off their supposed "wisdom."
And WHAT was actually banned? Narcissism. Vanity on display. Spiritual Giantism. Posturing and "impostering." False identities on parade. And hypocrisy.
See, the irony involved with many who claim to be "well along the path" or "well into the journey" or who claim to have reached the end of the path and become "fully enlightened, liberated, and realized" is this: some set out on a quest that could shift them away from their past phoniness and identity crises to truth and authenticity and away from their living and play-acting on the stage of "The Theatre of the Lie."
The hypocrisy that Maharaj saw for decades and that has been witnessed here for decades as well is this: such claimants just moved from one stage to another, the only perceived difference being that new roles are being played, new characters are being displayed. Some actors nowadays are typecast. They only play villains or they only play good persons. Such was not the case with so many whom Maharaj witnessed over the years. Some of the actors who came to the loft had played the villain for years, but then they assumed the role of "The Really Good One" or "The Super Religious One" or "The Spiritual Giant." They were living no less a lie than before. Harsh to point out their current condition? Or actually quite loving?]
DeGraw: "Part of where I'm going is knowing where I'm coming from." [Certainly Maharaj shared that pointer often, inviting seekers to find out where they came from in order to know where they were going. He asked, "Where were You in the days prior to conception?" He advised seekers to "Go back, reverse, along the same path by which You came" and "Return back to Your Original Nature" and go back to abiding in the way that happened when originally in that field of awareness-energy prior to the manifestation of THAT as conscious-energy.]
DeGraw: "I don't want to be anything other than me" (or Me).
[Those words could also have been spoken by that speck of consciousness called "Maharaj."]
Another fairly recent example of lyrics containing certain non-dual messages is the John Rzeznik's "I Just Want You to Know Who I Am." He wrote: "I don't want the world to see me' cause I don't think that they'd understand. When everything's meant to be broken, I just want you to know who I am" (or "Who I Am" or "What I Am").
[Such was the message behind one of Maharaj's most frequently-offered pointers: Understand Who I Am so that you may understand Who / What You Are.]
But what of "everything's meant to be broken"? That pointer takes persons to some of Maharaj's least popular pointers: What you take yourself to be is not that at all and What you take yourself to be will not last. Additionally, similar to the non-dual pointer from another Advaitin called "Jesus" who said "No one will ever see heaven for it is within," Maharaj made clear that their is no "life" or "rebirth" after this one because "You were not born once, so you surely cannot be born again." As for "seeing God someday," Maharaj said, "Humans invented God" in order to have a power that will remove their fears and grant their desires.
But why is everything meant to be broken? Maharaj said that science would someday advance to the point where it would prove the validity of all non-dual teachings. The Second Law of Thermodynamics did just that, making clear that whatever comes together will come apart, including bridges and buildings and physical bodies and minds and personal identities and relationships and roles being played and governments and nations and cults and sky-cults (religions) and suns and solar systems and anything else which manifests (always temporarily) because parts come together to form what appears to be something else.
Maharaj made clear that nothing is created and nothing is destroyed. All is energy-matter, and neither energy nor matter can be created, nor can energy or matter be destroyed. (So much for a "Creator God" and so much for a "Destroyer God.")
All merely cycles, Maharaj taught. The composite unity of an elemental plant food body which is circulating air and circulating various forms of energy (including the circulation of conscious-energy) will come apart . . . will break up. And that coming together of elements and coming apart will happen long before the taking of mahasamadhi. It is happening every instant, right now.
Why do humans have to dust the furniture? Because they are shedding their skin every 28 days. Skin cells come and go. Ever wonder how a stomach can "last" though its flesh is being exposed to the same acids which can eat their way right through large pieces of vegetables or through a huge piece of meat . . . a large piece of animal flesh? It can't, and it doesn't. The lining of the stomach is replaced every four days or so.
Per the "laws of nature" (the laws of physics) everything really is made to be broken.
Next, desiring neither notoriety nor fame, Maharaj could have said the words in the chorus of the Rzeznik song with one change to the last line (in italics):
I don't want the world to see me 'cause I don't think that they'd understand." [Maharaj made clear that (a) he did not want large numbers of people coming to the loft because the message is only for the few and that (b) most will never grasp this understanding.] "When everything's meant to be broken, I just want You to know . . . What I Am because that is also What You Are."
If the awareness is aware of awareness, of "ItSelf," then abidance can happen NOW in the same fashion that it happened prior to being manifested as consciousness (which brings duality with it). To abide as the pre-manifestation awareness (when awareness was not even aware of itself and when there was no conscious-of-ness) is to abide NOW without any identification, without any concepts, without any personality disorders, without any ignorance, without any insanity, without any sense of different-from-ment, without any sense of better-than-ment, and - therefore - without any sense of separation.
To be continued.
Please enter the silence of contemplation.
