Today's Considerations
25. Yesterday's post ended with this:
So how can freedom and peace and sanity begin to manifest? By beginning to move beyond the unconscious acceptance of all false identifications as real identities and by beginning to abide once more as one happened to abide during the Child No-Knowing Stage - which is quite similar to the manner in which You were abiding as "Your Original (Natural) Nature."
Why did Maharaj shift to that recommendation? Because, in the end, he employed his mastery of psychology, no longer playing the role of "A Master of Combining Hinduism with Non-Duality" and no longer a so-called "Spiritual Master" or "Spiritual Giant." (He eventually said of those who took themselves to be "full of spiritual wisdom" and who felt they knew "a lot of spirituality" and who took themselves to be Spiritual Giants that "I am a pygmy before you.")
His understanding of psychology allowed him to see that humans were been driven unconsciously by the perverted and distorted machinations of their fiction-filled and programmed, conditioned, acculturated, domesticated, brainwashed and indoctrinated minds. He saw, too, that they were simply internalizing and identifying with and modeling and mimicking the thoughts and words and deeds of persons who had earlier contracted - through no fault of their own - the Ultimate Sickness and who were suffering as a result of its symptoms (which Maharaj identified as "ignorance and stupidity and insanity").
[Note: he did not say that "humans are ignorant and stupid and insane." He said that persons were suffering from a Sickness with the symptoms of "ignorance and stupidity and insanity." He never blamed persons for having the Sickness because he knew that no one could give herself or himself the Ultimate Sickness any more than one can stand alone in a room and will themselves to have influenza. The Ultimate Sickness is passed on, and those who gave it to you cannot possibly be the same ones who provide a cure for it (unless they have been fully cured by having followed the seven-step "path" to its end). Therefore, it became clear to Maharaj that the Ultimate Sickness was passed on from adults to children early on when children are still willing to model, unquestioningly, their programmers and conditioners and are willing to believe, unquestioningly, all of the ignorance that is learned from adults; are willing to normalize all of the personality disorders that are passed down to them from adults; and are willing to tolerate the insanity that so often follows the development of personality disorders. Maharaj had also seen how insane it is for humans to be "godlike," to model their God or gods or goddesses, especially when some of those gods are shown in "holy" texts to have behaved in ways that differ not at all from the ways that sociopathic mass murderers behave.]
So, he came to understand that, if persons would be freed from the symptoms of the Ultimate Sickness, then they must stop modeling the very humans who programmed, conditioned, acculturated, domesticated, brainwashed and indoctrinated them in a totally ignorant and perverted and distorted and insane manner; they must stop modeling a god or gods or goddesses whose behaviors make no sense at all if witnessed objectively; and they must find something else entirely to model.
His suggestion: model (abide as) "Your Original Nature," that is, abide in the same way that "You" were prior to having been programmed, conditioned, acculturated, domesticated, brainwashed and indoctrinated in a totally ignorant and perverted and distorted and insane manner.
Additional excerpts from the eBook below entitled "The Relative Results of Returning to 'The Child Ignorance Stage' or "the Child Ignorance State" are relevant in regards to Maharaj's pointer that "You need not know 'What you Are'; it is enough to know 'what You are not'.":
"If only four of the sevens steps on the seven-step 'path' are completed, that is worthwhile, relatively speaking, because it is far more significant for those who are unhappy or even miserable or suffering to be able to recognize the 'not-You's' (and their hidden, subconscious agendas) than to be able to understand 'The Real You.' Why?
"Because it is the 'not-You's' which generate identification with false personas which, in turn, generate belief-based fears and belief-based desires; then, it is those personality-generated fears and desires which generate misery and suffering. In order to be happy (unconditionally happy) and in order to be free of unhappiness and misery and suffering, the condition of the brain must be restored to the same condition it was in during the last time that you were unconditionally happy. And that condition was . . . mindless.
"The child, prior to being programmed, conditioned, acculturated, domesticated, brainwashed and indoctrinated, was abiding in a fashion which was much like the nature of the awareness-energy with the potential to manifest as conscious energy, which was also mindless. Neither THAT nor the unprogrammed, not-conditioned, not-acculturated, not-domesticated, not brainwashed and not-indoctrinated child had any ideas, concepts, notions, perceptions, or views (a.k.a., 'beliefs'), so neither THAT nor the unprogrammed, not-conditioned, not-acculturated, not-domesticated, not brainwashed and not-indoctrinated child has any of the criteria required for being judgmental, angry, combative, and arrogant or for being cursed with a sense of different-from-ment and better-than-ment."
[Regarding a computer virus that was circulating years ago when the book was written]:
"There is a computer virus circulating presently that is masquerading as a virus-protection program. It will flash on-screen, will mimic whatever virus protection program is on your computer, will inform you that your computer is infected with such-and-such a virus, and will ask if you would like it to remove the contamination. Presenting itself in the same way that you're accustomed to with your own particular virus-protection program, many people click the "Yes" tab and their system is doomed.
"Any time someone infects the system here, the first action taken is to run the 'restore' program. The computer is usually returned to its clean, per-contamination state, to its original virus-free, 'sickness-free' condition.
"That is all that the 'journey' discussed here is about, and the full 'journey' restores the consciousness to its original, clean, unblocked, pre-contamination, pre-Ultimate Sickness state.
"Likely, there may still be some minor malware infections which are hiding in the background of the computer, but all of the main threats to the system have been addressed for now as a result of having returned the system to its original state."
So, do you see the parallel between contaminated computers and humanity's pattern of spreading the Ultimate Sickness and the parallel between what is required in both cases to address the contamination which blocks effective functioning?
To be continued.
Please enter the silence of contemplation.
