Today's Considerations
Reference was
made to "Applied Advaita" . . . to taking the non-dual understanding
which comes via Full Realization and Full Enlightenment and then
overlaying the wisdom and clarity, which come as a result of that
understanding, on the remainder of the relative existence.
The
application of the understanding - in the absence, by the way, of any
belief in "An Applier" - is (according to Maharaj) the rarest of all
happenings.
[Recall his final estimate / guesstimate that only one in ten million will Realize.]
Of
course, the fact is that there is no "applying" of anything if there is
no "applier." Will the naturally-abiding deer that slept in the front
yard here last night consciously "apply wisdom" in every situation they
face today? No. So, what really happens with humans post-Realization is
what will happen with those deer today. Specifically, natural abidance
will merely happen spontaneously. If sane and wise, there is no
"thinking about how to live" and there is no "deciding what the sane
thing to do in any given situation would be." It all happens
automatically with no thought about anything at all.
[Too,
there is no one post-Realization who is "using his or her intelligence
to get through life." As noted in the movie "Forrest Gump," intelligence
is meaningless if it is manifesting alongside the "stupidity" which
Maharaj identified as both a trait of, and one of the causes of, the
Ultimate Sickness:
Forrest:
"My momma told me that 'stupid is as stupid does'." If the most
intelligent person you know is doing stupid things, then Maharaj's
pointer applies: Stupidity, not intelligence, is the key driver
involved.]
As
with all life forms on the planet except humans, all is merely
happening spontaneously, and it's left to Pure Witnessing to see sane
living and logical living and wisdom-driven living when it is happening
or to see insanity-driven living and illogical living and
ignorance-driven living when it is happening.
Whether
based in Maharaj's "guesstimate" or in objective observation, it should
be clear that the most common occurrence is (1) the exact opposite of
"Applied Advaita"; is (2) the exact opposite of "the non-dual
understanding having been overlaid on the relative existence"; and is (3) what happens when there is no willingness to take the steps which can lead to Realization and to merely witnessing thereafter what happens and simply functioning spontaneously
in a sane and wise fashion.
Next,
Maharaj never said that "humanity is ignorant, stupid, and insane." He
said that humans suffer almost universally from the Ultimate Sickness
and that the symptoms of that Sickness include "ignorance and stupidity
and insanity."
Short of Full Realization (which is simply
the process by which persons are freed from the "ignorance and stupidity
and insanity" which drive most all humans and which is the direct result of
"ignorant and stupid and insane" programming, conditioning,
acculturation, domestication, brainwashing, and indoctrination) there
will be no possibility of abiding naturally and peacefully and wisely.
To the contrary, the abidance will unfold in
a most unnatural manner as persons try to live supernaturally, buying
into the long-term fascination which religions have had with
bloodletting; buying into the long-standing practices of xenophobic
cultures and war-mongering societies which inspire the endorsement of bloodletting and
bloodshed; and which lead persons to buy into the hierarchical notion that the best way to
solve a problem is not to address the problem but is to kill those who
are suffering from the problem (which they neither asked for nor caused). THAT approach is the epitome of ignorance at work.
Thus, the opposite of "Applied Advaita" is
"applied duality." From the members of some of the hierarchies
referenced earlier, the following duality-based statements have actually
been heard here over the years (and even recently). They include comments made by some
enjoying the highest places on a hierarchy and statements made by those
who are in jobs which pay them to protect those at the top by
suppressing or eliminating those at the bottom of any given hierarchy:
"I love chasing bad guys. I really feel good
when I go home at night if I put some of the
bad guys behind bars that day."
"Guess you heard about the gangbanger the
guys caught up with last night and sent straight to Gangster Hell, huh? I was
pissed big time that it was my night off and I wasn't there to help send
him on his way."
"My sponsor has more years in our group than
anybody else so he is definitely the wisest and the best one around to guide me
through all of life's rough spots."
"I don't care if you like the way I'm
teaching your child or not. I've got 25 years of experience in the
classroom so I know what I'm doing."
Said to a teacher: "I'm the principal here
and that means I'm in charge, so I'm telling you for the last time: stop
making my phone ring."
"I actually feel sorry for the people I see
jogging along the road when we're on our way to church on Sundays. They
don't have a clue what they're missing out on by not being here with us."
"He's the priest in charge of this church, so you need to support him, not question him and not turn on him when lies are made up about sexual misconduct."
"The Pope is infallible. Stop questioning his decisions"
or, regarding the recent Pope,
"I'm
not sure what happened this time, but it seems to me that the people in
the recent College of Cardinals weren't really listening to God when
He spoke to them."
"Ours
is not to question why. If the captain said to raid their compound and
destroy them, then we raid their compound and destroy them."
"I will gladly die for this nation but will kill off as many of our enemies as I can before they get me."
"Hell yeah he's a national hero. He got 160 confirmed kills and probably killed another hundred of 'em if the truth be told."
"America. Love it or leave it, you ass!"
"The
Bible says that homosexuals are to be stoned to death. I don't question
that because the Bible is the inerrant word of God."
"We are the makers - they are the takers. To hell with 'em."
"It doesn't make a bit of difference that he was unarmed. He didn't follow a direct order given to him by a cop."
"After
an officer ran his car off the street and onto a curb at 50 m.p.h. to
run over a mentally-ill man who was armed with a rifle: "I had two
thoughts that go in my mind [sic]: I need to shoot him or I need to run
him over, and I was too far away to shoot him." [His supervisor backed
the decision.]
All
of those expressed thoughts are based in duality, in a sense of
"different-from-ment" which leads to a sense of "better-than-ment." All are
outgrowths of a belief in hierarchical rankings involving concepts
about "good people" vs. "bad people"; about "the authorities" vs.
"those who deserved to be abused or eliminated because they asked for
it"; and about "tough-as-nails patriots" vs. "wimps" and "bleeding
hearts."
Human
actions begin and move along this continuum: from thoughts to words to
deeds. The thinking behind the statements above lead to insane levels of
acceptance of bloodletting and bloodshed and to the endorsement of
bloodletting and bloodshed and even to a culture-wide approval of
bloodletting and bloodshed.
When
religions and parents and cultures and business leaders and political leaders normalize the
abnormal, then the abnormal will prevail, will breed more abnormality,
and will generate disharmony and chaos and bloodshed. And all of that is
rooted in the dualistic thinking and in the dualistic talking which result in the insane actions of such thinkers and talkers.
To be continued.
Please enter the silence of contemplation.
[NOTE:
The four most recent posts follow. You may access all of the posts in
this series, and all other posts, by clicking on the links in the "Recent Posts and Archives" section.]
