Today's Considerations
[Continued from yesterday]
In fact, the history of blood-shedding and bloodletting parallels the history of dualistic thinking and believing and talking and behaving and separating and segregating, and at the core of dualistic thinking and believing and talking and behaving and separating and segregating is one of the most egregious of all dualistic constructs, namely, hierarchies.
And reinforcing the widespread acceptance of duality has been the formation of such hierarchies by rulers and politicians and religious leaders and spiritual leaders and all other sorts of authority figures; additionally, perpetuating and legitimizing and normalizing the abnormality of dualistic thinking and believing has been the espousal and backing and defense and widespread acceptance of hierarchies - at all costs - by those in the upper economic and social and political and religious levels of almost all societies and cultures throughout much of human history.
Consider the levels of absurdity that are reached when (A) leaders come up with outrageous categories which they use to classify - and differentiate between - the members of any given community or culture and when (B) the masses blindly and unquestioningly go along with such duality-based methods of separating the members of such cultures.
One term can provide a clear example of the absurdity of categorizing persons and dividing them into different "levels" in a social hierarchy. Consider the label "untouchables" which was used in India up until 1949.
The name "untouchable" was the name assigned to any member of a wide range of "low-caste" Hindu groups and to any person outside their rigidly-defined caste system, and the use of the term and the imposition of the social and economic disabilities associated with it were totally legal.
Legal, too, in the U.S. was the right of a high-ranked human to own a low-ranked human; as was the legality of denying women the right to vote until 1920; as is the right nowadays to pay women less than men are paid for doing the same job; as is the right to enact discriminatory laws which deny some citizens the right to vote; etc., etc., etc.
And all of that is based in beliefs regarding hierarchies which separate persons into categories and which give rights and opportunities to some "high level" people but which deny the same opportunities and rights to other "low level" people.
The constructing of hierarchies and the denial or granting of rights or opportunities based on one's arbitrarily-determined place on a hierarchy is nothing new. Consider these examples:
and
and
and
and
and
and as many business people see their hierarchy
and as many workers see their hierarchy
Per Maharaj, what is considered key among the contributors to the Ultimate Sickness and to its symptomatic evidences of arrogance and a sense of being different-from and being better-than and believing that one deserves privilege and that one has the right to determine who is "good" and who is "bad" and who, therefore, is "deserving" and who is "undeserving"? What is key? Ignorance and personality disorders and the insanity and neuroses and psychoses which personality assumption and personality disorders often lead to.
The espousal of hierarchies - and the establishment and espousal and backing and defense and widespread acceptance of hierarchies - is all under the control of those who would preserve their own status quo and who are determined to deny to those whom they think are "below them" the right of an opportunity to rise in any given society as a result of all persons being provided equal access to opportunities. For such equality to manifest would require an understanding of non-duality and a sense of unicity and an understanding of what the Transcendentalists pointed to with the phrase "the unity beyond the multiplicity." Not likely to happen, is it?
Because of such hierarchies, the end result has been, historically, this: in all cases, eventually, suppressed and trampled and abused persons have risen up and rebelled; then, conflict and in-fighting and social chaos and civil wars and bloodshed have followed. The pointer here: nothing is more rooted in duality than hierarchies and the chaos and bloodletting and bloodshed to which dualistic concepts and beliefs always lead.
Please enter the silence of contemplation.
[NOTE: You may access all of the posts in this series by clicking on the links below]
