Today's Considerations
36. [To continue with excerpts from the eBook Your Original Nature]
In Plato's, "Allegory of the Cave," prisoners who are chained in the darkness of a cave (and whose heads have been immobilized so that they cannot see anything other than what is directly in front of them) are looking at the shadows of puppets and other objects that are being cast onto the wall by use of the light of a fire that is burning in the cave.
The prisoners can hear certain puppeteers moving around behind them, but with nothing more than that slim evidence, they must try to differentiate between the puppets and the puppeteers . . . between shadows and the real . . . between perception and reality . . . between form and substance . . . between reflections and subjects . . . between images and that which is authentic. They fail miserably at differentiating between the false and the real, as do the masses - with very few exceptions - who are walking about the planet in their sleep.
Only when a prisoner is released and taken outside the cave in full sunlight can the puppets and objects be seen for what they are. Then, the ignorance of not being able to distinguish the false from the real is removed in the light, but what if the one who has entered the light, and who came to see the real, were to return to the cave and were to try to share what she / he now understands?
Such a one would be mocked by all of the others in the cave who are still convinced that shadows are real . . . that perception is reality . . . that form and substance are one . . . that reflections and subjects are one.
[A decade ago, when many rigid Christians and many devout Hindus and a few Jews and fewer Muslims would write to this site to challenge the pointers offered here, they were shown the courtesy of a reply. The extension of such courtesy was short-lived, for one might as well be talking to the people still in the darkness of Plato's cave, unable to see reality (much less "Reality"). In fact, one might as well be talking to one of the walls in the cave. The more those religious ones were ignored when they wrote here, the more aggressive and vicious and violent and threatening they became (their hollow claims about their faith "assuring them peace and love" notwithstanding). Finally, filters were set up to block them all, a method still being used to this day as a way to toss some out of this electronic loft in the same way that Maharaj had to toss the same types out of the loft in his flat in Bombay. With 97% of the persons on the planet claiming an affiliation with one religion or another, Maharaj's final guesstimate that "only one out of ten million will ever Realize" becomes even more credible. Most will live out their entire relative existence as if prisoners in a dark cave.]
In the cave, there were echoes and shadows, shadows and echoes. What persons take to be "their world" is just like the dark cave, and while they believe that what they are perceiving is real, the fact is that what they think is real is merely a shadow; additionally, the falsehoods which they are hearing (via words and mind-speak) - and which they unquestioningly accept as truth - is really nothing more than the present echoes of the past nonsense and ignorance which has been passed down for ages.
An echo is the repetition of a reflected sound, or it is a reply that repeats or imitates what has just been said (as in the case of “followers echoing their leaders”); so an echo is merely an imitation—not real—and that is the status of all words: mere reflections and expressions and repetitions and imitated thoughts and duplicated ideas and emulated concepts of others.
Here, the question is, “What do You know?” Maharaj's advice was to hang your big name teachers, hang your internationally-known authors, hang your spiritual adviser or sponsor, hang your religious leader, hang your favorite guru, and hang all of the "deep, philosophical thinkers" that you are quoting in order to impress others via your imaginary alignment with such thinkers. Hang 'em all, Maharaj said. (To that list, Maharaj added, "Hang Krishna, hang Christ, etc." His question was, and the question here is: “What do You know? What can You report that You understand because of taking non-dual pointers into the silence and then tapping into the inner resource?")
Site visitor Sim once noted the non-dual message which was offered in a line from a song that says, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” Are you still not completely independent and free because you are holding onto something (or many things) that would best be “lost”? Is there an aversion to the noise that would be “lost” were you to be "stunned into silence" (Maharaj) by an onslaught of Truth? Is there an attachment to talking and to noise and to a near-endless-stream of words that could best be “lost”?
If you have not lost your love to talk and to share concepts and to promote ideas, you are not free; if you have not lost your desire to imitate “the not real,” you are not free; if you have not lost the tendency to take the shadows for the real, then That Which You Are is still free, but the false “you” will not know independence and you will not know the bliss of total freedom.
All that has not yet been lost makes you as much a prisoner as those persons in Plato’s cave; as imprisoned as those being tortured by interrogators using high-volume noise and excessive sound levels; and as much a prisoner as those who walk into their regular meetings or into their worship services, sleepwalking into what they think are "special buildings" in their arms-stretched-out-before-them, stiff-legged, night-of-the-living-dead manner.
Here, the invitation is to be free . . . totally free: free of a love of noise, free of belief in shadows, free of misperceptions, free of the excessive use of words, free of taking reflections as real, free of imitation, free of echoing and parroting what others say (as happens in Parrots Anonymous), free of belief in word-supported delusions, and free of abiding in the darkness as if in a cave.
The invitation is to Realize Fully; then, you will be awake, aware, and fully conscious. After Realization and once aware, if you see a little girl enjoying a quiet moment in nature, you will not intrude. You will not approach her and yell out words. You will not disturb that which is abiding naturally. You will disturb neither animals nor birds nor humans nor anything real and natural. You will not be an interrupter of the peace of anything real and natural.
But can the consciousness, when speaking in a way that exposes lies and points toward truth, seemingly disturb or interrupt the peace of that which is not real . . . that which is nothing more than the assumed ego-states which persons adopt as identities?
For the answer, look to Maharaj's later talks - the ones he offered after giving up on a religion-based treatment for the Ultimate Sickness and the ones he offered after giving up on a spirituality-based treatment for the Ultimate Sickness and then the ones he finally offered which were a psychology-based version of the Ultimate Medicine - and you will see that the answer is, "Oh yes. Definitely." So it is.
To be continued.
Please enter the silence of contemplation.
