Today's Considerations
Belief in duality leads to belief in separation; belief in separation leads to the establishment and maintenance of hierarchies which become the "enforcement tool" for the most prejudiced persons in any society or culture. Because duality leads to the Ultimate Sickness, and because the Ultimate Sickness is marked - according to Maharaj - by "ignorance" and by "stupidity" and by "insanity," and because prejudice is marked by a prejudicial, dualistic sense of different-from-ment and better-than-ment, then hierarchies involve duality, the Ultimate Sickness, prejudice, ignorance, stupidity, and insanity.
The Realized are moved through the relative existence by way of the spontaneous functioning of wisdom. Because wisdom is the antithesis of dualistic thinking and believing and behaving; because it is the antithesis of the mental and emotional Ultimate Sickness; and because it its the antithesis of prejudice, ignorance, stupidity, and insanity, then the Realized refuse to recognize the validity of any of the hierarchies which have been dreamed up by Sick, prejudiced persons who are driven not by wisdom but by "ignorance, stupidity, and insanity" instead.
Maharaj said that "Wisdom is knowing I am nothing; Love is knowing I am everything." Wisdom also knows the unicity, so ironically, a double-edged sword comes with Realization. While the Realized do not emote, they most certainly do feel. [The result of Realization is not, as some think, a numbing out of all feelings. It is that which ends all emotional intoxication.]
And the result of the ability to feel, intensely, in the presence of prejudice and "ignorance and stupidity and insanity" and misery and suffering is that the Realized on occasion will witness a happening which generates an uneasy feeling which, in relative terms, is called "the result of empathy." To be empathetic during the relative existence is to care during the relative existence. [Maharaj was once asked by a visitor, "Do you really care about us?" to which he answered, "More than you will ever know."]
To care is to feel, and that sometimes involves feeling the misery and suffering of those who must face misery and suffering on a daily basis because of the fact that their society or culture has assigned them to the lower level of a hierarchy and has locked them into that level with little opportunity to escape. As a result, it is their duality-based society or culture which is a primary contributor to their misery.
Seeing that, the Realized deal with that double-edge sword, one which can they can swing to break the bonds of bondage one moment but which can in another moment cut the one wielding the sword with the sharp edge of unicity which results in one feeling the pain and misery and suffering of persons trapped the ubiquitous
hierarchies which are omnipresent all around the globe.
The Realized feel it when someone is seen to be trapped on a long, dark path of sadness, of hopelessness, of a sense of futility, of opportunity-less-ness, of depression. Maharaj made clear that the closest thing to the "goal" of a "so-called non-dual teacher" is "to free persons from suffering and misery."
[How truly sad it is here to witness on occasion one who is presenting himself or herself as "a champion of non-duality" and as "one who is realized" and as "one who is offering the non-dual teachings to others" but who is as hypocritically-prejudiced as those in his or her community who are judging others based on the color of their skin and who are tolerating and even endorsing the abuse of those "colored" persons by the authorities is their community.]
[How truly sad it is here to witness on occasion one who is presenting himself or herself as "a champion of non-duality" and as "one who is realized" and as "one who is offering the non-dual teachings to others" but who is as hypocritically-prejudiced as those in his or her community who are judging others based on the color of their skin and who are tolerating and even endorsing the abuse of those "colored" persons by the authorities is their community.]
Nothing throughout human history has contributed more to pain and misery and suffering than duality which leads to "ignorance and insanity" and prejudice which lead, in turn, to the establishment and maintenance of hierarchies which lead to the bloodshed and bloodletting as the belief in hierarchies becomes a key tool tool which is used to generate a sense of different-from-ment and better-than-ment and, thus, the belief in the right of those who take themselves to be "the good ones" to seek out and destroy "the bad ones."
And that belief leads to the bloodshed that is spilled on a daily basis on the streets of communities where the most impoverished try unsuccessfully to eke out an existence while facing the inevitability of failure in that task because of the place on a hierarchy which they have been locked into; in work camps in South Africa where workers ask for a viable wage for toiling in the mines which make the rich even richer; on the streets where persons march in protest of the slaughter of unarmed and ignorant and mentally-ill persons among them;
in relationships where one feels entitled to brutalize another who is not "following orders"; in wars where "Leader "A" refuses to do what is demanded by "Leader B" in a nation with more powerful weapons; in places where Muslims are killing Jews and Christians and Muslims of a different sect; in places where Christians and Jews are killing non-Jews and non-Christians; in places where Muslims are killing Hindus and Hindus are killing Muslims; ad infinitum.
So it is when prejudice and "ignorance and insanity" inspire the formation of hierarchies and the forced assignment of persons to the lowest levels of those hierarchies where they are denied any possibility of receiving the education required to attain employment, even as the non-Realized shout, "Get a damn job, you bum!"
It was said of one Advaitin, when he looked at humanity and the prevailing, pervasive "ignorance and insanity" which Maharaj would discuss later: "He wept." That is the result of caring, of empathy, of Realization as long as duality and prejudice and "ignorance and insanity" continue to lead to a sense of separation and arrogance and a willingness to play the role of "The Good Person" which leads to the belief that bloodletting and bloodshed involving "The Bad People" is "just the way it is and is really the way it should be."
Please enter the silence of contemplation.
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