Today's Considerations
Today, you’re invited to review the two examples offered recently
and see exactly what might be revealed in terms of dualistic thinking vs. non-duality:
***One man killed his wife because she was separating from
him.
***Another killed nine people in a church because they were
black and he favored separation, talking often about “sparking a race war” and “wanting
segregation reinstated.”
+++Some members of a group described the man who shot his
wife as “a very spiritual person.”
+++Dylann Roof was described by his pastor as “a devout
Christian who was baptized in the Lutheran faith, went to church camp, and
worshiped regularly.”
***The nine people shot by Roof were also Christians.
***It was a pro-religious group calling itself “Aryan
Nations,” whose messages of hate and white superiority have fueled violent
crimes and domestic terrorism for decades, which applauded the actions of Dylann Roof.
(Only hours after Roof was arrested for shooting nine blacks
at a Charleston, South Carolina church, Aryan Nations leader Morris Gulett – an
ordained Church of Jesus Christ Christian Pastor - offered praise and urged
others to follow Roof’s example: “We had better see much more of this type of
activism if we ever expect to see our America return to it’s [sic] rightful
place in the world and our children grow up in a clean safe healthy enviroment
[sic],” Gulett wrote. Other racists individually have offered support or praise
for Roof in comments posted on a forum hosted by “Stormfront.” “Stormfront was
established by members of the anti-black, pro-Christian Ku Klux Klan and has
been identified as the world’s largest hate site. As noted yesterday, the KKK
was established at the end of the U.S. Civil War in 1865 to carry on the fight
against segregation after the Southern confederacy surrendered and the “official”
pro-slavery war ended.)
As another example of what is at the core of the fighting
and killing in the two cases cited and in cases all around the globe each day,
consider the levels of pontification; the calls for rebellion again the U.S.
Government; the calls by state government officials for all to refuse to recognize
the law passed last Friday by the U.S. Supreme Court; and the calls by some elected
officials in the U.S. Government to ignore the law. Their objections were based on their “religious beliefs.” The issue: same-sex couples living in 75% of
the fifty states in the U.S. could already marry, but those living in the
remaining 25% could not. Friday, the Supreme Court gave the same rights to all.
What is the "non-dualist’s" take on all of that?
Was Maharaj, or is any “non-dualist,” anti-ignorance, anti-stupidity,
and anti-insanity?
Would Maharaj, or any “non-dualist,” be pro-same-sex marriage or anti-same-sex-marriage?
Was Maharaj, or is any “non-dualist,” pro-spirituality or
anti-spirituality?
Was Maharaj, or is any “non-dualist,” pro-religion or anti-religion?
Well, consider: was Thomas Edison anti-the-first-9999-incandescent-bulb-prototypes
he used, or did he turn his back on them for the simple reason that they did not work?
To clarify, those pointed to with the term “Fully Realized”
have reached the state endorsed by Maharaj, a state of “zero-concepts” and zero
beliefs. Maharaj recommended being free of the mind completely and stated that
he had no mind. If the last belief goes, so too does the mind go.
Maharaj: “We believe in so many things on hearsay. We
believe in distant lands and people, in heavens and hells, in gods and
goddesses, because we were told. Similarly, we were told about ourselves, our
parents, name, position, duties and so on. We never cared to verify. The way to
truth lies through the destruction of the false. To destroy the false, you must
question your most inveterate beliefs”
and
“Go forth, unburdened with ideas and beliefs.”
Therefore, there is no one here that can be either
pro-gay-marriage or anti-gay-marriage. It’s not an issue. No "Realized Advaitin"
would care who marries, who does not marry, or who marries whom.
Contrary to the beliefs of some, there can also be no one
here to be pro-religion or anti-religion. Religion involves dogma, and dogma is nothing more than a compilation of dreamed up concepts. Nothing about it is real, so nothing about it can be
true. One might as well choose sides and
be either pro-mirages or anti-mirages. All that the non-dualist has to say about
it is, “I invite you to see all mirages as the mirages that they are. If you cannot do that, you
are suffering from one or more of the traits of the Ultimate Sickness which
Maharaj identified as 'ignorance, stupidity and insanity.' Yet if you do not want to differentiate between that which is a mirage and that which is real - or if you do not want to differentiate between the true and the false - so be it."
Advaitin Douwe Tiemersma wrote: “There are various religions and systems of
philosophy which claim to endow human life with meaning. But they suffer from
certain inherent limitations. They couch into fine-sounding words their
traditional beliefs and ideologies, theological or philosophical. Believers,
however, discover the limited range of meaning and applicability of these
words, sooner or later. They get disillusioned and tend to abandon the systems,
in the same way as scientific theories are abandoned, when they are called in
question by too much contradictory empirical data.” Was he anti-religion, or was he simply one that was capable of differentiating the false from the true?
So one pointed to with the term “non-dualist” or with the
term “Fully Realized” is neither “pro” nor “anti” anything. To take a stance "for" or "against" anything would just involve more duality.
All that Maharaj did - or that any “truly Realized non-dual teacher" does
- is what any caring, empathetic human would do: if one walking
down the street sees a sinkhole and knows that other people are walking a
step behind, a caring and empathetic one would stop and point out the sinkhole to those
walking behind them so that those persons can also enjoy the same thing that the Realized
enjoy at that moment, namely, not falling into a sinkhole.
Maharaj pointed out the mental sinkholes that people walk
toward - or which they have already fallen into - and he offered a way to avoid sinkholes or to escape from the sinkholes which have already been fallen into.
Was he invested in the way that persons responded when he pointed to what he pointed to? No. Would
he become upset and remain upset if persons ignored his pointing toward
sinkholes? No. He was not “pro-one-response” and “anti-all-other-responses.”
He witnessed true and false, he pointed toward the truth, and
then he went about his way as all other persons went about their way.
How could he have been driven even remotely by an agenda or motive or intention when
he admitted that, even including those who came to the loft, only 1 out of
100000 would ever realize, later amended to 1 out of 1,000,000 and then later amended to 1
out of 10,000,000?
Yet he did remain willing to share, no matter the odds. Same
here. Pointers are offered, and then seekers are left to draw their own
conclusions, or not.
So what in terms of non-duality can pointed out in the
examples given? The process of receiving the Ultimate Medicine involves
understanding the Ultimate Sickness and its roots and symptoms.
So in the examples above, insane actions were rooted in a
desire not to separate in one case and in a desire to separate in another, whether
the issue was not allowing a woman to separate if she wanted to do so; or whether
the issue was wanting races to separate; or whether the issue was wanting
people of the same sex to separate rather than marry. All of the examples involved duality-based thoughts and beliefs dealing
with separation and who should or should not mix with whom.
So, in all cases, the illusion of “separate from” was at
play.
In all cases, a sense of different-from-ment and
a sense of better-than-ment were at play.
In all cases, people trapped in dualistic thinking patterns were
being driven by beliefs – beliefs about right and wrong. As one non-dualist was
heard to say, “The belief that something is wrong is the fire under the ass of
humanity.”
Or “the bug up humanity’s ass.”
Or “the stick up humanity’s ass.”
So these types of dualistic thoughts and beliefs are now commonplace:
“It is wrong for you to want to leave me, though I am
abusing drugs and you and our children.”
It is wrong for whites to have to co-exist alongside blacks.”
“It is wrong for two people of the same sex to love each
other and marry.”
“It will be wrong if more white people don’t start killing
black people.”
“It is wrong if people are not Christians.”
“It is wrong if white Christians do not kill black Christians.”
Do you see that this is not about blacks and whites; or about Christians
and non-Christians; or about gays and straights; or about who can marry whom
and who cannot; or about right and wrong; or about good and evil; or about Sunnis
and Shias; or about “us vs. them"; or about any other dualistic pairings?
This is about “ignorance and stupidity and insanity,” about
seeing “ignorance and stupidity and insanity,” and about turning:
Maharaj: “Turn within.”
Stop looking without for the source
of displeasure and misery and suffering. Look within. See all sinkholes. Turn. Then,
develop a sense of empathy and the unicity to replace the false sense of
separation that is taught via programming, conditioning, acculturation, domestication,
brainwashing, and indoctrination.
Maharaj: “You have to turn away from the world and go
within, until the inner and the outer merge and you can go beyond the
conditioned, whether inner or outer.”
See, and then turn away from, the warped programming; from the
bizarre conditioning; from all that your culture has taught; from all that your
parents and friends and relatives and leaders have taught; from all of the
brainwashing you‘ve been exposed to both inside and outside the home; and from all of the
indoctrination which you have been exposed to.
Maharaj: “Why not turn away from the experience to the
experiencer and realise the full import of the only true statement you can
make: 'I am'?”
Not “I am a Christian.” Not “I am a white.” Not “I am a black.”
Not “I am right.” Not “You are wrong.” Not “I am a Super Husband and you must stay
with me.” Not “I am a gay person.” Not “I am a straight person.” Not “I am the
one who gets to decide who lives and who dies.” Not “I am a member of a super
race.” Not “You are a member of an inferior race.”
Of course, all of that is just a suggestion, just an invitation,
to be accepted . . . or not.
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 in the previous series and several thousand other posts as well by clicking on the links in the "Recent Posts and Archives" section.]
