Today's Considerations
Maharaj: "Only that person will visit this place whose
virtue and sin have come to an end."
In the previous post, there was a discussion of why Maharaj
cared not a whit about sin and had nothing to do with those who were occupied
with defining sin; nor with those who were obsessed with identifying sinners and then judging and
criticizing and ostracizing and shaming them;
nor with those who were driven to punish - by mental, emotional, physical, and financial
means and, yes, even by death - those who commit whatever is being defined as sin in any given culture at any given moment.
Billions who are preoccupied with sin suggest that even “thinking”
about sinning is a sin. See someone you find attractive and then suddenly there
manifests a thought about having sex with that man or woman or there even manifests a
physical urge to commit adultery with them? That, according to those who
consider themselves to be expert on sin, is exactly the same as having
actually committed adultery. (The suspicion is that the thought only might feel far less satisfying than the act, but that might - as with all things dualistic - vary from one person to the next.)
Maharaj found that the beliefs held among the masses regarding
sin are illogical and incongruous - those beliefs being rooted in duality and
judgment and arrogance and hypocrisy and personality identification and being a
source of perceived separation as well as a source of fighting and punishing and killing and
warmongering.
He certainly held not one single view of sin which aligned
with that held by the 97% of the people on the planet who claim to be affiliated
with organized religion or by the millions who claim to be spiritual. So what was his atypical take on sin?
Maharaj: “To take
appearance for reality is a grievous sin and the cause of all calamities" (“calamities”
defined as “disasters, catastrophes, misfortune, and tragedies").
Of the hypocrisy mentioned above, he said: “Discard all
traditional standards. Leave them to the hypocrites. Only what liberates you
from desire and fear and wrong ideas is good. As long as you worry about sin
and virtue you will have no peace.”
Obviously, sin being one-half of a dualistic pairing, if the
concept of sin is to be discarded then so too must the concept of virtue be discarded.
The former generates guilt and shame or a sense of separation; the latter generates
a plethora of false identities and their accompanying arrogance, conceit,
haughtiness, pride, superciliousness, self-importance, and condescension along
with a sense of being different from and better than and, therefore, a sense of feeling separate
from.
Of the role that personality identification plays in the
concept of sin, he said: “Sin and virtue refer to a person only. Without a
sinful or virtuous person, what is sin or virtue? At the level of the absolute
there are no persons; the ocean of pure awareness is neither virtuous nor
sinful. Sin and virtue are invariably relative”
and
“Why do you insist on polluting the impersonal with your
ideas of sin and virtue? It just does not apply. The impersonal cannot be
described in terms of good and bad. It is Being - Wisdom – Love - all absolute.
Where is the scope for sin there? And virtue is only the opposite of sin.”
He added: “. . . The opposite of sin which you call ‘virtue’
is only obedience born out of fear.”
His considering hypocrisy to be insufferable (the display
of which would result in one being banned from the loft) came with his understanding that neither sin nor virtue can "exist" without the other. He understood that one is forever mixed up with the other
and thus “mixes up” the minds of those who believe in those dualistic concepts.
Of “sins” and “virtues” and of “Sinners” and “Saints,” he
said: “It is the mixing up the two that is so disastrous. Nothing can block you
so effectively as compromise, for it shows lack of earnestness, without which
nothing can be done.”
Consider the point of this exchange:
Q: “Are sin and virtue one and the same?”
M: “These are all man-made values! What are they to me? What
ends in happiness is 'virtue', what ends in sorrow is 'sin'. Both are states of
mind. Mine is not a state of mind.”
Again, his counsel: “Discard all traditional standards.
Leave them to the hypocrites.”
So Maharaj understood that those who are embroiled in the
sin-virtue debate and those who consider themselves to be firmly fixed in the virtue
camp are the most likely to exhibit the trait of hypocrisy because hypocrisy is forever in the
company of its first cousin virtue.
As always, examples and illustrations are offered:
“I am a strong Christian. I strongly believe in God, Jesus,
and the Bible. I believe the fact that I’ve accepted Jesus as my savior will be
my salvation. In that backroom or whatever it is when God confronts me with my
sins, I do not believe any of the kills I had during the war will be among
them. Everyone I shot was evil. I had good cause on every shot. They all
deserved to die.” The words of Chris Kyle, the most lethal sniper in U.S.
military history with 160 kills confirmed by his spotter; Kyle actually claimed 255 kills in Iraq, a
nation that the U.S. invaded on false pretext
Speaking last Friday at a political rally organized by a Christian
coalition, the Republican candidates running for the office of the President of
the United States touted their virtues while citing their "strong Christian principles"
and "the role that their virtues and principles will play in their governing style":
Governor Rick Perry: "My faith has guided me for my
entire life, and I don't suspect that's going to change.”
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal spoke of having hosted daylong
prayer events in his state, as did Perry.
Jeb Bush said that religion has been "an organizing
part of my architecture, if you will, as a person and certainly as an elected
official."
John Kasich said that his Catholic background pushed him to
run for governor. "I got a calling, folks," he said, referring to
Bible verses more than once.
Ted Cruz touted his strong, religious, fundamental upbringing.
Former Senator Rick Santorum continued to tout his social
conservative agenda, his Catholic beliefs long having been the guiding force behind
his political beliefs and actions.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee noted that he is a
Baptist minister and said that “spiritual convictions should certainly be
reflected in one’s worldview, approaches to problems, and perspective.”
Yet all of those who consider themselves to be highly virtuous and
who tout their unwavering commitment to Christian principles are all, 100%, in favor of capital
punishment. They are all in favor of state governments and the federal
government continuing to have and to exercise the right to kill citizens whom they decide should
not be allowed to live.
Ironically, those candidates claim to behave properly as a result of always asking this question before taking action: “What Would Jesus Do?”
Ironically, those candidates claim to behave properly as a result of always asking this question before taking action: “What Would Jesus Do?”
Indeed. What would Jesus have done with Chris Kyle or those politicians? The answer lies
in his past actions:
When Jesus witnessed hypocrites inside the temple, he picked up
a whip, walked into the temple, and began beating them, driving them all out onto the street.
And what would Maharaj have done were he to have encountered those persons touting their virtuous beliefs and claiming they render them virtuous? The answer lies in his actions:
When he witnessed hypocrites inside the loft, he tossed them
out onto the 10th Lane in Khetwadi. (Those who are so critical of Maharaj for that
act should actually be complimenting him for showing far more restraint than did
Jesus and for being far kinder than Jesus by not using a whip on those he cast out.)
Maharaj's point: virtue cannot manifest without sin; sin cannot manifest
without virtue; and virtue cannot manifest without hypocrisy.
Of possible interest to the student of non-duality: the word
“hypocrisy” is derived from the Greek term for “actor” - literally, “one who
wears a mask.” In other words, someone who pretends to be what she or he is not.
What could possibly be more at the heart of non-duality than the rejection
of acting, the abandonment of the habit of wearing a mask, the termination of
pretending to be what one is not, halting the assumption of false identities,
and bringing to an end all arrogant claims about one’s virtues?
To be continued.
Please enter the silence of contemplation.
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