PART “LL”: REALIZING WITHOUT DOGMA, WITHOUT CONTINUOUS SPIRITUAL PRACTICES, AND WITHOUT A PREOCCUPATION WITH “THE NATURE OF REALITY AND THINGS NOUMENAL”

Today's Considerations

So, Maharaj’s bottom-line on religion has been seen: “Take all of the pictures of your gods and deities and put them in the sea."

So too has his bottom-line on spirituality been seen: “Stop reading (the 'spiritual classic') I AM THAT and listen to my later talks” and “give up spirituality.”

And his bottom-line on “SELF-Inquiry” has also been seen: “You do not need to find the answer to ‘Who am I?' It is enough to find out who you are not.”

In the U.S. each year, 59% of all women killed are killed during the break up of their relationships with their “lovers” or “husbands” or “partners” or “spouses” or “mates” or whatever roles the men whom they were involved with had assumed as real identifiers.

What Maharaj and the wisest sages before him understood is how amazingly the tenor and tone of the relative existence would be altered if only persons were freed from belief in their personality identifications and freed from living under the influence of the hidden agendas of their assumed personas or ego-states which subconsciously drive the thoughts and words and actions of every human on the planet who has not addressed the issues which evolve from their nonsense-filled minds, minds filled with nonsense and "ignorance and insanity" as a result of ignorant and insane programming and conditioning and acculturation and domestication and indoctrination and brainwashing.

Consider how different the relative experiences of those woman killed annually would have been if no one had been taught to accept false identities as real and if no one believed that personality identifications such as “lover” or “partner” or “spouse” or “mate” were real.

The reason that Maharaj urged visitors to move on to the fourth step if they had become fixated at the third of seven steps on the “path” from identification with the false “I” to understanding the unicity and being freed of the key symptoms of the Ultimate Sickness (which he identified as “ignorance, stupidity, and insanity”) was this:

It is at the third step where religious and / or spiritual roles are played, and the belief by those role-players is that their roles are “good” and that other roles are “bad” or “not as good.” How can anyone move beyond duality and their dualistic thinking patterns if they have not moved beyond the belief in “good vs. bad” people and beyond the belief that there is a world that is dominated by “good vs. bad” forces or that "this is a world where good and evil forces are at war"?

Maharaj understood that it is "ignorance and stupidity and insanity" which drive persons' thoughts and words and actions. He understood that the issues of humankind are far too complex to be explained away by simply concluding they are caused by "bad" people or that they are a result of "evil forces at work in the world."

To that end, Maharaj informed seekers that “self-inquiry” (the process whereby persons can see that the "selves" which they have been assigned and assumed are false) is enough. He saw that “SELF-Inquiry” – when it leads persons to accept a new, assigned Identity or to adopt a new Identity which is even beyond “good” or “great” and is believed to be “Supreme” – also leads to a level of arrogance based in a sense of different-from-ment and a sense of better-than-ment. He saw that the level of that type of arrogance is gigantic (as in “Spiritual Giantism”) when compared to the arrogance generated by the self-concepts which come with believing that false selves are real.

Recall his words: "Only that person will visit this place whose virtue and sin have come to an end."

Did Maharaj . . . 

kick people out of the loft whose thoughts and words exposed the false selves which they were playing, or . . .

did he kick people out of the loft whose thoughts and words exposed the fact that they had arrogantly assumed the false SELF Identity of Someone or Something that is of a supposedly “Supreme” nature?

When a visitor exposed a false-self persona, Maharaj address that and tried to make clear that the role being played was not real. When a visitor exposed a false, Supreme-Self Persona, Maharaj wasted no time in sending them down the stairs and out into the street.

He realized over the years that he might be able to change the perspective of those trapped in “commonplace” identities, but experience showed him that he was not likely to have any such effect on those trapped in a supposedly “uncommon” or “extraordinary” or “special” or “exceptional” or “supreme” role.

Recall, too, that he said those types with a self-concept of being "virtuous" were also the ones who were going to be blind to their “hypocrisy” which is “extraordinary” and “exceptional” and “supreme” (the lip service given to their "humility" and "unassuming nature" notwithstanding). Maharaj never bought into any identity or Identity, no matter how “good” or “bad” his culture considered any identity or Identity to be.

So why did he say that “self-inquiry” instead of “SELF-Inquiry” would be enough? "SELF-Inquiry" can lead to a belief in a "Supreme Self." Consider what “supreme means”:

“Supreme” = “the highest in rank or authority, paramount, sovereign, and chief”;

and

“of the highest quality, degree, character, and importance”;

and

“that which is the greatest, the utmost, the most extreme, and the ultimate."

Really? THAT’s what some take their “You” or "Self" to be? And believing that about a “Self” is preferable to any other beliefs about a “self” or “selves”?

In the end, the closest that Maharaj came to anything either “supreme” or “Supreme” was maybe . . . supreme disgust, specifically, supreme disgust with any and all arrogance and conceit and haughtiness and a sense of superiority and a sense of being supreme and pride and self-importance and condescension and superciliousness and every other trait or attitude or belief which reinforces a sense of duality and which generates a sense of different-from-ment and better-than-ment.

To be continued.

Please enter the silence of contemplation.

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