Today's Considerations
The Advaitin poet Shakespeare may have written a play
entitled “much ado about nothing” in the late 1500’s1599. Maharaj in the late
1900’s said: that when a person is being driven by the mind, “it exaggerates.”
He advised seekers to “live without self-concern.”
Maharaj: “Don't concern yourself with others, take care of
yourself.”
Yet many over the years have protested:
Unimportant? Much ado about nothing? The heck you say! What
about my father and others who fought the Germans and Japanese. You think they
did not make a difference? They killed Hitler.
The reply” “Actually, Hitler killed himself. But again, the
point is this:
Again, Maharaj said: “There have been thousands of avatars
and great men, and important personalities. Has a single one of them been able
to do anything to change the natural course of events in the world?” Of course,
his answer was, “No.”
Did Hitler's demise “change the natural course of events”
(or, more accurately, humankind’s most unnatural course of events)?
Absolutely not. Over a quarter of a billion people have been
killed since the end of WWII and the number may be higher. Howe many have died
in nations with “Hitler-like” leaders seen atrocities within their borders
since the death of Hitler? Over a quarter of a billion people have been killed
since the end of WWII, and the number may be higher. Consider China and
Russia’s actions and U.S. involvement all around the globe. Consider the
killings in Korea, Cambodia, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Rwanda, and all across
the African continent.
Consider The Reagan Wars: Reagan's conviction that the
Soviet Union lurked behind all the world's evils led him to embrace a series of
unsavory allies on the principle that "the enemy of my enemy is my
friend." In the name of anticommunism, Reagan supported the regimes of
brutal authoritarian dictators in Haiti and the Philippines. He supported the
white supremacist government of South Africa in its efforts to suppress the
country's growing anti-apartheid movement. He funded and armed right-wing
"death squads" that rampaged through El Salvador and Nicaragua,
massacring leftist foes and innocent civilians alike. He sent lethal weaponry
to both the Islamic fundamentalist government of Iran and to the Iraqi dictator
Saddam Hussein. He even invaded Grenada. Only in Afghanistan did one of
Reagan's covert foreign interventions inflict real harm upon the Soviet Union,
but in hindsight we can see that Reagan's Afghanistan policy ended up
inflicting real harm upon the United States as well because he armed a group to
fight Russians in that country, a group which would later become known as
Al-Qaeda.
The Bush / Cheney War in Iraq: The Iraq War began with the
2003 invasion led by the United States. The invasion toppled the government of
a former U.S. ally, Saddam Hussein. The conflict continued for much of the next
decade as an insurgency emerged to oppose the occupying forces and the
post-invasion Iraqi government set up by the U.S. It is estimated that as many
as 600,000 or more estimated Iraqis were killed in the first three to four
years of conflict. L. Paul Bremer, Iraq’s American ruler in 2003, along with
the U.S. policy he enforced, were key contributors to the original insurgency
after the U.S. invaded Iraq on bogus, fabricated charges.. At a stroke of Bremer’s pen, 400,000 members of the
defeated Iraqi army were barred from government employment and denied their
pensions but were allowed to keep their guns. Those forces became “The Islamic
State” (a.k.a., “The Islamic State of Iraq” and “al-Sham” or ISIS).
Now, consider those banging on their wars drums to attack Iran
and consider the way that the Israeli government is treating the Palestinians
whose homeland was taken from them in 1947.
So killing Hitler changed the course of events in the world?
Hardly.
So the suggestion offered by Maharaj and here as well can be
paraphrased in this consideration: “Physician heal thyself.” Might be a
difference in the way the rest of your relative existence unfolds as well as in
the relative existence of those dealing with you. But overall? Nada.
And post-manifestation when there is no relative existence
to affect one way or the other? Even more Nada.
Vietnam ... add in much ado about nothing
Maharaj: “Stop misusing your mind and all will be well with
you. You need not set it right -- it will set itself right, as soon as you give
up all concern with the past and the future and live entirely in the now.”
Maharaj made clear that there are no half-measures in
regards to reaching a sense of unimportance and understanding that all which
happens in the relative existence is much ado about nothing: “either you become
totally self-concerned, or totally un-self-concerned.”
His invitation: “Give up the bondage of self-concern”
and
“Abandon all self-concern” and “worry not about the material
or spiritual.”
Humans concerned with self or with seeking Self or with
their identification with Self blow everything all out of proportion. The
Obsessive-Compulsive Personality disorder is running rampant, and seekers and
non-seekers alike – still trapped in the mind – will obsess (that is, endlessly
think about something and think about something and think about something) and
then they will act compulsively (that is, driven by the hidden agendas of their
personality identifications of the agenda of their Self identification).
All is so magnified and such anal behavior is inspired by
their OCD that the invitation offered to some seekers who have come here has
been to "throw away your microscope and pick up a telescope and turn it
around and view all thorough it to get a proper perspective. Stop magnifying
and de-magnify instead”
and
“It has nothing to do with either "high esteem" or
"low esteem" to suggest that you stop over-estimating your worth or
value and fixate in a sense of unimportance. Besides, “low-self-esteem and high-self-esteem
are still about nothing more than the self. As for one with “Self-Esteem,” the
view here is that “sometimes, no company is far preferable to certain company
that might want to show up.”
In the end, much ado about something and magnifying and obsessing
and behaving compulsively and having a sense of importance and self-concern and
Self concern and dogma and spiritual workaholism and endless inquiry and
Inquiry and bondage and an absence can all be traced to the present of a mind,
and any and every mind is filled with nonsense and ignorance and insanity.
To be free, be free of the mind.
To be free of the mind, be free of its content, namely,
ideas, concepts, perspectives, perceptions, misperceptions, notions, etc.,
which can all be encapsulated with the term “beliefs.”
Want to be free of the mind? Believe nothing. Every belief
is one more link in the chains that
bind, and all those chains are mental chains
