Today's Considerations
To review the “Four Stages” and then consider the "Fifth":
STAGE ONE
During “Stage One,” children are exposed to intensive programming
and conditioning and domestication and acculturation and brainwashing and indoctrination
during their first six years. The result is the formation of a primary personality
type as well as the assignment and assumption of many other personal identifications.
Then, another fourteen years of considerable programming and conditioning and domestication
and acculturation and brainwashing and indoctrination follow, resulting in a total of twenty
years of thorough programming and conditioning and domestication and
acculturation and brainwashing and indoctrination. In the Western cultures
especially, the programming is to get . . . to accumulate (and now, many Eastern cultures
have adopted those same Western “values”).
STAGE TWO
Afterwards, most persons pass the next twenty years (ages 21-40) in the
second stage, consumed with the process of accumulating. Personality-based fears
and desires mark and mar the relative existence of those so thoroughly programmed and
conditioned and domesticated and acculturated and brainwashed and indoctrinated.
STAGE THREE
Most persons reach a “fork in the road of their lives” in
the early 40’s (specifically, around 42-1/2) when a sense of emptiness sets in and often results in the
manifestation of tiredness and depression and misery and suffering (but the
presence of those often never registers with the masses). A few might begin to
question everything and then seek outside the same old venues which they have
always used (because those were the same venues which their parents used and in which they trapped their offspring).
STAGE FOUR
Fortunate but few are those who find the less traveled road
or “path” which leads to the understanding and freedom and peace alongside an ability to cope calmly and sanely with the vicissitudes of any relative existence.
For the few who take the road less traveled, they move into
Stage Four as they begin a process of either Self-Inquiry or self-inquiry and
reflection and truth-seeking and self-examination and investigation and self-inventory
and de-accumulation and, maybe, discovery (all of which can lead to freedom and then sanity and peace).
Such questioning and investigation can lead to being freed from the effects of faulty and ignorant
and insane programming and conditioning and domestication and acculturation and
brainwashing and indoctrination and to freedom from all bogus beliefs, including their belief in
“who-ness.” At that point, some might assume a Special Identity or adopt some other conceptualized identification involving a Special
Self or a Supreme Self or an Ultimate Self.
If they are freed from all identities and from any other "Identity," then that freedom from
personal identifications and even from a “Personal Identification Which Is Deemed To Be Impersonal" - along with freedom from the nonsense accumulated in "the mind" and from the hidden agendas of the identifications stored in the mind - will no longer unconsciously determine thoughts and words and
actions (a scenario which removes any and all ability to make conscious choices).
And if freed from the effects of the accumulation of mind content and false identifications, then one will also be freed from the misery and suffering generated by personality and personality defects and personality disorders and the various levels
of neuroses and / or psychoses which manifest as personality disorders disintegrate into mental illness (a.k.a., "the Ultimate Sickness").
STAGE FIVE
If all of that happens, then humans can exist throughout the
remainder of the relative existence in what is called, “The Fifth, Post-Realization
Stage” which is characterized by what can be called “AS IF LIVING.”
In the Glossary of Terms in the back of the book FROM THE I TO THE ABSOLUTE, the following is offered in regards to AS IF LIVING:
The style of living that "the Realized" exhibit, seemingly
living like persons but without persons’ attachments, delusions, and emotional
intoxication; the manner in which "the Realized' can “finish out” the manifestation,
meeting “responsibilities” and providing for the space - the composite unity - while knowing full well
that “this world” is nothing more than an imagining in the distorted
perceptions of persons. (That is not to say that "nothing is real." That is a false statement. It is to say that nothing, including "the world," is actually as perceived.)
Additionally this is offered about AS IF LIVING: a lifestyle
that is unencumbered with attachment and emotional intoxication and belief in
the lies of the culture; a lifestyle free of game playing and image
perpetuation; a lifestyle unmarred by the emotions and emotional intoxication
experienced by persons; a lifestyle during which the Realized can witness
feelings rise and fall without any emotional intoxication, reacting,
over-reacting, or setting off a chain of reactions (as happens with persons); a
lifestyle free of the misery that is generated by the desires / fears of
personas.
Thus, “AS IF LIVING” involves living in what could be called
“the Nisarga fashion” (that is, functioning in a natural way, living as if any
of "this" is “real” or “significant” or “important” or “meaningful”
but knowing that it not). That leads to living / functioning spontaneously for
the remainder of the manifestation while
(1) knowing that the “world” is illusory, not at all as persons think it is,
but
(2) living AS IF any of “all this” matters.
(Thus, employment can happen even without the assumption of an "employee" persona; managing can happen without the belief in "The Super Employer"; and marriage can happen without the assumption of the false identities of "The Wife" and "The Husband" which will soon be self-elevated to the status of "The Super Wife" and "The Super Husband" who will then be unbelievably arrogant and who will feel entitled and who will be miserable and near-impossible to live with in a peaceful or happy manner.)
(1) knowing that the “world” is illusory, not at all as persons think it is,
but
(2) living AS IF any of “all this” matters.
(Thus, employment can happen even without the assumption of an "employee" persona; managing can happen without the belief in "The Super Employer"; and marriage can happen without the assumption of the false identities of "The Wife" and "The Husband" which will soon be self-elevated to the status of "The Super Wife" and "The Super Husband" who will then be unbelievably arrogant and who will feel entitled and who will be miserable and near-impossible to live with in a peaceful or happy manner.)
While functioning in an “AS IF fashion,” the consciousness
can register feelings but will not register emotions and emotional intoxication
(such intoxication being limited to the domain of ego-states). Maharaj might
have appeared to be emotionally-intoxicated when he threw out of his loft those
who showed up as an ego-state and who were trapped in egotism and wanted to
show off their spiritual knowledge (a.k.a., learned ignorance), but in fact
- in the case of Maharaj - there was no “one” (no “person” or “personas”) to drive any emotion-based action.
So what was happening on those occasions? Because of the Manifested Love in regards to earnest
seekers (which comes with a sense of the unicity), he protected those earnest seekers from having their process disrupted
by those with an agenda of showing off what they deemed to be their lofty
spiritual state and their high level of spiritual knowledge.
The deer in this neighborhood model an “AS IF” fashion of abidance:
They attend to the needs of the composite unity, of a
presently-manifested but ever-changing body; they interact with living things which are similarly
calm and peaceful and quiet; they move away from living things (humans) which
abide in a chaotic, restless, disordered, and noisy manner.
They fight primarily for defensive purposes (the exception generally
involving a doe in rut). They abide in a sane manner, so they engage in no
self-defeating, self-destructive behaviors (behaviors which – among all living
things - happen only among humans).
All of the sane and natural behaviors of all living things
(except for humans) happen because all living things (except humans) are
mindless. If you try an AS IF, mindless mode of living, you might like it. Of course, that’s just a
suggestion, but it certainly seems to be working quite well for every living thing on planet earth (with only one exception: humans).
To be continued.
Please enter the silence of contemplation.
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