MAHARAJ: “There’s No Such Thing As Peace of Mind,” Part “F”

Today's Considerations

Recent postings have discussed how that which was originally one of humanity’s most useful assets - namely, “the mind part of the brain” - eventually became distorted into one of humanity’s greatest liabilities.

For millions of years, humans or human-like beings had a brain that was about one cup in size. As it evolved and expanded to its present 3-1/2 cup size, one of the many results of that evolutionary process was the development of an area of the brain which allowed for the storage and retrieval of information, in particular, information which could assist in the survival-of-the-species process.

Early on, there was no place in which humans could store anything in memory; later, even after that evolutionary ability manifested, humans received very little information to store in memory. Contrast that with the current levels of stimulation-overload, information-overload, teaching-overload, learning-overload, and beliefs-overload to which humans are being subjected. Then consider how much of all of that overload is pure nonsense; is just so much fiction and myth and superstition being passed on as fact; is outright lies; is unadulterated ignorance; is insane; and is often traumatizing.

Next, consider the real rub: not one iota of all that overloading is ever forgotten. It is forever stored. Now most of that acculturated information in storage – that is, most “memories” – will never be remembered. Most is forgotten in seconds (like, “The traffic light changed from red to green and I can go” or “The light changed from green to red and I must stop.”) If someone aged forty were to constantly remember all traffic light changes which were witnessed over the decades, then imagine how impossible it would be to negotiate the relative existence.

While everything ever stored in memory is still there, some lament the fact that they are ‘losing their memory” and find they had difficulty recalling some of the most basic information and even the most recent information.

The fact: memory does not "decay” and memory is not lost. In fact, the storage part of the brain has a near-limitless capacity. Yes, because of physical changes which can come with aging, it can become more difficult to access that information and retrieve it. Yet are there not some “relative benefits” to that? Imagine if, right now, you were constantly recalling everything in memory. Geez!

Yet as personality identifications are assigned and assumed, and as personality disorders develop, and as persons begin to sense misery and suffering around the loss of the identities to which they are attached, then what is happening now is just about as chaotic as it would be to recall every traffic light change ever witnessed.

Consider the men who have come this way who are miserable because the ones who had been playing the role of “The Wife” were driven to stop playing that role, thus bringing to an end the role of “The Husband" which those men were playing.

Some of those men had been divorced for twenty years but were still suffering from the emotional intoxication which was manifesting and generating a sense of hurt and / or anger and resentment and even rage. Though the memory of hundreds of thousands of traffic light changes meant nothing, the memory of what was is being churned about in their minds throughout the day, and in some cases hourly, and in some cases, every minute, all day long. More insanely, their beliefs about what was was a total distortion then and is a total distortion now.

Meanwhile, what humans also do not remember are the mistakes they have made and thereby avoid making those same mistakes again; instead, they repeat the same mistakes over and over. One man told me he had married four times. I suggested that he had only married once because in every case he was marrying the exact same woman over and over. They just happened to have different names (until they married him and then they all ended up with the same last name as well). 

"Hi. Have you met my wife, Mrs. Jones?"  

"Hi. Have you met my wife, Mrs. Jones?"  

 

"Hi. Have you met my wife, Mrs. Jones?"  

"Hi. Have you met my wife, Mrs. Jones?" 

So the problem with humanity when abiding under the auspices of the mind is that (a) much which they do not remember could be a relative asset if remembered while (b) much that they do remember is distorted and is generating misery and suffering and is, therefore, a liability.

Other ways that the content of the mind contributes to misery and suffering:

A. Even if millions of stored memories are less accessible, they can be retrieved. The mental games that persons play to avoid their unwelcome memories involve repressing, denying, distorting, and dissociating, yet repressed memories and denied truths and distorted thinking and dissociating in order to avoid facing - and dealing with - unpleasant memories or truths can still be retrieved. Certain present happenings can trigger a recall or retrieval of long-repressed memories, such as those involving trauma. Yet they can be retrieved, and the revival of memories of repressed trauma can have the same impact now as existed at the time of the initial trauma event(s).

Some have said when pointers have been offered about the current effects of childhood programming, conditioning, etc. and of childhood trauma events, “Floyd, that was then, this is now.” Nope. Not the case. Then is also now when the effects of what happened then are determining how one is feeling and behaving now.

B. False memories are another major factor is the way that the mind subconsciously controls thoughts and words and actions and generates distortions and delusions. While child abuse is one of the most heinous and odorous acts on the planet, there have been some cases when persons have been accused or convicted of child abuse when they never committed the crime. Child psychologists, using anatomically-correct dolls, have planted false memories in some children and then those memories become “real” to the child.

Untold numbers of adults have also had false memories implanted and now they are convinced that they have lived previous lives and can recall the details of each. What “floyd” is assumed to be by most in nothing more than a composite unity of earth elements, air and conscious-energy. At the point when mahasamadhi is taken, the elements shall return to the universal pool of elements, the air shall return to the universal pool of air, and the conscious-energy shall return to the universal pool of conscious-energy.

Those three parts constantly come and go throughout the manifestation, so no composite unity is ever the same thing one moment as what it was a few moments before. So how could those same elements be regrouped into the same “person” again when there was never any instance at all of “the same elements / air / energy” being consistently and continuously within that space during the manifestation?

Once in elementary school, around the age of eight or so, I read a book about a WWII pilot whose plane crashed. He was captured and survived and eventually escaped. In the early part of that book, the former pilot who wrote it went into great detail describing the control panel, what all of the gauges registered, and how they reacted as his plane was struck by a shell and as he was trying to keep the plane in the air.

Years later, I awoke from a dream in which I had dreamed that I was a pilot. I recalled that during the dream, I knew such specific details about the art of flying and reading gauges and understanding everything that was happening on the control panel that it would have been easy to conclude, “Dang! I must have been a pilot in a former life! How else could I now know all of those specific details which only a trained, experienced pilot could know?”

Yet I did not draw that conclusion and I did not cling to that false belief to this very day. I do not tell people that I know for a fact that I had a previous life and in that life I was a trained pilot. I recalled the book and concluded that, indeed, no memory is every “lost,” that most memories are never retrieved, and that – occasionally – something might trigger a recall of a very old memory. 

End of story. A dream of a type which implants in so many persons a false memory was not “bought into.”  There was also no expansion of the possible implications of that dream and no coming up with a belief in the “birth-life-death-rebirth” concept which was just dreamed up by human thousands of years ago.

Maharaj: “Once you accept time and space as real, you will consider yourself minute and short-lived. But are they real? Do they depend on you, or you on them?”

and

“Existence and non-existence relate to something in space and time, here and now, there and then, which again are in the mind.”

Eight years ago on this site, this was offered, and it is still relevant now:

Impressions and images and archetypes and dogma and ideas are all concepts that are based in memories and stored in the unconscious or in the subconscious. To be influenced by anything that you are unconscious of blocks Realization and prevents true freedom. The basic archetypes are merely personality types that are universally recognized. The commonly-held beliefs about such types have been repeated so frequently that those fictitious characters are no longer questioned by persons but are assumed as identities instead.

As with all myths and superstitions (and the religious and spiritual beliefs that have evolved from them), the impressions or imprints that follow repeated exposure to such “typing” are soon taken by the conditioned masses to be real. False identities are assumed to be real and those assumptions are seldom ever questioned. As a result of thousands of years of conditioning and genetic messaging, the belief in falsehoods has become so widespread that the attachment of “positive vs. negative” connotations to ideas or words is now automatic, no matter how nonsensical the labels of “good vs. bad” might be.

Archetypes are about symbols, images, personas, and individualization, all of which are false concepts taken to be true by “the mind” and all of which must be seen to be fictional if one is to Realize. The liability that “the mind” has become should now be clear. Archetypes inspire certain patterns of thought when truth can only be found beyond “thoughts,” beyond the fiction of the "mind."

Archetypes are “deposits of the repeated experience of humanity” which cause humans to accept “mythical ideas” as real. The Advaitin knows that these inherent and cultural images are only one more influence that must be transitioned if Realization is to happen. The stuff of myths and legends and fairy tales has become the stuff of “the mind” of persons. Along with the accumulation of ideas and concepts and beliefs and dogma, those archetypal images and concepts now form a collection of never-to-be-questioned beliefs that drive humans to behave and emote and think in the unnatural or supernatural ways that they now behave and emote and think.

Just as was the case with the brain’s ability to store memories and retrieve memories, impressions and archetypes were initially an “asset” in facilitating the perpetuation of the species, but now (just as is the case with “the mind”) they have become a liability to those seeking freedom and truth and independence.

To be independent and in touch with reality, seven specific steps are required. They must be taken in an exact order, which happens to be exactly the reverse order by which the consciousness manifested and became corrupted (or blocked or "changed") through various levels of programming and conditioning and acculturation and genetic coding.

Maharaj: “What changes has no reality. Time and space are imagined, ways of thinking, modes of perception. Only timeless reality is, and it is here and now”

and

“The whole of it is [imagination]. Even space and time are imagined. All existence is imaginary”

and

“In reality time and space exist in you; you do not exist in them. They are modes of perception . . . .”

 

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.]