Today's Considerations
It has been noted that Maharaj said, "Someday, science shall
advance to the point that it will prove the truth of the non-dual teachings.” A
review of the transitions he underwent show that he was also a scientist of
sorts, experimenting with various forms of the Ultimate Medicine, witnessing
objectively, setting aside what he saw was not working effectively, and trying
another method which might work.
In retrospect, it can be seen that Maharaj's loft was more “scientific-laboratory-like”
than “ashram-like.” It was there that he undertook many experiments in his
efforts to find an effective form of the Ultimate Medicine.
His guru ordered
that he was to use a religion / non-dual compound version of the Ultimate
Medicine (his plan being to pull them in with bhajans but then sneak the non-dual message in afterwards). It turned out, therefore, that the earliest visitors to the loft were “guinea pigs”
in Maharaj's religious / non-dual laboratory.
He would eventually set that combination aside and try a
spiritual / non-dual compound version of the Ultimate Medicine with a heavy
dose of Self-Inquiry as well. The results of any of those versions of the
Medicine, obviously, did not impress him in the long run. Thereafter he began to focus almost
entirely on the psychological roots of the Ultimate Sickness, later on advising
seekers to “stop reading I AM THAT altogether and to listen to my current talks”
(which focused on the psychological roots and psychological aspects and symptoms of the Ultimate
Sickness).
The basic meaning of the Greek word "ψυχή" ("psūkhē") was
"life" in the sense of "breath." From "psūkhē" came "psychology." The earliest derived
meanings included “soul / ghost," as in “some unseen something or force or
influencer or controller" which has a relative effect on one’s life (that
is, determines and controls what one thinks and says and does). Later, the derived meaning focused
on the concept of "self" in
the sense of "conscious personality" or "psyche," and nowadays many psychologists and therapists and non-dualists and advaitins and Nisargans
understand that it is a combination of all of the various personality types (or personality identifications
or personas) which control all of the thoughts and words and actions of humans.
As scientific understandings advanced, the notion of the
presence of a “soul / ghost” which was determining person’s thoughts and words
and deeds was set aside and “psyche” came to be associated with “the mind,” so nowadays the term “psychology” is rooted in “psyche”
(the mind) + “-ology” (the scientific study of); thus, the focus nowadays is more in
line with Maharaj’s take on the psychology of humanity in that he studied - and came to understand - the
human mind and its functions, especially those functions which affect human behavior in any given
context.
So, eventually, Maharaj focused on the scientific study of mental
processes and behavior and the behavioral and cognitive characteristics of a
specific "individual" or group, rejected the label of “spiritual master” which
some had assigned to him, and explained that “next to you spiritual giants, I
am but a spiritual pygmy.”
If one were to review the synopses of the psychology courses offered in modern universities, one could also see that Maharaj was already offering much of the same content from those psychology courses long before many of those
universities were ever founded.
I hold credentials which certify me to teach 100 / 1000
level and 200 / 2000 level courses in all fifty states in the U.S. and can,
therefore, teach the following courses, among others:
Introduction to Psychology
Introduction to Methods in Psychology
Intro to Social Psychology
Abnormal Psychology
Introduction to Health Psychology
Cultural Psychology
Child Development Psychology
Psychology of Adolescence
Introduction to Social Psychology
and
The Psychology of Personality
Of all of those, Maharaj was a master of the Introduction to
Psychology, of the Psychology of Personality, and of Abnormal Psychology.
Abnormal psychology is the branch of psychology which studies
unusual and unnatural patterns of human thought, emotion, and behavior, all of which may or
may not be understood as precipitating a mental disorder. Although many behaviors
could be considered as abnormal, this branch of psychology generally deals with
behavior in a clinical context.
One writer explained it this way:
Imagine that you are in a coffee shop. You wait patiently in
line, you order your drink, you pick up your drink and then you sit and sip it
quietly. Others around you do the same thing, and you are able to sit
peacefully and read a book or listen to music. In other words, it's a pretty
normal afternoon in the cafe. But, what if someone did not stick to the script?
What if a man cut in front of everyone in line? Or, what if a woman suddenly
starts yelling out nonsense words? Would you still consider it a normal
afternoon?
So, while psychology is the study of human thoughts,
feelings vs. emotions, and behaviors, abnormal psychology is the study of
abnormal and unnatural thoughts, emotions and behaviors. Abnormal thoughts, emotions and
behaviors may or may not be part of a larger mental illness, or
psychopathology, but psychologists who study abnormal psychology are being trained
to treat people who have some type of mental illness (including personality disorders which can set the stage for persons to deteriorate psychically
into neurotic or psychotic states).
Maharaj was a master of all of that information and understood this
pointer offered yesterday:
Because of perverse mind stuff - programming and
conditioning and domestication and acculturation and indoctrination and
brainwashing – persons are not prepared to seek the natural, the peaceful, the
quiet. To the contrary, they are made ready to accept as normal their often
subconscious but all-too-common state of agitation and impatience and petulance
and annoyance and irritation and unhappiness. As for most of those and most all
other persons, they have developed a tolerance for insanity and chaos and pain
and misery and suffering because of the psychological process of “normalizing.”
Yesterday, one contributor to the development of an abnormal
psyche / mind was discussed, specifically the mind-distorting process labeled “normalization.”
The point was made that children are soon exposed to all of the beliefs that
generate a sense of duality and that the sense of duality is a result of
normalizing dual-mindedness, arrogance, and a false sense of separate-from-ment
and better-than-ment, all of which set the stage for conflict and chaos and
killing and the ignorance of believing that natural things are supernatural
things and that natural events are controlled by supernatural beings or a Being
residing in another world.
It was also noted that psychological normalizing goes
hand-in-hand with psychological modeling as children mimic what they see and hear; as they adopt
the beliefs that they hear; and as they eventually assume that those beliefs are “their
own” instead of the beliefs of “others.” The wise understand that the roots of the most commonly-accepted beliefs all around the globe can be traced back
to the darkest ages of ignorance and to the days when the still-present belief in myths and superstitions first began.
Today, the widespread belief that non-facts are actually
facts is a key symptom of – and perpetuator of – the Ultimate Sickness.
Psychological modeling is a method whereby persons learn by
imitation alone, even without any specific verbal directions or instructions. The process in
which persons serve as models for others - exhibiting the behavior to be
imitated by the others - is a part of developmental psychology nowadays but was
also a part of Maharaj’s psychological repertoire.
Consider a child born in France in a French-speaking home. That child will speaks French; however, if that same child is adopted and taken to the
U.S. and raised in an English-speaking home, then that same child will speak English.
That is one thing. But what happens when a child models
prejudice? Distorted thinking? Magical thinking? Arrogance? Unavailability? The inability
to love, much less understand Love?
What happens when a child models a parent’s Attachment
Personality Disorder (P.D.) or Obsessive-Compulsive P.D. or Depressive P.D. or
Narcissistic P.D.; the Histrionic P.D. (generating Emotional Intoxication) or
Factitious P.D. or Somatization P.D. or Avoidant P.D. or Borderline P.D. or
Masochistic P.D.?
What happens when a child models a parent’s Schizoid-Avoidance
P.D. or Schizotypal P.D. or Passive-Aggressive P.D. or Paranoid P.D. or
Dependent P.D. or Co-Dependent P.D., the Addictive P.D., the Bipolar P.D., the
Antisocial / Sociopathic P. D., the Pathological P.D., the Sadistic P.D., the
Schizoid P.D. or Dissociative P.D.?
In an environment in which a child is exposed from early on to the
key symptoms of the Ultimate Sickness (identified by Maharaj as “ignorance,
stupidity, and insanity”) and in which those symptoms become normalized and in
which those symptoms are then modeled can only generate higher rates of the Ultimate Sickness and deeper levels of the Ultimate Sickness.
That is what the professionals cited in the posting two
days ago have been witnessing and reporting over the last 20 to 30 years:
the presence of mental sickness has been increasing geometrically. For millennia, it was ignorance
which was being perpetuated from one generation to the next.
Nowadays, as during the days of Maharaj as well, both insanity and ignorance have been perpetuated
more and more from one generation to the next.
The problems of humanity do indeed center in the mind, and a
diseased mind cannot be cured. It can only be cleaned up by eliminating a few distortions at a
time. Yet if one holds tens of thousands of false beliefs to be true, then being
rid of ten or twenty or thirty false beliefs will have no more effect than dropping one
antibiotic into a vat of tens of thousands of viruses.
The viruses will remain and thrive; similarly, Maharaj came
to see that persons cannot live long enough to challenge and question and
research and discount and discard each and every false belief that has been
passed down to them. They must all be discarded in one fell swoop.
That is why Maharaj advised:
“Go to zero concepts”
and
"Distrust your mind and go beyond”
and
"Don't rely on your mind for liberation. It is the mind
that brought you into bondage. Go beyond it altogether”
and
"Stop making use of your mind and see what happens"
and
"Learn to separate yourself from the image and the
mirror. Keep on remembering: I am neither the mind nor its ideas"
and
"The death of the mind is the birth of wisdom"
and
"I have no mind . . . ."
and
"As to my mind, I have no such thing. There is consciousness in which everything happens"
and
"I am double dead: not only am I dead to my body, but to my mind, too"
"I am double dead: not only am I dead to my body, but to my mind, too"
and
"I find I have lost the mind irretrievably."
"I find I have lost the mind irretrievably."
See. Being mindless. Sound impossible? Then first, see what the mind is: it is a storehouse of
information passed down to you from “them”; it is a storehouse of false beliefs.
Willing to be free of the mind? To “lose the mind"? To be "dead to the mind”? To
“have no mind”? To allow “the mind to die” so that “wisdom can be born”? To “stop
making use of the mind”? To “stop relying on the mind”?
Then simply stop believing everything that “they” told you and everything that "they" are continuing to tell you now.
To be continued.
Please enter the silence of contemplation.
[NOTE:
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