Today's Considerations
It was with no malice but with the kind of honest estimation
that one can come to only in the absence of egotism that Maharaj said
originally that only 1 out of 100000 would grasp the teachings, later amended
to 1 out of 1,000,000; eventually his guesstimate would be that only 1 out of
10,000,000 would come to an understanding of truth and develop the level of wisdom required to
differentiate between true and false.
Why are the numbers that low in terms of “truth seeking”?
And why is the truth so unpopular when it is heard and usually discarded? There
are many reasons:
THE POST-PROGRAMMING, POST-CONDITIONING, POST-ACCULTURATION,
POST-DOMESTICATION, POST-INDOCTRINATION, POST-BRAINWASHING MIND
After having been programmed etc. to believe that the
ancient myths and lies and distortions which were dreamed up during humanity’s height
of ignorance and then passed down as
truth from one generation to the next by those assuming the role of “the authorities”
in a child’s life, it is nearly impossible to see lies as lies and to abandon
belief in lies which have been believed for decades to be truth.
Relatedly,
BLIND FAITH
Bind faith results from the use of the greatest “hooks” of
all: “If you believe what we tell you, then you will be able to escape a series
of pretty miserable successions through one birth / life / death / rebirth cycle
after another and can escape cycling and re-cycling and can reach instead a
state of eternal, uninterrupted bliss;” or,
“Here is what you better believe, and if you believe it
without question, then you will be blessed in this life; you will be assured eternal
life after this life; and you will be guaranteed to have rewards for the entirety
of that eternal life.” (What a deal, huh!?) “But if you question, if your faith
falters or wavers, then you will receive none of that and you will be punished now
and forevermore.”
The same applies to many “Eastern-oriented seekers”: if a
seeker’s first exposure to non-duality comes via the Traditional Teaching
Method, then any pointers based in some other method – such as the Direct Path Teaching
Method,” for example - will usually be discounted posthaste.
If someone supposedly being treated for alcoholism in a spiritual
group hears mention of a non-spiritual approach that is showing some promise,
the latter is dismissed posthaste. That’s the way that ego-state assumption –
alongside the accompanying egotism which is used to support that false identity
– functions.
[For more on "blind faith," see the free eBook available on the subject under "FREEBIES" above.]
TRUTH IS OFTEN MORE "DISTURBING" THAN "PLEASING"
Have you heard, “The truth will set you free?" Have you heard, “The truth will set you free but it will piss you off first?” Had any experience with the latter?
LYING AND CHEATING ARE THE NEW GOLD STANDARD
In the early 1970’s, my path crossed that of a mate from high
school who had joined the local police force in a city of several thousand people.
He invited me to ride along with him on a Friday night shift and see what police
come across on any given weekend. He pointed out with fairly-consistent post-investigation
accuracy that those drivers who run through red lights are likely to be
drinking and that those drivers who are sitting through a green light are
likely high on pot. But what was most shocking was later in the shift, when he
was sensing some kind of bond. He reached under his seat and pulled out
what he said was his “throw-down pistol” which “all police carry.”
At the time, the term was new to me, so he explained that if
he or his peers shot someone who was not armed, the consequences might sometimes be
career-threatening, so if someone was killed by an officer “in the line of duty”
and it was found that the victim was unarmed, a pistol was tossed onto the
ground, usually around the head to avoid putting the gun by the right hand of a
left-handed person or vice-versa. My words in reaction to that admission assured
that we would never speak to each other again, accompanied by his threatening advice that I
best never mention that if I wanted to stay healthy.
If cheating went on in school during the 1950’s, then the
usual case was that the punishment at school was only superseded in harshness
by the punishment doled out at home after a parent was informed of the
incident. Nowadays, to the contrary, teachers are being forced to simply “re-test“ those caught
cheating to avoid the consequences for the student and for the student’s
parents and to avoid consequences for the teacher and the school after the
parents "lawyer up.” Also, teachers and administrators have been caught cheating
on students’ test scores, elevating them in order to enhance a school’s reputation
and to earn the cash bonuses paid for high achievement by students.
Recently, I read an account of a high school whose football team
had become a dominating force in their area, near unbeatable - almost always
assured of making it into the playoffs and often winning the championship. Their
secret? Most of the players were using steroids and the coaches had taken a “look
the other way” approach. In fact, other students knew about the use of
performance-enhancing drugs, many teachers knew, many administrators knew, and
anyone who witnessed the players’ “bulking up” process knew. And where were the
high school players buying those drugs? From bodybuilders hanging out at, or
employed by, local fitness centers.
In professional sports in the U.S., efforts to uphold
certain behavioral standards are, for the most part, a joke that is not funny
at all. Players experiencing “’roid rage” get away with assaulting girlfriends,
wives, and citizens-at-large with near-immunity. It’s all about getting a tick
in the “W” column rather than a tick in the loss column.
In the U.S. and many other countries, the political leaders
are blatant liars who sell out to major donors and adopt the agenda of those donors,
yet those politicians are seldom held accountable by their electorate and they
usually make millions of dollars during the time that they are in their
positions of authority. Moreover, that trend continues afterwards: between 1998
and 2006, 43 percent of all members of the U.S. Congress took lobbying jobs
after leaving Congress, landing positions with an average annual salary of $2
million.
How rich are the members of the U.S. Congress? Currently,
there are over 245 millionaires. The others will likely be millionaires by the
time they leave their posts. And some receive so much money during the election
process that they enter as millionaires: in the 2010 elections, the members of
the freshman class of senators who were elected that year each had a median net
worth of around $4 million.
When they retire, the laws (which they wrote) allow them to keep all of the money in their campaign coffers without paying any income tax on those funds.
Lying and cheating and stealing have few unwanted consequences
and instead provide much-sought-after financial gains."Truth? I don't need no stinkin' truth! It's the non-truths that pay bigtime."
AN UNSHAKABLE SENSE OF CERTITUDE
“Certitude” is "an absolute certainty or conviction that
something is the case."
At the heart of fanaticism is a desire for something. The
by-products of buying into the pitch offered by those who are claiming that
they can provide what is desired by the fanatics who come their way include . .
.
a false but
nevertheless all-powerful sense of certainty, confidence, assuredness, conviction,
and, therefore "close-mindedness" (which is constantly being reinforced as even
more "mindedness" manifests as more and more concepts and beliefs are taught and learned).
Maharaj made clear what is also now made clear here: (1) the method eventually being used by him had no components which involved
acquiring anything and that to the contrary (2) his approach "would take away everything"
(in terms of identity and Self-Identity and learned ignorance and beliefs and personality
assumption and personality disorders).
The point offered here regularly is this: “There is no ‘one’
here who believes anything, so there is no ‘one’ here that could possibly want
you to believe anything. All pointers offered are a part of an un-teaching
process; all invitations are invitations to un-learn it all rather than to spend
a lifetime learning more by engaging in religious or spiritual or philosophical
or ideological or cultist workaholism.”
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.]
