Friday, October 09, 2015

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

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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.]

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