TODAY’S CONSIDERATIONS
To review from yesterday:
Maharaj said . . .
“…You should go back, reverse, to the source” [and if not the source which is understood after the seventh step of a seven-step “journey,” then at least to the fourth step where you return to the freedom and joy and lightness of “The Child No-Knowing State].
and
“Follow the same path by which you came” [and keep following it until you reach that pre-conditioned state where the possibility to enjoy unconditional happiness occurred].
and
"Go to zero concepts” [and thereby be truly free].
If you must "go back" and "reverse to the source," then you had earlier "come in" from “the source.” In past discussions here, that “coming in” has been referred to as “the first leg” of a multi-leg “journey.” That “coming in leg” involves a movement of energy
from an unmanifested state in which awareness was not even aware of itself, was not aware of anything period, then moving toward a state where, once that energy manifested within the space of some type of form, then it could manifest as conscious-energy and be conscious-of.
For “a” to be conscious of “b,” then a state of duality must exist; therefore, the manifested consciousness will always involve duality.
Once again, Maharaj said of consciousness, “It is a burden. Body means burden. Sensations, desires, thoughts - these are all burdens. All consciousness is of conflict.”
For conflict to exist, there must be two parties involved, or one party that is so driven by insanity that it can be at odds with itself. Either way, that is what duality looks like when at play, and duality at play always involves conflict and chaos. The one called “Christ” by some offered a pointer regarding conflict and chaos. After he was introduced to the non-dual teachings, and after he abandoned organized religion, and after he began offering non-dual pointers, he said, “A dual-minded person is unstable in all ways.” Being unstable is guaranteed to generate conflict and chaos.
So, any touting of the consciousness misses the mark. It is the pre-manifested-consciousness condition called "awareness" which is key. If awareness becomes aware of itself, it can serve as the tool to be used to differentiate between the true and the false, a differentiation which the consciousness cannot possibly make.
Thus, during the coming in process, consciousness manifests in a human space in this fashion:
first there is a movement away from the source (the source being understood at the seventh step on the “going back, reversing path” which Maharaj recommended). That movement away from the source happens at rocket speed as the conscious-energy zooms past the 6th step and the 5th step. But then, there is a pause of many months at the 4th step, that is, at the stage which humans call “the baby or the infant or the early childhood state.”
During the early part of that state, the child knows nothing. It is merely witnessing, and at one level, the witnessing is a version of pure witnessing as the child sees the physical face which goes with the voice it heard for months while in the womb and feels at one with that face / body / person. At that point, the witnessing is pure to the degree that the child experiences a sense of the oneness to some degree.
After the child discovers its own hands and feet and other body parts, it begins to develop a sense of separateness from the mother (entering a period of self-interest and self-absorption referred to as "the Terrible Two's"). The potential for the development of narcissism is in place as the child ignores others and focuses on self.
At that point, subject-object witnessing replaces pure witnessing and conflict is assured as duality takes hold. Soon, the penchant and predilection and partiality which the consciousness has for duality will begin manifesting swiftly – not at the original rocket speed at which the consciousness moves but at the speed which programming and conditioning and domestication and acculturation and brainwashing and indoctrination can be introduced to the child.
Via those, false roles and personal identifications will also be introduced, as well as ideas and concepts and notions and bogus perceptions and warped perspectives and thoughts and words and dreams and views and faith and convictions and values and principles and theories and intentions and knowledge (a.k.a., "learned ignorance”) all of which are stored in the developing mind and all of which will combine to form the child's belief systems.
How long does that take? Usually about four years. Here's the timetable:
The typical child has only a short respite of less than two years before it is totally absorbed by duality-based thinking and talking and behaving . . . a short respite when what Maharaj called a period of “zero concepts” will come to an end, replaced by exposure to the intensive degrees of programming and conditioning and domestication and acculturation and brainwashing and indoctrination which begin.
So from the age of two to the age of six, each child nowadays will be inundated with a flood of ignorant and insane information. Soon, ninety-seven percent - statistically - will be introduced to the religious dogma which was passed down to its parents from their parents’ parents and from generations and generations of ancestors before them.
Shortly, the child will also be taught, in a school or by community elders, the cultural beliefs which were passed down as truth, though those beliefs were all based in myths and superstitions. By what is called in many places the “elementary school years,” the typical child will be so flooded with nonsense that it will already be enslaved by the content of a mind which is building up a multi-faceted belief system which is marked by what Maharaj called three of the key symptoms of the Ultimate Sickness, namely, “ignorance, stupidity, and insanity.”
Parents who are not already warped beyond all limits will instinctively have the “Momma Bear” instinct to naturally and spontaneously and vigorously protect and defend their offspring. Yet the facts are these:
if anyone else tried to take control of their children and harm them as much, relatively speaking, as the parents are harming their children via ignorant and insane programming and conditioning and domestication and acculturation and brainwashing and indoctrination, the parents would likely kill that person who is so effectively harming their offspring.
While most parents believe that they are packing their children's baggage with what is required for their entire journey through life, they are actually handing their children a suitcase loaded with a variety of time bombs. By the time those children reach adulthood, they will have experienced many destructive experiences even as the big bomb is still waiting to explode.
Those time bombs are personality identifications which lead to personality disorders which lead to neuroses and psychoses which lead to self-defeating behaviors; destructive behaviors; self-destructive behaviors; depression, so-called “nervous breakdown”; suicide attempts;
slow suicide attempts (using tobacco or drugs or over-eating or following food laws which do not provide a person's particular metabolic body type with the nutrition it needs to function properly); from becoming vindictive and resentful and revenge-seeking to being escapist and avoidant; to being deranged; explosively-enraged; hysterical; panic-stricken; impulsive; obsessive; compulsive; barbaric; sociopathic; psychopathic; and catatonic, ad infinitum.
In the end, every human that has undergone programming and conditioning and domestication and acculturation and brainwashing and indoctrination will either need (1) the non-dual understanding in order to be free of all of that or will need (2) professional help (rather than help from amateur, armchair psychologists), that is, help from those properly and thoroughly trained to assist person’s with severe personality disorders as well as neuroses and psychoses.
And those mental illnesses are not rare. They are now all-pervasive.
As George Bernard Shaw said when asked if he thought there might be life on other planets, he replied: “I know for a fact there is because they are using earth as their insane asylum.”
Or as Maharaj said: “Insanity is universal. Sanity is rare. Yet there is hope, because the moment we perceive our insanity, we are on the way to sanity.”
Thus, the proper role of the guru, he said, is not to introduce seekers to spiritual principles and is not to require seekers to engage constantly in spiritual exercises but is “to dispel ignorance in the hearts and minds of disciples."
He advised, “It is only your ignorance that makes you say ‘I know.’ Begin with the admission that you do not know and start from there.”
He said: “There is nothing that can help the world more than your putting an end to ignorance.”
The obstacle?
He said: “An ignorant man is ignorant of his ignorance.”
Ultimately, he said, “I am only interested in ignorance and the freedom from ignorance.”
He said: “Humanity’s pain is caused by the abysmal stupidity of mankind.”
Speaking of the Ultimate Medicine, Maharaj referred to it as “the remedy for a disease caused by obtuseness and stupidity.”
What is the rub with person's understanding and accepting that?
Who that is still trapped in ego and egotism - and who wants to find the way to becoming some “Supreme Self” or “A God” or “God” - wants to hear, “You do not need that”? Who wanting such aloof identities is going to be receptive to hearing, “You do not need to know more . . . you need to know less”?
Who wanting a Greater and Higher and More Noble Identity is receptive to hearing, “You only need to be freed from the ignorance and insanity which were imposed on you by way of ignorant and insane programming and conditioning and domestication and acculturation and brainwashing and indoctrination”? Few.
The additional obstacle?
What persons that are so firmly trapped in ego-states and egotism that they think they are perfect or “turned out pretty damn good” can even consider that their parents could have been less than perfect? For the egotistical, they consider themselves to be the evidence of how wonderfully wise and great and adept their parents were at raising children.
Yet understand that there is no need for resenting parents. Nor is there a need to make excuses for them. Nor is there a need to blindly see them as having been wise and perfect in their child-rearing techniques.
There is only a need to see one's present condition, to see the far-from-perfect results of being guided by the content of one’s mind, and to understand that there is no such thing as “your mind.”
There is only “their mind,” and the content of their minds - which has been rooted in myths and superstitions and nonsense and ignorance and insanity for generations – has become the content presently stored in the minds of their offspring.
Arrogance will prevent persons from seeing that the content of “their programmers' and conditioners' minds” is bogus and always has been.
Hatred is not required to be free of it. Just enough clarity to see that what was passed down from "their minds" is not really working to humankind’s advantage is all that is required.
Originally, the human brain had no area for storing and recalling information. During the times when the human brain was at its pre-evolutionary, one-cup size, there was no mind. You are here now, so obviously that no-mind condition of your ancestors worked out okay in terms of the survival of the human species. After an evolutionary process, as the human brain expanded to its present three-and-a-half-cup size, it was still an asset, helping the members of the human species to perpetuate themselves.
Only after ignorance and insanity began to drive humans (who then passed on those liabilities via ignorant and insane programming and conditioning and domestication and acculturation and brainwashing and indoctrination) did the human mind become the liability which it remains to this day.
Over the years, I have witnessed thousands of persons who have admitted that they were insane but now claim that they simply had a spiritual malady and that their spirituality has freed them from being being driven by ignorance and insanity any more. They claim that they have been restored to sanity by way of "the grace of God" or some other type of "Higher Power's" miraculous (that is, not actually real) intervention.
[The question: "So if there is a loving and caring and all-powerful God of grace with real, higher power and an ability to intervene, why did he or she allow you to engage for years in ignorance-and-insanity-driven harm and self-harm in the first place? What's that you say? He loved you enough to give you free will? That is definitely not an impressive Parent skill, O Child of that God."
As a loving and responsible parent, I did not give my daughter when she was a child the free will to play in the street with other children who were playing in the street. I defined and imposed boundaries which actually guarded her safety. I heard a mother say recently, "My four year old child is 'very independent'." What I saw was that she did not care enough to sacrifice the time and effort to discipline her now unruly and totally-out-of-control child. He was not "independent." He was so undisciplined that he was kicked out of a very expensive daycare within weeks of being enrolled. He was characterized by the owner as "being a danger to himself and being physically harmful to the other children." Hardly the product of a wise and loving parent.]
Those types who have been fooled and are now fooling themselves would do well to seek, objectively, a second opinion from someone other than those in their fellowship who are going along with their claim of sanity.
To stop doing one specific destructive and self-destructive thing that was being done as a result of one’s insanity does not mean that one has been cured of insanity. The proof of there still-present insanity? The many other destructive and self-destructive things which are now being done by those making their bogus claims of being sane.
What stops ignorant behaviors is an understanding of cause and effect, an end to the insanity of not being able to differentiate between the false from the true, and the spontaneous willingness to abandon all destructive and self-destructive behaviors. That willingness only comes after truly being freed of the bondage of ignorance and truly being restored to sanity and really seeing truth.
What ends insanity is a true restoration to sanity, and that requires, first, seeing the remaining insanity and, secondly, taking the necessary steps to eliminate the root of insanity.
To shift away from the highest levels of psychoses and from extreme levels of neuroses requires being free of the personality disorders in which they were rooted. And freedom from personality disorders only comes if freed from all personality identification by being freed of any and every belief in any and every identity (and “Identity”).
Being free of what Maharaj’s called the “heavy burden” of personality and its effects requires “going back, reversing” at least as far back as “The Child No-Knowing State” which existed for the short time before ignorant and insane programming and conditioning and domestication and acculturation and brainwashing and indoctrination resulted in being trapped in ignorant and insane belief systems.
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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