TODAY’S CONSIDERATIONS
So what else is a part of the rationale for returning to “The Child Ignorance Stage” or to "The Child No-Knowing State” as its called here?
In order to be free of craziness, ignorance, and abnormalities. Yet a guide is required to move beyond all of that. Why? Because crazy cannot spot crazy. Ignorance cannot spot ignorance. Abnormal cannot spot abnormal; moreover, abnormal cannot spot normal, either. Similarly, neither unnatural nor supernatural (spiritual) can spot natural.
What blocks any chance for one to be freed from the craziness, the ignorant, and the abnormal? Personal identification assignment and assumption, which will always soon be accompanied by the development of personality disorders. Of the disorders plaguing most seekers, the Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder is one of the most prominent.
Maharaj: “Once this obsession with the body goes, you will revert to your natural state, spontaneously and effortlessly.”
Similarly, obsession with the mind will block access to the natural state, and obsession with personas / personality identifications / roles / stage characters / false selves will block access to the natural.
So, once the obsession with the mind (and all of its content) goes, you will revert to your natural state, spontaneously and effortlessly, and once the obsession with the agendas of personal (or "Personal") identifications go, you will revert to your natural state, spontaneously and effortlessly. Thus, from what Maharaj said, what conclusion can be drawn about what blocks persons from abiding naturally?
Their obsessions. Their constant obsessing, be it about the body or the mind or their personas or their dogma or their “program” or their spiritual exercises or their “spiritual development” or their SELF-Inquiry” or their philosophy or their ideology or their efforts to avoid eternal punishment or their efforts to gain eternal rewards or their efforts to reform the world or their desire to be loved or their desire to be admired or their desire to avoid or their desire to be taken care of or their desire to escape or their desire to control or their desire to never be bothered in any way by anyone or anything.
As for those obsessed with, and therefore trapped in, their unnatural tendencies or their supernatural / spiritual interests and preoccupations, he said:
“The only difference between us is that I am aware of my natural state, while you are bemused. We differ only in appearance.”
He said: “The moment we perceive our insanity, we are on the way to sanity. This is the function of the Guru: to make us see the madness of our daily living. Life makes you conscious, but the teacher makes you aware.”
And what are most seekers not aware of?
The way that their “needing to seek” was brought about by a lifetime of obsessive-compulsive thinking and behavior; the way that their seeking is now being driven by obsession and by the compulsive behavior which obsessing generates; and the way that their obsession continues to feed on itself, similar to a cancerous cell.
A. In the end, Maharaj stripped away from his message all of the non-essential, mystical, mythic, dogmatic, spiritual elements (which all inspire magical, unrealistic thinking) and offered instead a message of practically, making clear that humankind’s problems center in the mind:
"All illness begins in the mind."
"Your confusion is . . . in your mind."
"There is no chaos in the world except the chaos which your mind creates."
" . . . The mind obscures and distorts."
"It is the mind that creates illusion."
"There is no such thing as peace of mind. Mind means disturbance; restlessness itself is mind."
B. Here, the same happened as occurred with Maharaj: it was seen that the Ultimate Sickness is a mind-sickness, a mental sickness; thus, as happened with Maharaj, all use of a religious / non-dual version of the Ultimate Medicine has been cast aside after seeing its ineffectiveness in treating the Ultimate Sickness; all use of a spiritual / non-dual version of the Ultimate Medicine ended after seeing its ineffectiveness in treating the Ultimate Sickness;
then, a stripped down, simplified version of the Medicine began to be offered. It was seen that trillions of life forms have come and gone, that trillions of life forms are coming and going, and that of all of those, not a single one except for humans ever felt the need to find god, the need to worship a god or gods and goddesses, the need to seek mental health, the need to be restored to sanity, or the need to cast off nonsense which was taught and which became the learned ignorance which drives ignorant thoughts and words and actions among humans.
C. Another with the non-dual understanding who offers a practical, sensible, realistic, no-nonsense, matter-of-fact, and functional version of the teachings put it this way: “The point is to wake up, not to earn a Ph.D. in waking up.”
Yet how many behave as if they have a Ph.D. in dogma? (According to research, 97%, or approximately 6,980,400,000 persons, who claim to have an affiliation with one organized religion or another.)
And how many behave as if they have a Ph.D. in spirituality? (According to some research, up to 37%, or 2,664,000,000 persons, claim to be spiritual. NOTE: That number includes some self-identified “religious” persons who also claim to be “spiritual.”)
Add in those who claim to be members of one or more of the 75+ Twelve Step groups which are spinoffs of “AA” with hundreds of thousands of chapters and with millions of members all around the globe and almost all persons on the planet are claiming to be religious and / or spiritual.
And how many of those are obsessive about their religion or spiritual program or group? The closest to an accurate guesstimate would be . . . all. Based in what?
Consider what Douwe Tiemersma offered: “There are various religions and systems of philosophy which claim to endow human life with meaning. But they suffer from certain inherent limitations. They couch into fine-sounding words their traditional beliefs and ideologies, theological or philosophical. Believers, however, discover the limited range of meaning and applicability of these words, sooner or later. They get disillusioned and tend to abandon the systems, in the same way as scientific theories are abandoned, when they are called in question by too much contradictory empirical data.”
So, based in what? “Empirical evidence,” that is, “experience,” “observation,” and “objective witnessing,” not only seeing the way that persons behave nowadays but also seeing the historical evidence and the way that humans have behaved for the last 5,000 years since dogma and spirituality became so popular. And what of Tiemersma’s observation about believers “abandoning such systems”?
Might it be more accurate to suggest that nowadays, when believers become disillusioned with their system, they merely change systems, moving from one system to another during their often life-long seeking?
Either way, his comments deal accurately with beliefs and believers, and beliefs are about the mind. They are the content of the mind. In fact, everything stored in the mind ultimately involves and supports one belief or another.
So when did the troublesome mind begin? With humankind, when the brain expanded from its original 1-cup size and evolved into its present 3-1/2 cup size and developed areas for the storing and recalling of information.
When does each individual mind begin nowadays? When programming, conditioning, domestication, acculturation, brainwashing, and indoctrination begin. When nonsense is taught from early on and accepted ans stored in the mind unquestioningly . . . with blind faith.
And what else is a part of the rationale for returning to “The Child Ignorance Stage” or "The Child No-Knowing State”? To reach a state of lightness by returning to the condition which allowed a sense of lightness to exist in the first place. The farther a person moves away from the originally-light, originally-no-knowing state, the greater the heaviness of burdens during the relative existence will be.
Maharaj spoke of “the burden which is [already] heavy enough.” That burden is rooted in the nonsense which accompanies personal identifications, none of which had been assigned or assumed during the no-knowing state. To be free again, more need not be learned. The call is for less. The call is for de-accumulation. The call is to allow all of the content of the mind to dissolve. The call is to un-learn it all, to be un-taught all.
Maharaj: “The dissolution of personality is followed always by a sense of great relief, as if a heavy burden has fallen off.”
He could also have said, “The dissolution of mind is followed always by a sense of great relief, as if a heavy burden has fallen off" and “The dissolution of belief in identities (and Identities) is followed always by a sense of great relief, as if a heavy burden has fallen off."
He did say,
“Whatever is conceived by the mind must be false, for it is bound to be relative and limited."
and
"Distrust your mind, and go beyond."
and
"Beyond the mind there is no suffering."
and
"Don't rely on your mind for liberation. It is the mind that brought you into bondage. Go beyond it altogether."
As for Maharaj’s pointer that "we differ only in appearance," the invitation is always to strip away any external perceived differences and to understand that which is common to all. This illustration was received yesterday and points toward the unicity and away from the supposed multiplicity beyond the actual unity:
Okay, even then there might be some slight difference which can be detected:
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
[NOTE: The four most recent posts will 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.]
Also:
In addition to the five non-duality books made available without charge by Andy Gugar, Jr. (see “FREEBIES” above), you can now access nearly 2,800 posts for any topics of interest to you.
Use the search feature at the top and then click “Open Menu” in the upper right hand corner and use the “Find” feature to locate your search term in the postings.
Finally, if anything on the site has been of use to you, you may use the donate button at the top of this page to donate any amount you choose or you may use the following button to make a $5 donation. All donations help defray expenses and allow us to continue to offer access to all of the free books and content without any membership fee.
Thank you for your support. You may click the button below to donate $5:
