TODAY’S CONSIDERATIONS
To review:
Maharaj: "All illness begins in the mind"
and "Your confusion is . . . in your mind"
and "It is the mind that creates illusion."
Parents want to control their children. Politicians want to control the masses. Megalomaniacs want to control all people and things on the planet.
All control begins and ends with mind control, and all mind control involves duality.
Psychopaths are willing to kill to intimidate other persons to think and behave as the psychopaths prefer; the shrewd ones who would control persons to follow willingly use programming, conditioning, etc. in order to control the minds of the masses and bend them to the would-be controller's will.
Parents typically do not want to kill their children – they just want them to think and talk and behave in a certain way. Politicians do not want to kill the masses; they want them alive but also thinking and talking and behaving in the ways which politicians prefer.
To that end, the most effective mind-control involves using dualistic concepts (right vs. wrong, good vs. bad, and reward vs. punishment) in order to control.
Of course some form of punishment short of death must be used by parents with their children and by politicians with the masses in order to bend those whom they would control to their will; thus, some of the more effective tools which would-be controllers have available are: surveillance and fear and “the dangling of carrots” as well as constant reminders regarding the possibility of being punished.
Those who would be controllers must lead the ones they want to control to believe that they are being watched and judged at every turn. They must believe that their watchers know when they are being good and when they are being bad. Above all, persons who would be controlled must be challenged and brow-beaten if skepticism or questioning begins to manifest. Those must be squelched immediately, either by threat or by overt punishment. As important, those who would control must fool those whom they want to control.
Consider the roots of such desire to control and such willingness to be fooled and controlled. All modern religions have evolved from ancient pagan religions, and modern religions still cling to many of the ancient beliefs and practices of their pagan forerunners.
Their beliefs included such concepts as unseen but all-knowing, all-powerful authorities who could be made mad or glad by persons on earth; unseen but all-knowing, all-powerful authorities watching from some remote location and keeping records of good actions vs. bad actions; and unseen but all-knowing, all-powerful authorities that plan and execute punishments for all those guilty of bad actions.
In the West, children are usually introduced early on to those concepts by way of lies told to them about Santa Claus (or Saint Nicholas, St. Nick, Kris Kringle, Pelznickel, etc.) Also, in the Far East, many children are taught that there is Agni, a god who supposedly knows all and who gives gifts to assure that the gods are happy and that followers will be blessed.
In Hinduism, the concept of sacrificing to gods to receive blessings is central. In Christianity, Jesus Christ was deemed to be a gift, sacrificed by his father to all humanity in order to remove their sins. All of that evolved from several pagan religions in which virgins were sacrificed to an angry god – usually a Rain God early on – in order to please the god and bring crop-saving rain.
The priest would have sex with the virgin (being god’s representative on earth and knowing that nothing soothes an angry male like sex); afterwards, he would bring the naked virgin out of the holy chamber where he had engaged in sex with her and would then - before the gathered worshippers - cut from her chest her beating heart. Lastly, he would eat the body and drink the blood and then pass the human organ among the crowd to do the same, thus “entering into communion with god.”
Yesterday, all around the globe, over two billions Christians reenacted that brutal practice using bread and wine, symbolic of "the blood of Christ and the body of Christ" (or believed to be actual blood and actual body by believers in the concept of "transubstantiation"); yet the roots of the service which they entered into yesterday date back to the days when the blood and body of virgins were consumed during a worship service.
See? All of those worshippers in ancient days were being fooled, and now modern-day worshippers are being fooled. They believe in a God of punishment and they believe in a God of rewards if they are willing to believe and to sacrifice and to behave in the manner which they have been taught is "good."
Fooled. All fooled. All fooled big time.
Annually, children in the West are fooled into believing in Santa Claus in order that the same message can be conveyed to children: "There is a power in another realm and He knows if you’ve been good or bad, so be good for goodness sake” and “If you are good all year, you will receive gifts at the end of the year; but if you are not good, you will be punished by not receiving any gifts." See?
It’s all about fooling the masses in order to control them.
And when the children begin to suspect or become skeptical or begin to question whether or not Santa is real, the fooling goes on a bit longer. Eventually, those who fooled the children will confess that, “Yes it was all a story, just a wonderful tale, but one that is rooted in the truth because, though there is no Santa Claus, there is a God that Santa represents in the story and God knows if you’ve been good or bad and, if you’re good, He will reward you. So we told you about Santa Claus, but the story is really about God, and it is God that you must now believe in unquestioningly.”
See? Fooling persons happens the same way, over and over: "Just believe whatever we tell you and do it with blind faith, because if you do not, that too will displease God and you will not be blessed.”
And the child that was fooled by the Santa story does not usually say, “You've already lied to me once about this subject, so why should I believe you this time?”
But if asked, the answer is, “Because this time, I really am telling you the truth.”
A woman yesterday told the story of leaving the man whom she had lived with for eight months and whom she had supported financially because he could not keep a job, supposedly "because he stayed drunk constantly," and a man who beat her often. Each time, he told her he was going to change, and each time that promise turned out to be a lie, followed by a new promise accompanied by the statement, "This time, I really am telling you the truth.”
After each subsequent beating escalated in intensity, she finally left. In the past months, he has told her that he is getting help, that he has joined AA, that he is sober, and that he realizes that alcohol was his problem and that it was just the alcohol which caused him to beat her but that he has changed and wants her (her money?) back.
His mother has warned her that he was diagnosed by two different counselors as being a full-blown sociopath and psychopath, but he contacts her daily by email and she is becoming convinced that he has really changed, that AA does indeed bring about miracles, and that they "just might be able to have a good relationship now.” He fooled her many times in the past; now it seems that he is about to succeed in fooling her again.
Tomorrow, observations by Laura Cococcia on this topic, including pointers by Michael Shermer as well, will be shared. Here’s a preview:
Cococcia said, "It takes almost no effort to make a child believe in Santa Claus. Step one? Put some presents under a Christmas tree every year. Step two? Tell the child that Santa Claus put them there. Result? You've got a Santa-believer on your hands."
She notes, "Shermer asserts that belief is the natural human state, and that it is science and reason that seem unnatural to us" and she notes that the skeptic "pulls away the curtain that divides us from our understanding of why we are prone to believe ultimately illogical, at times fantastical, things.
"Santa Claus, and his mystical compatriots the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, are cultural as well as psychological phenomena that serve as apt examples of our propensity for self-deception. Of course, 'self-deception' might seem like a fairly heavy-handed term to use in describing the average 5-year-old's belief in Santa Claus.”
Indeed, children do not start off deceiving themselves. They are deceived by the adults around them. See? Initially, persons are being deceived by others; later, they will deceive themselves . . . and will then deceive other persons who listen to them as well.
Why take the steps to return to "The Child Ignorance Stage" or "The Child No-Knowing State"?
Because those were the only "pre-fooled days" of your existence. Because all "post-fooled days" are marked by heaviness.
And because only "pre-fooled days" and "no-longer-fooled days" can provide any chance of enjoying the sense of lightness which comes when free of the consequences of learned ignorance and insane beliefs.
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:
