TODAY’S CONSIDERATIONS
Maharaj said in the 1980’s: " . . . The mind obscures and distorts."
and
"It is the mind that creates illusion."
and
"There is no such thing as peace of mind. Mind means disturbance. Restlessness itself is mind."
Earlier, John Milton said in the 1600’s: "The mind . . . in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”
and
Richard Lovelace said, also in the 1600’s, “Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage.” What does? The mind, he said.
So sages have long known of – and warned seekers of – the heaviness which comes when one is imprisoned by the mind and trapped within the belief systems stored within the mind as a result of assuming such false identities as "The Super Religious One" or "The Spiritual Giant" or "The Super Seeker" or "The Supreme Self."
I see so many of those types who never enter into a "relationship" which is even remotely healthy. Big surprise, huh? Who the heck would find living with anyone assuming one or more of those four false identities to be even the least bit fun?
I see so many of those types who never enter into a "relationship" which is even remotely healthy. Big surprise, huh? Who the heck would find living with anyone assuming one or more of those four false identities to be even the least bit fun?
Yet few warn - as Maharaj did later on - of the heaviness of obsession-driven seeking.
Like Maharaj, philosophy teacher Donald Palmer did address the issue when he advised students to “take philosophy seriously, but not gravely.”
He undertook an effort "to make lighter" what he called “the unbearable heaviness of philosophy.”
Maharaj made clear that too often, humans - be they seeking or not - are driven.
Consider the actual implications of that term:
If you are in a car and are being driven, then there are three places you can be and one place you cannot be. If you are being driven, you can be in the passenger seat, in the back seat, or locked (imprisoned) in the truck.
Where can you not be? Behind the wheel. If not behind the wheel but being driven instead, then you really have no say at all about where you go, when you go, how you go, if you go successfully along a highway, or if you end up being driven into a ditch or off a cliff.
Maharaj made clear that too often, humans are driven by their unquestioned-and-faith-based beliefs – be they rooted in dogma or spirituality or some ideology or some philosophy.
Maharaj: “Blind beliefs . . . pollute and dull the psyche.”
and
“The more earnest you are, the less belief you need.”
and
‘To destroy the false, you must question your most inveterate beliefs.”
and
“Go forth, unburdened with ideas and beliefs.”
Too often, humans are driven by dogma-inspired or spirituality-inspired or some ideology-inspired or philosophy-inspired concepts and notions to believe that their dogma or spirituality or ideology or philosophy has made them “different from” (and, therefore, better-than and superior to “others”):
Maharaj on “different from”:
“There is nothing which is different from me.”
“You are not different from others.”
“There is no chaos in the world, except the chaos which your mind creates. It is self-created in the sense that at its very centre is the false idea of oneself as a thing different and separate from other things. In reality you are not a thing, nor separate.”
“This is your last illusion that you are a jnani, that you are different from, and superior to, the common man. Again you identify yourself with your mind, in this case a well-behaved and in every way an exemplary mind. As long as you see the least difference, you are a stranger to reality.”
“You are in no way different from me, only you do not know it.”
“When the discriminative mind comes into being and creates distinctions, pleasure and pain arise.”
Maharaj on “a sense of superiority”:
“Because you imagine differences, you go here and there in search of ‘superior’ people”
and
“Intellectual arrogance pollutes and dulls the psyche” (as do religious arrogance and spiritual arrogance)
and
"Above all, one must not make judgments of inferiority or superiority."
and
“The ultimate in selfishness is to care only for the protection, preservation and multiplication of one's own body. By body I mean all that is related to your name and shape - your family, tribe, country, race, etc. To be attached to one's name and shape is selfishness.”
Too often, humans are driven by acculturation, by surrounding influence in their societies and institutions and environment.
Maharaj on “Culture”:
"If you seek reality you must set yourself free of all backgrounds, of all cultures, of all patterns of thinking and feeling."
and
“The causes of perversity are also natural - heredity, environment and so on.”
Too often, humans are driven by the false selves which they have been assigned or which they assume, leading to "self-centeredness" / "selfishness":
Maharaj: “Your interest in others is egoistic, self-concerned, self-oriented. You are not interested in others as persons, but only as far as they enrich or ennoble your own image of yourself.”
So what, per Maharaj, is the proper version of the Ultimate Medicine to be used to treat all of that Ultimate-Sickness-based-nonsense?
That depends on which of the three versions of the Medicine that he tried out during the three periods during which he received visitors:
“The Early Years Version” was a compounded medicine combining religious with non-dual pointers.
“The Middle Years Version” was a compounded medicine combining spirituality with non-dual pointers.
“The Later Years Version” was a compounded medicine combining psychology with non-dual pointers.
Maharaj’s later perspective about the earliest version of the Medicine which he used?
To one man: “Take all of the pictures of your gods and deities and put them in the sea”
and
"With the body comes the world, with the world - God, who is supposed to have created the world and thus it starts - fears, religions, prayers, sacrifices, all sorts of systems - all to protect and support the child-man, frightened out of his wits by monsters of his own making"
and
"Science provides the answer to many questions which formerly were in the domain of religion"
and
"Look at the mind as a function of matter and you have science; look at matter as the product of the mind and you have religion"
and
"First of all, you identify something as being good or bad for yourself. Then, in an effort to acquire good or to get rid of bad, you have invented a God. Then you worship such a God and . . . you pray to that God for something good to happen to you"
and
"Recorded religions are mere heaps of verbiage. Religions show their true face in action, in silent action. To know what man believes, watch how he acts. For most of the people service of their bodies and their minds is their religion. They may have religious ideas, but they do not act on them”
and
Questioner in loft: "You seem to have little use for religion."
Maharaj: "What is religion? A cloud in the sky. I live in the sky, not in the clouds, which are so many words held together. Remove the verbiage and what remains? Truth remains."
and
A visitor to the loft: "The scriptures say that we have our karma and our sins and that is why we are here."
Maharaj: "That is for the ignorant masses. One who has realized . . . , for him these stories are of no use."
As for the second version, he would eventually say:
"Forget spirituality."
He invited seekers to follow your "normal inclinations" - that is, their natural tendencies -
and to
"do your normal duties"
and
"just give up spirituality."
He said: "Whatever you have tried to understand during your spiritual search will prove false"
and
"When the birth is disproved, the great noble meaning of spirituality and the meaning of this world - everything - is disproved."
[Okay, so maybe neither religious nor spirituality has provided a real solution to humankind’s mind-based problems, but what about finding "the True Self" and "The Supreme Self"? That is certainly the method which has been recommended by some for millennia and which Maharaj recommended for a time as well.
Maharaj on “SELF-Inquiry” vs. “self-inquiry”:
He said that "it is enough to know what you are not"
and
"I got involved in spirituality, in the business of spirituality, [but] finally I lost that love of Self also. I have no more love for the Self."]
So what really needs to be addressed? In the end he said . . . humans' psychological issues . . . humans' mind issues.
To use his first or second version of the Medicine will be assured “to make Jack a dull boy” and to make a prison of one's mind and to make mere living into a second job and to make a relative existence heavier as a result of excessive and obsessive religious or spiritual workaholism.
The lightness modeled by the deer and the fish and the birds and every living thing on the planet is the norm, but humans have been robbed of the norm of lightness and have been robbed of the ability to follow Maharaj’s suggestion to relax and take it easy and to lie down and rest in the cool blue shade as do the deer.
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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