TODAY’S CONSIDERATIONS
Maharaj: “It is the dance of the conscious presence.”
Last night my daughter contacted me to say that a breaking news story out of southern France showed another instance of an ignorant and angry and insane person attacking strangers. She said it looked like the people had been run down by the driver of a huge truck on the promenade in front of the Hotel Negresco in Nice where we had stayed many times each year when she was young and I owned and operated a European tour company.
After some discussion, she could only say a single word: “Crazy.”
The reply: “Indeed. That is another name for all fanaticism.”
Fanatical humans have long enjoyed blood sports when happy and have long enjoyed killing and even mass murder when unhappy (exactly as modeled by so many gods in so many of the planet's religions). The bloodletting then renders them . . . happy:
When visiting the ancient ruins in Chichen Itza, I was shown the site of ballgames where players were decapitated and their heads were used as balls during the games.
In Rome I visited the remains of the Coliseum and the site where the Circus Maximus was located (and where deadly chariot races inspired today's auto races in the U.S. in which crashes and occasional deaths are assured). On one single day alone in the Coliseum, over 9,000 animals were killed for the entertainment of the crowds. Entire species were wiped off the face of the earth during the years when “the games” were being played.
During that same period, over 400,000 humans were killed in the arena, also for entertainment, and many times that number died in other arenas such as the Circus Maximus.
Columbus - now considered a hero in the U.S. where his birthday is a national holiday - killed 15,000,000 of the indigenous peoples living on islands off the east coast.
Later, European invaders would kill an estimated 150,000,000 of the indigenous peoples in what is now called “the Americans,” 25 times more than the number of Jews killed by Germans during WWII. That German Holocaust serves as another example of how popular genocide has been throughout the history of humanity.
If one's God is genocidal, then any "godly" follower also has permission to be genocidal. If one's God is sociopathic, then any "godly" follower also has permission to be sociopathic. And if one's God is psychopathic, then any "godly" follower also has permission to be psychopathic.
Over 14 millions Jews worship a homicidal, sociopathic, psychopathic god; over 2 billion Judaeo-Christians worship a homicidal, sociopathic, psychopathic god; over 1.6 billion Muslims worship a homicidal, sociopathic, psychopathic god. What is the surprise about the way that those who believe themselves to be "godly" are willing to behave?
Consider the fallacious reasoning which follows when a syllogism forms after such beliefs are accepted:
A. God kills.
B. I am godly.
C. Ergo, I can kill for God."
Maharaj identified the key symptoms of the Ultimate Sickness as "ignorance, stupidity, and insanity." Is not the source of much of humankind's ignorance, stupidity, and insanity" clear?
"Crazy = "fanaticism"; "fanaticism = "crazy."
In November of 1864, a group of “Native Americans” were promised safe haven alongside Sand Creek if they would give up their arms. They did so, but on the 29th of that month, U.S. Army Colonel John Chivington lead a 700-man force in a massacre in which they killed and mutilated around 160+ “Indians,” about two-thirds of whom were women and children.
Chivington, who was also a Christian preacher, ordered his forces to scalp those killed, to cut off their fingers and ears, to cut off the breasts and vaginas of the women, to rip the fetuses out of the women who were pregnant, and to cut off the penises of the men and to hang all of those body parts on their horses for a victory parade through the streets of Denver in which “the heroes of Sand Creek” were honored.
Later, his soldiers made tobacco pouches out of the scrotums of the men slaughtered there, and some Colorado legislators asked to be given such pouches as souvenirs. One served candy to his grandchildren from his souvenir scrotum pouch. Only after continuing protests a few years ago did a Colorado ski resort finally remove from a glass display in its lobby an article made from the skin of a Native American.
Today, the town nearest the site of the massacre is named “Chivington, Colorado” in honor of "The Hero of the Battle of Sand Creek."
U.S. President Andrew Jackson (the man honored on the U.S. twenty dollar bill who was also a slave owner) had a wall in the White House where he displayed the skin of Native Americans.
In Mexico and Spain and other places, bullfights continue to this day. Occasionally a bull gores and kills a matador, as happened last week, but usually the drugged bulls die a tortuous death. Blood sport.
In the U.S., boxing and the bloodletting which comes with it has long been a major form of entertainment, but now kickboxing is even bloodier and is, therefore, even more popular.
Humans do like to let blood and do find great joy in that. But what about when they’re angry? The same happens: blood must be let.
The fanatical man who drove a truck onto the Promenade des Anglais last night and killed over 80 people and hospitalized many more – including over fifty children – was angry as he made his plans, but he was seemingly quite happy as he carried out his plan.
Such chaos and instability manifest from within darkness and prevent any sense of lightness, and both chaos and instability indicate the presence of heaviness. That pointer is discussed in the book Dancing Lightly in which this is offered for consideration:
Consider the analysis offered by Maharaj of what can happen when freedom from emotional intoxication is interrupted by emotions, which leads to motions (actions), which lead in turn to misery. Years ago, this was discussed with one seeker:
What you have seen is why the Advaitin uses the word "selfish" (that is "self-ish") to describe the ego-states that toss a huge stone into the previously-still pond and care not about the effects of the waves on those sharing the pond.
Maharaj: "When it comes to thoughts and feelings [and] desires and fears, you become acutely self -conscious."
Focused on the self's relative needs or desires or fears, the self takes over and causes the tossing-without-caring to happen. The generating of chaos in a formerly peaceful pond begins with a divorce, and the divorce involves having an affair with one's false selves and thus being divorced from humankind in general.
To be divorced from belief in false selves and their agendas will have an effect on all in the pond. Only in that condition can the destructive or harmful motions (i.e., relative actions, relative behaviors) finally stop. The "Blowing of the Still" can be heard and acknowledged. Stillness returns.
What drives one away from the stillness and into motion? That will always prove to be some emotion, and that emotion will have been rooted in the fears and desires of one or more personalities. Consciousness will drive motion; abidance as THAT - even as the AM-ness continues to happen - will allow the shift to the background of motion where Witnessing only is happening.
That is the way it is in the true state which Maharaj spoke of: "My true state, which is whole, undifferentiated, is beyond birth and death. I am never bound by my body and mind. I am limitless."
If not bound by body and mind and personality, we will be "bound" to the still and undifferentiated whole. Then we will be free of personality and personality-driven motions (actions, behaviors) which cause a sense of separation, which cause . . . "divorce."
If caught up in the turmoil of emotions, we arrive in that state discussed earlier when Maharaj explained the situations which can rob one of the stability that had come previously with the understanding. To understand what leads to such an unhappy circumstance, consider:
1. At some point, the seeker grasps - if even only for a fleeting moment - the awareness of the Oneness which cannot be segmented, which will not succumb to "divorce."
2. The stability comes after touching the stillness of the awareness that is not aware of prior to manifestation. At that point, one can shift to the background of motion and can witness only - as opposed to being driven into motion / action / reaction - by personality-based emotions.
3. If pulled back into the foreground of motion which is generated by consciousness, body, mind, personalities, and personalities' emotions, one will be divorced from humanity and will be married to one's false selves. How can whatever degree of the understanding which came for a time then be "lost"?
4. That which is "lost" is not the understanding. It was always there; it remains there but has become temporarily blocked . . . not in reach for the time being. No, what seems to have been "lost" at that point is the sense of wholeness which comes with being stabilized in the unicity and the peace of your original nature and merely being Love.
That sense of wholeness is only visible and knowable from the platform of stillness. If being driven by the Class VI rapids of a river, everything that appears to be racing by along the sides is a blur. Nothing is clear.
If sitting in a quiet eddy to the side, the chaos of the water can be witnessed, but all remains clear when witnessed from the area of stillness. Having been crashed on the rocks and the rapids, there will eventually be a sense of splintering, of splitting off from, of fragmentation. The divorce and all of its ramifications have come.
What triggers the motion, the movement away from the understanding and being pulled back?
Maharaj: “You are so used to the support of concepts that when your concepts leave you, although it is your true state, you get frightened and try to cling to them again.”
The concepts, of course, are the food which feeds the ego . . . the false selves; the false self or selves are the food which feeds the emotions; and the emotions drive the motions, the always-destructive actions which personality will generate.
Next, understand this: The "journey" to THAT is not the end. As discussed with one seeker, you take your car to the shop for an oil change, to have fresh oil added into the engine block so that the contaminants of small metal shavings which can destroy the engine are removed and fresh oil is added to make everything function smoothly.
Once you have that oil, do you spend the rest of your life at the auto shop? Of course not. You went there only to receive the oil; after that, you went on your way, never having to concern yourself with the shop, never thinking about the oil, never believing that the only peace in life that can found is at the shop. No, you move on.
You focus on what is happening now. You do not focus on the shop or abide in the shop. You're out and about, enjoying what you enjoy or processing what is to be processed in the relative existence. This is "Applied Advaita."
Those who want to claim that they are so religious or so spiritual or so special that they are THAT only and have no association whatsoever with the AM-ness are fooling themselves or trying to fool others. The summative statement of these teachings is "I AM THAT; I AM," not "I AM THAT."
To complete the "journey" to THAT is to acquire the oil which can be used to lubricate the relative machinery . . . to acquire the oil which can be used to allow the remainder of the manifestation to pass in a smooth and easily-flowing fashion.
Maharaj: "My world is just like yours. I see, I hear, I feel, I think, I speak and act in a world I perceive, just like you. But with you it is all; with me it is nothing"
and
"With the realised man the experience 'I am the world, the world is mine' is supremely valid - he thinks, feels and acts integrally and in unity with all that lives. He may not even know the theory and practice of self-realisation, and be born and bred free of religious and metaphysical notions. But there will not be the least flaw in his understanding and compassion."
Nothing in either of those pointers suggests that Maharaj was beyond seeing and hearing and feeling etc. He completed the "journey" to THAT, acquired the oil required, overlaid the oil on the relative machinery, and then went along his way, enjoying the place where the machinery took him, enjoying the company of those along for the ride, but totally in touch with the trip now going on "here" in a smooth fashion as result of having acquired the stabilizing oil from "there."
Yet some are driven by emotions to ride the roughest rivers with the most violent motion. Only a few will ever realize and be content in the calm, motionless waters. Some will have to fall over the waterfall more times than others; but if they survive the falls, they might see that joy can only happen when they do not ride the rough waves of the river all to the way to the falls but move instead over to the still eddy and stay in the background of motion.
Maharaj: "What is wrong with seeking the pleasant and shirking the unpleasant? Between the banks of pain and pleasure the river of life flows. It is only when the mind refuses to flow with life, and gets stuck at the banks, that it becomes a problem. By flowing with life I mean acceptance - letting come what comes and go what goes. Desire not, fear not, observe the actual, as and when it happens, for you are not what happens, you are to whom it happens. Ultimately even the observer you are not. You are the ultimate potentiality of which the all-embracing consciousness is the manifestation and expression."
So what class of water are in?
There was a time when the boredom of an unfulfilling relative existence drove "floyd" to seek the excitement and adrenaline-releasing chaos of the rapids. Consider how the classifications describe so accurately the various ways that persons traverse the relative existence:
Class A: Lake water; still; no perceptible movement.
Class I. Easy, smooth water; light ripples; clear passages; gentle curves.
Class II. Moderate; medium-quick water; rapids with regular waves; clear and open passages between rocks and ledges; maneuvering required.
Class III. Moderately difficult; numerous high and irregular waves; many rocks.
Class IV. Difficult; long and powerful rapids and standing waves; advanced preparations for possible rescue work important.
Class V. Extremely difficult; long and violent rapids that follow each other almost without interruption; river filled with obstructions; big drops and violent currents; rescue preparations mandatory.
Class VI. Extraordinarily difficult; constant threat of death because of extreme danger; every safety precaution must be taken.
Someone who has survived the Class V and VI rapids and is once again flowing smoothly with the river of life expressed beautifully what it is like when the return to the understanding pushes one out of the motion of the rapids and to the stillness of no motion . . . of no action-taking instead:
"I woke this morning with what feels like an elixir of calm, stable love flowing through the veins. How is it possible to live without this stability? I am enjoying this spaciousness."
It is the foreground of emotion / motion which drives people to jump into the Class VI rapids that block the calmness and stability and, yes, even Love; it is the background of motion which allows one to relax in the stability of a Class I river where the existence is easy and smooth and light and clear and gentle.
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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