TODAY’S CONSIDERATIONS
Maharaj: "It is you who are deeply complex, mysterious, hard to understand. I am simplicity itself."
In 325 A.D. at the Council of Nicea (Nicaea) men gathered to revise the original version of the bible and produced the version used nowadays by Christians. Along with removing over 1000 chapters containing content which ran counter to their agenda (such as chapters with passages referring to the humanity of Christ, his marriage, etc.), they also invented a concept which codified the religion’s attachment to dualistic beliefs and dualistic thinking. The concept: there exists a god of evil as well as a god of good.
They capitalized the old Hebrew word for “enemy” (which was “sa-tan” and which also often referred to egotism and pride) and then used that name as a personal identifier of "The Adversary of God." (The same crowd took the name of the pagan "Lord of the Flies" or "The God of Insects" - specifically, "Beelzebub" - and made that synonymous with "Satan" as well.)
Next, they inserted passages which identified that rebellious former angel as the current source of temptation and wickedness and thus the source of humanity’s troubles (thereby blaming something outside persons as the cause of their problems).
Then, trouble came to the council in the person of a well-read cleric who pointed out to the bible revisionists that one verse in "Ecclesiastes" seemed to challenge The-Devil-Makes-Us-Do-It claim.
The verse: “You have been given a simple life; your complex problems are of your own making.” Oops. Obviously that could not be true if they wanted to cling to their new claim that Satan is actually the cause of humankind’s problems, so the council faced a dilemma.
Eventually, they determined by vote that the verse obviously failed the-test-of-being-divinely-inspired. On the other hand, their vision of a devil incarnate passed the-test-of-being-divinely-inspired, so they removed that verse from their final version.
[That verse still appears in the old Jerusalem Edition, but not in the versions which have evolved out the council’s altered text.]
The result: an arrangement of laws, rules, and principles which organized duality into a complicated system of rights and wrongs and “do’s” and “don’t’s” which would pass down to trillions of persons a codification of dualistic thinking and dualistic beliefs which continue to be held to this day and which continue to inspire some two billion or so persons nowadays to believe that their problems are not rooted in the mind – as Maharaj would eventually point out – but are caused by their spiritual sickness which prevents them from being able to fight off the influence of a god of evil.
Maharaj explained that the belief in a concept of “God” (and therefore “Satan” as well) were dreamed up by men and that the concept of gods and goddesses for 5000 years - or the concept of a single God for many thousands of years – is just one more concept which blocks humans from understanding why they think the way the think, why they say what they say, and why they do what they do:
Maharaj: "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 the 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."
He would say time and again, “The cause of all is . . . all.” Everything that has ever happened in this universe and in all prior universes contributes to the causes of any given happening now.
And as far as the teachings go, he would say time and again that “it’s all so simple.”
That advice has been offered by sages and advisors for thousands of years: “Keep it simple”
and
offered by military leaders who now advise: “K.I.S.S.,” meaning, “Keep it simple, stupid.”
Any list of truly key non-dual pointers would have to recognize that advice as well.
[Continued from yesterday]
It Is All Very Simple, Part Two
Maharaj said to one of his visitors in the loft: "Realisation is but the opposite of ignorance. To take the world as real and one’s Self as unreal is ignorance . . . the cause of sorrow. To know the self as the only reality and all else as temporal and transient is freedom, peace and joy. It is all very simple."
Yes . . . it really is "all very simple."
Maharaj: "Truth is simple and open to all. Why do you complicate? Truth is loving and lovable. It includes all, accepts all, purifies all. It is untruth that is difficult and a source of trouble. It always wants, expects, demands. Being false, it is empty, always in search of confirmation and reassurance. It is afraid of and avoids enquiry. It identifies itself with any support, however weak and momentary. Whatever it gets, it loses and asks for more. Therefore put no faith in the conscious. Nothing you can see, feel, or think is so. Even 'sin' and 'virtue' [and] 'merit' and 'demerit' are not what they appear. Usually 'the bad' and 'the good' are a matter of convention and custom and are shunned or welcomed, according to how the words are used."
Also, consider the implications of this exchange:
Questioner: "What distinguishes your world from mine?"
Maharaj: "My world has no characteristics by which it can be identified. You can say nothing about it. I am my world. My world is myself. It is complete and perfect. Every impression is erased, every experience - rejected. I need nothing, not even myself, for myself I cannot lose."
Questioner: "Not even God?"
Maharaj: "All these ideas and distinctions exist in your world; in mine there is nothing of the kind. My world is single and very simple."
See, it really is all so very simple: if you transition your belief in all identification, you will be free of the debilitating influence of body and mind and personality, and it is always either body and / or mind and / or personality that "wants, expects, demands"; that is "empty, always in search of confirmation and reassurance"; that is "afraid of and avoids enquiry"; that "identifies itself with any support, however weak and momentary"; and that always "asks for more."
If you are not the body or mind or personality - which are "the cause of sorrow" - then what are you? That, too, is so very simple: you are a composite unity - which is a triad consisting of elements, air, and energy. The body is a plant food, elemental body which is temporarily circulating air and which is temporarily a body-cum-consciousness - that is, a body temporarily housing conscious-energy. At the time that the consciousness unmanifests, the elements will return to the universal pool of elements; the air will merge with the universal pool of air; and the conscious-energy will be released into that universal pool of energy from whence it manifested.
There is no beginning, middle, end, or afterlife; thus, there is no eternal reward or punishment. (Talk about a freeing fact!) There is no time and there is no truth to the concept of timelines. There is nothing that is linear - there is only that which cycles. It is all very simple. And if the composite unity is understood, the relative existence becomes simple too, devoid of "the causes of suffering," namely:
body identification, the fiction-filled mind, and the agenda-driven personalities that cast the masses into a personality trance which strips them of all ability to choose, which strips them of all ability to cast aside their learned ignorance, and which strips them of all ability to transition beyond their family-and-culture-induced-insanity.
Family-and-culture-induced-insanity? Yes. Emphatically, yes. During the last forty-two years of working with parents, countless numbers have been heard to complain about their teenage children who they claim are doing things that seem "silly or destructive or insane." And teens can exhibit one or more of those. But why?
Because it takes approximately 13-15 years of dealing with parents who are driven by their personality trances and by their learned ignorance and by their insanity for their children to also be forced into a trance;
to be rendered unawake and unaware and unconscious, just like their parents; to also be trapped in learned ignorance, just like their parents; and to also be strapped with the burden of personality defects and insanity, just like their parents.
The source of that which parents complain about in terms of their teen children would also be very simple to see - if parents could but see themselves; that is, if they could see their own false, unawake, unaware, unconscious, ignorant, insane selves. Once the simple understanding of the composite unity is understood, then there is neither a body nor a mind nor assumed personalities that can complicate the relative existence.
It truly is all so simple after it is understood that the elements cannot be upset, understood that the air cannot be upset, and understood that energy cannot be upset. No part of that which you temporarily are can be upset. The only thing that can be upset is the imaginary not-you or the imaginary not-you's.
Only the not-you's can complicate what would be an otherwise simple relative existence; only the not-you's can "always want, expect, and demand"; only the not-you's can feel "empty, always in search of confirmation and reassurance"; only the not-you's can be "afraid of and avoid enquiry"; only the not-you's can "identify with any support, however weak and momentary"; and only the not-you's can always "ask for more."
It all really is so very simple to understand, once it has been explained in simple, everyday terms, yes?
Next, if the end of the search for labeling comes with the understanding that you are nothing, what is to seek? The only thing to seek is that understanding.
(Do not take that as a Neo-Advaita pointer. There is more involved than "You are what you seek. You're done, so go away"; however, in some respects, it is not much more involved than that, in the end.)
Then, being label-free and identity free, the remainder of the abidance can happen naturally, simply, sanely, and rationally (which is the way that every living thing on this planet abides, except for programmed and conditioned and domesticated and acculturated humans).
That means, the remainder of the manifestation can happen without the burden of having to "do" in order to sustain false identities.
That also means, the remainder of the manifestation can happen without the burden of the egotism and conceit that accompany the assumption of "noble" identities that actually foster arrogance (such as, "The Supreme Self," "The Most Superior Self," "The One at One with God," or - in some cases - just "God").
With nothing more to do, the illusion of the "do-er" can end and what then begins is the mere beingness - marked not by anything unnatural and not by anything thought to be supernatural but only by that which is nisargan / natural.
See? Simple, yes?
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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