TODAY’S CONSIDERATIONS
In this series, many of the sources of instability and insanity are being discussed in order to provide to all seekers the opportunity to realize, "Okay, I cannot identify at this point on my 'journey' with that source, but I surely can relate to those other two." What might be the purpose of that exercise?
If one is physically sick, a doctor cannot prescribe the proper treatment unless the sickness have been properly diagnosed. To fail to properly find the cause of a sickness is to guaranteed that there will be a failure to find the proper cure. The sources being discussed can provide clues to be used to attain a proper diagnosis of the Sickness which is at the root of humankind's problems and misery and suffering and thereby set the stage for finding the proper Medicine and a cure.
Some of the sources of instability and insanity which have been witnessed over the years and which have been compiled for discussion in this series include:
Psychological Splitting
Duality-Based Splitting
Personality Disorders
Personality Disintegration
A Failure to Psychically Integrate
Chemical Imbalances in the Plant Food Body
Biological / Genetic Factors
Fixation in "The Parent" or "The Child" (Childish) State
Programming, Conditioning, Domestication, Brainwashing, Indoctrination, and Acculturation
The Insane Cultural Influences Propagated Via Prolonged Exposure to Acculturation
Modeling Parental Thoughts and Words and Actions
and
Accepting Parental Beliefs Without Questioning
Emotional Intoxication and Fanaticism
Fanaticism can manifest around sports or politics or work or race or sexual orientation or financial status or a near-endless host of other beliefs, but the wise, objective observer that is familiar with the history of humankind's activities over the last 5000 years would see - if totally accurate and honest - that nothing has generated more insatiability and insanity than the widespread acceptance of the concepts dreamed up and disseminated by religions and by spiritual movements.
(That is why Maharaj would eventually suggest that seekers give up both religion and spirituality and focus on the primary source of the Ultimate Sickness, namely, the mind.)
In that regard, the following is offered from the book INSTABILITY / INSANITY: What the Advaita Teachings Can (and Cannot Address):
INSTABILITY / INSANITY INDUCED BY RELIGIOUS / SPIRITUAL INTOXICATION
Consider the following excerpt from the book FROM THE I TO THE ABSOLUTE which describes what happens during the "Coming In Journey" as the Child Ignorance Stage (a.k.a., the Child No-Knowing Stage) is brought to an end when identities and dogma are added to the mind.
Note that a child, if fed and dry and in a comfortable atmosphere, is perfectly content. Why? The child is functioning in a no-concept, no-identity, no-duality manner.
Note also that 97% of all persons on the planet claim affiliation with some organized religion and millions more claim to be spiritual, so one of the earlier sources of concepts and duality in the lives of 97%+ of the people on the planet is rooted in their religious or spiritual beliefs (which is itself the source of much of the duality believed in by the masses today: "good vs. bad"; "right vs. wrong"; "moral vs. immoral"; "heaven vs. hell"; "reward vs. punishment," etc.)
The satsang discussion transcribed in the book referenced above unfolded thusly with a dialogue - already in progress - between a Questioner and Floyd:
Q.: “I need some help to really process all that.”
F.: “Then let’s try this: we’re on a seven-step ‘journey’ to Reality, if you will. Let’s go to the ‘end’ and work 'backwards' for a moment, since all merely cycles. Let’s consider when the consciousness was manifesting in the space in a womb with the non-beingness about to cross the borderline to the beingness. The days of the bliss of the womb were numbered.”
Q.: “If I had known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have come out.” (Laughter)
F.: “I’m in charge of humor here. Don’t intrude. Ha. (Laughter) Regarding your leaving or not leaving the womb, as well as all that has happened since then, there has never been any choice on your part. A natural process forced the space to exit a birth canal. An initial act of friction between your parents resulted in this space in which consciousness manifested. Actions began to happen, but they were driven by instinct. No one taught you to protest if hungry; no one taught you to seek a breast to suckle.”
Q.: “Right.”
F.: “In a manner of speaking, that’s as ‘close’ to the True Self as you’ve been since that slap on the rear triggered your breathing cycles.”
Q.: “Why?”
F.: “Because you were mainly being. They had not yet taught you. A fictional mind had not yet resulted from hearing the lies about who or what you are and had not yet assumed any false role or identity or personality. You wore no masks. All merely happened via natural instinct and body chemistry rather than programming and conditioning. You mainly focused on nothing and were just being. You were manifest but still mainly in a void, though becoming increasingly conscious of pain and discomfort. If fed and clothed comfortably, you were fairly free of strife or worry . . . whether sleeping, dreaming, waking, or fully conscious. Not until they taught you would you be forced into the bondage of concepts and the mental and emotional pain of duality. Eventually, you would always be in a sleep state—whether in bed, driving, at work, talking, whatever.”
Q.: [Nods head in agreement]
F.: “Next, at some point you began to witness. You saw a mobile spinning in the crib above you. You saw huge faces being shoved into yours. You heard sounds coming from their mouths. You began to witness. Unless they made loud, alarming noises, you witnessed objectively and had no perceived fears. You had no opinions. You had no beliefs or concepts. You had no array of attitudes and judgments about what you were witnessing. Since contradictory beliefs had not been introduced, you had no quandaries to weigh, no disparities to consider, no ideas about ‘good’ vs. ‘bad’ or about anything else. You were merely witnessing. Do you understand what was happening when I spoke earlier of being like the eagle, soaring above it all and merely watching?”
Q.: [Head moves in the affirmative]
F.: "Soon, having sensed a body presence, you would believe yourself the subject and assume that you were witnessing other objects. Do you see why, at its very root, this life becomes a lie . . . setting you up to assume that dualities are the real and feeling apart from?"
Q.: "Yes. I never considered that aspect."
F.: "Add to that 'setup' all of the concepts that they would soon begin to teach you and you should understand the source of your future bondage: the assumption of duality. Their teachings, combined with that initial assumption of subject-object, would soon result in a programmed, variable mind. The mind would begin moving constantly. No rest or peace will it ever know again, unless you follow the path from duality 'back' to the unicity. Later, they began labeling you as ‘our child,’ ‘our son,’ ‘our boy,’ ‘our teen,’ ‘our young man,’ and later . . . ‘an adult.’ But Your "true identity" cannot change; any variable labeling can only name what you are not. As their ‘child,’ they began teaching you concepts, giving you ideas and a personality, ‘whipping you into shape,’ so they claimed. Then, they introduced one of the earliest and most limiting of all dualities—the source of so many nightmares in this culture. They presented their concept of ‘good’ vs. ‘bad.’ That illusion began to dominate your mind and affect your behavior. With the ‘good-bad’ concepts feeding your illusory ‘mind,’ you were becoming more and more ignorant, even as they claimed to be making you more and more knowledgeable. All the concepts and ideas and beliefs and dogma they offered became your learned ignorance. They then began assigning roles for you to play and to assume as identities. You probably received their earliest ‘spiritual’ role or persona: ‘a gift from God.’ That fostered egomania and set another destructive ball rolling! [Laughter] Self-will became a liability because, the more false ‘selves’ you assumed as identities, the more the agenda of each false self—the desire to be—began to drive you. You were constantly in a fight to preserve those false personalities. The chaos of self-will ends when the self dies—when the false ego-states or false identities dissolve. Until then, you will have much to fight for, as your current body-mind-personality experience shows.”
Q.: [Nodding]
F.: “Back to the ‘downward’ journey through the stages that has now left you out-of-touch with reality. Next, they likely took you to a church or temple or synagogue or some other building thought to be "special" and religious roles and identities were assigned there. You took their learned ignorance and began seeing even more “others” and using religious concepts to judge others and to label them and their behaviors as ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ The next stop was school where teachers programmed you, teaching you their version of what is ‘good’ and ‘bad,’ encouraging you to read the words of ‘experts’ and learn from their knowledge. They told you to listen to newscasts so that you would always be informed. ‘The more you know, the better,’ they claimed. They filled your mind with what they called ‘facts’ and ‘knowledge’ and contributed to your variable mind. That mind became dominated by its ‘good-bad’ duality perceptions as that mind tried constantly to process all the contradictions in your false world. Your mind is the chattering of a thousand monkeys, trying to process all their ‘stuff.’ As you became older, you could drive down the road alone and be in group therapy, right?” [Laughter]
Q.: “That’s still the case!” [Laughter]
F.: “Of course it is. Every picture ever taken of you is a group photo because you believe yourself to be all those false identities that they assigned to you.” [Laughter]
Q.: [Smiling]
F.: “All in positions of influence over you were rewarding you in order to reinforce behaviors they considered ‘good’ or were punishing you for what they thought to be ‘bad.’ You would become confused, though, since what half in the culture labeled ‘good,’ the other half considered ‘bad.’ You did something once and got a kiss. You did it again and got slapped. Contradictory opinions never convey the truth, so you were receiving more and more lies and becoming more and more confused.”
In a "place of authority" being run by "persons with authority" where children are taught not to question authority, one of the most prevalent sources - and reinforcers - of duality invites persons to adopt a new identity of "The Christian" or "The Jew" or "The Muslim" or "The Buddhist" or "The Advaitin" or "The Hindu" or "The Taoist" or "The Druid" or "The Wiccan" or "The North American Spiritualist" or "The Scientologist" or "The Mormon," etc.
Counting all of the religions and subcategories or sects or denominations, there are presently over 500,000 from which to choose, but they all - with few exceptions - have several practices in common:
they teach and preach duality; they expect people to learn more and more; they expect people to live by the dictates of a holy text and the holy writings of the authorities in charge;
they assign new, false identities that make their members "better than" others not living according to their precepts;
some encourage rolling on the floor; some endorse reaching a state of ecstasy where members faint; most encourage persons to give their money and / or property to the organization;
they inspire angst over whether one will be rewarded forever or punished forever;
most use music and accoutrements and chanting to inspire emotional intoxication; and some inspire members to kill themselves if - in that process - they can kill members of another religion;
and almost all reinforce dualistic notions of "better-than-ness" and "different from" and "separate from" or "united with."
The result: 97% on the planet, programmed to believe the most unbelievable myth-and-superstition-based nonsense, are totally unstable and insane even as their leaders and authorities insure them that they alone are the stable and sane ones.
Can the Advaita Teachings address the issues of instability and insanity that are generated by religious and / or spiritual intoxication? Most assuredly.
Are the odds in favor of anything freeing the 97% who are trapped in their dogma and who believe the most outrageous claims set forth in their holy writings and by their holy authorities? No. So it is.
Yet so it need not be for you.
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
[NOTE: The four most recent posts are below. 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.]
In addition to the five non-duality books made available without charge by Andy Gugar, Jr. (see “FREEBIES” above), you can now access over 2,800 posts for any topics of interest to you.
