TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
THE FOUR STAGES
To review before moving on to the Stage IV discussion:
Stage I:
Roughly, ages 1-20 involve programming, especially programming to accumulate: to accumulate roles and identities; to accumulate knowledge; to accumulate ideas and beliefs and concepts; to accumulate things; to accumulate places; and even to accumulate people.
Stage II:
Roughly, ages 20-40 involve absorption in the dualistic beliefs that were learned via acculturation and conditioning and domestication and programming; a continuation of blind accumulation; an eventual sense of emptiness; and then either . . .
1. an effort to accumulate even more to address the sense of emptiness,
or
2. an effort to enter into Self-Inquiry to find that which is authentic as a result of suddenly seeing, to at least some degree, the forty years of phoniness; seeing the senselessness of unchecked consumption; seeing the insanity of having been lost in the dream of the planet; seeing the multitude of phony roles played out in The Theatre of the Lie; seeing the dependency on outer resources and the blind willingness to believe the lies of the culture that are taught by so-called "experts" and religious leaders and spiritual guides;
seeing how developing and maintaining an image displaced any concern with authenticity; and seeing how many years have been preoccupied with seeking either reward or punishment now and seeking eternal reward vs. eternal punishment later. At this point, the Ultimate Sickness is glimpsed, and the search moves outside the realm of relative seeking and begins to move toward a search for the Ultimate Medicine.
If one understands Maharaj's later suggestion that Self-Inquiry is not required and that "it is enough to know who you are not" - via the (false) self-inquiry process - then the process can be "fast-tracked."
[Note that it is often after 40 years that the seeking of an alternative understanding - which is offered only in alternate venues from those used by the masses - happens. Over the decades, an informal counting of the average ages of those who have come here and who are truly ready is . . . forty-two-and-a-half years of age. That is not a popular pointer, but others who tried to seek earlier failed completely (though they would not usually admit that). Maharaj made clear that this message is not for the young. None of his children "got it." They were not interested.
Moreover, Maharaj made clear the relative harm that a parent can do if she or he tries to introduce this understanding to a child too early; for example, youth often mistake the "relax, stop the going and doing and zooming, stop accumulating" as an invitation to reject employment and then miss out on whatever levels or forms of "independence" that might bring. Want to pay the bills and the rent for a "couch potato" for the next fifty years? Then give them this message too soon.
Maharaj also made clear the relative harm that a parent can do if she or he tries to introduce this understanding too early, that is, prior to the readiness having manifested. And what causes the readiness to manifest? Years of misery as a result of the Ultimate Sickness having been passed down and then, in turn, years of suffering the effects of the "ignorance, stupidity, and insanity" (Maharaj) which mark and mar the relative existence of all persons with that Sickness. Who that is either (a) not miserable or suffering or who is (b) dissociated from their misery and suffering, will earnestly seek anything other than what they think they have? No one.
It usually takes all twenty of the Stage II years of nonsense and garbage and BS and screw ups, along with the confusion and chaos and disarray and madness which are all generated during the Stage II accumulating phase, before it "sinks in," before it "hits one" and allows him or her to realize, "Hey, wait a minute. This is nuts. I've done all of this and I'm still miserable. I feel empty. I need something different."]
Stage III:
If #2 above happens, then seeking continues, but the tenor of the search changes as truth is no longer sought in the culture's established venues and is no longer sought via those thought to be "experts" or via "the popular religious and / or spiritual leaders" or via the famous authors and lecturers who focus on popular, relative issues which they serve up with a smattering of noumenal terminology in order to deliver a message that will "seem to be spiritual" and that will be popular among the masses.
Yet that re-focusing will not free any seeker from attachment to false identities and false concepts. If freedom is to come, it can only begin to come when, as explained earlier, there is at least enough "contact" with the inner resource / inner guru to be able to differentiate between the words of a famous talker as opposed to the consciousness that speaks via a Realized teacher.
At that point, the actual "journey" can begin if the readiness has come to question every idea and belief and concept and if the willingness has come to be guided along a "path" (here, a "direct path") which runs counter to all that was rooted in accumulation and which is a path to de-accumulation, to unlearning, to discarding, to being free of the effects of having been driven by learned nonsense and by personality disorders and by insanity and by belief in the lies perpetuated by the ignorant (or the manipulative) and accepted as truth by the masses.
Also at that point, if one finds a Realized teacher, then the seeker can transition to the Fourth Stage. Then, the seeking will be directed, and directed within. If the directions of the teacher are followed, then it is possible that the accumulation of blockages that have prevented the pure consciousness from seeing will be de-accumulated.
All that is false will be seen to be false by way of moving along the "path" and eventually understanding that which is actually Truth. It is at this point that the actual "journey" begins if one's teacher knows the exact way that "the coming in" happened and can guide the seeker to go back . . . to go back out in the exact but reverse order of the way the coming in happened.
That coming in resulted in identification with the false "I"; the "journey" will move the seeker through the seven "coming in" steps in reverse order and back to the Absolute (and, in some cases, even beyond to an understanding of the functioning of the totality and an awareness of awareness, to an awareness of the void, and to an awareness of the nothingness which preceded the Absolute.)
Stage IV: The De-Accumulation / Actual "Journey" Stage
This stage begins with the teacher guiding the seeker through a series of pointers which can remove the belief that the false is true, which can remove the belief that one's identity is personal and individualized, and which can remove the belief that the seeker's identity has something to do with a body and a mind and a personality (or with multiple personalities, roles, states-of-being, personas, ego-states, characters, etc.)
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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