TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
THE FOUR STAGES
To review the stages:
Stage I: The Being Programmed to Accumulate Stage
Roughly, ages 1-20 involve programming, especially programming to accumulate: to accumulate roles and identities; to accumulate knowledge; to accumulate ideas and concepts and notions and perceptions, etc. (a.k.a., "beliefs"); to accumulate things; to accumulate places; and even to accumulate people.
Stage II: The Accumulating Stage
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 . . .
keep on doing the same old stuff
or
begin seeking something which has not yet been found.
[The two problems with assuming the role of "The Seeker: (1) Most do not have a clue about what they should actually be seeking; and, (2) all - if they do not finally find and then forever abandon that Seeker role as well - they will self-upgrade, assume the role of "The Super Seeker," and become obsessed with seeking and never be free to take it easy.]
Stage III: The Forest Dweller Stage / The Set-Aside-As-Much-As-Possible and Seek Stage
Stage IV: The De-Accumulation / Actual "Journey" Stage
By now, it should be clearer why Maharaj estimated that only a few thousand persons on the planet will be Fully Realized at any given time.
It has been noted that Maharaj's instruction for following the "path" and completing the "journey" requires that the seeker "go back, reverse, to the source" and that the seeker "follow the same path by which you came"; however, there was no "Hänsel und Gretel-style-crumb-dropping" on the way in that can now be followed easily to find the way out.
Therefore, look again at the challenges that seekers face before they can even begin the "journey": they must find
** a teacher who knows exactly where the seeker "was" in the days prior to conception;
** a teacher that knows the exact steps by which a speck of consciousness moved from that Absolute ocean of awareness and manifested in a body-cum-consciousness;
** a teacher that knows the exact steps that were taken in order for that speck of originally-pure consciousness to become so blocked and so corrupted that it moved, step-by-step, until it reached a point where it took itself to be anything and everything that the ignorant said it was;
where it could accept the most unbelievable tales as believable; where it accepted as fact that which is not provable by fact; where its ability to see became so limited that it could not see the limitless and infinite nature of the beingness and the non-beingness as well; and could only accept that who (what) it is, at its core, is merely an elemental, plant food body;
where such ignorance could manifest that there is no understanding of how that body came to be, naturally, but is thought to have manifested with some supernatural intervention as well; where that which is natural has been replaced by that which is unnatural and believed to be supernatural;
where it is believed that the causes of natural happenings are supernatural instead; where there is no ability to distinguish between true and false; where the most simple question such as "Who am I?" cannot be answered accurately; where such statements as "I don't even know who I am anymore" can be made and can be true to degrees far greater than intended;
and where the relative existence is characterized by, what Maharaj called, "learned ignorance," "insanity," and (oops) "stupidity."
[The more that Maharaj attempted to guide seekers along the Direct Path, the more direct his delivery of pointers became. The most tender egos often left the loft on their own in anger before being tossed out. What they missed is Maharaj never said that they were ignorant and stupid and insane. He said they were suffering from a Sickness, the symptoms of which include "ignorance and stupidity and insanity."]
Note:
As you consider why so few will ever Realize Fully, understand that all of the elements of the Ultimate Sickness listed above are addressed by heavy doses of the Ultimate Medicine that are not provided until Stage Four where the actual "journey" begins and where the steps are actually taken.
Difficult enough it is to find a teacher who even knows the reverse path out, let alone that has the ability to actually teach the way back to seekers. That notwithstanding, consider the other obstacles which must be surmounted and that compound the difficulty of reaching a teacher that has the Ultimate Medicine and that understands the one and only proper way that the Medicine must be administered.
Even before reaching Stage Four where the mouth of the "path" is located and where one can begin the "journey," a seeker must move beyond (must "get pass") forty years of programming, conditioning, acculturation, and domestication as well as two levels of faux seeking.
The first level of faux seeking, to review, involves outward-directed seeking rather than inward and properly-directed seeking, as offered by those whose paths require seekers to travel in a sleepwalking state (such as religious paths and kindergarten-level spirituality paths);
or, the first level of faux seeking which is offered by those who heard the consciousness speak and point toward truth but who have subsequently bastardized the message in order to make it appealing to the masses who now buy the distorted versions via multi-million-seller books and lecture tours and multi-thousand-dollar retreats.
Also before reaching Stage Four where the actual steps are taken, seekers must move beyond the next obstacle of "faux seeking" which involves wandering about as if in a forest and trying to find one's way, without a guide, through a maze.
Interestingly, this level of seeking is actually necessary (as is some version of the first level of "faux seeking") because it is this next (forest dweller) level which can move the seeker away from searching in the very venues that lead the masses to entrapment in the dream of the planet and that provide no means whatsoever for awakening from the dream.
Yet this second level can allow "The Seeker Ego-State" and "The Super Religious Ego-State" and "The Spiritual Giant Ego-State" to wean themselves, to stop suckling at the teat of the dream-inducing charlatans, to stop dozing off during their activities which support a false-and-ever-coming-and-going-sense-of-comfort state, and to wake up at least enough to see that the dream is not the real and that it is the real which they should be seeking (meaning, real truth, real facts, as opposed to the "learned ignorance" which the masses are taught and then cling to).
[Maharaj made clear that "realization" is nothing more than that . . . realizing that all which one has been taught and accepted blindly and unquestioningly is nonsense, developing the ability to be able to differentiate the true from the false, and thereby being free of ignorance.]
This second level allows the focus to move from away from those whom the masses have accepted as their sleep-inducing guides, allows the seeker to move away from the corrupting influences of those who work with the masses and prevent them from awakening, and to consider the possibility that some other way must surely exist.
This second level of for-the-most-part-solitary seeking allows the possibility of seeing clearly that the path being followed by the masses is the path to continued dreaming, not to awakening; that some other "path" must surely lead away from the dualistic instability that results when the masses are programmed to accept that "there are good times and bad times and that's just the way it is";
that leads away from accepting instability and fluctuation and even chaos as "parts of life that are not optional but that must be accepted as 'the way it is'"; that breeds dependency on outward sources and outward powers and outward Power(s);
that opens the door to the realization that there must be some other path besides the one that is trudged by the masses and that inspires them to accept with blind and unquestioning faith that they are awake when they are asleep; that leads them to mistake nonsense for sense; that results in their believing that black is white and that white is black;
that convinces them that they know when they do not know at all; that inspires them to believe that dualities represent truth; that leads them to believe that they are their bodies and minds and personalities; and that drives them to believe that those three false identities can be real for eternity when they are not even real now.
All of that is what seekers are "up against" in the search for freedom from learned ignorance and for Truth instead. If you find that you have circumnavigated all of those blockages and are now ready to seek in a venue where you have never sought before, at least with a guide that knows both the way in and the way out, then you are ready to move to Stage Four and to begin walking the one and only path which provides at its end the full dosage of the Ultimate Medicine which cures - once and for all - the Ultimate Sickness.
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.
