TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
The proper treatment plan for the Ultimate Sickness cannot be formulated unless the causes are understood.
For thousands of years, long before any religious or spiritual teachings were codified and recorded in supposedly "holy texts," dogma and precepts were passed along by word of mouth.
And regarding those concepts which were being passed along by word of mouth and which were supposedly identifying the cause of humanity's problems, what was at their core?
Duality. The duality of "good people" vs. "bad people." The duality of "a world 'here' populated with humans" vs. "a world 'there' which was populated with gods and goddesses" (or, after Abraham, with "God" who became the God of Judaism, the God of Christianity, and the God of Islam).
The duality of reward vs. punishment for humans as determined by those other-worldly gods.
And it is that desire for receiving rewards and avoiding punishment which led to the invention of gods and goddesses and God in the first place:
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."
Those foundational concepts became generally accepted, all around the globe and all without the benefit of any questioning. That blind faith acceptance continues to this day, so 97% of the humans on planet earth claim an affiliation with one religion or another - almost always the one that the parents of every child happened to be affiliated with at the time of the child's arrival.
Millions more claim that they are "not religious but are spiritual instead," a claim often delivered with a considerable degree of pride to let others know that spiritual persons are higher on the dreamed up hierarchy of transcendence than mere religious persons.
Yet all personalities (roles, identities, ego-states, selves, characters, personas, a Self, a Supreme Self, etc.) are a source of three of the key symptoms of the Ultimate Sickness as identified by Maharaj: "ignorance, stupidity, and insanity").
Some trapped in the egotism which supports the belief in ego-states find the list of those symptoms offensive, but note: Maharaj did not say that the "non-realized" (which he defined as those trapped in and clinging to the "learned ignorance" which they were taught) were "ignorant, stupid, and insane people."
If you are sick and the way that you are feeling and behaving is being controlled by a high fever which has rendered you bedridden, that does not mean that you are a fever. It is merely a symptom of your sickness. The same applies to the traits of the Ultimate Sickness which Maharaj identified.
What is the proof of the presence of those traits?
Some are aware that an uncle of mine was chief administrator of the mental hospital in Rusk, Texas for many decades. In addition to the many criminally-insane who were incarcerated there, others were hospitalized who had serious mental illnesses.
One fellow there thought he was Napoleon reincarnate. Another thought he was President of the United States and that the opposition party has conspired to have him locked away so they could take over the government in spite of the fact that he "was actually the elected president."
What is crazier than not knowing who you are and believing that you are someone or something that you are not?
Yet that is the case with billions of persons all over the planet. People believe they are the job they have been hired to do. People believe that they can enter a religious edifice or an office of the Justice of the Peace as a single man and a single woman but can walk out thirty minutes later being "A Wife" and "A Husband." A short time afterwards, they can believe that they are "A Super Wife" or "A Super Husband."
So, the Ultimate Sickness is marked by, among other symptoms, insanity. A lawyer would put it this way if explained in a legal brief:
WHEREAS, persons who do not know who they are (or what they are) are certifiably insane;
and WHEREAS billions of persons think that they are something or someone that they are not;
now THEREFORE, let it be ordained that billions of persons are insane
and
THEREFORE, are suffering from symptoms brought on by having had the Ultimate Sickness passed on to them.
And what is that insanity about?
Accepting false and dreamed up personalities, roles, identities, ego-states, characters, personas, selves, a Self, a Supreme Self, etc. as actual identities and / or something that is real (though it is not).
At the core of the Sickness, therefore, is an inability to differentiate the true from the false, the real from the fake, the form from the substance, the image from the reflection, the copy from the original, the authentic from a counterfeit replica, and the factual from the fictional.
Earlier, reference was made to the nonsensical beliefs about other worlds and gods and goddesses or a God which were passed down by word of mouth and which are still believed in by humans on a near-universal basis.
Those beliefs have fostered hundreds of false identities among members of the clergy, among the laity, and among those playing the role of "The Super Religious One" and / or "The Spiritual Giant," so nowadays, billions of persons have been assigned roles or have assumed roles which are based in nothing more than ancient hand-me-down myths and superstitions ("lies") which they have unquestioningly accepted as identifiers of who they are.
Millions and billions are so proud of what they think they are, based in their employment, hobbies, nationalities, race, sexual preference, etc., but nothing has generated a belief in as many false roles - and nothing has produced as much distortion and delusion and illusion and mental entrapment as spiritual egotism and religious arrogance. And nothing has created more obstacles than those to being freed from the insanity which accompanies the Ultimate Sickness.
Any viable treatment plan for the Sickness must include a means by which persons are freed from all sense of personhood. For the plan to be effective, it must also be understood that the greatest obstacles to being restored to sanity are the spiritual egos and / or religious egos which are assigned early on by one's family or which are accumulated at the third of seven steps on the "path" where religious and spiritual roles are assumed and played.
That role playing, which happens at one of the steps on the path which cannot be skipped, must nevertheless be transitioned if one is to be totally free of entrapment in ego-states and the egotism which supports those false identities. The effective treatment of the Ultimate Sickness requires that not only the supposedly "bad" identities must be forfeited but that the supposedly "good" identities must go, too. Why? Because they often lead to a greater sense of separation than any so-called "bad" roles.
From what has been witnessed here for nearly seven decades, the guy who admits, "I'm a crook, and screw you if you don't like it" has been far less likely to cause relative harm and damage than the one who says, "I am a god-fearing Christian who loves you and who wants to help you and who wants to show you the right way to live."
The former's honesty will lead you to be awake and aware and conscious of his agenda; the latter's comments have lulled millions into a sleep state of relative vulnerability.
Maharaj: "Only that person will visit this place whose virtue and sin have come to an end."
Consider: the last time that unconditional happiness was experienced by most of the more than seven billion persons on the planet was during the Child Ignorance or Child No-Knowing State.
Recently Andy Gugar, Jr. was holding the three-month old "grandson" called "Carson" on the same day I was holding the four-month-old "granddaughter" called "Ava." Later, we discussed the fact about what is right now vs. what is coming:
Both children were at perfect peace because both were dry and fed and concept-free. End of story, for now, yet as Sam Cooke sang, "But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will."
The reason Maharaj said that "There is no progress" and advised instead that seekers "should go back, reverse, to the source" is because of that:
1. Before the change came, you were at perfect peace in your no-concept, non-dual, no-belief state as "a pre-programming, pre-conditioning child."
2. Then came a change after having been infected with the Ultimate Sickness.
3. The treatment must involve going back, going back to that original condition prior to manifestation or to that original condition post-manifestation but prior to programming, conditioning, etc.
To fixate at the third of seven steps on "the path" is to be trapped in even more insanity than prior to beginning the "journey" because it is there that persons believe that they have arrived though they are not even at the midway point of the complete "journey" to realization, to being totally free of the symptoms of the Sickness.
Maharaj said of those who have fixated at that third of seven steps and who mistakenly believe that they are fully enlightened: "They believe that they are standing in the full light of the noonday sun, but in fact they are still standing in the dull light of dawn."
Again, a viable treatment for the Ultimate Sickness will bring to an end the belief in all personalities, roles, identities, ego-states, selves, characters, personas, Self, Supreme Self, etc.
To be trapped in a "religious ego" or in a "spiritual ego" or in a "Super Seeker ego" (along with the egotism which they all bring to defend themselves, that is, to defend the illusion of their false selves) is to be trapped in the symptoms of the Ultimate Sickness and is to be driven by its symptoms of "ignorance, stupidity, and insanity."
All assigned and / or assumed personality identifications must go in order to be effectively treated for the Sickness.
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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