THE ULTIMATE SICKNESS: Causes, Symptoms, Aspects, Effects, Treatment, Part Twenty-Seven

TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS

Here, the mind-based roots are pointed to with discussions regarding the programming and conditioning and domestication and indoctrination and brainwashing and acculturation which begin during childhood and continue throughout the adulthood of the masses. 

Because Maharaj understood the mind-based roots of the Ultimate Sickness, he also spoke of the influences of programming and acculturation and other processes which form the distorted and delusion minds which mark and mar the relative existence of persons. 

 For example, he noted that "All states and conditions are of the mind." For the mind to suffer from a "condition," it must first be conditioned. 

Regarding responses to things such as sensory and mental pleasures which can drive persons to act in ways which can lead to harm, relatively speaking, Maharaj noted that in his perspective, "Both are seen as they are - conditional responses." 

He said that he agreed completely with one visitor whose understanding regarding the mind and conditioning was this: "The mind is consciousness in motion" and that consciousness is a "conditioned aspect." He said, "The unconditioned is another aspect and beyond lies the abyss of the absolute." 

Maharaj's advice was this: "You have to turn away from the world and go within, until the inner and the outer merge and you can go beyond the conditioned, whether inner or outer." He said, "Like water is shaped by the container, so is everything determined by conditions," and the perspective persons take regarding their condition is determined by their conditioning, acculturation, etc. 

The treatment? Move beyond consciousness of consciousness and become aware of awareness. Thus Maharaj said: "The awareness of conditions brings one to the unconditioned." 

To treat the Ultimate Sickness requires un-doing the effects of programming and conditioning and domestication and indoctrination and brainwashing and acculturation, so the discussion today will turn to the 

INSTABILITY / INSANITY INDUCED BY ACCULTURATION / CULTURAL INFLUENCES 

by offering excerpts from the book INSTABILITY / INSANITY: What the Advaita Teachings Can (and Cannot) Address :

To review what has been revealed so far: 

INSTABILITY / INSANITY INDUCED BY DUALITY-BASED SPLITTING: The non-dual teachings can address this condition 

INSTABILITY / INSANITY INDUCED BY PSYCHOLOGICAL SPLITTING The non-dual teachings can be a part of the process required to address this condition, but cannot address it entirely 

INSTABILITY / INSANITY INDUCED BY CHEMICAL IMBALANCES, PHYSIOLOGICAL FACTORS, 

AND 

BIOLOGICAL FACTORS (including biorhythmic shifts and both male and female menopause) Because there is no disconnect between the body and mind, and because the mind is the seat of personality, and because personality is the seat of discord and misery, the non-dual teachings can play a part - but the smaller part - in addressing this condition Regarding the latter, you are invited to consider again the following: 

The main problem of the planet centers in the mind. The mind is the seat of duality, and duality is that which drives persons in a constantly fluctuating state of being happy vs. being unhappy; of shifting from loving to hating; of moving from idealizing and romanticizing to degrading and debasing; of upgrading and downgrading; of moving from "you light up my life" to "You drive me crazy." 

Indeed, the latter is half right: the craziness and insanity are there, but it is not because of the partner. It is because of the insanity of buying into false images; of dualistically upgrading; of having seen in the beginning only "the good" and ignoring the facts before one's very eyes because of some would-be persona's agenda and desires and / or fears. 

Next, you are invited to understand that not only females suffer the effects of menopause. Men do exactly the same, and both can be treated in order to reduce or eliminate the unpleasant effects. There is plenty of information online for those interested in researching that subject as well as finding the ways that biorhythmic shifts throughout the month affect males and females alike. 

Now . . .

INSTABILITY / INSANITY INDUCED BY CULTURAL INFLUENCES 

First, few enjoy the process of self-inquiry and few will ever even begin the process of objective self-examination, yet if self is not seen, in all its forms, truth can never be seen, either.

Furthermore, because few enjoy the process of self-inquiry and objective self-examination (driven by egotism, as most are, to "focus on my positives and not my negatives") then personality will remain intact and the "assets and liabilities" of all sorts of personalities / personas will induce constant fluctuation and eventual instability and, yes, even insanity when personality disorders reach the highest level of psychic disintegration and psychological deterioration. 

For the few who do become willing to undertake an intrepid and comprehensive cataloguing of what some might dualistically be called their "negative traits" or their "personal liabilities," few examine the other areas which are explored here, areas such as all of the root causes of the duality that they have accepted as "reality," as "the way things are," an invitation which the masses will never receive; 

thus, few will ever complete a comprehensive inventory and find all of the sources of duality that must be expunged from that storehouse of false beliefs and bogus ideas and nonsensical concepts called "the mind." 

Seekers cannot move on until they are first willing to find the sources of all of their beliefs which generate a sense of separation and better-than-ness and different-from-ness, and those false-pride-based sources are often the ones that are most guarded by ego-states and egotism and denial and that most often trigger anger and defensiveness when raised for consideration, including: 

. . . uncovering the lingering effects of parental influences, effects that began when the family of origin raised a child or children in ways that have led those children to become adults who are rigid and distant and excessively formal and remote and detached and aloof ; including 

. . . seeing the effects of a religious-or-spirituality-induced sense of separation and better-than-ness, and including 

. . . the seeing of all that has manifested as a result of duality-based false pride, including: racism; nationalism and cultural smugness; false pride in one's geographic location or city or state or nation; bigotry; isolationism; hatred by race; hatred regarding sexual preferences; division by political affiliation; ethnocentrism; jingoism; racial intolerance; ad infinitum. 

While xenophobia has likely existed since the earliest days of tribalism, it may be at an all-time peak now. There is, in this part of the self-examination process, a fine line between (a) making false generalizations on the one hand and (b) the refusal to admit that there have been, historically, certain races and certain cultures that include persons who are far more separatist and destructive and violent than others. 

In the process of self-examination, it can be quite difficult to be objective enough to see and finally admit that one is a member of such a race and such a culture that has historically fostered more hatred and violence and separation than others and which still disseminates much of the programming that supports a sense of superiority and "different-from-ness" and "better-than-ness" and aloofness and coldness and rigidity and arrogance. 

Few will ever come to realize that their racial and cultural roots - while they should not invoke shame - should most assuredly not generate pride, either. Yet how many will ever complete even the most rudimentary level of self-examination, much less uncover all of the deep-seated sources of duality and arrogance and perverted pride and, yes, even degrees of sociopathy and a wide variety of pathologies that induce instability and insanity? 

To review: While xenophobia has likely existed since the earliest days of tribalism, it may be at an all-time peak now. In the process of self-examination, persons might see, and finally admit, that they are citizens of a nation that deserves none of the esteem assigned by their country's xenophobes and that their country has historically fostered hatred and violent and separation as a result of the citizenry's dualistic senses of superiority and "different-from-ness" and "better-than-ness." 

Persons can readily point out the deficiencies of all those "other nations," but they will typically become quite angry when they own nation's shortcomings are mentioned. The harsh reality of an intensive and thorough and complete self-examination is this: 

you are not better than or different from anyone else because of where you live; you are not better than anyone else because of your race; you are not better than anyone else because of your sexual preferences; you are not better than or different from anyone else because of your political affiliation; you are not better than or different from anyone else because of what you think you know that they do not know; 

you are not better than or different from anyone else because of your nationality or your culture; you are not better than anyone else because of your ability to emote but not feel; you are not better than or different from anyone else because of your religious or spiritual affiliations or your religious or spiritual knowledge (which is just so much learned ignorance). 

Quite to the contrary, relatively speaking, you are actually much worse off than persons who do not believe that they are better because of where they live; than persons who do not believe that they are better because of their race; than persons who do not believe that they are better because of their sexual preferences; 

than persons who do not believe that they are better because of their political affiliation; than persons who do not believe that they are better because of what they think they know; than persons who do not believe that they are better because of their nationality or culture; 

than persons who do not believe that they are better because of their ability to emote but not feel; than persons who do not believe that they are better because of their religious or spiritual affiliations or their religious or spiritual knowledge. Worse off, relatively speaking? Yes, for you will go through the relative existence with the arrogant notion that where you live is the greatest place on earth, thus leading you to believe that you are among the greatest on the earth, trapping you in an egotistical sense of separation. 

Extreme nationalistic, xenophobic pride, manifesting on a near-global basis, becomes the groundwork for invasions and bombings and wars that are all rooted in arrogance and a dualistic sense of "better-than-ment" and "different-from-ness" and the belief that that "you should be like us, should use our political system, and should adopt our economic system - then you can be great, too."

To review a pointer from earlier: "Few will ever come to realize that their racial and cultural roots - while they should not invoke shame - should most assuredly not generate pride, either" but this was also offered: Yet "false-pride-based sources [such as xenophobia and cultural arrogance] are often the ones that are most guarded by ego-states and egotism and denial and that most often trigger anger and defensiveness when raised for consideration." 

 It is quite likely that the discussions above would offend millions and possibly billions were they to read those specific examples which reveal 

 (1) the way that ego-states function alongside egotism and denial and 

(2) the way that cultural influences drive behavior as strongly and as blindly as personality, as in: "I will never visit another country - it would be a step down" "I will use my money to buy and control people and to get anything I want from them" and "We will invade other countries and tear them down and then enter into nation-building and make them over in our image." 

Can the non-dual teachings address the instability and insanity and arrogance induced by cultural influences? If the readiness has manifested within the seeker, then most assuredly the Advaita teachings can assist with addressing this condition. 

To be continued. 

Please enter into the silence of contemplation. 

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