TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
It has been shown that Maharaj warned seekers to "stay away from the Big Name Teachers." Why?
Consider:
When I was a child, there were certain medicines which were in almost every medicine cabinet in our low-income neighborhood, including cod liver oil; castor oil; Dr. Tichenor's original mouthwash (which the local alcoholics used as a substitute when they could not afford to buy a new bottle of rye or whiskey); and the very worst of all, the original 666 cold medication which contained antipyrine, ammonium chloride, magnesium sulphate, citric acid and other ingredients which the Hague Conventions and the Geneva Protocol should have banned for human consumption.
None of those medicines were "popular" because they all had the most bitter properties imaginable. Moreover, I cannot recall a single instance when any of those bitter, tart, vinegary, and pungent medicines addressed what truly ailed me, but I can certainly recall when bitter doses of the truth helped awaken me and led me to vanquish the beliefs which had been accumulated and housed in my mind and which were causing the Ultimate Sickness to take its toll on me and every aspect of my relative existence.
Not unlike the case with those bitter medicines, Maharaj knew that the non-dual pointers which offer the true version of the Ultimate Medicine will include a most bitter dose of truth for persons to see about themselves and their "personality defects"; thus, for most, those curative doses of truth will not be popular, so the Big Name Teachers offering messages which are popular and populous - all cherry-flavored and topped off with a big dollop of sweet whipped cream on top - will never be the truth.
[How to detect when the first doses of truth, facts, candor, and honesty are being received? The truth will eventually set you free, but first it's going to piss you off. The truth does not draw enormous crowds. The truth does not inspire people to make millionaires of those offering it. Telling persons what they want to hear, rather than what they need to hear, draws crowds. Look no further than the last U.S. presidential campaign for evidence, or look at the most recent occasion when a Big Name Teacher induced persons to pay five to ten thousand dollars to spend a week with her or her staff.]
If someone (A) offers you a dose of the Ultimate Medicine to treat the symptoms of the Ultimate Sickness which you are suffering from and (B) you really like their version of the Medicine, then know that it is not the real thing. They are not "well-meaning" but are using their audiences and readers in a most self-serving, economically-rewarding manner.
Next, even the most "well-meaning" may offer a version of the Medicine which they truly believe (alert!) can treat the Sickness effectively. Both "maharaj" and "floyd" fell into that category.
Buying into the widespread belief systems which suggest that the Ultimate Medicine is carried in a dogma vessel or that it can be tapped into via spiritual exercises prevented us from seeing early on that the Sickness is a mental illness and that neither religion nor spirituality address mental illnesses, popular beliefs to the contrary notwithstanding.
Yet consider what this bit of syllogistic reasoning reveals:
A. Those popular treatment methods (1) are presently being used by billions of persons and (2) have been tried over the millennia by trillions of persons.
B. A study of the facts surrounding human behavior throughout human history provides proof that the billions on the planet now, and the trillions that have walked the planet in the past, were plagued by the Ultimate Sickness from cradle to grave / pyre.
C. Therefore, the popular treatments - religion and spirituality - have never proved to be truly effective versions of the Ultimate Medicine.
That is what Maharaj came to see, and that is why he turned away from the use of dogma and spirituality as a treatment for the Ultimate Sickness and began offering psychology / non-dual pointers which address the root of humanity's problem, namely, the content of the mind.
What did Maharaj mean when he said, "You are not in the world - the world is in you"?
What he meant was that "the world" is as it is imagined to be by persons; that what is imagined is not real; and that "the world," therefore, is merely in you . . . that is, in your mind.
If there are seven billion persons on the planet, no two will define "the world" in the exact same way. So what "the world" is imagined to be would have seven billion definitions, and nothing that is being defined in seven billion contradictory ways is being defined accurately.
Thus, if one wants "the world" which he or she is presently living in to change or wants "her or his world" to be different from the way it is, then the process for bringing that change about is simply to . . .
. . . change your perspective.
All of the previous "groundwork" laid down in this series so far is building to the key elements of the viable treatment, and one of the key elements of that treatment plan is to develop a different perspective. How different must it be?
It must be the 180-degree-opposite of the way it has been.
That's first. Then later, one's blind faith in - and attachment to - every idea, concept, notion, perception, etc. (a.k.a., in "every belief") must be relinquished, abandoned, and renounced.
Then only can one reach (and fixate in) the final stage which Maharaj called "The Zero Concepts State."
Reaching that "no-mindset" condition is a key element of the viable treatment which he eventually found.
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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