TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
[Thanks to those checking on the state of the plant food body here after a break in postings. Was out of town assisting a friend that had surgery.]
THE NEXT MAJOR SHIFT IN PERSPECTIVE WHICH CAN COME WHILE MOVING TOWARD REALIZATION OR WHICH COMES AFTER REALIZATION
The surest indicator of the presence of the Ultimate Sickness and a call for the Ultimate Medicine is this: magical thinking (a.k.a., "delusional thinking," "illusion-based thinking," "distorted thinking," "religion-and-cult-based thinking," "all-spirituality-based thinking," "unclear thinking," "emotional-intoxication-driven thinking," and "group think" - defined as "a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome); in other words, "thinking, period."
As an example, this newspaper headline was shared in 2013:
CATHERINE, HERBERT SCHAIBLE'S SECOND CHILD DIES AFTER PARENTS USE PRAYER, NOT MEDICINE
April 23, 2013
PHILADELPHIA (AP) —
A couple serving probation for the 2009 death of their toddler after they turned to prayer instead of a doctor could face new charges now that another son has died.
Herbert and Catherine Schaible
belong to a fundamentalist Christian church that believes in faith healing. They lost their 8-month-old son, Brandon, last week after he suffered from diarrhea and breathing problems for at least a week, and stopped eating.
Four years ago, another son died from bacterial pneumonia.
Herbert Schaible, 44, and his 43-year-old wife grew up in the First Century Gospel Church in northeast Philadelphia and have served as teachers there. The church's website has a sermon titled "Healing – From God or Medicine?" that quotes Bible verses purportedly forbidding Christians from visiting doctors or taking medicine.
"It is a definite sin to trust in medical help and pills; and it is real faith to trust on the Name of Jesus for healing," says the message from last May.
At a hearing Monday, a judge told the couple they had violated the terms of their probation, noting the Schaibles had told investigators that they prayed to God to make Brandon well instead of seeking medical attention.
"You did that once, and the consequences were tragic," Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge Benjamin Lerner said.
Their defense attorney said: "Nobody argues that these aren't very loving, nurturing parents."
Indeed, the argument is not about "love." The argument is about the Ultimate Sickness and its traits of "ignorance, stupidity, and insanity" which are rooted in programming and conditioning and acculturation.
When my granddaughter contracted an infection five months ago, at the age of three weeks, she was taken to the hospital by my daughter and her husband; there, their daughter was treated for an infection and released forty-eight hours later. My daughter may well have prayed, but neither she nor her husband believed that prayer would suffice.
Ninety-seven percent of the people on the plant claim an affiliation with one religion or another; millions claim to be "spiritual, not religious"; and millions more believe that everything that happens is being determined by "The Universe."
What modern sky cults and religions (all having evolved from ancient, superstition-and-ignorance-based pagan religions) as well as all spiritual movements and all philosophical movements and all ideological movements and all other cults have in common is a core misdirection which results from a failure to misunderstand Maharaj's pointer that "the cause of all is all."
Are you or "floyd" here because two parents engaged in an act of friction, or was that happening only one event in a chain of trillions and trillions of events which occurred over a period of almost 14 billion years in this universe as well as all of the events which have happened throughout all of the universes which have ever been and all of the events that have happened for eternity?
In the book FROM THE I TO THE ABSOLUTE, the following from a transcript of an exchange during a recorded satsanga session addresses the “no single cause” teaching:
F.: “Upon realization, another duality disappears: the credit-blame duality. The realized know that assigning credit to one source or assigning blame to one source is to ignore the reality of an infinite chain of happenings. Here’s a simple example that might be relevant. Last week, driving along the road that leads out here, the rear tire of a car ahead of me threw a pebble against my windshield and cracked it. You’ve all probably had a similar experience? [Nods in agreement] What caused that?”
Questioner: “The rear tire of the car ahead of you.”
Questioner 2: “Actually, the driver of the car was responsible. I think people who do that should have to pay for the cost of the repair.”
F.: “I’m glad you said that since your comment will let us see how wrong that type thinking is and let me offer the pointer about ‘cause’.” [Participant displays a mock frown. Laughter from group] As I passed that car and drove farther along the road, I caught up with a truck that was hauling gravel . . . and spilling it all along the roadway. The pebbles in the road, one of which was thrown into my windshield earlier, most likely came from that truck. Now who’s to blame for my cracked windshield?”
Questioner 2: “The driver of the dump truck.”
Questioner 3: “The manager of the hauling company who allowed the truck to haul gravel without a cover over the top to prevent slippage.”
F.: “The manager? Or could it have been the owner of the hauling company who was too cheap to provide covers or too negligent to be certain that covers were being used?”
Questioner 4: “I’ll play along: it was the fault of the highway patrol that is not efficient enough to pull over those creating hazards on the road.” [Laughter from group]
F.: “Or the legislators who misappropriated funds to their pet projects and underfunded the highway patrol? [More laughs] Okay, enough. You get the picture. A series of events evolved in a way that, at a particular moment, a particular set of circumstances also evolved that resulted in a broken windshield on my vehicle.
And if we wanted to play this game a little longer, you’ve already shown that we could trace the cause back millions of years to the circumstances that resulted in a boulder being broken down into pebbles, one of which millions of years later struck my windshield.
But billions of years before that, an atom appeared in a vacuum, maybe even spit forth from an adjacent universe. And that atom split and then split again and then formed a mutated atom and those two collided and . . . bang . . . that collision caused a chain reaction that resulted in our boulder being formed billions of years later.
And then millions of years after that, the boulder atrophied into huge stones and then rocks and then pebbles, and because of that happening and because of a truck and an owner and a manager and a driver and a construction project and an inefficient highway patrol and a driver and a car ahead of me, my windshield broke. Ha.
Look at the billions of events that had to occur over a period of billions of years in order for my windshield to be damaged. Yet arrogantly, persons want to claim that they know exactly what's causing any particular happening. Persons want to tell you the one cause that they think is behind whatever is happening. They want to credit one thing or one entity or one power. Or they want to blame one thing or one entity or one power.”
Questioner: We’re back to the pointer you offered before.”
F.: “Specifically?”
Questioner: “About over-simplifying the ‘cause’ of anything. You said something like ‘the cause of everything is everything that’s happened before’.”
The point being offered there is that to limit cause or to assign blame to one factor is to ignore the many deterministic factors that drive events or that drive human thoughts and words and deeds. If persons would be freed from being driven (a condition which removes choice) then they must understand the expansive assortment of contributory sources that drive them to think and talk and behave as they do.
Recently, a person in the news said that understanding the cause of global warming doesn’t matter . . . that we just need to solve the problem. How can any problem be solved without knowing the cause? How can a repetition of the same problems be prevented if the cause of the problem is not known?
To say, “I don’t care how the car got in the ditch, just get it out” is a setup to allow the same circumstances to be repeated and to allow the car to continue ending up in ditches.
So too is the case when persons do not understand what determines (what drives) their thoughts and words and deeds.
If one would move beyond the levels of determinism that rob the non-Realized of choice and logic and reason, then they must understand the varieties of determinism that control the non-Realized on the planet.
If the wise were to understand another core deception which all of the organized religions, spiritual movements, philosophies etc. share, it would be seen that they are all teachings the same nonsense but assigning different words to refer to the same belief they share.
After dealing with cardiovascular and internal bleeding issues several years ago, I was ordered by the doctors to continue my morning walks through the neighborhood. As I neared the house after making a circular walk, a woman said, "You're moving slower than usual today. Are you okay?" I continued the slow walk, saying, "Just had a few physical issues that have been dealt with."
Her reply: "Turn it all over to God. He will never let you down. Let him take care of you."
I did not reply, "If there were a God, it would be obvious that he must have already let me down by not taking care of me and allowing me to have a genetic heart defect; moreover, I would be dead now if I had turned it over to him instead of to trained professionals who diagnosed my problems and treated them effectively."
Nor did I say, "So let me see if I understand you. If I have another heat attack, if my lungs stop functioning because of fluid buildup, and if I begin passing blood because of internal bleeding, I should forget the doctors and just 'Turn it all over to God, and He won't let me down and He, not the doctors, should be allowed to take care of me? If so, I'll need to get your full name and contact information so my survivors' lawyers can sue your ass for practicing medicine without a license and for prescribing a treatment option which will kill me'."
Of course she was not concerned in the least about the condition of the plant food body here at all but was concerned about showing off her ego-state of "The Super Religious One" to someone passing by.
And she is not alone in her distorted, BS-thinking regarding faith healing.
The same happens in 12-step groups where people buy into what they are told in their literature: You have body and mind problems, but if you just become spiritual, that will address your body / mind problems." Really?
Again, the proper response by those agreeing to follow that advice is:
"Okay, I'll do what you say, but I'll need to get your full name and contact information so my survivors' lawyers can sue your ass for practicing medicine without a license and for prescribing a treatment option which could kill me or which can leave me miserable as a result of using your plan which does not address my mental issues including my many personality disorders, my "grave mental and emotional disorders," my neuroses and my psychoses."
Yet billions around the globe buy into similar "treatment plans" which are recommended by non-professional, non-trained persons.
Now, what of "non-dualists?" If you or your guru have decided that your should turn the care of your plant food body over to "Brahman" or to "Parabrahman" or to "Bhagavan" or to "Ishvara," then you are using the same kind of magical thinking which others are using when they advise one to "turn your troubles over to God" or "turn your troubles over to the Over Soul" or "turn your troubles over to the Will of the Universe" or "turn your troubles over to the Power of the Universe" or "turn your problems over to YHWH /Yahweh / Jehovah / Elohim."
As I shared with someone recently,
"In his later talks, Maharaj said to let these teachings address the Ultimate Sickness which involves the mind and leave the healing of the plant food body to trained professionals."
Maharaj said that what realization brings is "moksha," that is, "freedom from the bondage of ignorance."
A viable version of the Ultimate Medicine is only intended to provide freedom from what Maharaj called three of the key symptoms of the Ultimate Sickness: "ignorance, stupidity, and insanity."
If one is freed of those, then one's actions will change, including any past actions which might have been self-defeating and self-harmful and self-destructive, relatively speaking. But the Ultimate Medicine is not per se a "body-medicine." It is a "mind medicine."
Realization did not cure my genetic heart defect. It is still there. It did not clear up the retention of excess fluids. The doctor's plan did that. Nor did realization stop the internal bleeding which was induced by an aspirin regimen and which was exacerbated by a prescription of a blood thinner. [See? Neither doctors nor gurus should be put on a pedestal. All can offer ineffective treatment plans on occasion.] No, the bleeding was stopped by a specialist who went to the source of the bleeding and delivered a small amount of electric current through an endoscope to cauterize the wound.
Had I turned the plant food body's problems over to a process which is only intended to address mental problems, I'd have been unknowingly and naively and unwittingly taking mahasamadhi.
Moreover, in many cases, the Ultimate Medicine might address mental issues, but in other cases, professional intervention by mental health care specialists might be called for. Either way, in no case can the Ultimate Medicine treat major plant food body illnesses.
If persons were to go to see a counselor or psychiatrist who said, "You know, I have a suspicion that you do feel good because you have a defective heart valve, so I'm going to have the receptionist schedule you for open-heart surgery in my back room tomorrow at 9 AM," most persons with any vestige of sanity at all would say, "The hell you say. I'm outta here."
Yet those same persons hear, "Use prayer, not doctors, for your child's infection" or "Treat your body and mind problems with spirituality," or "Turn it over to Parabrahman," they often say, "Okay."
If realized, ignorance ends and distorted thinking ends and delusion ends and magical thinking ends.
Again, when my granddaughter contracted an infection at the age of three weeks, she was taken to the hospital and treated and released forty-eight hours later.
The same could have happened to the two Schaible children were it not for ignorance and stupidity and insanity which came from ignorant and stupid and insane programming by their parents and by their religious and spiritual leaders and by their fellow congregants.
Wise decisions can happen for anyone who is restored to sanity and has given up all magical thinking and gets their butt to a doctor when the indication is that a doctor visit is being called for. If being driven subconsciously by the hidden agendas of ego-states, then no decisions can be made and no ability to make choices exists.
The realized might use the realization process to eliminate the sick nonsense stored in a mind, but - if realized - they will not leave it to a guru to treat a defective heart valve or internal bleeding.
Again, the surest indicator of the presence of the Ultimate Sickness and a call for the Ultimate Medicine is this: magical thinking (a.k.a., "delusional thinking," "illusion-based thinking, distorted thinking, religion-and-cult-based thinking, "all-spirituality-based thinking," "unclear thinking," "emotional-intoxication-driven thinking," "group think" - defined as "a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome); in other words, "thinking, period."
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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