TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
Persons (the "non-realized") are also willing to enter onto a "path" and then end up staying on it, and willing to begin a "journey" which never reaches the destination but continue on that "journey" anyway, and are willing to accept a treatment plan which they are told offers no cure for what ails them but normalize that and stay with that ineffective plan, anyway, for this additional reason as well:
64. Because humans have always operated for the most part from a position of ignorance; and because - when humans operate from a position of ignorance - they have no accurate understanding of cause-and-effect relationships; and because when humans have no accurate understanding of cause-and-effect relationships, they dream up causes; and because when they dream up causes they dream up supernatural Causers;
and
65. because when they combine their body-identification-based fears with their belief in dreamed up supernatural Causers, they substitute supernatural causes for a lack of understanding of natural causes which leads them - when trapped in personality-based fears and desires - to play the role of Deal Makers with god but who end up being Deal Breakers and the role of Promise Makers to god but not Promise Keepers.
65. because when they combine their body-identification-based fears with their belief in dreamed up supernatural Causers, they substitute supernatural causes for a lack of understanding of natural causes which leads them - when trapped in personality-based fears and desires - to play the role of Deal Makers with god but who end up being Deal Breakers and the role of Promise Makers to god but not Promise Keepers.
It has long been noted by the wise that "God did not create man but that man instead 'created' (dreamed up) gods and goddesses and, later, a "Supposedly One True God."
Regular visitors to this site know that Maharaj explained this way why that is the case with humans:
"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."
Dr. Steve Kelly explained it this way:
"Notions of gods arise in all human societies, from all powerful and all-knowing deities to simple forest spirits" and those beliefs are linked "to the ways in which human mental processes were adapted for survival in prehistoric times" and "rest on a couple of observations about human psychology.
"First, when an event happens, we tend to assume that a living thing caused it. In other words, we assume agency behind that event. A rustling of a bush or the snapping of a twig could be due to wind. But far better to assume it’s a lion and run away.
"The survivors who had this tendency to more readily ascribe agency to an event passed their genes down the generations, increasingly hard-wiring this way of making snap decisions into the brain. This is not something that people need to learn. It occurs quickly and automatically.
"The second trait is about how we view others. While living together in a tribe would have had many advantages for survival in prehistoric times, getting along with everyone would not always have been easy. Comprehending others’ behaviour requires you to understand their thoughts and beliefs, especially where these may be incorrect due to someone not knowing the full facts of a situation. This is known as 'theory of mind'. This idea says that we automatically assume that there are reasons behind others’ behaviour which we try to work out in order to better understand why they behave the way they do.
"You may be wondering what these two hard-wired processes have to do with belief in gods.
"Imagine a pebble falling in the back of a cave. Our agency device tells us that someone caused that to happen. With nothing in evidence, could it be an invisible creature or a spirit? If so, why would it be sneaking around? To find out secrets about us or to discover if we are good or bad people?
"Another example might be a volcanic eruption. In the absence of geological knowledge, our tribal ancestors' agency system would have ascribed this event to a person - but one that surely has superhuman ability. And why would they want to cause such destruction? Perhaps the eruption signified a punishment, perhaps because the tribe had not acted in accordance with the being’s wishes."
Some recall a couple of examples I shared years ago which illustrate the point:
1.The path of Hurricane Katrina was determined by all-natural causes, including global rotation, global winds, trade winds moving westward from the coast of Africa, the position of a variety of high and low pressure systems, etc.
Yet the Dalai Lama - either (a) knowing nothing about why a hurricane actually follows the track it follows or (b) wanting to use the event to further his own agenda and belief system - assigned a supernatural cause to an all-natural event. He claimed that "the people of New Orleans were hit by Hurricane Katrina because of their negative karma.” Several TV evangelists in the U.S. joined in and claimed that the hurricane hit New Orleans because of God's wrath which was evoked by the fact that “New Orleans has a history of being tolerant of homosexuals.” (None offered an explanation about why god did not conduct his warning and revenge while avoiding the collateral damage incurred by the good, god-fearing, anti-gay religious people in the city.)
2. Hurricane Rita made landfall in the U.S. between Sabine Pass, Texas and Holly Beach, Louisiana after having reached wind speeds of 180 mph (290 k.p.h). A few days later, I left Texas to travel to Louisiana to conduct a 2-day retreat which some seekers there had arranged.
Along the way, I stopped at store in a rural Louisiana town and overheard an elderly woman talking to the cashier and a group of other people who were waiting in line to pay for the water and ice and other supplies they needed because their electrical power had not yet been restored. She also claimed that, like Katrina, the hurricane was caused by a supernatural Power and said that “God is trying to tell us something, and we better listen.” And all of her neighbors nodded in agreement, one reinforcing her belief with an “Amen, Sister.”
Kelly said of the pebble falling and the volcano erupting that his "two very simplistic examples should help illustrate how these hard-wired mechanisms could lead to the beginnings of a belief in gods, as well as ghosts and other supernatural creatures. Our ancestors would have drawn conclusions about supernatural occurrences by fitting together these instincts towards agency and the theory of mind."
He continued: "This even applies to the Abrahamic, all-knowing, all powerful god. He may seem very inhuman at first glance, but it has been shown that we reason about Him in a very human way. For example we depict Him helping one person before moving to the other side of the world to help someone else. Hard-wired reasoning processes helps explain how religious ideas are so durable, spreading across continents and down through generations.
"Both these and other ancient instincts appear to be in evidence from observations of children. Very young children seem to show very accurate understanding of physical laws. For example they know that two solid objects cannot merge into one or that horses do not have metal gears inside them. Developmental psychologists have suggested that children are intuitive biologists, physicists and psychologists."
[Thus the expression, "Out of the mouths of babes." Children question, and then they call BS on things they are told by adults but which make no sense. They initially tend to "tell it like it is" until intervening adults break them of the practice.]
"Many religious stories contain concepts that seem to violate this special kind of intuition, such as a man walking on water or a burning bush that talks. These tales take advantage of this feature of memory to successfully propagate themselves and resist being forgotten.
"Putting these ideas together is one way of explaining religious thought and behaviour. You could go further and suggest that, if these ideas are correct, religion is merely a by-product of mental processes operating in error."
The point here: For thousands of years (if not for millions) when humans have not understood the actual causes of events in what they take to be "their world" and when they have not understood the real causes of what is happening around them, they have dreamed up gods and goddesses or, with billions of persons now, a single god.
Why, though, is it so difficult for humans to admit that they have been mistaken when they finally do hear truth? Again, humans do not want to hear truth. They prefer to deny and to fool others and to fool themselves, even when faced with evidence that clearly proves that their beliefs are totally fallacious. This was shared some time back and provides an example of the phenomenon:
Several years ago while conducting a retreat, I met a couple living in central Louisiana who said that they were moving out of that state because it had become “too damn tolerant of blacks” and was “letting them take over.” Their internet research, they said, revealed that South Carolina was the most “white-friendly, black-unfriendly state in the U.S. so they were going to move there,” and they did.
Yet when I spoke with them about their comments, they denied being racists, much less white supremacists. In their case, their views had been normalized during the twenty years they lived in a Louisiana community located only a few miles from a city where the KKK is still openly active, where trucks drive about with nooses hanging off their tailgates as a warning to blacks who would try to assert their rights, and where its racist reputation is well-known;
nevertheless, their beliefs and attitudes were no different from those of their friends and families and therefore seemed to them to be . . . quite "normal" and certainly nothing out of the ordinary.
And while their words and actions were totally racist and revealed their "we're better than blacks" belief, they were adamant about the fact that they were not racists, and the way they expressed that notion with such conviction, it actually seemed that they truly believed what they were claiming.
The same happens when the non-realized among the masses are confronted with evidence that there cannot be a "Creator." The following explanation has stirred up more persons than most pointers have and has inspired many to defend vehemently and angrily their myth-and-superstition-based beliefs about their god:
THE NON-DUAL NISARGAN MESSAGE:
There is nothing personal, including a person, an individual, or a Personal Creator. There is beingness, but there is no personal being or Personal Supreme Being. Because nothing has been created, there is no creator / parent and there is no Creator God or Creator Gods and Goddesses; additionally, there is no Destroyer God and there are no Destroyer Gods and Goddesses.
THE SCIENTIFIC FACT:
All is energy / matter. Neither energy nor matter can be created. Neither energy nor matter can be destroyed and while persons can believe unquestioningly that their gods and goddesses or their "God" has always been, they cannot image that energy and matter have always been.
THE NON-DUAL MESSAGE:
There are no timelines.
THE SCIENTIFIC FACT:
All is merely cycling. There is no beginning and there is no end, be the discussion about energy or about matter or about babies or about adults. Babies are not created. Babies are elemental plant food bodies that can temporarily house the manifest consciousness. Same with human adults . . . same with all "living creatures." They are merely composites of already-existing elements that are being cycled as opposed to something "new" being created. The elements might be arranged in a "new" formation or form or space, but they have existed forever and are not "new." The elements can come together for a time, but they will not remain together. The body that "was" last month is not the same body now; the specks of consciousness that were manifested last month are not the same specks of consciousness presently manifested within the space. (If either of those could happen, no one would have to eat anything to "resupply" the cycling elements or to "restock" the temporarily-manifested conscious-energy.)
One attribute of the manifest consciousness is that it longs for continuity, for a long continuation of the beingness throughout the relative period and, later, for an eternal continuation of being. When persons are in fear or in a deal-making mood or in a promise-making mode with a god in order to feel secure or in order to gain something desired or to receive some continuing benefit, then they are going to be willing to enter onto a "path" and then end up staying on it, and willing to begin a "journey" which never reaches a destination but continue on that "journey" anyway, and willing to accept a treatment plan which they are told offers no cure for what ails them and be willing to normalize that and stay with that ineffective plan, anyway.
In such cases, they will never be truly free, but with 50% of all humans being Personality Type Sixes who are wired to be dependent and co-dependent and who are converting many other types to join them in their dependent and co-dependent lifestyle, most humans do not really want to be free anyway.
I once saw a report about a man who continued to commit one misdemeanor after another and who was arrested time and time again. One prosecutor, looking over that man's file, saw that most of his arrests were occurring during the winter months.
When the man was brought in again for minor theft, the prosecutor pulled him aside and the man confessed that he was homeless and that he preferred to be locked away in a warm jail cell where he could receive three meals a day rather than stay out on the streets where he was cold and hungry.
Now that man was being locked up because of a conscious plan which he was totally aware of; to the contrary, most among the masses are locked up because of a plan which they are committed to as a result of the programming, conditioning, etc. and which they were exposed to as children and which they are now following as an adult because of factors which they are totally unconscious of.
So almost all humans will be placed on a "path" by their parents or other adults who have influenced them to believe what they believe and will thereafter blindly and unquestioningly stay on that path for a lifetime.
And those types were the ones who came up with a variety of charges about what was wrong with Maharaj, and who come up with all sorts of charges about what is wrong with Floyd, to have the nerve and the gall to suggest that people consider giving up their endless seeking and give up their religious or spiritual workaholism and just relax for a change.
They are the ones who will go to some "house of worship" and talk about those they saw on the way who were not going to a local church / temple / mosque / etc. to observe the holy day but were taking walks through their neighborhoods
or
who will complain that on their way to their holy place they saw people who were not going to a holy place but were "playing with their children in a park when those children should be attending religious classes on this holy day"
or
who will arrogantly proclaim that "I'm sorry that everyone is not here with us today at our meeting because everyone in the world could benefit from this spiritual program of ours and what we could teach them about how all people should live."
So it is, but so it need not be if the masses were to see that what they are doing is always a result of unconscious motivations and a result of the subconscious effects of their programming and conditioning. But the case with most humans is this:
when an invitation is extended to become truly free and independent and non-co-dependent, most will reject the invitation, will continue to cling instead to their dependencies and co-dependencies, and will continue in a Titanic-like-fashion with their "hold steady to the course and full speed ahead" manner of living.
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 nearly 3,000+ posts for any topics of interest to you.
