TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
THE RATIONALE FOR REALIZING AND THEN ABIDING NATURALLY
"Realization is nothing more than being free of all "learned ignorance."
--Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
As a child, clean and efficient mass transportation in the form of electric buses (short for "omnibuses") prevailed in many urban areas all across the U.S. The routes where I lived even extended many miles from downtown in every direction so service even reached the slum area where two parents and my sister and I shared the limited space in a 600' square-foot frame house sitting up on cinder blocks.
The nearest stop for electric trolleys was a half block from that house, so moving about the city was cheap and easy. A common sight was electric wires overhead and buses connected to them with two extensions which angled back from the top of the bus to the power source above.
The same is true over much of Europe and in many other parts of the planet: there is available for the citizenry an efficient, cheap, and clean mass transportation system.
So why did "the powers that be" in the U.S. go a different route and eliminate rather than expand the electric, mass transportation system being used when I was a child and move to the use of the internal combustion engine with all of its pollution of the environment?
In our neighborhood, most families did not own cars, so when the mass transportation system was dismantled, we asked, "Why was our means of transportation taken from us? And why would we shift from the use of clean transportation to the use of filthy transportation, environmentally speaking?" We eventually found the answer:
Back in "The Dawn of the Automobile Age," General Motors began systematically buying streetcar lines and then shutting them down, leaving millions of Americans without viable public transportation options. Its motive? To ensure a market for its still-novel personal transportation technology. Rather than ride buses or walk, the idea was that people would buy Buicks.
There is no question that a GM-controlled entity called National City Lines did buy a number of municipal trolley car systems. And it's beyond doubt that, before too many years went by, those street car operations were closed down.
So this common sight . . .
Was replaced with these common sights:
Eventually, the oil and tires industries and many others joined to form a consortium with General Motors, Standard Oil, Firestone Tire and Rubber, Phillips Petroleum and Mack Truck Manufacturing Co. and they all began pumping money into their destroy-the-mass-transportation-system venture.
It's also true that GM and others were convicted in a post-war trial of conspiring to monopolize the market for transportation equipment and supplies sold in the U.S. (In the end, a federal court found all of the parties guilty of conspiring and colluding to destroy the U.S. public transportation system. The fine imposed by the federal judge? $1.00)
For the price of one U.S. dollar, that consortium of profit-inspired companies was able to destroy the viable and environmentally-friendly public transportation system in the U.S. and left the nation decades behind the rest of the developed nations which improved - rather than destroyed - their public transportation systems after WWII.
What does that have to do with non-duality? Everything.
Whereas the non-dual message encourages de-accumulation, the attitude of the persons running General Motors, Standard Oil, Firestone Tire and Rubber, Phillips Petroleum and Mack Truck Manufacturing Co. back then, and the attitude of persons running most of the major corporations and larger businesses in the U.S. is still, "There's never enough."
That is also the dominant and dominating attitude of those among the non-realized masses: in their view, there is never enough, be it money, the size of one's house, the amount of food consumed, the amount of talking done - you name it. There is never enough.
Is that natural? Far from it. It is most unnatural.
The naturally-abiding deer in this neighborhood are all lean and trim. The occasional coyote trotting across open areas through the woods or running quickly across the streets and across the surrounding roads are lean and trim. But many of their relatives, the domesticated dogs in the area, often mirror the shape of their owners: far from lean, far from trim.
Those life-forms abiding in nature in their natural way do not overeat, over-drink, race about, or accumulate anything. For anything or anyone abiding naturally, enough really is . . . enough.
The family renting the house next door brought with them not a pet dog, and not two pet dogs, and not three pet dogs, and not four pet dogs but five pet dogs, all living in a moderate-sized, residential home in a residential neighborhood.
See? Never enough. Five dogs. Five bourbon and waters. Five cars. Five whatevers. It matters not what is being accumulated in high quantities. It will all take a toll, and the maintenance of whatever is accumulated will eventually exact a far-higher toll than what is accumulated. Yet a belief in the need for "more and more and more" has become the guiding light, uh, guiding darkness, among the non-realized masses all around the globe.
So the persons next door have turned what was intended to be a residential home for humans into what amounts to a commercial enterprise, a kennel, a dog pound, a dog shelter, a residential home for dogs. With four humans inside but with five dogs inside, the humans are not living in a human house but are living in a flea-infested, poop-contaminated doghouse instead.
All five of their dogs are large hunting dogs, but they never hunt. They sit in the house all day, are never taken for a walk, eat most of the day, and then defecate. Their backyard might be the most noxious in the neighborhood, but it is also likely the best-fertilized lawn in the neighborhood (and most likely has the best-fertilized carpeting throughout the interior of the house as well).
The dogs' lifestyle mirrors exactly their masters' lifestyle. One of the dogs is so obese that it can barely walk. If about to go somewhere in the master's car, it cannot jump the 10" to get inside but must be picked up (by one of the adults because the children cannot lift it) and placed inside.
See? Unnatural.
Moreover, the deer in this area do not stuff themselves with fermented berries, get drunk, race down a trail in the woods, veer off track, crash into a tree, and kill themselves in such crashes.
No, it's only humans who do that:
Why? Because the typical human mind has been programmed and conditioned to race unnaturally; thus, the body will also be driven to race about unnaturally as well since persons subconsciously try to end the unnatural sense of feeling torn, disunited, split, disconnected, disjointed, out of tune, contorted, jumbled, disorganized, unstable, and out of alignment. And indeed, almost all humans are, internally, out of alignment.
After Yeshu'a (Jesus) was exposed to the non-dual message, he said: "Dual-minded persons are unstable in all ways."
Persons racing along a 40 m.p.h. road at 80 m.p.h. are trying, in their insane fashion, to attain a sense of harmony within. They are seeking a sense of unity. They want the speed of the body and the speed of the mind to align, but in cultures where persons are programmed, conditioned, etc. to go and do and zoom, then the possibly of slowing the mind and then slowing the body and relaxing in order to attain that sense of oneness and unity and harmony is not even considered.
Thus, the plan in most cultures is to go and do and zoom in order to raise the speed of the body until it aligns with the speed of the mind in an unconscious effort to avoid feeling torn and disjointed and unstable and out of tune because the parts of the composite unity are totally out of alignment.
And that is totally unnatural. For those who can finally see that the actual manner in which they are moving through the relative existence is exactly as described above, the invitation here for them is to turn to "Plan B," which most among the masses will never consider.
So consider:
The mind prevails. Among humans, it is all-powerful, all-controlling, all-dominating, and totally but subconsciously in charge of all words spoken (or tweeted) and all actions taken. Thus, for the body to take actions which evidence the "ignorance and stupidity and insanity" which Maharaj said are markers of the presence of the Ultimate Sickness, it is useless to try to make the body stop occasionally;
or to try to "meditate" the body into a state of calmness when it feels so much pressure that it seems as if one is a piece of fragile glass in the hands of some mighty force which is bending it out of shape to such a degree that if anyone were to touch it - and put even the slightest additional pressure upon it - it would shatter into a million pieces.
Yet that "meditative" method will prove to be a totally useless exercise because the body never controls the mind as much as the mind will control the body. Body slowed first and then the mind will surely follow? No. The mind issues addressed first and then the body can follow? Yes.
[True, body issues which arise from not following the proper food plan for a particular metabolic body type can generate psychosomatic problems such as depression, anxiety, obsessing, stress, etc., but the end result is still a psychological problem, its root notwithstanding.
For example, Maharaj said that "Once obsession with the body goes, you will revert to your natural state, spontaneously and effortlessly"
and added,
"The only difference between us is that I am aware of my natural state, while you are bemused."
Once the mind stops its incessant and constant grinding away, then the Pure Witnessing can manifest. Only then, Maharaj said, can you "live your life as it comes, but alertly, watchfully, allowing everything to happen as it happens, doing the natural things the natural way, suffering, rejoicing — as life brings."
Maharaj said: " When you lose sight of mental states, pure being emerges as the natural state."]
I have known of so many over the years who race about in the morning before leaving for a job so that they have time to sit still for five or ten minutes of "meditation" to prepare them for the day, only to find that their meditative exercise did not prepare them for even the first few minutes of the day because they join the stream of traffic leaving their homes and shortly join in with their fellow travelers as they all rage like maniacs at each other for slowing down the pace of those bent on racing about and on going and doing and zooming.
They become so insane that they want to ram your car from behind, or drive alongside you and force you off the road, or engage in a road rage shooting and killing. And that is all caused by the unnatural thoughts which are is going on inside their minds.
They become so insane that they want to ram your car from behind, or drive alongside you and force you off the road, or engage in a road rage shooting and killing. And that is all caused by the unnatural thoughts which are is going on inside their minds.
The purpose of meditation is not to reach some "higher state of consciousness" or to reach some "temporary no-mind state." Instead, the end game involves being rid of the mind - that is, all ideas, concepts, notions, a.k.a., "beliefs" - and to reach what Maharaj called a "no-mind, zero-concepts state"; therefore, trying to calm the mind for a brief period is useless.
Until realization, "meditation" is actually intended to offer a chance to take pointers into quiet consideration, to become aware of the inner workings of the mind and body which feed the Ultimate Sickness, and then purge from both the body and the mind all of the contaminates which are preventing any chance of abiding naturally.
And all of that is the rationale which justifies the effort to become free of the beliefs which inspire unnatural and supposedly supernatural living. Why? Because both of those lifestyles take such a heavy toll, relatively speaking.
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 3,100+ posts for any topics of interest to you.
