TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
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To continue with the sharing of certain quotes which point toward the non-dual understanding:
From Philosophers And Sages And Seers Of Truth:
Miscellaneous Quotations And Pointers That Are Relevant To Advaitins / Non-Dualists
excerpted from the book
"NATIVE AMERICA" WISDOM
Many Asians / "Far Easterners" began moving some 25,000 years ago onto the Bering Strait Land Bridge, part of which is under water now but at the time connected the Far East with what is now called "Alaska." Some may have lived on the Strait for thousands of years and then eventually began moving farther east, across the Straits and into what is now called "Canada" and "the U.S." and then south into what is now called "Central America" and "South America."
Speculation and evidence combine to suggest that the migration happened because of changing weather conditions, because of depleted food supplies, and because they were being invaded by whites from the west. The general consensus is that they began moving off the Strait and heading further east and then south some 20,000 years ago.
[Ironically, as they moved east, at least partially to escape brutal white invaders coming from the west, they would settle in "the Americas" but would then eventually be invaded by the descendants of their original invaders who would invade, this time, from the east. In what is now called "the U.S.," 98% of the indigenous peoples would be killed and the remaining survivors would be interred on the remaining 2% of the land on which they had lived and which was "reserved" for "Indians" only.
Recently I mentioned that when returning from Louisiana, I passed the remnants of a plantation and the remains of several slave quarters. Soon after that, I passed the Alabama-Coushatta Indian Reservation. Both provide reminders of what the descendants of those white invaders did - and continue to do - to Asians and to Africans and to other non-whites to this day, even as some textbooks in U.S. schools are re-writing and covering up that history.]
One of the descendants of those who survived "The American Holocaust" was born to a Cherokee couple in 1884. She lived in East Texas and would come to be known to me as "Grandmother." She would give birth in 1916 to a son who would be known to me as "my father."
I never heard Grandmother mention the terms "non-dual pointers" or "the Eastern teachings," but both were brought by Asians across the Bering Strait and were spread from (a) the Far East to (b) a small remainder of the still-visible part of the Bering Land Mass (specifically, Diomede on the western coast of Little Diomede Island) and were then spread all the way eventually to Ushuala at the southernmost tip of what is now called "South America."
Though neither she nor her fellow indigenous relatives and tribe members likely ever heard the term "non-duality," what they shared from their body of wisdom was exactly that, traceable all the way back to their earliest ancestral home in "the Far East."
Here are some pointers from various tribe members that were in touch with the understanding:
"If in doubt, be still and wait."
"That which is inhaling and exhaling is an illusion; truth can only be found in the empty space of the absolute quiet and the empty moments in between."
"Peace can only be found in the silence; once found, it can remain under any conditions."
"It is possible to be alone and truly like the company kept in the empty moments."
"Only excursions into that which is natural can reveal truth."
"Even the seasons form a great circle, but they always come back again to where they were."
"The life of a human is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where energy moves."
"There is no birth. There is no death. There is no creation. There is no destruction. There are only the cyclings of elements, air, and energy; there is no body-mind-personality continuity."
"Harmony with all things is possible, but it cannot manifest in the presence of inner turmoil or in the absence of Full Realization."
"I saw more than I can tell, and I understood more than I saw, for I was seeing the shape of all shapes living in harmony as one."
"We are but one thread."
"Peace comes from within when oneness with the universe is realized."
"It was seen that power need not be sought except for the strength required to fight the greatest enemy—self."
"It was seen that when self has been eliminated, no more power or strength is required."
"It came to be known that another can be disappointed if that is required in order to be free of dual-mindedness and to be true to Self."
"It was seen that, to be trustworthy, one must first be faithless."
"I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments."
"Earth, teach me humility; Earth, teach me to forget myself."
"We are but one."
“Walk in balance."
"Above all you should understand that there can never be peace between nations until there is known that true peace which is within.”
“It appears that where marriage is solemnized by the church and blessed by the priest, it may at the same time be surrounded with customs and ideas of a frivolous, superficial, and even prurient character. Love between a man and a woman is founded on the mating instinct and is not free from desire and self-seeking.”
“I want to know
. . . if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself
. . . if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul.”
OTHER NON-DUAL POINTERS FROM MORE MODERN SOURCES
Russell Brand
"It's difficult to believe in yourself because the idea of self is an artificial construction. You are, in fact, part of the glorious oneness of the universe. Everything beautiful in the world is within you."
G.I. Gurdjieff
"Without self knowledge . . . man cannot be free and . . . he will always remain a slave."
"A considerable percentage of the people we meet on the street are people who are empty inside, that is, they are actually already dead. It is fortunate for us that we do not see and do not know it. If we knew what a number of people are actually dead and what a number of these dead people govern our lives, we should go mad with horror."
"A man can only attain knowledge with the help of those who possess it. This must be understood from the very beginning. One must learn from him who knows."
" . . . Man will renounce any pleasures you like but will not give up suffering."
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson
“Recognize that the very molecules that make up your body, the atoms that construct the molecules, are traceable to the crucibles that were once the centers of high mass stars that exploded their chemically rich guts into the galaxy, enriching pristine gas clouds with the chemistry of life.”
“The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.”
“The most I learn about the universe, the less convinced I am that there's any sort of benevolent force that has anything to do with it, at all.”
“I want to put on the table, not why 85% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences reject God. I want to know why 15% of the National Academy don’t.”
“After all, what nobler thought can one cherish than that the universe lives within us all?”
“I know that the molecules in my body are traceable to phenomena in the cosmos. That makes me want to grab people on the street and say: ‘Have you HEARD THIS'?”
“People cited violation of the First Amendment when a New Jersey schoolteacher asserted that evolution and the Big Bang are not scientific and that Noah's ark carried dinosaurs. This case is not about the need to separate church and state; it's about the need to separate ignorant, scientifically illiterate people from the ranks of teachers."
“While the Copernican principle comes with no guarantees that it will forever guide us to cosmic truths, it's worked quite well so far: not only is Earth not in the center of the solar system, but the solar system is not in the center of the Milky Way galaxy, the Milky Way galaxy is not in the center of the universe, and it may come to pass that our universe is just one of many that comprise a multiverse. And in case you're one of those people who thinks that the edge may be a special place, we are not at the edge of anything either.”
“Again and again across the centuries, cosmic discoveries have demoted our self-image. Earth was once assumed to be astronomically unique, until astronomers learned that Earth is just another planet orbiting the Sun. Then we presumed the Sun was unique, until we learned that the countless stars of the night sky are suns themselves. Then we presumed our galaxy, the Milky Way, was the entire known universe, until we established that the countless fuzzy things in the sky are other galaxies, dotting the landscape of our known universe. Today, how easy it is to presume that one universe is all there is. Yet emerging theories of modern cosmology, as well as the continually reaffirmed improbability that anything is unique, require that we remain open to the latest assault on our plea for distinctiveness: multiple universes, otherwise known as the 'multiverse,' in which ours is just one of countless bubbles bursting forth from the fabric of the cosmos.”
Next:
A series of articles combined and published as Cosmic Consciousness: A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind (1901) influenced a fellow named William ("Bill") Griffiths Wilson considerably. He became interested in Eastern teachings, so when he wrote a book which has become "The Bible of Alcoholics," he included much material which he "co-opted," some of which was from articles and books which he read about Eastern Teachings.
Many of the pointers he repeated, of course, deal with pointers that "non-dualists" can relate to:
From "ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS" (a.k.a., "the A.A. Big Book")
References are made to “The Great Reality” and use of “the sixth sense” and “the intuition” and it is advised to “cast aside ideas and emotions and attitudes.”
In later writings, the author of that book spoke of "physical intoxication, mental intoxication, spiritual intoxication and emotional intoxication" as well as "physical sobriety, mental sobriety, spiritual sobriety and the final level of sobriety, emotional sobriety."
He suggested that his audience did not have a drinking problem but had a "thinking problem."
In his writings, the author of that book also spoke of "a total psychic change" that restores one to sanity; of a movement beyond the Realm of the Material and the Realm of the Spirit, reaching a state of awareness that is the essence, and connecting with what he called in the A.A. Big Book one’s "inner resource" (a.k.a., "the inner guru");
and he spoke of a movement beyond the limited physical 5-sense existence into a constant use of the vital sixth sense;
and of a movement beyond the three-dimensional (height, width, depth) limitations of this (phenomenal) world and into the fourth dimension (or, in Advaitin terms, "the Noumenal).
He wrote about the fallacy of mistaking appearance for the real, writing that "The prosaic steel girder" is not actually what it appears to be but is instead "a mass of electrons."
He wrote, "With few exceptions, our members find that they have tapped an unsuspected inner resource which they presently identify with their own conception of a Power greater than themselves." [Those see "their resource" as within, not without.]
Also from the A.A. Big Book, a quotation from Dr. Silkworth: " . . . they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false.”
Wilson also wrote, “The main problem . . . centers in his mind . . . .”
and
“The first thing apparent was that this world and its people were often quite wrong.” [Note: That means, there is not just something "wrong" with alcoholics but there is something "quite wrong" with all people instead. In other words, all persons are just not quite "right."]
He wrote: "It is constantly revealed, as mankind studies the material world, that outward appearances are not inward reality at all."
The solution is to be “catapulted into what I like to call the fourth dimension of existence. I was to know happiness, peace . . . .”
He wrote: "The terms 'spiritual experience' and 'spiritual awakening' are used many times in this book which, upon careful reading, shows that the personality change sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism has manifested itself among us in many different forms."
[So, yes, he understood that mental and personality disorders were at the root of the illness and originally wrote that the illness is a "two-part sickness of body and mind." He had arranged for certain men in Ohio to write their "stories," sharing how they were recovering from alcoholism via the A.A. program (which he had "co-opted" from the Oxford Group). When those men read the rough draft of his book and saw that Bill was speaking of "a two-fold illness," they explained that if he did not make clear that the sickness is, above all else, a "spiritual malady," then he would not get their stories which he needed to add to his 164 pages in order to make a "big book." He succumbed to the blackmail and talk would thereafter be about "a three-part illness involving body, mind, and - above all else - one's 'spiritual condition," abandoning his original plan to show that the main root of the problem with the Addictive Personality Disorder centers in the mind and in personality disorders."]
For the second and subsequent edition, he had the final word when he wrote, "Most of us think this awareness of a Power greater than ourselves is the essence of spiritual experience. Our more religious members call it 'God-consciousness'.”
[So he made clear that, in the beginning, "the God part" was a part which only their "religious members" spoke of, those members originally being a group of Catholics from Cleveland whose priest made them split from the original Akron Oxford Group - with threat of excommunication otherwise - and who were the men who made the original "no-spirituality, no stories" demand.]
While he was able to insert many pointers in the book based in Eastern teachings, the original intention was to offer a far-greater emphasis on the non-dual understanding than was included in the end. As for the explanation that only the original "religious members" talked about "God," that point was relegated to an appendix at the end of the book which is printed in a small font, so it is seldom given much - or any - attention nowadays.
At any rate, non-dual pointers have long been shared, even by those who never heard the term "non-dual." That has long been the case among those who have, to use the words Bill "co-opted" from someone else, "tapped into the inner resource."
To be continued.
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