MAHARAJ AND RELIGION'S ANTI-SCIENCE STANCE, Part One

TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS 

NOTE: 

The previous series discussed the difference in the "Real Love" which Maharaj discussed and the various concepts about [not real] "love" which the masses speak of. For those who are interested in the full discussion of that topic, the eBook 

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REAL LOVE.

Now, to the subject of the next series:

THE RELIGION VS. SCIENCE DEBATE 

In the third phase of his years of teaching - after Maharaj had abandoned the use of a religious / non-dual version of the Ultimate Medicine and after he had abandoned the use of a spiritual / non-dual version of the Ultimate Medicine and after he realized that the Ultimate Sickness did not involve persons knowing too little dogma and did not involve persons having a "sick spiritual" or a "spiritual malady"- Maharaj made clear that the problems of humankind are centered in the mind. 

At that point, he began using a psychology / non-dual version of the Ultimate Medicine. 

As for his take on science, he had long before seen the ignorance of religious leaders attacking scientists and allowing the insanity of religious or spiritual fanaticism to inspire non-factual information to be accepted as truth as a result of blind faith to the point that, throughout history, those types of fanatics often advised their congregants that all scientifically-based beliefs were atheism-rooted beliefs. 

For other examples, see Copernicus and his problems with church officials which came with his suggestion that the sun did not revolve around the earth, challenging the church teaching that god put the earth at the center of everything. 

Or see Galileo who was threatened by church officials with torture or killing and who was eventually placed under house arrest for the same "crime against God and the church" by also suggesting that the earth revolved around the sun rather than the sun revolving around the earth. 

Or see Giordano Bruno, a philosopher who was known as a heretic because he was an advocate of Copernican theory. Bruno became known as “the first martyr of the new science” after he was burned at the stake in 1600. 

Or see Leonardo Da Vinci who "played the game" but nevertheless did have enemies within the church. Why? 

1. He was the "illegitimate child" of a female peasant and a wealthy lawyer. 

2. He became convinced that the earth is much older than Christianity suggested. 

3. He argued that falling sea levels—not Noah's Flood—left marine fossils on mountains. 

4. He became a Renaissance Humanist, and Renaissance Humanism was a revolt — sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit — against the "other-worldliness" of medieval Christianity.

(Humanists turned away from a religious preoccupation with personal immorality, focusing instead on how to enjoy, make the most of, and improve this life for the humans living it. That would later be the same focus adopted by Maharaj as well, was it not?)

Yet Da Vinci was fairly successful at hiding many of his understandings from the church; nevertheless, the church was used as a vehicle to attack him. He was accused of sodomy - a tactic used in Florence at that time to attack competitors and enemies. The church court was unable to convict, but Da Vinci left Florence, knowing that to be hauled before the church court again could prove fatal. 

In Rome, his freethinking ways soon got him into endless trouble with his patrons and the Pope. One writer said, "He became involved in a growing rift with the Vatican, which attempted to call him to order, but Leonardo’s unquenchable thirst for scientific knowledge was not to be extinguished by anything as trivial as religion." 

However, he did continue to walk a dangerous road – the road that consigned Giordano to the flames of the Inquisition and which gagged the mouth of Galileo. In the end, Da Vinci was forced by religion to go into exile in France. 

Or see John William Draper who wrote "The History Of The Conflict Between Religion And Science." 

Or look to Maharaj who endorsed science from early on and who endorsed the science of psychology to formulate the final version of the Ultimate Medicine which he used exclusively in the end. 

THE MODERN ANTI-SCIENCE MOVEMENT IN THE U.S. and OTHER NATIONS 

The earliest European settlers in what is not the U.S. used a theocratic form of government. Eventually, the "Founders" - many of whom were Deists - wrote a Constitution which called for the separation of church and state. That has never been adhered to consistently, but since the 1940s, religion has once more been especially influential in politics, rising to a higher-than-usual level in the 1970s when far right-wing, ultra-conservative Christians engaged in vigorous and fanatical levels of political activism. 

At that point, their political-religion actually focused more on social issues, a trend which continues to this day, as religious fundamentalists advocate for socially-conservative positions on issues including 

- the use of Christian-based school prayer in public schools on a daily basis 

- the teaching of "intelligent design" and creationism in science classes rather than evolution 

- an opposition to stem cell research and use 

- an opposition to any other than a literal interpretation of "holy scriptures"

- an opposition to homosexuality and to giving the same rights to homosexuals that all other citizens receive 

- an opposition to transsexuals and to giving the same rights to them that what all other citizens receive 

- an opposition to the use of birth control 

- an opposition to women in the workplace instead of staying in the home

- an opposition to women being involved in politics  

- an opposition to sex outside of marriage

- an opposition to sex education, endorsing abstinence instead

- an opposition to equal pay for women 

- an opposition to abortion, even in cases of incest or rape or saving the life of a pregnant woman

- an opposition to pornography 

- the support of spreading "a Christian worldview" that is being endorsed with tremendous fervor even as they criticize Muslims when they fervently support the spreading of Islam and its views 

- the support of Dominionism and Christian Reconstructionism, the latter calling for the overthrow of democracy in the U.S. and the founding of a New American Theocracy which would use the Ten Commandments as its constitution 

- an opposition to university-level education (deemed to be "too liberal" and "anti-Christianity")

and now,

- an opposition to public schools and public education as well as an endorsement of home schooling with content focusing on lessons containing Christian principles.

In the U.S. in 1987, the Supreme Court set off a caca storm when it ruled that creationism is religion, not science, and cannot be advocated in public school classrooms. Yet the religion vs. science differences have been debated, and fought over and killed over, for hundreds of years all around the globe. 

This has been noted: "Science acknowledges reason, empiricism, and evidence while religions include supposed revelations, blind faith, and supposed sacredness whilst also acknowledging philosophical and metaphysical and spiritual and religious explanations with regard to the study of the universe."

In other words, the latter prefers to assign spiritual, supernatural explanations for what are natural (or unnatural) happenings. Flooded? You've displeased God. Struck by tornadoes or hurricanes? You've displeased God. Had buildings knocked down when terrorists flew planes into them? You've displeased God. Home destroyed by wildfires? You've displeased God. You've displeased God!! You've displeased God, dammit!!!

Now, in the U.S., with the increasing influx of Christians being elected to state, local and federal positions of political power and influence, science has once more come under an all-out attack. 

MAHARAJ'S TAKE ON THE RELIGION / SCIENCE DEBATE 

As in all things and all ways, Maharaj was neither "pro" anything or "con" anything. He was concerned only with the factual and the true. All else is to be abandoned; thus, he abandoned religion and spirituality and endorsed only natural (Nisargan) abidance.

At one point, he said that "science will someday advance to the point that it will confirm the validity of the non-dual teachings." 

Yet he said at another point: "Science deals with names and shapes, quantities and qualities, patterns and laws; it is all right in its own place. But life is to be lived; there is no time for analysis. The response must be instantaneous — hence the importance of the spontaneous, the timeless. It is in the unknown that we live and move. The known is the past."

ONE OF THE MORE RECENT EXAMPLES WHERE SCIENCE IS ONLY NOW "CATCHING UP" WITH THE NON-DUAL UNDERSTANDING (WHICH HAS LONG EXPLAINED WHAT SCIENCE IS ONLY NOW REALIZING)

Consider this recent headline: 

NEW YORK, N.Y. (WIVB) — RESEARCHERS IN NEW YORK SAY THAT AFTER A PERSON DIES, THE BRAIN IS STILL ACTIVE 

The "news" report went on to say: 

What this means, according to CBS contributors, is that “in many cases, people can be aware that they’ve passed away.” 

 The research has been done by a team at New York University’s Langone School of Medicine. They are studying people who have suffered cardiac arrest. 

Dr. Sam Parnia told Live Science, “Technically speaking, that’s how you get the time of death — it’s all based on the moment when the heart stops.” 

KDKA, CBS contributors in Pittsburgh, cited a report from Live Science, which said the following: 

“They’ll describe watching doctors and nurses working; they’ll describe having awareness of full conversations, of visual things that were going on, that would otherwise not be known to them,” Parma said. 

The team of researchers wants to find out more about what happens in the brain before it stops working. 

“We’re trying to understand the exact features that people experience when they go through death, because we understand that this is going to reflect the universal experience we’re all going to have when we die,” Parnia said. 

The fact: Maharaj understood more than seventy years ago that "after a person dies, the brain is still active." He understood "the exact features that people experience when they go through 'death.'" He understood the exact stages which plant food bodies and manifested consciousness transition through during the movement from beingness into non-beingness and beyond. 

And non-dual sages have understood all of that for thousands of years.

Once Yeshu'a ("Jesus") came to understand certain non-dual pointers, he also understood more than 2000 years ago all of the "exit phases."

[He said, "Heaven and earth shall fade away." What he meant by that was that the consciousness - blocked or not - does not leave a plant food body instantly but slowly fades away, so the beliefs stored in the mind - such as false concepts about "this world" (a.k.a., earth") and a "better world (a.k.a., "heaven") and a "worse world" (a.k.a., "hell") - will fade away, allowing the opportunity not for "the brain" to remain active but for the manifested-but-unmanifesting consciousness to remain active, for a time.]

Hence, many people claim that they looked down upon their bodies as they were "dying" and saw rescuers working to revive them and then saw themselves returning to their bodies and "living" (and then thereafter claiming erroneously that "it was a miracle").

The misunderstanding has led many to claim that "they died and went to heaven" and then "came back." Many of them have made fortunes from religious types who have paid for the books written about that "journey" or to watch the movies made about such events, all of which are pure nonsense of course. Only a few have been honest enough to admit "they made up the whole damn thing" and none have shown any evidence that they understand what actually happens during the unmanifesting of conscious-energy / consciousness.

Again, far from what some describe as "a miracle" is a happening which is really just a commonplace event which the wisest non-dualists have understood for thousands of years. What any others describe as "a miracle" is a misunderstanding at best or is a full-blown con at its worse, dreamed up and then used to further a dogma-based agenda or a financial agenda. 

The explanation of what really happens at the moment of mahasamadhi and unmanifesting will continue with tomorrow's post. 

To be continued.

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