TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
“The idea that you know what is true is dangerous, for it keeps you imprisoned in the mind.”
--Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Here, there is nothing that is believed, so there is no one here who wants you to believe anything, either. Here, the invitation is to be free of all that you have been programmed, conditioned, acculturated, domesticated, indoctrinated, and brainwashed to believe so that you can be free, period.
--Floyd Henderson
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Maharaj said, “The true teacher will not imprison his disciples in a prescribed set of ideas, feelings [that is, emotions] and actions; on the contrary, he will show them patiently the need to be free from all ideas and set patterns of behavior"; thus, he advised, “Reach a state of zero concepts”
The only prison which need concern most seekers in the prison of the mind. The irony is that while each belief forms one of the bars of that prison, even a single remaining bar can prevent clear seeing. To be totally free, all of the bars of the prison must be eliminated. The only one no longer being fooled is the one that no longer believes anything that she or he was told.
If you are not abiding under the auspices of a brain as it existed in its pre-development-of-a-mind-state, then you will most assuredly feel as if you are in prison, trapped behind iron bars and feeling miserable, and many of the wisest of all ages have seen what truly imprisons humanity:
Richard Lovelace accurately noted: "Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage." Instead, he made clear, it is the mind which makes a prison.
John Milton said: “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”
Yeshu'a (Jesus) said after he was exposed to the non-dual teachings: "No one shall ever see the kingdom of heaven for it is within," now.
So if "heaven" is within now, so is "hell." Pain is of the body; misery and suffering are of the mind; therefore, either "heaven" (joy or bliss or happiness or contentment) or "hell" (misery and suffering and insanity) is within, and now is the only time that either can be known.
Maharaj said, “You are not in the world. The world is in you.” Meaning? Meaning that the world is imagined by you so it is “in you” . . . that is, "in your mind"; therefore, any misery or suffering being experienced in what is taken to be “this world” is nothing more than a mental construct to one degree or another.
[And that is why Yeshu'a shared the non-dual pointer that "Heaven and earth shall fade away," meaning - at the point when mahasamadhi is taken - the conscious-energy shall fade away from the elemental plant food body and return to the universal pool of unmanifested consciousness and, with that fading, the concepts of "heaven" and "earth" and "hell" shall also have to fade away because they were only in the mind anyway.]
Similarly, any reward supposedly attainable in "another better world" or any punishment supposedly imposed in "another worse world" is also a mental construct. Thus, anyone telling persons about the dualities of "heaven vs. hell" and "reward and. punishment" and "this world vs. a better world or a worse world" are passing along mental constructs which are all based in lies.
Lies, in turn, are all based in concepts, ideas, notions, perceptions / misperceptions, thoughts, designs, impressions, images, opinions, views, theories, and supposed knowledge (a.k.a., "learned ignorance") which can be summarized in one word: beliefs.
[And by the way, you have no beliefs. There is no one who can accurately say, "These are my beliefs." All beliefs are passed down from "them," so they are all "their" beliefs.]
In the book entitled FREEDOM from BELIEFS (Believers, Non-Believers, and "No-Belief-ers")
the following is shared by way of offering an introduction to the subject as well as the rationale for abandoning all beliefs and reaching the "no-mind" state or the "zero concepts" state which were recommended by Maharaj:
Why is it that the peace and harmony and happiness that Maharaj referenced cannot manifest if there is a "mind" (which he reported he no longer had after Realization)?
Consider the implication of the title of the book, "There's No Such Thing As 'Peace of Mind' (There Is Only Peace If You're Out Of Your Mind)".
That is, there can only be peace and harmony and happiness if you are out from under the influence of what is taken to be "your mind" when, as noted, there is no such thing as "your mind" because a mind is nothing more than a storehouse of "their" beliefs; therefore, what is taken to be "your mind" is actually "their" mind.
(Among the non-realized, "parents" may have died twenty years ago, but they are still very much present, chattering away from within the mind they built and filled with their culture's nonsense and left behind.)
So what there is among the not-fully-realized is "their mind" ("their" referring to all persons who have taught you any idea or concept which is presently stored in the section of the brain called "the mind"; thus, it is the content of "their mind" which has been passed down and transferred and is always taken in error to be "your mind." Why is it "their mind"?
Because whatever is in it, you did not put there. "They" put it there. Who are "they"? The members of your family of origin, relatives, friends, teachers, religious and / or spiritual influencers, political leaders, and all who were in positions of "authority" during your childhood and who exposed you to their ideas and concepts (beliefs) which you have adopted as "your own."
Moreover, the adoption of ideas and concepts (beliefs) continues even now, into adulthood, for all who are not realized (that is, who have not discarded all of the learned ignorance which was passed down and remains stored in "the mind"). All "mind" have been filled with fiction; with beliefs which are based not at all in fact; with beliefs which have never been questioned;
and with beliefs which have been accepted with no evidence to support them at all but have been accepted on "blind faith" alone.
More complicating among the masses is the fact that the contents of the "mind" are now held in such esteem that people are willing to fight for those beliefs or - in some cases - even willing to kill or die in a fight over those beliefs.
How has the "mind" evolved from its original purpose of storing survival-related, retrievable data to its present state of storing distorting, deluding, misleading, fooling, peace-robbing, harmony-destroying, happiness-blocking beliefs which in many cases amount to nothing but nonsense?
The "mind" is a part of the brain where information can be stored and retrieved, originally used as a "constructive" tool for survival; now, it is a destructive force that drives nonsensical behaviors that are based in nonsensical thoughts generated by the "mind."
What types of information are stored there? Ideas, concepts, etc. (beliefs), beliefs which were set in place by programming and conditioning and domestication and acculturation and indoctrination and brainwashing..
The "mind" is an illusion because it is an area now used for storing an entire network of belief systems which are generated from the dreamed up "-ism's" which are valued by cultures and societies but which are based in non-facts rather than facts.
It is the area of the brain which accepts beliefs such as "I am this" and "I am that"; then, the false personas which are mistakenly believed to identify who you are will subconsciously drive thoughts and words and deeds, removing all ability to choose and resulting in the non-realized masses being driven by agendas which are stored in the fictitious "mind."
Moreover, the persons being driven have no clue at all about what the hidden agendas are and how they block any opportunity to be awake, aware, conscious, sane, reasonable, rational, and to be in charge of what they say, what they do, and how they traverse the relative existence.
And all the while, they are convinced that their beliefs give their relative existence some worth and value and purpose and meaning and direction and power and control.
To see the actual effects of one's beliefs, to be able to look back objectively and to realize that every destructive and insane act was based in one or more beliefs, is to ease the transition away from belief-based ignorance and belief-based insanity and to pave the way for being free of living under the influence of "their" ideas and concepts (beliefs) which drive persons in ways that have not proven to be to their benefit at all - relatively speaking.
The transcendent (re-purified, unblocked) consciousness gives no credibility to concepts or ideas or attitudes (i.e., beliefs). It understands the unicity; conversely, the conceptual consciousness erroneously accepts beliefs and takes the perceived multiplicity to be real.
The transcendent consciousness, being free of delusion and illusion, allows for the abidance as the Absolute. Then, even the concepts offered by Advaitins will have been transcended.
Years and years of the accumulated mental and emotional and spiritual garbage of the culture can be tossed . . . and tossed without concern, without dread, without any sense of loss. (Later, it will be realized that it wasn’t even tossed because there is no “tosser.”)
The garbage actually just faded away after its value was finally questioned and seen to be worthless as a result of its senseless content. Yet note how much the ego-defense mechanism of arrogance (which protects the illusory “I”) hates any suggestion that would devalue all of the knowledge—all of the learned ignorance—which has been accumulated throughout a relative existence and stored in what is called a “mind.”
The books offered here provide pointers that - in the end - are nothing more than thorns that can be used to remove thorns, scalpels that can excise the cancerous, Ultimate Sickness within the "mind" wherein the main problem of humankind is centered.
Value the conceptualized content of "the mind" and persons will be attracted to the contents of "their contaminated minds" and will then attach firmly to all of the bastardized content of "their minds."
A house cannot begin to be refreshed until one takes out ALL of the garbage, and the space which houses the consciousness cannot be refreshed - that is, restored to sanity - unless all of the garbage in the "mind" is removed.
And only if all of the garbage is removed can peace and harmony and happiness manifest and fill that newly-re-purified space.
Such is the sane course of action regarding garbage. Only the arrogance of ego-states, which are revealed via the talk generated by conceptualized consciousness, would inspire efforts to try to give value and meaning to the garbage of cultures and dogma and movements and "-ism's."
The consideration is that you let fade away all of the garbage—all of the concepts and beliefs and learned ignorance—and be free of the effects of the concepts-and-beliefs-laden consciousness; then you'll merely witness the AS IF living as it happens, without attachment.
Yet that AS IF living can happen only after the body and “mind” and the last of any assumed roles all fade away. Therein lies the challenge since the body and "mind" and personality are the very illusions which take the consciousness and "the mind" to be so worthwhile.
So what must a seeker be alert to as he / she listens for the re-purified consciousness to speak? Each must develop a detector that can differentiate between (a) that which emanates from the transcendent consciousness as opposed to (b) what is heard when the concept-and-belief burdened and blocked consciousness engages in "mind-speak."
The sages have taught for thousands of years that what is real cannot be named, so that which is named cannot be real, and nothing is more steeped in the duality of conceptual consciousness than what one has named "my beliefs."
In the absence of blocked consciousness, there could not be any "Believer" vs. "Non-Believer" duality, and there could be no notion among "Believers" that they are better than and smarter than and holier than "Non-Believers."
There could be no impressions and no misperceived memories and no “mind” and attachment to "doing things a certain way because they have always been done"; there could be no learned ignorance and there could be no mental intoxication or emotional intoxication or spiritual intoxication. There could be nothing unnatural, and there could be nothing considered “supernatural.”
There could be no assumed personas so there could be neither ego nor egotism. There would be no thinking, so there would most assuredly be no magical thinking of the type that assigns "supernatural cause" to naturally-occurring events. There could be no attachment to chaos or to trying to control.
What could be, instead, is peace and harmony and happiness and stability.
To be continued
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