TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
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Of the non-dual understanding which Maharaj offered, what might explain why he initially estimated that "only 1 out of 100,000 will ever get this" but later said that "only 1 out of 1,000,000 will ever get this" and eventually - after decades of working with seekers - modified that guesstimate to "1 out of 10,000,000"?
Consider the enormity of the obstacles which one who works for 20 or 40 or 80 years with seekers of the non-dual understanding will witness:
Obstacle #5: "AN AFFINITY AMONG THE MASSES FOR AN ATTACHMENT TO THE SYMPTOMS OF THE ULTIMATE SICKNESS"
Education in the U.S. and in other nations as well has often been a low priority. Governmental support for education on the local and state and federal levels have always been minimal. Teacher pay has been, and is, minimal. In many parts of the country, an actual anti-education, anti-intellectual sentiment has been firmly held - typically among the uneducated, of course.
Universities have long been held in disdain by the most conservative members of American society, the belief being that "those liberals working in their lofty ivory towers don't have a clue about what is really happening and what really should be taught, and all they do is put liberal, anti-God thoughts in the minds of our children. All they want to do is reprogram our kids to give up all the values we taught them."
As for those who do go to college, John Wilson's research and investigation into the political divide in the U.S. - and in other nations as well - revealed that "the most disturbing examples of 'thought policing' on college campuses have come from the right."
He said: "The image of the college campus as a gulag of left-wing totalitarianism is false, created largely through the exaggeration of deceptive stories by conservatives who hypocritically seek to silence their political opponents."
Jason Blakely found evidence in the Republican Party's new tax bill of the way that "it marks the culmination of a decades-long renouncement of higher education by portions of the American conservative movement."
He cites a number of college presidents and leaders who studied the Republicans' 2017 bill and concluded "that the tax bill appears to be symptomatic of the GOP’s growing disillusionment with higher education" and concluded that "a commonplace of the culture war is that the Republican Party and the American right consistently position themselves against the universities."
In multiple ways, the bill reduces the money which universities will have starting in 2018, and students will also be deprived of much of the funding assistance which they had qualified for in the past.
Last year, the collective student loan burden in the United States passed the one trillion dollar mark, and students are being charged an interest rate on their debt which far exceeds the interest rate of other consumer debt.
From 2006 to 2013, Direct Unsubsidized Student Loans carried a rate of 6.8% for both graduate and undergraduate students. By contrast, in 2013, a student with a good credit score could receive a loan for a new car with a rate of 3.2%. In other words, the government was charging students more than twice as much for loans for an education as financial institutions were charging for loans for a new car.
Also last year, President Trump's Education Secretary Betsy DeVos revoked Obama administration guidelines which increased consumer protections in student loan servicing. Two dozen state attorneys general complained - to no avail - that “rolling back essential protections imperils millions of student loan borrowers and families" and urged her to reconsider immediately. They were ignored.
THE SCORE CURRENTLY:
Money lenders and government: 1
Students: 0
or, truth be told,
Money lenders and government: $Trillions
Students: (Even less than) $0
So students attending college are screwed going in by being charged unjustifiably-high loan rates and by having less government loan and grant accessibility and are then screwed afterwards as money lenders defraud them by increasing their loan amount by adding non-contractual hidden charges and arbitrary fees to their loan totals. And now the students be gouged financially have little or no right to challenge the practice.
By word and deed, it is obvious that along the line of the 50-50 political divide in the U.S., nearly one-half of the population and more than one-half of the local and state and federal political leaders are continuing the anti-education, anti-intellectual crusade which has long been led by the Right.
In survey results released on 11 July 2017, more than half of Republicans said that colleges have a negative impact on the U.S.
In 2008 Obama said of the persons in that segment of the population, "It's like these guys take pride in being ignorant." Indeed.
Maharaj noted that three of the key symptoms of the Ultimate Sickness are "ignorance, stupidity, and insanity." It is obvious to any impartial observer that in the U.S. and many other nations, there does exist a deeply-embedded and strong-held affinity among 50% or more of the masses to cling to the attachment which many have to the Ultimate Sickness and to the ignorance and stupidity and insanity which continues to drive those persons and their agendas.
Obstacle #6: "THE IGNORANCE / MAGICAL THINKING / ANTI-SCIENCE PARADIGM"
"Science will someday advance to the point that it will confirm the validity of the non-dual teachings."
--Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
In England and much of Western Europe during the Middle Ages (or during "The Medieval Period" and "The Dark Ages" lasting roughly from the end of the 5th century through the late 1400's) physicians and surgeons were considered by religious leaders of that day to be pariahs - persons who should be exiled or killed.
Was that view based in the often barbaric practices of many physicians, including for a long period of time the popular method of treating most illnesses with bleeding? No, not at all. (It was the priests who were conducting barbaric rites of exorcisms, the killing of those healers accused of being witches, etc.) No, the issue was egotism-based territorialism: the priests thought that healing should be left in the hands of God and in the hands of God's representatives on earth, that is, in the hands of the clergy.
So much did those ordained by the Church despise anyone outside of religion who offered healing services that churches not only denied non-church-affiliated healers the right to participate in church activities but also excommunicated them and refused them the right to be buried in the churches' "holy ground." In many more extreme instances, the church held a "court-like" hearing and found non-religious healers brought before their court to be heretics, apostates, atheists, secularists, and blasphemers. Many of those were sentenced to death.
An internet source offered the following:
In the 19th century, the "conflict thesis" emerged to propose an intrinsic conflict or conflicts between the Church and science. The original historical usage of the term asserted that the Church has been in perpetual opposition to science. Later uses of the term denote the Church's epistemological opposition to science. The thesis interprets the relationship between the Church and science as inevitably leading to public hostility when religion aggressively challenges new scientific ideas as in "the Galileo Affair."
An alternative criticism is that the Church opposed particular scientific discoveries that it felt challenged its authority and power – particularly through the Reformation and on through the Enlightenment. This thesis shifts the emphasis away from the perception of the fundamental incompatibility of religion per se and science-in-general to a critique of the structural reasons for the resistance of the Church as a political organization.
In terms of "the science vs. dogma debate," when persons are programmed to believe that they will be punished for eternity if they accept any scientific fact which challenges the beliefs which they have been taught by their religious leaders, science and facts will usually lose and ignorance and fiction and lies and nonsense will almost always win.
And with 97%+ being programmed to accept religious and / or spiritual teachings without questioning and with blind faith instead, that is quite an obstacle for anyone seeking the non-dual understanding.
To be continued.
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