TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
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To review:
The discussion at this point in the series is now focusing on "The Most Influential Obstacles Of All" which have come via dreamed up myths and superstitions and via "religious" and / or "spiritual" sources, including religious and / or spiritual thoughts, ideas, concepts, notions, views, theories, inklings, perceptions, a.k.a., "beliefs."
Recall the man who approached me after a talk and said, "I was abused as a child by a priest. I've done years of work to try to get beyond that, but where I am today is, I still cringe when people start talking religion to me. So my question is, have you found a way to guide people to realization and freedom without their having to buy into the dogma you talk about?"
Moreover, look at the fact that the popular venues where seekers seek (or the popular venues where people go who are convinced that they have never had to seek because their parents hooked them up with those venues and taught them that their particular venue was the only one where truth was taught) and see that they have a 5000+-year history of failing to set persons free of their distorted and delusional and freedom-blocking and independence-blocking belief systems. Then it should be clear why Maharaj eventually advised seekers to avoid those venues.
Thus, this:
REALIZING WITHOUT DOGMA, WITHOUT CONTINUOUS SPIRITUAL PRACTICES, AND WITHOUT A PREOCCUPATION WITH “THE NATURE OF REALITY AND THINGS NOUMENAL”
[Continued from yesterday]
Maharaj: "Only that person will visit this place whose virtue and sin have come to an end."
In the previous post, there was a discussion of why Maharaj cared not a whit about sin and had nothing to do with those who were occupied with defining sin; nor with those who were obsessed with identifying sinners and then judging and criticizing and ostracizing and shaming them; nor with those who were driven to punish - by mental, emotional, physical, and financial means and, yes, even by death - those who commit whatever is being defined as sin in any given culture at any given moment.
Billions who are preoccupied with sin suggest that even “thinking” about sinning is a sin. See someone you find attractive and then suddenly there manifests a thought about having sex with that man or woman or there even manifests a physical urge to commit adultery with them? That, according to those who consider themselves to be expert on sin, is exactly the same as having actually committed adultery. (The suspicion is that the thought only might feel far less satisfying than the act, but that might - as with all things dualistic - vary from one person to the next.)
Maharaj found that the beliefs held among the masses regarding sin are illogical and incongruous - those beliefs being rooted in duality and judgment and arrogance and hypocrisy and personality identification and being a source of perceived separation as well as a source of fighting and punishing and killing and warmongering.
He certainly held not one single view of sin which aligned with that held by the 97% of the people on the planet who claim to be affiliated with organized religion or by the millions who claim to be spiritual. So what was his atypical take on sin?
Maharaj: “To take appearance for reality is a grievous sin and the cause of all calamities" (“calamities” defined as “disasters, catastrophes, misfortune, and tragedies").
Of the hypocrisy mentioned above, he said:
“Discard all traditional standards. Leave them to the hypocrites. Only what liberates you from desire and fear and wrong ideas is good. As long as you worry about sin and virtue you will have no peace.”
Obviously, sin being one-half of a dualistic pairing, if the concept of sin is to be discarded then so too must the concept of virtue be discarded. The former generates guilt and shame or a sense of separation; the latter generates a plethora of false identities and their accompanying arrogance, conceit, haughtiness, pride, superciliousness, self-importance, and condescension along with a sense of being different from and better than and, therefore, a sense of feeling separate from.
Of the role that personality identification plays in the concept of sin, Maharaj said:
“Sin and virtue refer to a person only. Without a sinful or virtuous person, what is sin or virtue? At the level of the absolute there are no persons; the ocean of pure awareness is neither virtuous nor sinful. Sin and virtue are invariably relative”
and
“Why do you insist on polluting the impersonal with your ideas of sin and virtue? It just does not apply. The impersonal cannot be described in terms of good and bad. It is Being - Wisdom – Love - all absolute. Where is the scope for sin there? And virtue is only the opposite of sin.”
He added: “. . . The opposite of sin which you call ‘virtue’ is only obedience born out of fear.”
His considering hypocrisy to be insufferable (the display of which would result in one being banned from the loft) came with his understanding that neither sin nor virtue can "exist" without the other. He understood that one is forever mixed up with the other and thus “mixes up” the minds of those who believe in those dualistic concepts.
Of “sins” and “virtues” and of “Sinners” and “Saints,” he said:
“It is the mixing up the two that is so disastrous. Nothing can block you so effectively as compromise, for it shows lack of earnestness, without which nothing can be done.”
Consider the point of this exchange:
Q: “Are sin and virtue one and the same?”
M: “These are all man-made values! What are they to me? What ends in happiness is 'virtue'; what ends in sorrow is 'sin'. Both are states of mind. Mine is not a state of mind.”
Again, his counsel:
“Discard all traditional standards. Leave them to the hypocrites.”
So Maharaj understood that those who are embroiled in the sin-virtue debate and those who consider themselves to be firmly fixed in the virtue camp are the most likely to exhibit the trait of hypocrisy because hypocrisy is forever in the company of its first cousin virtue.
As always, examples and illustrations are offered:
“I am a strong Christian. I strongly believe in God, Jesus, and the Bible. I believe the fact that I’ve accepted Jesus as my savior will be my salvation. In that backroom or whatever it is when God confronts me with my sins, I do not believe any of the kills I had during the war will be among them. Everyone I shot was evil. I had good cause on every shot. They all deserved to die.”
Those are words spoken by Chris Kyle, the most lethal sniper in U.S. military history with 160 kills confirmed by his spotter. (Kyle - labeled "One of American's Greatest Heroes" - actually claimed 255 kills in Iraq, a nation that the U.S. invaded on false pretext. The lie about the number of persons he bragged about killing would prove to be only one of the many lies which he was discovered to have told.)
Several years ago, while speaking at a political rally organized by a Christian coalition, the Republican candidates who were then running for the office of the President of the United States touted their virtues while citing their "strong Christian principles" and "the role that their virtues and principles will play in their governing style":
Former Governor Rick Perry: "My faith has guided me for my entire life, and I don't suspect that's going to change.”
Former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal spoke of having hosted daylong prayer events in his state, as did Perry.
Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush said that religion has been "an organizing part of my architecture, if you will, as a person and certainly as an elected official."
Governor John Kasich said that his Catholic background pushed him to run for governor. "I got a calling, folks," he said, referring to Bible verses more than once.
Senator Ted Cruz touted his strong, religious, fundamental upbringing.
Former Senator Rick Santorum continued to tout his social conservative agenda, asserting that his Catholic beliefs have long been the guiding force behind his political beliefs and actions.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee noted that he is a Baptist minister and said that “spiritual convictions should certainly be reflected in one’s worldview, approaches to problems, and perspective.”
Yet all of those who consider themselves to be highly virtuous and who tout their unwavering commitment to Christian principles are all, 100%, in favor of capital punishment. They are all in favor of state governments and the federal government continuing to have and to exercise the right to kill citizens whom they decide should not be allowed to live. They all bow down to their top political leader who has confessed to being a sexual predator.
nor do they question any of the illogical policies being set forth by the current White House Administration which has repeatedly expressed a desire
to execute U.S. drug dealers and which is advocating for a new policy which will allow them to do exactly that, ignoring the relevant facts.
Here are some of the relevant facts being ignored.:
FACT: 64,000 people in the U.S. died from drug overdoses in 2016.
FACT: That same year, and every year, at least 112,000 people in the U.S. die from obesity.
The facts suggest that if there were truly an interest in "saving lives,"
then before going through all of the effort required for the federal government to be able to
legally kill drug dealers, twice as many lives could be saved annually by
establishing a new policy to kill waitresses and waiters and restaurant
owners and grocers.
When was the last time a waitress or waiter or
restaurant owner or grocery store owner looked at a customer who was
obviously obese and said, "Sorry, we can't serve you. It's obvious that
you've already had too much."
Waitresses and waiters and restaurant
owners and grocers are enabling people with a potentially-deadly addiction, so surely those enabling 112,000 to die annually should be killed before the ones enabling 64,000 people with a potentially-deadly addiction to die annually. Right? Or is the whole concept based in - to use Maharaj's words - "ignorance and stupidity and insanity"?
Ironically, those former candidates for the highest office in the land mentioned above claimed to always behave properly as a result of always asking this question before taking action: “What Would Jesus Do?”
Indeed. What would Jesus have done with Chris Kyle or those politicians? The answer lies in his past actions:
When Jesus witnessed hypocrites inside the temple, he picked up a whip, walked into the temple, and began beating them, driving them all out onto the street.
And what would Maharaj have done were he to have encountered those persons touting their virtuous beliefs and claiming they render them virtuous? The answer lies in his actions:
When he witnessed hypocrites and attention-seeking egomaniacs inside the loft, he tossed them out onto the 10th Lane in Khetwadi. (Those who are so critical of Maharaj for that act should actually be complimenting him for showing far more restraint than did Jesus and for being far kinder than Jesus by not using a whip on those he cast out when they disrupted the satsang sessions in the loft.)
Maharaj's point: virtue cannot manifest without sin; sin cannot manifest without virtue; and virtue cannot manifest without hypocrisy.
Of possible interest to the student of non-duality: the word “hypocrisy” is derived from the Greek term for “actor” - literally, “one who wears a mask.” In other words, someone who pretends to be what she or he is not.
What could possibly be more at the heart of non-duality than the rejection of acting, the abandonment of the habit of wearing a mask, the termination of pretending to be what one is not, halting the assumption of false identities, and bringing to an end all arrogant claims about one’s virtues?
To be continued.
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