TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
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To review the key pointers being discussed at this point:
The most influential obstacles of all to realizing and being free 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."
A man who was abused as a child by a priest. man approached and asked for a way "to be guided to a state of realization and freedom without their having to buy into dogma."
The popular venues where seekers seek (or don't) have a 5000+-year history of failing to set persons free of their distorted and delusional and freedom-blocking and independence-blocking belief systems. venues.
Thus it should be clear why Maharaj eventually advised seekers to avoid those, leading to this totally different option:
REALIZING WITHOUT DOGMA, WITHOUT CONTINUOUS SPIRITUAL PRACTICES, AND WITHOUT A PREOCCUPATION WITH “THE NATURE OF REALITY AND THINGS NOUMENAL”
Today, you’re invited to review the two examples offered recently and see exactly what might be revealed in terms of dualistic thinking vs. non-duality:
**One man killed his wife because she was separating from him.
**Another killed nine people in a church because they were black and he favored separation, talking often about “sparking a race war” and “wanting segregation reinstated.”
+++Some members of a group described the man who shot his wife as “a very spiritual person.”
+++Dylann Roof was described by his pastor as “a devout Christian who was baptized in the Lutheran faith, went to church camp, and worshiped regularly.”
***The nine people shot by Roof were also Christians.
***It was a pro-religious group calling itself “Aryan Nations,” whose messages of hate and white superiority have fueled violent crimes and domestic terrorism for decades, which applauded the actions of Dylann Roof.
(Only hours after Roof was arrested for shooting nine blacks at a Charleston, South Carolina church, Aryan Nations leader Morris Gulett – an ordained Church of Jesus Christ Christian Pastor - offered praise and urged others to follow Roof’s example: “We had better see much more of this type of activism if we ever expect to see our America return to it’s [sic] rightful place in the world and our children grow up in a clean safe healthy enviroment [sic],” Gulett wrote.
Other racists individually have offered support or praise for Roof in comments posted on a forum hosted by “Stormfront.” “Stormfront was established by members of the anti-black, pro-Christian Ku Klux Klan and has been identified as the world’s largest hate site. As noted yesterday, the KKK was established at the end of the U.S. Civil War in 1865 to carry on the fight against segregation after the Southern confederacy surrendered and the “official” pro-slavery war ended.)
As another example of what is at the core of the fighting and killing in the two cases cited and in cases all around the globe each day, consider the levels of pontification; the calls for rebellion again the U.S. Government; the calls by state government officials for all to refuse to recognize the law passed last Friday by the U.S. Supreme Court; and the calls by some elected officials in the U.S. Government to ignore the law.
Their objections were based on their “religious beliefs.” The issue: same-sex couples living in 75% of the fifty states in the U.S. could already marry, but those living in the remaining 25% could not. Friday, the Supreme Court gave the same rights to all.
What is the "non-dualist’s" take on all of that?
Would Maharaj, or any “non-dualist,” be pro-same-sex marriage or anti-same-sex-marriage?
Was Maharaj, or is any “non-dualist,” pro-spirituality or anti-spirituality?
Was Maharaj, or is any “non-dualist,” pro-religion or anti-religion?
Was it being anti-religious or anti-spirituality which led Maharaj to eventually turn his back on both and start prescribing a psychology / non-dual combination as the Ultimate Medicine?
Well, consider: was Thomas Edison anti-the-first-9999-incandescent-bulb-prototypes he used, or did he turn his back on them for the simple reason that they did not work?
To clarify, those pointed to with the term “Fully Realized” have reached the state endorsed by Maharaj, a state of “zero-concepts” and zero beliefs. Maharaj recommended being free of the mind completely and stated that he had no mind. If the last belief goes, so too does the mind go.
Maharaj: “We believe in so many things on hearsay. We believe in distant lands and people, in heavens and hells, in gods and goddesses, because we were told. Similarly, we were told about ourselves, our parents, name, position, duties and so on. We never cared to verify. The way to truth lies through the destruction of the false. To destroy the false, you must question your most inveterate beliefs”
and
“Go forth, unburdened with ideas and beliefs.”
Therefore, there is no one here that can be either pro-gay-marriage or anti-gay-marriage. It’s not an issue. No "Realized Advaitin" would care who marries, who does not marry, or who marries whom.
Contrary to the beliefs of some, there can also be no one here to be pro-religion or anti-religion. Religion involves dogma, and dogma is nothing more than a compilation of dreamed up concepts. Nothing about it is real, so nothing about it can be true. One might as well choose sides and be either pro-mirages or anti-mirages. All that the non-dualist has to say about it is, “I invite you to see all mirages as the mirages that they are.
If you cannot do that, you are suffering from one or more of the traits of the Ultimate Sickness which Maharaj identified as 'ignorance, stupidity and insanity.' Yet if you do not want to differentiate between that which is a mirage and that which is real - or if you do not want to differentiate between the true and the false - so be it."
Advaitin Douwe Tiemersma wrote: “There are various religions and systems of philosophy which claim to endow human life with meaning. But they suffer from certain inherent limitations. They couch into fine-sounding words their traditional beliefs and ideologies, theological or philosophical.
"Believers, however, discover the limited range of meaning and applicability of these words, sooner or later. They get disillusioned and tend to abandon the systems, in the same way as scientific theories are abandoned, when they are called in question by too much contradictory empirical data.”
Was he anti-religion, or was he simply one that was capable of differentiating the false from the true?
So one pointed to with the term “non-dualist” or with the term “fully realized” is neither “pro” nor “anti” anything. To take a stance "for" or "against" anything would just involve more duality.
All that Maharaj did - or that any “truly realized non-dual teacher" does - is what any caring, empathetic human would do: if one walking down the street sees a sinkhole and knows that other people are walking a step behind, a caring and empathetic one would stop and point out the sinkhole to those walking behind them so that those persons can also enjoy the same thing that the Realized enjoy at that moment, namely, not falling into a sinkhole.
Maharaj pointed out the mental sinkholes that people walk toward - or which they have already fallen into - and he offered a way to avoid sinkholes or to escape from the sinkholes which have already been fallen into.
Was he invested in the way that persons responded when he pointed to what he pointed to? No. Would he become upset and remain upset if persons ignored his pointing toward sinkholes? No. He was not “pro-one-response” and “anti-all-other-responses.”
He witnessed true and false, he pointed toward the truth, and then he went about his way as all other persons went about their way.
How could he have been driven even remotely by an agenda or motive or intention when he admitted that, even including those who came to the loft, only 1 out of 100000 would ever realize, later amended to 1 out of 1,000,000 and then later amended to 1 out of 10,000,000?
Yet he did remain willing to share, no matter the odds. Same here. Pointers are offered, and then seekers are left to draw their own conclusions, or not.
So what in terms of non-duality can pointed out in the examples given? The process of receiving the Ultimate Medicine involves understanding the Ultimate Sickness and its roots and symptoms.
So in the examples above, insane actions were rooted in a desire not to separate in one case and in a desire to separate in another, whether the issue was not allowing a woman to separate if she wanted to do so; or whether the issue was wanting races to separate; or whether the issue was wanting people of the same sex to separate rather than marry. All of the examples involved duality-based thoughts and beliefs dealing with separation and who should or should not mix with whom.
So, in all cases, the illusion of “separate from” was at play.
In all cases, a sense of different-from-ment and a sense of better-than-ment were at play.
In all cases, people trapped in dualistic thinking patterns were being driven by beliefs – beliefs about right and wrong. As one non-dualist was heard to say, “The belief that something is 'wrong' is the fire under the ass of humanity.”
Or “the bug up humanity’s ass.”
Or “the stick up humanity’s ass.”
So these types of dualistic thoughts and beliefs are now commonplace:
“It is wrong for you to want to leave me, though I am abusing drugs and you and our children.”
"It is wrong for whites to have to co-exist alongside blacks.”
“It is wrong for two people of the same sex to love each other and marry.”
“It will be wrong if more white people don’t start killing black people.”
“It is wrong if people are not Christians.”
“It is wrong if white Christians do not kill black Christians.”
Do you see that this is not about blacks and whites; or about Christians and non-Christians; or about gays and straights; or about who can marry whom and who cannot; or about right and wrong; or about good and evil; or about Sunnis and Shias; or about “us vs. them"; or about any other dualistic pairings?
This is about “ignorance and stupidity and insanity,” about seeing “ignorance and stupidity and insanity,” and about turning:
Maharaj: “Turn within.”
Stop looking without for the source of displeasure and misery and suffering. Look within. See all sinkholes. Turn. Then, develop a sense of empathy and the unicity to replace the false sense of separation that is taught via programming, conditioning, acculturation, domestication, brainwashing, and indoctrination.
Maharaj: “You have to turn away from the world and go within, until the inner and the outer merge and you can go beyond the conditioned, whether inner or outer.”
See, and then turn away from, the warped programming; from the bizarre conditioning; from all that your culture has taught; from all that your parents and friends and relatives and leaders have taught; from all of the brainwashing you‘ve been exposed to both inside and outside the home; and from all of the indoctrination which you have been exposed to.
Maharaj: “Why not turn away from the experience to the experiencer and realise the full import of the only true statement you can make: 'I am'?”
Not “I am a Christian.” Not “I am a white.” Not “I am a black.” Not “I am right.” Not “You are wrong.” Not “I am a Super Husband and you must stay with me.” Not "I am a Super Wife but you're not a Super Husband so you're not good enough for me." Not “I am a gay person.” Not “I am a straight person.” Not “I am the one who gets to decide who lives and who dies.” Not “I am a member of a super race.” Not “You are a member of an inferior race.”
Of course, all of that is just a suggestion, just an invitation, to be accepted . . . or not.
To be continued.
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