TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
[See the offer following this post for details on how you can watch a video which includes a discussion of all seven of the steps on the path as used by Maharaj]
THE RATIONALE FOR CHOOSING SCIENTIFIC FACTS OVER THE EMOTIONAL INTOXICATION GENERATED BY RELIGIOUS / SPIRITUAL FANATICISM:
While Religion and Science Are Not Always Incompatible, Logic and Reason and Wisdom Make Clear That If a Choice Between The Two Is To Be Made, Only One Choice Is the Sane Option
Here, "God," the "Son of God," the "Holy Spirit," "Buddha," "Krishna," etc., etc., etc.: are viewed as verbs, not nouns. See the end of the post for the full meaning and implications of that.
EDITOR’S INTERVIEW (Part Three) from the non-duality-based novel, The Twice-Stolen Necklace Murders
[NOTE: In the interview, the terms "True or Real Self" refer not to a "pure witness" but to "pure witnessing" or to authenticity and clarity as opposed to any sense of "self-ness" or "you-ness." At the most, what is real during the manifestation are the elements which form a space or body in which - among humans and non-humans "beings" - both air and conscious-energy can circulate. Note, too, that while Maharaj and I endorsed Self-Inquiry at one point, later self-inquiry - and finding via that process all that one is not - is now deemed to be enough. The following interview took place 15 years ago while still using the same seven-step process which Maharaj used (instead of the four-step approach used nowadays which Maharaj also shifted to in his later period). For current perspectives, newer readings and posts on this site provide the different perspective which came to Maharaj and to me via never understandings.]
[Continued from yesterday]
E.: I know that modern science is confirming this teaching, as in the new revelations regarding the ‘Field of Consciousness.’ But is this understanding compatible with the newest teachings in physics, such as the ‘strings theory’?
K.: Absolutely. My Teacher said decades ago that science would one day catch up with the ancients’ understanding and prove that the teachings are fact. Such is happening. Since strings are the lowest common denominator of EVERYTHING, smaller than atoms, smaller than electrons, smaller than the mass of protons and neutrons at the core of electrons, then the understanding of the science of strings shows us that the only thing which makes you appear to be different from me—or from a piano, or from a tree—is the vibrational pattern of the strings. And since the strings are simply energy in movement, and since the strings know automatically what to do when they are manifested in a human as opposed to in a piano as opposed to in a tree, then the teaching of strings proves this Understanding, scientifically. We are consciousness-energy. We are all THAT, all the same, all one, with only appearances leading us to believe we are separate or different. We are not. Physics now proves that we are THAT, that We Are All One. We ARE the strings, so to speak. Use whatever name you choose to refer to that one ‘thing’ from which all is composed when manifest. More recently, the strings theory had been modified by some who now claim that the ‘sparticle’ might be even more basic than the string. No matter. What is Real is whatever that most basic, singular, non-dual ‘thing’ is, period. Now call That what you want, the truth is that Easterners have known for about 40,000 years that everything in the universe that is manifested or not is nothing more nor less than a manifestation or not-manifestation of That, of the one True That-ness. Call it ‘strings’ or ‘That’ or ‘sparticle’ or ‘energy with consciousness.’ That is All, and That is All there Is.
E.: I wonder if it sounds to the readers the way it sounds to me—that if a person follows this plan to its end, he becomes robotic as a result of following your suggestion to give up emotions. Like, forgive me, your acceptance around Rob, for example.
K.: If so, let’s correct that misconception by understanding the difference in emotions and feelings. Emotions are experienced only by ego-states, by the false selves, and always result in a reaction to something which triggers another reaction to that reaction, and then a reaction to that reaction. The final result is emotional intoxication and insane behavior. Abandoning the false selves causes the loss of nothing except delusion, insanity, and emotional intoxication. Firmly fixed in the True Identity, one lives AS IF and experiences the gamut of true feelings. I might feel anger or I might feel joy. Yet, as the eagle in the vision, I am the witness. I see the anger rise; I see the anger subside; I feel the joy when it comes; I see the joy as it goes. But I do not react; therefore, I avoid a chain reaction of events that would leave me intoxicated or insane if I were living in an ego-state and being jerked about by emotional reactions. I can feel anything I feel around Rob, and I do. Yet I do not become trapped in a state of emotional intoxication around Rob, for that debilitates and paralyzes. I see so many who are not feeling what they feel over the loss of someone they love but who are experiencing the emotions of an ego-state identity around that perceived loss. They are paralyzed, crippled, basically, dead. At best, they are ‘Night-of-the-Living-Dead’ creatures.
E.: Fair enough. That’s a key distinction. Thank you. Next, you mentioned earlier the eagle from your vision. How does your vision fit into all this understanding you came to?
K.: The vision provided the key. Think back over the details of the vision and see that I first experienced separation from the body after going through the arch, leaving the physical world behind and entering into the mental world—something like a religious experience. But the mental world is an illusion of the thinking mind. To separate from that falsehood, I transitioned into the spiritual realm by entering into the raven—being at one with the natural. But the raven is the symbol of death. What has to die? Even the spiritual role, the spiritual ego-state has to be given up.
How did that happen? By becoming the gull, the bird of ignorance. By having all knowledge washed away in the vision, by being pure again, by having the impurities of programming and human ‘knowledge’ washed away during the ‘baptismal’ rite in the ocean. The gull is like the state of ‘child ignorance.’ The child early on only senses that it IS, knows the ‘I Am’ sensation, but has not yet been polluted with the additives like ‘I am a boy,’ ‘I am a good boy or a bad boy,’
‘I am a teen,’ ‘I am a man,’ ‘a husband,’ etc. Think back to ‘the employee’ example earlier. Then, transitioning into the eagle, what is left is the witness. The eagle simply witnesses and sees the gull state, the false spiritual state, the false religious-mental state, and the falseness of the body as one’s True Identity. Then, the eagle turns, and is drawn into the field of consciousness. The subtle body remains for a time and can witness it all—just as people have reported that they hovered above their body after ‘death’—but then the subtle body enters into the light, the field of energy-consciousness, and is truly At-One in the Dome of Light. The breath is gone; the physical body is gone; the subtle body finally dissolves; and the energy that can neither be created nor destroyed remains. It IS, but it has no vehicle, no manifest form, no way to know that it IS.
Now, to understand how ‘you’ got ‘here,’ simply see that the process is cyclical and imagine what the reverse of the steps in the vision looks like: energy manifests, and the child only witnesses but knows nothing. Later, it enters the child ignorance state for a time; then it’s programmed to think it’s some spiritual gift from the gods or a god; then it is programmed with mind stuff and religion; then it’s told it is the body and all the roles that bodies play. And by that time, humans thusly programmed have become so far removed from knowing who they Really Are, many will never see the stages that were in the vision, will never know the various stages they went through to get ‘here’ and to believing what they believe.
Asleep, they do not question their ideas, nor their false emotions, nor their loss of contact with true feelings, nor the falseness of ‘their’ beliefs or dogma or attitudes. They walk around in their bodies like those Night-of-the-Living-Dead creatures and never ask, never question, for they were told to have faith and told never to question, often with punishment following if they did. Imagine the effect on the billions of people who have been raised under the influence, under the influence of dogma which rewards them if they do not ever question what they are told: “You will benefit from having faith in what we tell you, and it will be to your advantage if you never question what you are told here by us. And if you do not have such faith, you will burn and suffer forever. Now, that’ll be ten percent, please; then go in peace.” Oh my gosh! Amazing!
E.: I never really saw that before. It is rather amazing, isn’t it? To another area: does one have to practice regular meditation to ‘get this’ understanding that you speak of?
K.: Meditation is misunderstood and thus misused. Some think that meditation is about humming; some think that meditation is about getting quiet in order to get into conscious contact with some god or power or force; some think that meditation is about getting guidance from some god with male appendages; some think that meditation is about seeking the quiet or some super state, like samadhi; some think that meditation is about finding a half-hour peace-state to prepare for the day’s noise and strains. It’s none of that.
Meditation is properly used to take an assignment into contemplation, into true, focused consideration. Once the falseness of all conditioning and belief and dogma is revealed, and once the True Self is then known, then meditation ends. It is a tool. When the job is done, no tool is needed. That does not mean that the quietness cannot be effective for rest and healing. It is, but it need not be structured. The gotta-work-at-resting trap can end.
Now, when the tool first begins to work, then the reverse of what most formerly perceived as the right way to meditate will start to happen: the meditation period (of say 30 minutes or an hour or a week) is no longer the ‘quiet time’; it will be the ‘noisy’ time in which the contemplation is completed or in which an exercise like arms-legs-organs is done or in which the reverse-count is done to find where you were three days before conception. How is that a reverse of the norm? You end up spending 30 minutes in the ‘noise,’ in the contemplation, and then the remainder of the day becomes your silence. The mind stops racing; the thoughts of the thinking mind stop; the working mind takes over, and you simply flow through the day, or not. Instead of 30 minutes of quiet and the remainder of the day spent in noise, the reverse becomes your norm as the meditation tool begins to work.
Eventually, you can remain in the silence, even in a crowd. Even in a crowd, you can be in the quiet, at perfect peace, and you can sense being in the Aloneness, the All-Oneness. Even with thousands around, even with thousands screaming. Then, in that state, what is to meditate? What is to seek? You suddenly understand that each being is a Creator, if manifest; you understand the meaning of ‘ye are gods’; you understand Who You Are. You understand that there is nothing that constitutes a ‘way,’ there’s nothing more to understand, there’s nothing to do, there’s nothing to concern yourself with, there’s nothing to dread about what remains ‘after’ the manifestation ends, there’s nothing to meditate upon. Finally, there is no counsel to seek, no dues to pay, no organizations or groups to join. You do not belong to anything, thus You are free. Living should not be something one must ‘work at.’ The deer simply does what is required naturally to live, and when you live naturally, then perfect peace comes . . . but only after perfect freedom comes. ‘Perfect’ means ‘whole’ or ‘complete,’ so that perfect freedom is just complete freedom, freedom from ALL dependencies—including dependency on celestial entities or mystical teachings or mythical holdovers from ignorant, superstitious times in the past.
E.: So, do you agree with other advaitic teachers, that only one in a million will ever ‘get this’?
K.: Because of the power of conditioning, the power of the ego, and the power of the defenses that most people have built to protect their dogma, their sacred cows, and their beliefs, that is probably true. My Teacher spoke of three types: wet charcoal, dry charcoal, and gunpowder. Wet charcoal will never burn and will stay the way it is until it decays; dry charcoal can burn eventually, but with much labor required. So it is with people. But those who are ready, those who finally understand once and for all that their conditioning, dogma, programming, beliefs and closed minds really are not working for them, then they can be like gunpowder. The words I speak can ignite them instantly, and can explode away their fictional beliefs and distorted thinking and can allow them to truly Realize what they are not and What They Truly Are.
E.: How much of this should the reader hang onto?
K.: The reader should hang onto none of it. That’s the entire point. What you consider in meditation, all that is concept too. My exercises, others’ teachings, their dogma, all are human-formulated-concepts. Throw out ‘my’ concepts, throw out ‘their’ concepts. Eventually, be free of it all. Get free of the indoctrination. A sane mind is one free of ideas, free of the emotional reactions we discussed earlier, and free of all beliefs. The non-dualistic message of Christ the Advaitic Teacher speaks of the dual-minded man as being insane in all ways. The sane being is not dual-minded.
The sane being is of one mind, the working mind, and is always the same. The sane mind knows the I AM and knows that I AM THAT. There is no duality, only non-duality, only oneness. And THAT cannot change. It just IS. The thinking mind is chaotic, with dual and multiple thoughts racing through it constantly; the sane, working mind is quiet, free of chaos. And mental chaos is the only ‘hell’ there is. That’s why the current pontiff says that ‘heaven and hell are not geographic places but are mental states. You are in one or the other, NOW.’
Use these exercises I offer, and any other concepts, like any throw-away item: let the exercises and concepts serve the purpose of bringing about an understanding of the differentiation in the true and the false, and then toss it all away and live simply and naturally as if. AS IF the manifest is the real but knowing ultimately that THAT is all that is Real. Know that You Are Light, I Am Light. Know that all which is believed to be observable is ‘seen’ in the flickering images of the light that plays before our eyes. It is not the Real, any more than the actors flicking across the screen of your TV are Really there. They are but images in the mind. So is all that is ‘seen.’ Be aware that the Unseen, the Unseeable, is the Real. Be done with worrying about the false images of this manifestation we call our ‘lives’ or ‘others’ or ‘self.’
Then, you’ll enjoy the present moment, the Eternal Now, as long as you are manifest. And you’ll have no expectations to meet nor any future rewards to long for nor any future punishments to spend a lifetime trying to avoid. Free of those, you are free of the control of those who dream up or pass along all those concepts that form the prison-called-the-mind that traps most people in fear, misery, depression, or all the addictive behaviors that follow those defects in an effort to try to escape them. As long as anyone tries to maintain a religious-spiritual image or role, he will be at the mercy of those who would manipulate him with religion or with spirituality. They’ll tell him that a religious person does this and a spiritual person does that, and to keep his religious or spiritual image, he’ll do what they say. Then, he’s theirs. For some, both states can serve a purpose, but both are to be transcended. They are but bridges that allow us to cross the degrees of separation. In one does not transcend those, he is vulnerable, and thus in fear, and frustrated eventually by being controlled by others. There is no freedom, and thus no peace, living in ‘their’ world with ‘their’ mind doing the driving.
E.: Sounds wonderful, the state of freedom from all that. So, what’s next for Kirk?
K.: I go where the flow takes me. Right now, the flow is taking me back to Europe, with Bird.
E.: May I assume that, in light of her last experience at the Frankfurt airport, Marie won’t be flying into Germany?
K.: Ha! You assume rightly. We’ll be flying into Milan. I have an assignment that will begin in Italy, so we’ll combine business and pleasure.
E.: Can you share any details?
K.: Well, all I know right now is that an anonymous client is paying my agency to send me into southern Italy to interview a man supposedly on his deathbed who has some information that will purportedly be of interest to many people, so I’m told. My former tour company work in Europe, which left me familiar with places and people on the Continent, has paid off to get me this cushy assignment. Ha.
E.: So that’s the business part. Now what does the pleasure part entail?
K.: Bird and I will be driving from Milan down the coast road along the western shoreline. There’s a quaint little place north of Roma called ‘Trattoria Panini.’ The last time I was there, my friend and his wife who operate it had a young son whose school team had just won a regional soccer trophy. The lad is probably in his thirties now, and I hope that we find them all in good health so that Marie can meet them. During that last visit, the son ran over the hills that separate the coast road from the sea and came back with a seafood medley netted just minutes before. They prepared a combination of fish and shrimp and other delicate sea foods which they then served in a butter-and-white-wine cream sauce over pasta. I’m been wanting that dish again for three decades, so I’ll see if that’s possible. From there, we’ll spend a few days in Roma then drive through Napoli and take the Autostrada del Sole into Reggio Calabria. Our destination is a small town outside Reggio.
E.: Think there might be a story in the making here?
K.: Ha. John and Henderson have already asked Marie to keep a journal. We’ll see what happens.
E.: Thank you, Kirk, for being willing to share your life-altering experience with our readers.
K.: You’re welcome, as if. Ha.
“The rest is silence.”—W. Shakespeare
[The sequel which picks up with the travels through Southern Italy referenced above, entitled THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF WARS, continues with the same characters and the non-dual message offered in an adventure / mystery novel format.]
To be continued.
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Here, "God," the "Son of God," the "Holy Spirit," "Buddha," "Krishna," etc., etc., etc. are viewed as verbs, not nouns.
THE EXPLANATION
If looked at as nouns, they point to illusions and are, therefore, a total waste of time to even discuss; if looked at as verbs which are resulting in certain sane but rare behaviors among humanity, then they are worthy of some attention during the relative existence.
Meaning? There are members of certain groups who say things such as "My concept of God in the past was of a weak God, an absentee God, A Santa Claus-type God, a mean, punishing, vindictive God, etc. Today, I am in close contact with a loving and caring God whom I worship and praise and glorify and give thanks to."
The reply to that usually goes like this: "If you are in contact with a God that wants to be worshipped and praised and glorified, then you're dealing with someone like yourself - a narcissist - and hanging out with narcissists will never bring an end to your narcissism. Next, in the phrase 'loving and caring God,' any supposed God that truly had her or his act together would tell you that the totally irrelevant part of that phrase is 'God' and that the only part to be focused on should be the 'loving and caring' part.
"That is, a non-narcissistic god / goddess would say, "I care not an iota about being worshipped and praised and glorified by you or anyone else. How arrogant and insecure and needy would I have to be to want that? Forget the man-made, dreamed up noun 'God' and focus on the 'God as a verb' understanding and then go forth and let loving and caring be verbs - not adjectives - and let them generate the act of love and the act of caring and let those actions manifest through you."
Pope John Paul II was spot on:
"Heaven and hell are not geographic places but are states of mind, nothing more than concepts dreamed up by men."
