TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
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CONSIDER:
"Heaven and hell are not geographic places but are states of mind, nothing more than concepts dreamed up by men."
-- Pope John Paul II
"There is no hell."
--Pope Francis, the current pope [in an interview with journalist Eugenio Scalfari]
"No one shall ever see 'the kingdom of heaven.' It is within"
and
"Heaven and earth shall fade away."
--Yeshu'a (Jesus)
Here, with those who are still driven to talk about "God," the "Son of God," the "Holy Spirit," "Buddha," "Krishna," etc., etc., etc., the invitation to them is to view those as verbs, not nouns. See the end of the post for the full meaning and implications of that.
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
Last month, there was a trip to the office of a cardiologist for a battery of heart tests. The doctor spent eleven years in universities during his initial training process. He spent an additional four years of on-job training and has received additional training during 3-4 week periods for the past thirty years.
His record is clean, but even with all of that training, many doctors still make mistakes. In the U.S. alone, 200,000-350,000 people are killed annually in hospitals as a result of physicians' mistakes.
Yet have you noticed how many people with no education and no training at all are self-appointed, self-identified medical experts and hand out medical advice freely (as if their belief that they know it all has even a shred of truth to support it, though it does not)?
The same applies with non-duality. Maharaj received training from many before meeting the one whom he would identify as his guru and receiving his tutelage. Yet all of that training and study and tutelage was for naught as he eventually abandoned all he had been taught and began offering what he came to understand by way of his on-the-job training.
To review, after years of trying to treat the Ultimate Sickness, he eventually understood the Sickness for what it is, and for what it is not. This is what he came to see:
It is not a “sickness of the soul” or a “sickness of the spirit”; it is not a sickness that is centered “somewhere in a human body, more specifically, in an area somewhere in the vicinity of the heart”; it is not a sickness that results from “a dogma-deficiency” (but actually seems to flourish in an environment of “excess dogma”); its symptoms can be aggravated by the egotism that accompanies the assignment or assumption of “beyond the phenomenal, spiritual, Noumenal personas”; it is a mental sickness; and it is centered in the mind.
Whether dealing with cardiological issues or Ultimate Sickness issues, if one is not combining what has come via experience and from observing what works and what does not work, then one can never offer the most effective treatment plan for what is really ailing the persons being dealt with. Moreover, if the roots of an illness are not understood, then an effective treatment plan cannot be formulated.
See, every human – if born without serious brain effects – will initially have a sense of the Oneness. A child does not see itself as being separate from its mother when it puts a face to the voice it was hearing while in the womb. (By week sixteen of a pregnancy, a developing child can begin hearing voices. By week twenty-four, a developing child will turn its head toward a voice it hears from without.)
It is not until about the age of 24 months that children begin to discover all of the parts of their bodies and begin focusing on “self” rather than on others. With that comes the development a sense of separation, as if this is seen: “Hey, wait a minute. I am not her. I am not at one with her and I am not a part of her. I am something separate and apart from. I am ‘me’.”
When the focus turns from the sense of Oneness, and the child focuses only on itself, that is called “The Terrible Two’s.” (If that continues, then an adult partner someday may well conclude that the same kind of narcissism and self-focus and self-concern of a mate seems pretty “terrible” as well.)
To understand the proper means for treating
the Ultimate Sickness, one must see what Maharaj eventually saw: the Sickness is not a result of something having been taken away that left a person Sick; instead the Sickness is a result of something having been added which left a person Sick. And what is added? Blockages. Blockages which prevent the seeing of what was originally seen.
Blockages which prevent conscious contact with the original understanding of the unicity. And how were those blockages added? Via programming, conditioning, acculturation, domestication, brainwashing, and indoctrination, leading to persons suffering from what Maharaj identified as three of the key symptoms of the Sickness: “ignorance, stupidity, and insanity.”
So why did Maharaj abandon the use of a religious / non-dual version of the Ultimate Medicine? If beliefs which were added have caused the Sickness, then what possible good can it do to add more beliefs, especially beliefs about thousands of gods and goddesses? Or beliefs about a god who supposedly loves you unconditionally but who will also cast you into the fires of a hell where you will suffer for eternity?
Of beliefs about a dictator named Xenu from another planet who, some 75 million years ago, brought billions of his people to earth, stacked them around volcanoes, and killed them with hydrogen bombs and there being a religion founded on that piece of fiction which tells people that the immortal spirits of these aliens now adhere to humans and are the cause of all “spiritual harm”?
And what sense does it make to tell persons who might otherwise abide naturally that they should abide unnaturally or supernaturally and should abandon their identities (except they should also find their Supreme Identity)?
And what sense does it make to tell people that they should join a religion based in a tale about a prophet named Moron - sorry, Moroni - who buried a history of his people written on “gold plates”; that as an angel, he visited 17-year-old Joseph Smith in his bedroom; that he told Smith where the plates were buried (just 3 miles south of where Smith lived); and that Smith was granted the right to marry as many women as he chooses (up to 33 and possibly as many as 48);
that (as in the ancient Jewish writings) “dark skin is a sign of god’s curse but white skin a sign of god’s blessing” (a notion that shooter Dylann Roof and many in his culture believe); that “Native Americans are descendants of ancient Israelites; that Jesus visited the Native Americans after he was crucified; and that women cannot enter heaven unless married to a Mormon man who gives them a secret name which they’ll need in order for their husband to be able to pull them through a slit in a veil and into heaven.
Need more examples? Pick any “faith” and study its teachings and you’ll find all the examples you need of the fact that what religions add do not eliminate - but actually contribute to - the propensity of global “ignorance and stupidity and insanity.” So Maharaj gave up any and every notion that dogma can be a component of the Ultimate Medicine.
(The most revealing information which offers Maharaj's most open and frank and totally unrestricted views on a wide variety of topics come by way of his words which were never published. His uncensored words as reported by friends and acquaintances, words which he shared with them in the form of off-the-record remarks, are his most candid. Uncensored? Some were censored? Yes.
His translators and editors culled out many of his comments and did not allow them to be published, including the profanities he occasionally used to pepper his talks and to emphasize certain points. Regarding Maharaj's take on religion, this account - received from a site visitor who had access to the comments shared by a man whose flat Maharaj had once visited - is quite revealing:
The man visited by Maharaj: "He came into my flat and looked at all of the pictures of gods and deities which I had framed and which I was displaying on my walls and on tables. He looked at them and then said the following":
Maharaj: "Very nice, but don't you think that tomorrow you should collect them all and put them into the sea?!")
Next, why did Maharaj begin advising people to stop reading the book I AM THAT and to “give up spirituality”? Spirituality also adds. It does not remove all ideas and notions and concepts (a.k.a., beliefs) but increases the number of beliefs / blockages.
Third, why did he abandon Self-Inquiry and begin telling people that what is understood via “self-inquiry” is enough (namely, understanding all that you are not, even if you never come to know “Who You Are” or find the "Supreme Self”)? More addition when total subtraction is called for, along with understanding that there is no who-ness and there is no WHO-ness.
See, within all, there is that original sense of the Oneness. By adding concepts / beliefs, that sense is covered up or blocked - via programming, conditioning, acculturation, domestication, brainwashing, and indoctrination – and replaced with a false sense of different-from-ment and better-than-ment. It is the latter which allows an ignorance-and-prejudice-spreading culture to produce a fellow like Dylann Roof who will walk into a church and shot nine people because they have “dark skin.”
If it is blockages and concepts and beliefs which are at the root of the Sickness, then the last thing anyone with the Sickness needs is the addition of more blockages and concepts and beliefs.
Of the nine basic personality types, it is the Type Four that has a propensity for questioning; for accepting nothing that is based only in "blind faith”; for rebelling against the nonsense in one’s culture; for casting aside the imposed blockages; and for eliminating the blockages which – once discarded – allow the original sense of the unicity to return to awareness.
Maharaj had that propensity. Andy had that propensity. That propensity was here at the young age of 5 or 6 (and that questioning and refusal to believe lead to the corporal punishment administered most Sundays from a father who was incensed that I would question the teachings which Ms. Myrtle was trying to teach in Sunday School).
And Mary Elizabeth Frye had that innate understanding as well. No one had to lead her through Self-Inquiry or religious teachings or spiritual exercises in order for her to write the following after a woman during the years of WWII shared that the Nazis had killed her Jewish mother and after the woman expressed how upset she was that she’d never be able to go to her mother’s grave and weep:
Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.
And all have that Type Four personality within, to one degree or another. All with a normally-functioning brain have within that “inner resource” or that “inner guru” which can be accessed to work around the blockages and to tap once again into the inkling of the original truth that was sensed but that has since been blocked.
That does not require the addition of more dogma; that does not require that all sorts of spiritual exercises be completed on a daily basis; that does not – according to Maharaj – require finding “the SELF” or “the Supreme Self.” To the contrary, it requires de-accumulation; it requires being rid of all concepts and beliefs and reaching a state of zero concepts; it requires being un-taught; it requires un-learning. It does not require re-programming but calls for de-programming.
All of the methods Maharaj tried in conjunction with a non-dual blend, he abandoned. Why? They all add more. They all encourage accumulation. And they add more - not less – when it should be clear that it is less that is required in order to treat the Ultimate Sickness.
To be continued.
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Here, with those who are still driven to talk about "God," the "Son of God," the "Holy Spirit," "Buddha," "Krishna," etc., etc., etc., the invitation to them is to view those 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 (that narcissism evidenced by the fact that you think you are "godly").
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."
Yeshu'a (Jesus) and Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis were all spot on:
"No one shall ever see 'the kingdom of heaven.' It is within" and "Heaven and earth shall fade away."
and
"Heaven and hell are not geographic places but are states of mind, nothing more than concepts dreamed up by men."
