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
who is considered to be "the Pope's personal leaker"]
"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.
REALIZING WITHOUT DOGMA, WITHOUT CONTINUOUS SPIRITUAL PRACTICES, AND WITHOUT A PREOCCUPATION WITH “THE NATURE OF REALITY AND THINGS NOUMENAL”
[PART TWO OF INTERVIEW SHARED YESTERDAY, TODAY INCLUDING MAHARAJ'S TAKE OF SOME OF THE POINTERS OFFERED THEREIN]
The Huffington Post news site offered an interview with psychologist Dr. Priscilla Dass-Brailsford – entitled "A Psychologist's Explanation of Why Racism Persists in America" - in which she pointed to some of the same mind-rooted sources of duality and arrogance and chaos (which Maharaj had set forth decades earlier and which are pointed to here nowadays) in order to explain what happens when such phenomena are at play.
Though the psychologist never mentions non-duality specifically, her present-day observations in many cases adumbrate the non-dual pointers of Maharaj which are as relevant today to the topic she is discussing as they were forty years ago when he first offered them.
Consider some of the parallels between Maharaj’s earlier pointers and what she suggests in the article:
Questioner: What types of psychological factors give rise to racist beliefs and behaviors?
Dass-Brailsford: Racism has to do with thinking of oneself as being different from other people.
Maharaj on “blind beliefs”:
“Blind beliefs . . . pollute and dull the psyche.”
Maharaj on “different from”:
“There is nothing which is different from me.”
“You are not different from others.”
“There is no chaos in the world, except the chaos which your mind creates. It is self-created in the sense that at its very centre is the false idea of oneself as a thing different and separate from other things. In reality you are not a thing, nor separate.”
“This is your last illusion that you are a jnani, that you are different from, and superior to, the common man. Again you identify yourself with your mind, in this case a well-behaved and in every way an exemplary mind. As long as you see the least difference, you are a stranger to reality.”
“You are in no way different from me, only you do not know it.”
Dass-Brailsford: Racists see others as being less than, and think of themselves as being superior. Just as you would have attitudes about anything -- about poor people, for example, or immigrants -- you have to think about where those attitudes began and how they developed. Was it environmental? Was it upbringing? Was the person born that way? So, there's the age-old debate about nature versus nurture here.
Maharaj on “Culture”:
"If you seek reality you must set yourself free of all backgrounds, of all cultures, of all patterns of thinking and feeling."
Maharaj on “environment”:
“The causes of perversity are also natural -- heredity, environment and so on.”
Maharaj on “superior”:
“Because you imagine differences, you go here and there in search of ‘superior’ people”
and
“Intellectual arrogance pollutes and dulls the psyche”
and
"Above all, one must not make judgments of inferiority or superiority."
Maharaj on “race” and “self” / “self-centeredness / selfishness”:
“The ultimate in selfishness is to care only for the protection, preservation and multiplication of one's own body. By body I mean all that is related to your name and shape -- your family, tribe, country, race, etc. To be attached to one's name and shape is selfishness.”
“Your interest in others is egoistic, self-concerned, self-oriented. You are not interested in others as persons, but only as far as they enrich or ennoble your own image of yourself.”
Q.: Can you elaborate on some of the ways that a community or society can foster and perpetuate racism?
Dass-Brailsford: If you grow up in an environment where people think white people are superior to people of color, you begin to believe in it. And when your whole system around you is constructed in a way that supports that belief, you will begin to think that you are superior.
Maharaj on “beliefs”:
“The more earnest you are, the less belief you need.”
‘To destroy the false, you must question your most inveterate beliefs.”
“Go forth, unburdened with ideas and beliefs.”
And, again, on “culture” and “environment”:
“If you seek reality you must set yourself free of all backgrounds, of all cultures, of all patterns of thinking and feeling.”
“The causes of perversity are also natural -- heredity, environment and so on.”
Dass-Brailsford: South Africa is a classic example: When you look at the country's history, everything was divided, all of the institutions. The church actually supported racism -- the white church there (the Dutch reform church) actually believed that black people were inferior and white people had to rescue and take care of them. If you grow up in an environment where people think that white people are superior to people of color, you begin to believe in it. That's how a belief gets constructed -- by the social environment you live in, the schools you attend, your church, your families, your neighbors. All of that.
Again: “If you seek reality you must set yourself free of all backgrounds, of all cultures, of all patterns of thinking and feeling.”
Q.” What can learn from the example of South Africa, both in terms of how racist attitudes are created and how they can be overcome?
Dass-Brailsford: In the South African apartheid, a racially motivated system of government affected the lives of all citizens. Blacks were seen as inferior and whites as superior; there were severe penalties to be paid by anyone who disagreed with this. We all know this through South Africa’s most famous prisoner, Nelson Mandela. Segregation was entrenched in the places people lived, in the schools they attended, the beaches and parks they could visit and so on. White children raised in such an atmosphere cannot help but hold racist attitudes of white superiority and black marginalization.
Again, "Envies and anger . . . pollute and dull the psyche."
Dass-Brailsford: After apartheid ended, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission helped acknowledge the trauma of apartheid for many black survivors and their families. It is a reconciliation that has not occurred in this country after the trauma of slavery and the Native American genocide.
Q.: Studies have shown that many people have subtle, or implicit, racial biases that they're completely unaware of. Are racial biases often unconscious? How do these unconscious biases over time develop into hateful beliefs and actions?
Dass-Brailsford: Implicit biases are when you're not aware that you have a race bias. You behave in a discriminatory way without realizing that you have racist values. That occurs a lot in the medical profession, for example -- physicians don't realize that they're treating some patients differently to others based on race and often based on class as well.
Maharaj on “discrimination”:
“When the discriminative mind comes into being and creates distinctions, pleasure and pain arise.”
Dass-Brailsford: Again, you develop attitudes and stereotypes from socialization. Here's a common example: An older woman is walking down the road and she sees a black man approaching. She holds her purse tighter thinking that it's going to be snatched. Research has found that both black and white people often behave in this way because of our socialization. It's because of what the media says about young black men being thieves and robbers and bag-snatchers. We all tend to behave in that way based on the socialization.
Maharaj on “desires and fears”:
“Desires and fears . . . pollute and dull the psyche.”
Q.: Do hate crimes like the Charleston shooting tend to beget more hate crimes?
Dass-Brailsford: Sometimes, yes. Now there are more churches that have been burned. When there's a hate crime like this, sometimes it can escalate issues because people retreat into their separate camps. People who are racist become more racist, because something they believe in is threatened.
Maharaj understood that anger most often arises when an ego-state feels threatened.
Again: “Envies and anger . . . pollute and dull the psyche.”
Dass-Brailsford: On the other hand, incidents like this can actually bring about positive change. Removing the Confederate flag is a positive development. I would assume that as more positive outcomes develop, people will need to hold on to their racist values more strongly, and will become even more protective of their belief systems. You see this in the Muslim world: as the U.S. became stronger about trying to put down al Qaeda, the Muslim world became stronger about fighting to hold onto their values.
Q.: What psychological toll does racism take on both its victims?
Dass-Brailsford: People get depressed and they get afraid, fearful and anxious. It can come up physically with high blood pressure and heart disease. There are studies being done on how even sleep is affected by racial inequality, because racism keeps victimized people from being able to settle down. They are always hypervigilant because someone or something in the environment is going to threaten them based on their race. They are fearful all the time.
Again, Maharaj on “desires and fears”:
“Desires and fears . . . pollute and dull the psyche.”
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 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"
and
"There is no hell."
