TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
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TO REVIEW:
"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,
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 THREE OF INTERVIEW SHARED YESTERDAY AND MAHARAJ'S TAKE OF SOME OF THE POINTERS OFFERED THEREIN]
Q.: What is the relationship between poverty and racial inequality?
Dass-Brailsford: In some ways that are very complex but also in ways that are simple. Poverty and race go hand in hand in the U.S. In a nutshell, as there have always been strong associations between race and privilege, there are also just as strong associations between race and disadvantage, which can spiral downwards into poverty. Systemic discrimination continues to thrive in the U.S.
A sign unfurled at a U.S. professional baseball game captured the facts surrounding the history of the U.S. and racism:
A sign unfurled at a U.S. professional baseball game captured the facts surrounding the history of the U.S. and racism:
Again, Maharaj: “When the discriminative mind comes into being and creates distinctions, pleasure and pain arise.”
Dass-Brailsford: Examples can be taken from looking at how home loans are given - how race may factor into this process. We all know that owning property is an important step in upward mobility, but for people of color this step is often not easy because of racial discrimination. We also see this in employment: Employers are more likely to hire a white applicant as opposed to a qualified black applicant.
Q.: What needs to happen for our society to overcome racism?
Dass-Brailsford: We need to have more discussions. Rather than people retreating into their separate camps, there has to be more engagement and people need to talk to each other. In Charleston, you do see black and white people coming together. That's been uplifting to see. There are a lot of white people supporting the black community. They were in church; they gave eulogies and so on. Those are positive developments. It's not something that would have happened 20 years ago, and it goes to show that we are moving in the right direction as a society, although sometimes when these things happen, we feel like we're moving backwards. It can be two steps forward and one back. The movement toward a pluralistic society is taking a long time and it's far overdue.
[So consider the potential ways to address the duality-based issues above (and note that, as was eventually the case with Maharaj when he abandoned the use of religion and spirituality in his efforts to try to address the Ultimate Sickness, the psychologist does not suggest that “people just need to be more religious” and she does not suggest that “people just need to be more spiritual”; she focused, and Maharaj finally did as well, on the psychological roots of humankind’s problems). So look at her suggestions:
Discussions? Not likely. Discussions with persons trapped in ignorance and insanity can only result in ignorant and insane conversations.
Engagement. Maybe.
Cooperation? If you use the feature above and to the right to search the term “primordial cooperation,” you can find that, yes, there was that type of relative “cooperation” for a time (among the members of my Cherokee Grandmother’s extended family and community, for example). Around the globe, that had definitely vanished. In the U.S., if one is out and about among the general public, it is constantly made clear that the relative existence is typically marked now with near-unavoidable and near-uninterrupted contact with dual-minded persons who are preoccupied with self only, a fact which leads to amazing levels of rudeness at the least and to near-limitless levels of frustration and anger and conflict and fighting at the extreme.
Two steps forward and one back? Yes. My daughter is not involved with duality as such, but she definitely understands the Oneness and she does express her take on any and all discriminatory behaviors and perverse political agendas whereby certain politicians on one hand advocate for “less government interference” (meaning “less government regulation of the businesses owned by their financial contributors”) but on the other hand tell women what they can and cannot do with their bodies; what type of sex is okay and what type is not; who can marry whom and who others should not marry; who shall really have equal rights and who shall not; ad infinitum.
She recently said, “Dad, I thought we had settled all of this decades ago. What’s the deal?”
The reply: “The deal is, there is never an end to the cycle of billions of persons passing down to the next generation their learned ignorance and stupidity and insanity, so there is never an end to the constantly re-emerging requirement to address the present consequences of ignorance and stupidity and insanity.”]
Note: neither the solutions which Maharaj eventually pointed to nor the solutions which the psychologist offered for consideration had anything to do with religion or spirituality. They have everything to do with the psychological roots of humanity's problems (which is what Maharaj also focused on after his failures with trying religious and spiritual methodologies to address the Ultimate Sickness).
As was the case with Maharaj eventually, Dr. Dass-Brailsford did not say people need to be more religious.
Maharaj’s perspective about religion?
To one man he said: “Take all of the pictures of your gods and deities and put them in the sea”
and
"With the body comes the world, with the world -- God, who is supposed to have created the world and thus it starts -- fears, religions, prayers, sacrifices, all sorts of systems -- all to protect and support the child-man, frightened out of his wits by monsters of his own making"
and
"Science provides the answer to many questions which formerly were in the domain of religion"
and
"Look at the mind as a function of matter and you have science; look at matter as the product of the mind and you have religion"
and
"First of all, you identify something as being good or bad for yourself. Then, in an effort to acquire good or to get rid of bad, you have invented a God. Then you worship such a God and . . . you pray to that God for something good to happen to you"
and
"Recorded religions are mere heaps of verbiage. Religions show their true face in action, in silent action. To know what man believes, watch how he acts. For most of the people, service of their bodies and their minds is their religion. They may have religious ideas, but they do not act on them”
and
Questioner in loft: "You seem to have little use for religion."
Maharaj: "What is religion? A cloud in the sky. I live in the sky, not in the clouds, which are so many words held together. Remove the verbiage and what remains? Truth remains."
and
A visitor to the loft: "The scriptures say that we have our karma and our sins and that is why we are here."
Maharaj: "That is for the ignorant masses. One who has realized . . . , for him these stories are of no use."
[As was the case with Maharaj eventually, the psychologist also did not say that people need to be more spiritual to solve all these problems. What did Maharaj say to seekers?
"Forget spirituality."
He invited seekers to follow your "normal inclinations" - that is, their natural tendencies - and to
"Do your normal duties"
and
"Just give up spirituality."
He said: "Whatever you have tried to understand during your spiritual search will prove false"
and
"When the birth is disproved, the great noble meaning of spirituality and the meaning of this world - everything - is disproved."
Okay, so maybe neither religious nor spirituality has provided a real solution to humankind’s mind-based problems, but what about finding "the True Self" and "The Supreme Self"? That is certainly the method which has been recommended by some for millennia and which Maharaj recommended for a time as well.]
Maharaj's later take on “SELF-Inquiry” vs. “self-inquiry”:
He said that "it is enough to know who / what you are not"
and
"I got involved in spirituality, in the business of spirituality, [but] finally I lost that love of Self also. I have no more love for the Self."
So what is to be addressed? The psychological issues . . . the mind issues.
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."
