TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
ANNOUNCEMENTS
1. [See the offer following this post for details on how you can watch a retreat on video which includes a detailed discussion of all seven of the steps on the path as used by Maharaj]
2. 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.
4. My assistant found two paperback copies of the book co-authored with Mark Houston, A Twelve-Step Journey to SELF-Transformation, an excellent gift for someone struggling with an addiction to alcohol (or anything else, really). The book lists for $19.95 + Priority Mail shipping. To purchase, you may use the donate button at the top right of this page and include a note that the $27.60 is for the Twelve-Step book.
Regrets to international visitors but this is only available within the U.S. because international shipping rates are prohibitive and time-consuming and cannot be tracked.
To review from yesterday:
Nisarga yoga: "Nisarga" means "natural." The term "natural," as used in regards to Advaita, refers for some only to
(1) abiding as one's original nature, as the Awareness prior to manifestation of consciousness, even as the manifestation of the consciousness continues. For some, it refers also to
(2) abiding as all on the planet abides - with the exception of non-Realized persons. That is, the teaching can be expanded to invite seekers to abide naturally rather than unnaturally and rather than trying to abide supernaturally / magically / religiously / spiritually.
Those who fixate at the third step - where religious and / or spiritual roles are played – don’t even make it to the fourth step. They’ll never be identity-free because they love their religious and / or spiritual roles and the “positive strokes” which they often receive for showing off those roles in public.
Now to continue:
At the later stages of his evolution, no religious and / or spiritual activities were endorsed and the message changed from the type of pointers that were more prevalent in I AM THAT (with its religious [Hindu] overtones and with its spiritual overtones) to a message with no religious or spiritual overtones at all.
Yes, Maharaj understood that the religious / spiritual activities still had to happen, but the time and tolerance allowed for assuming those false ego-states as new identities and for playing those roles shrank considerably. Such was not the case early on:
Consider the way that he let his teacher's instructions control him even when Maharaj knew that some of those instructions led him to engage in certain doingness that he knew full well was useless and "pointless," to use one of his own words. He said,
"My Guru asked me to do these five bhajans daily, and he never cancelled his instructions before he passed away. I don't need to do them any more but I will carry on doing them . . . because this is the command of my Guru. I continue to obey his instructions, even though I know these bhajans are pointless, because of the respect and gratitude I feel towards him."
The "later Maharaj" invited seekers to reject anything that was "pointless." Actually, as alluded to earlier, some of his contemporaries said that Maharaj used the bhajans the same way that theaters used posters to attract a crowd to their movies. Then, he felt that once he had people gathered in the loft, he could also offer the message that was beyond bhajans.
One familiar with the early crowds, however, said that the tactic seldom worked - that the locals were there for bhajans and were looking for Hindu-based messages. It was reported that it was when Western visitors began to come that the message became a message less focused on the religious and the spiritual and more on actual, nisarga-style non-duality.
That trend continued to the end as more and more pure non-duality was discussed and fewer and fewer religious and spiritual principles and precepts and concepts were offered. [Some actual quotes to support that point will be cited later.]
Though much of the prescribed activity and doingness that his teacher assigned would wane somewhat during the later years, and especially during the days prior to his taking mahasamadhi, much of the useless and "pointless" activity continued for a period of time. Thus on another occasion, he said:
"My Guru has authorised me to give out this mantra to anyone who asks for it, but I don't want you to feel that it is necessary or important. It is more important to find out the source of your beingness."
So early on, he was so into guru-bhakti that he gave out a mantra that he felt was neither "necessary" nor "important." Hardly evidence of the "maverick Maharaj" that would emerge later on, yes?
In fact, after I AM THAT became widely-circulated, the crowds - which included more and more non-Indian seekers - began to show up in such numbers that Maharaj complained that his previously quiet loft (street noise notwithstanding) had been turned into something more like "a train platform." Yet it was then that the message shifted and dealt more purely with non-duality alone.
To watch the evolvement is in some ways like watching a daddy's boy or mommy's boy trying to cut the cord while still wanting to cling in order to gain approval or show respect or gratitude. To read all of the teachings in the order in which they were presented will reveal to the astute witness the shifts in the message / focus that was offered when the "completely mature and completely free Maharaj" manifested.
Which leads to this: some come here and are shocked when they hear the understanding that came to the speck called "Floyd" which only coincides with the later teachings of Maharaj . . . with the teachings of the post-cord-cutting Maharaj . . . with the teachings of "that totally free and totally maverick messenger."
Again, the mindset of those who come here with their preconceived notions about what the message of Maharaj is supposed to sound like are not at all unlike the six blind men in the Indian tale, each touching only one part of an elephant and mistakenly believing that the part they have touched can provide a truthful description of what the entire elephant looks like.
Touch the early transcripts of Maharaj and you feel something that is "spiritual to the touch" (even described on the back cover of I AM THAT as a "modern spiritual classic"); but in the end, Maharaj discounted all things spiritual and all efforts spiritual and all teachings spiritual.
Yet even in some of the early talks he gave a hint of things to come in his later teachings, including pointers that he would offer up in a way that often resulted in blunt force trauma to many religious and spiritual egos.
He said:
"Whatever spiritual things you aspire to know are all happening in this objective world, in the illusion. All this is happening in the objective world. All is dishonesty. There is no truth in this fraud."
"Only that person will visit this place whose virtue and sin have come to an end."
"There is no question of elevating to a higher level. Here it is only a question of understanding."
"Both the mantra and the faith in the mantra will get dissolved."
"There is no progress."
"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 the 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." [Wait. Did he say, "You have invented God"? Yes, he did.]
“Whatever you have tried to understand during your spiritual search will prove false.”
“From birth, what has made the body grow? It is no power in the world. It is the power of beingness, the atom, the Self, the consciousness . . . call it what you will.”
“When the birth is disproved, the great noble meaning of spirituality and the meaning of this world—everything—is disproved.”
“If they come face-to-face with that root, they will be stunned into silence.” [Here, more often, they are stunned into shouting or being angry or walking out if they hear any pointers from Maharaj other than the ones they have read in that "modern spiritual classic" which some report is "their Bible."] Maharaj also said:
“I have no faith in anything which has ever been told, not even what has been told by the Vedas. Only my own experience.”
The key point is not whether Maharaj's message, or focus, evolved. It did. The key point is,
if you are seeking the version of the message that was "early Maharaj," that version is offered in some other venues than here or in the later talks of Maharaj. If you are seeking the totally unvarnished and most mature version of Maharaj's teachings, then some of the pointers in I AM THAT might apply but - for the most part - the mature, unvarnished message is the later message.
It would behoove seekers to understand all of the versions of Maharaj's teachings and then decide which they are ready to study earnestly and which they would focus upon to the exclusion of all others. [Many clinging to the "spirituality" in I AM THAT have made their choice, but it is without having studied the totality of Maharaj's message.]
The early version will fixate most seekers at the third of seven steps to Full Realization, that is, at the religious or spiritual step. Only the later version can point the way to the final four steps and to the actual end of the "path."
Of course the other option he would eventually endorse included . . .
Moving beyond the third step by abandoning the roles of “The Religious One,” “The Spiritual Giant,” “The Super Seeker,” etc. as well as all other identities (and “Identities”);
reaching the fourth step by casting aside body and mind and personality identifications and abiding in the same no-concept state, no-beliefs state, no-judgmental state, no-arrogance or narcissism state, no know-it-all state, no-entitlement state, no-wanting-control and no being-perpetually-angry state, and no-avoidance and denial and escapism state;
and then
abiding in the earliest post-manifestation manner as happened during “The Child Ignorance Stage” or “The Child No-Knowing State.”
Do that and all of the spiritual work and seeking work will end and will be enough without having to deal with the three additional steps with which so many non-dual seekers become absorbed for decades.
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 that is relevant is 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"
--Yeshu'a (Jesus)
and
"Heaven and earth shall fade away."
--Yeshu'a (Jesus)
and
"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,
a writer used by the Pope to issue off the record
teachings which become a part of the Papal Magisterium.
[That said, would that the popes who have shown the courage to reject a core concept of their dogma - namely, "hell" - would find the additional courage required to question the very existence of their institution in light of the centuries-long cover-up of their history of raping children and in light of the mental and emotional and psychological scarring of billions of their members past and present.
And that need for courage also applies as questions need to be asked about why so many other sky cults are still being supported and allowed to continue to exist as well. When certain types of programming and conditioning have been shown to blind the masses, they should end. Will they? Not likely. Why?
Because what the masses think and say and do is most influenced by the international crime families which hold sway over the masses as criminals conduct their planet-wide operations. What are the major international crime families and which are the most influential and have the largest memberships?
The Mafia / La Cosa Nostra; the Catholic Church (with it 1.2 billion followers); Protestant and Evangelical Churches (with over 1.2 billion followers) like the one I was raised in where the youth director molested and sexually assaulted young girls; big business which has long created environments in which people have been abused; powerful political bodies like the U.S. Congress, etc., etc., etc.)
With all of those crime families, neither the followers nor the leadership ever voluntarily step down or shut down their criminal activities. Be they gangs, organized crime families, religions, big business, politicians, etc., they all want control and they all want power and they all want money, and nothing internal will interfere with the driving forces at play.
The masses must demand that all those in charge must step down and their groups and institutions must shut down, and there's the real problem because the continuation of their crimes are enabled not as much by the people running such crime organizations as they are enabled by the masses of people who - wanting some perceived "payoff" - remain involved with them and give them money and support them and aid and abet the continued existence of those criminal enterprises and thus facilitate the ability of church criminals and political criminals and other types of criminals to continue to commit their crimes.]
Here's
the direct link to the VIDEO VERSION
of the "Awakening Together" satsang session with Regina and Jacqueline referenced earlier, 18 MARCH 2018
If preferred, here's
the direct link to the AUDIO VERSION
of that session.
