TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
ANNOUNCEMENTS
1. [See the offer in gold text 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 green text after today's post for the full meaning and implications of that.
3. A new video ("Number Ten: Awakening Together Satsang, March 2018") has now been added in the far right column of this page, offering the opportunity to view a recent 2018 satsang session with Floyd being interviewed by Regina and Jacqueline of "The Awakening Together Group." (See the details in the blue text after this post.)
The point in this series is that the non-dual message has long been widespread but has seldom been understood either then or now.
ADDITIONAL QUOTES
from
SRI NISARGADATTA MAHARAJ
One of the earliest pointers which Maharaj’s guru offered to him was one he went back to time and again. He was told, "You are not what you take yourself to be . . . . "
After years of recommending to seekers that they engage in “SELF-Enquiry” and that they find the True Self and find the answer to “Who Am I,” he would eventually shift away from that message and share instead this:
“You do not need to find ‘Who You Are'; it is enough to know who you are not.”
Returning to the fundamentals, he realized that "You are not what you take yourself to be . . . " applies as much to the supposedly Noumenal Identities (“Infinite Self,” “Supreme Self,” etc.) as it applies to the relative, phenomenal personal identities which generate so much relative chaos.
But why the shift / shifts in approach?
As he sought over the decades an effective version of the Ultimate Medicine which he could use to treat the symptoms of the Ultimate Sickness, he found that each time he felt confident that his current approach was an effective one, the longer-term experiences of those listening to him proved otherwise.
That led him to cast aside and replace the first two versions of the Ultimate Medicine he used until he eventually settled on the third:
VERSION ONE
When Maharaj used a religion / non-dual compounded version of the Ultimate Medicine, persons were attracted to his loft for twice-a-day bhajan sessions with sprinklings of non-dual pointers which he inserted into the format.
VERSION TWO
When Maharaj switched to the use of a spirituality / non-dual compounded version of the Ultimate Medicine, huge numbers of persons - especially from the West - were attracted to his loft for twice-a-day satsang sessions.
However, the next change he made resulted in the popularity of his message peaking and then declining . . .
a. because he came to understand that the Ultimate Sickness is a mental sickness rather than a too-little-dogma sickness or a “spiritual malady” kind of illness;
and
b. because he came to understand that religious and / or spiritual versions of the Ultimate Medicine were having no consistent or long-term effect on eliminating the symptoms of the Ultimate Sickness. Thus he came to the third version.
VERSION THREE
In the end, Maharaj stopped serving up non-dual pointers as either a religious or spiritual cocktail and began using a psychology-based / non-dual approach which addressed the actual source of the problem, namely, the warped and nonsense-filled minds of almost all humans.
When he stopped with all the religious stuff and when he abandoned the fanaticism-based spiritual stuff, the praises offered up to him in the past were replaced with criticism, including such comments as . . .
"The later books of Maharaj do not enjoy the same clarity as I Am That. It seems that he himself got complicated or rather evolved himself or declined maybe as happens to many teachers. It is also the lack of quality of translation in the level of I Am That."
"At first when he was still listening to his guru he was telling the truth, like he did in I AM THAT. In his other talks, his ego made him start telling things he dreamed up on his own that were not true."
"He deteriorated from one of the great spiritual men of all times to one of the least spiritual people of all times."
To the latter, Maharaj would have likely said, “Bingo! You got it!!”
He would eventually say, “Compared to you spiritual giants, I am but a spiritual pygmy.”
He said:
“Give up spirituality”
and
“Follow your normal inclinations"
and
"Forget spirituality"
and
"Just give up spirituality and abide naturally."
He advised:
“Stop reading I AM THAT and listen to my later talks.”
He said that those talks in the book I AM THAT "were for that time only and are not applicable now."
So that final understanding of the fact that the Sickness is a mental sickness led him eventually to advise seekers to
stop reading I AM THAT,
stop with all their religious and spiritual seeking,
address the mind problem which is at the root of the Ultimate Sickness,
be freed from the learned ignorance that was taught and from the insanity which was imposed from outside (via parental and societal influences),
stop abiding unnaturally,
stop trying to abide supernaturally (magically, spiritually, etc.)
and then
just abide naturally, the way that every living thing on the planet abides except for programmed and conditioned humans.
Such was the nature of his later talks which came to an end on Wednesday, 9 September 1981, and such were the changes which brought the critics out in full force, inspired by the advice above as well as these additional pointers:
"I do not follow the spirituality of the masses."
"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."
"I am not addicted to self-descriptions [such as] 'soham' and [such as] 'brahmasmi'."
[Note: "Soham" means, "I myself" or "It is I" or "He is I". "Brahmasmi" means, "I am Brahman" or "I am the Supreme" or "I am God" or "I am the Infinite Supreme Soul" or "I am part of the Brahman" - that being an implication of duality in itself.]
He said:
"Subsequent to that 'I Am' and body-mind, and in the realm of the mind, there occurs what you call 'spiritual seeking' or 'spiritual knowledge'. This is nonsense."
"I appeal to you with my folded hands: don't get into this spirituality."
"The sum total of my spirituality now is nothing. Even that word 'nothing' is not there, so there is no spirituality left."
“When the birth is disproved, the great noble meaning of spirituality and the meaning of this world—everything—is disproved.”
“If [persons] come face-to-face with that root, they will be stunned into silence.”
"After the information given to you by the mother, that you are a boy or girl, all your further acquisitions are by hearsay."
“From the Absolute no-knowing state, spontaneously, this consciousness ‘I am’ has appeared—there is no reason, no cause.”
"There is no such thing as spirituality; whatever is, is only this 'worldly' life, in the five-elemental play."
"Those who have apperceived my knowledge will not fall prey to the logic or spirituality expounded by others."
Q.: "I want to live a good life, a holy life. What am I to do?"
M: "Go home; take charge of your father's business; look after your parents in their old age. Marry the girl who is waiting for you. Be loyal, be simple, be humble. Hide your virtue. Live silently."
Q.: "So many saints and mystics lived and died. They did not change my world."
M.: "How could they? Your world is not theirs, nor is theirs yours."
"I got involved in spirituality, in the business of spirituality, [but] finally I lost that love of 'the Self' also. I have no more love for 'the Self'."
Indeed, all of those pointers brought his “popularity” to a peak and a subsequent fall.
Similarly, when the use of religious and / or spirituality-based pointers ended here, so did the high number of visitors to the site.
So it is.
As noted here time and again, “The truth will set you free, but it’s really going to piss you off first.”
The case here now is the case that was with Maharaj:
He told visitors to the loft that they were not going to get anything there because he was about the business of “taking everything away.”
Talk about an unpopular message among the masses, including among the 99%+ on the planet who are among the “non-realized” as well as all of the “non-seekers” and the 97% who are attached to one organized religion or another or the millions absorbed in one so-called “spiritual program” or another on the planet and also those seeking via the ancient Eastern teachings and via non-duality.
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) whose Vatican Bank worked for decades with the Mafia while laundering mob earnings (for a 15% all-profit charge by the Bank); 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
or
You can click on video "Number Ten" in the upper right-hand column on this page.
If preferred, here's
the direct link to the AUDIO VERSION
of that session.
