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.)
MORE ON "THE MIND":
Today,
"Knowledge” and "Learned Ignorance"
"Realization is nothing more than being free of all learned ignorance."
---Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Here’s Maharaj’s take on the concept of “knowledge” (a.k.a., “learned ignorance”):
"You come here because you are ignorant, not because you are knowledgeable. This knowledge I give is only to remove ignorance."
"Those who come here with the idea of getting knowledge, even spiritual knowledge, come here as individuals aspiring to get something; that is the real difficulty. The seeker must disappear. When you know Your Real Nature, the knowledge 'I Am' remains, but that knowledge is unlimited. It is not possible for you to acquire knowledge. You are knowledge. You are what you are seeking."
"I am that knowledge 'I Am'."
"You understand what I say but you are afraid that whatever so-called knowledge you have collected is being devalued."
"You discover that there is nothing to discover."
"How did I get to the truth that I prevail everlastingly? I understand what My True Nature is. Nobody had told me how to do it. I did not seek this knowledge externally. It sprouted within me."
"There are two ways of receiving the knowledge 'I AM'. One way is you are taught the knowledge, you receive it externally. Another way is, the knowledge grows from inside, intuitively."
"Some people come here for knowledge. I talk because the words naturally come out. There is no intention behind my talks that you should get knowledge."
"Ignorance will remain there for all time just as knowledge also will remain for all time. There cannot be knowledge without ignorance and there cannot be ignorance without the correlated knowledge. Both are the opposites in manifestation. One cannot remain without the other.”
“Even this concept about knowledge is merely a concept. With a jnani, there is no concept of either ignorance or knowledge. The total absence of all knowledge or ignorance is that state prior to the arising of consciousness. But you try to interpret whatever I say with various concepts and you condition yourself with all these concepts."
"Any image you have of yourself is not true. [True knowledge, Maharaj made clear, merely involves the capacity to differentiate between that which is authentic vs. that which is false.]
“Try to understand all this ‘knowledge’ which you are now gathering. The so-called ‘knowledge’ you get elsewhere talks only about ignorance.”
“All of what is pursued by the mind, it is not true knowledge. True knowledge cannot be understood easily. If I had the experience 'I Am' before, would I care to enter the womb of my mother? Prior to entering the womb I did not know myself. There was no knowledge of 'I Amness'. "
"The factual state of affairs is open, very clear, but nobody wants to look at it. This is the place where the intellect gets annihilated."
"I do not follow the spirituality of the masses. In this place spirituality of the common type will not be doled out to you. You can never be lost; whatever you have lost, you have lost only the words. Through this 'I Am' comes the 'world knowledge'."
"What I am expounding does not relate to worldly knowledge. You do not want to give up either 'worldly knowledge' or so-called 'spiritual knowledge', and yet, through these worldly concepts, you want to understand the riddle of your existence, and that is precisely why you are not able to understand."
"You, with your ‘wisdom,’ are stuck here; you are sticking to certain concepts. If you had no concepts, why should you come here? You study only those concepts which arise from within you. Those concepts which you do not like will not occur to you."
"All so-called knowledge is tainted by words, which is only ignorance."
"You are very adept at word-games. While I am talking about knowledge that is beyond this phenomenal world, you are trying to understand through worldly concepts and words. Give up all these concepts and inquire into the nature of your beingness. How did you happen to be? Ponder it! The real blessing of the Guru comes when your knowledge itself sprouts inside you."
"If you continue in the realm of intellect you will become entangled and lost in more and more concepts."
"You have a lot of knowledge but it pertains to the practical world. I will not talk about the worldly knowledge."
"You did not know your own existence after you were born. Nine months in the womb and for sometime afterwards that 'I am so and so' is absent. When you start recognizing your mother, then you also come to be aware of your own existence. That 'I Amness' comes sometime later.”
“Mother teaches you, in ignorance, that you are the body and you begin to believe that. Your mind also starts slowly to develop. So right from the beginning, because of ignorance, the Absolute does not know itself; and because of the body, it started knowing that it is - 'I AM'."
"I have no use for traditions or traditional knowledge. If you do the slightest research on tradition you will see that it is all a concept. I am concerned with only one fact. Here I was in my wholeness, not even aware of my awareness, then suddenly this consciousness sprang up. How did it come about? That is the question which needs investigating."
"What you are doing is using your mind and intellect, but what I say is not based on the intellect, but rather on whatever comes up spontaneously in consciousness. You try to fix that knowledge which springs spontaneously from consciousness into the structure of concepts you have built out of the mind and intellect. This can never happen."
"This is the place where the intellect gets annihilated."
"You are bent on having knowledge at the most mundane level, but whatever knowledge you collect is bound to disappear."
"Whatever you have placed before me as knowledge are all mistaken concepts."
"When you come to the end of material world-knowledge, at that stage you transcend the observer and the observed. That means that you are in a true state of beingness. Thereafter you enter the state of transcending beingness, where the identities of the observer and observed disappear."
"Personalities only exist in body consciousness. The usual knowledge is concerned only with the body image. You are not the body, you are the consciousness."
"What I am expounding does not relate to worldly knowledge."
"While I am talking about knowledge that is beyond this phenomenal world, you are trying to understand through worldly concepts and words. Give up all these concepts . . . ."
"Ultimately, one must go beyond knowledge . . . ."
"I will not expound knowledge . . . ; a few words here and there will be all."
"Your idea of knowledge is something you can catch hold of, something you can feel and put into your pocket. This knowledge is not of that kind. When I know that I am knowledge itself, what can I hope to get?"
"When you get this knowledge you will realize that knowledge of this world and [knowledge of] consciousness are not even worth your spit."
"You have come here with the idea that you are full of knowledge."
"You assume that you have knowledge. You have developed a pride that you have knowledge, so for testing yourself you have come here. Some others here have no pride that they are knowledgeable; you alone are claiming all the knowledge and pride."
"Just as a person continues going to work every day because he wants to receive his wages, so you keep coming here because you want to gain knowledge."
"Try to understand all this knowledge which you are now gathering. The so-called 'knowledge' you get elsewhere talks only about ignorance; it cannot talk about [authenticity]."
"Once it is known what is temporary and what one's original state is, no further knowledge is needed."
"Whatever you have placed before me as knowledge are all mistaken concepts."
"During these talks you have gotten very angry; this is in the zone of mind modifications - it is not a reflection of your consciousness. The one who understands that anger is the message 'I Am'. All your spiritual studies are conducted with your identification with the body-mind."
"When will I have no experience of this illness [that is, cancer]? Just as the sun sets, only when this consciousness sets will there be perfect health or no experience of this sickness. So long as the consciousness is there the sickness must be experienced. What is my pleasure or happiness? Nothing other than this knowledge 'I Am', this consciousness."
Thus his earlier advice:
"Go to zero concepts"
and his pointers that
"all my knowledge has gone into liquidation"
and
"I have no mind."
Again, "Realization is nothing more than being free of all learned ignorance."
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 their god / their 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 the picture link which has now been added for 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.
