TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
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“The idea that 'you know what is true' is dangerous, for it keeps you imprisoned in the mind.”
--Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
"To destroy the false, you must question your most inveterate beliefs."
--Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
THE RATIONALE FOR REACHING A
"NO-BELIEFS,"
"ZERO CONCEPTS,"
"NO-MIND" STATE
AS RECOMMENDED BY MAHARAJ AND THEN ABIDING UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE ELEMENTAL BRAIN RATHER THAN THE DISTORTED, FICTION-FILLED MIND,
PART ONE
WHAT MAHARAJ HAD TO SAY ABOUT THE TOPIC WE HAVE BEEN DISCUSSING:
"All illness begins in the mind."
"Your confusion is . . . in your mind."
"Whatever is conceived by the mind must be false, for it is bound to be relative and limited.
"Distrust your mind, and go beyond."
"There is no chaos in the world except the chaos which your mind creates."
" . . . The mind obscures and distorts."
"It is the mind that creates illusion."
"There is no such thing as peace of mind. Mind means disturbance. Restlessness itself is mind.
"Don't rely on your mind for liberation. It is the mind that brought you into bondage. Go beyond it altogether."
"Beyond the mind there is no suffering."
So if the problem centers in the mind, and since a sick mind - obviously - cannot heal a sick mind, then what is the solution, per Maharaj?
"Stop making use of your mind and see what happens."
"Learn to separate yourself from the image and the mirror. Keep on remembering: I am neither the mind nor its ideas."
"There is no such thing as mind. There are ideas . . . ."
"Abandon the wrong ideas, for they are false and obstruct your vision . . . ."
"The death of the mind is the birth of wisdom."
"To know that you are a prisoner of your mind - that you live in an imaginary world of your own creation - is the dawn of wisdom."
So what was his state in the end, the state which ultimately freed him and led to the birth of his wisdom? It was a no-mind state:
"There is no such thing as a mind," period.
"I have no mind . . . ."
Want to be free of the mind? Maharaj advised:
"Reach a state of zero-concepts."
"As to my mind, I have no such thing. There is consciousness in which everything happens."
"I am double dead: not only am I dead to my body, but to my mind, too."
"I find I have lost the mind irretrievably."
WHAT HE DID NOT SAY AT THE END:
"Your confusion is a result of the fact that you have a spiritual malady and are not spiritual enough.
"Your confusion is a result of the fact that you have not completed the entire Self-Inquiry process."
NOR DID HE SAY AT THE END:
"There is no chaos in the world except the chaos which comes from having accumulated too little knowledge of dogma.”
"There is no chaos in the world except the chaos which comes from people not being spiritual enough."
"There is no chaos in the world except the chaos which comes from not knowing the Supreme Self."
NOR DID HE SAY AT THE END:
"To know that you are a prisoner of your ignorance of religion and of your inadequate knowledge of dogma is the dawn of wisdom."
"To know that you are a prisoner of your sick spirit and your spiritual malady is the dawn of wisdom."
"To know that you are a prisoner of your insufficient understanding [and beliefs about some] 'Supreme Self' is the dawn of wisdom."
[My dad occasionally used a phrase to explain some human behaviors that we witnessed which seemed quite beyond the pale. Later, I would hear the same phrase while watching the movie Forrest Gump:
"Stupid is as stupid does."
Meaning? "Stupid people do stupid
things."
As a child, I had no clue what dad meant. Later, I would understand that Maharaj's pointers about what drives the thoughts and words and deeds of the masses could lead to an expansion of the statement to include:
"Ignorance is as ignorance does"
and
"Stupid is as stupid does"
and
"Insanity is as insanity
does."
The take with Maharaj and the take here both differ from that
view in this way:
It is true that humans operate along this continuum:
Thoughts lead to words . . . words lead to actions;
thus, the conclusion some draw is that "if I am seeing stupid actions on the part of someone, then I can trace it back to the stupid thoughts of that person."
But consider: some of the most intelligent persons behave in the most ignorant and / or insane and / or stupid fashion.
Secondly, because there are no actual persons / personas - all false personalities and identities being products of the imagination and acculturation - then there cannot be any ignorant persons or stupid persons or insane persons.
Some claim that Maharaj said there are ignorant persons and stupid persons and insane persons, but he did not. What he said in that regard is that "most suffer from the Ultimate Sickness" and that "three of the key symptoms of the Ultimate Sickness are ignorance, stupidity, and insanity."
He never said that people are ignorant, stupid, and insane. That would require a belief in "who-ness" which is an illusion. What he did say was that those three influences control persons.
The fact: those called "humans" or "persons" are actually just triads - composite unities - made up of these three parts: (1) an elemental plant food body with (2) conscious-energy which is never more than temporarily-manifested in the body and (3) circulating oxygen.
"Never more than temporarily manifested?" Exactly. Persons must eat food in order for a constantly-cycling supply of conscious-energy to be replenished and available.
Whatever speck of conscious-energy is manifested today (10 February 2021) within the space formed by an elemental plant food body which most call "floyd" is not the same speck of conscious-energy which was manifested yesterday (9 February 2021) within the space and will not be the same speck of conscious-energy which will be manifested tomorrow (11 February 2021) within the space, should the body still be functioning tomorrow.
The delusion that one specific quantity of conscious-energy has been manifested in any given body since the so-called point of "birth" is a result of memory alone which generates the misperception of continuity. Were conscious-energy to operate in that fashion, then a parent would only need to feed a child one time.
So, there is no such thing as an ignorant person or a stupid person or an insane person, but there are billions of those who are trapped in the lie of body identification, who are trapped in the lie of mind identification, and who are trapped in the lie of personality identification(s), and to believe that one is his or her body is the height of ignorance, stupidity and insanity;
to believe that the fiction and distortions and lies which are stored in one's mind are true is the height of ignorance, stupidity and insanity; to believe that one is actually defined and identified by the false personalities / personas / roles which have been assigned or assumed is the height of ignorance, stupidity and insanity;
and the highest degree of insanity might well be to be driven - subconsciously and unconsciously - by the agendas and fears and desires of illusory identities.
Moreover, to have one's thoughts and words and actions controlled by the agendas of illusions is also the height of ignorance, stupidity and insanity.
On occasion, persons might see that they have been fooled and that one of their beliefs was a lie, at which point they toss aside that belief and replace it with another.
That is tantamount to having one doctor remove cancerous cells from within your body but then allowing another doctor to implant other cancerous cells within your body.
The sane approach would be to remove all cancerous cells and not replace them at all.
The same applies to beliefs and to the mind in which they are stored.
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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THE EXPLANATION
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
"There is no hell."