TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
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"There is no such thing as mind. There are ideas . . . ." and "Abandon the wrong ideas, for they are false and obstruct your vision . . . ." and "The death of the mind is the birth of wisdom" and "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" and "I have no mind . . . ."
--Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
"Realization is nothing more than a process which results in a person being freed from believing in all learned ignorance."
--Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
The Anatomy of Human Memory Storage: The Elemental Brain vs. the Non-Elemental Mind
or
The Natural Brain vs. the Never-Natural Mind
We have seen how Maharaj eventually determined that the Ultimate Sickness is neither a physical illness nor a too-little-dogma illness nor a result of any so-called “spiritual malady” or “sick spirit” but is instead a psychological, mind Illness.
Note: He did not say that the Ultimate Sickness is a “brain-illness” and that the brain, therefore, must be discarded. Being a mind Sickness, he said, that seekers must discard the mind (specifically, all belief in the content of the mind) and reach a zero-mind, zero-concept, zero-belief state.
It has been asked here, "Is it possible that everything you have ever been taught and learned and that everything you have been told or instructed to read is false"?
When, in the end, Maharaj called for seekers to "discard the mind," many asked, “How”? Many whose path led them here have asked vehemently and even angrily sometimes, “How can that possibly be done?”
The answer? “Simply.” That is, “Simply by abandoning belief in all of the learned ignorance stored therein.
See, "the path" is simply a series of steps to take in order to move from a belief in nonsense and learned ignorance to being free of belief in nonsense and learned ignorance by being un-taught and by un-learning.
This process has always been about de-accumulating; therefore, you do not need to know more . . . you simply need to know far less.
Maharaj’s message, especially in the later days, was a combination of Direct Path Method pointers and Nisargan (natural) Yoga pointers. In order to abide naturally, one must abandon all unnatural living and all supernatural living. Meaning?
Meaning, abandon living under the auspices of a mind and the magical thinking it generates; abandon all supernatural thinking and talking and behaving; abandon all “religious and / or spiritual thinking and talking and behaving.” Live in the same natural style that everything on planet earth lives in – and has always lived in - the one exception being mind-driven humans.
In terms of the brain and the mind, what is nisargan / natural and what is not?
That which is elemental is natural; that which is mental and emotional and which has been “added on” after the manifestation of the initial elemental plant food body and its elemental plant food parts is unnatural.
That which is extraneous is unnatural; that which is elemental is necessary. That which is native is natural; that which is foreign to the elemental plant food body and its parts is unnatural.
NATURAL
That which is endemic and original and authentic and intrinsic and inherent and built-in and unacquired and primary is natural.
UNNATURAL
That which is taught and imported and alien and non-original and non-authentic and secondary and extraneous and extrinsic and acquired and cultivated and absorbed and adopted and embraced and dispensed and taken in and fostered and nourished and nurtured and promoted is all conceptual and dualisitic and is, therefore, unnatural.
[What are some things which are acquired and taught and cultivated and promoted? Hatred; an addiction to chaos and instability; a belief that one is better than others of different skin color, different affiliations, different religious beliefs, different sexual preferences, different socio-economic status; different nationalities, etc. In other words, that which is based in duality.]
THE ELEMENTAL BRAIN
The elemental brain is endemic and original and authentic and intrinsic and inherent and built-in and unacquired and primary and dispersed, so it is totally natural.
THE NEVER-ELEMENTAL MIND
The never-elemental mind and its content are imported and alien and non-original and non-authentic and secondary and extraneous and extrinsic and acquired and cultivated and absorbed and adopted and embraced and taken in and fostered and nourish and nurtured and promoted, so the mind is always totally unnatural.
Thus, recommending an all-nisargan style of abiding throughout the relative existence, Maharaj advised seekers to abandon body and mind and personality identifications because they are false.
He did not advise seekers to abandon body and brain and personality identifications because they are false since the brain is not false at all.
What is false is all of the nonsense and BS which is taught and accepted without question and accepted with blind faith instead and then stored in certain parts of the brain.
Those brain parts where information is stored and from which it can on occasion be retrieved are elemental; what those brain parts store are called “the mind” and what is stored therein is not elemental.
If you buy a new jar with a lid capable of being tightly and completely sealed, it is fairly clean, fairly pure, fairly devoid of contaminants. If you go into a cow field and gather up some bull manure and put it in the jar and seal it so that the manure will stay there for as long as the jar exists, then that jar is full of BS.
Moreover, that jar will be useless and contaminated and impure and infected and tainted and polluted for its entire existence unless it is opened and the BS inside is discarded and the jar is thoroughly cleaned enough to return it to its original pure and uncontaminated state.
And there's the rub with the human mind:
It's like that jar which has been loaded up with all of the BS that has been put into it; it becomes closed, contaminated, and tightly sealed. Unless specific steps are taken in a specific order, it will never be cleaned out and restored to its original, pure, uncontaminated state.
So let’s look at the specific differences in the elemental brain vs. the non-elemental mind or in the natural brain vs. the never-natural mind.
The parts of the brain which serve as information processors to create memories and store them include the prefrontal cortex, the neocortex, the basal ganglia, the cerebellum, the hippocampus and the amygdala.
Those parts are as elemental and natural as others parts such as the cerebrum and the brainstem.
While the body manifests with some information included, such as archetypes, those are stored in the genetic material of the body, not in “the mind.”
At the point that a child moves through a birth canal or is removed from the womb via a caesarean process, if the brain therein in normal, then it includes storage and retrieval parts called the prefrontal cortex, the neocortex, the basal ganglia, the cerebellum, the hippocampus and the amygdala.
Those are elemental and natural (though those parts have not always been included in the brain throughout the history of human-like beings). Most parts of the human brain developed or evolved over a long period of time before ending up in it current condition with all of its current parts.
That is, the so-called “human brain” was quite different from what is deemed nowadays to be “the human brain.” That is, the brain of the past is nothing like the brain of the present.
Originally, the adult human brain was about one cup in size. Now, it is about 3.5 cups in size. It evolved, and the most notable change was the development of the current brain’s computer-like traits including the ability to store information and retrieve information.
What was not included at the point of the manifestation of “a baby” then, and what is not included at the point of the manifestation of “a baby” now is a mind.
Now, the prefrontal cortex, the neocortex, the basal ganglia, the cerebellum, the hippocampus and the amygdala are like the jar mentioned above: they were basically empty and in all cases will eventually be filled with BS and then sealed tightly and completely.
In the case of humans, how is the BS placed therein? Via BB-type programming, conditioning, acculturating, domesticating, brainwashing and indoctrinating.
The mind is neither elemental nor
natural but is made to be most unnatural as ignorant and insane BS beliefs are passed down from generation to another generation by persons driven by what Maharaj called the key symptoms of the Ultimate Sickness: "Ignorance, stupidity, and insanity."
To be continued.
Tomorrow: The TABULA RASA
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."
