TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
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[To continue with offering for your consideration non-duality-based pointers dealing with a variety of topics.]
THE NON-DUALITY MESSAGE OFFERED IN
FICTION
Jack Kerouac
“Finding Nirvana is like locating silence.”
“The page is long, blank, and full of truth. When I am through with it, it shall probably be long, full, and empty with words.”
“Love is all.”
“Listen closely . . . the eternal hush of silence goes on and on throughout all this, and has been going on, and will go on and on. This is because the world is nothing but a dream and is just thought of and the everlasting eternity pays no attention to it.”
“Happiness consists in realizing it is all a great strange dream.”
Q.: " . . . Do you want to go on being fooled every damn minute of your life?"
A.: "Yes . . . ."
Michael Connelly
"He was long past believing in God—the horrors he had seen documented had little by little sapped his stores of faith. In those seemingly final days, as his own heart withered and tapped out its final cadences, he did not grasp desperately for his lost faith as a shield or a means of easing the fear of the unknown. Instead, he was accepting of the end, of his own nothingness. He was ready. It was easy to do."
Mary Shelley
In Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein," Victor Frankenstein and the "monster" he created represent a duality in one respect, but - on the other hand - represent two sides of a single entity. By the end of the novel, there is a shift in the one that represents "good" and the one that represents "evil" - the man or the monster. The man-made "creation" / "creature" is actually kind and innocent but misunderstood and mistreated while, inevitably, Victor ends up in a barren area being chased by his own creation.
In the traditional fairy tale "The Beauty and the Beast"
and
in Victor Hugo's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame"
There is a treatment of the dualistic "beauty" vs. "ugliness" that is reinforced by acculturation. There is in both cases one that is considered by the culture's standards to be ugly but who is in love with one that the cultures deem to be far superior as a result of physical appearance.
The same happens in the story of a Germanic beauty vs. ugly, dangerous bears in their traditional fairy tale "Goldilocks and the Three Bears."
[Relatedly, see the comments farther below regarding “The Phantom of the Opera” with a beautiful opera singer and a deformed mentor who has no chance of developing a relationship with her beyond their present musical bond].
Brad Thor
"He started by using his wealth to co-opt anyone who could have an impact on popular culture or public opinion. Newspapers, actors, journalists, publishers, politicians, business people, unions - you name it. The idea was to be able to control the media, as well as any other voices Americans trusted. It's ideological subversion, plain and simple. To get it to take hold, though, they needed to begin planting this new way of thinking in the most fertile minds that could get a hold of."
"Which means kids."
"Precisely. But it wasn't enough to simply plant this new ideology. For it to blossom, it had to grow without being challenged."
"Couldn't they be deprogrammed? I'm sure it'd be a monumental task, but . . . . "
"No. They're completely immune to anything that deviates from their ideological perception of reality and what they have been taught is the 'real' truth. The lens they look through life at has forever been altered. It's both terrifying and brilliant in its totality."
The girls' complaints all contained dualities, ranging from porridge that was too hot vs. porridge that was too cold; from two chairs that were the wrong size big vs. one that was too right; and from a bed that was too hard vs. one that was too soft.
In Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical "The Phantom of the Opera"
The musical is also based on "The Beauty and the Beast" model. The phantom is also a lonely man seeking love but a man who is also dualistically capable of being bitter and angry and capable of hatred and even murderer.
In Robert Lewis Stevenson's "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"
Dr. Jekyll is a docile man whereas Mr. Hyde displays the a vicious sense of malevolence and cruelty.
In Abraham "Bram" Stoker's "Dracula
Dracula is part normal man, part soulless killer. Werewolves are part innocent humans, part uncontrollable killer.
Floyd Henderson
(from the non-duality-based fictional book, The Board of Directors of Wars)
“Look at every drama you’ve ever seen. The main character, who represents you
and me and everyone, runs around like a chicken with his head cut off. He is
confused and in the dark. Those who are in a position to sit back and witness
the drama objectively can see that he's just an actor on a stage and that none
of the drama is real. But for entertainment's sake, he and the witnesses can
pretend it's real. Both, in fact, can get so absorbed in the role that they can
take it to be the real for a time. But even amidst all the drama, a time comes,
that moment in the play when even the actor finds out the truth. It is called
the “peripetia” in drama—that moment in the play or the movie when the lead
actor finds out that everything he thought to be true is really false; when he
sees that he was being misled at every turn; when those he thought he could
trust the most and who thought they were telling him the truth were also wrong.
“It’s the moment of freedom that comes when one finds out that everything he
ever thought or believed or held sacred or thought worth fighting for was a
lie. The freedom comes when he gives up all of the concepts he bought into,
drops his head in relief and amazement, shakes his head back and forth, wonders
for a moment how he had bought into all their crap, smiles at how easily he was
duped, watches how all the rest of the play unfolds automatically until its
end, and leaves the stage after saying to himself, "Well sonofabitch. I'll
be damned." And then he laughs. He laughs at it all. And then he's done
with it, once and for all.”
ZOROASTRIANISM
One of the earliest conceptions of dualism came from the Persian Religion of Zoroastrianism (mid-fifth century B.C. which taught that "Ahura Mazda" was the eternal creator of all "good things" and taught that all thing which ran counter to Ahura Mazda's order - and which were therefore "bad" - came from "druj."
EGYPTIAN RELIGION
Egyptian Religious beliefs contrast the Gods Seth (disorder, death) and Osiris (order, life).
GREEK and ROMAN RELIGIONS
The Greeks made up tales about other-worldly powers to explain the things they deemed "good" and the things they deemed "bad," and eventually the myth-based gods and goddesses evolved into the Greeks' religion. After the Romans conquered the Greeks, they adopted the Greek gods and goddesses but gave them Roman names.
JUDAISM
The book:
"The Torah" or "Pentateuch": Five Books Supposedly Written by Moses; also The first five books of the Christians' "Old Testament"
Judaism is dualistic, dealing with a lower, material part (the body), and a higher, spiritual part (the soul), evolving from Platonic Dualism. There is talk of "this world" and "another world."
CHRISTIANITY
The book:
The "Old Testament" (i.e., the "Old Contract or "Agreement") and "The New Testament"(i.e., the "New Contract or "Agreement")
After the Councils of Nicea personalized "satan" (Hebrew = "enemy") and Beelzebub (Hebrew = "God of Insects" or "Lord of the Flies"), the notion of dual gods was introduced. One is said to be "the God of good, the other, of evil or bad or sin." (Even early Christian teachings were were dualistic, also largely based on Platonic Dualism. Now, there is also a personal dualism in Christianity with a soul-body distinction based on the idea of an immaterial Christian Soul, though Christ - after he began teachings non-duality during the last three years of his life - said that "No one will ever see the Kingdom of Heaven: it is within" and "Heaven and earth shall fade away."
Eventually, more concepts were added and Christianity shifted beyond Dualism to teaching that a holy "trinity" exists. More duality exists in the teaching of a geographic place where eternal rewards shall be enjoyed vs. a geographic place where eternal punishment and pain and misery shall exist.
Quotations for the Gnostic writings that are attributed to YESHU'A (a.k.a., "Jesus the Christ")
"If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."
"When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter ['the kingdom' / 'awareness' / the 'peace state']."
ISLAM
The book:
"The Koran" or "Quran" or "Qur'an" or "Quoran"
Islam, too, is based in duality with an eventual reward for those who behave is complete certain prescribed actions.
VEDANTA and ADVAITA
The Vedanta philosophy is divided into Dvaita (dualistic) and Advaita (non-dualistic). Dvaita proposes dualism in consciousness and matter, while Advaita does not. (Some modern scientists speak of "energy and matter." Others speak of "energy-matter" or "energy / matter.")
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."
teachings which become a part of the Papal Magisterium.
