Advaita Vedanta: FREEDOM FROM BELIEFS (Believers, Non-Believers, and “No-Belief-ers”)

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FREEDOM FROM BELIEFS (Believers, Non-Believers, and “No-Belief-ers”)

Maharaj’s “Take” on the Subject of “Beliefs”

There are hundreds and hundreds of present-day beliefs which are false because they are rooted in ancient myths and superstitions.

There are millions and millions of present-day beliefs which are false because they are rooted in distorted and nonsensical programming, conditioning, domestication, acculturation, indoctrination, brainwashing, and millions of cases in which hand-me-down nonsense and mental garbage have been passed from one ignorance-driven generation to the next.

There are millions of nonsensical beliefs which have been passed along by the “-ism’s” in cultures all around the globe.

As always-false personal identifications are assigned and / or adopted, the each come with their own sets of desires and fears as well as concepts, notions, ideas, thoughts, dreams, impressions, etc., all of which make up the entire collection of one “beliefs” (which are actually just the beliefs of others.)

The following are some of the many pointers offered by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj in regards to beliefs, offered now for consideration by readers:

“All happens as it needs, yet nothing happens. I do what seems to be necessary, but at the same time I know that nothing is necessary, that life itself is only a make-belief.”

“See that you are not what you believe yourself to be.”

“Stop imagining, stop believing.”

“You are taking so many things for granted. Begin to question. The most obvious things are the most doubtful. Ask yourself such questions as ‘Must I believe all I am told about myself?’“

“ . . . He is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.”

“We believe in so many things on hearsay. We believe in distant lands and people, in heavens and hells, in gods and goddesses, because we were told.

“Similarly, we were told about ourselves, our parents, name, position, duties and so on. We never cared to verify. The way to truth lies through the destruction of the false. To destroy the false, you must question your most inveterate beliefs.

“Of these, the idea that you are the body is the worst. With the body comes the world, with the world, God (who is supposed to have created the world) and thus it starts . . .

“ . . . fears, religions, prayers, sacrifices, all sorts of systems - all to protect and support the child-man, frightened out of his wits by monsters of his own making. Realise that what you are cannot be born nor die and, with the fear gone, all suffering ends.”

“I am offering you exactly what you need - awakening. You are not hungry and you need no bread. You need cessation, relinquishing, disentanglement. What you believe you need is not what you need. Your real need I know, not you. You need to return to the state in which I am - your Natural State.”

“Go forth, unburdened with ideas and beliefs.”

“ . . . Question wisely. Instead of searching for the proof of truth, which you do not know, go through the proofs you have of what you believe to know. You will find you know nothing for sure. You trust on hearsay. To know the truth, you must pass through your own experience.”

“You believe you know the world and yourself, but it is only your ignorance that makes you say: ‘I know’. Begin with the admission that you do not know and start from there.”

“What is the drug which you call ‘karma’ or ‘destiny’? It made you believe yourself to be what you are not. What is it, and can you be free of it?

“Before you go further you must accept, at least as a working theory, that you are not what you appear to be . . . that you are under the influence of a drug. Then only will you have the urge and the patience to examine the symptoms and search for their common cause.”

“As long as we believe that we need things to make us happy, we shall also believe that in their absence we must be miserable. Mind always shapes itself according to its beliefs.”

“After one or two years [a child] comes to know itself, the mother, etc. When the child knows itself, its knowingness has started. Prior to that it is ignorance; although it is no-knowingness, it is ignorance.

“Then the knowledge ‘I Am’ is attained: it does not know who it is but it knows it is something. Later on the child starts collecting concepts and ideas which other people feed it and develops certain concepts or images about itself and others. The mind has developed.

“Then comes deep sleep and the waking state, the daily cycle. In the waking state, in whatever state of mind you are, you know the world, together with your concepts, and then you fall into sleep.

“Now, technically, you can call that deep sleep no-knowingness. But this is not that no-knowingness beyond which the Absolute lies. Let us proceed again from the child: ignorance, knowingness, accumulation of concepts, meeting the guru. The guru tells you, ‘Get rid of concepts.’

“So, when you are, only you are. This is the first step: to abide in the consciousness that you are, without words. When the child started knowing itself, there was also knowledge, but that is a general knowledge and is common to all.

“The seeker, having understood what the guru said, gets rid of the concepts, and now, as the first step, the seeker dwells in the state ‘I Am’, just being.”

“Once you know with absolute certainty that nothing can trouble you but your own imagination, you come to disregard your desires and fears, concepts and ideas. You live by truth alone.”

“You give reality to concepts, while concepts are distortions of reality. Abandon all conceptualisation and stay silent and attentive.”

“Go beyond your concepts and ideas; in the silence [and in the absence] of desire and thought, the truth is found.”

Why silence? Because, as the indigenous people of the “North American” continent, long understood and share this pointer

“Truth is the space between inhalation and exhalation.”

Sages have long shared a related pointer: “The truth can be known but it cannot be stated.”

Persons are driven to state their beliefs; ergo, beliefs - as is the case with anything and everything else that is stated - can never true.

Why be free of all beliefs? So that you can be free of being driven either consciously or unconsciously by lies, falsehoods, distortions, misrepresentations, etc.

To be continued.

Please enter into the silence of contemplation.

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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.]

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