Advaita Vedanta: MISTAKES OFTEN MADE BY SEEKERS

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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.)

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MISTAKES OFTEN MADE BY SEEKERS

“To expound and propagate concepts is simple.
But to drop all concepts is difficult and rare.”

---Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

MISTAKING THE ABSTRACT FOR THE CONCRETE

In one part of the six-part book

It’s All Bullshit (And Why Knowing It Sets You Free)

Dr. Jeffrey A. Schaler offers professional insight into the connection between religion and mental disorders:

“Psychosis exists when people cannot differentiate the symbolic from the real, when they cannot tell the true from the false. When people think they are hearing the voice of a being living in another world, they are psychotic.

“Schizophrenia is said to be characterized by hallucinations, i.e., self-reported imaginings. Belief in God is a socially acceptable self-reported imagining.

“All self-reported imaginings labeled psychosis are essentially religious. To label religious claims as psychotic is no more derogatory than to label psychotic claims as religious.

“Hearing voices in one's head is normal. We generally call it our conscience. [Other times, it is just our self-will, our ego, granting itself what it wants in the guise of God.] Psychosis is the belief that the voices in one's head belong to another person.

“The denial of voices-as-self is an attempt to deny the truth. It is a way of saying ‘this is not me.’ Pretending that the self is split or dissociated is a way of avoiding responsibility.”

[Or a way of gaining control and power and influence over people.]

Again, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj said: “First of all you identify something as being good or bad for yourself. Then, in an effort to acquire good or to get rid of the bad, you have invented a God. Then you worship such a God and . . . you pray to that God for something good to happen to you.”

See, God is an invention, an abstract concept dreamed up by controlling or fear-driven humans. As an invention of the human (nonsense-and-garbage-filled) mind, “God” is an abstraction rather than something or someone concrete.

Other similar abstractions include the wishing well, the rabbit's foot, the magical shooting star, the horseshoe, the four-leaf clover, the Blarney Stone, black-eyed peas eaten on New Year's Day, crossing one's fingers, wishing on a chicken's wish bone, knocking on wood, etc.

Those, like "god," are abstractions, but the non-realized masses for thousands of years have considered their “god” (or “gods and goddesses”) to be concrete.

That which is concrete can be seen and touched, just as a brain surgeon can see and touch the brain (concrete) but cannot see or touch “the mind” (abstract).

The definition of abstract is “existing in thought or as an idea but not having a physical or concrete existence.”

No one has ever seen the god of Abraham whose words served as the founding principle of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Their god has always been in hiding, a fugitive from human eyes, sneaking about and supposedly speaking from inside a burning bush or from clouds above.

Moreover, anyone who believes that something abstract is actually concrete is totally delusional, suffering from the Ultimate Sickness and its key symptoms which Maharaj identified as “ignorance, stupidity, and insanity.”

So anyone believing that something that is totally abstract is actually concrete is insane, and the insane never realize.

Again, Schaler:

“Psychosis exists when people cannot differentiate the symbolic from the real, when they cannot tell the true from the false.

And when they cannot tell the concrete from the abstract.

What should be more basic to a human than being able to differentiate between the abstract and the concrete, between the true and the false?

Yet the ability to differentiate is lost if a human has been programmed, conditioned, acculturated, domesticated, indoctrinated, and / or brainwashed.

The actual task of the non-dual guide is to assist seekers with what should be their singular goal: being free of the effects of programming, conditioning, acculturation, domestication, indoctrination and / or brainwashing which lead to existing in a state where persons cannot differentiate true from false and ideas from concrete items.

Here’s an exercise which might help them:

Find an area where some road work is going on and where jack hammers are being used to break up the old concrete road; then locate a piece of the concrete and place it in one hand.

Next, swish the other hand through the air and pretend that you have caught a piece of duty that was floating around you in the air.

Now, take the hand holding duty and slap yourself in the head with that duty. No pain, huh? Nothing, huh? Now, take the hand holding the piece of concrete and smash it against your head as hard as you can.

See? Concrete. Real. Duty? Not real . . . only a thought. Concrete things you can see and touch. Duty you cannot. One is real, relatively speaking. One is imagined . . . a figment of the mind.

Similarly, faith (abstract) cannot be seen but ironically, neither can the god (not concrete but also abstract) whom so many worship and develop a dependency upon.

What are some other abstract thoughts / ideas / imaging and dreamed up things which do not have a physical reality:

Blind faith

Trust

Teachings

Truth

Race

Control

Power

Life

Culture

Influencing

Status

Meaning

Purpose

Nostalgia

Etc., etc., 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.]

Here's

the direct link to the VIDEO VERSION

of the "Awakening Together" satsang session with Regina and Jacqueline referenced earlier,

18 MARCH 2018

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.

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