HINDU BY “BIRTH,” BUT INVESTIGATING ADVAITA, Part Eight

FROM A SITE VISITOR: [Please see the 02 November 2007 post for the e-mail which is being responded to today]

(The exchange continues):

F.: Now, Vignesh, you are invited to revisit some of your comments about “God” and “religion” and “holy” writings in light of the pointers offered over the last days:

V.: “My concept of Brahman(God) has so far been like…,” and “in every religion there is no parallel existence to God,” and “God does not change,” and” “Even if there is Consciousness, how could God become aware of It's existence…?” and “But that is not in line with the teachings of the Upanishads, right?”

F.: What a waste of energy, yes? What a waste of time that could be spent dancing and enjoying the lightness of being, yes? Why a waste? Why spend time debating with yourself or others about mirages? See that a mirage is a mirage and move on down the road. But that is nearly impossible for those who, from childhood and then throughout adulthood, have been programmed to believe in duality, in god(s), in holy men, and in holy books.

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 God. Then you worship such a God and…you pray to that God for something good to happen to you.”

Note that duality drives the invention of gods, that the invention of gods drives the writing of dualistic (“holy”) books, that dualistic (“holy”) books generate organized religions and spiritual movements, and that religions and spiritual movements generate and support more dualistic concepts: good, bad, right, wrong, reward, punishment, heaven, hell, etc., resulting in a closed loop of learned ignorance.

Why is there no need for holy books and religion and worship and spiritual movements? Because Truth cannot be stated; thus, there is no need for any priest or preacher or prophet or rabbi or imam or medicine man to assume it is his task to tell you what the Truth is. Truth cannot be stated. There is no need for any “holy” man (it is almost always a man, is it not?) to write what he claims are “holy words of God’s Truth” because the Truth cannot be written any more than it can be stated.

However, Truth can be realized by tapping into “the intellect” (actually the pure consciousness) via the inner guru, but many adhere to the view expressed by Loyola who wrote that Catholics “… sacrifice the intellect to God.” (No argument there, but the practice is not limited to any single denomination but is common throughout all religions and sects and “programs” and spiritual movements as well.)

For an objective witness to see how “religious leaders” have required the forfeiture of logic and reason over the ages can lead such a witness to question their invitation to abandon logic and reason; can lead to the objective witness eventually discarding all false beliefs; and can prepare the way for Truth to spring into awareness via the re-purified consciousness.

Yet the forfeiture of logic and reason among persons who are religiously or spiritually programmed, as you have been, is a result of the same programming that inspires many to agree with the belief of Luther who said, “Reason is the Devil’s harlot….”

It is that type of disdain for reason—along with the inflation of the worth of “unquestioning faith”—that has led trillions of people over the millennia to accept that Buddha, Krishna, and Christ were all conceived in some virginal fashion and were all born in manners that (supposedly) did not involve the use of a violated-by-a-male birth canal. So much for holy words in holy books.

If you want to rely on books as your source of truth, then read enough books and treatises and essays to receive a balanced view: Read Freud’s The Future of an Illusion in which he reports, “Where questions of religions are concerned, people are guilty of every possible sort of dishonesty and intellectual misdemeanor.”

Read Heine’s Gedaken: “In dark ages people are best guided by religion, as in pitch-black a blind man is the best guide; he knows the roads and paths better than a man who can see. When daylight comes, however, it is foolish to use blind old men as guides.”

But in the end, what good are any of the readings from believers or non-believers? One group shouts “Aye” and the other immediately shouts “Nay.” The task for you is not to find out what all of them think they know but for You to find the answer to this question: “What do You know?" The third step of the "journey" to Realization is a religious or spiritual step. The step must be taken; however, to complete the "journey," the third step must be transitioned.

To find the answer to the question above, you must cast aside all of the beliefs that are “theirs,” then conduct a Self-Inquiry, and thereafter determine what You have always known but do not remember at this moment because of programming and conditioning. That which blocks the realization of that which You have always known is the impure (programmed and conditioned) consciousness.

The obstructions that have blocked "you" from knowing You are the same obstructions that prevent the seeing of Truth because they create a miasma of lies called “the mind.” That miasma includes such obstacles as dogma, ideas, beliefs, and concepts.

For beginners, Vignesh, the suggestion is to stay with the “I Am” only until the last ego-state and concept and belief dissolves. Eventually, even the “I-Amness” can be transcended, and then, abidance as the Absolute can happen. The “you” will disappear, You will stop functioning as if the various "you's" are real, and You will abide as the one and only You for the remainder of the manifestation. Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)
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HINDU BY “BIRTH,” BUT INVESTIGATING ADVAITA, Part Seven

FROM A SITE VISITOR: [Please see the 02 November 2007 post for the e-mail which is being responded to today]

(The exchange continues):

V.: Does that mean, the manifestation was unplanned for? That will explain alot of things in the Universe- about the uncertainty and everything. But that is not in line with the teachings of the Upanishads, right?

F.: As explained yesterday, in the absence of any divinity, there can be no “Divine Plan.” As for “uncertainty,” change is certain, cyclings (more exactly, groupings and un-groupings) are certain, and the continuity of matter and energy are certain. Beyond that, the comment is accurate: few certainties exists, and everything in the relative existence is in a state of constant flux (save abidance as the Absolute).

The question is, though, why should anything or anyone be “in line with” the Upanishads, the Holy Bible, the Koran, the Torah, or any other books deemed “holy”? One meaning of “Upanishad” is “brahma-knowledge by which ignorance is destroyed.” By reading supposedly “holy” books, by focusing on their concepts, and by accumulating more ideas and dogma to believe in, the process of “aligning with” such teachings does not “destroy ignorance” but actually increases the volume of learned ignorance (also known as, religious or spiritual knowledge).

Yet you continue to try to resolve the religious teachings to which you have been exposed with the revelations that are trying to arise from that inner speck of sanity or reason or logic that is within. To be free of the hold of learned ignorance, one must understand the origin of the idea of a creator god:

at one point, all of the earliest pagan religions had “specialty” gods, such as a rain god. That god, so claimed his self-appointed "representative on earth," is made less angry if his rep has intercourse with a virgin, cuts out her beating heart with a sharp rock, eats the body, drinks the blood, and then passes the same through the crowd so all can have “communion” with the angry rain god and entice him to drop some water on wilting crops so that people might have body continuity.

Consider what that one historical fact alone reveals. Consider how sick and demented those early, pagan priests were: they dreamed up a plan whereby they could rape virgins, cut open their chests, kill them by removing their hearts, and eat those hearts while drinking the blood of virgins. And they were able to use their religious and spiritual doctrine to convince the masses not only to accept the act but to participate in it. THAT is the level of insanity in which religions are rooted and THAT is the insanity by which religions function today.

Would any sane person even need to write to this site or even remotely feel a need to investigate religions to try to determine if they are really vehicles of truth and sanity? Isn't the answer obvious? Can any sane person think that one must bleed or kill in order to realize?

Yet billions of Jews killed lambs and smeared blood over doors; trillions of Christians have sung about blood and have claimed they were drinking blood and eating body in their weekly worship services while claiming that vampirism and cannibalism are "inspired by the Devil"; and billions of Muslims have used iron to beat themselves on their heads and backs in order to bleed. Others have believed in gods with multiple arms or in male gods who come to earth and have sex with mortals.

Freedom from belief in all of that nonsense comes when you accept that which can be realized via the logical and reasonable speck of consciousness which has been blocked by an accumulation of programming and conditioning and dogma and beliefs and concepts. If you must investigate, investigate both sides of the topic, objectively:

You are likely aware of the thousands of specialty gods dreamed up by men over the millennia. (Edward Gibbon wrote in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, “The various forms of worship were all considered by the people to be equally true, by the philosopher as equally false, and by the magistrate as equally useful.”

Nothing has changed in the thousands of years since that period in ancient Rome: it is the ignorant (programmed) masses who believe the religious teachings which are dominant in their cultures; it is the philosophers that realize all of the teachings (programming and conditioning) are false; and it is the politicians who use the ignorance of the masses to their own ends. If you Realize Fully, all of your speculations about "plans" and "Divine Planners" and "holy teachings" will stop.

In the Upanishads, and in many of the so-called "holy" books of earlier religions and philosophies as well, the suggestion was that all of the gods can be grouped into three categories: creators, sustainers, and destroyers. When Abraham suggested that there is only one god, then all of the creator, sustainer and destroyer gods were rolled into one, inventing a god with a Multiple Personality Disorder.

Such a god, it is claimed, supposedly created you and supposedly loves you unconditionally; however, he will most certainly destroy you if you (co-dependently) make him angry. What was not known by any of the writers of those “holy” books is the fact that you and all educated people likely know now, namely, that all is matter/energy and that neither matter nor energy can be created or destroyed.

Nothing created? Then no creator and no Creator. Thus, all books discussing a Creator are ultimately nonsense. Is that a radical consideration, or a statement that follows the objective application of reason and logic? Talk of a literal God or literal gods only happens at the kindergarten level of spirituality, and that level must be transcended if the entire "journey" to Realization is to happen.

The Fully Realized know that all concepts are generated as waves of consciousness are in motion. Post-manifestation, pure consciousness is soon rendered impure or warped or blocked off as a result of programming, conditioning, enculturation, and domestication.

Some who have undertaken a "journey" have reported that, in the early stages of their awakening, the impurities began to dissolve and visions of “god” seemed to appear. Some farther along the "path" came to believe that some self or Self was being “transformed”. As more impurities are discarded, both visions of a self and visions of a “god” begin to dissolve as persons see the light/The Light.

The energy-cum-consciousness is understood. As the false self and the True Self are distinguished, one’s back is turned on “the world” as illusions are seen to be just that...illusions. Via the light, the Reality of the Essence is perceived, and belief in the darkness of illusions and (and the belief that mirages are real) can dissolve. One might argue that "I am not a mirage because I Am," but the point is not that You Are not. The point is that you are not what you think you are.

The exhaustive and exhausting search for answers via pagan religions, via traditional religions that are all rooted in pagan religions, or via philosophies that set forth more concepts and ideas can come to an end. Yet that happens only rarely among the programmed.

The prerequisites for being free of all those influences are (a) objective questioning and (b) the subsequent uncovering of evidence that reveals as nonsense all of the contradictions that have been produced by the leaders of those groups over the millennia.

The Advaita Teachings offer an alternative, never suggesting that any beliefs or ideas be accepted as fact but inviting seekers to reach a state of zero concepts instead. Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)
RELATED TO TODAY’S TOPIC:

Click FROM THE I TO THE ABSOLUTE (A Seven-Step Journey to Reality)

NEW ADVAITA PACKAGES AVAILABLE AT REDUCED RATES:

The Entire Advaita Collection (all twelve items in all three of the packages below): $187.00 + S&H

“The Advaitin Beginner’s Package”: The Meditation CD, two Meditation Guides, Bullshit, and Spiritual Sobriety $62.00 + S&H

“The Mid-Level Seeker’s Package”: Peace of Mind, Liberation, What Happens When I Die? and The Essence of the Teachings $54.00 + S&H

“The Advanced Advaitin Seeker’s Package”: From the I to the Absolute, Consciousness/Awareness, and From the Absolute to the Nothingness $45.00 + S&H

To order, visit http://floydhenderson.com/order.htm .