CONSCIOUSNESS IN MOTION: A Journey into the Dark Abyss of the “Mind,” Part Two

[Continued from 27 July 2007]
F.: Before venturing for a few moments into three “minds” (which are being presented as examples of what happens when the corrupted consciousness engages in its constant movement and generates distorted perspectives), this caution is offered: NEVER compare. Comparing is dualistic to the core; furthermore, if the result of a comparison leads you to believe that you’re “not as bad off as others,” then your “journey” can come to a halt as egotism persuades you that “you are doing so much better than everyone else.” If you find that you are “much worse off than others,” then the angst around that can end the “journey.”

While not to be used for the sake of comparison, neither are the examples of corrupted consciousness being presented as some kind of litmus test for levels of corruption. The consciousness in motion in these three illustrations shows no evidence of having been re-purified, but they are certainly not among the severe cases of bastardized consciousness that have been witnessed over the last eighteen years.

Finally, note that these examples deal far less with specific persons and far more with the masses at large who—functioning from the auspices of their warped consciousness—are totally devoid of logic and reason, totally unstable, and totally unable to tap into the inner resource, the sixth sense, or the natural, intuitive guidance that formerly served humankind for millions of years.

The speakers will not be identified, though all three have shared these thoughts publicly on more than one occasion. Their words, which allow access to their thoughts as the “stream of warped consciousness” flows, reveal three persons who are totally embroiled in the machinations of their “minds”:

CASE #1
Let’s go back to the beginning, Floyd: I graduated from college and got a teaching job like I had always wanted. I loved my job, I loved the kids, I loved my peers, I hated the pay. Once I married, her income with mine made things OK. Then she got pregnant—three times in seven years—and quit work. The pressure started building up. One person couldn’t live on my salary, much less five. I started hating my job because it didn’t pay enough and I started resenting all of the financial responsibilities I faced. Of course I love my wife and kids but I have to admit that on occasion I have resented them too.

Problems got worse and then fights with my wife got worse. We went to a relative’s minister for counseling but his answer was to join the church and we’d find peace. We went for a year and things only got worse. Now, both of us are too frustrated and worn out to try to make the other one happy. A while back, I got pulled into an emotional affair at work that became a full-blown affair. People found out. I started resenting the gossipy faculty. Several more affairs followed. I would not have sex with my wife for days after each encounter because I hate using condoms and I always wanted to make sure I was clear so I wouldn’t pass on anything to my wife if I caught something.

Many days now, I don’t want to go home. I drink a lot before I even show up at the house. Some days I wish no one would be there when I pull into the drive. I don’t sleep at night because I’m angry about not being able to be with some of the other women I care about, I’m worried about money, and I’m worried about losing my job because I’m raging at the students in the classroom big time. I can name a lot more things that I hate than I love, a lot more things I’d like to have than I’ve got. It’s becoming pretty obvious that I missed the boat.

If this site were about nothing but analytical, behavioral, or differential psychology, the case above could be used to discuss the principles of those three areas of psychology for the next several months. Let it suffice to say that when that person was invited to consider that his words exposed self-absorption and dominance by the many false selves he had adopted, his visits ended. (Cassius asked Brutus, “Brutus, can you see yourself?” When Brutus answered in the negative, Cassius said, "Then let me be your mirror.” The speaker above continues to live in the mirror instead of having moved through the looking glass.)

In the meantime, the warped consciousness of one person's "mind" does not affect that one person alone, relatively speaking, but bastardizes the surrounding consciousness with its toxins as well. The majority of the students that head to his class each day are probably trying to decide whether to enter his room or to seek out a quiet place on campus where they sit down and slit their wrists.

It’s so easy to understand that “things aren’t always the way they appear” when a respected politician’s lies are exposed; when it’s learned that the esteemed director of Christian education in a church was secretly praying every day for a year that her husband would die; or when the “most wonderful son-in-law I could have wished for” turns out to be the murderer of his wife...of that speaker's daughter. The non-Realized are totally incapable of seeing that things are never the way they appear to be. The facts in Case #1 above are the exact opposite of the way the speaker perceptives things, but he is certain that his problems are caused by “others,” that he in not self-absorbed, and that he is not trapped in any personas.

So the instability of the warped consciousness is illustrated, along with proof that the Advaitin teacher spoke accurately when he said, “A dual-minded person is unstable in all ways.” Instability cannot be compartmentalized. Case 1's “love-hate,” “care about-resent,” “want-don’t want” fluctuations are typical of the warped consciousness that is forever in motion and forever generating misperceptions. The example also supports the pointer that it is much easier to accumulate than it is to de-accumulate.

Now, forget that example and focus on the consciousness that you are. Is it in movement? Does it vacillate between states of “I’m happy-I’m not happy”; between states of “I want that-I don’t want that”; and between the confusion of “I like that person-I can’t stand that person”? If you are experiencing instability and vacillation to any degree, the “journey” to Reality if for you. Please enter the silence of contemplation.
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MISTAKING INSANITY FOR NORMALCY, Part Five in This Series

From a site visitor: [Received 10 June 2007] Today you said history shows religion leads to separation and judging and even killing. That’s not true. For me, my religion leads to peace and power. I stay in conscious contact with Him with prayer all day, every day, and He empowers me and gives me guidance and peace so I can be happy for as long as by His grace I am allowed to live. I hope you can find your way to Him so that you can have peace in this life and joy forever. Signed, John (as in 3:16)--A Child and Agent of God

F.: Yesterday, it was shown how your religion is based in duality and that your own prophet said, “A dual-minded person is unstable in all ways.” Thus, the words of your own prophet guarantee that—trapped in the duality of your dogma—you will be guaranteed to be "unstable in all ways." You cannot compartmentalize the instability that results from your dualistic thinking and only be unstable on Sundays, for example. Next, persons who are unstable develop personality disorders and mental illnesses. Your words reveal that at least two of those illnesses have manifested in your case.

In order to be restored to sanity, you might first inquire into the ways in which professionals, such as psychologists and psychiatrists, treat those like you who are engaging in “auditory locutions with a being or beings from another world.” In the book SPIRITUAL SOBRIETY: Recovering What Religions Lost, Dr. Jeffrey A. Schaler is quoted as he discusses “psychosis,” a condition in which persons fail to differentiate between the symbolic (abstract) and the real (concrete). He said:

People are labeled psychotic when they refer to mental representations as if they were substantive and real. One example [involves taking] the 'voice of conscience' as the literal voice of another being, known as 'hearing voices.' The failure to differentiate between the symbolic and the real may be intentional (artistic license) or strategic (lying) or the result of a cognitive inability to differentiate between fantasy and reality.

The third case is likely yours, John, since supernatural thinking and supernatural living are based in fantasy and in magical thinking rather than being in touch with reality and living naturally. Schaler also discusses another illness that can generate belief in illusions:

Schizophrenia is said to be characterized by hallucinations, i.e., self-reported imaginings. Belief in God is a socially acceptable, self-reported imagining. Another example of self-reported imaginings, i.e., hallucinations, is the popular belief in the existence of angels. This belief is considered normal by mentally “healthy” people. Belief in the existence of aliens is considered abnormal and is a sign of mental illness. Yet, insofar as angels and aliens are both hallucinations (that is, self-reported imaginings), there is no difference between believing in angels and believing in aliens. When self-reported imaginings conflict with socially accepted norms of belief, speech, and behavior, the claims are considered psychotic. When self-reported imaginings are consistent with socially accepted norms of belief, speech, and behavior, the claims are considered normal.

Thus, that which is abnormal is now considered normal among the deluded masses, and that is the obstacle that seekers face when trying to break free of the bondage of enculturation and the nonsense circulated as truth via their culture's programming and conditioning. For more, visit http://floydhenderson.com/spiritualsobriety.htm

More revealing, might the truth be that your beliefs, your concepts, and your ideas are not really “yours” at all? You unquestioningly believed "them" when they told you that there is an unseen being that knows if you are sleeping and knows if you're awake and knows if you've been good or bad and who will bring your presents. You believed that tale with unswerving faith, and even after they admitted that they had lied to you about Santa, you now have unquestioning faith in their next tale about another unseen being that watches over you and knows if you've been good or bad and gives you the gifts of power and guidance when you're good.

The ease with which persons can be programmed to believe the most outlandish tales would be humorous if it were not for the fact that the end result is all of the insane-like behavior and misery and suffering and killing that mars the relative existence because of the sleepwalkers who are walking about the planet while doing things in their sleep, talking in their sleep, and spreading their tales in their sleep.

Might you be able to find which persona, which assumed identity that has resulted from the corrupted consciousness, generated the e-mail above? Might you be able to find why you think those guiding voices in your head are being spoken by a being from another world? Might you be able to understand how it is that you came to believe what you believe and why the above illnesses have manifested?

If you find what you were before conception and where you were in the weeks prior to conception, you will find that “you” were not born at all. And if you find that you were not born, you might give up the notion that you are “born again” (even as those adhering to the teachings of other religions can give up the notion that they will be born again and again and again). You’ll also understand that, if you were not born, you cannot die, even as you understand that there will be no continuity for the body or “mind” or personality.

Since you are not in touch with reality, you will likely give no consideration to being in touch with reality. Like a six-year-old who has been told that he was lied to about Santa, you want to cling to your magical beliefs in the hope of continuing to get your "rewards" (such as "power" and "guidance," in your case.) Those who are more willing, however, can begin the “journey” to sanity, to being in touch with reality, to being able to differentiate the symbolic from the real, and to being able to distinguish reality from fantasy. That is what the Advaita Teachings can bring into being, after all. As far as your religiosity or holiness or spirituality, Maharaj dismissed all of that when he said:

"Whatever spiritual things you aspire to know are all happening in this objective world, in the illusion. All this is happening in the objective world. All is dishonesty. There is no truth in this fraud."

By the way, should you ever consider taking this “journey,” understand that it cannot begin by writing to this site to question the consciousness that speaks herein or by any acts of questioning “other” Advaitins or by seeking out people and trying to force your beliefs on them. The “journey” begins by questioning your self, by questioning what others taught you, by making an honest and impartial appraisal of all of your beliefs, your concepts, your ideas and your notions about who you are. And at the "journey's" end is freedom from all of "their" limiting beliefs and the ability to relax into the bliss of the nothingness...the bliss of zero concepts and zero false personas. Please enter into the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)
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DISCARDING “KNOWLEDGE” WHEN IT IS ACTUALLY LEARNED IGNORANCE, Part Five

Why do so few Realize? (1) Pride in worldly knowledge and attachment to religious and/or spiritual knowledge. (2) Use of a "backwards" approach, namely, knowledge accumulation vs. ignorance de-accumulation. And that is why worldwide ignorance has not been stamped out and will not be stamped out, because persons believe that the planet-wide epidemic of ignorance could be solved if only people would acquire more knowledge. The Advaitin understands that the knowledge is the ignorance and that the ignorance is the knowledge. The ignorance is that which the masses have been taught and have learned, and their ignorance will only be compounded if more of the same type knowledge is injected into the equation. Ignorance could be stamped out if persons were to forfeit their revered beliefs and ideas and concepts and dogma. Since that happens so rarely but is a prerequisite for Realization, only a few will ever Realize (that is, be in touch with reality...be restored to sanity). Among religions and philosophies, there is no other means that can produce the necessary brain-flush save completion of the entire Advaita “journey” which invites the dissolution of all of the contamination that is “the mind.”

From a site visitor: I’m totally westernized--gulity as charged--so I’ve been trained to give great value to knowledge, which you’ve been knocking. I’m at least willing to listen to you and see if I can get your point, but looking at your bio info, you obviously attended university, acquired enough knowledge to convince someone that they should pay you to use that knowledge, and then paid your bills through use of that knowledge. Your vast knowledge in many subject areas is obvious. So, what’s the deal? Larry

F.: In yesterday’s example of a curtain blocking the witnessing of the lilies, take the lilies to represent Reality and the curtain to be the learned ignorance that blocks seeing Reality. To remove the curtain of ignorance does not require more knowledge as much as it requires seeing ignorance as ignorance and seeing most "knowledge" as ignorance as well. Take the curtain’s removal and the witnessing of the lilies to represent that “Oh my gosh!” moment of Realization when (after preparation happens, after envisioning and reading happen, after discussion with a Realized Teacher happens, and after the readiness thereby comes about) all of the knowledge/learned ignorance fades away, body-mind identity ends, the influences of personality end, and Full Realization happens. Yet nothing prevents Realization more than assuming personas (be they “The Perfectionist,” “The Controller,” “The Religious One” or “The Spiritual Giant.” And nothing supports those last two ego-states more, and nothing perpetuates entrapment in the ignorance of concepts more, than the all-time leading source of concepts: religion (or even philosophies such as Advaita when they are distorted into religions).

The Advaita process will reveal to you the ignorance of believing in concepts, dogma, and ideas that (1) were dreamed up ages ago by shrewd men with an agenda to control the ignorant masses (especially females), that (2) have been passed down as “religious or spiritual knowledge” for millennia, and that (3) must be removed if truth is be seen. Advaita is based in reason and logic, so no Realized Advaitin would insult seekers (especially “females”) by suggesting they learn the chauvinistic tales in the “holy” writings of the three dominant religions. Why accept teachings that pass on an irrational, subliminal message about how much “worse” women are than men, such as Eve who tempted a formerly “good” man; such as Lot’s wife who (unlike her “good” husband who did not look back) was turned into a pillar of salt because she did; or such as Mary Magdalene who was revamped as “a whore” when the Christian Bible was totally re-written, and its message further distorted, in the 4th century.

Advaita would never reinforce such vilification of females, portraying them (in religious texts that are described as “the inspired word of God”) as the “bad” influence on pitiable men who were previously “good” before dealing with “evil” women…women such as Jezebel, Rahab, Potiphar’s wife, and Delilah. Females would never be encouraged by an Advaitin to accept teachings in “holy” texts that denigrate women (or men). Curiously, three billion women on the planet do go right along with all of that sexist nonsense, evidence of the degree to which programming and conditioning can result in causing some otherwise intelligent people to be totally blind and totally fooled. And the fact that so many women continue to honor those beliefs and align themselves with the billions of men who adhere to such prejudicial, dualistic dogma is a wonderment as well. So it is on the “Planet of the Programmed.”

To the contrary, Advaita erases, rather than reinforces, such dualistic belief in “bad women vs. good men,” in "good men vs. bad men," in "God vs. bad people," in “differences,” in “better than,” and in “evil vs. moral.” You will never be asked by a Realized Advaitin to stretch the imagination, to start thinking magically, and thereafter believe that a human egg was once miraculously fertilized sans sperm. You would never be asked to accept that the (supposed) mass-murder-by-drowning of every inhabitant on the planet except for eight people (resulting in an act of genocide that made Hitler’s efforts look like child’s play) was a “perfectly understandable and acceptable” act that should not be questioned.

These are but a few examples of the type of fictional knowledge that currently trap over six billion persons in the imprisonment of their so-called “minds.” They do not need more to believe in--they need far less. Thus, the Advaita approach deals with “the removal of knowledge which is merely learned ignorance,” not with “acquiring and accumulating more knowledge.” There is no other means that can produce the necessary brain-flush save completion of the entire Advaita “journey” which invites the dissolution of all of the contamination that is “the mind.” And that is why Christ, after understanding the Advaita message, left organized religion and used the Advaita method not to add more beliefs but to try to remove beliefs: "A dual-minded person is unstable in all ways"; "no one will ever see the kingdom of heaven...it's within"; "heaven and earth shall fade away"; "when you speak of me, speak of me as I AM"; and "Before Abraham was, I AM." Please enter the silence of contemplation. [Tomorrow: The Conclusion]