MISTAKING THE ABSTRACT FOR THE CONCRETE, Part Three 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

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj: "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."

F.: As Maharaj points out, John, no god created man in that god's image; instead, man created a god in man's image. Next month, many persons in the U.S. will be celebrating “A Day of Independence” without realizing that they have none. Two-thirds report—just like you, John—that they pray daily for guidance from God regarding what to do about "this" or what to do about "that." In other words, 66% of all Americans on earth admit that they can’t figure out what to do on their own and that they depend on an entity that does not live on earth to decide for them. For the more than 6 billion persons who claim membership in one of the three religions of Abraham, they admit that they have to be told what to do by someone else. Thus, they have no independence.

Moreover, a study of the evolution of religions shows that their god is nothing more than an abstract morphing by Abraham of all of the pagan gods of creation, sustenance, and destruction into one god that has been assigned a concrete form (specifically, a male form among Jews, Christians and Muslims). 95% of those polled in the U.S. report that they believe in that morphed, male god (as you do, John) and 64% say they have never once doubted his existence even once. Nearly two-thirds of all persons happily admit that they have never once questioned what other persons have told them.

83% also report that they believe, as you do, that body continuity is literally possible, taking the abstract concept of “I am my body” and assigning it the trait of concreteness, now and forevermore. With all of that programming, duality gains a firm foothold, so 88% report that they believe in a literal, concrete geographic “heaven” and "hell." (Actually, 88% report that they believe in "heaven" but only 71% report that they believe in “hell,” possibly hoping that to deny its existence might exempt them from eternal assigment to that location?) But notice, John, how you and those surveyed are merely taking an illusion and then either ungrading it or downgrading it:

You take yourself to be a three-dimensional being and you believe in a fourth dimension that is divided dualistically into a geographic place for housing the “good” and a different geographic place for housing the “bad.” You are taking illusions to be real and then either upgrading or downgrading them as your abstract thinking creates supposedly physical extensions of your illusions. “Heaven” is merely an upgrade in your “mind” of the illusion of “this world.” “Hell” is merely a downgrade in your “mind” of the illusion of “this world.” The “celestial power” that you think is at your disposal is merely an ungrade in your “mind” of the illusion of “worldly power” that you think you have as a result of another abstraction you would call "unquestioning faith."

But whether your beliefs concern upgraded illusions or downgraded illusions, they are still all illusion. You have been deluded, yet you do not know that you are deluded. He who has been fooled only rarely understands that he has been fooled, so you will believe in “power” and "body continuity" and "eternal reward" or "eternal punishment" and "guidance" as well as all of your other abstractions that are based in delusion. And the chief way that persons are fooled is by programming them to believe that abstract terms (terms that refer to nothing more than ideas and concepts that are dreamed up by persons) are terms that have physical referents. Thus, humans can dream up an abstract concept such as “an all-powerful being in another world” and then believe that entity is concrete.

Then, they can claim that their abstract concept has the physical form of a male; next, they can modify the Anglo-Saxon abstract term for “good” (“gud”) into the term “Good” and eventually “God”; and finally, they can claim that “God” is the name of an actual, concrete, physical entity. After generations of programming, the masses can take a contrived concept (that there is an omnipotent being that will share his power if people only believe in him); they can distort words to invent a label for their contrived concept (“gud” to “good” to “Good” to “God”); and they can then convince billions of persons that the abstract concept “God” and the abstract term “God” actually have a real, concrete, physical referent.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj offered this teaching:

"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."

In an earlier posting, this pointer was offered:

Either there is One, or there is duality and/or multiplicity. Either there is a prime cause and creation (and therefore a prime causer and creator) or there is neither creation nor destruction. Science has proved that there is neither creation nor destruction. All is energy/matter, and energy/matter can be neither created nor destroyed. Wherefore a causer or a creator in that reality? Where is there any possibility of a creator (or a creator-sustainer-destroyer god) when That Which Is Has Always Been, when That cannot have been created, when That cannot be destroyed, and when all merely cycles...or not?

Persons who are programmed to believe that their bodies-minds-personalities shall last "for infinity after death" do not pause to consider that, if infinity is a possibility in --> that "direction" on their timelines, then it must also be a possibility in <-- that "direction" on their timelines. Infinite is infinite. Whatever has the ability to exist "forever after" also had to have the ability to exist "forever before."

If persons are not free of being fooled, if they are dependent on someone else to tell them what to do in every situation, and if they are trapped in the delusion that results when they believe erroneously that abstract concepts have a physical referent, then they are walking about as if in a dream. They are walking about in their sleep, dreaming that they are free and empowered while actually being trapped and being so powerless that they cannot even decide what to do on their own.

They are imprisoned in the “minds” that have resulted from their consciousness having been warped by ignorant leaders (or by truly savvy leaders who have elevated manipulation to an art form). Yet, like you, they are convinced that they have power and that they are free. Such is the delusion of dualistic thinking and assigning concrete forms to abstract concepts. Please enter into the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)
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ADVAITA TEACHINGS: Relevant, or Not? Part Three

[Several visitors, after understanding why “the mind” has become a liability, are getting free of additional concepts. For those who asked about samskaras and are now getting rid of another concept, see the posting for June 14, 2006]

From a site visitor: OK, so I read the posts from the last days, and you did admit that the I AM is a part of the I AM THAT I AM, so the question is, how is any of that talk about consciousness and witnessing have any relevance to the I AM I’m trying to navigate through? Tom

F.: To continue with the pointer offered at the end of yesterday’s post, today’s post will be directed to “Tom the Seeker,” though you aren’t aware of the degree to which you have assumed that role. Don’t despair since most are trapped in the same ego-state and most haven’t realized that either.

Like all persons, you are seeking many things. Beyond seeking "others" and "things" to make them happy, persons also seek (1) control and (2) power that will guarantee the ability to control. That becomes the trap that guarantees relative existence imprisonment for persons. Nothing outside Your Self can provide consistent happiness, and control and power are conceptual illusions. The closest you shall ever come to “having power” is to enter into the witness states. Were you to witness objectively, you would see that all of your thoughts are merely flickerings on the screen of consciousness.

You would see that there are no "your thoughts" but there are only the thoughts that arise as a result of your having been programmed and conditioned to develop a "mind," a repository of concepts and beliefs and dogma/spiritual knowledge (which is only learned ignorance). All content of the "mind" is false, and it is that “mind” that has left you in a position to "try to navigate" your relative existence rather than reporting that you have navigated it to its end and have transcended the relative completely.

Trapped in the desire for power and control, as all persons are, you want to know what can be expected and what plans can be made so that control is guaranteed. You have not seen your own pattern or that of other persons: that which is unexpected is what shall come, and that which is planned will never come exactly as planned. The way that a character in a John D. MacDonald novel puts it is:

Not one of us ever grows up to be what he intended to be. Not one of us fulfills his own expectations.

They who know that They already Are That Which They Have Always Been are free. They who have no expectations are free. Only a fool would say, “I became exactly what I wanted to become.” Only a bigger fool would reflect over the events of a lifetime and say, “Yeah, that went exactly as planned.” And only the biggest fool would believe, “Well, there’s a god in charge of everything, so it went exactly the way it was supposed to go…suffering and misery included.”

In order to be free of the disappointments of unmet expectations and the disappointment of not being what one wanted or planned to be, find That Which You already Are. I Am complete, fixed and stabilized; in your efforts at “trying to navigate” through this existence, you are incomplete, not fixed and fluctuating. Awareness is absolute; consciousness is relative. You are trapped in consciousness, specifically, in contaminated consciousness. Therefore you cannot be absolutely free. Since the relative is always in motion, always in a state of flux, your relative experiences will require that you always be in motion, in flux. Ego is about going and doing and zooming, so no persona has any tolerance at all for stillness. Therefore your sense of freedom, like your sense of happiness, will come and go, at best.

In “trying to navigate” through your relative existence, you reveal another role that you’re playing: “Tom the Captain,” the one in charge of where the ship goes and how the ship goes. (Again, there’s that desire for control.) Everything in the relative existence which involves “trying” is always wearisome and frustrating and tiresome. Who could possibly feel any sense of freedom or joy if the life they are trying to negotiate is wearisome and frustrating and tiresome? Were you to Realize, you could understand the complete compatibility of the I AM you mentioned and the I AM THAT. You would understand that passions can be felt, that dispassionate actions can happen, and that you need not become a forest dweller in order to “navigate” the I-Amness or to try to be free of having to try so hard as a result of your unmet desires and your perceived fears.

Knowing the Perfect Self, You would reach that state wherein nothing can be added and wherein nothing can be taken away. When it is known that nothing can be added, how could any nagging desire manifest? When it is known that nothing can be taken away, how could any nagging fear manifest? To know that You Are beyond being added to or stripped of, to know that You Are beyond the beingness and even the non-beingness, is freedom. Only then can you relax. Only then will the restless search end.

Yet you question the relevance of a discussion about witnessing? The relevance of the witnessing will truly come when you reach the witnessing stages, when you then turn the witness upon yourself, and when you see that there is neither seeker not witness. Then you will understand when it is said that I Am both subject and object, when it is said that I Am the Eternal Subject, when it is later said that I Am neither subject nor object, and when it is said even later that I Am beyond all of that, witnessing included. Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)

“MIND” and MEMORIES: When Nature’s “Assets” Become Warped into “Liabilities,” Part Four

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Because of programming and conditioning and enculturation, that which had been an asset (memory) has became a liability.

FROM A SITE VISITOR: Loved your expression “brain-flush”?! Now that resonates. I’ve been visiting your site off-and-on since the early days - you did a piece one time on the brain and mind and consciousness but I can’t find it in the search. Can you tell me how to find that and then tie it in with “brain-flush”? LOL Thanks.

[Continued from yesterday]

F.: The “deficient and distorted” part of the brain that Maharaj referred to is, of course, that part which stores and accesses memories, so all memories are deficient distortions. Nothing is as it appears to you, and nothing that has ever appeared to you was really the way it was perceived. You have been fooled because that which "they" gave you to use for perceiving is an accumulation of foolishness. Since the “mind” is the sum total of memories, and because all memories are distortions, then the “mind” is the sum total of your distortions. Want to be free of distortions and to Realize truth? Be rid of the “mind.” Yet you cannot go beyond the “mind” when you are constantly looking at the “mind” (that is, paying attention to "thought"). In order to go beyond the mind, Maharaj said, you must look away from the “mind” and its fictional contents. That means, therefore, that “minds” are nowadays so deficient and distorted that they should be ignored.

If you have not Realized, you do not see things now the way that they truly are, so it would have been totally impossible to have seen them the way they truly were in the past; therefore, the invitation is to Realize, to see that none of the memories that you are clinging to are accurate (including memories about “happenings,” memories involving “persons,” and all of the things you were taught to believe that are still stored “in your memory”).

Next, understand the reason that there is some talk in the teachings about “Now.” (By the way, there is no “power of now” since there is no power. Power is just a concept to which persons become addicted). “Time” too is a concept, so why even speak of now? Because anything supposedly recalled from the “past” is a memory, and it has been established that memories are distortions, so there is no past and there are no accurate memories. In fact, your entire world is in you...in your "mind," so how could that which is merely in your "mind" and which you think is "the world" possibly be real?

The most that the I-Amness can ever claim, therefore, is now, but if Realization has not happened, even perceptions regarding "now" are distortions. (Eventually, even that speck of now-time measurement will become meaningless, if you Realize.) If Realized—and thereby free of (false) memories—no action now would be triggered by a memory of something past. That in itself would be another level of freedom. For example:

MEMORY-DRIVEN DISTORTION LEADING TO EMOTIONAL INTOXICATION: “I am upset because we are no longer together and I don’t have the love now that I had back then.”

CLEAR PERCEPTION NOW AS A RESULT OF NOT BELIEVING IN A DISTORTED, ILLUSORY MEMORY: “What I thought I had back then was not even close to ...

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THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS “PEACE OF MIND”
(There Is Only Peace if You’re Out of Your Mind)

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Please enter the silence of contemplation. [To be continued]