HOW SAMSKARAS GENERATE INSANE THOUGHTS, WORDS, AND DEEDS

FROM A SITE VISITOR: [This visitor has written frequently regarding his entrapment at the body identification level and his fear of cancer.] Not long ago you talked about the impact statements can have on people. Recurring statements or even just a one time statement. As you know, I've had an extreme worry of cancer. Irrational. I very well remember my grandmother being a bit of a hypochondriac and, in particular, always talking about getting cancer. My wife told me that my mother told her that when I was very young that my grandmother would talk to me often and I would listen intently about cancer. I had totally forgotten that as I was very young. The thing about statements is that in an instant they can impact your forever but you can't stop them in an instant.

F.: Yes. While vasanas (residual impressions) can provide a glimpse of the Original Understanding that lingers within, some teachers have long advised students to recognize and be free of the relative effects of samskaras—those mental impressions that are rooted in lies and that drive thoughts, words, and deeds. It is your memory of the fear-inducing content of those early conversations, along with your desire for body continuity and your fear of a lack of continuity, that have been the source of much of your mental suffering and emotional intoxication.

Samakaras (sans = together + kara = action) drive deeds when those false memories (or memories of the excessive talk from your grandmother) come together in a space/body that had the ability to take actions or perform deeds. Driven by a “mind” that was warped by such excessive fear-mongering, you (the consciousness) were warped by someone who was so absorbed in self that she assumed that her truth would be everyone's truth.

It would be like telling a relative, “You're going to get colon cancer and diabetes—guaranteed—just wait and see. No exceptions. I got 'em so you’re going to get 'em.” It is one thing to make offspring aware of any familial history with specific hereditary health issues; it is another to speak of it so often that children become traumatized. Yet such is the power of conditioning. Why not try telling the consciousness that it is the consciousness that is in fear, and not You? Why not return to step one and begin again the process of discarding body identification?

Another example of the long-lasting effects of statements from a grandmother (statements which programmed and conditioned a child) was provided by a woman who was advised by an associate to come for satsang. She arrived and soon shared her first lie: that she was “looking for change and peace.”

She had spent her first seventeen years on a south Louisiana rice farm. Her parents had followed the orders of their priest and pope and had bred as instructed: without restraint. As a result, the woman had eleven siblings living in a home with her, her mother, her father, and her grandmother, bringing to fifteen the total number of people living in a three-bedroom home.

She explained that the front porch and the back porch were eventually enclosed and that her eleven brothers and sisters slept in bunk beds either in one bedroom or in the two makeshift, porch rooms. With such crowded conditions, she felt "fortunate" that she was “her grandmother’s favorite” and was thus allowed to share a bed and a bedroom with that woman for fifteen years.

When the woman first came for satsang, she was 45 years old and miserable behind what she called “more than twenty-five years of horrible relationships with men.” More than anything, she wanted to know “what was wrong with men nowadays…why they were not raised to behave properly.”

As she shared the history of her relationships, it became obvious she had adopted the persona of her grandmother who had, in turn, assumed the identity of "An 80-Year-Old Occidental Prude." Men were quite confused over the years by her “runway model looks” but her octogenarian thinking and conduct. When asked to describe the events that precipitated the end of her most recent failed relationship, she explained:

Okay, well with that one, he greeted me properly at the door and gave me a flower. All seemed like it was going to go well. Then, as we approached the car, he unlocked the doors with his remote, got in on his side of the car, and opened my door from inside. I turned and started back to my condo. When he got out of the car and asked if I had forgotten something, I told him that he had forgotten something, namely, that a gentlemen walks a lady to her side of the car and opens her door from the outside before getting into the car.

She went on to describe other relationships that had ended as quickly when she slapped some men for making moves that did not reinforce her “Above all, I am a lady” self-image. Further investigation of what she called “wonderful lessons learned during the years that grandmother shared her room and her wisdom” uncovered the primary messages that contributed to a child’s programming and an adult’s misery:

“Always make sure that men treat you like a lady.” “You must demand that men treat you properly—they will not do it by choice.” “If a man asks you to do anything that is not lady-like, slap him and walk away.” When asked to appraise objectively how her grandmother’s advice was working for her in her relative existence, she defended the woman’s “wisdom” to the end.

After the consideration was offered that the problems in her relative relations were not being caused as much by men as they were being caused by her having adopted the phony self-image of "Super Lady" and by the grandmother that she had internalized, she left the way she arrived: angry. It seemed likely that the only reason she paused for a few seconds on her way to the door was to decide if she should come back long enough to slap the offending mouth.

Have you paused long enough to look at self and to determine if there are some basic but inane beliefs that are driving you through your relative existence? The powerful influence of a few nonsensical comments or pieces of advice or insane words stored as memories can remove from persons any ability at all to make choices.

Instead, their thoughts, words and deeds are being controlled by inane statements that have become components of a “mind”—that repository of nonsense and lies and dogma and concepts that often renders persons helpless and hopeless and miserable.

Advaita invites you to cast aside all of the ideas and emotions and attitudes that were pumped into you as a child. Question it all. See that it was all just so much nonsense. Then, the invitation is to discard it all and follow the seven-step “path” to freedom. Please enter the silence of contemplation.
READINGS RELATED TO TODAY’S POSTING:

Click CASTING LIGHT ON THE DARK SIDE OF RELATIONSHIPS

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

SAMSKARAS, ARCHETYPES, AND FREEDOM FROM THEIR EFFECTS

F.: As this series ends after responding to questions submitted about samskaras and archetypes, let the main pointer be offered: solutions in the relative cannot be found unless problems in the relative (and their sources) are properly identified. It is useless to top off the weeds in a garden instead of pulling them up at the root and discarding them. Take the garden that is bastardized with weeds to be the relative existence. Take the plants to be the lives of persons (that is, the non-Realized) that could be flourishing but that do not because of the weeds. Take the weeds to be all that chokes off the ability of the plants to flourish (and to exist in a calm and peaceful fashion):

the belief by persons that they are awake when they are walking about in their sleep; the belief by persons that they are making choices and have free will when in fact everything they think and emote and do is controlled by genetics and chemical imbalances and a “mind” that is a repository of lies and programming and enculturation and conditioning; the arrogant belief by persons that they have the right to control friends, neighbors, traffic, co-workers, spouses, a nation and all other nations; the belief by persons that they have the right to decide who should die and who should live; and the deep love affair that persons have with their concept of “separation.”

It is that love affair that persons have with their belief in separation and duality which breeds all arrogance and all “better-than-you” type thinking; which makes neighbors or co-workers or spouses or other teams or other cities or other states or other nations “not good enough”; which allows persons to believe that the deaths of persons in their group are bad but that the deaths of those outside their group can be good; which allows persons to believe that they have a god in another world that is empowering them and making them “better”; which drives persons to believe that if you do not worship, or if you do not worship their god according to the dictates of their religion or denomination or sect, that they have the right to punish you, reject you, or even kill you.

And what are the roots of those weeds that have always brought misery and suffering to the “human existence”? The roots are ignorance; a lack of wisdom; a preference among persons to explain everything supernaturally or mythically or magically or superstitiously rather than preferring the scientific and factual and actual explanation for happenings; a laziness that drives persons to accept what others say rather than investigating and seeking truth themselves; a preference for emotional intoxication over reason and logic; programming, conditioning and enculturation; taking impressions and images to be real; the assumption of ego-states as identities; the allowance of the ego-defense mechanisms that accompany all ego-states to determine everything that persons say, do, or feel; the refusal to seek an understanding of the unicity while clinging to the belief in separation and multiplicity; and, as a result of believing in “separate but not equal,” being driven by such high levels of arrogance, egotism, and self-importance that the planet becomes dominated by persons (playing their roles of “leader”) who are supercilious, prideful, and haughty.

Further, all that is defined as “destructive” on the planet evolves from two relative contributors: (1) the arrogance, ego, and false pride of “leaders” and (2) the programmed and conditioned masses who blindly follow those leaders and who refuse to question the words of their politicians or preachers or generals or ayatollahs or judges or teachers or priests or mullahs or spiritual teachers or entertainers or rabbis or gurus or medicine men or imams.

The “journey” to Realization begins with questioning…with a willingness to question it all. To clean out the garden and thereby allow the plants to flourish, the seeker must find the roots of the weeds and discard not just the evidence of the weeds but must be rid of the root systems as well. When the manner in which persons think, emote and behave is determined by impressions and images and personas instead of by logic and reason and fact, then a relative existence problem exists and nothing other than insane or insane-like behavior can follow. Persons are being driven by unconscious and subconscious forces, even as they believe that they are making choices.

Impressions and images and archetypes and dogma and ideas are all concepts that are based in memories and stored in the unconscious or in the subconscious. To be influenced by anything that you are unconscious of blocks Realization and prevents true freedom. The basic archetypes are merely personality types that are universally recognized. The commonly-held beliefs about such types have been repeated so frequently that those fictitious characters are no longer questioned by persons but are assumed as identities instead.

As with all myths and superstitions (and the religious and spiritual beliefs that have evolved from them), the impressions or imprints that follow repeated exposure to such “typing” are soon taken by the conditioned masses to be real. False identities are assumed to be real and those assumptions are seldom ever questioned. As a result of thousands of years of conditioning and genetic messaging, the belief in falsehoods has become so widespread that the attachment of “positive vs. negative” connotations to ideas or words is now automatic, no matter how nonsensical the labels of “good vs. bad” might be.

Archetypes are about symbols, images, personas, and individualization, all of which are false concepts taken to be true by “the mind” and all of which must be seen to be fictional if one is to Realize. The liability that “the mind” has become should now be clear. Archetypes inspire certain patterns of thought when truth can only be found beyond “thoughts,” beyond the fiction of the "mind."

Archetypes are “deposits of the repeated experience of humanity” which cause humans to accept “mythical ideas” as real. The Advaitin knows that these inherent and cultural images are only one more influence that must be transitioned if Realization is to happen. The stuff of myths and legends and fairy tales has become the stuff of “the mind” of persons. Along with the accumulation of ideas and concepts and beliefs and dogma, those archetypal images and concepts now form a collection of never-to-be-questioned beliefs that drive humans to behave and emote and think in the unnatural or supernatural ways that they now behave and emote and think.

Just as was the case with the brain’s ability to store memories and retrieve memories, impressions and archetypes were initially an “asset” in facilitating the perpetuation of the species, but now (just as is the case with “the mind”) they have become a liability to those seeking freedom and truth and independence.

To be independent and in touch with reality, seven specific steps are required. They must be taken in an exact order, which happens to be exactly the reverse order by which the consciousness manifested and became corrupted through various levels of programming and conditioning and enculturation and genetic coding. If you want to take those seven steps, the guide is available. Please enter the silence of contemplation.
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SAMSKARAS, ARCHETYPES, AND THE BIRTH OF DUALITY

F.: Samskaras, involving memories and mental impressions, are by definition “of or pertaining to the mind,” and “the mind” over the ages has devolved into nothing more than a repository of lies and concepts that are to be transitioned if Realization is to happen. (NOTE: Such "impressions" are quite different from one property of the manifested consciousness, namely that which allows for “non-personal communication” as consciousness speaks to consciousness without bounds. An example of that was offered earlier when a woman named Elaine in Louisiana awakened abruptly at 4:30 A.M. CST and became aware of the fact that her daughter LeeAnn, in California at 2:30 A.M. PST, had been involved in an accident.)

Over the last several million years as the brain evolved from an organ the size of 400 mls to one that is over 1400 mls, two "new" sections developed that made possible the storage and retrieval of "memories" and the sensing of "impressions." The intent was for those sections of the brain to facilitate the survival of the species. Thus, if one man saw another walk off the edge of a cliff and shatter on the rocks below, the brain of the witness would record the incident in memory. Later, if that witness happened upon the edge of a cliff, his brain would retrieve the earlier memory from a section of the brain and make the man aware of a threat. Soon, the threat would be given a connotation and a sense of “not good” would be felt every time a similar happening occurred.

On different occasions, after returning home from extended hunting trips that had ended in success, the same man might approach his mate. Each time he did so, he would raise their next meal into the air for her viewing. They both would develop from those instances a sense of “good,” and that would be associated with such tangible concepts as "having a mate" and "sharing a meal" as well as with intangible concepts such as “homecomings” and "cohabitating" and "caring for" and "being cared for." Human would soon begin to form thousands of images with connotations of either “good” or “not good,” all associated with an ever-increasing number of human experiences.

Over millions of years, those images and connotations would be stored in the brain’s “newer” section for storage, would be retrieved repeatedly by triggering mechanisms, would be discussed and reinforced once languages developed, and would eventually be passed on as part of the genetic coding. And all of that was based in what would develop into a series of images in "the mind" that classify everything as “good” or “bad.” Those images, and that duality, gave rise to what would be called "archetypes."

The terms "good" and "bad" would eventually be used by humans to appraise and evaluate and classify and divide and separate all happenings and persons and things and places.

The concept of duality was born.

After that, the sense of “separate from” would eventually become what seemed “natural.” From that point to this, not only would the Original Understanding of non-duality be lost (along with the innate and natural awareness of the unicity) but also the Teachings of non-duality would be taken by most to be the “unnatural” perspective because it became the least common.

The evolution of the brain that generated samskaras and archetypal images (both of which help perpetuate a belief in duality) also laid the roots from which duality would grow. From the belief that duality is the real, all conceptualized illusions of “separate” and “different from” and “better than” would grow. Ultimately, it would be from the conceptualized illusions of “separate” and “different from” and “better than” that all ego would grow, and from ego has come all relative existence arrogance. And from ego and arrogance and a sense of separation have come the desires and fears that generate the perceived need for power; the desire to control; the assumed right to judge and moralize and be “the one who is right”; the assumption of the right to dictate and punish or reward; the need to argue, fight, separate, and engage in wars; and the willingness (and often, indeed, the propensity) to destroy on personal, state, national and international levels. The trillions, and the trillions of trillions, of persons who have died on this planet from anything other than a "natural cause" were actually sacrifices made on the altar of ego.

The roots of the widespread, insane-like behavior among persons, all embroiled in the relative existence and driven by their concepts, can be traced back to evolutionary events that set the stage for the widespread belief in duality. It can be seen, therefore, that to be free of the effects of all of that programming, conditioning, genetic influence, and enculturation is an awesome and challenging undertaking. Understanding the scope of those obstacles explains why so few will ever Realize, yet for the dedicated seeker who finds a capable and willing teacher, it can happen. Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)

SAMSKARAS AND ARCHETYPES: DELUSIONS AND DUALITY

F.: A recent series explained how the mind was once an asset but has now become a liability. That series triggered a number of e-mails asking about samskaras as well as archetypal images. Tomorrow, archetypal images will be discussed. Today, some considerations regarding samskaras will be offered, as explained earlier in the following exchange that is an extract from the soon-to-be-published book entitled CONSCIOUSNESS, AWARENESS, AND THE NATURE OF REALITY (Peace Every Day When Abiding as the Absolute) :

Seeker: And how has my consciousness been corrupted, according to you?
F.: Via impressions—or samskaras—as my teacher called them. Here’s an analogy: imagine you’re at the beach, a few yards from the water’s edge. As you walk, you leave behind impressions of your feet. Are those impressions real?
Seeker: For the moment, yes.
F.: Really? What’s real about those impressions? They are only space—nothingness, emptiness—that seems to your eye to be “something” when in fact they are nothing. Will they last?
Seeker: They’ll last until the tide comes in and washes them away.
F.: So are they an actual form, or just a temporary space that appears to have shape and form?
Seeker: OK...they’re temporary.
F.: So it is with everything you think you see. It’s only an appearance, and appearances are distortions, and distortions trigger misery. You look at the body called “floyd” and all that is there is a space, but you think you are seeing some thing. It is emptiness…nothingness. Just a handful of elements with air and energy temporarily circulating through the space. If you remove the water that is within the body, then those elements won’t even fill a small urn.

Realization is like the wave that can come along and sweep away all the false impressions imprinted on "the mind." Realization makes you aware that the nothingness that you’ve always taken to be something is not that thing at all. Those impressions were never real. You mistook an empty space to be something, and that’s what persons do all day long, all month long, all year long, year after year after year. Most spend their entire existence convinced that their perceptions are the “right” perceptions when if fact they have never seen anything “rightly.”

As a result, they will suffer from one false impression after another, not unlike all the impressions in your “mind.” Footprints in the sand appear to have some shape or form, just as mirages in the desert appear to have a shape or form, but the reality is that all impressions and all mirages are just a part of the fiction of the “mind.” To be “in touch with reality” is to be able to differentiate betwen what is illusion and what is real, between what is delusion and what is truth, and between that which appears to be dualistic as opposed to that which is One and truly Real. Please enter the silence of contemplation.

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