Today's Considerations
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In the ten+ years during which postings have been offered on this site - especially during those years when comments were allowed and when email contact was encouraged - threats came from self-proclaimed Muslims and self-proclaimed Christians; moreover, attacks also came from Hindus who claimed to be in perfect peace and from Buddhists who claimed to be benefiting from an understanding of an Eight-Fold Path and Four Noble Truths (but who nevertheless felt driven to put in their two cents’ worth).
More recently, when a few Christians have been quoted because some of their words point to the non-dual understanding (which Jesus also shared in his later years) some "non-dualists" or "Nisargans" have emailed comments or complaints, wanting it to be clear that they can see exactly where on the "path" those Christians were stuck and how far short they are of True Realization.
Here, though, there is no pro-anything agenda nor any anti-anything agenda. There is no one here who believes anything, so there can be no one here who wants anyone else to believe anything. The invitation, in fact, is to the contrary: believe nothing.
Yet there is a long tradition here of sharing non-dual pointers from authors, actors, playwrights, musicians, poets, politicians, philosophers and seers of certain truths even if they never heard of “Realization” and even if they are or were far removed from that state.
Thus, in the book entitled QUOTATIONS AND POINTERS dealing with NON-DUALITY, ADVAITA, NISARGA YOGA and more ,
quotes and pointers are offered from hundreds and hundreds of people and sources, including as diverse a crowd as
Plato, St. Francis of Assisi, Desiderius Erasmus, Albert Einstein, George Bernard Shaw, Richard E. Lingenfelter, Robert Burton, Daniel H. Boorstin, Gary Zukav, E. Bayda, Mark Twain, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Brad Thor, Mohandas "Mahatma" Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela,
Immanuel Kant, Bruce Lipton, Clive Cussler, Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, Lewis Thomas, Max Planck, Heinrich Hertz, Ralph Klein, Barbara McClintock, Erwin Schrodinger, Fritjof Capra, Niels Bohr, David Bohm, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Marvin Kaye, S.H. Sharp, Paul Krassner, Ken Kesey, Russell Brand, G.I. Gurdjieff,
John Lennon, a variety of examples of the non-duality message contained in the body of Native America wisdom, a Cherokee Grandmother, and examples of the non-duality message that have appeared in the fictional works of Jack Kerouac, Michael Connelly, Mary Shelley, Victor Hugo, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Robert Lewis Stevenson, Abraham "Bram" Stoker as well as the message of “not two” as offered in film (including a list of over thirty movies which are all based in non-duality, such as The Matrix, Part One, The 13th Floor, Inception, The Truman Show, Dark City, Existenz, Avatar, and many more).
So with fair warning to the diehards, here it goes again:
There’s a fellow who is presently visiting three cities along the East Coast of the U.S. and speaking to large gatherings of people, a fellow who in deemed by billions to be one of the most religious ever. In his case, as head of the Catholic Church, he is proving to be more “Jesus-like” than “current-day-Christian-like,” and that alone has inspired many self-proclaimed “Christians” to attack him and his message. Indeed, his talks do contain considerations and pointers which are deemed to be equally-offensive both to those on the far right religiously and to those on the far left religiously as well as to those among the far right politically and to those among the far left politically.
Yes, he does seem to an “Equal-Opportunity Offender” and, therefore, is treated no differently from the one named Yeshu’a (erroneously called “Jesus” nowadays) when he started sharing non-dual pointers and treated no differently from the way Maharaj was treated after he abandoned his focus on religious and spiritual pointers and focused more on the mind as the carrier of the Ultimate Sickness.
Yet the fellow speaking at a United Nations assembly today does offer some non-dual pointers which might be of interest to those seeking the “not-two” understanding. Yesterday, before a joint session of the U.S. Congress, he offered these considerations among others dealing with the polluting of “our common home” (a.k.a., “earth”) and dealing with the “greed” vs. poverty link as well. He said:
1. Our world is increasingly a place of violent conflict, hatred and brutal atrocities, committed even in the name of God and of religion.
2. We know that no religion is immune from forms of individual delusion or ideological extremism. This means that we must be especially attentive to every type of fundamentalism, whether religious or of any other kind.
3. The contemporary world, with its open wounds which affect so many of our brothers and sisters, demands that we confront every form of polarization which would divide it into these two camps.
4. There is another temptation which we must especially guard against: the simplistic reductionism which sees only good or evil; or, if you will, the righteous and sinners.
[Maharaj: "Only that person will visit this place whose virtue and sin have come to an end."]
5. We know that in the attempt to be freed of the enemy without, we can be tempted to feed the enemy within. To imitate the hatred and violence of tyrants and murderers is the best way to take their place.
(Consider as an example of pointer #5 the way that lies were used to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq in order to oust Saddam Hussein in an effort to gain control of that nation's oil supplies; then, consider the way that the invading forces “imitated the hatred and violence of a tyrant and murderer”; and then consider the way that the invading force ended up having to “take his place,” even to this day.)
Call it “polarization” or “simplistic reductionism” as that fellow did yesterday or call it “imitating” or “dividing” or “splitting” or “creating a schism” or “separating” or “partitioning” or “segregating” or “carving up” or “wall-building” or “dissecting” or “driving a wedge between” or “fencing off” or “cracking” or “tearing apart” or “generating a sense of different-from-ment and better-than-ment,” it still all deals in the end with one thing: duality.
It all deals with setting people apart from each other and fixing them at a certain point along a continuum of separate places on hierarchies, and hierarchies have long been a key tool of those who support divisions, be they along political lines; religious lines; religious vs.. spiritual lines; spiritual vs. non-spiritual lines; religious vs. atheist or agnostic or non-believer lines; racial lines, economic and class lines; ad infinitum.
And it was reportedly Yeshu’a who warned of the results of duality and made clear where duality is centered:
“A dual-minded person is unstable in all ways.”
The Ultimate Sickness is a mind sickness, not a religious or spiritual sickness. It is rooted in “learned ignorance and insanity” and in dualistic beliefs, and it results in chaos and in “violent conflict, hatred and brutal atrocities, committed even in the name of God and of religion.”
So duality is
(a) centered in the mind,
and its results include
(b) “polarization” or “simplistic reductionism” or “imitating” or “dividing” or “splitting” or “creating a schism” or “separating” or “partitioning” or “segregating” or “carving up” or “wall-building” or “dissecting” or “driving a wedge between” or “fencing off” or “cracking” or “tearing apart” or “generating a sense of different-from-ment and better-than-ment”
which lead to
(c ) fighting and disharmony and dissonance and discord and chaos and even “violent conflict, hatred and brutal atrocities.”
To be continued.
Please enter the silence of contemplation.
[NOTE: The four most recent posts follow. You may access all of the posts in this series and in the previous series and several thousand other posts as well by clicking on the links in the "Recent Posts and Archives" section.]