Righteousness and
Discrimination
The test of righteousness is based on fear or glory
“The Kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but
righteousness and peace in the Holy Spirit. Our faith
consists not in persuasive words of human wisdom, but in the
demonstration of the Spirit and of power.”
A
Conversation of St. Seraphim of Sarov with Nicholas
Motovilov Concerning the Aim of a Christian Life
The power of righteousness has a dark and evil side when
it is not properly understood and experienced. There have
been too many deeds done in the name of righteousness that
have been truly in the camp of ignorance, vengence, fear and
stupidity. Yes, stupidity, plain old, dumb old, duh!
“You must realize (the) capacity for discrimination, or
you really cannot cut it in the Spiritual process.”
Basket
of Tolerance
“I did not enter into and endure or pass through the
Spiritual process by being an asshole or true believer.
Doubt was my Siddhi, the kind of Siddhi I acquired through
that intellectual discipline, I do not believe or
communicate bullshit, nor do I suggest that you bullshit
yourself. Put yourself through the hard school, and really
consider it. You must realize that capacity for
discrimination, or you really cannot cut it in the Spiritual
process. It takes a long time to be really schooled in
discrimination. There is more to discrimination than just
things of the mind, ideas and so forth. Discrimination is a
tool you also bring to non-ideas – to impressions and events
that have nothing to do with intellect or mentality or
culture or society. You ‘must bring discrimination to events
that transcend the conventional or lower bodymind, that
transcend the first three stages of life. I was able to use
that tool in the higher stages of life. I know how important
it is as an instrument for growth into the higher stages.
Therefore, you must acquire a similar capability.”
Why
Study the Great Tradition
“In the popular un-Enlightened mind, the ego is eternal,
good, Divine, and even very God. And mind is sufficient
Heaven, or else this mortal Earth-life is the ultimate goal
of conscious being. Such views are not only false, they are
the very substance of un-Enlightenment, fear, cruelty, and
madness. There are countless numbers of angry people and
angry “religious” groups willing to do great harm to anyone
or any organization that does not subscribe to the popular
views of salvation. And, therefore, it is not only the
message of worldly people but the message of ordinary and
even extraordinary religious people that must be confronted
by Wisdom. The righteous egoic “bite” of “pop” religion (and
“pop” politics, “pop” science, and the “pop” mind cults of
psychiatric vintage) must be tempered and transformed by
unrighteous love, tolerance, and intelligent
understanding.”
Nirvanasara
“Vajra neurosis involves fear of being surprised,
confused, or overwhelmed by outside, so one continually
monitors the environment for threats. When a threat is
detected, we respond by cold or hot anger –pushing the
world away by creating a cold wall that holds phenomena at a
distance or a hot front that repels them. Vajra is
associated with abstract intellect, with mapping
relationships so as to have a clear, comprehensive view of a
situation. In the neurotic state, the abstracting process
becomes compulsive and loses contact with phenomena. One
becomes self-righteous, justifying everything in terms of
one’s “system” and filtering out inconvenient facts. It also
leads to intellectual frivolousness, getting caught up in
word games divorced from experience, or compulsively
figuring out how things fit together and what rule of
conduct applies to a situation. On a bodily level it
involves excessive visual and head orientation, always
trying to see around the corner or behind your back,
watching every corner.”
Maitri
“Religious cults are nearly always antagonistic to one
another-each claiming some kind of righteous superiority for
its special historical revelation. And the level of
participation in the limited cultures of such cults is
largely a matter of uninspected beliefs, external rituals,
and superficial codes of social conduct, There is nothing
morally, humanly, or spiritually superior, about such
“religious” consciousness.”
True
Religion Is the Natural Evolutionary Process of Human
Existence
” don’t believe there is stupidity, delusion, and casual
ill-will manifested anywhere more than in the domains of
religion and spiritual cultism. Those who would truly live
as a sacrifice in God must struggle every day to maintain a
level of wit and good humor in the face of ceaseless
disheartening confrontations with believers and aspirants in
the various traditions. There is a righteous kind of sheer
and pious madness that seems almost always to infect those
who should be the enlightened minds and friends of
mankind.”
The
False Viewpoint of Religious and Spiritual Cultism
“The Way of the Heart is not a matter of any righteous
effort toward self-purification. It is a matter of freedom
from that effort. Neither is it an evil or immoral life. The
Way of the Heart is simply a matter of understanding what
the right principle of life is from the point of view of
Truth, through feeling-Contemplation of Me. On the basis of
that principle, you become tolerant of others and tolerant
of your own humanity.”
The
Incarnation of Love
When right is wrong and wrong is right, when right is
right and wrong is wrong discrimination is the measure.
“There is no point in becoming “concerned” about the
Community. The sadhana of the Community is no more a matter
of concern for what appears than personal sadhana is a
matter of concern for the qualities that arise in
meditation. The Community can only become schizophrenic,
righteous, self-conscious, and peculiar by thinking that the
realization of the Community, as I have described it, is
identical to a certain exterior manifestation that is
perfect, non-cultic, brilliant, and all of the rest. Then
the Community will always be looking at itself to make sure
its ass is not hanging out. All of that is itself cultic
concern. As long as human individuals are the substance of
the Community (and that is forever!) the tendency will be
present in each person every hour of every day to manifest
the conditions and dramas of Narcissus. The tendency will
always be to assume separation and to act separatively,
exclusively. So the intelligence of the Community is not
properly directed toward perfection in that outward sense of
conformation to a certain image. Rather, the Community must
always and actually do sadhana. In other words, it must live
that process in which all tendencies and concerns are broken
down, from hour to hour. And that requires everyone to meet
directly, to deal with one another directly, to deal with
themselves directly, and always to overcome this negative
destiny that is appearing in both new and old ways from day
to day. That sadhana is the sign of such a Community. It is
not a matter of its concern for outward perfection, but of
its adherence to the real process of sadhana. In that case
the outward manifestation of the Community remains free to
assume always more appropriate and effective forms in every
moment.”
“All concerns are a sign of the same thing. Every concern
is self-watching, self-meditation rather than simply living
the Condition of Satsang in which all things are realized in
Truth. And it doesn’t make any difference what the
particular concern is. It may seem like a very righteous and
realistic one. But concern itself is the sign of
Narcissus.”
Garbage
and Goddess
“Past societies have, in their extreme moments of
confrontation, destroyed themselves, as well as their
opponents. This is because ego-based societies function in
essentially the same manner as egoic individuals. Individual
human beings kill others and themselves every day.
Therefore, groups and societies, confronting one another in
egoic fashion, likewise threaten one another with
destruction. And, in the extreme moments of confrontation,
when self-preservation achieves its peak of righteous
irrationality, it is profoundly likely that nuclear war will
result.
The motives of present-day society are the same as those
of past societies. The only difference is that, in the
present day, the technology of both communication and
confrontation has become both globally extended and
profound. Therefore, when globally communicated
confrontation reaches its peak of irrationality, war-motives
will willingly destroy the entire world, just as readily as,
in the past, less technologically sophisticated war-makers
have wiped their petty local warring tribes from the face of
the Earth”
On
Liberation from ego and egoic Society, or, Cooperation +
Tolerance = Peace
“The world, even the Realm of Nature as a whole, is
founded on a righteous Principle. Therefore, the world will
be purified, without a doubt. The Force of the Divine
pervades everything, and, therefore, It also purifies
everything in one way or another. If human beings, while
they have the benign capacity to enter into God-Communion,
will not do so, but instead create a corrupt culture, a
subhuman order, then the purification will not occur within
the ordinary and benign course of natural processes. It is
then no longer a matter of some Adepts saying a holy word or
speaking the Truth whereupon everybody changes his or her
approach to life. It would be good if as many as possible
could hear the universal Teaching of Truth and respond to
it. But if the Teaching alone is not sufficient, then great
upheavals necessarily occur. That is how the righteous Law
works. It is not just that we pay our dues for past
activity. A righteous Principle is positively at work,
constantly to purify and to reestablish order.”
The
Urgency of the Teaching
“Religious and Spiritual cultism is, thus, a kind of
infantile collective madness. (And such madness is equally
shared by secular cultists, in every area of popular
culture, including politics, the sciences, the arts, the
communications media, and even all the agencies and
institutions of conventional ‘officialdom” relative to human
knowledge, belief, and behavior). Religious and Spiritual
cults (and, likewise, all secular cults) breed “pharisaism”
(or the petty righteousness of conventional thinking).
Religious and Spiritual cults breed “Substitution” myths (or
the belief that personal ego-transcendence is both generally
and ultimately, impossible, hut also unnecessary, because of
what “God”, or some “Master”, or even some “priest” has
already done). Indeed, religious and Spiritual cults (and
likewise, all secular cults) breed even every kind of
intolerance, and the chronic aggressive search for exclusive
social dominance and secular power. Religious and Spiritual
cults are, characteristically, populated by those who are,
generally, neither inclined toward nor prepared for the real
right practice of religious and Spiritual discipline, but
who are (and always seek to be) glamorized and consoled by
mere association with the “holy” things and beliefs of the
cult itself.
This error of religious and Spiritual cultism, and of
ego-based culture in general, must be examined very
seriously such that the error is truly rooted out, from
within the cult and the culture itself (and not merely, and
with equally cultic cultural righteousness, criticized from
without). Cultism of every kind (both sacred and secular)
must be understood to be a kind of ritualized infantilism
bound to egocentric behavior, and to the embrace of
“insiders” only, and to intolerance relative to all
“outsiders’ The cultic tendency, both sacred and secular,
causes (and has always caused) great social, cultural, and
political trouble, as can even now be seen in the
development of worldwide conflicts based on the exclusive
(or collectively egocentric) orientation of the many grossly
competitive religious traditions, political idealism’s, and
national identities.”
Cultism
“The childish neurosis that characterizes exoteric
cultism is precisely the clinging to superficial levels of
understanding (or even mere belief, without much
understanding), coupled with a righteous sense of exclusive
possession of Truth. And, in this late-time (or
dark epoch), this frame of mind is in evidence
in every area of human occupation. That frame of mind
characterizes the cults of science and politics just as much
as it does the cults of conventional religion.
It is time for everyone to awaken from the spell of
childish, subhuman, ego-possessed, subjective (mental,
emotional, and physical) obsession. It is time to grow
up!”
Cultism,
the childish beginners religion
“No merely human being should presume to be the Master of
Man. Every one of you is equally responsible to the Single
and Transcendental Master of the world, the Living Light,
the Love that is hidden in the heart of Man, and that is the
only Power that has been Appointed to Rule the world.
Therefore, in order to do what is Great, you must love
and serve your intimates and all of mankind. Whoever expands
himself will eventually be reduced to nothing. But whoever
transcends himself will become as Radiant as the atom in his
own heart.
Damn you self-conscious and hypocritical bastards who
rule the world with heart-breaking ideas and bombs as big as
Nature! You tear out the very eyes by which Man may enjoy
the Vision of Transcendental Truth. You do not surrender to
the Radiant Life that is the Source and Destiny of Man, and
neither do you allow anyone else to breathe and feel his Way
to Infinity.
Damn you righteous intellectuals and TV prophets of
mediocrity! You broadcast your Word around the world in
order to reduce every man, woman, and child to your own
likeness. And when any one hears you, he imitates you in the
streets, and thus becomes even more benighted and dangerous
than you.
Damn you fake Wise Men, all of you petty intellectuals
and fundamentalist religious fanatics, who pretend to read
the signs of Man! You stare in fascination at your own
genitals, scratching your heads. You say, “The body is
nothing. Only the mind glorifies Man. Therefore, it is
knowledge that gives power.” Assholes! What is greater, the
mind that separates itself in order to know, or the body
that is always already one with the Living Truth? What is
greater, the thought that “I know” or the body that
surrenders in love? Therefore, any one who gives himself
bodily to the Power of Life also gives even his mind, his
feeling, and his every breath. Any one who transcends all
knowledge in Love, Transcendental Wisdom and Spiritual
Enlightenment has truly learned all there is to learn as
Man. And any one who Confesses that Man is always in bodily
Communion with the Living God will remain Alive forever.
Damn you infantile psychiatrists and official analyzers
of religion! You justify all the childishly self-possessed
and self-indulgent motivations of mankind, but you cannot
acknowledge the divine Reality that provides the foundation
for the manly Sacrifice of Man. Yes, Man should survive and
grow by his enjoyment, but not without self-transcending
love, compassion, the will to serve others, and the
enlightened disposition of higher spiritual understanding.
Assholes! You do not presume to know the Truth, but you make
doubt and every kind of subhuman problem into a natural Law
and Obligation of Man.
Damn you sanctimonious religionists! You are enthusiastic
for every Idol that words can make, but your hearts and
bodies are full of city poison and all the effects of secret
self-indulgence. Assholes! First be converted to the Living
Spiritual Reality that every heart presumes in its deepest
need. Then discipline your body and your actions with love.
If you do all of this, then your minds will also confess the
Truth, and that Truth will liberate mankind from all the
archaic beliefs and false cults that now provide the
pretentious worldly fortress of “great religions”.”
Jesus
and Me
“At last he represents no truth at all. Therefore, his
living coaxes everyone only to understand. His existence
denies every truth, every path by which men depend on
certain truths, certain experiences, certain simulations of
freedom and enjoyment. He is a seducer, a madman, a hoax, a
libertine, a fool, a moralist, a sayer of truths, a bearer
of all experience, a righteous knave, a prince, a child, an
old one, an ascetic, a god. He demonstrates the futility of
all things. Therefore, he makes understanding the only
possibility. And understanding makes no difference at all.
Except it is reality, which was already the case.
Heartless one, Narcissus, friend, loved one, he weeps for
you to understand. After all of this, why haven’t you
understood? The only thing you have not done is
understanding.
You have seen everything, but you do not understand.
Therefore, the man of understanding leaps for joy that you
have already understood. He looks at the world and sees that
every one and every thing has always understood. He sees
that there is only understanding. Thus, the man of
understanding is constantly happy with you. He is
overwhelmed with happiness. He says to you: See how there is
only this world of perfect enjoyment, where every one is
happy, and every thing is blissful. His heart is always
tearful with the endless happiness of the world.
He has grasped it, but no one is interested. He is of
interest to no one. He is fascinating. He is unnoticed.
Since no one understands, how could they notice him? Because
there is only understanding, he is beloved, and no one comes
to see him. Because there is only truth, he is likely to
become famous. Since there is only joy, he will not be
remembered. Because you have already understood, you find it
necessary to touch his hand. Since you love so much and are
not understood, you find it possible to touch his ears. He
smiles at you. You notice it. Everything has already died.
This is the other world.”
The
Knee of Listening
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