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#1759 - Tuesday, April 6, 2004 - Editor: michael
All the scriptures are meant only to make a man retrace his steps
to his original source. He need not acquire anything new. He only
has to give up false ideas and useless accretions. Instead of
doing this, however, he tries to grasp something strange and
mysterious because he believes his happiness lies elsewhere. That
is the mistake.
Ramana Maharshi
http://www.spiritual-teachers.com/
http://www.evilgerald.com/Issues/Issue6/1genes.htm
Scientists discover gene for gullibility - Evil Gerald exclusive!
If you thought that the scientists who recently discovered that
you get more wet if you walk through rain than if you run were
the smartest people ever, then prepare to change your mind or be
completely wrong. Because the Evil Gerald can exclusively reveal
today that boffins at UCD's Biotechnology lab have discovered the
human DNA gene for gullibility.
The Origin of Gullibility, Religion, and Other Insanities:
A Working Hypothesis
The full ariticle is at:
http://www.geocities.com/trolleyfan/gullible.html
Perhaps you've noticed that many of the people around you believe
some pretty bizarre things. From spaceships following comets to
psychic phone-lines to being able to solve the problem of people
wanting to kill people by banning guns to wine turning into blood
(that somehow you can drink). In fact, given a little thought,
you and a friend could probably come up with a couple of pages
each of stuff that each of you can't believe people believe...
...Then, while comparing your list to your friend's, you discover
you both believe some of the things on the other person's list.
The question, therefore, is not so much which of these things you
(and/or others) believe is true (I'd bet on "almost
none," it's probably the best guess - including a lot of
things I believe in), but why people "believe" anything
in the first place.
Looked at dispassionately (not possible to do, I know), it's very
strange and not a little bit, well, unbelievable that a species
would develop the ability to accept as fact things they have
absolutely no evidence for.
Why?
Here's my idea...
Somewhere in the last couple of million years, the evolution of
humans hit a snag. Intelligence had been, up to this point, a
real cool idea. With it, hominids could adapt in years (or even
days!) to changed conditions that would have taken millennia (at
least!) to adapt to by the more standard pure physical evolution.
http://www.successconsciousness.com/index_000014.htm
Mind and thoughts create the world
Thoughts arise and we look at them. The same thoughts tend to
arise again and again. If we let this process continue, it goes
on incessantly. These thoughts make us to behave, expect, talk
and act in a certain personalized way, and thus cause the people
we come in contact with, to treat us and relate to us in a
certain manner.
We usually continue with the same way of thinking, and live the
same kind of life each day, whether we like it or not. These
thoughts shape our circumstances and relationships. It is like
watching the same movie over and over again. If we want to watch
a different movie we have to change the reel or cassette. This
happens by changing our thoughts. This is how creative
visualization works, and there is nothing supernatural about
this.
The world we experience, and the life we live are actually made
from the thoughts we project. The mind creates a world of
illusion. By changing our thoughts, we change the illusion and
experience a different reality. We do not create a world, only an
illusion that looks real. No unusual power is involved here. We
are living in Maya and are changing the Maya.
When we are able to still the mind and the senses, our
consciousness seems to shift into a new dimension. Actually it is
there all the time, only that the mind makes us think otherwise.
When there are no thoughts in the mind, the world we know and
believe is real, loses its reality. We become conscious of the
world beyond the mind and illusions.
Waking up from illusion
We can wake up completely, understand and become conscious of the
illusion of Maya, and live, as we really are, as a pure,
formless, beginning-less and endless consciousness. Due to
illusion it seems as if we are all separated, having individual
selves and each living a different life. Even when we wake up
from Maya, its play may go on. We continue to see and experience
it, yet it is of no concern to us anymore. Outwardly we may
continue to live our life in the same manner, but we are really
awake.
The great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.
When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and
undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven
and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth
then hold no opinions for or against anything. To set up what you
like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind. When
the deep meaning of things is not understood the minds essential
peace is disturbed to no avail.
The way is perfect like vast space where nothing is lacking and
nothing is in excess. Indeed, it is due to our choosing to accept
or reject that we do not see the true nature of things. Live
neither in the entanglements of outer things, nor in inner
feelings of emptiness. Be serene in the oneness of things and
such erroneous views will disappear by themselves.
When you try to stop activity to achieve passivity your very
effort fills you with activity. As long as you remain in one
extreme or the other you will never know Oneness.
His Disciples questioned: "When will the Kingdom come?"
Jesus answered: It will never come If you are expecting it.
Nobody will say Look here or look there. Yet the Kingdom of the
Father Is spread throughout the earth And no man sees it.
The Gospel According to Thomas
Love my heart longs day and night for the meeting with you -for
the meeting that is all-devouring death
Sweep me away like a storm; take everything i have;
break open my sleep and plunder my dreams. Rob me of my world
In that devastation, in the utter nakedness of spirit, let us
become one in beauty
Tagore
"...because two bodies, naked and entwined,
leap over time, they are invulnerable,
nothing can touch them, they return to the source.
There is no you, no I, no tomorrow,
no yesterday, no names, the truth of two
in a single body, a single soul,
oh total being..."
The eye cannot see it; the mind cannot grasp it.
The deathless Self has neither caste nor race,
Neither eyes nor ears nor hands nor feet.
Sages say this Self is infinite in the great
And in the small, everlasting and changeless,
The source of life.
Mundaka Upanishad 1.1.6
Teach your children
what we have taught our children -
that the earth is our mother.
Whatever befalls the earth
befalls the sons and daughters of the earth.
If man spit upon the ground,
they spit upon themselves.
This we know.
The earth does not belong to us,
we belong to the earth.
This we know.
All things are connected
like the blood which unites one family.
All things are connected.
Whatever befalls the earth
befalls the sons and daughters of the earth.
We did not weave the web of life,
we are merely a strand in it.
Whatever we do to the web,
we do to ourselves ....
Chief Seattle
Three passions have governed my life:
The longings for love, the search for knowledge,
And unbearable pity for the suffering of [humankind].
Love brings ecstasy and relieves loneliness.
In the union of love I have seen
In a mystic miniature the prefiguring vision
Of the heavens that saints and poets have imagined.
With equal passion I have sought knowledge.
I have wished to understand the hearts of [people].
I have wished to know why the stars shine.
Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens,
But always pity brought me back to earth;
Cries of pain reverberated in my heart
Of children in famine, of victims tortured
And of old people left helpless.
I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot,
And I too suffer.
This has been my life; I found it worth living.
BERTRAND RUSSELL