On Friday, September 8, 2000, Geoff (Hadi)@63.14.212.64 said:

Hadi, I posed that question before reading your other posts on hypnosis ... it's still an interesting question though ... everyone talks about 'society' as an ongoing entity yet its constituent 'parts' are individuals ... hmmm ... and transient individuals at that ...

BTW, if you want a good laugh - click here - it includes the funniest headlines of 1998

A couple of my favourites -

"Legislator Wants Tougher Death Penalty"

"Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Experts Say "

"Miners Refuse to Work After Death "

"Lawyer Says Client Is Not That Guilty"

Wonderful as always ... just one question though ...

'Who' or 'what' is doing the 'hypnotising' ? and for that matter if at some level 'all is one' then 'who' is being hypnotised ... :)

Keep it up - not a bad title for a book ... :)

Superb!! !!!Wow!! Hadi!!!

Namaste'

Conversations with Allah - Part IV

My friends in the West seem to think that Islam treats its women as second class and sometimes fifth class citizens. What would you tell them to reassure them? Hmmm. I thought it was well understood that it is men who treat women badly. Not ideologies. Men may hide behind an ideology, a religion or a random dogma which suits their ego structure - their insecurities, but this is just to deflect blame onto an amorphous being, an unaswerable entity, a power beyond questioning only to justify their own unreasonableness. It has become customary to blame the Gods. This mistreating of women is done in all societies and it is done by men. Would it be fair to say that Islamic men treat their women worse than Western men?

Not at all. A good Islamic husband treats his wife with great respect, takes great pride in his family and protects his mind from lustful desires and the covetting of other men�s wives by putting in place certain social practices and formalities. These are intended for the benefit of the whole of society, men and women. Unfortunately men are very insecure and lack women�s emotional depth and trust, so they have corrupted and distorted some of these rules for their benefit.
In the West, on the other hand, women have been turned into "objects". Objects of pleasure. Objects of promise. Objects of sex. When the same good muslim comes to the West, everywhere he looks he sees women using their sex. Giving it away. Selling it. He sees it in all the advertising. He sees it on the television. In films. Literature. He encounters it on the streets. The image of women has been distorted into an image of desire. A false image. An image distorted by make-up, diets, sexually provocative clothes, muilated by surgery and adjusted for the base and low consciousness of primal men. This can be very threatening for the Islamic man who has lived a life of rightousness.

Western Women have become sex objects. They have transformed themselves into the baser desires of men. They have subverted their own nature. For the young women of today it is expected that they will gladly indulge in all manner of unnatural sex acts. Every orrifice is a pleasure thing. Every man a worshipper of the woman�s ego, her vanity. In the shops you can see them on the covers of all the magazines, legs splayed, breasts bulging, lips glossed and wanton. In the pornographic shops you see them having sex with dozens of men, with other women, with animals, horses?- with cripples, with objects, with pain and torture, with that Bobbet guy!
All of this is for money, for success, for vanity, for greed. This is what a woman has to do for so called "equality", "respect". But this is not equal respect, it is equal disrespect. The values and standards have been eroded, some would argue they have been obliterated. Great value has been put on appearance and so it is the woman who is beautiful, sensual and willing who seems to succeed in the West. It is the beautiful young blond with the silicon breasts who gets the job, the man and the security. This is seen even amongst their leaders where it is the pretty and plinat Intern who gets her turn with the Head of State.
The ordinary woman, the majority, she is made to feel inadequate and that she must fulfill some of the demands of the "image". She is treated like meat. Like masturbation.

Men�s drinking bars are sprouting up all over the West. Bars where men can go and be their baser form and oggle at women who strip and dance naked, inches from their faces. Husbands. Fathers. Grandfathers. The woman too has a responsibility in this. She makes the man into an animal by exciting his baser instincts and then judges him for it. The man uses the woman for his baser pleasures and judges her for it.

In Islam there are arranged marriages, and one thing to be said for arranged marriages is that they do not favor the beautiful or the sexually pliant. They give all women a chance.

Yes, but what of love? A marriage which is arranged is abhorrent to the western woman and man because it is not a marriage of love.

The West does not understand love. It understands passion, desire, lust. Not love. Because in the West people believe Love is something to be found in a relationship with another. It is sought "out there" in some stranger. The Spiritual and Mystic understands that love is within. The ability to share love is every persons right and ability. But people just don�t see it. They are all looking for that Romeo and Juliet Hollywood love. Yet they try to get it by allowing the man to bugger them. They have to earn it by looking like a centerfold and dressing like a harlot. How much real love is there in the Western Marriage? Not an old traditional marriage, but a young marriage. The women are turned into whores. The men are turned into ego worshippers, sex addicts. One in two marriages end in divorce. Far higher than anything to be found in Islam. Families are broken all over. Single mothers struggle in insecurity, working like slaves for the Great Magus who runs their society. Children are abused, unloved, unattended. Raised with poverty, fear, insecurity, anger, violence, neglect. And everywhere, the outcome. The dis-ease. Drug and alcohol abuse. Crime. Murder. Suffering. Misery. Hatred. Psychological illness, therapy, Lovelessness.
Everywhere, loneliness. Emptiness. So many men and women living in misery. Without Grace. That�s why it is called a dis-Grace. The west has lost its Grace.

Why is it that the West cannot see its own errors. Its own inhumanity? Its own inequalities. They are hypnotized.

When you are hypnotized, you do not know you are hypnotized. You accept your world without question. Without any real investigation, until you begin to search your own soul.

You live within a certain perception, under a particular spell, and you believe the illusion that Women in the West are treated better than those under Islam.

I was considering this perception when there was a knock at my door and, as luck would have it, it was Allah wanting a bowl of rice. So I decided to ask him what he thought about the debate. Here is a snippet of our chat.

PatThe individual is you. You cannot change anyone else. You can only help them see your change. As Bob said, you need to spend more time on your self. For you are the world. Everything you see and experience is a reflection, a shadow, a projection. It�s all you. A child does not fear its parent unless the parent has been cruel. One does not hate another unless they feel they have just cause. It�s the same with racial hatred. It has a root. A cause. Sometimes that cause may be false. It may be conditioning. Other times it may be true, it may be historical. And only through Self study, Self observation, going within, can you discover and understand the Truth. As Krishnamurti said of Truth�

"He has to find it through the mirror of relationship, through the understanding of the contents of his own mind"

Gurdjieff used to like to tell his students this parable.

Once there was a rich magician who had a great many sheep. But the magician was mean and did not wish to spend on shepperds and fences to protect his sheep. Nor could he be troubled to care for them or watch over them himself. Concequently many of his sheep would stray and many would run away, knowing the magician only wanted them for their flesh and their skins.
But one day the magician found a solution. He hypnotised the entire flock. He made them believe they were immortal, important, safe, and that he had provided everything for them. He made them believe that he loved them. He persuaded some that they were lions, or eagles or even men. He said nothing was ever going to happen to them because he had created the world "just so", for their benefit. And the sheep never ran away again, but went about their days until the day he would want their flesh and their skins.

This story was Gurdjieff�s metaphor for man�s enslavement by the State. Osho tells us,

"Man has the seed of a great flowering of consciousness, but that doesn�t happen. It does not happen because man has become hypnotized - by the society, by the state, by the organized church, by the vested interests. The society needs slaves and man can remain a slave only if he is not aalowed to grow to his uttermost flowering... Hence, the whole process of socialization, of civilization, is nothing but a deep hypnosis� Man is being hypnotized from the very moment he is born. "

Karen: I left the collective a few years ago.

hehe..

Marc working through my fear has been a central issue in my personal development in the past year or so. I can certainly relate to your frustration. Perhaps you could be more specific as to what your fear is keeping you from doing? What are you afraid of?

Fear has kept me in very unfulfilling jobs. Fear has kept me both in dysfunctional relationships and out of intimate relationships entirely for years at a time. When you start really looking at yourself and your conditioning fear becomes a pretty central theme for most people. Only in the past year or two (I�m 34) have I felt spiritual centered and strong enough to face many of my deep seated fears. Something that really helped me is the realization that fear is the opposite of love, but love has no Real opposite and therefore fear isn�t Real. I�m not suggesting that we don�t experience fear as human beings (it could be argued that most of our lives are spent in fear of one kind or another), but that this fear only has reality in our ego�s perceptions. If we can learn to perceive from a higher level, fear of all kinds will naturally dissolve. This usually requires a life long process of learning and growing to truly achieve.

If you are paralyzed with fear right now, even if you don�t really believe it, just imagine that this fear is just a limitation of your ego�s perception. Within the fear is an opportunity for you to grow and learn. Step back from it and just observe it as just a necessary obstacle in your life that you need to push through in order to grow. Without it you wouldn�t have this opportunity. It is really a gift if you think about it.

Good luck, I hope this helps.

Pat - I agree with you on your stance on women. The level of consciousness involved in considering women as second class citizens is on a par with the KKK's attitude toward blacks. However, "it is what it is" and to change the collective attitude of those with less awareness would be trying to move a mountain.

We are best served by stating our dissatisfaction with the treatment when we see it (as you have) and spending most of our time working on ourselves.

Well, off to NE Arizona, SE Utah and SW Colorado for a couple of weeks of dry camping in our RV. Back to nature, national parks, rounding meditation and general R & R. Keep the discussions lively and I shall catch up on our return.

Namaste' and Love to all, Bob

Marc another (in addition to "practicing") help is to start "visualizing" yourself doing these activities.

I would recommend a book by Shakti Gawain called "Creative Visualization".

Im 28 years of age and I am growing increasingly frustrated by my inability, due to the fear, to know which direction to step in and where to start and so on and on....Any help will be greatly appreciated and cherished...I am just growing tired of the fear the oh so paralyzing fear

OK. Help me with this. In order to change the consciousness of Muslims and their attitude about how they treat women, we need to get in touch with each and every individual and find out how they function? Find out who they are? If I've understood that correctly, then the whole idea of trying to effect change in the world looks pretty insurmountable. Is there a better way?

Welcome Marc. Your question, has raised a lot of questions (in me).

Your age mainly, as a starter.

I look back on some things I did growing up and even into early adulthood as being CRAZY today.

Generally you start "where" you're "at" with ANYTHING (like riding a bike) and do the best you can, and with practice, practice, practice.......... proficiency comes.

Hadi, just a few days ago you said, "We cannot hope to influence the collective unless we can reach the individual on a fundamental level." And also, "If, on the other hand, you deal with the individual, with me, on the basis of what is my consciousness? who am I? how do I function? . . . you begin to make terrific progress in waking me up."

I am trying to reach you at your fundamental level in this discussion about women, trying to understand where you are plugged into the "collective vision." Since you state how you feel about the influence of the political leaders on the individual and collective, that must be important to you. That's what I'm doing with stating my perception that these views on women do damage, and this is important to me. I don't know where your consciousness is on this. Let's see if we can reach each other!

Just kidding of course.

I am wondering if anyone knows of any teachings books or videos that Depak or anyone else has that helps someone overcome their fears...For example I have a terrible fear of being hurt physically so I dont participate in some fun sporting events...I want to seek more thrills but Im too scared of the outcome...I want to break free of these fears but dont know how...someone anyone that can help I would appreciate it thankfully, Marc Stephen Bacher

Namaste'

Wellllllllllllll, WHEREVER their at (women), behind, beneath, below, etc., they need to know their place.

While us men are out doing things, creating, building, exploring, etc., someone has to be cooking, raisning the kids, cleaning, and just generally keeping things in "order".

Did you guys see the movie "Dogma?" My three boys watched it and managed to see the underlying message...which was good, considering that they enjoyed the movie so much.

Bob, I agree with your comments about the designation "unclean" having something to do with male predominance / dominance. Although, there probably were people out there thinking that "unclean" referred only to hygiene as well. Two sides to every story!

On a personal note, my 'middle' son turns 18 tomorrow; he becomes legally 'of age!' Unfortunately, he's zillions of miles away which means I'll have to fall back on two hours of phone talk, sending him a HUGE box of goodies for him to feel closer to home and lots and lots of good wishes. (sigh!)

Have a good weekend all!

The best healing for me is walking in the nature, and just listen. It gives me new energy and help me back to ballance.

Interesting interchange of ideas...Starts out as discussion, of major world religions...then, evolves into a discussion of hygiene issues and their moral/sexist implications.

Cool, Namaste'

Hadi, you did it again with your latest quote ... LOL.

Thank you!!!

"I love California. I practically grew up in Phoenix."

Yes, you guessed it... Dan Quayle.

Perhaps everyone is projecting baggage onto the original meaning which isn't there in the first place. Perhaps it was always just talking about hygiene, but we gave it meaning. Just as for Bob it means that it is making women unequal to men, I don't see that "meaning". This is the meaning Bob has "given" to it perhaps because of his perceptions that women are treated very unequally by religions. To a foreign culture I know Westerners and their customs seem equally strange and carry the baggage of an image cultivated by the local collective ego.

Pat, all I was saying was, why use one set of dogmas - "God created man in his own image" - to criticise another set of dogmas? Why not drop all that nonsense. There is no entity as God, only a Way. Tao means "Way". Because there is Intelligence, we give this Way meaning by giving it an identity. "God". "Allah". Yahwe. Zeus. Neptune. It's all nonsense.

This is all there is. Everything is happening right now. This moment is ALL. When one truely and fully "realises" that with full awareness and full consciousness, one's life is transformed.

Unclean, as it is being used, seems to really mean that women are not seen as equals. I feel it is just a close minded, male dominated world not recognizing our higher female self. If females were looked at as equal, it would be perceived as threatening to many. (IMO)

Namaste', Bob

Well I'm not sure what we're all arguing for here. I'm not a Bible believing person and don't subscribe to any religion. I guess I'm narcissistic enough to believe that I am a spiritual being in a physical body and somewhere down the line believe that God is responsible, in part, for my being here. Even with that notion in mind, I find it extraordinary that so many religions carry on the notion of any part of a woman (or man) for that matter to be unclean. (I studied the Bible for years and never read that a woman's menstrual cycle was unclean. I musta been looking in the wrong places. Interesting how so many ancient texts, written by men mostly I may add, state such a thing, yet have absolutely no problem joining with that which is apparently unclean...)

I do agree that we have to keep in mind who wrote what when and I consider that to be the major problem. How is it that so many human beings agree with these crazy notions after so many years of having the ability to think for ourselves???

OK, reading too fast! But why would you think it's laughable when it sometimes results degradation and abuse?

Yes, it's the continuation that bothers me, obviously. Also, don't *you* think (:-) that there is at the very least the implication that "unclean" as it's being used includes spiritually unclean? I don't think we're talking solely about hygiene even though that was one of the original bases.

Om Mohammed - You mentioned a while back you could not get into the HTML site TO had listed because it was censored where you live. Out of curiosity, where are you posting from?

Namaste'

Geoff - That is really great! I tried to sound it out and didn't go with the right emphasis. However, in the process I came up with 12:30 as One, Two Three, Oooooohhhh!!!

Namaste'

Yes Karen. I think maybe you misunderstood my post. Whe I said, let's face it, certain things are unclean, I eas talking literally not spiritually. Nothing is spiritually unclean. It just is. But as humans, we have concepts of clean and dirty which is about hygiene and bathing and washing so as not to get infections, diseases and smelly; and then the term unclean has spiritual connatations which I think are laughable. So, I think we are in agreement. On a human level we make these distinctions. In the times that they were written there was not the same sanitation as today, so they probably had a point back then. To continue to believe these things today and to impose them on others is where a bit of useful advice becomes written instone and becomes "dogma". Don't you think?