Advaita Vedanta: "EVIL"? or "IGNORANCE, STUPIDITY, and INSANITY"?, The Review, Part Four

Today's "DAILY CONSIDERATION" for You

49. Just as millions of alcoholics around the globe continue to be treated annually with a methodology that has been shown to be ineffective, the case is the same with the persons seeking treatment for the Ultimate Sickness.

50. The most popular books on non-duality and the most popular book on treating alcoholism are exactly alike in that both are offering a distorted, ineffective, and unsuccessful message, based in what is called "spirituality" which is nothing more than a version of religion that has been arrogantly upgraded by those assuming a false, self-elevating identity.

51. Granted, at the third step of a seven-step "journey" to Realization, some version of religious or spiritual roles are usually assumed and played, yet those are just roles - just more assumed personalities / personas - so those are to be transitioned as well.

52. Consider the relative chaos that results from addictions and consider the relative chaos that results from non-Realization, and then see that (a) the most popular book on treating alcoholism offers a treatment plan that does not address in any way the mind-personality disorders that are at the root of the problem, and see that (b) the most popular books on non-duality do not address in any way the root causes of the Ultimate Sickness (which are also mind-personality issues) because their popularity lies in the fact that the authors have added duality-based and religion-based and spirituality-based elements to the message which guarantee "mass appeal" and huge sales.

53. The no-holds-barred message of non-duality that eradicates all things thought to be "personal" has never had "mass appeal." If the non-Realized masses like a message that they hear, it is proof that non-duality's originally blunt-and-in-your-face-message-that-will-set-you-free is not the message that is being read or heard and being well-received by the non-Realized masses. The exact opposite is the case, and that is why Maharaj warned his visitors to stay away from "the Big Name Teachers." They are "Big Names" because they have mass appeal, and the non-duality message does not have any appeal at all to the masses. (As an example, note how the Jewish people admired Jesus when, as a child, he was regurgitating Jewish scriptures vs. what happened to him as an adult when the Jews turned on him after he began offering non-duality teachings.)

54. Therefore, that which is presently the most popular method for treating alcoholism (namely, "becoming spiritual") and that which is presently the most popular method for treating the Ultimate Sickness (namely, "becoming spiritual") are methods that - their popularity be damned - do not address at all the root causes of the sickness (or the Ultimate Sickness) and do not provide at all the proper treatment for the sickness (or the Ultimate Sickness).

55. Globally, off-the-mark methods are being used to address body and mind and personality issues as well as their accompanying grave mental and emotional disorders, all for naught.

56. Because the Ultimate Sickness is not being treated properly, then it shows up throughout the relative existence in a variety of "Ultimate Sickness Subsets," including pain, misery and suffering; addiction; fighting; in-fighting; broken "relationships"; religious people killing people in other religions; religious people killing people in other sects or denominations; personality disorders; personality disorders disintegrating into neuroses and psychoses; bombings; killings; genocide; wars; and the entire gamut of relative problems that follow the assumption of body-mind-personality identification.

57. Whatever the problem or the sickness or the Sickness, in most cases the methods being used to try to address the problem or sickness or Sickness are totally ineffective, and that should be obvious to an objective observer.

58. Dreamed up, conceptualized god or gods and goddesses - were they to really exist - would have had thousands of years to address humanity's problems and sicknesses and the Ultimate Sickness, but they would have been shown to be totally ineffective - were they to have actually existed - and that should also be obvious to an objective observer.

59. All that is dreamed up and conceptualized is, of course, nonsense, as pointed out by Maharaj:

“Whatever you have tried to understand during your spiritual search will prove false.”

“When the birth is disproved, the great noble meaning of spirituality and the meaning of this world—everything—is disproved.”

He told later visitors: "Do your normal duties" and "just give up spirituality."

60. Why that advice? Because Maharaj was sane enough to know - after having witnessed accurately and objectively for decades - that spirituality does not treat the Ultimate Sickness.

61. Moreover, spirituality does not treat polyps, cancerous polyps, neuroses, psychoses, planet-wide chaos, personality disorders, alcoholism or other addictions, and - in fact - generates even more intoxication in the form of "spiritual intoxication."

62. And it was "religious and spiritual intoxication" (and the accompanying insane thoughts and words and actions that flow from such intoxication) that led to the recent bombings in Boston; that led to flying airplanes into the World Trade Center Towers;

that led to some Christian ministers in the U.S. claiming that their angry God orchestrated that to send a message to non-Christians, gays, and liberated women; to some Islamic ayatollahs and imams claiming that it happened to send a message to non-Muslim infidels; to members of one religious sect in Iraq continuing to this day to blow up with bombs the members of another sect;

to the European Holocaust; to the Catholic Inquisition; to the Crusades; to the decimation of 150,000,000 in "the Americas" in order to build Christian nations in a "new world"; to the deadly attacks in Bombay, India;

to children dying after parents refused to seek medical assistance for their sick children because the parents' religion taught that prayer can heal physical illnesses; to more wars and killings than any other single factor; to Protestants and Catholics fighting in the Thirty Years' War;

to Protestants and Catholics fighting in the French Wars of Religion; to Islamics and Christians fighting in the Nigerian Civil War; to Islamics and Christians fighting in the Second Sudanese Civil War; to Islamic Sunnis and Islamic Shiites fighting Christians in the Lebanese Civil War;

and it is "religious and spiritual intoxication" (and the accompanying insane thoughts and words and actions that flow from such intoxication) that lead politicians to claim that government is too big and must be shrunk even as they also claim that government must pass laws to take away from women the right to do whatever they want with their own bodies;

and it is "religious and spiritual intoxication" (and the accompanying insane thoughts and words and actions that flow from such intoxication) that leads politicians to claim that government is too big and must be shrunk even as they want to write laws that prevent citizens from doing what they choose to do in their bedrooms;

and to politicians claiming that if a woman is impregnated during a rape that she must carry that child to term; and to claiming that if a rape is a "legitimate rape" that the female body will shut down the impregnation process (proving that if she becomes pregnant, it was not a rape at all but was an act of consensual sex); or claiming that if a woman is impregnated during a rape that God wanted that to happen, etc., etc., etc.

63. The claims by billions that religion and / or spirituality is the only hope for humanity notwithstanding, and all of the evidence being to the contrary, all of that is exactly what religion and spirituality have generated.

64. And all of that evidences ignorance and stupidity and insanity, and it is religion-and-spirituality-induced insanity that allows persons with extreme personality disorders (such as the Sociopathic Personality Disorder and / or the Psychopathic Personality Disorder) to drop bombs on those whom they see dualistically as "others" or to set down bombs in a crowd, walk away calmly, and thereby kill or maim persons whom they see dualistically as "others."

65. Again, to listen to anyone who is intoxicated is displaying ignorance and stupidity and insanity; yet who are the 6,790,000,000 persons on the planet who claim an affiliation with one religion or another (or the millions who claim an affiliation with one spiritual organization or another) listening to for advice and guidance and for their "marching orders"?

66. They are listening to religious and / or spiritually-intoxicated leaders (and, therefore, to thoughts and words that are rooted in ignorance and stupidity and insanity).

67. What (to use Maharaj's words) provides more evidence of ignorance and stupidity and insanity than listening to any intoxicated person for advice and guidance and for one's "marching orders"? The answer: nothing (except believing their thoughts and words and then acting on them).

68. The Nisarga Yoga invites seekers to abide naturally; to conceptualize nothing; to be driven by no beliefs; to listen to the silence before listening to the thoughts and words of fanatics and maniacs; and to rest in the cool, blue shade rather than being steamed by the heated rhetoric of zealots and ideologues or by anyone who is obsessing over anything.

Please enter the silence of contemplation.

Questions? Submit to:

Comments?

Just hang on to those please.

A Non-Duality Online Course is currently available at a reduced rate. See above for details.

[Received from Mac, 10/17/12]:

"Glad to see the online teaching offered at a discount. Hopefully, more who are ready will be able to take the course. For me, the course was the beginning of the unlearning that led to the trip to the lake for a retreat and the understanding."

SHIFTING THE FOCUS FROM THAT WHICH DOES NOT WORK TO THAT WHICH DOES, Part One

A "movement" or "shift" happened here that added another parallel to the many parallels in terms of the phenomenal "experiences" and the noumenal revelations that "Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj" and "Floyd" share in common. (Many visitors over the years have said that they also shared the same parallels with "Maharaj" and "Floyd" as well.) In the case of "Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj" and "Floyd": 1. both grew up in very poor families 2. both moved to populated areas to seek employment opportunities 3. both exhibited business skills that led to their opening and operating many businesses and to their having a large number of employees working for them 4. both succeeded financially 5. both became attached to accumulating; 6. both married and had a family 7. both were initially religious 8. both moved away from organized religion and became interested in "spiritual" matters, finding and following the teachings of a big name teacher (or, in "Floyd's" case, many big name teachers) 9. both had highly religious wives who were quite displeased with the shift away from religion and toward "spirituality" 10. both began to feel empty in spite of all of their "spiritual seeking" and in spite of all of their accumulated "spiritual knowledge";

11. both began to de-accumulate after both saw that they could survive quite well on a fraction of the income they had been making 12. both had wives who were unhappy when the de-accumulation stage was entered and both had wives who became unhappy about their husbands' focus on non-duality and who blamed their unhappiness on no longer having a religious husband (The facts be known, in both cases the unhappiness involved the fact that their husbands were no longer interested in - or willing - to work 80+ hours per week and that their husbands were no longer interested in accumulating wealth and possessions and providing the rich lifestyle to which their wives had grown accustomed) 13. both eventually came to see that the religious and spiritual states were also ego-states, and both saw that there are far more steps on the "path" to complete after reaching the religious and spiritual steps and after playing those roles which are the third of seven steps on the entire "path" 14. both "lost" their wives (one via "death," the other through divorce); 15. both accelerated their seeking; 16. both entered into the "forest dweller stage" 17. both Realized 18. both began to de-accumulate even more 19. both began sharing the teachings 20. for years, both answered questions in whatever order those questions were received, though both said that the movement from identification with the false "I" / "I's" involved an exact, step-wise manner of moving along a "path" that involved "going back" in the same (but reverse order) of the way they "came in" - that is, the way that the manifestation happened and the way that the consciousness was blocked through seven stages that resulted in their becoming identified solely with their false personas, with the content of the "mind," and eventually, with the body. But the most significant awareness that finally came to both after years of offering satsang and after having answered thousands and thousands of questions was this: After years of "Maharaj" offering satsang in his loft, and after years of "Floyd" offering satsang in meeting halls and in his home and via what one site visitor called "Floyd's electronic loft," this fact became obvious to both: "Maharaj" came to see in the 1970's and into 1980 and 1981 that his approach was not working and "Floyd" finally came to see the same.

21. Both saw that many who heard the teachings are not going to understand (Maharaj reporting that "only 1 in 100,000 are going to 'get' this" understanding) 22. both soon saw that even more than expected of those who heard the teachings were not going to understand (Maharaj modifying his "guesstimate" and reporting that "only 1 in 1,000,000 are going to 'get' this" understanding) 23. eventually both saw that even far more than expected of those who heard the teachings were not going to understand (Maharaj eventually concluding that "only 1 in 10,000,000 are going to 'get' this" understanding). And the failings were not the fault of seekers. A "one -in-ten-million" estimate is proof that satsang was not working for most seekers, and the evidence here lately is proof of the same.

Both "Maharaj" and "Floyd" invited seekers to focus on the exact, step-wise "path." Yes, during satsang, "Maharaj" sometimes alluded to the steps while discussing them in no particular order - but he never once laid out the steps in the exact order in which they had to be completed. That was not his teachings style or approach.

Therefore, another movement or shift is happening here spontaneously after reflecting on the more than two decades since the teachings were first offered here and looking at the results of Maharaj sharing pointers in his loft and looking at the results of "Floyd" sharing pointers in this electronic loft: Looking objectively at his results, Maharaj's satsang method of sharing - in the end and by his own admission (only "one out of 10,000,000") - did not produce the intended outcome.

Looking objectively at the results here when using an "electronic loft" satsang method of sharing has not produced the intended outcome nearly as often as any of the three "face-to-face" methods used with seekers by which they have been led through the seven steps in order. Here, the body is growing older, of course. Mahasamadhi could be taken today, or it could be taken in twenty years.

Obviously, that cannot be known. But the decision here has been made that whatever amount of the relative existence remains shall be spent in sharing the teachings in the ways that have been seen over the last 20+ years to be the most effective methods.

Looking back over the list of those that have truly received the understanding, it is seen that Robert R. read all of the books, then took the online Advaita course and then completed some face-to-face Skype sessions to receive the final clarifications required. It was seen that Mac read all of the books, completed the online course, and then attended a retreat where he was guided through the seven steps. Mac said that the online course work inspired him to attend the retreat in order to be able to receive the final "pieces." It was seen that Andy Gugar, Jr. read all of the books, then came here for a retreat and was taken through the seven steps in order, and then returned once more for the final clarifications required. After reviewing the shifts that happened with him after attending two retreats, he reaffirmed this past week his commitment to helping spread the non-duality, nisarga understanding as presented here. As a result of seeing what has "worked" during the last 20+ years of sharing the non-duality understanding - and seeing what had not "worked" as well - changes will be made.

SHIFTING THE FOCUS FROM THAT WHICH DOES NOT WORK TO THAT WHICH DOES, Part Two

In "Part One," examples were given of seekers that were led to Realization not by satsang but by following the various protocols outlined farther down this page which provide the understanding in the step-wise, orderly, required fashion which moves seekers along a "path" that is as prescribed by Maharaj ... "going back" in the "reverse order" by which the consciousness manifested and became blocked.

However, conversations with some that just read the majority of the books have revealed that they certainly seem to have grasped the understanding and Realized as well. As a result of seeing what has "worked" during the last 20+ years of sharing the non-duality understanding - and seeing what has "not worked" as well - changes are being made. There are seven specific steps that happen when awareness-energy is "pulled" into a cycle of manifestation. When that energy manifests as conscious-energy, that formerly pure and unadulterated energy becomes "corrupted" (or "blocked" from seeing clearly) via programming, conditioning, domestication, acculturation, and brainwashing. Soon, there is a belief in the not-Real as a result of seven degrees of separation from an understanding of the Real. Using the method that was also employed by his contemporaries - a method which focused on offering non-duality pointers via satsang - Maharaj addressed questions in the order in which they were received. He might receive a question from a seeker at the third step and his reply would include what amounted to an invitation to move to the fourth step. The next question might come from a seeker at the first step, and the reply would include an invitation to move to the second step. The information offered to the second seeker would seemingly contradict what was offered to the first seeker, so visitors who have come here for decades have asked questions which showed how confused they were by the fact that Maharaj's statements to each visitor in his loft were "level-appropriate" yet were provided in no precise order, resulting in what seemed to be an inconsistent message. So the process overall was confusing in that seekers were told to follow the "path back" in the same way that they "came in," except in reverse order, but pointers were not given in a specific, step-wise order at all. Maharaj did recognize the seven steps that are taught here, but by offering the teachings in an order that was dictated by the order in which questions were received from seekers who were at different steps on the "path," the result was this: a pointer about moving beyond the fourth step might be followed by a pointer about moving beyond the first step, and that pointer might be followed by a pointer about how to move beyond the sixth step. The same was done on this site for seven years. The result is a collection of 1,800 or so essays discussing almost every non-duality topic that can be discussed, and the search button on the top right side of this page will now allow seekers with a question about a specific topic to find an explanation. That method, however, will never provide the manner in which the seven steps on the "path" must be transmitted and received in order to Realize Fully. An objective study of the history here of more than twenty years of offering non-duality pointers reveals this: seekers that were given pointers in the exact order in which they needed to receive them were the ones that Realized.

They read the books, then they completed the online course and / or completed seven Skype or telephone sessions or came here for a retreat (or watched the downloadable DVD version of an actual retreat, available below).

Some found that which they were seeking by reading the author's book that deal with non-duality subject matter. Via all of those venues, the steps are taught in their proper order. The essays available on this site will remain for those interested in searching for a discussion of a particular non-duality topic without charge, but the focus here until mahasamadhi is taken is going to be on offering the teachings in the step-wise fashion that has been seen to work.

THESE PAPERBACK BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE THROUGH AMAZON.COM
(Four by Floyd Henderson and two by Dennis Waite. Click the picture for more information or to order)

* * * * * * *

ALL EBOOK AND PAPERBACK VERSION OF HENDERSON'S NON-DUALITY BOOKS and RECOVERY LITERATURE and FINANCIAL BOOKS are available at

Floyd Henderson's Website

Within minutes of purchase you can be reading any of the eBooks below on your mobile devices, including an iPhone, iPad, Android tablet, Android phone, laptop, home computer or on a Kindle reader. For Apple and Android, either download the eBook directly onto your device or email the eBook file to your mobile device and open the file from your email. For Kindles or other similar devices, use your USB cable to transfer the eBook to your reader.

FOR THOSE SEEKING FURTHER EXPLANATION OF THE NON-DUALITY UNDERSTANDING, AS NOTED ABOVE, SOME SEEKERS HAVE REALIZED BY USING THE METHODS BELOW, OR A COMBINATION OF THE METHODS:

WAYS THAT SEEKERS HAVE REALIZED:

I. BY WATCHING the 4-Disk, Seven-Hour Video (DVD) Set of an advaita retreat, or the downloadable file version. To find out more or to purchase the DVD or downloadable computer file version of the retreat, DVD or Downloadable computer file versions of the Four-Day Advaita Retreat

International buyers: note the separate option for those outside the continental U.S.

II. BY READING the explanations offered in the collection of non-duality books that are available on this site and at www.floydhenderson.com.

III. BY ENROLLING in the Online Advaita Classes For information, visit Information on the Advaita Classes on the Internet To enroll visit Enroll in the Advaita Internet Course

IV. BY ATTENDING an Advaitin retreat with floyd and being guided through all seven steps. For details of the retreats offered, please visit the retreat information site.

V. BY ARRANGING a one-hour session via Skype or telephone with Floyd. (Skype is a free service.)

Click the button to pay and you will be contacted to arrange a date and time for the call.

VI. ALL OF THE FOLLOWING BOOKS are available at
Floyd Henderson's Website

and ALL CAN BE SENT TO FRIENDS OR FAMILY MEMBERS AS GIFTS [details at floydhenderson.com. Once on that site, click on the picture of the book you would like to send as a gift for details]

FROM THE I TO THE ABSOLUTE: A Seven-Step Journey to the Absolute