A DAILY CONSIDERATION FOR YOU
F.: From yesterday:
Shively: “So we said, ‘Does that happen in monkeys because they organize themselves in a hierarchy, too.’ And it turns out that it does. Subordinate monkeys are more likely to have fat in their abdomen than are dominant monkeys. I think the most amazing observation that I've made in my lab is this idea that stress could actually change the way you deposit fat on your body. To me, that was a bizarre idea that you could actually alter the way fat is distributed."
Narrator: "Sapolsky, Shively and others think stress could be a critical factor in the global obesity epidemic."
The Narrator continued: “Even worse, fat brought on by stress is dangerous fat.”
Shively: “We know that fat carried on the trunk, or actually inside the abdomen, is much worse for you than fat carried elsewhere on the body. It behaves differently - it produces different kinds of hormones and chemicals and has different effects on your health. Whatever it is that works for individuals, they need to value stress reduction. I think the problem in our society is that we don't value stress reduction; in fact, we value the opposite. We admire the person who not only multi-tasks but does five things at once. We kind of admire those persons, how they manage that, though it’s an incredibly stressful way to live. We have to change our values and value people who understand a balanced and serene life."
[NON-DUAL NOTE: Some regular visitors to this site might recall an example used back in 2007 or so: Consider two men working in a downtown high rise office complex. It is lunchtime. One takes out the lunch he brought, puts on some relaxing music, leans back in his chair, puts his feet up on his desk, eats his sandwich and fruit, and looks out the window and watches the birds fly by as the clouds move cross the sky. Next door, a businessman (that is, a “busy-ness man”) has a client sitting at his desk, two other clients waiting in the outer office, and is on the phone lining up one early lunch meeting with a client and a later luncheon with another. His phones have three lights blinking, indicating three calls for him are on holds. The secretary brings in papers for the client at his desk to sign. Still talking on the phone, he points for the secretary to set the papers in front of the man and points at the man to sign them. He rushes through seeing the others in his office and clears them out and heads to his car to drive to the first of two lunch appointments. Now, the question is this: “In the typical, so-called “developed” or “advanced” nations on the planet nowadays, which man would be admired and which would be labeled ‘a lazy man who is not nearly motivated enough and should be accomplishing much more than he is’?" Again, Shively: “We have to change our values and value people who understand a balanced and serene life.”]
Narrator: “One heartbreaking moment in history reveals that stress may, in fact, damage us long before we are even aware. Holland, late 1944. A brutal winter and a merciless army of occupation conspire to starve a nation. It is known as the Dutch Hunger Winter. For those who survive today, these are haunting memories.”
[Side note: In the early 1980’s, I sat in the flat of Jan and Miep Gies located about a twenty-minute tram ride from the central area of Amsterdam where the Otto Frank office was located on Prinsengracht Canal in the early 1940's. Jan and Miep were among several who helped hide the Frank and the van Daan families in several rooms in the attic of the office building out of which Frank had operated the company which he established there after leaving Germany when the Nazis began their reign of terror. (See “The Diary of Anne Frank” which logged the events of their daily lives during their hiding over a twenty-five month period.) Miep described riding her bicycle into the countryside during that winter of 1944, seeking enough food for the seven people hiding upstairs as well as for her and her husband and two others who assisted in hiding two families of Jews from the Dutch Green Police and the Nazi occupiers. She said that often a four-or-five hour trip would net only a few, mostly rotten, potatoes purchased at a very high cost. Brutal conditions indeed.]
Narrator: “Dutch researcher Tessa Roseboom had heard many of those tragic memories. She and her team wanted to know if there were any lingering effects. Roseboom knew that our bodies respond to famine in much the same way they respond to other stressors, so she set out to see if the fetuses of women pregnant during these arduous days could possibly be affected by stress. Because of meticulous record keeping by the Dutch, Roseboom was able to identify over 2,400 people who could have been impacted. She and her team analyzed the data from those born during and after the famine and came to a surprising conclusion.”
Roseboom: “I think that you could say that these babies were exposed to stress in fetal life and they are still suffering the consequences of that now, sixty years later.”
Narrator: “Most of the Dutch Hunger Winter children live today, all in their sixties. Many still bear the scars of war.”
Roseboom: “We found that babies who were conceived during the famine have an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. They have more hypercholesterolemia, they are more responsive to stress, and they generally are in poorer health than people who were born before the famine or conceived after it.”
Narrator: “Researchers think that stress hormones in a mother's blood triggered a change in the nervous system of the fetus as it struggled with starvation. This was the fetuses' first encounter with stress. Six decades later, the bodies of these Dutch Hunger Winter children still haven't forgotten.”
Sapolsky: “What we now know is it's not just your fat cell storage that winds up being vulnerable to events like this. It's your brain chemistry. It's your capacity to learn as an adult. It's your capacity to respond to stress adaptively rather than maladaptively. How readily you fall into depression, how vulnerable you are to psychiatric disorders - yet another realm in which early experience and early stress can leave a very bad footprint.”
[NON-DUAL NOTE: Maharaj was once asked if he really even cared about the people who came his way, seeking peace and freedom? He replied: “More than you will ever know.” Do you understand why some among the Realized that not only know the Oneness but abide as the Oneness care enough to provide time and energy to try to offer a means by which some have found freedom from stress and worry and from the consequences of those factors, consequences which can go on for generations? The Realized understand that almost all of those consequences are rooted in the mental, in the mind, in what Sapolsky terms “psychological states.” The Ultimate Sickness is a mental sickness, and it is the mental, psychological issues – not a too-little-religion issue or “a spiritual malady” issue – that must be addressed if peace and freedom are to come and remain for the remainder of the manifestation.]
To be continued.
Please enter the silence of contemplation.
10 August 2014
Shively: “So we said, ‘Does that happen in monkeys because they organize themselves in a hierarchy, too.’ And it turns out that it does. Subordinate monkeys are more likely to have fat in their abdomen than are dominant monkeys. I think the most amazing observation that I've made in my lab is this idea that stress could actually change the way you deposit fat on your body. To me, that was a bizarre idea that you could actually alter the way fat is distributed."
Narrator: "Sapolsky, Shively and others think stress could be a critical factor in the global obesity epidemic."
The Narrator continued: “Even worse, fat brought on by stress is dangerous fat.”
Shively: “We know that fat carried on the trunk, or actually inside the abdomen, is much worse for you than fat carried elsewhere on the body. It behaves differently - it produces different kinds of hormones and chemicals and has different effects on your health. Whatever it is that works for individuals, they need to value stress reduction. I think the problem in our society is that we don't value stress reduction; in fact, we value the opposite. We admire the person who not only multi-tasks but does five things at once. We kind of admire those persons, how they manage that, though it’s an incredibly stressful way to live. We have to change our values and value people who understand a balanced and serene life."
[NON-DUAL NOTE: Some regular visitors to this site might recall an example used back in 2007 or so: Consider two men working in a downtown high rise office complex. It is lunchtime. One takes out the lunch he brought, puts on some relaxing music, leans back in his chair, puts his feet up on his desk, eats his sandwich and fruit, and looks out the window and watches the birds fly by as the clouds move cross the sky. Next door, a businessman (that is, a “busy-ness man”) has a client sitting at his desk, two other clients waiting in the outer office, and is on the phone lining up one early lunch meeting with a client and a later luncheon with another. His phones have three lights blinking, indicating three calls for him are on holds. The secretary brings in papers for the client at his desk to sign. Still talking on the phone, he points for the secretary to set the papers in front of the man and points at the man to sign them. He rushes through seeing the others in his office and clears them out and heads to his car to drive to the first of two lunch appointments. Now, the question is this: “In the typical, so-called “developed” or “advanced” nations on the planet nowadays, which man would be admired and which would be labeled ‘a lazy man who is not nearly motivated enough and should be accomplishing much more than he is’?" Again, Shively: “We have to change our values and value people who understand a balanced and serene life.”]
Narrator: “One heartbreaking moment in history reveals that stress may, in fact, damage us long before we are even aware. Holland, late 1944. A brutal winter and a merciless army of occupation conspire to starve a nation. It is known as the Dutch Hunger Winter. For those who survive today, these are haunting memories.”
[Side note: In the early 1980’s, I sat in the flat of Jan and Miep Gies located about a twenty-minute tram ride from the central area of Amsterdam where the Otto Frank office was located on Prinsengracht Canal in the early 1940's. Jan and Miep were among several who helped hide the Frank and the van Daan families in several rooms in the attic of the office building out of which Frank had operated the company which he established there after leaving Germany when the Nazis began their reign of terror. (See “The Diary of Anne Frank” which logged the events of their daily lives during their hiding over a twenty-five month period.) Miep described riding her bicycle into the countryside during that winter of 1944, seeking enough food for the seven people hiding upstairs as well as for her and her husband and two others who assisted in hiding two families of Jews from the Dutch Green Police and the Nazi occupiers. She said that often a four-or-five hour trip would net only a few, mostly rotten, potatoes purchased at a very high cost. Brutal conditions indeed.]
Narrator: “Dutch researcher Tessa Roseboom had heard many of those tragic memories. She and her team wanted to know if there were any lingering effects. Roseboom knew that our bodies respond to famine in much the same way they respond to other stressors, so she set out to see if the fetuses of women pregnant during these arduous days could possibly be affected by stress. Because of meticulous record keeping by the Dutch, Roseboom was able to identify over 2,400 people who could have been impacted. She and her team analyzed the data from those born during and after the famine and came to a surprising conclusion.”
Roseboom: “I think that you could say that these babies were exposed to stress in fetal life and they are still suffering the consequences of that now, sixty years later.”
Narrator: “Most of the Dutch Hunger Winter children live today, all in their sixties. Many still bear the scars of war.”
Roseboom: “We found that babies who were conceived during the famine have an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. They have more hypercholesterolemia, they are more responsive to stress, and they generally are in poorer health than people who were born before the famine or conceived after it.”
Narrator: “Researchers think that stress hormones in a mother's blood triggered a change in the nervous system of the fetus as it struggled with starvation. This was the fetuses' first encounter with stress. Six decades later, the bodies of these Dutch Hunger Winter children still haven't forgotten.”
Sapolsky: “What we now know is it's not just your fat cell storage that winds up being vulnerable to events like this. It's your brain chemistry. It's your capacity to learn as an adult. It's your capacity to respond to stress adaptively rather than maladaptively. How readily you fall into depression, how vulnerable you are to psychiatric disorders - yet another realm in which early experience and early stress can leave a very bad footprint.”
[NON-DUAL NOTE: Maharaj was once asked if he really even cared about the people who came his way, seeking peace and freedom? He replied: “More than you will ever know.” Do you understand why some among the Realized that not only know the Oneness but abide as the Oneness care enough to provide time and energy to try to offer a means by which some have found freedom from stress and worry and from the consequences of those factors, consequences which can go on for generations? The Realized understand that almost all of those consequences are rooted in the mental, in the mind, in what Sapolsky terms “psychological states.” The Ultimate Sickness is a mental sickness, and it is the mental, psychological issues – not a too-little-religion issue or “a spiritual malady” issue – that must be addressed if peace and freedom are to come and remain for the remainder of the manifestation.]
To be continued.
Please enter the silence of contemplation.
10 August 2014
A DAILY CONSIDERATION FOR YOU
F.: [A NON-DUAL NOTE AND REVIEW: Stress is universal. All members of all species experience it, some more than others. The ones who experience stress and its consequences the most are those at the lower end of hierarchies. All members of all species that suffer from stress – with one exception – are suffering from legitimate, real stress that is brought on by an actual, physiological threat. With them, it all begins externally with a threat of being caught and killed and eaten. The exception? Humans.
Humans today are suffering from stress that is brought on by a psychological threat – a threat that is imagined to be real by an assumed ego-state but that is most unreal. With humans, it all begins internally when one or more ego-states – which are total mirages - feel threatened but, nevertheless, trigger the same kind of response that is experienced by a zebra on the savannah that is running for its life from an attacker.
All species, except humans, stress with legitimate cause. Humans stress with no real, legitimate cause. And not only do humans stress over imagined threats to their false identities at any given moment but they also stress over the possibility of dreamed up threats in the future, a concept that no other species has. If a zebra could talk, it would ask: “The future? What the heck are you talking about . . . the future?”
What - other than a human who have been totally fooled - would stress over "eternal reward vs. eternal punishment in the future"? Or over "reincarnation" and "multiple births and lives and deaths and rebirths to be endured in the future"? Or stress over "how to escape those cycles and be 'blown out' in order to attain Nirvana in the future"?
Yet such stress is common nowadays because humans have been completely fooled and have thus disintegrated into a bizarre psychic state that allows them to experience something no other concept-free species can possibility experience, namely, “dread.”
Only humans dread. No other species suffers from what I call “anticipatory-based stress.” Insane enough to experience stress induced by a “psychological state,” as Sapolsky points out, but most humans also experience stress generated by concern over imagined, future threats.]
Now, To continue with the report on the damage to the brains of rats that were subjected to stress:
Sapolsky: “And what was most interesting in many ways was the part of the brain where this [effect of stress] was happening, the hippocampus. You take Intro Neurobiology and what you learn is that the hippocampus controls learning and memory.”
Narrator: “Stress in these rats shrank the part of their brain responsible for memory.”
McEwen: “Stress affects memory in two ways. Chronic stress can actually change brain circuits so that we lose the capacity to remember things as we need to. Very severe, acute stress can have another effect which is why it is said that ‘stress makes you stupid.’ It makes it impossible for you, over short periods of time, to remember things you know perfectly well.”
[NON-DUAL NOTE: Hence, the case among the non-Realized as described here: "It is as if they are no longer awake, aware, conscious. They are walking in their sleep, talking in their sleep, and doing everything else in their sleep as well."]
Sapolsky: “We are all familiar with that phenomenon from back when we stressed ourselves by not getting any sleep at all. We couldn't remember a single thing for a final exam. You take humans and stress them big time, long time, and you're going to have a hippocampus that pays the price as well.”
Narrator: “In addition to undermining our health, stress can make us feel plain miserable. Carol Shively set out to find out why. She began not with misery but with pleasure. Shively suspected that there was a link between stress, pleasure, and where we stand on the social hierarchy. Just like stress, pleasure is linked to the chemistry of the brain. When a neurotransmitter called dopamine is released in the brain, it binds to receptors, signaling pleasure. She explored this process first by looking into the brain of a non-stressed [dominant] primate and then looking at a subordinate's brain.”
Shively: “What we discovered is that the brains of the subordinate monkeys are very, very dull because there's much less receptor-binding going on in this area. Why is that? What is it about this area of the brain? When you have less dopamine, everything around you that you would normally take pleasure in is less pleasurable, so the sun doesn't shine so bright, the grass is not so green, food doesn't taste as good. It's because of the way your brain is functioning that you're doing that, and your brain is functioning that way because you're low on the social status hierarchy.”
Sapolsky: “One feature of low rank is the reality of being low-ranking. An even stronger feature, by the time you get to humans, is not just being low-ranking or poor. It's feeling low-ranking or poor. And one of the best ways for society to make you feel like one of the have-nots is to rub your nose in it over and over and over again with what you don't have.”
Narrator: “Richmond, California is a town where society's extremes can be spotted right from your car.” [Shows a man driving through a "fairly-well-to-do, middle class" area] “This is cardiologist Jeffrey Ritterman's regular commute.”
Ritterman: “You can learn a lot about the stress and health outcome just from the neighborhoods you visit. In this neighborhood, the life expectancy is quite good and most of the people are pretty healthy. As we reach the top of the hill, it gets to be a little bit less privileged and as we make this transition, the social status begins to drop and, correspondingly, in these areas, the health outcome is much worse.
These people are not going to have the same life expectancy as the people in the middle class area we started in. People are on guard, people are vigilant, and they're living a more stressful life. This is a community that produces high stress hormones in people, and over time it takes its toll.”
[NON-DUAL NOTE: Consider the terms used in analyzing the hierarchical separation among colonies of monkeys and troops of baboons and humans as well, words that are not any part of “The Vocabulary Of Non-Duality”: “superior,” “subordinate,” “low-ranking,” “high-ranking” “rich,” “poor,” "haves," "have-nots," “well-to-do,” “privileged,” “less privileged” and you’ll understand why so many postings here over the years have addressed the ramifications of hierarchies and a sense of different-from-ment and a sense of better-than-ment.]
Narrator: “One of Ritterman's patients is 65-year-old Emanuel Johnson, a guidance counselor in one of America's most dangerous neighborhoods.”
Johnson: “Last year I think we had 47 homicides. In just the last 4 days, we've had 11 shootings and 3 deaths, and I just know, nine times out of ten, it's going to be a relative or someone that the kids know.”
Narrator: “For Emanuel Johnson, there is a price for chronic exposure to this stress”:
Johnson: "Five years ago I had a heart attack. I'm a diabetic, too. I have to work on it constantly. I've been in this business 20 years, so it's just - it's stressful just working the job. So over the years came issues with the cholesterol, the blood pressure, the sugar, but the stress was always there, long before those problems came on.”
Narrator: “Emanuel Johnson's body [shown, obviously overweight] may be telling yet another story of stress. The Whitehall Study in England found an incredible link between stress, your position in a social hierarchy, and how you put on weight.”
Marmot: “And the issue may not be just about putting on weight, but also the distribution of that weight. And the distribution of that weight - putting it on around the center - is related to one's position in the hierarchy, and that, in turn, may be related to chronic stress pathways.”
Shively: “So we asked, ‘Does that happen in monkeys because they organize themselves in a hierarchy, too?’ And it turns out that it does. Subordinate monkeys are more likely to have fat in their abdomen than are dominant monkeys. I think the most amazing observation that I've made in my lab is this idea that stress could actually change the way you deposit fat on your body. To me, that was a bizarre idea - that you could actually alter the way fat is distributed."
Narrator: “And Sapolsky, Shively and others think stress could be a critical factor in the global obesity epidemic.”
To be continued.
Please enter the silence of contemplation.
9 August 2014
Humans today are suffering from stress that is brought on by a psychological threat – a threat that is imagined to be real by an assumed ego-state but that is most unreal. With humans, it all begins internally when one or more ego-states – which are total mirages - feel threatened but, nevertheless, trigger the same kind of response that is experienced by a zebra on the savannah that is running for its life from an attacker.
All species, except humans, stress with legitimate cause. Humans stress with no real, legitimate cause. And not only do humans stress over imagined threats to their false identities at any given moment but they also stress over the possibility of dreamed up threats in the future, a concept that no other species has. If a zebra could talk, it would ask: “The future? What the heck are you talking about . . . the future?”
What - other than a human who have been totally fooled - would stress over "eternal reward vs. eternal punishment in the future"? Or over "reincarnation" and "multiple births and lives and deaths and rebirths to be endured in the future"? Or stress over "how to escape those cycles and be 'blown out' in order to attain Nirvana in the future"?
Yet such stress is common nowadays because humans have been completely fooled and have thus disintegrated into a bizarre psychic state that allows them to experience something no other concept-free species can possibility experience, namely, “dread.”
Only humans dread. No other species suffers from what I call “anticipatory-based stress.” Insane enough to experience stress induced by a “psychological state,” as Sapolsky points out, but most humans also experience stress generated by concern over imagined, future threats.]
Now, To continue with the report on the damage to the brains of rats that were subjected to stress:
Sapolsky: “And what was most interesting in many ways was the part of the brain where this [effect of stress] was happening, the hippocampus. You take Intro Neurobiology and what you learn is that the hippocampus controls learning and memory.”
Narrator: “Stress in these rats shrank the part of their brain responsible for memory.”
McEwen: “Stress affects memory in two ways. Chronic stress can actually change brain circuits so that we lose the capacity to remember things as we need to. Very severe, acute stress can have another effect which is why it is said that ‘stress makes you stupid.’ It makes it impossible for you, over short periods of time, to remember things you know perfectly well.”
[NON-DUAL NOTE: Hence, the case among the non-Realized as described here: "It is as if they are no longer awake, aware, conscious. They are walking in their sleep, talking in their sleep, and doing everything else in their sleep as well."]
Sapolsky: “We are all familiar with that phenomenon from back when we stressed ourselves by not getting any sleep at all. We couldn't remember a single thing for a final exam. You take humans and stress them big time, long time, and you're going to have a hippocampus that pays the price as well.”
Narrator: “In addition to undermining our health, stress can make us feel plain miserable. Carol Shively set out to find out why. She began not with misery but with pleasure. Shively suspected that there was a link between stress, pleasure, and where we stand on the social hierarchy. Just like stress, pleasure is linked to the chemistry of the brain. When a neurotransmitter called dopamine is released in the brain, it binds to receptors, signaling pleasure. She explored this process first by looking into the brain of a non-stressed [dominant] primate and then looking at a subordinate's brain.”
Shively: “What we discovered is that the brains of the subordinate monkeys are very, very dull because there's much less receptor-binding going on in this area. Why is that? What is it about this area of the brain? When you have less dopamine, everything around you that you would normally take pleasure in is less pleasurable, so the sun doesn't shine so bright, the grass is not so green, food doesn't taste as good. It's because of the way your brain is functioning that you're doing that, and your brain is functioning that way because you're low on the social status hierarchy.”
Sapolsky: “One feature of low rank is the reality of being low-ranking. An even stronger feature, by the time you get to humans, is not just being low-ranking or poor. It's feeling low-ranking or poor. And one of the best ways for society to make you feel like one of the have-nots is to rub your nose in it over and over and over again with what you don't have.”
Narrator: “Richmond, California is a town where society's extremes can be spotted right from your car.” [Shows a man driving through a "fairly-well-to-do, middle class" area] “This is cardiologist Jeffrey Ritterman's regular commute.”
Ritterman: “You can learn a lot about the stress and health outcome just from the neighborhoods you visit. In this neighborhood, the life expectancy is quite good and most of the people are pretty healthy. As we reach the top of the hill, it gets to be a little bit less privileged and as we make this transition, the social status begins to drop and, correspondingly, in these areas, the health outcome is much worse.
These people are not going to have the same life expectancy as the people in the middle class area we started in. People are on guard, people are vigilant, and they're living a more stressful life. This is a community that produces high stress hormones in people, and over time it takes its toll.”
[NON-DUAL NOTE: Consider the terms used in analyzing the hierarchical separation among colonies of monkeys and troops of baboons and humans as well, words that are not any part of “The Vocabulary Of Non-Duality”: “superior,” “subordinate,” “low-ranking,” “high-ranking” “rich,” “poor,” "haves," "have-nots," “well-to-do,” “privileged,” “less privileged” and you’ll understand why so many postings here over the years have addressed the ramifications of hierarchies and a sense of different-from-ment and a sense of better-than-ment.]
Narrator: “One of Ritterman's patients is 65-year-old Emanuel Johnson, a guidance counselor in one of America's most dangerous neighborhoods.”
Johnson: “Last year I think we had 47 homicides. In just the last 4 days, we've had 11 shootings and 3 deaths, and I just know, nine times out of ten, it's going to be a relative or someone that the kids know.”
Narrator: “For Emanuel Johnson, there is a price for chronic exposure to this stress”:
Johnson: "Five years ago I had a heart attack. I'm a diabetic, too. I have to work on it constantly. I've been in this business 20 years, so it's just - it's stressful just working the job. So over the years came issues with the cholesterol, the blood pressure, the sugar, but the stress was always there, long before those problems came on.”
Narrator: “Emanuel Johnson's body [shown, obviously overweight] may be telling yet another story of stress. The Whitehall Study in England found an incredible link between stress, your position in a social hierarchy, and how you put on weight.”
Marmot: “And the issue may not be just about putting on weight, but also the distribution of that weight. And the distribution of that weight - putting it on around the center - is related to one's position in the hierarchy, and that, in turn, may be related to chronic stress pathways.”
Shively: “So we asked, ‘Does that happen in monkeys because they organize themselves in a hierarchy, too?’ And it turns out that it does. Subordinate monkeys are more likely to have fat in their abdomen than are dominant monkeys. I think the most amazing observation that I've made in my lab is this idea that stress could actually change the way you deposit fat on your body. To me, that was a bizarre idea - that you could actually alter the way fat is distributed."
Narrator: “And Sapolsky, Shively and others think stress could be a critical factor in the global obesity epidemic.”
To be continued.
Please enter the silence of contemplation.
9 August 2014
A DAILY CONSIDERATION FOR YOU
F.: [NON-DUAL NOTE: As noted, there are some things that the understanding can address and some things the understanding cannot address. Limitless effort can be made to guide persons to differentiating true from false, but if the hypothalamus is under functioning, which it is in probably 98% of all humans, then nothing will help. It has been observed with one team I work with that in some cases, the use of a hypothalamus supplement for ninety days straight has shown remarkable shifts in one’s ability to differentiate true from false.] Now to continue:
From yesterday:
Sapolsky: “Basically, if you're, you know, a stressed, unhealthy baboon in a typical troop, high blood pressure, elevated levels of stress hormones, you have an immune system that doesn't work as well, and your reproductive system is more vulnerable of being knocked out of whack. Your brain chemistry is one that bears some similarity to what you see in clinically-depressed humans. And all that stuff, those are not predictors of a hale and hearty old age.”
Narrator: “Could this also be true for that other primate?”
Ah. A key query, yes. More on that tomorrow.
To continue with the pointers offered in the Sapolsky film “STRESS: PORTRAIT OF A KILLER”:
(Today: THE PHYSIOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES OF STRESS AND THE CALL BY THOSE CONSEQUENCES FOR REALIZATION AND A NISARGAN PERSPECTIVE)
Narrator: “As Robert Sapolsky was monitoring stress in baboons, Professor Sir Michael Marmot was leading a study in Great Britain that tracked the health of more than 28,000 people over the course of 40 years. The study was named for Whitehall, citadel of the British Civil Service, where every job is ranked in a precise hierarchy - the perfect laboratory to determine whether in humans there might be a link between rank and stress.”
Narrator: “Kevin Brooks is a government lawyer.”
Kevin Brooks: “I think I've been under chronic stress in this organization simply because I'm a square peg in a round hole.”
Narrator: “His rank- Level Seven - means he has little seniority in his department. He lives the life of a subordinate.”
K.B.: “One of my cases wasn't wholly under control.”
(Then Brooks entered the office one Monday morning and was told his manager wanted to see him.)
K.B.: “So we find a room, he shuts the door, then he says, ‘You know what you've done?! You know what happened while you were away?! We couldn't find one of your files!’ He just gave me a darn good kicking, you know? Psychologically, he did me over. At the end of it came more threats. I left the room, crossed over the corridor to my own room, and I just burst into tears.”
So that’s an example of the view from the bottom of Britain’s rigid hierarchical system. What’s the view like from the top?
Narrator: “Sarah Woodhall also works for the government. Unlike Kevin, she is a Senior Civil Servant.”
Woodhall: “There are about 160 people reporting to me ultimately one way or another within the sector. I do really enjoy working in civil service. It's quite a dynamic environment, and it can be quite exciting. I like working with lots of people, so, yeah, I do really enjoy my job.”
Narrator: “Such dramatically different reflections dramatize one of the most astounding scientific findings in the Whitehall Study.
Marmot: “Firstly, the study showed that the lower you were in the hierarchy, the higher your risk of heart disease and other diseases. So people second from the top had higher risks than those at the top, people third from the top had a higher risk than those second from the top, and it ran all the way from top to bottom. We're dealing with people in stable jobs with no industrial exposures. And yet your position in the hierarchy intimately related to your risk of disease and length of life.”
Woodhall: “I've been very lucky. I haven't ever experienced any problems with my health. Since I've been in the Senior Civil Service, I haven't had a day off with ill health. So I've been very fortunate.”
K.B.: “In my own situation, I think that my career is pretty much tainted. It's pretty much arrested. Out of the last three years at work, I've been off sick for probably half that time.”
Sapolsky: “This particular study is sort of 'the Rosetta Stone of the whole field' because it's the British Civil Service System. Everybody's got the same medical care. Everybody's got the same universal health care system. It’s just like the baboons in that all the baboons eat the same thing and they have the same level of activity. It's not this stuff that, oh, if you're a low-ranking baboon, you smoke too much and you drink too much. Both of these studies rule out all those confounds, and they produce virtually identical findings.”
Narrator: “On both sides of the primate divide, there are soul-wrenching stories and life-threatening consequences. For every subordinate (like Kevin, living a life of baboon uncertainty), there is an alpha strutting his stuff, glorying in power, over someone else - someone unsuspecting, someone low-ranking.”
[Back to Sapolsky on the savannah]
Narrator: “As in previous seasons, Robert measures how individuals at every level of the baboon hierarchy react to and recover from stress.”
Sapolsky: “So what we're doing, we're now going to challenge the system with increasing doses of epinephrine.”
Narrator: “The baboon's response is immediately picked up in its blood - vital signs that can be deep frozen in perpetuity.”
Sapolsky: “It's this storehouse of potential knowledge, and I’ve got thirty years of those blood samples frozen away at this point because you never know when some new hormone or some new something or other pops up.”
Narrator: “Anticipating the long reach of stress is a recent idea, for when Robert was young, scientists believed stress was the cause of only one major problem: peptic ulcers, eating away at the walls of the stomach.”
Sapolsky: “Thirty years ago, what's the disease that comes to everybody's mind when you mention stress? Stress and ulcers, stress and ulcers. This was the first stress-related disease discovered, in fact, seventy years ago.”
Narrator: “The connection between stress and ulcers was mainstream medical gospel until the late 1980s. Then Australian researchers identified bacteria as the major cause of ulcers.”
Sapolsky: “That overthrew the entire field. It's got nothing to do with stress. It's a bacterial disorder.”
Narrator: “So no longer would the solution be stress management. Now it could be something as simple as a pill. It was a major breakthrough. Stress didn't cause ulcers. Case closed. But a few years later the research took a new twist. Scientists discovered that this ulcer-causing bacteria wasn't unique. In fact, as much as two-thirds of the world's population has it. So why do only a fraction of these people develop ulcers? Research revealed that, when stressed, the body begins shutting down all non-essential systems, including the immune system. And it became clear that if you shut down the immune system, stomach bacteria can run amok.
Sapolsky: “Because what the stress does is wipe out the ability of your body to begin to repair your stomach walls when they start rotting away from this bacteria.”
Narrator: “So stress can cause ulcers by disrupting our body's ability to heal itself. If stress can undermine the immune system, what other havoc can it wreak? One answer comes from a colony of captive macaque monkeys near Winston-Salem, North Carolina.”
Carol Shively [a researcher there]: “People think of stress as something that keeps them up at night or something that makes them yell at their kids. But when you ask me what stress is, I say, "Look at it. It’s this huge plaque in this artery.”
Narrator: “Carol Shively has been studying the arteries of macaques. Like baboons and British civil servants, these primates organize themselves into distinctly hierarchical groups and subject each other to social stress. Stress hormones can trigger an intense negative cardiovascular response - a pounding heart and increased blood pressure. So if stress follows rank, would the cardiovascular system of a high-ranking macaque - call him “a Primate CEO” - be different from his subordinates? When Shively looked at the arteries of a dominant monkey - one with little history of stress - its arteries were clean. But a subordinate monkey's arteries told a grim tale.”
Shively: “A subordinate artery has lots more atherosclerosis built up inside it than a dominant artery has.”
Narrator: “Stress and the resulting flood of hormones had increased blood pressure, damaged artery walls, and made them repositories for plaque.”
Shively: “So now when you feel threatened, your arteries don't expand and your heart muscle doesn't get more blood. That can lead to a heart attack. This is not an abstract concept; it's not something that maybe someday you should do something about. You need to attend to it today because it's affecting the way your body functions, and stress today will affect your health tomorrow and for years to come.”
Narrator: “Social and psychological stress - whether macaque, human or baboon - can clog our arteries, restrict blood flow, and jeopardize the health of our heart. And that's just the beginning of stress's deadly curse. Robert's early research demonstrated that stress works on us in an even more frightening way.”
Sapolsky: “Well, back when I was starting in this business, what I wound up focusing on was what seemed an utterly implausible idea at the time, which was chronic stress and chronic exposure to glucocorticoids could do something as unsubtle and grotesque as kill some of your brain cells.”
Narrator: “As a Ph.D. candidate at Rockefeller University in the early 1980s, Sapolsky collaborated with his mentor, Dr. Bruce McEwen, to follow the path of stress into the brain. They subjected lab rats to chronic stress and then examined their brain cells. The team made an astonishing find. They found that while the cells of normal rat brains have extensive branches, stressed rats' brain cells were dramatically smaller.”
Sapolsky: “And what was most interesting in many ways was the part of the brain where this was happening, the hippocampus. You take Intro Neurobiology and what you learn is the hippocampus affects learning and memory.”
Narrator: “Stress in these rats shrank the part of their brain responsible for memory.”
To be continued.
Please enter the silence of contemplation.
8 Aug 2014
From yesterday:
Sapolsky: “Basically, if you're, you know, a stressed, unhealthy baboon in a typical troop, high blood pressure, elevated levels of stress hormones, you have an immune system that doesn't work as well, and your reproductive system is more vulnerable of being knocked out of whack. Your brain chemistry is one that bears some similarity to what you see in clinically-depressed humans. And all that stuff, those are not predictors of a hale and hearty old age.”
Narrator: “Could this also be true for that other primate?”
Ah. A key query, yes. More on that tomorrow.
To continue with the pointers offered in the Sapolsky film “STRESS: PORTRAIT OF A KILLER”:
(Today: THE PHYSIOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES OF STRESS AND THE CALL BY THOSE CONSEQUENCES FOR REALIZATION AND A NISARGAN PERSPECTIVE)
Narrator: “As Robert Sapolsky was monitoring stress in baboons, Professor Sir Michael Marmot was leading a study in Great Britain that tracked the health of more than 28,000 people over the course of 40 years. The study was named for Whitehall, citadel of the British Civil Service, where every job is ranked in a precise hierarchy - the perfect laboratory to determine whether in humans there might be a link between rank and stress.”
Narrator: “Kevin Brooks is a government lawyer.”
Kevin Brooks: “I think I've been under chronic stress in this organization simply because I'm a square peg in a round hole.”
Narrator: “His rank- Level Seven - means he has little seniority in his department. He lives the life of a subordinate.”
K.B.: “One of my cases wasn't wholly under control.”
(Then Brooks entered the office one Monday morning and was told his manager wanted to see him.)
K.B.: “So we find a room, he shuts the door, then he says, ‘You know what you've done?! You know what happened while you were away?! We couldn't find one of your files!’ He just gave me a darn good kicking, you know? Psychologically, he did me over. At the end of it came more threats. I left the room, crossed over the corridor to my own room, and I just burst into tears.”
So that’s an example of the view from the bottom of Britain’s rigid hierarchical system. What’s the view like from the top?
Narrator: “Sarah Woodhall also works for the government. Unlike Kevin, she is a Senior Civil Servant.”
Woodhall: “There are about 160 people reporting to me ultimately one way or another within the sector. I do really enjoy working in civil service. It's quite a dynamic environment, and it can be quite exciting. I like working with lots of people, so, yeah, I do really enjoy my job.”
Narrator: “Such dramatically different reflections dramatize one of the most astounding scientific findings in the Whitehall Study.
Marmot: “Firstly, the study showed that the lower you were in the hierarchy, the higher your risk of heart disease and other diseases. So people second from the top had higher risks than those at the top, people third from the top had a higher risk than those second from the top, and it ran all the way from top to bottom. We're dealing with people in stable jobs with no industrial exposures. And yet your position in the hierarchy intimately related to your risk of disease and length of life.”
Woodhall: “I've been very lucky. I haven't ever experienced any problems with my health. Since I've been in the Senior Civil Service, I haven't had a day off with ill health. So I've been very fortunate.”
K.B.: “In my own situation, I think that my career is pretty much tainted. It's pretty much arrested. Out of the last three years at work, I've been off sick for probably half that time.”
Sapolsky: “This particular study is sort of 'the Rosetta Stone of the whole field' because it's the British Civil Service System. Everybody's got the same medical care. Everybody's got the same universal health care system. It’s just like the baboons in that all the baboons eat the same thing and they have the same level of activity. It's not this stuff that, oh, if you're a low-ranking baboon, you smoke too much and you drink too much. Both of these studies rule out all those confounds, and they produce virtually identical findings.”
Narrator: “On both sides of the primate divide, there are soul-wrenching stories and life-threatening consequences. For every subordinate (like Kevin, living a life of baboon uncertainty), there is an alpha strutting his stuff, glorying in power, over someone else - someone unsuspecting, someone low-ranking.”
[Back to Sapolsky on the savannah]
Narrator: “As in previous seasons, Robert measures how individuals at every level of the baboon hierarchy react to and recover from stress.”
Sapolsky: “So what we're doing, we're now going to challenge the system with increasing doses of epinephrine.”
Narrator: “The baboon's response is immediately picked up in its blood - vital signs that can be deep frozen in perpetuity.”
Sapolsky: “It's this storehouse of potential knowledge, and I’ve got thirty years of those blood samples frozen away at this point because you never know when some new hormone or some new something or other pops up.”
Narrator: “Anticipating the long reach of stress is a recent idea, for when Robert was young, scientists believed stress was the cause of only one major problem: peptic ulcers, eating away at the walls of the stomach.”
Sapolsky: “Thirty years ago, what's the disease that comes to everybody's mind when you mention stress? Stress and ulcers, stress and ulcers. This was the first stress-related disease discovered, in fact, seventy years ago.”
Narrator: “The connection between stress and ulcers was mainstream medical gospel until the late 1980s. Then Australian researchers identified bacteria as the major cause of ulcers.”
Sapolsky: “That overthrew the entire field. It's got nothing to do with stress. It's a bacterial disorder.”
Narrator: “So no longer would the solution be stress management. Now it could be something as simple as a pill. It was a major breakthrough. Stress didn't cause ulcers. Case closed. But a few years later the research took a new twist. Scientists discovered that this ulcer-causing bacteria wasn't unique. In fact, as much as two-thirds of the world's population has it. So why do only a fraction of these people develop ulcers? Research revealed that, when stressed, the body begins shutting down all non-essential systems, including the immune system. And it became clear that if you shut down the immune system, stomach bacteria can run amok.
Sapolsky: “Because what the stress does is wipe out the ability of your body to begin to repair your stomach walls when they start rotting away from this bacteria.”
Narrator: “So stress can cause ulcers by disrupting our body's ability to heal itself. If stress can undermine the immune system, what other havoc can it wreak? One answer comes from a colony of captive macaque monkeys near Winston-Salem, North Carolina.”
Carol Shively [a researcher there]: “People think of stress as something that keeps them up at night or something that makes them yell at their kids. But when you ask me what stress is, I say, "Look at it. It’s this huge plaque in this artery.”
Narrator: “Carol Shively has been studying the arteries of macaques. Like baboons and British civil servants, these primates organize themselves into distinctly hierarchical groups and subject each other to social stress. Stress hormones can trigger an intense negative cardiovascular response - a pounding heart and increased blood pressure. So if stress follows rank, would the cardiovascular system of a high-ranking macaque - call him “a Primate CEO” - be different from his subordinates? When Shively looked at the arteries of a dominant monkey - one with little history of stress - its arteries were clean. But a subordinate monkey's arteries told a grim tale.”
Shively: “A subordinate artery has lots more atherosclerosis built up inside it than a dominant artery has.”
Narrator: “Stress and the resulting flood of hormones had increased blood pressure, damaged artery walls, and made them repositories for plaque.”
Shively: “So now when you feel threatened, your arteries don't expand and your heart muscle doesn't get more blood. That can lead to a heart attack. This is not an abstract concept; it's not something that maybe someday you should do something about. You need to attend to it today because it's affecting the way your body functions, and stress today will affect your health tomorrow and for years to come.”
Narrator: “Social and psychological stress - whether macaque, human or baboon - can clog our arteries, restrict blood flow, and jeopardize the health of our heart. And that's just the beginning of stress's deadly curse. Robert's early research demonstrated that stress works on us in an even more frightening way.”
Sapolsky: “Well, back when I was starting in this business, what I wound up focusing on was what seemed an utterly implausible idea at the time, which was chronic stress and chronic exposure to glucocorticoids could do something as unsubtle and grotesque as kill some of your brain cells.”
Narrator: “As a Ph.D. candidate at Rockefeller University in the early 1980s, Sapolsky collaborated with his mentor, Dr. Bruce McEwen, to follow the path of stress into the brain. They subjected lab rats to chronic stress and then examined their brain cells. The team made an astonishing find. They found that while the cells of normal rat brains have extensive branches, stressed rats' brain cells were dramatically smaller.”
Sapolsky: “And what was most interesting in many ways was the part of the brain where this was happening, the hippocampus. You take Intro Neurobiology and what you learn is the hippocampus affects learning and memory.”
Narrator: “Stress in these rats shrank the part of their brain responsible for memory.”
To be continued.
Please enter the silence of contemplation.
8 Aug 2014
A DAILY CONSIDERATION FOR YOU
F.: [NON-DUAL NOTE: Can the non-dual understanding really help reduce or eliminate stress? Definitely, based on what was experienced here and on the experience of others. In terms of addressing what the documentary has so far revealed via Sapolsky’s latest research, there are two areas where the understanding can lead to greater freedom from stress and to more peace:
The first area deals with what Sapolsky referred to as "real physiological threats" vs. "unreal psychological threats" (the latter being threats perceived by false personalities / personas as being real though they are not). The non-dual understanding has been seen to address cases where persons have not been able to differentiate true from false. As Sapolsky has shown, one of the main sources of stress nowadays among humans is rooted in the fact that they cannot differentiate between true or “real” physiological threats and false, unreal psychological threats whereby false identities perceive false threats as being real threats.
Is there anything that the non-dual understanding can provide to reduce or to eliminate stress in a moment of crisis that involves a “real” and pending and imminent physiological threat? No. As for the Nisargan understanding, that is all about what is natural, and stress under those conditions would be natural; therefore, no Realized Nisargan would ever suggest that anything natural should be eliminated or avoided. Is there anything that the non-dual understanding can provide to reduce or to eliminate stress in a moment of “supposed crisis” that involves a false, unreal psychological threat? Of course. Absolutely.
So to review: the documentary makes clear that (a) humans “are being stressed by social and psychological tumult invented by their own species” and then adds (b) “if a zebra escapes [an attack], its stress response shuts down, but human beings can't seem to find their ‘off’ switch. We turn on the exact same stress response for purely psychological states.”
“Psychological states” involve ego-states, dreamed up identities that have been assigned or assumed and that all have hidden agendas and hidden fears and hidden desires that control every non-Realized person’s thoughts and words and actions. There is no “control” or “power” at all under such circumstances. There is only ignorance and insanity under such circumstances.
Imagine one lives in a desert and drives through a stretch of road each day at 3 P.M. Imagine that every sunny, hot day that a mirage appears along that same stretch of road. If a driver were to swerve to avoid an imagined collision with an imagined mirage, then one might end up wrecked in a ditch. (How many humans have experienced a relative existence that has amounted to little more than a total wreck because of things that were imagined but not real, because of the mirages - the false identities - that they take to be real?)
Next, imagine being angry on a day with intermittent clouds – convincing you that the mirage you are attached to is coming and going, is not secure. That would be stress-invoking, yes? And imagine the feelings on rainy days when the feelings go beyond a sense that your mirage is being threatened and you become convinced that it is being destroyed completely. Being attached to a mirage and loving a mirage can be nothing short of being trapped in delusion, ignorance, insanity, and stress. If one is highly stressed and that stress is rooted in the symptoms of the Ultimate Sickness, wouldn’t that be evidence of ignorance? Yes. Of insanity? Yes.
The True Self is not the Pure Witness – that’s an identity. It is Pure Witnessing which is merely a process, a temporary happening, and most certainly not a person at all. It sees clearly and can differentiate between what is true and what is false. As Sapolsky has shown, one of the main sources of stress nowadays among humans is rooted in the fact that they cannot differentiate between true or “real” physiological threats and false, unreal psychological threats whereby false identities take what is only a perceived threat to be a real threat.
The second area where the understanding can have an effect on stress levels involves the desire for “control” (and that extends to all species). Stress is generated when desired control is not attained and one is trapped in the lower echelons of one of the billions of hierarchies that exist all around the globe. Baboons will never attain the understanding, so those at “the lower end” will never be as stress-free as their human counterparts who Realize.
By the way, dissociation and denial of stress do not eliminate it. “Religion” and “spirituality” and “praying” and “faith” have been seen to serve as placebos for some who are trying to be free of the stress that comes with the Ultimate Sickness, but any "placebo effect" is short-lived. Their effects are mainly “psychological” (per Sapolsky) and the unreal cannot cure the unreal. That is, “not-real psychological medicines” cannot cure “unreal psychological threats.” The non-dual understanding can actually address that issue.]
So to continue with the pointers offered in the Sapolsky film “STRESS: PORTRAIT OF A KILLER.”
Narrator: “In real life, for so many of us primates - including Robert's baboons - control is not an option.”
Sapolsky: “You get some big male who loses a fight, and chases a sub-adult, who bites an adult female, who slaps a juvenile, who knocks an infant out of a tree . . . all in fifteen seconds. Insofar as a huge component of stress is lack of control, lack of predictability, you're sitting there and you're just watching a zebra and somebody else is having a bad day and it's your rear end that's going to get slashed. [It's all] so tremendously, psychologically stressful for the folks further down on the hierarchy."
Narrator: “One of Robert's early revelations was identifying the link between stress and hierarchy in baboons. Some baboon troops are over one-hundred strong. Like us, they have evolved large brains to navigate the complexities of large societies. Survival here requires a kind of political savvy - with the most cunning and aggressive males gaining top rank and all of the perks: females for the choosing, all the food they can eat, and an endless retinue of willing groomers. Every male knows where he stands in society: who can torture him; who he can torture; and who, in turn, the ‘torturee’ can torture.”
Next, Sapolsky offers his revealing take on the baboons that he has come to know firsthand, and his take on some baboons adumbrates comments made throughout history regarding some humans as well:
Sapolsky: “Well, this sounds like a terrible thing to confess after thirty years, but I don't actually like baboons all that much. I mean, there's been individual guys over the years who I absolutely love, but most are these scheming, back-stabbing Machiavellian bastards. They're awful to each other, so they're great for my science. I mean, I'm not out here to commune with them. They're perfect for what I study.”
Narrator (referring to Sapolsky’s decades of research): “His early work - measuring stress hormones from extracted blood - led to two remarkable discoveries. A baboon's rank determined the level of stress hormone in his system, so if you're a dominant male, you can expect your stress hormones to be low. And if you're submissive, much higher.
[Imagine the stress levels from being bullied by Donnie Leone for three years, including every morning, including sometimes during lunch breaks, and including many times after school as well. Some claimed it was pretty “low life” the way that I had given him a “sucker punch.” I pointed out that I had not administered a "sucker punch" but that I had merely “punched a sucker” instead. Yet “fighting back” within a hierarchy – whether that involves baboons or humans or any other species – is rare; thus, stress is not rare. It is common. It is, in fact, pervasive. What roles do personality types play? Type Sixes seldom fight back but will on occasion; Type Nines almost never fight back; and Type Fours are the most prone of all to stand up to abusive authority and fight back.]
Next, the Sapolsky study reveals some additional costs of being trapped at the lower end of a hierarchy and staying there:
Narrator: “But there was an even more astonishing find in Sapolsky's sample: low rankers - the have-nots - had increased heart rates and higher blood pressure. This was the first time anyone had linked stress to the deteriorating health of a primate in the wild.”
Sapolsky: “Basically, if you're a stressed, unhealthy baboon in a typical troop, you'll have high blood pressure, elevated levels of stress hormones, an immune system that doesn't work as well, and your reproductive system will be more vulnerable to being knocked out of whack. Your brain chemistry is one that bears some similarity to what you see in clinically-depressed humans. And all that stuff . . . those are not predictors of a hale and hearty old age.”
Narrator: “Could this also be true for that other primate?”
Ah. A key query, yes. More on that tomorrow.
To be continued.
Please enter the silence of contemplation.
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WHY YOU MUST BE EMPTY IF YOU WOULD BE FULL
THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF WARS
The first area deals with what Sapolsky referred to as "real physiological threats" vs. "unreal psychological threats" (the latter being threats perceived by false personalities / personas as being real though they are not). The non-dual understanding has been seen to address cases where persons have not been able to differentiate true from false. As Sapolsky has shown, one of the main sources of stress nowadays among humans is rooted in the fact that they cannot differentiate between true or “real” physiological threats and false, unreal psychological threats whereby false identities perceive false threats as being real threats.
Is there anything that the non-dual understanding can provide to reduce or to eliminate stress in a moment of crisis that involves a “real” and pending and imminent physiological threat? No. As for the Nisargan understanding, that is all about what is natural, and stress under those conditions would be natural; therefore, no Realized Nisargan would ever suggest that anything natural should be eliminated or avoided. Is there anything that the non-dual understanding can provide to reduce or to eliminate stress in a moment of “supposed crisis” that involves a false, unreal psychological threat? Of course. Absolutely.
So to review: the documentary makes clear that (a) humans “are being stressed by social and psychological tumult invented by their own species” and then adds (b) “if a zebra escapes [an attack], its stress response shuts down, but human beings can't seem to find their ‘off’ switch. We turn on the exact same stress response for purely psychological states.”
“Psychological states” involve ego-states, dreamed up identities that have been assigned or assumed and that all have hidden agendas and hidden fears and hidden desires that control every non-Realized person’s thoughts and words and actions. There is no “control” or “power” at all under such circumstances. There is only ignorance and insanity under such circumstances.
Imagine one lives in a desert and drives through a stretch of road each day at 3 P.M. Imagine that every sunny, hot day that a mirage appears along that same stretch of road. If a driver were to swerve to avoid an imagined collision with an imagined mirage, then one might end up wrecked in a ditch. (How many humans have experienced a relative existence that has amounted to little more than a total wreck because of things that were imagined but not real, because of the mirages - the false identities - that they take to be real?)
Next, imagine being angry on a day with intermittent clouds – convincing you that the mirage you are attached to is coming and going, is not secure. That would be stress-invoking, yes? And imagine the feelings on rainy days when the feelings go beyond a sense that your mirage is being threatened and you become convinced that it is being destroyed completely. Being attached to a mirage and loving a mirage can be nothing short of being trapped in delusion, ignorance, insanity, and stress. If one is highly stressed and that stress is rooted in the symptoms of the Ultimate Sickness, wouldn’t that be evidence of ignorance? Yes. Of insanity? Yes.
The True Self is not the Pure Witness – that’s an identity. It is Pure Witnessing which is merely a process, a temporary happening, and most certainly not a person at all. It sees clearly and can differentiate between what is true and what is false. As Sapolsky has shown, one of the main sources of stress nowadays among humans is rooted in the fact that they cannot differentiate between true or “real” physiological threats and false, unreal psychological threats whereby false identities take what is only a perceived threat to be a real threat.
The second area where the understanding can have an effect on stress levels involves the desire for “control” (and that extends to all species). Stress is generated when desired control is not attained and one is trapped in the lower echelons of one of the billions of hierarchies that exist all around the globe. Baboons will never attain the understanding, so those at “the lower end” will never be as stress-free as their human counterparts who Realize.
By the way, dissociation and denial of stress do not eliminate it. “Religion” and “spirituality” and “praying” and “faith” have been seen to serve as placebos for some who are trying to be free of the stress that comes with the Ultimate Sickness, but any "placebo effect" is short-lived. Their effects are mainly “psychological” (per Sapolsky) and the unreal cannot cure the unreal. That is, “not-real psychological medicines” cannot cure “unreal psychological threats.” The non-dual understanding can actually address that issue.]
So to continue with the pointers offered in the Sapolsky film “STRESS: PORTRAIT OF A KILLER.”
Narrator: “In real life, for so many of us primates - including Robert's baboons - control is not an option.”
Sapolsky: “You get some big male who loses a fight, and chases a sub-adult, who bites an adult female, who slaps a juvenile, who knocks an infant out of a tree . . . all in fifteen seconds. Insofar as a huge component of stress is lack of control, lack of predictability, you're sitting there and you're just watching a zebra and somebody else is having a bad day and it's your rear end that's going to get slashed. [It's all] so tremendously, psychologically stressful for the folks further down on the hierarchy."
Narrator: “One of Robert's early revelations was identifying the link between stress and hierarchy in baboons. Some baboon troops are over one-hundred strong. Like us, they have evolved large brains to navigate the complexities of large societies. Survival here requires a kind of political savvy - with the most cunning and aggressive males gaining top rank and all of the perks: females for the choosing, all the food they can eat, and an endless retinue of willing groomers. Every male knows where he stands in society: who can torture him; who he can torture; and who, in turn, the ‘torturee’ can torture.”
Next, Sapolsky offers his revealing take on the baboons that he has come to know firsthand, and his take on some baboons adumbrates comments made throughout history regarding some humans as well:
Sapolsky: “Well, this sounds like a terrible thing to confess after thirty years, but I don't actually like baboons all that much. I mean, there's been individual guys over the years who I absolutely love, but most are these scheming, back-stabbing Machiavellian bastards. They're awful to each other, so they're great for my science. I mean, I'm not out here to commune with them. They're perfect for what I study.”
Narrator (referring to Sapolsky’s decades of research): “His early work - measuring stress hormones from extracted blood - led to two remarkable discoveries. A baboon's rank determined the level of stress hormone in his system, so if you're a dominant male, you can expect your stress hormones to be low. And if you're submissive, much higher.
[Imagine the stress levels from being bullied by Donnie Leone for three years, including every morning, including sometimes during lunch breaks, and including many times after school as well. Some claimed it was pretty “low life” the way that I had given him a “sucker punch.” I pointed out that I had not administered a "sucker punch" but that I had merely “punched a sucker” instead. Yet “fighting back” within a hierarchy – whether that involves baboons or humans or any other species – is rare; thus, stress is not rare. It is common. It is, in fact, pervasive. What roles do personality types play? Type Sixes seldom fight back but will on occasion; Type Nines almost never fight back; and Type Fours are the most prone of all to stand up to abusive authority and fight back.]
Next, the Sapolsky study reveals some additional costs of being trapped at the lower end of a hierarchy and staying there:
Narrator: “But there was an even more astonishing find in Sapolsky's sample: low rankers - the have-nots - had increased heart rates and higher blood pressure. This was the first time anyone had linked stress to the deteriorating health of a primate in the wild.”
Sapolsky: “Basically, if you're a stressed, unhealthy baboon in a typical troop, you'll have high blood pressure, elevated levels of stress hormones, an immune system that doesn't work as well, and your reproductive system will be more vulnerable to being knocked out of whack. Your brain chemistry is one that bears some similarity to what you see in clinically-depressed humans. And all that stuff . . . those are not predictors of a hale and hearty old age.”
Narrator: “Could this also be true for that other primate?”
Ah. A key query, yes. More on that tomorrow.
To be continued.
Please enter the silence of contemplation.
You can scroll down through the book section below if interested in receiving a free copy of the eBooks entitled:
"GOOD vs. EVIL?" or "IGNORANCE, STUPIDITY, and INSANITY?"
"GOOD vs. EVIL?" or "IGNORANCE, STUPIDITY, and INSANITY?"
or
"THE VISION"
"THE VISION"
Comments regarding the free eBook entitled “THE VISION”:
“My thanks to you and Andy.” – Andrew “Mac” McMaster
“Thanks so much for the book! And, by the way, it is brilliant and the most effective pointing that you have done. It has served to help clear the remaining blockages.” – Stan Cross
“Greatly appreciate having “THE VISION” added to my Henderson resource library that is situated on the right side of my bed for easy access! Eternally grateful for what was received and what was given.” – Robert Rigby
“ ‘THE VISION’ is such a well-written, condensed version of the Nisarga Yoga approach to understanding and enjoying Reality that I feel it can serve as a must-read ‘meditation guide’ for all earnest seekers.” – Andy Gugar, Jr.
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.
* * * * * * *
ALL OF THE FOLLOWING BOOKS
are available at
“My thanks to you and Andy.” – Andrew “Mac” McMaster
“Thanks so much for the book! And, by the way, it is brilliant and the most effective pointing that you have done. It has served to help clear the remaining blockages.” – Stan Cross
“Greatly appreciate having “THE VISION” added to my Henderson resource library that is situated on the right side of my bed for easy access! Eternally grateful for what was received and what was given.” – Robert Rigby
“ ‘THE VISION’ is such a well-written, condensed version of the Nisarga Yoga approach to understanding and enjoying Reality that I feel it can serve as a must-read ‘meditation guide’ for all earnest seekers.” – Andy Gugar, Jr.
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";
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.
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
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)
(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 www.floydhenderson.com
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:
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
are available at www.floydhenderson.com
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
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
Floyd Henderson's Website
FROM THE I TO THE ABSOLUTE: A Seven-Step Journey to Reality
CONSCIOUSNESS / AWARENESS
FROM THE ABSOLUTE TO THE NOTHINGNESS
THE FINAL UNDERSTANDING
THE ADVANCED SEEKERS' SERIES
Anthology of four books
THE BLISSFUL ABIDANCE SERIES
Anthology of six books
SRI NISARGADATTA MAHARAJ AND HIS EVOLUTION
THE FINAL FIFTEEN TOPICS DISCUSSED BY SRI NISARGADATTA MAHARAJ
A TWELVE-STEP JOURNEY TO SELF-TRANSFORMATION
For more information on this book, or to purchase a copy now, click:
A GUIDE FOR WORKING THE STEPS (IN THE MANNER USED BY THE FOUNDERS)
THE TWELVE STEPS AND ADVAITA / NON-DUALITY: A 21-DAY PLAN FOR A PSYCHIC CHANGE
SELF-TRANSFORMATION MEDITATION GUIDE (VOLUME ONE)
SELF-TRANSFORMATION MEDITATION GUIDE (VOLUME TWO)
WHY NISARGA YOGA IN ADDITION TO THE ADVAITA TEACHINGS?
A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE via the Non-Duality Teachings and the Nisarga Yoga
YOUR ORIGINAL NATURE
GOING CRAZY / GOING SANE
INSTABILITY / INSANITY: WHAT THE ADVAITA TEACHINGS CAN (AND CANNOT) ADDRESS
THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS "PEACE OF MIND" (THERE IS ONLY PEACE IF YOU'RE OUT OF YOUR MIND)
FREEDOM FROM SHIFTING BETWEEN STATES OF HAPPINESS AND UNHAPPINESS
THE ULTIMATE SICKNESS / THE ULTIMATE MEDICINE
PROGRAMMING, CONDITIONING, DOMESTICATION, AND ACCULTURATION (THE SOURCES OF THE ULTIMATE SICKNESS & THE NON-DUALITY TREATMENT)
"WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I DIE?"
THE MYTH OF "DEATH"
THE ESSENCE OF THE TEACHINGS: THE SIMPLICITY OF REALIZATION
FINDING REAL LOVE IN AN UNREAL WORLD
CASTING LIGHT ON THE DARK SIDE OF RELATIONSHIPS
OVERCOMING THE FEAR OF BEING TOTALLY INDEPENDENT
THE NON-DUALITY POINTERS OFFERED BY YESHU'A ("JESUS THE CHRIST")
NOW ACCEPTING REQUESTS FOR FREE COPIES OF THE FOLLOWING EBOOKS:
A free copy of the 278-page eBook entitled
"GOOD vs. EVIL?" or "IGNORANCE, STUPIDITY, and INSANITY?"
and / or
A free copy of the 267-page eBook entitled
"THE VISION"
is available to be sent to you and anyone else you choose.
[Please note: When the Direct Path Teaching Method is offered in conjunction with the Nisarga Yoga, something unique results when compared to what happens via the approach used by religions, spiritual movements, philosophies, ideologies, etc.:
rather than inviting seekers to learn more, the invitation here is to unlearn all; rather than offerings teachings, what is offered are unteachings; rather than offering to provide seekers more of anything, seekers will find that the process will take away everything. And via that process, the bliss of Your Original Nature will manifest and remain until mahasamadhi is taken.
To that end, the content of this book will seem radical to the seekers of more, but for those truly ready to be totally free and totally independent - and for those who are truly ready to abandon efforts to accumulate and to de-accumulate instead - the pointers in this book might be relevant.]
To receive your free copy, or to have us send a free copy to your friends or relatives, send your email address (or their addresses) to the following:
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Simply state in your email that you want the book sent as a gift to you (or as a gift from you to as many people as you like. Copies are now ready to be sent.)
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE THE ADVAITIN
WHEN ONLY THREE HOURS OF MANIFESTATION REMAIN (THE "FINAL" TALKS OF FLOYD HENDERSON)
I AM THAT (vs. "This Is Who I Think I Am")
QUOTATIONS AND POINTERS DEALING WITH NON-DUALITY, ADVAITA, NISARGA YOGA, AND MORE
DANCING LIGHTLY
THE PATH TO FREEDOM VS. THE PATH TO MISERY
THERE IS NOTHING THAT IS PERSONAL (INCLUDING YOU AND INCLUDING GOD)
LIBERATION (ATTAINING FREEDOM FROM PERSONALITY VIA REALIZATION)
WHY YOU MUST BE EMPTY IF YOU WOULD BE FULL
FREEDOM FROM BELIEFS (Believers, Non-Believers, and "No-Belief-ers")
WHEN REALITY IS OVERLAID ON THE RELATIVE
THE RELATIVE RESULTS OF RETURNING TO "THE CHILD IGNORANCE STAGE" OR "THE CHILD NO-KNOWING STATE"
WHAT BLISS IS AND WHAT BLISS IS NOT
THE TWICE-STOLEN NECKLACE MURDERS
THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF WARS
LESSONS IN NON-DUALITY FROM TRAVELS IN SOUTH AFRICA
A SERIES OF ESSAYS DISCUSSING THE FIRST STEP ON THE SEVEN-STEP PATH TO REALIZATION
A SERIES OF ESSAYS DISCUSSING THE SECOND STEP ON THE SEVEN-STEP PATH TO REALIZATION
A SERIES OF ESSAYS DISCUSSING THE THIRD STEP ON THE SEVEN-STEP PATH TO REALIZATION
A SERIES OF ESSAYS DISCUSSING THE FOURTH STEP ON THE SEVEN-STEP PATH TO REALIZATION
A SERIES OF ESSAYS DISCUSSING THE FIFTH STEP ON THE SEVEN-STEP PATH TO REALIZATION
A SERIES OF ESSAYS DISCUSSING THE SIXTH STEP ON THE SEVEN-STEP PATH TO REALIZATION
A SERIES OF ESSAYS DISCUSSING THE SEVENTH STEP ON THE SEVEN-STEP PATH TO REALIZATION
SPIRITUAL SOBRIETY (RECOVERING WHAT RELIGIONS LOST)
IT'S ALL BULLSHIT (AND WHY KNOWING IT SETS YOU FREE)
