TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
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To continue with the reply to the question, "So what else is this deal all about?" some answers have been already been offered in the ebook WHEN ONLY THREE HOURS OF MANIFESTATION REMAIN (The "Final" Talks Of Floyd Henderson)
Today we'll look at answer #7 to the question "What is this non-duality deal all about anyway?": "This deal is about sharing a simple treatment plan for a global Sickness which has become quite complex in its nature."
It Is All Very Simple
No other teacher gave us such insight - via the transcripts of his final talks - than Maharaj provided by allowing the reader "to sit beside him" in the loft and to see how a realized teacher "handles" mahasamadhi. (It turns out that it is the exact, same way that the realized teacher "handles" all in the relative existence.)
Maharaj modeled the way that the relative existence can happen with dignity, even though a body is racked with pain. No other teacher displayed so precisely and intimately and transparently
(a) by way of the content of his final talks and
(b) via his demeanor during the final days of the manifestation,
the calm and peaceful way that the relative existence can happen and the calm and peaceful way that the end of the relative existence can happen. And his sharings showed the way that a guru that knows his final talks are being offered will focus his message on the basic and bare essentials.
In his case, he made clear that there is so much more to this "journey" than "the spiritual part." (Here, it is acknowledged that the religious and / or spiritual step must be completed but that the religious and / or spiritual step is the third of seven steps on the entire "path" and that the third step must be transitioned if the "journey" is to continue to completion and full realization which, per Maharaj, means nothing more than "being free of all learned ignorance").
So what topics did Maharaj deal with in his final talks?
1. The source of all relative problems.
2. The maya.
3. The nature of consciousness prior to manifestation (that is, the nature of Awareness).
4. The falsehood of all things thought to be personal.
5. How the relative can and should continue post-Realization, but with Reality having been overlaid upon it.
6. The uselessness of knowledge (a.k.a., learned ignorance).
7. Stabilizing in reality and Reality and truth and Truth.
8. The sickness (that is, the Ultimate Sickness) and its treatment (which means addressing the actual problem which is the mind, not "the spirit").
9. Transcending body, mind, personality and, eventually, the consciousness itself, paving the way for only the impersonal consciousness to continue for the remainder of its manifestation.
10. Why realization cannot happen unless one transitions beyond all fear and / or anger about having one's so-called "knowledge" devalued and debunked.
11. How the end of the manifestation of the conscious-energy is the beginning of freedom from bondage.
12. The nothingness.
13. The freedom that comes by allowing all knowledge to go into liquidation.
14. Being unconcerned.
15. Abiding with dignity and taking mahasamadhi with dignity.
If all that is to be understood about those fifteen topics were understood, it would be enough. Here, there is no presumption that Maharaj's final talks could be "improved upon" . . . or need to be. Any final talks here would be quite similar.
One topic that would be included in any final talks here was introduced earlier, namely, the invitation to see - as Maharaj taught - how very simple these teachings really are (or should be, if the teacher knows how to present them in a forthright and simple and easy-to-grasp manner.) The invitation is also to see how simple (that is, "natural") the relative existence becomes with the understanding of these teachings (or, actually, these "unteachings").
Maharaj said to one of his visitors in the loft: "Realisation is but the opposite of ignorance. To take the world as real and one’s self as unreal is ignorance . . . the cause of sorrow. To know the self as the only reality and all else as temporal and transient is freedom, peace and joy. It is all very simple."
Yes . . . it really is "all very simple."
Maharaj: "Truth is simple and open to all. Why do you complicate? Truth is loving and lovable. It includes all, accepts all, purifies all. It is untruth that is difficult and a source of trouble. It always wants, expects, demands. Being false, it is empty, always in search of confirmation and reassurance. It is afraid of and avoids enquiry. It identifies itself with any support, however weak and momentary. Whatever it gets, it loses and asks for more. Therefore put no faith in the conscious. Nothing you can see, feel, or think is so. Even 'sin' and 'virtue' [and] 'merit' and 'demerit' are not what they appear. Usually 'the bad' and 'the good' are a matter of convention and custom and are shunned or welcomed, according to how the words are used."
Also, consider the implications of this exchange:
Questioner: "What distinguishes your world from mine?"
Maharaj: "My world has no characteristics by which it can be identified. You can say nothing about it. I am my world. My world is myself. It is complete and perfect. Every impression is erased, every experience - rejected. I need nothing, not even myself, for myself I cannot lose."
Questioner: "Not even God?"
Maharaj: "All these ideas and distinctions exist in your world; in mine there is nothing of the kind. My world is single and very simple."
See, it really is all so very simple: if you transition your belief in all identification, you will be free of the debilitating influence of body and mind and personality, and it is always either body and / or mind and / or personality that "wants, expects, demands"; that is "empty, always in search of confirmation and reassurance"; that is "afraid of and avoids enquiry"; that "identifies itself with any support, however weak and momentary"; and that always "asks for more."
If you are not the body or mind or personality - which are "the cause of sorrow" - then what are you? That, too, is so very simple: you are a composite unity - which is a triad consisting of elements, air, and energy. The body is a plant food, elemental body that is temporarily circulating air and that is temporarily a body-cum-consciousness - that is, a body temporarily housing conscious-energy. At the time that the consciousness unmanifests, the elements will return to the universal pool of elements; the air will merge with the universal pool of air; and the conscious-energy will be released into that universal pool of energy from whence it manifested.
There is no beginning, middle, end, or afterlife; thus, there is no eternal reward or punishment. (Talk about a freeing fact!) There is no time and there is no truth to the concept of timelines. There is nothing that is linear - there is only that which cycles. It is all very simple.
And if the composite unity is understood, the relative existence becomes simple too, devoid of "the causes of suffering," namely:
body identification, the fiction-filled mind, and the agenda-driven personalities that cast the masses into a personality trance which strips them of all ability to choose, which strips them of all ability to cast aside their learned ignorance, and which strips them of all ability to transition beyond their family-and-culture-induced-insanity.
Family-and-culture-induced-insanity? Yes. Emphatically, yes. During the last forty-two years of working with parents, countless numbers have been heard to complain about their teenage children who they claim are doing things that seem "silly or destructive or insane." And teens can exhibit one or more of those. But why? Because it takes approximately 13-15 years of dealing with parents who are driven by their personality trances and by their learned ignorance and by their insanity for their children to also be forced into a trance;
to also be left unawake and unaware and unconscious, just like their parents; to also be trapped in learned ignorance, just like their parents; and to also be strapped with the burden of personality defects and insanity, just like their parents.
The source of that which parents complain about in terms of their teen children would also be very simple to see - if parents could but see themselves; that is, if they could see their own false, unawake, unaware, unconscious, ignorant, insane selves. Once the simple understanding of the composite unity is understood, then there is neither a body nor a mind nor assumed personalities that can complicate the relative existence.
It is all so simple after it is understood that the elements cannot be upset, understood that the air cannot be upset, and understood that energy cannot be upset. No part of that which you temporarily are can be upset. The only thing that can be upset is the imaginary not-you or the imaginary not-you's. Only the not-you's can complicate what would be an otherwise simple relative existence; only the not-you's can "always want, expect, and demand"; only the not-you's can feel "empty, always in search of confirmation and reassurance"; only the not-you's can be "afraid of and avoid enquiry"; only the not-you's can "identify with any support, however weak and momentary"; and only the not-you's can always "ask for more."
It all really is so very simple to understand, once it has been explained in simple, everyday terms, yes?
Next, if the end of the search for labeling comes with the understanding that you are nothing, what is to seek? The only thing to seek is that understanding.
(Do not take that as a Neo-Advaita pointer. There is more involved than "You are what you seek. You're done, so go away"; however, in some respects, it is not much more involved than that, in the end.)
Then, being label-free and identity free, the remainder of the abidance can happen naturally, simply, sanely, and rationally (which is the way that every living thing on this planet abides, except for programmed and conditioned and domesticated and acculturated humans).
That means, the remainder of the manifestation can happen without the burden of having to "do" in order to sustain false identities. That also means, the remainder of the manifestation can happen without the burden of the egotism and conceit that accompany the assumption of "noble" identities that actually foster arrogance (such as, "The Supreme Self," "The Most Superior Self," "The One at One with God," or - in some cases - just "God").
With nothing more to do, the illusion of the "do-er" can end and what then begins is the mere beingness - marked not by anything unnatural and not by anything thought to be supernatural but only by that which is nisargan / natural.
See? Simple, yes?
To be continued.
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