ANNOUNCEMENTS
[Walter Driscoll asked to interview me in order to preserve on video some of the latest modifications and evolutions in the versions of the message offered here since 1989. He would label the discussion, "Unlearning with Floyd Henderson."
Please note: For those who have a problem hearing what is being shared, the video offers a fairly accurate set of closed captions which some listeners might want to activate.
The interview is available for viewing by clicking on video "NUMBER THIRTEEN" in the column to the right.]
1. [See the offer in gold text following this post for details on how you can watch a retreat on video which includes a detailed discussion of all seven of the steps on the path as used by Maharaj]
2. Here, with those who are still driven to talk about "god," the "Son of god," the "Holy Spirit," "Buddha," "Krishna," etc., etc., etc., the invitation to them is to view those as verbs, not nouns. See the green text after today's post for the full meaning and implications of that.
3. A new video ("Number Ten: Awakening Together Satsang, March 2018") has now been added in the far right column of this page, offering the opportunity to view a recent 2018 satsang session with Floyd being interviewed by Regina and Jacqueline of "The Awakening Together Group." (See the details in the blue text after this post.)
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CAUSATION and RELATIVE EVENTS AND BEHAVIORS:
“Evil?” or “Ignorance, Stupidity, and Insanity”?
Note the “clues” regarding causation which were included in part of the article referenced yesterday:
“HOUSTON (KTRK) -- The Lone Star College Cy-Fair campus is back open while
investigators are working to figure out why a student slashed 14 people there
on Tuesday [9 April 2013]. Investigators are piecing together a motive behind
the attack at the school on Barker Cypress, and there are new clues that the
suspect may be mentally unstable.”
You figure?
So it is asked: “Mentally unstable?” Not “evil”? Not “a pagan”? Not “born bad”?
Not “immoral”? Not “sinful”? Maybe just “mentally unstable”? Yet that
possibility is not even a remote consideration for most persons when they believe they are seeing something "evil" as defined by the belief systems of others, systems which they were taught and which they now take to be their own.
So why do the majority of the persons in the U.S. believe
that the cause of “evil” things is “evil people” and the cause of “evil people”
is “Satan” or “a lack of religion” or “too little spirituality”?
Because of programming and conditioning and ignorance and acculturation and indoctrination and brainwashing and by persona assignments or by assumption,
so those non-realized persons will never be ready for the truth, much less “The
Truth.” Thus Maharaj taught: “Only that person will visit this place whose
virtue and sin have come to an end.”
See, seeking this understanding cannot even begin unless one has transitioned
the over-simplified, religious and spiritual beliefs that involve “how to be
virtuous” and that involve deciding who is “evil” and who is not and that
involve defining “sin”;
and determining how best to impose and maintain “Biblical
standards” or “Christian ideals” or “Qur'anic values” or “Judaeo principles” or
“moral standards” or “global ethics rooted in spirituality.”
But consider: what if Maharaj's pointer is spot on, and what if there is a
chain of causation that includes inestimable, almost-always-hidden factors,
none of which are “evil”?
In that case, there are some actual, concrete,
tangible, specific steps that can be taken - relatively speaking - that can
sometimes address the ignorance-and-insanity-based issues that the masses
mistake as issues rooted in “evil.”
So what do those issues involve? Some of the elements in the chain of causation
that generate what persons label “evil doings” or “wicked people” include
ignorance, stupidity, and insanity as well as personality assumption,
personality defects, and personality-defects-gone-wild, leading to psychic
disintegration and full-blown neuroses and psychoses.
The book entitled FROM THE I TO THE ABSOLUTE contains the transcripts from
the last organized satsang sessions that were held here.
In that book, there is a chapter entitled “REALIZATION: No Single Cause,” and
the chapter includes the exchange that unfolded with four seekers when an
everyday occurrence was used to illustrate the way that what most persons take
to be “a single cause” is not that at all:
Floyd: “Upon realization, another duality disappears: the credit-blame duality.
The realized know that assigning credit to one source or assigning blame to one
source is to ignore the reality of an infinite chain of happenings.
Here’s a simple example that might be relevant. Driving home
after the day’s work was completed, the rear tire of a car ahead of me threw a
pebble against my windshield and cracked it. You’ve all probably had a similar
experience? [Nods in agreement] What caused that?”
Questioner 1: “The rear tire of the car ahead of you.”
Q.2: “Actually, the driver of the car was responsible. I think people who do
that should have to pay for the cost of the repair.”
F.: “I’m glad you said that since your comment will let us see how wrong that
type thinking is and let me offer the pointer about ‘cause’.” [Participant
displays a mock frown. Laughter from group] As I passed that car and drove
farther along the road, I caught up with a truck that was hauling gravel . . . and
spilling it all along the roadway. The pebbles in the road, one of which was
thrown into my windshield earlier, most likely came from that truck. Now who’s
to blame for my cracked windshield?”
Q.2: “The driver of the dump truck.”
Q.3: “The manager of the hauling company who allowed the truck to haul gravel
without a cover over the top to prevent slippage.”
F.: “The manager? Or could it have been the owner of the hauling company who
was too cheap to provide covers or too negligent to be certain that covers were
being used?”
Q.4: “I’ll play along: it was the fault of the highway patrol that is not
efficient enough to pull over those creating hazards on the road.” [Laughter
from group]
F.: “Or the legislators who misappropriated funds to their pet projects and
underfunded the highway patrol? [More laughs] Okay, enough. You get the
picture. A series of events evolved in a way that, at a particular moment, a
particular set of circumstances also evolved that resulted in a broken
windshield on my vehicle.
“And if we wanted to play this game a little longer, you’ve already shown that we could trace the cause back millions of years to the circumstances that resulted in a boulder being broken down into pebbles, one of which millions of years later struck my windshield.
“But billions of years before that, an atom appeared in a vacuum, maybe even spit forth from an adjacent universe. And that atom split and then split again and then formed a mutated atom and those two collided and . . . bang . . . that collision caused a chain reaction that resulted in our boulder being formed billions of years later.
“And then millions of years after that, the boulder atrophied into huge stones and then rocks and then pebbles, and because of that happening and because of a truck and an owner and a manager and a driver and a construction project and an inefficient highway patrol and a driver and a car ahead of me, my windshield broke. Ha.
“Look at the billions of events that had to occur over a period of billions of years in order for my windshield to be damaged. Yet arrogantly, persons want to claim that they know exactly what's causing any particular happening.
“Persons want to tell you the one cause that they think is
behind whatever is happening. They want to credit one thing or one entity or
one power. Or they want to blame one thing or one entity or one power.”
Q.: We’re back to the pointer you offered before.”
F.: “Specifically?”
Q.: “About over-simplifying the ‘cause’ of anything. You said something like
‘the cause of everything is everything that’s happened before’.”
Q.2: “And you said that if we don’t realize that, we'll buy into the ancient
myths about a single causer and a single creator of matter and energy. And you
said that if one can imagine infinity beyond this manifestation, then one
should be able to know the infinity before this manifestation.”
F.: “Well, that’s not quite the way I put it, but your version is accurate
enough. The point is just as you said: the cause of all is all that has ever
happened. Forget seeking a prime cause.”
The invitation here is always to see things as they are, including things
relative (that is, things involving the AM-ness) and including things Absolute
(that is, things involving the THAT-ness).
It has been noted that those who claim that “nothing is real” are in error and
that - among the non-realized masses - the simple fact is this instead: things
are never as they appear. When the understanding of the functioning of the
totality manifests, then not only are things noumenal understood but things
phenomenal are also understood.
Therefore, the invitation regarding things phenomenal - including insane acts
that persons mistakenly label as “evil acts” and including insane persons who
are mistakenly labeled as “evil people” - is this:
if there is a relative goal to address effects and events and actions, that
cannot happen accurately and effectively unless the entire chain of causation
that led to any given effect or event or action is understood, and to assign
blame or cause to one single thing will always prevent the actual chain of
causes from being understood.
And what is the most common assignment of cause that is completely erroneous?
The assignment of a supernatural cause to a totally and solely natural event .
. .
1. . . . as was the case when the Dalai Lama blamed the 2005 flooding of New
Orleans, Louisiana on “the negative karma of the people in New Orleans” while
the Christian minister John Hagee said God caused the damage in order to stop a
gay pride parade that was scheduled in that city;
2. . . . as was the case when, after
Hurricane Rita had caused widespread damage along the Gulf Coast in the U.S., a
woman was heard to say, “God is trying to tell us something”;
3. . . . as was the case when Christian preacher Jerry Falwell said that the
cause of the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York City on 9/11 was God
who was angry with “the American Civil Liberties Union, feminists, gays and
lesbians”;
4. . . . as was the case when the Christian minister Pat Robertson said that
the 2010 earthquake that struck Haiti was because the people there had made “a
pact with the devil”;
5. . . . as was the case when Jerry
Newcombe (a spokesman for the evangelical group Truth in Action) said that the
theater shootings in Aurora, Colorado happened because God wanted to send a
message to mourners that some of their loved ones were going to hell while a
U.S. Republican Representative from Texas said he believed that the shootings
happened because Christianity is under attack.
Never is what Maharaj called “stupidity verging on insanity” more on display
then when persons assign blame for natural events on a supernatural cause or
when persons suggest that the cause behind “evil” events is the presence of “Satan-driven
evil in the world” or “paganism” or “bad people as opposed to good people” or “immorality”
or “a lack of virtue” or “sin” or “non-believers.”
Again, Maharaj noted: “Only that person will visit this place whose virtue and
sin have come to an end.”
To understand accurately the chains of causation and then to find a relative means
for addressing relative issues, one must first abandon all magical /
supernatural / religious / spiritual thinking, including thoughts about “Satan”;
and thoughts about “an angry God that uses destructive events to send messages”;
and thoughts about who is “a pagan” and who is not; and thoughts about the
duality of “good vs. evil”; and thoughts about “immorality”; and thoughts about
“sin”;
and one of the most ignorant of all thoughts, namely, that if one becomes
religious or spiritual, that will cure severe mental and emotional and
personality disorders as well as neuroses and psychoses.
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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THE EXPLANATION
Yeshu'a (Jesus) and Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis were spot on:
"No one shall ever see 'the kingdom of heaven.' It is within"
and
"Heaven and earth shall fade away."
and
"Heaven and hell are not geographic places
"There is no hell."
teachings which become a part of the Papal Magisterium.
