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.)
4. Some prefer paperback books even if they have to wait a day or so to receive it and have to pay more for a printed book and its shipment. Now, 10 paperback books by Henderson are in print and available in two anthologies through Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and over 40,000+ booksellers around the globe including in the Americas, Germany, India, Italy, Poland, Russia, China, Spain, Brazil and South Korea. See the end of this post in red text for details.
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CAUSATION and RELATIVE EVENTS AND BEHAVIORS:
“Evil?” or “Ignorance, Stupidity, and Insanity”?
This was shared earlier:
Yet if persons were never to understand “that which they
are,” consider how very different the relative existence would be if persons
were at least sane enough to understand everything that they are not.
What is more insane than not knowing who (or more accurately “what”) you are,
as is seemingly the case with Mary and as is actually the case with every non-realized
person on the planet?
Persons around the globe are suffering a multiplicity of personality disorders
because they have assumed multiple personas / false identities, and one of the
more commonly occurring disorders as far an non-duality is concerned is
dissociation, a term in psychology describing a condition that can cover a
continuum involving a mild detachment from one's immediate surroundings to a
more severe detachment from all awareness.
A major characteristic involves a detachment from reality –
rather than a loss of reality (such as the case with psychotics). Such is the
case with the masses: they do not have a clue who (or “what”) they are, yet they are convinced that they are the false identities which they are not - and
that is total craziness.
Therefore, it can be inferred that Maharaj - in suggesting that only a few on
the planet will ever be Realized at any given time - is making clear that most
are dissociated and that most are trapped in a sense of WHO-ness without any
clue that there is no “personal who” (or “Personal Who”) at all.
There is only “what,” so there is only an invitation to find
“what is” rather than “who is.” And what is that which is mistaken for “a who”?
A composite unity of an elemental plant food body, circulating air and
temporarily housing conscious-energy. And in that triad, only the air is
constant because body elements are being cycled and so is the
conscious-energy.
The answer to the non-dual question - “Where were you prior to conception?” -
is understood by few. Most persons believe they eat because they are hungry and
do not really have a clue about why all living things must eat. The reason?
Because everything in the relative existence is involved in cycling . . . in
things coming together and things coming apart. (See “The Second Law of
Thermodynamics” for details.)
When my daughter Ashley was young, she asked a question that came to her after
a lesson on digestion in her science class that day. She asked, “How can the
stomach acids dissolve a piece of steak without also dissolving the stomach?”
The reply: “They can't. The stomach's acids liquefy whatever is in the stomach,
including the stomach itself, so the cells that make up your stomach are
replaced every two to four days. Every two to four days, you have a different
stomach.”
(There could be an effort to describe the look on her face, but words would
fail in the attempt.)
When someone says, “I have a stomachache,” they are speaking as if they have
had that one stomach all of their lives, but a thirty-year-old has actually had
about 3,600 stomachs.
Skin cells have a “life span” of about two to four weeks, so when you look at a
person you saw a month ago, you are not seeing the same body at all.
(Persons who are unaware of these facts can look at a chronology of school
pictures from first grade to twelfth grade, can see major shifts in physical
appearance, yet can still believe that the twelfth grader is the same “person”
as the first grader. In fact, there is no such thing as body continuity, even
in the relative, much less after mahasamadhi is taken.)
And there is no personal continuity either as roles (personas) are constantly
being assumed and then replaced by other roles. (E.g. more than half the time
the role of “spouse” will eventually be replaced by the role of an “ex”.)
Other cells in the digestive tract are also being replaced (that is, cycling),
as are reproductive cells.
If one did not eat, then there would be no plant food cells transforming into
human body cells, so one would “die” as a result of the skin and stomach and
other cells not being replaced.
Now, if persons do not know that their body today is not the same body they had
earlier or two days ago or four days ago or a month ago, they surely do not
understand that the specks of conscious-energy within are not the same specks
that were within the body-cum-consciousness earlier.
And because persons do not even understand the most basic of the biological
principles that are at play within the elemental plant food body, then persons
are surely not aware of the mental games that are at play in their programmed
and conditioned and acculturated and domesticated and brainwashed and
indoctrinated minds.
Furthermore, persons' beliefs about the self (or actually the “selves” that
persons take themselves to be) are as erroneous as their beliefs about their
bodies.
And the misunderstanding is prevalent among many seekers as well,
including some who are certain that they have grasped the understanding fully
though they actually have no clue at all regarding what the term “The True Self”
really refers to.
There is no more permanency to whatever people take “The Self” to be than there
is to the human stomach because the closest thing that “The Self” can be
compared to is nothing more than the rare cases of the temporarily-manifested pure witnessing . . .
not even “The Witness.”
Thus, Maharaj said, “After the information given to you by the mother, that you
are a boy or girl, all your further acquisitions are by hearsay.”
And it is those persona-based “further acquisitions” that set the stage for all
insane thoughts; moreover; insane thoughts lead to insane words, and it is from
insane words (including the ones that happen when personas “speak” within) that
insane deeds evolve.
And it is those persona-based “further acquisitions” which
set the stage for all insane thoughts; moreover; insane thoughts lead to insane
words, and it is from insane words (including the ones that happen when
personas “speak”) that insane deeds evolve.
Thus, the point again: whatever one might take to be “the ills of the planet
and its people,” those ills all fall not under the umbrella of “good” vs. “evil”
but under the umbrella of the Ultimate Sickness;
additionally, the Ultimate Sickness involves the duality rooted in (1) assuming
multiple personalities (personas, ego-states, roles, false identities) and then
in (2) all of the personality disorders that accompany those assumptions and
that Sickness, including:
the Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (P.D.); the Depressive P.D.; the
Narcissistic P.D.; the Histrionic P.D.; the Factitious P.D.; the Somatization
P.D.; the Avoidant P.D., the Borderline P.D.;
the Schizoid-Avoidance P.D. and the Schizotypal P.D.; the Passive-Aggressive
P.D., the Paranoid P.D.; the Addictive P.D.; the Bipolar P.D., the Antisocial /
Sociopathic P.D.; the Pathological P.D.; the Sadistic P.D.; the Dissociative
P.D., and many others.
Consider the level of wisdom involved in the ancient non-dual message that (a)
understood the above; that (b) warned persons of the chaos and insanity that
accompanies body-mind-personality identification and personality assumption;
and that (c) provided a means by which persons could be freed of those traits
and their accompanying mental illnesses and from all of the other effects of
the Ultimate Sickness.
And how did the process of sharing that wisdom usually begin? Often with the
presentation of (1) pointers regarding false identifications and (2) the
assignment of a mantra, all of which were to be taken into silent
contemplation. And the most frequently-assigned non-dual mantra involved
seekers being advised to “stay with the I AM.”
Why? Following the words “I am” with any word or words does not generate “evil”;
instead, following the words “I am” with any word or words generates what
Maharaj called “ignorance” and “stupidity” and “insanity.”
Moreover, “ignorance” and “stupidity” and “insanity” generate belief in duality
and its accompanying false sense of “different-from-ment” and “better-than-ment”
and “apart-from-ment” and “separate from” and an “us vs. them” mentality, and,
therefore, “the friend of vs. the enemy of” mentality.
From that grows the beliefs that “friends are virtuous and right and deserve to
live” as well as the counter notion that “enemies are not virtuous and are
wrong and deserve to die”; furthermore, the “friends vs. enemies list,”
recorded in the ever-moving consciousness, is an ever-changing list:
the former spouse who was “the best friend ever” becomes, more than half the
time, the present and greatest enemy ever; the former enemy becomes an economic
friend; the former economic friend becomes the present enemy; the neighbors who
were friends or acquaintances become the enemy that must be shot or bombed;
and often, when it appears that some persons have
inexplicably determined that “others” are the enemy, what has really happened
is that those “others” merely became pawns that insane persons use to complete
the agendas of their assumed personas or to address the internal chaos
generated by the bizarre beliefs stored in their “minds.”
Thus, Maharaj noted that “Only that person will visit this place whose virtue
and sin have come to an end.” The invitation to visit the loft had but one
purpose, ultimately: to reduce the prevalence of “ignorance” and “stupidity”
and “insanity.”
Yet ego-states, being rooted in duality, are forever making judgments about who
is virtuous and who is not.
It is because “others” can become the pawns that insane persons use to complete
the agenda of their assumed personas or the internal chaos generated by the
bizarre beliefs stored in their “minds” that the children in New Town,
Connecticut became the targets of Adam Lanza who was discussed earlier:
he did not know a single one of them, so he did not consider
them “my personal enemies.” He used them as a means to an end, namely, to
advance the agenda of his assumed ego-states and to advance his desire to
assume a new identity, namely “The Greatest Mass Murderer in History.”
That is why the people in Boston, Massachusetts became the targets of the
Tsarnaev brothers: the brothers did not know a single one of the people targeted
by their bombs, so they were not considered to be “our personal enemies.” The
Brothers Tsarnaev used those people as a means to an end, namely, to advance
the agenda of their assumed ego-states.
The advice from Maharaj to those who assume imaginary personas as real
identities:
“There is no such thing as a person. There are only restrictions and
limitations. The sum total of these defines the person. You think you know
yourself when you know what you are. But you never know who you are.
The person merely appears to be, like the space within the pot appears to have the shape and volume and smell of the pot. See that you are not what you believe yourself to be. Fight with all the strength at your disposal against the idea that you are nameable and describable.
You are not. Refuse to think of yourself in terms of this or
that. There is no other way out of misery, which you have created for yourself
through blind acceptance without investigation. Suffering is a call for
enquiry; all pain needs investigation.”
To suggest that ego-state / personality-driven acts and egotism-inspired acts
and ignorance-and-stupidity-and-insanity-based acts are really acts that happen
because certain people are not virtuous and are sinful and evil is to
oversimplify the actual chain of causation.
It is the use of such religious and ideological and spiritual-based judgments and assessments which prevent the masses from ever understanding what is actually at play behind any and all acts of violence and fighting and war.
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.
