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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MISTAKES OFTEN MADE BY SEEKERS
"To expound and propagate concepts is
simple.
But to drop all concepts is difficult and rare."
---Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Maharaj said: “There are no distinctive marks of . . . realisation. Only ignorance can be recognised, not jnana. Nor does a jnani claim to be something special. All those who proclaim their own greatness and uniqueness are not jnanis.
“They are mistaking some unusual development for realisation. The jnani shows no tendency to proclaim himself to be a jnani. He considers himself to be perfectly normal, true to his real nature. Proclaiming oneself to be an omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent deity is a clear sign of ignorance.”
He also said: “There are so many who take [mistake] the dawn for the noon, a momentary experience for full realisation and destroy even the little they gain by excess of pride.”
He also pointed out that most humans will never seek the non-dual understanding, but he also noted that many mistakes are being made even by those that are seeking.
Maharaj’s advice to seekers regarding that topic was: “Body, feelings, thoughts, ideas, time, space, being and not-being, this or that - nothing concrete or abstract you can point out to is you.”
While the mistakes being made by seekers shall be discussed, let us begin by reviewing the following pointers offered recently regarding the concrete vs. the abstract:
Consider not just a numb brain but brain damage itself.
Hundreds of babies suffer some degree of brain damage as a result of trauma during childbirth.
Some adults along the way suffer concussions and traumatic brain damage.
Concussions and traumatic brain injuries notwithstanding, most humans never suffer brain damage.
Currently in the U.S., two percent of the population are living with disability as a result of a traumatic brain injury.
However, based on Maharaj’s estimate of how many will ever realize fully, over 99% suffer from mind damage, from the damage which comes about after a mind has been subjected to programming, conditioning, domestication, acculturation, indoctrination, and brainwashing.
While “the mind” involves various parts of the brain wherein the four memory types (working memory, sensory memory, short-term memory, long-term memory) are stored, even those areas are not literally damaged.
They are corrupted by “garbage type information” which is stored therein after nonsensical beliefs (“learned ignorance” per Maharaj) are taught and learned.
Consider the brain vs. the mind. The manifestation of consciousness cannot continue without the brain, but the manifestation can continue - and will continue far more pleasantly and contentedly - without the mind.
The mind is the content stored in various parts of the brain. The difference: the brain is concrete but the mind is abstract.
A surgeon can open a skull and see and touch the hippocampus, the neocortex, the amygdala, the basal ganglia and the cerebellum. If any of those have a tumor or blood clots within, the surgeon can remove that. The surgeon can also remove that which causes aneurysms, epilepsy, and Parkinson's disease.
But as for the beliefs (or nonsense or garbage or lies) stored in various parts of the brain, the surgeon can do nothing at all to remove those. That removal requires a non-dual plan which only a few realized guides understand.
Now for the mistakes being made by seekers:
MISTAKING THE DAWN FOR THE NOON
From a site visitor:
[Received years ago] Today you said history shows religion leads to
separation and judging and even killing. That’s not true. For me, my religion
leads to peace and power. I stay in conscious contact with Him with prayer all
day, every day, and He empowers me and gives me guidance and peace so I can be
happy for as long as, BY HIS GRACE, I am allowed to live. I hope you can find
your way to Him so that you can have peace in this life and joy forever.
Signed, John (as in 3:16)--A Child and Agent of God
F.: Hello John. It is a wonderment that persons like you find a site such as this at all; however, it is no wonderment at all that when they do, they are driven by ego to submit a prescription for the “right” way that “others” should think and feel and behave (namely, the exact same way that you think and feel and behave).
Evidently, you failed to relate to the content in the most recent series on narcissism. It is also no wonderment that those programmed the way you have been programmed will assume that no one is happy or at peace if they do not believe what you believe.
At the core of all dogma is the notion that “our way is The Way . . . the only way.
You would have everyone add to their knowledge base those things that you believe, whereas Advaita invites you to discard all concepts and beliefs.
There will never be an invitation from any realized guide for you to think the way they think (because they do not think). There will never be an invitation for you to attain more religious or spiritual knowledge (for they have discarded all learned ignorance).
You, on the other hand, have an “agenda of addition” rather than a plan for subtraction or de-accumulation.
At any rate, you did find the site, so your opinions and beliefs will be
addressed since they provide an opportunity to share certain non-dual pointers
in response; however, your comments will addressed in light of a point offered
by Dennis Waite in one of his books: “Opinions
and beliefs may be more dangerous than ignorance . . . . ”
First, a few remarks in general today before addressing later the specifics in
your e-mail:
1. The religious and / or spiritual stage is the third of the several stages to full realization. There is no suggestion to skip that step, only an invitation to transition beyond a stage that most take to be the final step of the “journey” and that causes them to mistake the dawn for the noon.
2. You have ignored the historical record and claim that a pointer is “not true.” Look, then, at the current events that are resulting in separation and wholesale killing and see the prime identifier that the combatants have adopted and which inspires their conflict.
Nowadays, combatants around the globe are not divided along national lines as much as along religious lines. As with all who are out of touch with Reality / reality, the theory behind your beliefs does not match the actual practices.
The Advaitin Douwe Tiemersma - a member of the Philosophical Faculty at Erasmus University in Holland at the time - explained it this way in the 1980’s in his Foreword to the book I AM THAT.
There are various religions [that] suffer from certain inherent limitations. They couch into fine-sounding words their traditional beliefs and ideologies, theological or philosophical.
Believers, however, discover the limited range of meaning and applicability of these words, sooner or later. They get disillusioned and tend to abandon the systems, in the same way as scientific theories are abandoned, when they are called in question by too much contradictory empirical data.
3. Your own words support the link between religion and killing when you explain that you are alive by your god’s grace, the implication being that “he” is going to kill you someday, whenever “he” chooses. And most certainly “his” propensity for killing is well-documented in Jewish and Christian writings.
4. Now, to your hearing guidance from a god: the fact that an uncle was Chief Administrator of a state-run hospital for the clinically-insane afforded an opportunity to observe first-hand the effects of certain mental illnesses.
Many of those suffering psychosis had lost the ability to differentiate the real from the symbolic, as you have. The schizophrenics often had hallucinations and self-reported imaginings, just as you report when discussing the guidance you claim to hear. You are less in "conscious contact" and more in "unconscious contact.
So, one result of the religious programming that you have been subjected to - and which you are now trying to subject others to - is faith-based psychosis and faith-based schizophrenia.
Those mental illnesses will get you some Crusades; will get you some Inquisitions; will lead to decimating entire populations in order to establish religious nations;
will lead to the gassing and incineration of the members of one religion by members of another; will get you 1,400 years of sectarian violence; and will inspire many among the faithful to strap on and detonate vests made of bombs.
Again, variances in noble theories and actual practice are a “call to question” it all as a result of “too much contradictory empirical data.
Yet your programmers accompany their promises of “peace and power” and their
promise that “you” shall not perish with the perfect hook: if you question, you
lose all that has been promised.
5. As for the two new ego-states that you have adopted (“Child of God” and “Agent of God”), remember in the verse you reference (3:16) that the best plan “he” could come up with involved killing “his son.”
6. If my adult age daughter called me "all day, every day" for guidance, it would be clear that she is suffering a dependency disorder and has not realized that she has all of the provisions needed for completing her relative existence "journey" from a state of total freedom.
Nisarga Yoga is about living naturally, not unnaturally or supernaturally. The deer calls on no one and does just fine
Now, there is no assumption that any of that can change your “mind” (your warped consciousness) but there might be those who have reached the point mentioned by Douwe Tiemersma and who understand what it is to “suffer from certain inherent limitations” of their dogma;
who have discovered “the limited range of meaning and applicability” of those teachings; who have become “disillusioned” and are ready “to abandon the systems”; and who are ready to “question” those teachings as a result of “too much contradictory empirical data.
While fixated at the third step to realization, the dawn is often mistaken for the noon. Persons think that they have arrived and haven’t a clue that they have not traveled even one-half of the “path” to full enlightenment and complete liberation.
It was while trapped in two ego-states (a religious persona and a spiritual persona) that disillusionment finally allowed “floyd” to begin to question. The willingness to question led to a search for something beyond the distortions of programming and conditioning and enculturation, and it was then that the non-dual understanding was found.
It was such understanding that led to the re-purification of the consciousness which, in turn, led to total freedom.
This series will be offered for those who might be in that state of disillusionment, who might find the wherewithal to question, and who might find the notion of “total freedom” to be a saner option - relatively speaking - than the appeal of “total dependence.”
The series might also be relevant for those that have not seen the mistakes that have made during their non-dual “journey.” And it might be relevant for those who cannot differentiate between the true and false and between the concrete and the abstract.
To be continued.
Please enter the silence of contemplation.
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"From the I to the Absolute (A Seven-Step Journey to Reality");
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“Liberation (Attaining Freedom from Personality via Realization)”
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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.
