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 newer 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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CONSCIOUSNESS vs. AWARENESS
Understand then, that it is this conscious presence that you are, so long as the body is there. Once your body is gone, along with the vital breath, consciousness also will leave. Only that which was prior to the appearance of this body-cum-consciousness, the Absolute, the ever-present, is your true identity. That is what we all really are. That is reality. It is here and now. Where is the question of anyone reaching for it?
-Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
The Foreground and The Background
To further illustrate, consider the view from a window of the apartment I often used during my visits to Tuscany:
In the foreground of the scene, preparation is being made to harvest crops; a new house is being built; some people are driving to work; down the road to the right, people are waiting to catch the local bus to the mercato in nearby Villafranca; someone in a white van approaching from the right is making a delivery.
In the foreground, drivers are conscious of obstacles and intersections and traffic signs and lane markers. It appears that there are do-ers and it seems that they are doing. In the background there is a portion of the landscape that is covered with trees;
then, farther in the distance are mountains and then beyond the mountains there are clouds; finally, the open sky is beyond all of that. Beingness, rather than doingness, is the case in the background.
Now, you’re invited to (a) determine the ways in which the foreground might represent consciousness manifest and (b) determine what the background might reveal about Awareness.
Next, for purposes of illustration, take the foreground in the scene to represent the I-Amness and the background to be the I AM THAT-ness. Take the foreground to represent consciousness and the background to represent awareness.
Note that consciousness involves being conscious of (something) so consciousness is always, ultimately, about duality: “this” is conscious of “that.”
(Thus, the seeker who thinks
he / she is fully realized and is the unicity because he/she knows the “True Self”
is mistaken. There is no self, no Self, who, no Who. That seeker might be realized,
but THAT, which truly is, is beyond self-ness, Self-ness, beingness,
non-beingness, and even “Self”-realization. Reality is beyond “conscious
of-ness” and is therefore a state of zero concepts and zero awareness. In that “state,”
awareness is not even aware.)
But all of the happenings in the scene’s background of unicity (as well as all of the supposed happenings that are occurring via the manifested, dualistic consciousness in the foreground) are only possible because of the energy of the sunlight breaking through the clouds in the background.
Without that background energy
manifesting via plants, nothing in the foreground could happen. (As
Szent-Gyorgyi said: “What drives life is . . . a little electric current, set
up by the sunshine.”)
Consciousness could not happen except for the background of awareness, but awareness IS, whether consciousness is manifested or not and whether consciousness of “this” or “that” happens or not.
At the atomic and sub-atomic levels of matter / energy as “clouds” and “mountains” and “trees” in the background, awareness IS. Yet there is no “one” that is conscious of anything. So it is when the temporarily-manifested conscious-energy unmanifests and is subsequently “re-absorbed” into that field called “The Absolute.”
Note too that in the foreground, many things seem significant: a delivery must be made on time; people must be at work on time; and food must be purchased in the mercato and consumed in order for the consciousness to remain manifested in the physical space.
In the background, however, it is clearer that everything is merely cycling and nothing matters at all: clouds come and go; mountains that had formed will someday crumble; and trees that are rising will one day fall.
So it is when abidance happens as the Absolute: what happens will happen, yet “the insignificant” is never misperceived as “significant.” “The foreground of consciousness” begins to unfold in the same way as “the background of Awareness.”
That leads to peace every day. Any faulty perceptions of the type that result in the insignificant being considered significant only happen via the warped consciousness, via the assumption of personas, and via the emotional intoxication that personas generate.
The Unicity Beyond the Apparent Multiplicity
To continue with the discussion of the scene described, the doingness in the foreground is marked by consciousness and a sense of duality. Persons unaware of the unicity believe that they are conscious of some “vast multiplicity” of things: houses, roads, crops, intersections, buses, mercatos, etc.
Being in the actual background of the scene, which includes trees and clouds and mountains and sky and sunlight, there is no sense of duality. Why? There is no “one” to be conscious of anything, yet there is awareness. In what way is “awareness without conscious of-ness” present in the background?
Observe that there appears to be a variety of “cloud” formations, but see that “the clouds” are not The Real. What is “real,” for the sake of this example, is H20.
A series of two hydrogen atoms are conscious of an oxygen atom, but there is no “one” that is present to be conscious of anything. Consciousness (that is, pure, non-personalized, universal consciousness) is just happening, so even though the talk of things manifested (clouds, tress, etc.)
Awareness is not dualistic in its nature. It is in that fashion, therefore, that the manifested, re-purified consciousness can remain manifested for a time but can function as awareness . . . can abide as the Absolute.
The H20 can manifest in various “forms” or “spaces” which persons try to separate by using such labels as “rain, rivers, lakes, clouds, vapor, water, snow, snowmen, snowballs, snow cones, snow flurries, snowflakes, snow piles, slush, ice, steam, pools, waterfalls, streams, fog, ponds, hail, drizzle, floods, mist, swamps, oceans, seas,” ad infinitum;
however, it’s really all one thing, all H20, merely appearing to be different. (See why persons live in the delusion of duality? See why persons are not “in the world” and why “the world” is in them . . . in their wrongly-perceiving “minds”? See why they take what they think they see to be real and how they try to support “differentiation” through labeling?)
Similarly, consciousness can manifest via the spaces labeled as “plants, animals, humans, birds,” etc., and though it’s really all consciousness manifested, it appears to the non-realized to be multiple and different things.
For any perception of rain, rivers, plants, or animals to happen, conscious of-ness must happen first, and as a result of inaccurate suppositions rooted in distorted perception, the illusion of duality manifests.
As with the “atoms as clouds,” whereby awareness can happen without any “one” being conscious of, so it is as the Absolute. Awareness is, even though there is no “one” to be aware of; thus, awareness involves no duality.
In both the foreground and the background of the scene, everything is merely happening; however, in the foreground where consciousness has been corrupted, consciousness takes itself to be something it is not.
Meanwhile, Maharaj said, “The background of awareness never changes.”
That misunderstanding leads persons to believe that they are making things happen and that they are seeing separate things. Persons are taking themselves to be “do-ers,” are lacking an understanding of the unicity, and are, therefore, strapped with delusional thinking generated by an illusory “mind.”
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.
