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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THE REASON THAT “NON-DUALISTS” SHOULD
UNDERSTAND PRIMATE CULTURES ON THE AFRICAN SAVANNAH
“Again, primates are primates are primates. The basic behavior of one primate will usually adumbrate the basic behavior of all primates. Apes mirror humans; humans mirror apes; moreover, what happens in Vegas might stay in Vegas, but what happens on the savannah will happen everywhere else on the globe where humans have clustered together in cultures and societies.”
--floyd
“Baboons live in big, complex social groups, and the population I went to study lived like kings . . . .
“The baboons work maybe four hours a day to feed themselves; hardly anyone is likely to eat them. Basically, baboons have about a half dozen solid hours of sunlight a day to devote to being rotten to each other. Just like our society . . . .
“We live well enough to have the luxury to get ourselves sick with purely social, psychological stress.”
--Sapolsky
Maharaj’s approach was in direct opposition to the style of the Big Name Teachers nowadays who incorporate a blending of (a) some “non-dual-like” pointers with (2) far more talk involving relative topics which reinforce and cater to the non-realized masses’ relative desires to move farther up hierarchies themselves and to join at the top those who have already ascended on the hierarchies of supposed power and control;
to join with those who would rise on a status-and-enhanced-image hierarchy; to join with those who prefer a hierarchy made up of Spiritual Giants and a hierarchy currently occupied by the so-called “The Top Ten Most Spiritual People on the Planet”;
or who desire to join those on a financial hierarchy of millionaires and billionaires and multi-billionaires of the type “occupied” by so many of the Big Name Teachers.
What an absurd irony, is it not, that so many of the Big Name Teachers (whom Maharaj warned seekers to avoid) are formulating hierarchies; are relishing their supposedly-higher place on hierarchies; and are inviting their audiences and readers to join them at the higher end of all sorts of hierarchies.
So what would be Maharaj’s take on such concepts as those listed yesterday that are offered by the Big Name Teachers who link their names with non-duality? Again, all of Maharaj’s pointers were “level appropriate.”
He might offer a seeker at the second step on the “path” one pointer but offer a totally different pointer to someone at the third step; so, he might mention “power” to one early on, but to one farther along the “path,” he made clear that “power” is a product of ego-assumption and egotism and deception.
Overall, though, the one familiar with the content of all of his talks - but especially with the later ones - would know his take on the following:
Regarding “Power,” “Attaining Power,” “The Power of Now,” “The Power of Intention,” and “The Power of Words”:
[“Power” is a concept, man-made and dreamed up, totally useless in the long haul. Maharaj: “To imagine that some little thing - food, sex, power, fame - will make you happy is to deceive oneself” and “If you expect any benefits from your search - material, mental or spiritual - you have missed the point. Truth gives no advantage. It gives no higher status, no power over others; all you get is truth and freedom from the false.”]
Regarding “10 Secrets for Success,” “Getting What You Want,” “The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire,” “The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: A Practical Guide to the Fulfillment of Your Dreams”:
[“Success? Really? Fulfilling dreams? Really? Maharaj: “Success” only involves “the steady resistance against the unnecessary,” (not seeking and attaining the unnecessary) and “All ambitions are for the sake of the ‘I am’” and, again:
“If you expect any benefits from your search - material, mental or spiritual - you have missed the point” and “Stay without ambition, without the least desire.” As for one’s “dreams” about success and then fulfillment of dreams, even “the very idea of going beyond the dream is illusory,” much less staying in the dream; and “As long as you give reality to dreams, you are their slave.”]
More on “desire”: “Desires are just waves in the mind. You know a wave when you see one. A desire is just a thing among many. I feel no urge to satisfy it, no action needs be taken on it. Freedom from desire means this: the compulsion to satisfy is absent”
and
“All desires must be given up, because by desiring you take the shape of your desires.
When no desires remain, you revert to your natural state” and “Desire is merely the fixation of the mind on an idea” and “Desirelessness is the highest bliss,” and if you “pursue any desire, it will always give you trouble.”
Regarding “Assuring Eternal Life”:
[Maharaj: “You can do nothing. What time has brought about, time will take away”
and “You are unborn” and you cannot be born again because you were not even
born once. Maharaj made clear that energy and matter - not life - are the
eternals.]
As for someone speaking of an “Ageless Body” and “Timeless Mind”:
[“I am neither the body, nor the mind, nor the mental faculties. I am beyond all these” and “You are neither the body nor in the body - there is no such thing as body”
and
“Self-identification with the body may be good for an infant, but true growing up depends on getting the body out of the way. Normally, one should outgrow body-based desires early in life” and
“When you know that you are neither body nor mind, you will not be swayed by them” and “Whatever is conceived by the mind must be false . . . .”
and
“Desire for embodied existence is the root cause of trouble” and “The body will survive as long as it is needed. It is not important that it should live long. A full life is better than a long life.”]
On “Advancing Your Spirit”:
[Maharaj: “Whatever spiritual things you aspire to know are all happening in this objective world, in the illusion. All this is happening in the objective world. All is dishonesty. There is no truth in this fraud”
and
“There is no question of elevating to a higher level. Here it is only a question of understanding”
and
“Only that person will visit this place whose virtue and sin have come to an end”
and
“There is no progress”
and
“Whatever you have tried to understand during your spiritual search will prove false.”]
and
On “The Infinite Self”
[Maharaj: “I take my stand in the original state where I was not aware that I am.”]
Thus, his message on this subject: You take yourself to be a spiritual giant. I am a spiritual pygmy and “avoid Big Name Teachers” and “In this ‘spiritual hierarchy,’ from the grossest to the subtlest, you are the subtlest.”
The invitation is to put any teacher to the test before you decide to follow. Ask objectively: “Is this person advocating hierarchies?” If so, that is the very antithesis - the exact opposite - of the non-dual message. Move on. Move away.
Best regards if you move away from seeking a place on any hierarchies and if you detach from those who dream them up and try to maintain them.
NEXT, TOMORROW: Salposky’s primary laboratory was located in an African Savannah. Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj - in testing various versions of the Ultimate Medicine - ran three laboratories in a Bombay loft: “a religion laboratory, a spirituality laboratory, and a psychology laboratory.”
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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.
