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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FREEDOM FROM BELIEFS
Maharaj’s “Take” on the Subject of “Beliefs”
The pointer and considerations offered here are an invitation to leave behind personality and ignorance and insanity and concepts and beliefs and ideas and come home . . . come back to the original sanity, to your original nature, to the original manner of abiding naturally rather than unnaturally or supernaturally.
The
following pointers from Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj are offered for consideration
by readers:
“All happens as it needs, yet nothing happens. I do what seems to be necessary,
but at the same time I know that nothing is necessary, that life itself is only
a make-belief.”
“See that you are not what you believe yourself to be.”
“Stop imagining, stop believing.”
“You are taking so many things for granted. Begin to question. The most obvious
things are the most doubtful. Ask yourself such questions as ‘Must I believe
all I am told about myself?’”
“ . . . He is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who
believes what is wrong.”
“We believe in so many things on hearsay. We believe in distant lands and
people, in heavens and hells, in gods and goddesses, because we were told.
Similarly, we were told about ourselves, our parents, name, position, duties and
so on.
The rub? We never cared to verify. The way to truth lies through the destruction of the false. To destroy the false, you must question your most inveterate beliefs. Of these, the idea that you are the body is the worst.
With
the body comes the world, with the world - God, who is supposed to have created
the world and thus it starts - fears, religions, prayers, sacrifices, all sorts
of systems - all to protect and support the child-man, frightened out of his
wits by monsters of his own making. Realise that what you are cannot be born
nor die and, with the fear gone, all suffering ends.”
“I am offering you exactly what you need -- awakening. You are not hungry and
you need no bread. You need cessation, relinquishing, disentanglement. What you
believe you need is not what you need. Your real need I know, not you. You need
to return to the state in which I am - your natural state.”
“Go forth, unburdened with ideas and beliefs.”
“ . . . Question wisely. Instead of searching for the proof of truth, which you
do not know, go through the proofs you have of what you believe to know. You
will find you know nothing for sure - you trust on hearsay. To know the truth,
you must pass through your own experience.”
“You believe you know the world and yourself - but it is only your ignorance
that makes you say: ‘I know’. Begin with the admission that you do not know and
start from there.”
“What is the drug which you call ‘karma’ or ‘destiny’? It made you believe
yourself to be what you are not. What is it, and can you be free of it?
Before
you go further you must accept, at least as a working theory, that you are not
what you appear to be, that you are under the influence of a drug. Then only
will you have the urge and the patience to examine the symptoms and search for
their common cause.”
“As long as we believe that we need things to make us happy, we shall also
believe that in their absence we must be miserable. Mind always shapes itself
according to its beliefs.”
“After one or two years [a child] comes to know itself, the mother, etc. When
the child knows itself, its knowingness has started. Prior to that it is
ignorance; although it is no-knowingness, it is ignorance. \
Then the knowledge ‘I Am’ is attained: it does not know who it is but it knows it is something. Later on the child starts collecting concepts and ideas which other people feed it and develops certain concepts or images about itself and others. The mind has developed.
Next comes deep sleep and the waking state, the daily cycle. In the waking state, in whatever state of mind you are, you know the world, together with your concepts, and then you fall into sleep. Now, technically, you can call that deep sleep no-knowingness. But this is not that no-knowingness beyond which the Absolute lies.
Let us proceed again from the child: ignorance, knowingness, accumulation of concepts, meeting the Guru. The Guru tells you, ‘Get rid of concepts, just be yourself.’ So, when you are, only you are. This is the first step: to abide in the consciousness that you are, without words.
When
the child started knowing itself, there was also knowledge, but that is a
general knowledge and is common to all. The seeker, having understood what the
Guru said, gets rid of the concepts, and now, as the first step, the seeker
dwells in the state ‘I Am’, just being.”
“Once you know with absolute certainty that nothing can trouble you but your
own imagination, you come to disregard your desires and fears, concepts and ideas.
[You] live by truth alone.”
“You give reality to concepts, while concepts are distortions of reality.
Abandon all conceptualisation and stay silent and attentive.”
“Go beyond your concepts and ideas; in the silence [and in the absence] of
desire and thought, the truth is found.”
Reactions to Maharaj’s Pointers
Consider
the two reactions shared above to Maharaj’s plain-spoken and straightforward
revelation about the primary problem of humanity that also explains why the
Ultimate Medicine is now universally-required for the universally-manifesting,
belief-based, Ultimate Sickness:
Maharaj: The problem is “stupidity, verging on insanity.”
What have been the two types of reactions to that pointer? Some responses heard
here have included: “There’s no cause to be mean about it” and “I prefer a
teacher who expresses love, not hate” and “There’s no need to be so direct and
hurtful.”
The reaction here the first time those words were heard was one of gratitude. Years of exposure to a plethora of platitudes had led to one dead end after another, and years of sugar-coating and whitewashing and denial of the real problem - the actual and Ultimate Sickness - had also led to one dead end after another.
The
requirement for a new and totally different path was clearly indicated after
the first glimmers of light began to expose the falsity of long-held beliefs.
Hopelessness and powerlessness and insanity can happen for decades without one
being aware of those conditions; severe depression can happen for decades
without the level of that condition ever registering;
and
the most ignorant (dare one say, “stupid”?) thoughts and words and deeds can
occur all day long without any awareness of how ignorant - and even crazy -
those thoughts and words and deeds truly are.
Oh sure, judgmental persons all day long can note how hopeless and ignorant and
insane “others” are, but the fact is this: if you spot it, you’ve got it; if
you can see it, you can be it. To project one’s own mental or emotional defects
onto “others” will block those who are doing the projecting from ever seeing
their own sickness and from ever addressing that.
Unless one truly experiences his or her own hopelessness and powerlessness and insanity and depression and ignorance-based thoughts and words and deeds when all of that has marked and marred much of one’s relative existence, then the Ultimate Medicine will not be sought and the Ultimate Mental and Emotional Sickness will never be treated.
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.
