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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HOW RELIGIOUS AND SPIRITUAL AND NON-DUAL MESSAGES HAVE BEEN WARPED BEYOND RECOGNITION
“Be empty of all mental content, of all imagination and effort, and the very absence of obstacles will cause reality to rush in.”
--Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
The Myths of Free Will and the Ability to Choose
Several times in this series, a pointer which has been discussed on this site for nearly two decades has been referenced again:
Among the masses on planet earth, beliefs and delusion travel side by side inside the minds of those who have been exposed to warped and ignorant and insane programming, conditioning, acculturation, domestication, brainwashing and indoctrination.
Consider:
An apocalypse as a noun has come to be defined as “an event involving destructive or damage occurring on a catastrophic scale.” In its older Greek roots, an apocalypse is a verb meaning to uncover, to reveal, to lay bare, to disclose or, literally, “to pull the lid off something.”
Religious writings discuss the noun version of the apocalypse and refer to “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” representing “Death,” “Famine,” “War” and “Conquest.”
Here, there are The Six Horsemen of the Apocalypse - catalogued above - which have spread the Ultimate Sickness around the globe, namely, warped and ignorant and insane “Programming,” “Conditioning,” “Acculturation,” “Domestication” “Brainwashing” and “Indoctrination.”
Those drive billions of humans to stagger through the relative existence in their sleep, to talk in their sleep, to drive in their sleep, to vote in their sleep, to “fall in love” in their sleep, etc., etc., etc.
To illustrate what it is like among the masses who are walking about in their sleep, a still from the movie “The Night of the Living Dead” has been used on this site:
The still shows a group of zombies, defined especially in Haitian and West African cultures as “a will-less and speechless human held to have died and been supernaturally reanimated.” They feed off living humans, just as sociopaths and psychopaths and narcissists and dependents and co-dependents and users do.
Zombies offer a spot-on example of the anti-woke, sleepwalking types because zombies and the non-realized who are not awake, not aware, and not conscious share the traits of being “will-less.”
Again, that has long been a part of the message here: if one is moving blindly through the AM-ness, the relative existence, then they are zombie-like, exactly like all non-realized persons, so they have no free will and no ability to choose consciously.
(To clarify, Maharaj said that“Realization is nothing more than the opposite of ignorance.” Almost all humans are doing what they do - unconsciously and subconsciously - because of their thoughts / beliefs. Thoughts / beliefs determine what persons say; what persons say then determines what they will do.”)
That being the case, who is consciously choosing to do anything? Pavlov’s dogs were driven crazy. Dogs normally salivate when they smell edibles. When they begin salivating when they hear a bell, they are insane. That is not normal. They were warped by warped programming and conditioning.
It is totally delusional for persons to speak of “their beliefs.” There is no such thing. There are but the beliefs of others - ancestors, parents, friends, other family members, politicians, religious leaders, etc. - which were taught and accepted as truth and them adopted and compiled in minds and then regurgitated in their sleep as humans talk to others.
It became so easy for me to accept Maharaj’s recommendations to “go to zero concepts” and to reject all of the content of the mind where the beliefs taught by others were stored and controlling thoughts and words and actions. Where is there any free will in that most common scenario?
I came to understand that when I had talked about “my beliefs,” there was actually no such thing. There were only “their beliefs” which I has been taught and unquestioningly and blindly and ignorantly accepted as being true and accepted as “my beliefs.”
Next, Maharaj said a great deal early on about “Self-realization.” Eventually, he moved on from his dogma period and moved on from his spirituality period and moved into his final period (the mind is the problem period). After that, he not only continued to disavow the existence of false selves but he also disavowed the existence of any post-manifestation SELF as well.
He said: “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.”
He stripped away the notion that “realization / Realization” is some kind of lofty, superior, towering, grand, exalted, elevated. noble, or distinguished “something” as well.
Understanding what realization truly is - seeing all learned ignorance along with false beliefs and rejecting all of that - and then reaching a realized state allowed me to disembark from the roller coaster existence I was experiencing and to stabilize.
When disturbed, I came to understand that I only needed to ask, “WHO is disturbed?” When the answer was always one false identity or another, it came to be seen that it was not “I” that was disturbed but it was instead some false personal identity which - when feeling threatened - had triggered a disturbance-inducing reaction based in some imaginary being’s fear or unmet desire.
Thus Maharaj’s conclusion that “Realization is but the opposite of ignorance.”
He explained that the decisive factors in realization are about finding truth and reaching a state of selflessness.
Therefore, he advised seekers to forget about both self-realization and Self-realization and to forget about seeking some noumenal identity now and some Noumenal Identity later.
He began advising: “Seek not to find ‘who you are.’ It is enough to understand all that you are not.”
In that regard, he said, “After the information given to you by the mother, that you are a boy or girl, all your further acquisitions are by hearsay.”
Regarding the acceptance of personas / false identities as being real and the consequences of believing those roles are real, he said, “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 called “their beliefs” and “their continuing power to influence my thoughts and words and actions long after they were no longer in existence.
Then only will you have the urge and the patience to examine the symptoms and search for their common cause.
All that a guru can tell you is: “My dear sir [or woman], you are quite mistaken about yourself. You are not the person you think yourself to be. Trust nobody, not even yourself. Search, find out, remove and reject every assumption till you reach the living waters and the rock of truth. Until you are free of the drug, all your religions and sciences, prayers and yogas are of no use to you, for, based on a mistake, they strengthen it.”
To understand that instruction and to do as instructed is the way to realization.
He said “The discovery of truth is in the discernment of the false,” so realization is simply about seeing all of the false beliefs which have been taught and accepted as truth.
Thus he said: “Something prevents you from seeing that there is nothing you need. Find it out and see its falseness. It is like having swallowed some poison and suffering from unquenchable craving for water. Instead of drinking beyond all measure, why not eliminate the poison and be free of this burning thirst?
“The sense ‘I am a person in time and space’ is the poison. In a way, time itself is the poison. In time all things come to an end and new are born, to be devoured in their turn. Do not identify yourself with time, do not ask anxiously ‘what next, what next?’ Step out of time and see it devour the world. Say: ‘Well, it is in the nature of time to put an end to everything. Let it be. It does not concern me. I am not combustible, nor do I need to collect fuel’.”
Now, consider this exchange:
Questioner: “What is the purpose of meditation?”
Maharaj: “Seeing the false as the false is meditation.”
That is the reason every post here ends with the invitation to “enter into the silence of contemplation.” Meditation is not about entering some state of total forgetfulness or nothingness or Om-ness.
It is about being so fully awake and aware and conscious that you can consider pointers offered to you and then use them to reach a new level of understanding.
To that end, Maharaj said: “Realization is about being free of the dream and being fully awake, aware, and conscious”
and
He said, “Realization is of the fact that you are not a person.”
That allows one to abandon the belief in all of the false personal identifications which have been assigned and / or assumed. He made clear that “realization is simply about discarding all belief in the learned ignorance which you have been taught.” See? Simple.
Finally, those who find an invitation to leave their parents’ beliefs behind and become independent of them and their influence and then be able to truly develop free will and the ability to make conscious choices, those humans are driven most often by . . . egotism:
“How dare you disparage my parents’ values and beliefs and what they taught me. I’ve turned out pretty damn well and it’s because of them!”
The subconscious belief behind that defensiveness is whispering inside the speaker’s mind, inspiring the belief that “If I am a product of those loins and those loins are not seen to have been perfect, then that means maybe I’m not perfect, you damn scumbag.”
While my daughter was hearing demands about being perfect from one parent, I was spending time pointing out to her all the ways I was not perfect. Years ago, when she saw the price she had paid because of that “be perfect” message, she asked for me to share whatever I had written explaining why the word “perfection” should never be used.
Today, she is free to a considerable degree of belief in that BS concept, and I see the new levels of freedom which have come with that understanding. More significantly, there are two granddaughters now, and when I see that they are not being burdened with that BS concept, I see a higher level of freedom and contentment.
Here, therefore, the invitation has long been this:
“You do not need to learn more . . . more dogma, more spiritual beliefs, or more non-dual pointers. You actually just need to be un-taught all that you’ve been taught.”
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
A talk and Q&A session on Walter Driscoll's non-dual site provided an opportunity to see some totally artificial ego-states fighting for their (imagined) lives.
To watch that talk and Q&A, click:
Walter Driscoll and Floyd Henderson
To watch the interview when Walter and Floyd discussed the fact that the Ultimate Sickness is a mental / mind sickness
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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.
