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
You have no choice, only the illusion of it.
--Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
THE DESIRE TO CONTROL AND THE DESIRE TO FOOL CONNECTION
To review: Maharaj:
“All illness begins in the mind”
and
“Your confusion is . . . in your mind”
and
“It is the mind that creates illusion.”
Parents want to control their children. Politicians want to control the masses. Megalomaniacs want to control all people and all places and all things on the planet.
All control begins and ends with mind control, and all mind control involves duality. Psychopaths are willing to kill to intimidate other persons to think and behave as the psychopaths prefer; the shrewd ones who would control persons to follow willingly use programming, conditioning, etc. in order to control the minds of the masses and bend them to the would-be controller’s will.
Parents typically do not want to kill their children - they just want them to think and talk and behave in a certain way. Most politicians do not want to kill the masses;
they want them alive but also thinking and talking and behaving in the ways which politicians prefer. Authoritarian leaders kill in order to generate fear among the masses in order for them to submit to control.
To that end, the most effective mind-control involves using dualistic concepts (right vs. wrong, good vs. bad, and reward vs. punishment) in order to control.
Of course some form of punishment short of death must be used by parents with their children and by politicians with the masses in order to bend those whom they would control to their will;
thus, some of the more effective tools which would-be controllers have available are: surveillance and fear and “the dangling of carrots” as well as constant reminders regarding the possibility of being punished.
Those who would be controllers must lead the ones they want to control to believe that they are being watched and judged at every turn. They must believe that their watchers know when they are being good and when they are being bad. The same with religions; the same with Santa.)
Above all, persons who would be controlled must be challenged and brow-beaten if skepticism or questioning begins to manifest. Those must be squelched immediately, either by threat or by overt punishment. As important, those who would control must fool those whom they want to control.
Consider the roots of such desire to control and such willingness to be fooled and controlled. All modern religions have evolved from ancient pagan religions, and modern religions still cling to many of the ancient beliefs and practices of their pagan forerunners.
Their beliefs included such concepts as unseen but all-knowing, all-powerful authorities who could be made mad or glad by persons on earth (thus being codependent, which is a strange disorder to have if one is “a perfect God”);
unseen but all-knowing, all-powerful authorities watching from some remote location and keeping records of good actions vs. bad actions; and unseen but all-knowing, all-powerful authorities that plan and execute punishments for all those guilty of bad actions.
In the West, children are usually introduced early on to those concepts by way of lies told to them about Santa Claus (or Saint Nicholas, St. Nick, Kris Kringle, Pelznickel, etc.) Also, in the Far East, many children are taught that there is Agni, a god who supposedly knows all and who gives gifts to assure that the gods are happy and that followers will be blessed.
In Hinduism, the concept of sacrificing to gods to receive blessings is central. In Christianity, “Jesus Christ” was deemed to be a gift, sacrificed by his father to all humanity in order to remove their sins.
All of that evolved from several pagan religions in which virgins were sacrificed to an angry god – usually a Rain God early on – in order to please the god and bring crop-saving rain.
The priest would have sex with the virgin (being god’s representative on earth and knowing that nothing soothes an angry male like sex); afterwards, he would bring the naked virgin out of the holy chamber where he had engaged in sex with her and would then - before the gathered worshippers - cut from her chest her beating heart.
Lastly, he would eat the body and drink the blood and then pass the human organ among the crowd to do the same, thus “entering into communion with god.”
Regularly, all around the globe, over two billions Christians reenacted that brutal practice using bread and wine, symbolic of “the blood of Christ and the body of Christ” (or believed to be actual blood and actual body by believers in the concept of “transubstantiation”);
yet the roots of the service which they enter into date back to the days when the blood and body of virgins were consumed during a worship service.
See? All of those worshippers in ancient days were being fooled, and now modern-day worshippers are being fooled. They believe in a God of punishment and they believe in a God of rewards if they are willing to believe and to sacrifice and to behave in the manner which they have been taught is “good.”
Fooled. All fooled. All fooled big time.
Annually, children in the West are fooled into believing in Santa Claus in order that the same message can be conveyed to children: “There is a power in another realm and He knows if you’ve been good or bad, so be good for goodness sake”
and
“If you are good all year, you will receive gifts at the end of the year; but if you are not good, you will be punished by not receiving any gifts.” See? It’s all about fooling the masses in order to control them.
And when the children begin to suspect or become skeptical or begin to question whether or not Santa is real, the fooling goes on a bit longer. Eventually, those who fooled the children will confess that,
“Yes it was all a story, just a wonderful tale, but one that is rooted in the truth because, though there is no Santa Claus, there is a God that Santa represents in the story and God knows if you’ve been good or bad and, if you’re good, He will reward you. So we told you about Santa Claus, but the story is really about God, and it is God that you must now believe in unquestioningly.”
See? Fooling persons happens the same way, over and over: “Just believe whatever we tell you and do it with blind faith, because if you do not, that too will displease God and you will not be blessed.”
And the child that was fooled by the Santa story does not usually say, “You’ve already lied to me once about this subject, so why should I believe you this time?”
But if asked, the answer is, “Because this time, I really am telling you the truth.”
A woman once told the story of leaving the man whom she had lived with for eight months and whom she had supported financially because he could not keep a job, supposedly “because he stayed drunk constantly”; she reported that he beat her often.
Each time, he told her that he was going to change, and each time that promise turned out to be a lie, followed by a new promise accompanied by the statement, “This time, I really am telling you the truth.”
After each subsequent beating escalated in intensity, she finally left. He told her that he was getting help, that he had joined AA, that he was sober, and that he realized that alcohol was his problem and that it was just the alcohol which caused him to beat her but that he had changed and wanted her (her money?) back.
His mother has warned her that he was diagnosed by two different counselors as being a full-blown sociopath and psychopath, but he contacted her daily by email and she was becoming convinced that he had really changed, that AA does indeed bring about miracles, that AA really can “restore people to sanity,” and that she “just might be able to have a good relationship now.” He fooled her many times in the past; then it seemed that he was about to succeed in fooling her again.
Consider the following observations by Laura Cococcia, including pointers by Michael Shermer as well: Here’s a preview:
Cococcia said, “It takes almost no effort to make a child believe in Santa Claus. Step one? Put some presents under a Christmas tree every year. Step two? Tell the child that Santa Claus put them there. Result? You’ve got a Santa-believer on your hands.”
She notes, “Shermer asserts that belief is the natural human state, and that it is science and reason that seem unnatural to us” and she notes that the skeptic “pulls away the curtain that divides us from our understanding of why we are prone to believe ultimately illogical, at times fantastical, things.
“Santa Claus, and his mystical compatriots the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, are cultural as well as psychological phenomena that serve as apt examples of our propensity for self-deception. Of course, ‘self-deception’ might seem like a fairly heavy-handed term to use in describing the average 5-year-old’s belief in Santa Claus.”
Indeed, children do not start off deceiving themselves. They are deceived by the adults around them. See? Initially, persons are being deceived by others; later, they will deceive themselves . . . and will then deceive other persons who listen to them as well.
Why take the steps to return to “The Child Ignorance Stage” or “The Child No-Knowing State”?
Because those were the only “pre-fooled days” of your existence. Because all “post-fooled days” are marked by heaviness and ignorance and insanity.
And because only “pre-fooled days” and “no-longer-fooled days” can provide any chance of enjoying the sense of lightness which comes when free of the consequences of learned ignorance and insane beliefs.
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.
