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. Also, by clicking on NUMBER FOURTEEN," visitors can also see the introductory discussion on non-duality on Walter's non-duality site and then a Q and A session which followed.]
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 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.
5. Would you like to have us send to someone as a gift from you a copy of any ebook in our inventory?
6. You may purchase a Floyd Henderson Shopify Gift Card here for someone and offer recommendations for the books in Floyd's store which might be of assistance to them.
7. You may click here to visit Floyd's bookstore which offers both digital books and paperback books which deal with non-duality, non-duality-based fictional adventures, recovery, and financial budgeting.
ARE YOU AT THE WET CHARCOAL STAGE OR THE GUNPOWDER STAGE?
(Most haven’t a clue and must be told)
THE CURSE OF HUMANKINDS’ RELATIVE EXISTENCE: IDENTIFICATIONS
“The personality is but a product of imagination. ‘The self’ is the victim of this imagination. It is the taking of yourself to be what you are not that binds you. The person cannot be said to exist on its own rights; it is ‘the self’ that believes there is a person and is conscious of being it.”
“Beyond the self lies the unmanifested, the causeless cause of everything. Even to talk of ‘re-uniting the person with the self’ is not right, because there is no person, only a mental picture given a false reality by conviction. Nothing was divided and there is nothing to unite.”
--Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Initially on “the path to realization,” the questioning of everything is required because “everything” is initially
transmitted (via the programming and conditioning and domestication and
acculturation and brainwashing and indoctrination) at an age when most are too
young and too intimidated to question anything.
Early on, the case with “floyd” - subjected to Southern Baptist / Evangelical Bible
Study classes two times per week for years - was the same case with many who
heard such comments as:
“If you do not have faith in what you are taught, then you shall be cast into
the burning flames of hell for eternity” (Miss Myrtle, “Volunteer Sunday School
teacher”)
and
“Truly I say to you, if you have faith, and do not doubt, you shall not only do
what was done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken
up and cast into the sea,’ it shall happen” (Scripture often read to us)
and
“Faith is a living and unshakable confidence. a belief in God so assured that a
man would die a thousand deaths for its sake.” (Martin Luther, with shades of
the same, present-day attitude shared by many fanatics of
another religion or by Christian fanatics).
The necessity of “faith without questioning” was even reinforced in public
school classes. One of the “Daily Quotes” offered here was this:
“Philosophical argument has sometimes shaken my reason for the faith that was
in me; but my heart has always assured me that the Gospel of Jesus Christ must
be reality.” (Daniel Webster)
So much for the myth of “one’s heart” being a reliable source of wisdom and
truth. Why not one’s liver or one’s kidneys or one’s colon? In fact, would not
the colon logically be the #1 place used to store such BS as above? So why “the
heart?”
It would be years later before the following words were read, words that resonated within, words that caused the inner guru - not “the heart” - to begin to vibrate over the excitement of knowing that people of wisdom were validating what I had felt within, even at the age of six:
Euripides: “Question everything.”
Socrates: “I seek truth and wisdom. . .” and “It is true that I encourage my students to question everything.”
Buddha: “. . . Don’t go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought . . . .”
and
Siddhārtha Gautama: “Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it”
and, eventually,
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj: “Question everything; don’t believe anything.”
Does that apply to all non-dual pointers offered on this site as well? Of course.
Does that apply to all non-dual
pointers in my books or shared in videos? Of course.
How much more status or prominence or even eminence is given to the “THAT-ness”
over the “AM-ness”? Compared to the attention and value given to the IS-ness,
how much more attention and value is assigned to the following:
“Liberation”
“Enlightenment”
“Realization”
“True Self” / “Real Self”
The “Infinite Self”
The “Supreme Self”
Maharaj put the last two in perspective when he advised, again: “Give up all
questions except one: ‘Who am I’? After all, the only fact you are sure of is
that you are. The ‘I am’ is certain. The ‘I am this’ is not.” (By the way, the “I
am that” is not, either.) Later, he would amend that pointer and say, “It
is not necessary to find the answer to ‘Who / What am I?’ It is enough to find
out who you are not.”
As for “True Self” or “Real Self,” those terms simply point to the Pure
Witnessing (which happens almost never on this planet but is far from “special”); moreover,
the Pure Witnessing has no trace whatsoever of “self-ness” or Self-ness.
So his eventual advice was
that one need not even find the answer to “Who am I?” noting that it is enough
to know who / what you are not (meaning you are not any of the nine basic
personality types or any other assigned or assumed personal identifications that
are driving you; additionally, you are not any of the other scores of false
identities picked up along the way which are driving and controlling your
thoughts and words and actions).
Not necessary to know who you are? Again, non-dual heresy, right?
And that notion of heresy will prevail among all except for those that come to
understand that the AM-ness is all that you can ever “know.”
Post-manifestation, there is no vehicle for the continued manifestation of
consciousness and no continuation of a vehicle for the manifestation of
awareness.
As was the case prior to the manifestation, there was awareness-energy that was
not aware of, and there was the potentiality for conscious-energy to manifest
and become blocked and then become unblocked via a multi-step “path” and then
eventually be conscious of awareness, allowing for awareness to be aware of
itself.
But post-manifestation? There remains only the formerly-manifested
conscious-energy that is no longer manifested and, therefore, no longer capable
of conscious-of-ness or aware-of-ness. It is once more free-ranging, moving through
the vast pool of unmanifested conscious-energy.
So wherefore all the pride around “Liberation” and “Enlightenment” and “Realization”
if the AM-ness is that which is available to you right now and if the THAT-ness
shall not be known at all post-manifestation?
“Liberation” merely refers to the pre-programmed, pre-conditioned state of the
conscious-energy when no personalities were being assumed as identities. “Liberation”
simply refers to being liberated from personality.
Is “Enlightenment” any nobler? Not at all. Suppose you walk into a dark or
semi-dark room where a rope is coiled up, a rope that appears to be a snake,
and you suddenly experience fear - a distressing emotion aroused by a perceived
threat. Is it really “noble” if you turn on a light and see the reality of the
facts and then calm down as a result of understanding that your fears were
unfounded, based only in the fact that you had been totally mistaken about what
you had formerly believed in wholeheartedly? No. It is not. There is nothing
noble about “enlightenment.”
As for “Realization,” is that elevating and noble? “Realization” merely points
to the condition of realizing that all which is false had once been taken to be
true. Does realizing that you had been fooled and that you had believed lies
and that you had accepted ignorant concepts as truth as a result of being
programmed to question nothing . . . does realizing all of that suddenly make
you different from and better than those still trapped in the foolishness and
the lies and the ignorance that you have possibly left behind though they have
not?
Of course not. All that there is for you is right now. All that can happen with
you can only happen now . . . not later. As Maharaj noted, “You were never born
once, so how could you be born again?
Maharaj: “Realization is merely the opposite of learned ignorance.” Realization is the state of being free of belief in anything in the huge body of ignorance being circulated among humans.
By the way, there are two forms of ignorance. One is the ignorance transmitted via programming, conditioning, etc. It is accepted as being true and factual without questioning, based in faith alone (or fear of being punished if such beliefs are not taken to be true. No choice was involved). The second kind of ignorance is opt-in ignorance. It’s the kind of ignorance which is believed by choice or after denial is engaged. Consider two examples:
Example 1: THE DISEASED, PERVERTED HUSBAND
Take the case of a woman whose husband returned from a business trip and a week later she was diagnosed with herpes. She drove from the doctor to her sister’s house because her sister had shared years earlier that herpes had been passed on to her. Once there, she asked her sister, “Is it possible I got this herpes by using your bathroom during my visits here?” The offended sister answered by saying, “Absolutely not, but don’t take my word for it. Do your research and find out for yourself.”
In spite of the facts she found, she choose to believe that she had gotten the herpes from her sister’s bathroom. Why? Because of opt-in ignorance. If she had contacted a lawyer and gotten a divorce, she would have needed to get a job herself; would have lost the house her husband was paying for; would have had to pay her own car notes and medical bills; etc., etc. etc. So she choose opt-in ignorance and stayed with him. Later he would bring home more serious STD’s and was discovered to be involved in the sexual abuse of under-aged girls. An earlier divorce would have been less gnarly than what eventually came.
Example 2: THE LYING POLITICIAN
Multiple press sources verified that a politician in the U.S. made over 30,573 false or misleading statements during his four-years in office; nevertheless, he remains the choice of about 50% of the population for reelection. Why have his supporters refused to admit he’s a liar? Because of their opt-in ignorance which allows them to vote for him because of their personal, often single-issue agendas which outweigh any ethical considerations.
Some like the way he serves their white supremacy agendas.
Some like the way he supports their anti-abortion beliefs including the fact that abortions are banned in cases of rape or incest. Some like the way he supports their every-pregnancy-must-continue-to-term belief, even if it involves a 10-year-old girl who was impregnated when a 27-year-old man raped her. (She had to leave her home-state of Ohio and go across the border to Indiana to end her pregnancy, even as millions of anti-abortionists claimed that the raped ten-year-old should have carried the fetus to term).
Some like the way he attacks black and brown-skinned people.
Some like the way he prefers to cozy up to dictators while breaking relations with leaders of democracies. They are practicing opt-in ignorance.
To continue: Post-manifestation,
there is no you or You, no self or Self, nothing supreme or Supreme. (There it
is again, yes? Unadulterated non-dual heresy. Ha.) If one is seeking “something
better,” you best go for it now because there is nothing better that awaits you
post-manifestation.
One man who started the “personality work” here offered a perspective that is
aligned with the pointers above. He wrote to offer thanks for the pointers
shared recently and said, “I would like to be free. I have not a clue about
realized or not and realize that it most likely happens or doesn’t, so [either
way] bring it on.”
That is, bring on the freedom . . . the freedom of no longer being driven by the
hidden, subconscious agendas of false identities and bogus personalities and
phony roles that enslave persons as a result of taking away their ability to
make conscious decisions even as they are abiding under the delusional belief
that conscious choices are being made.
And bring on the freedom from having old egotism-based beliefs replaced by new
egotism-based beliefs about supposedly being enlightened and supposedly being
realized and therefore supposedly being different from and better than those who
are not yet liberated and enlightened and realized.
Here, there is nothing that is believed, so there is no one here who wants visitors
to the site to believe anything, either. That runs contrary to the agenda of
every religion and faith and spiritual movement and spiritual group and
ideology and philosophy and cult and sky cult and self-help group and sect and
denomination and think-tank and party and faction and bloc that you’ll ever
find.
Here, the invitation is to be free . . . free of all that you have been programmed,
conditioned, acculturated, and domesticated to believe so that you can be free,
period. Why? Because you need not put off living – and living in a totally free
manner - any longer. It’s time to live, now.
This was shared years ago:
As a youth, summers were spent in the woods of east Texas with that Cherokee Medicine
Woman Grandmother whose every word was a link in the long chain of wisdom she
offered. In past postings, this line from a song of the indigenous peoples (which reminds me of pointers from Grandmother) has
been shared:
“Winds of life are blowing across the reservation and I can hear the voice of a
new generation . . . and it’s time, yes it’s time, to live.”
When the winds of change blow away the blockages that support the illusory,
inauthentic life, only then can that which is called “life” be relished as the
Absolute (and even as the Nothingness) are overlaid on the relative existence and
allow authenticity and sanity and logic and reason to take root.
To be continued.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
To watch the most recent talk and Q&A with Walter and his guests, 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 and why learning more is not the answer and why unlearning is the answer, click:
