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
Freedom from All Beliefs: Clearing Away the Final Vestiges
Mention has been made in past postings about ducks, squirrels, deer, bears, birds, fish, and persons (“persons” being a term that points to all of the “human spaces or forms” with ideas and concepts and beliefs that drive them to accept multiple false identities as being real).
Of the millions and millions in those groups that move about planet earth, and of the trillions and trillions that have ever lived on the planet, only the members of one group have developed (that is, regressed) in ways that drive them to assume that they are “different,” that they are “better than all other spaces and forms,” and that they have control and “dominion” over all of the other spaces and forms in other groups.
Some members of that group of “persons” or “human spaces or forms” also assume that they should have control and dominion over all of the “other persons” or “other human spaces or forms” in their group.
Of the millions and millions in those groups that move about planet earth, and of the trillions and trillions that have ever lived on the planet, all have an elemental brain but only the members of one group have developed (that is, regressed) in ways that have also resulted in a “mind” filled with ideas and concepts and beliefs.
And of the millions and millions in those groups that move about planet earth, and of the trillions and trillions that have ever lived on the planet, only the members of the group with “minds” have mental problems that drive them to fight others who believe different ideas and concepts and beliefs;
who have mental problems that drive them to inflict pain on themselves or others; who have mental problems that drive them to continue to engage in behaviors that have been proved to be harmful to their elemental bodies; who have mental problems that drive them to cut or shoot themselves or others; and who have mental problems and such arrogance that they feel entitled to engage in controlling and invasion and colonialism and enslavement and genocide.
Only the members of the group with “minds” have mental problems of such severity that they actually believe that they are the roles they play; that they really believe they can be something that they are not; and that they truly believe it when other persons tell them that they are either “good” or “bad” (although the criteria for such labeling varies from culture to culture);
have such mental problems that they really believe that they are “different from” others; that they actually think that they are “better than” or “worse than” others; and that they should abandon the roles that their cultures tell them are “bad roles” and that they should assume and play the roles that their cultures tell them are “good roles” to assume.
Only the members of the group with “minds” have such severe mental and emotional and “personal” (personality) problems that they think they must spend years - or even a lifetime - of searching and seeking and working to “improve” or “enhance” themselves.
As evidence of how many are trying to “improve” or “enhance” themselves, consider some of the titles of the bestseller books that are being marketed by those types whom Maharaj pointed to disparagingly with the term “Big Name Teachers” when he warned his followers to be wary of the concepts and beliefs that those with mass appeal offer and which are the most popular among the non-realized masses:
Change Your Thoughts - Change Your Life;
Your Ultimate Calling; Incredible You!; 10 Secrets for Success;
Advancing Your Spirit;
Ageless Body, Timeless Mind;
The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire;
The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: A Practical Guide to the Fulfillment of Your Dreams;
and
How to Know God.
Maharaj’s take on all that? He taught that at the core of all human misery and suffering is personality, ego-state adoption, and egotism. So much for an “Incredible You.”
He said, “I have no mind” (so he had no thoughts to change); “success” is a persona-based concept, he taught, as is “power,” as is “A Power,” and as is “power now.” To that end he said:
“The nearer you get to the truth, the more you lose interest in worldly affairs. Such a one will not have any interest in the world, but will act like an ordinary person.”
He made clear that the body is a temporary form and that the “mind” is finite as well, not “ageless.”
As for “fulfilling desires,” he taught that all misery and suffering are rooted in personal fears or in trying to fulfill personal desires;
Contrary to “fulfilling dreams,” he made clear that dreams are something to be rid of after seeing they are not the Real.
As for “spiritual advancement,” he said:
“There is no progress”
and
“There is no question of elevating to a higher level. Here it is only a question of understanding.”
As for “spiritual laws,” 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.”
As for being “called” to some “ultimate calling” and as for “knowing the caller” or “knowing God,” he said:
“First of all you identify something as being good or bad for yourself. Then, in an effort to acquire good or to get rid of the bad, you have invented a God. Then you worship such a God and . . . you pray to that God for something good to happen to you.”
All such concepts and ideas adopted by persons run counter to the no-belief, non-dual, no-identity, no-concept, no-idea, natural abidance and normalcy that mark the relative existence of all forms on the planet except for persons.
One has never seen a deer trying to improve or enhance itself. That which believes it can change or grow or develop into something that is different from what it actually already is is nothing more than a speck of consciousness that has been fooled.
That which believes it can become enhanced or improved or made better or made worse or ungraded or downgraded is a speck of conscious-energy that has been fooled. Maharaj said, “Only that person will visit this place whose virtue and sin have [both] come to an end.”
(After earning a B.A. degree, I became employed but had to take a second job to barely “break even, financially”; then, I began taking college nighttime courses and summertime courses in order to earn an M.A. degree. Why? Because I observed that in my professional, a B.A. could get you hired but it would not allow for other opportunities to happen which could allow me to pay my living expenses with one job only.
So I earned an M.A. degree and qualified for higher pay which did allow me to give up my second job and to “get a life.” Yet at no time did I think that M.A. degree had made me enhanced or improved or better or ungraded. I did not hang my degrees on a wall. I did not tell people I met that I has an M.A. degree. I just moved through the relative existence with slightly more “ease.”)
All concepts and beliefs such as those referenced above in the titles of books written by people who used “non-duality” (or actually “not-non-duality”) to become millionaires are rooted in the duality of either (1) an egotism-based notion of being “very good” or even “great” or (in true narcissistic fashion) “incredible”; or (2) a guilt-and-shame-based notion of being “bad” or “unworthy.”
Moreover, it is only the members of the group with “minds” that buy into distorted dualistic beliefs, ego-states as identities, egotism, a false sense of greatness, and the arrogance-generating delusion of many members of that group that they are part of “an exclusive and superior group or race or species.”
Also, it is only the members of the group with “minds” that buy into “self-destruction” and “destruction of others” as a result of first buying into guilt and the notion of being “bad” or “unworthy” or, conversely, “exceptional.”
Is it any wonder that Maharaj invited those trapped in the delusion of body-mind-personality identification (and those being driven by their false ideas and concepts and beliefs) to abandon all of the learned ignorance that is inspiring them to live unnaturally or inspiring them to try to live “supernaturally”?
Is it any wonder that Maharaj spent decades inviting persons to abandon all beliefs and to then abide naturally instead, as do ducks, squirrels, deer, bears, birds, fish, and all other “spaces-or-forms-cum-temporarily-manifested-consciousness” with the lone exception of “persons”?
To be continued.
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:
