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.
CONSCIOUSNESS AND AWARENESS:
Reconciling the “I AM” and the “I AM THAT”
To review, one attribute of conscious-energy is just that: an ability to be conscious of something. By definition, then, consciousness at its most basic level must deal with duality since an object has to be present in order for consciousness to be conscious of. During the manifestation, it is at the second witnessing stage of pure witnessing that such can be transitioned as the Oneness, as the non-dual Reality, is understood.
Yet awareness is that knowingness that knows no thing. Knowingness allows consciousness to know, but the knowingness does not know. Some equate pure consciousness with awareness since it is unadulterated by being conscious of any phenomenal concepts. Yet even pure consciousness must be considered to be conscious of something, by definition. By contrast, the awareness is, but is not aware of. Only those attributes lead some to conclude that consciousness and awareness are not one, as if sticky glue and its stickiness could be separate.
The knowingness - the Absolute - precedes all consciousness while nevertheless being that which allows consciousness to happen. It is knowingness without knowing “this” or knowing “that.” Even to declare that “I know I AM THAT” is an act in consciousness . . . an act made possible via knowingness, yet it is an act in consciousness nevertheless.
That which precedes even the knowing of I AM THAT is THAT which is knowingness but that is unadulterated with any knowledge of any thing, with any concepts, with “the known.” Ultimately, there is no knower. To say “I know the knowingness” is duality. To say “I know the knowingness but there is no knower” is still an exercise in consciousness and is thus dualistic.
Why do those that realize the Reality function in ways that are considered “moral” even when there is no belief . . . including any belief in definitions of morality? In the absence of a knower or “decider,” there are no decisions made and there is nothing that is known.
In fact, that is exactly what is known: nothing. From that stance, all that happens merely happens, spontaneously. With no concepts or dogma or body or mind or personality identification that is driving persons, there are no fears and no desires. In the absence of concepts and ideas and beliefs that generate fears and desires, no “others” are attacked out of perceived fears and no “others” are manipulated, abused, or used to fulfill imagined desires. Peace (or at least contentment) every day then happens.
This no concept, non-dual Reality results in the void and the nothingness. Italians have an expression: il dolce di fare niente (“the sweetness of doing nothing”). Since the understanding make clear that there is no do-er, then the non-dual pointer could more accurately note, il dolce di niente: the sweetness of nothing, the essence of nothing.
Remember the earlier point: sugar is elemental; sweetness is not. Sweetness is the essence of the sugar. A child eating a candy bar does not care about the elements. The child is enjoying the essence. Realization is about enjoying the essence, the sweetness, which is the essence of the void, of the nothingness, of the no-concept, no-thought, no-mind, non-dual Is-ness until the manifestation ends.
Reality
Ironically, much of the “journey” along the path to understanding Reality is spent in focusing on that which is not real. Krishna said, “Those alone who understand that I, the Absolute, am beyond the states of being and non-being realize my true nature, and all others are fools.” So Krishna suggested that fools can be known by these facts:
1. Fools do not understand that states-of-being (of believing that they are being “this” or being “that” and playing roles and accepting them as a true identity) are false.
2. Fools do not know that, post-manifestation, there is no beingness or even non-beingness. There is no false self that will be; nor is there any Self that will be, so there is not any Infinite Self or Supreme Self that will be, either. Nothing with any identity or shape or defined space will be. No selfness or Selfness exists. Only that which is beyond both beingness and non-beingness shall remain.
All that there will be is the unmanifested energy in the universal pool and the matter which cannot be destroyed. And those who do not understand that truth are fools (that is, they are persons who have been fooled by taking the dreamed up beliefs of other humans as gospel. As one famous social critic said, "There is no belief that has been dreamed up by men that is worth believing").
Peace (And Therefore Happiness)
Someone said that the key to peace and happiness is acceptance. Tell that to the person sitting in prison. The key to peace every day, and therefore to happiness, is freedom. And what robs persons of freedom? Primarily, programming, conditioning, acculturation, under-functioning body organs, assumption of roles, and delusion.
Upon full realization, it is seen that all spiritual knowledge was nothing more than a part of that massive accumulation of learned ignorance which burdens persons with the heaviness of their “something-ness” rather than the lightness of the “nothingness.” To fixate at that knowing stage - at the so-called "spiritual stage" - prevents abidance as the pure consciousness and prevents eventual abidance as the Absolute;
therefore, the final step of the “journey” is not marked by the gaining of spiritual knowledge but by an understanding of the functioning of the totality that happens in the absence of any “Understander” or any “Knower” or any “Spiritual Person” or any other “good” identity that is being assumed in order to replace former “bad” identities.
The re-purified consciousness will lead to de-accumulating, to understanding the bliss of the nothingness, to touching the validity of the void, and to being free of the insanity of the relative existence.
Since it cannot be stated, no one can share truth. Among the realized, the “emptiness,” the Void, the Nothingness is understood in the beingness; it is personas who engage in the doingness and who think that they are full of knowledge and intelligence when they are actually full of self.
When those roles are finally abandoned (and they - along with Self - are always the last to go) then the Void or Nothingness or the space can be understood and the true stillness of the de-programmed, de-personalized consciousness can happen. The corrupting process, and how to become free of corruption, was explained thusly to one seeker:
Seeker: And how has my consciousness been corrupted, according to you?
F.: Via impressions - or samskaras - as my guide called them. Here’s an analogy: imagine you’re at the beach, a few yards from the water’s edge. As you walk, you leave behind impressions of your feet. Are those impressions real?
Seeker: For the moment, yes.
F.: Really? What’s real about those impressions? They are only space - nothingness, emptiness - that seems to your eye to be “something” when in fact they are nothing. Will they last?
Seeker: They’ll last until the tide comes in and washes them away.
F.: So are they an actual form, or just a temporary space that appears to have shape and form?
Seeker: OK . . . they’re temporary.
So it is with everything you think you see. It’s only an appearance, and appearances are distortions, and distortions trigger misery. You look at the body called “floyd” and all that is there is a space, but you think you are seeing some thing. It is emptiness . . . nothingness. Just a handful of elements with air and energy temporarily circulating through the space. If you remove the water that is within the body, then the elements won’t even fill a small urn.
Realization is like the wave that can come along and sweep away all the false impressions imprinted on “the mind.” Realization makes you aware that the nothingness that you’ve always taken to be something is not that thing at all.
Those impressions were never real. You mistook an empty space to be something, and that’s what persons do all day long, all month long, all year long, year after year after year. Most spend their entire relative existence convinced that their perceptions are the “right” perceptions when in fact they have never seen anything “rightly.”
As a result, they will suffer from one false impression after another, not unlike all the impressions in your “mind.” Footprints in the sand appear to have some shape or form, just as mirages in the desert appear to have a shape or form, but the reality is that all impressions and all mirages are just a part of the fiction of the “mind.”
To be “in touch with reality” is to be able to differentiate between what is illusion and what is real, between what is delusion and what is truth, and between that which appears to be dualistic as opposed to that which is One and truly real.
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:
