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.
LESSONS IN NON-DUALITY from TRAVELS IN SOUTH AFRICA
Nelson Mandela’s Guides: Henry David Thoreau, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Non-Dual Message (con't.)
The
next non-dual message from a visit to South Africa deals specifically with Nelson
Mandela and how he overlaid realization upon his relative activities. The message
also deals with topics that have been of interest to the realized for ages,
including . . .
. . . “pacifism”; “civil disobedience”; “ignorance”; “cultural dissemination of
ignorance until learned ignorance becomes the so-called conventional wisdom of
most persons in every culture”; “separation”; “reconciliation”; and (what
Maharaj called) “stupidity verging on insanity.”
Yesterday, it was mentioned that Henry David Thoreau was arrested and jailed.
Why? Because he was a pacifist, a most-unwelcomed being in war-obsessed, territory-confiscating
nations.
[Such as? Such as the all-time past and present colonizing champion Great Britain and the runner-up past and present colonizing champion, the United States; such as Spain and Portugal and Germany and Japan and Belgium in the past; such as France and the Netherlands in the past;
and
such as the Jewish people who thousands of years ago fought multiple wars to defeat other kingdoms and took their lands, claiming to be "God's chosen people" and claiming "God wanted them to take control of the lands now referred to as The Holy Land)" and who in modern times have been fighting Palestinians in order to take full control of the so-called "Holy Land" supposedly promised to them by their God thousands of years ago.]
To continue with the maverick Thoreau:
And
worst, to the ignorant who dealt with Thoreau, he was not the “Hello-you’re-welcome-to-make-me-your-doormat”
brand of pacifist but was instead the “I-will-not-pay-a-tax-that-supports-U.S.-propensities-for-imperialism-and-aggression-and-colonialism”
type of pacifist.
It was he that spoke of using “civil disobedience” as a means of protesting
unjust laws and it was he that influenced Gandhi and King and Mandela to use
the same:
Gandhi: “A ‘No’ uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a ‘Yes’
merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble”
and
“All
compromise is based on give and take, but there can be no give and take on
fundamentals. Any compromise on mere fundamentals is a surrender.”
King: “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of
comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and
controversy”
and
“Never, never be afraid to do what’s right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake”
and
“Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal”
and
“The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence”
and
“One
has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”
Mandela: [From the dock at the opening of
his trial on charges of sabotage before the Supreme Court of South Africa,
Pretoria, April 20 1964]:
“Some of the things so far told to the court are true and some are untrue. I do
not, however, deny that I planned sabotage. I did not plan it in a spirit of
recklessness, nor because I have any love of violence. I planned it as a result
of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had arisen after
many years of tyranny, exploitation, and oppression of my people by the whites.”
“We had no doubt that we had to continue the fight. Anything else would have
been abject surrender. Our problem was not whether to fight, but was how to
continue the fight. We of the ANC had always stood for a non-racial democracy,
and we shrank from any action which might drive the races further apart than
they already were. But the hard facts were that fifty years of non-violence had
brought the African people nothing but more and more repressive legislation,
and fewer and fewer rights.”
“ . . . Our policy to achieve a non-racial state by non-violence had achieved
nothing, and our followers were beginning to lose confidence in this policy and
were developing disturbing ideas of terrorism.”
“It must not be forgotten that by this time violence had, in fact, become a
feature of the South African political scene.”
“The time comes in the life of any nation when there remain only two choices -
submit or fight. That time has now come to South Africa. We shall not submit
and we have no choice but to hit back by all means in our power in defence of
our people, our future, and our freedom.”
“How can I be expected to believe that this same racial discrimination which
has been the cause of so much injustice and suffering right through the years
should now operate here to give me a fair and open trial? I consider myself
neither morally nor legally obliged to obey laws made by a Parliament in which
I am not represented. That the will of the people is the basis of the authority
of government is a principle universally-acknowledged as sacred throughout the
civilized world.”
When convicted, he explained to the judge that he would still fight against
racism and for freedom when released.
Note: On June 11, 1964, at the conclusion of the trial, Mandela was found
guilty on four charges of sabotage and was sentenced to life imprisonment. He
began his sentence in the notorious Robben Island Prison, a maximum security
prison on a small island off the coast near Cape Town.
A
worldwide campaign to free Mandela began in the 1980s and resulted in his
release on February 11, 1990, at age 71, after 27 years in prison. In 1993,
Mandela shared the Nobel Peace Prize with South Africa’s President F.W. de
Klerk for their peaceful efforts to bring a non-racial democracy to South
Africa. Black South Africans voted for the first time in the 1994 election that
brought Mandela to the presidency of South Africa.
To understand the events of Mandela’s arrest and conviction and imprisonment is
to understand the reason that the realized speak out against ignorance (which
always eventually becomes the widespread learned ignorance that plagues
cultures around the globe);
is to see why there is no such thing as “conventional wisdom”; is to understand
how a sense of separation leads to prejudice and judging and “stupidity verging
on insanity.”
It is to see how the masses, trapped in the darkness and ignorance of separation
and “two-ness” and differentiation, will become so stupid as to believe in
dualistic hierarchies that place some rich at the top and place the poor at the
bottom of a culture’s economic hierarchy that is intended to assure separation;
that place persons of one skin color at the top of a society and persons of a
different skin color at the bottom; that assign, in such a shallow fashion,
some persons to the most valued place in society based on their “outside,
physical” looks rather than based on what is “inside”;
and that allow ignorant persons to block the most intelligent and rational
people in their societies from positions of influence in their political
structures while moving the most ignorant among them to the topmost positions
of their political hierarchies.
When such ignorance and desire for separation prevail, ignorant persons will
isolate (in one or many ways) their most talented and logical and intelligent
citizens, sometimes in an area such as Robben Island, separated from the very
people that they should be allowed to educate and lead.
When such ignorance and desire for separation prevail, ignorant persons will
build prisons such as the one on Robben Island off the southern coast of South
Africa which can be used to cast out the most realized among them (that being
one of the most frequent actions taken when those among the ignorant majority
come into contact with the wise that are always in the minority).
When such ignorance and desire for separation prevail, someone as brilliant as
Nelson Mandela will be forced to sit in a limestone quarry and break large
rocks into small rocks for forty hours per week in an effort to break his brain
and back and spirit.
When such ignorance and desire for separation prevail, someone as wise as
Nelson Mandela will be forced into a tiny cell at the Robben Island prison and
be forced to sleep on a concrete floor and to use a small bucket for all
latrine requirements.
When such ignorance and desire for separation prevail, the minds of the masses
will be locked first; then, next, the wisest among those ignorant masses shall
be figuratively or literally locked away as well.
To understand the events that unfolded in the last few decades in South Africa
is to understand the events that have marred the relative existence around the
globe since people began to form cultures and societies.
Yet
to visit South Africa and observe objectively is to see that - while much
remains to be accomplished in order to alleviate the most ill effects of
apartheid that yet mar the relative existence of so many people - one can also
see that a far-healthier racial truce exists there than in places like the U.S.
where much more time has been available to move beyond the racial prejudice
that generates the false senses of separation and better-than-ness that are
inspired by ignorance and learned ignorance and, yes, even “stupidity verging
on insanity.”
Ignorant? Yes. Stupid? Yes. Insane? Indeed, how ignorance-and-stupidity-and-insanity-driven was it to lock away anyone with
the wisdom of a Thoreau? And how ignorance-and-stupidity-and-insanity-driven was it to lock away anyone with the wisdom
of a Mandela who would later bring reconciliation to a divided nation?
How ignorance-and-stupidity-and-insanity-driven was it
to lock away anyone, and eventually kill someone, with the wisdom of a Gandhi? And how ignorance-and-stupidity-and-insanity-driven it is to lock away anyone, and eventually kill someone, with the
wisdom of a King, Jr.?
The non-dual understandings, above all else, are about freeing, not about
incarcerating - are about freeing persons of the mental ignorance and cultural
ignorance that support beliefs in a false sense of separation and two-ness and
distance as opposed to the sense of Oneness and closeness which the realized understand.
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:
