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.
“DO NOT SEARCH FOR THE ANSWER TO ‘WHO AM I?’ IT IS ENOUGH TO UNDERSTAND ‘WHO / WHAT YOU ARE NOT’.”
THE
FIRST DEGREE OF SEPARATION FROM REALITY: Body Identification
[The
discussion of the illusion of body identification will continue via
transcriptions of exchanges during workshops conducted during 2001-2002]:
Questioner: The “Arms-Legs-Arms Consideration” has shown me something, but I’m
not sure what.”
F: “Ha. OK. Hopefully, the consideration first reveals that you are not the
body and then, secondly, inspires you to ask, ‘Well, if I’m not my body, Who or
What am I?’ The body is momentary.
That which is fleeting cannot be the Real. Consider the similarity with a melted ice cube that seems to have ‘gone’ or ‘disappeared’ when placed in a glass of hot water. In fact, that which ‘the cube’ truly Is did not ‘go’ or ‘disappear’: all of the pairs of hydrogen atoms that had grouped with various oxygen atoms still remain.
Only the appearance of the form that those atoms had manifested in for a time led to the misconception that the cube was destroyed. As with the cube, when the body ‘dies’ and ‘dissolves’ away, the appearance of the form alters but all the elements from which the body was composed still remain.
What
‘disappeared’ was an image wrongly perceived. In the ‘Arms-Legs-Organs
exercise,’ the arms, legs, and some original organs of your manifested form
seem to disappear, but just as the hydrogen and oxygen atoms of the cube
remain, so remains that which you truly are. You sensed that truth during the
exercise. You did sense that you would still be you, right?”
Q.: “Yes.”
F.: “Then what is That which you sense is remaining-even after arms, legs, and
organs are gone?”
Q.: “I sense that I still exist.”
F.: “Yes. You sense that you still are.
Specifically, You sense the ‘I Am’ or your ‘I Amness,’ which we’ll discuss
later. Another way of understanding the results of the exercise would be to say
that ‘You experienced your presence.’ You experienced the truth of the fact
that ‘something’ would be present even after most of the physical parts of ‘you’-of
your body-disappear.
During
the experiment, you are not sensing your complete body-for much of it is
gone-but you are sensing a complete presence. That is what you are aware of
when, even without those appendages and organs, you know that you are still you.”
Q.: “OK.”
F.: “If you understood that pointer totally, no more would need to be heard,
but too much remains to block that full understanding. So, we continue. Next,
since we have seen that there is no duality, that there is no subject-object
duality, Who (or What) can you now conclude knows that consciousness?”
Q.: (Questioning look)
F.: “Let me put it to you another way. What remains after the body parts are
gone that is sensing that presence? What is conscious of that presence?”
Q.: “I don’t know.”
F.: “That’s close! Ha. That which knows the presence since there is no duality,
has to be . . . the pure, unblocked consciousness! It’s simple!
It is that unprogrammed, unconditioned, prior consciousness that senses itself in the manifest form which you call your physical body. Wordsworth wrote his ‘Ode on Intimations of Immortality’ after he had sensed his ‘eternal,’ original nature (which has nothing to do with WHO-ness or self-ness or Self-ness and has everything to do with temporarily-combined elements and gases and conscious-energy).
The arms-legs-organs exercise affords you that same opportunity: to become intimate with the immortal or infinite matter / energy. (Later, we’ll even amend that concept.) That Is What I Truly Am, and always have Been, and always will Be -hang the body.
In the baseless and time-wasting and energy-burning process of “Self-Inquiry” (when there is no real self or Self) we see the false, we see the mirages, we see the images, we see the “not real,” and we thereby come to understand what we are not. The exercise in intended to help you see first what you are not and then sense that you are something beyond the body.
You
actually sensed your own presence remaining, even after much of the body was
discarded during the exercise. If you got even that much from the exercise,
then you have received the basic benefit: you have been prepared to ask the
next logical question. And what would that be?”
Q.: “Well, as you said earlier: if I’m not the body, then What Am I?”
F: “Exactly.”
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:
