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 SECOND DEGREE OF SEPARATION FROM REALITY:
Mind Identification
(Excerpts from a satsang session in 2004)
(To continue)
F.: But my question is, ‘What do you think is the source of your misery’?”
Q.: “My wife leaving me. She said, ‘I don’t even know who I am,’ and she took the children and left. I’m miserable over losing everything . . . wife, family, property. I lost it all.”
F.: “First, if she said that she doesn’t know who she is, we can believe that is the case. Obviously, you don’t know who you are, either.”
Q.: [Frowns]
F.: “Secondly, if it is truly understood that one does not have a body and therefore cannot ‘lose’ the body, how can one lose the bodies on your list? The world of misery you speak of is imagined. You do not live in the world. More importantly, your freedom will come in knowing that nothing on the list is the source of misery.”
Q.: “I don’t think you
appreciate the hurt involved.”
F.: “If you truly understood the illusion of the body, you could not have an
illusory mind that would speak of a ‘lost wife’ and this lost persona called ‘husband.’
To be free is to be in a state of total independence. All personas lives in a state of total dependence. Each illusion of personality requires two codependent bodies as well as two codependent minds. It is that illusion of dualities which prevents a person from being free and which blocks a person from continuing on the path to realization.”
Q.: “Two bodies and two minds?”
F.: “Two bodies and two minds are required for any role to be taken as an identity. You cannot play the role of ‘husband’ alone. She cannot play the role of ‘wife’ alone. You each must have a body in order to play out those roles, you each must have another body willing to play the required counterpart role, and you each must have a mind that has been programmed to believe that the roles you play actually identify who you are.
Two bodies, two minds. Duality squared. If you are ‘husband’ and she leaves, you are not ‘husband’ any longer in your variable mind. According to that belief system, what you truly are can vary, depending on who is in your physical presence! But the reality is that what you truly are can never vary.
All personalities (or ‘personas’ or ‘false identities’ or ‘roles’ or ‘states-of-being this’ or ‘states of being that’) are dualities. The Real is permanent whereas dualities, being illusions, always appear to come and go. In that instability, one lives in the depression around perceived loss or in the manic state of illusory joy around perceived gain.
Neither state lasts, so one is constantly in a state of flux and desire, clinging to current dependencies while trying to accumulate new dependencies. ‘The employee’ cannot exist without ‘the employer’; the ‘lover’ cannot exist without a separate ‘lover’; the ‘father’ cannot exist without ‘a child.’
If ‘wife’ leaves, ‘husband’ thinks he’s dying. How tenuous your existence becomes - how absent of freedom life must be - believing in the illusion that your existence is totally dependent on all those ‘others.’ How vulnerable and fear-based that life must be . . . feeling so dependent and needy and incomplete.
Do you see that if each assumed personality requires the physical presence of another person, then two codependent bodies are required to sustain the illusion of each false personality? Trying to live in that duality, with no freedom at all, is it any wonder that you speak of misery?”
Q.: “I need some help to
really process all that.”
F.: “Then let’s try this: we’re on a multi-step ‘journey’ to Reality, if you will. Let’s go to the ‘end’ and work ‘backwards’ for a moment, since all merely cycles. Let’s consider when the consciousness was manifesting in the space in a womb with the non-beingness about to cross the borderline to the beingness. The days of the bliss of the womb were numbered.”
Q.: “If I had known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have come out.” (Laughter)
F.: “I’m in charge of humor here. Don’t intrude. Ha. (Laughter) Regarding your leaving or not leaving the womb, as well as all that has happened since then, there has never been any choice on your part. A natural process forced the space to exit a birth canal.
An initial act of friction between your parents resulted in this space in which consciousness manifested. Actions began to happen, but they were driven by instinct. No one taught you to protest if hungry; no one taught you to seek a breast to suckle.”
Q.: “Right.”
F.: “In a manner of speaking, that’s as ‘close’ to the Reality (and relative existence reality) as you’ve been since that slap on the rear triggered your breathing cycles.”
Q.: “Why?”
F.: “Because you were mainly being. They had not yet taught you. A fictional mind had not yet resulted from hearing the lies about who or what you are and had not yet assumed any false role or identity or personality. You wore no masks. All merely happened via natural instinct and body chemistry rather than programming and conditioning.
You mainly focused on nothing and were just being. You were manifest but still mainly in a void, though becoming increasingly conscious of pain and discomfort. If fed and clothed comfortably, you were fairly free of strife or worry . . . whether sleeping, dreaming, waking, or fully conscious.
Not until they taught you would you be forced into the bondage of concepts and the mental and emotional pain of duality. Eventually, you would always be in a sleep state - whether in bed, driving, at work, talking, whatever.”
Q.: [Nods head in agreement]
F.: “Next, at some point you began to witness. You saw a mobile spinning in the crib above you. You saw huge faces being shoved into yours. You heard sounds coming from their mouths, sounds which made no sense. You began to witness.
Unless they made loud, alarming noises, you witnessed objectively and had no perceived fears. You had no opinions. You had no beliefs or concepts. You had no array of attitudes and judgments about what you were witnessing. Since contradictory beliefs had not been introduced, you had no quandaries to weigh, no disparities to consider, no ideas about ‘good’ vs. ‘bad’ or about anything else.
You were merely witnessing. Do you understand what was happening when I spoke earlier of being like the eagle, soaring above it all and merely watching?”
Q.: [Head moves in the affirmative]
F.: “Soon, having sensed a body presence, you would believe yourself the subject and assume that you were witnessing other objects. Do you see why, at its very root, this life becomes a lie . . . setting you up to assume that dualities are the real and feeling apart from?”
Q.: “Yes. I never considered that aspect.”
F.: “Add to that ‘setup’ all of the concepts that they would soon begin to teach you and you should understand the source of your future bondage: the assumption that duality is possible and is real. Their ‘teachings,’ combined with that initial assumption of subject-object, would soon result in a programmed, variable mind.
The mind would begin moving constantly. No rest or peace will it ever know again, unless you follow the path from duality ‘back’ to the unicity.”
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:
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:
