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’.”
(Excerpts from a satsang session conducted in 2004)
THE FOURTH DEGREE SHIFT - MOVEMENT TOWARD REALITY:
The Child Ignorance State
or
The Child No-Knowing State
“DO NOT SEARCH FOR THE ANSWER TO ‘WHO AM I?’ IT IS ENOUGH TO UNDERSTAND ‘WHO / WHAT YOU ARE NOT’.”
(Excerpts from a satsang session conducted in 2004)
THE FOURTH DEGREE SHIFT - MOVEMENT TOWARD REALITY:
The Child Ignorance State
or
The Child No-Knowing State
[NOTE: We’ll pause for clarification of the fourth step which is the first toward understanding both reality and Reality.]
This series is entitled “DO NOT SEARCH FOR THE ANSWER TO ‘WHO AM I.’ IT IS ENOUGH TO UNDERSTAND WHO / WHAT YOU ARE NOT.” That was the advice offered by Maharaj after he came to see that the last three steps of his original version of “the seven-step path” should be eliminated.
He came to understand that the relative existence can run like a well-oiled machine if only people would (1) grasp the truth of the first three steps which shift seekers away from understand reality (I AM) and the Reality (THAT) and then (2) allowing seekers to abide at the Fourth Step level which is free of . . .
. . . belief in all concepts; in all false body and mind and personality identities; of all false post-manifestation identifications (including a resident of heaven or a prisoner in hell, either an angel or fuel for an everlasting fire, the Supreme Self, the Infinite Self, the Greatest Self, the Eternal Self, the True Self, etc).
HOW BELIEFS BLOCK ANY OPPORTUNITY TO BE ENLIGHTENED AND THEN REALIZE
For all his faults and BS beliefs, John Paul II did try to free his followers of one bondage, namely, the fear-generating mind bondage fed by the false concepts of “hell + eternal punishment.”)
Consider:
The non-dual message Yeshu’a offered was lost or ignored. The version of “Pauline Christianity” as set forth by politicians and the church hierarchy at the First Council of Nicaea is the only one that most people are familiar with today.
Yet the final message of Yeshu’a has not been completely lost because it is still being offered by some non-dual guides, but it is not being offered in any of the other modern venues where his “teachings” are supposedly being taught.
Pope John Paul II and Understanding “the Geography of Gehanna”
As with all popes, some of John Paul II’s hidden actions coated him in a high level of blemishing, staining, and tarnishing (including the Vatican Bank / working with the Mafia / money laundering scandals;
the murder of certain people living within the Vatican walls; the widespread and well-known pedophilia in the churches all around the globe; the reassignment of priests to other churches after their crimes of child molestation were uncovered;
the paying out of billions of dollars to silence the families of abused children, etc., etc., etc.); nevertheless, his non-hidden and publicly-stated clarification regarding the misperceptions about “hell” were spot on.
The non-duality message is about being free of the influence and effects of dreamed-up, dualistic concepts so that that one can be at peace. To that end, Pope John II tried to neutralize the anxiety and neuroses and fear of burning and suffering for eternity in “hell.”
Also to that end, he said in a three-part series of addresses that persons should come to understand “the geography of Gehanna.”
“Gehanna”(with
a variety of spellings) refers to the place in the valley of Gihinnom, or in some
texts, just “Hinnom.” The location was used in the days of Yeshu’a as a
trash-burning site outside ancient Jerusalem.
In Gehanna, fires were kept burning 24-hours-per-day, seven days-per-week.
Earlier, in this “Valley of Eternal Flames,” as it came to be called, the
Canaanites had thrown into the
fires people serving as human sacrifice or people considered enemies . . .
(including the thousands of people killed in the seven wars started by the Jews in order to gain control of the lands which they claimed god awarded to them as a result of their being "His Chosen People." Quite a ranking, n'est-ce pas?)
Later, the Jewish people burned their city waste there and disposed of the bodies of dead animals and the bodies of state enemies who were given the death penalty or of slain criminals in those same flames.
“Gehanna” is the word used by Yeshu’a (who spoke Aramaic), but it was corrupted later into the Greek word “Hades,” which was translated into the English word even later as “hell.”
In
a book called the “book of Revelation,” which was written some 63 years after the crucifixion of Yeshu’a, the
concept of hell was expanded into a “fiery lake” of damnation and
geographically relocated from its original Middle Eastern desert site outside
Jerusalem and supposedly moved to the center of the earth.
Pope John Paul II said that heaven and hell are “not geographic places”
literally but are “states of mind.” Subsequently, his comments were labeled “misstatements”
in certain Catholic writings that originated in Rome and that dismissed his
pointers as nothing more than age-related ramblings.
Of course the majority of Catholics rejected his words about Gehanna offered by the previously “infallible” John Paul II. Why? Because of the magical thinking religion taught them to use, rather than preferring to question everything using reason and logic.
Teach people to believe that their bodies will magically reform after “death” and “burial” or “cremation” and be capable of burning in flames forever rather than having their physical, pain-aware bodies being annihilated (as happens after taking mahasamadhi and their bodies return to the universal pool of elements) and you have suckers who will buy into all of your nonsense;
teach people to believe that a priest can chant words over wine and bread and - via the magical act of transubstantiation - and teach them to believe that that wine and bread can be turned in real blood and real flesh;
teach them that it is “normal” and “sane” to consume those elements and engage in church generated-and-approved-and-used acts of vampirism and cannibalism and you have suckers who will buy into all of your nonsense;
then after all of that nonsense having been taught as fact and truth, you’re going to have about 1.3 billion of “the faithful” who can also believe that a ‘punishment-deserving’ human can survive as an eternal, pain-ridden body is cast into everlasting flames.
The point Yeshu’a and the pope were making was this: forget about seeking peace through outer resources. If you are separated from the inner resource that can assist you in recognizing the truth (and the false), you’ll live in misery rather than in peace. So he used this comparison:
you
can live a life as comfortable as living in the fine city of Jerusalem or as
miserable as living in Gehanna - the fiery trash dump. Yeshu’a never said that
there was an eternal hell - a place of fiery punishment. He said, “Heaven and earth
shall fade away” (as the conscious-energy fades away). That means‘either hell shall also fade away or there shall
someday only be hell’.”
Consider what he modeled in the end: he left the organized religion of his
youth, abandoned the teachings in their “holy texts,” and shared non-dual
pointers in homes or on hillsides and in other natural settings.
Whereas Yeshu’a during his pre-teen years passed along the Jewish dogma which he had been taught and with which he had been programmed and conditioned early on, in the end he offered the Far Eastern message of non-duality.
If you are not doing the same but are instead continuing to be involved with organized religion and believing in heaven and hell and in a punishing (yet “all-loving”?) god who will nevertheless subject you to pain and suffering forever, then you cannot possibly be “a Christ Follower.”
Instead, you are following a long line of old, corrupt, perverted, money-hungry, abnormal men who have been spreading the “Greatest BS Story Ever Told” for 2000 years while dressing up in their multi-thousand dollar, foo-foo garb with their wizard-style, pointy hats and their shiny patent leather shoes (with red being the favorite color of all for those shoes).
Such old men have fooled trillions of humans over the centuries with their magical-thinking-based BS, but you can take away their ability to fool you any longer if you but transition Steps One, Two and Three and abide at the Fourth Step level, which is a level of contentment with zero-concepts, no beliefs, no personal identities, and no beliefs in ‘Special Identities'."
What is required to abide in that Fourth Step level of freedom? Being un-taught. Submitting to the process of total un-learning.
So why did Maharaj (and I) abandon the last three of the original seven steps? Because he came to see that understanding (1) the two types of witnessing, (2) the-bogus-but-oh-so-revered “special Identities” of the Supreme Self, the Infinite Self, the Greatest Self, the Eternal Self, the True Self, etc., and (3) the Non-Beingness will not, in in the long haul, offer anything of use in the search for peace and contentment and understanding Love and the Oneness / the Unity.
He came to see, in fact, that rather being useful, all that became a deterrent to being able to differentiate between what is true and what is false.
To find what you are not is sufficient since anything beyond that is a search for an endless supply of dreamed up mirages. To find that you are not even one of the personas which you were assigned or have since assumed is enough . . . enough to return to you the ability to consciously choose what you say and do rather than having all of your thoughts and words and deeds determined by the hidden agendas of false identities or Identities.
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:
