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: THE VISION (continued)
THE VISION (continued)
You float with millions of your likenesses, or so it seems, flowing toward gigantic, granite steps cut amphitheater-like into the opposite wall of the cave. Yet the likenesses aren’t likenesses at all. They really are you! The steps ascend from underneath the waters, breaking the surface and then rising and narrowing upwards, converging on one point - at the door to the dome.
As
you near the steps, you feel your body stiffen again. This time you rotate in
the water so that you sail along face down. Just before your head might have
bumped into the steps, you are stopped. Your feet begin to be lowered, and you
find yourself in an upright position, standing on steps in chest-high water.
You begin to ascend the steps, leaving the water behind. You, and millions of Yous,”
walk in exactly the same fashion, moving toward the narrowing peak that leads
to the door of the dome. You wonder, How could so many be entering the dome? It
really isn’t that large, now that I can see it more clearly. It seems that much
that you perceived as more is really . . . less.
But
the nearer you all move toward the door, the more you witness a siphoning
effect of sorts. As all near the door, all seem to dissolve into a form of
light being drawn inside. As you approach, you feel the last remnants - remnants
of whatever you had formerly thought yourself to be - gradually fading away.
The dissolving seems to be occurring in slow motion, and you feel ecstatic. It’s
almost as if you are feeling blissful as your beingness seems to be dissolving
into non-beingness.
Finally, you merge with the all, into the light, and it seems . . . it seems
over. It seems as if everything is over, is finished, is very near complete.
Then some degree of consciousness seems to linger after this additional degree
of separation fades. Even without a physical body or an earthly mind or a
spiritual body, a subtle body detects a series of chambers leading to other
universes. All then fades into light. It is sensed that nothing represented in
the vision is the Real.
It is understood that only by peeling back all the layers of false identities -
including the body, the mind, the spiritual identity, the child ignorance, the
witness, even the “True or Infinite or Supreme Self” could that which one
really Is be known.
It
is understood that what you really are is That, That which is often removed
from awareness through many degrees of separation. In the fading moments, as
beingness transitions into non-beingness, you come to know that you are That
common building block of all in this universe, in All universes.
No wonder some can say, “I don’t even know who I am.” You finally realize how
far removed most are from the knowledge of the original unicity as a result of
conditioning, programming, and dogma. Then, before fading into the perfect
peace of rest in the totality, your last consciousness is of the process that
had moved that which you are from the rest state in the Absolute, past the non-being
and into being.
You see how you came to witness, how the learned ignorance corrupted the pure
consciousness of the child state, how spiritual and religious roles were
assigned, how mental identities were accumulated, and how dominated the
existence was by the fears and desires of the mind and personas. You understand.
And then, even that dissolves. THAT is all there is.
RELEVANT, ENLIGHTENING, BUT SELDOM-HEARD QUOTATIONS FROM SRI NISARGADATTA MAHARAJ
“The world is nothing but the picture of your own ‘I’ consciousness.”
“There are two witnessing stages.”
“Prior to taking this form, you were formless; spontaneously the form came, and when the form came there was a natural longing to return to the formless state. When you want to return to the formless, desireless state, then only you come here, to seek what you are. The consciousness has to know the consciousness. When it realizes itself, then only do you return to normal.”
“My true state, which is whole, undifferentiated, is beyond birth and death. I am never bound by my body and mind. I am limitless.”
“Out of my existence as the Noumenon has come this state of the phenomenal. The homogenous understands the play of the attributes, the projection of the mind, but the play, the projection of the mind, cannot understand the homogeneous.”
“Whatever spiritual things you aspire to know are all happening in this objective world, in the illusion. All this is happening in the objective world. All is dishonesty. There is no truth in this fraud.”
“If you are not, can others be there?”
“After the information given to you by the mother, that you are a boy or girl, all your further acquisitions are by hearsay.”
“Only that person will visit this place whose virtue and sin have come to an end.”
“There is no question of elevating to a higher level. Here it is only a question of understanding.”
“Both the mantra and the faith in the mantra will get dissolved.”
“Understand that it is not the individual which has consciousness; it is the consciousness which assumes innumerable forms.”
“There is no progress.”
“Go to zero concepts.”
“Both experience and experiencer will disappear.”
“First of all you identify something as being good or bad for yourself. Then, in an effort to acquire good or to get rid of the bad, you have invented a God. Then you worship such a God and ... you pray to that God for something good to happen to you.”
“I
am stabilized. There is no going into samadhi, or coming down from samadhi.
That is over.”
“From the Absolute no-knowing state, spontaneously, this consciousness ‘I am’
has appeared—there is no reason, no cause.”
“That mind-language will talk only about the impressions it has collected. The
knowledge ‘I Am’ is not a thought but observes the thoughts.”
“When you are thoroughly knowledgeable, you will come to the conclusion that
this beingness is also an illusion.”
“The nearer you get to the truth, the more you lose interest in worldly
affairs. Such a one will not have any interest in the world, but will act like
an ordinary person.”
“You are already in your true state. Because of the mind, duality comes in and
therefore you are afraid.”
“You have some experiences and you try to benefit from them, but remember that
whatever is going to be of use to you ultimately is going to harm you. Wherever
there is use, there is also dis-use in this world of duality. Whatever you like
is going to create harm for you. Whatever you like most is, in the end, going
to be most harmful for you.”
“Every organic being, whether an insect or a human, depends on food. All these
flowers, this foliage, is our antecedent state.”
“Before this knowledge ‘I Am’ appeared on you, you were absolutely unattached.
As soon as the knowledge dawned on you, you became attached to everything
around you. Only that false ‘I’ is attached. Everything is just happening, and
the false ‘I’ is taking the credit for doing things.”
[Emphasizing that you are not the body]: “When you travel in a car, are you the
car?”
“ . . . You are the light.”
“Whatever you have tried to understand during your spiritual search will prove
false.”
[Explaining why persons seem to grasp the understanding and then seemingly “lose”
it]: “You are so used to the support of concepts that when your concepts leave
you, although it is your true state, you get frightened and try to cling to
them again.”
“People who depend on the intellect only always will be swinging like a
pendulum.”
“At the time of the emotions, you were one with the emotions—you were not
witnessing.”
“ . . . You should go back, reverse, to the source.”
“Follow the same path by which you came.”
“From birth what has made the body grows? It is no power in the world. It is
the power of beingness, the atom, the consciousness . . . call it what you
will.”
“When the birth is disproved, the great noble meaning of spirituality and the meaning
of this world - everything - is disproved.”
“If they come face-to-face with that root, they will be stunned into silence.”
“I take my stand in the original state where I was not aware that I am.”
“From my angle, you are nothing. You have no identity.”
“I have no faith in anything which has ever been told, not even what has been
told by the Vedas. Only my own experience.”
“In order to manifest itself, the consciousness needs a frame, a particular
construct in which it can appear.”
“Consciousness is present everywhere, but knowledge of that consciousness is
dependent on the form.”
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:
