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
ON NOTHINGNESS
Understand that everything which you take to be “spiritual” and “noumenal” is really nothing more than an accumulation of relative and phenomenal concepts.
According to the earliest teachings shared among the Indigenous Peoples, that which is “true” is only the space between exhalation and inhalation. Close enough.
“True Self” is not “God,” though many who have morphed this philosophy into a religion or a philosophy will adopt and defend that Self / God, false-self concept as well.
Moreover, there is no self or Self of any kind, be the selves believed to be “The Spouse,” “The Teacher,” “The Boss,” etc. or be the Self thought to be “The True Self,” “The Infinite Self,” “The Supreme Self,” “The Infinite Self,” etc.
All beliefs regarding self or Selves is (to use one of Maharaj’s favorite terms which his translators censured from his talks and transcriptions) total BS.
A temporary composite of temporarily-manifested elements which are cycling and the temporary presence of a certain quantity of oxygen which is cycling and constantly-cycling quantities of conscious-energy cannot be “a self.” Each self presently believed in was dreamed up by someone else long ago.
Moreover, a temporary, three-part composite of temporarily-manifested elements which are cycling and the temporary presence of a certain quantity of oxygen which is cycling and constantly-cycling quantities of conscious-energy cannot someday be a “Self.”
When mahasamadhi is taken, the elements will return to the universal pool of elements; the oxygen will return to the universal pool of oxygen; and the conscious-energy will return to the universal pool of unmanifested conscious-energy.
How could all of the dispersed elements and the dispersed oxygen / gas and the dispersed specks of conscious-energy possibly be found and gathered together and reunited in the exact space in which they were manifested?
They cannot. Now those trapped in their magical thinking patterns which were passed down via ignorant and insane programming, conditioning etc. have said to me, “Floyd, shut up! God can do anything!”
HUMANS HAVE DREAMED UP THOUSANDS OF GODS AND GODDESSES OVER THE MILLENNIA
F.: “So your god can do anything? Really? If that’s true, why can’t he address earth’s widespread ignorance and insanity and cruelty and suffering and misery and sickness and endless wars and plagues and starvation and school shootings and spousal abuse and child abuse and Jeep Wranglers with their 27 out of 100 reliability ranking?”
“He can! God is all-powerful and all-knowing, you ass! He can do anything?
F.: “Well then, isn’t that even worse? He could end all of that but doesn’t? Why?”
“Uhhh, He works in mysterious ways. It’s not for us to question what he does and does not do. We just have to have faith that he has a Divine Plan and there’s a reason for everything and all will turn out OK in the end.”
F.: “Geez. Now I’m really baffled. I figured he was like the thousands of gods and goddesses that human have dreamed up throughout the millennia -you know, a myth. But if he’s real yet does nothing to alleviate the suffering of humans he supposedly created, then wouldn’t that show that he’s just a totally incompetent deity? But now you’re telling me he’s not incompetent . . . that he’s just not helping? So you’re telling me he’s a cold-blooded psychopath, a guy that watches ‘His children’ suffering but then chooses to do nothing about it.”
F.: “So either your god is incompetent or he is a lazy, uncaring dotard who tolerates those labeled “perpetrators and aggressors” rather than caring for their victims and, therefore, just doesn’t give a damn. When my daughter was a helpless child, Job One for her mother and me was to protect her. So compared to your all-knowing and all-powerful deity, I have always been more kind and caring and loving than he? But you love and praise and glorify and worship and adore and exalt and venerate a guy who is the opposite, who is less kind and less caring and less loving than I?” Huuum.
Maharaj: “This is all a big hoax, a big fraud, created out of nothingness.”
Maharaj: “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.”
Ultimately, to try to support any “identity” alongside “the no-concept, non-dual Reality” is itself contradictory.
At the “highest level” of understanding, any “identity” is seen to be conceptual.
“Bliss”
is merely an undisturbed, unconcerned vibration. Contentment is enough.
The ultimate non-dual understanding is that there need not be any understanding. So relax.
When a “state” of zero concepts is reached, it is understood that there is no “identity” at all. Nothing from nothing leaves . . . nothing, not “SOMETHING.”
“Absolute,” “THAT,” “Brahman,” “God,” “energy,” “energy-matter,” “Consciousness,” “Awareness,” and “SOMETHING” are still man-made labels generated by persons.
Ultimately, to try to find out “who or what you are” is useless since there is no who to benefit, no user to use; on the other hand, finding out “who you are not” could eliminate unnatural and supernatural living and allow natural, AS IF living to happen throughout the remainder of the manifestation. You would no longer be driven by the hidden agendas of false personalities / identities / personas. That would also allow freedom to happen, and only if free can bliss, or at least contentment, happen.
Only when the addiction to the sound and the fury ends can the joy and bliss or contentment of the silence begin.
To look to the universe and to focus on the concept of “SOMETHING” prevents seeing “The Reality of the Emptiness,” “The Reality of the Void,” “The Reality of the Nothingness.”
Ego always wants more; freedom from the bondage of ego results in giving value to less.
Ego is about going and doing and zooming in order to collect more; freedom from the love of more allows the non-doingness (the beingness only) to manifest, at least temporarily.
Persons search for “the divine” and for an understanding of all that is “supernatural” when, in fact, there is nothing that is supernatural at all.
The result of their having been fooled is an endless stream of desires and fears among persons. Those create a constant sense of longing, and longing generates a constant sense of dis-ease.
The non-realized never come to the understanding that it is only from a condition of emptiness (empty of concepts, of identities, of a “mind”) that a sense of fulfillment can happen during the manifestation.
The realized can taste what the Italians call il dolce di fare niente - “the sweetness of doing nothing.” The fully realized will shift even beyond that and will understand something even simpler than “the sweetness of doing nothing,” namely, “il dolce di Niente” - “the sweetness of Nothing,” period.
Trace your roots. Go beyond the concepts of self and Self, beyond Consciousness, beyond Awareness, and even beyond the Absolute to the seminal Nothingness. Abide as such.
All identities are limiting. Limitations restrict freedom. Restrictions of freedom prevent the manifestation of happiness during the relative existence. Preoccupation with finding identities and assigning labels has the same effect.
If you would be free, align with the nothingness. Reach the space.
If you would be unconcerned, then all of your knowledge must go into liquidation. Has that happened? Have you reached the space?
“The supreme Absolute . . . is only a name for communication purposes.” (Maharaj)
Ultimately, even “nothing” as a concept is abandoned.
Non-duality endorses zero concepts. All of the mutated versions of Advaita, especially those which have been morphed into a religion or a philosophy by men with hidden agendas, are bastardizations . . . fabricated via the warped consciousness, accepted as truth by other specks of warped consciousness, and passed along now by such specks to other such specks.
There is a process whereby, from the nothingness, a particle can manifest. This entire universe began with the instantaneous manifestation of an atom within a vacuum.
It is from the nothingness that all manifestation happens spontaneously. After some groupings and ungroupings happen, the Nothingness will again prevail.
Prior to “this universe,” prior to Awareness, prior to Consciousness, and prior to manifestation, there was a “time” when only a vacuum was. Your “ultimate root” is even prior to time.
If you’re interested in oneness, understand that everything in this universe began as one, single atom that manifested within the emptiness of a vacuum.
Purged of all identities, ideas, beliefs, and concepts, the consciousness can function as an empty vacuum. Originally, the empty vacuum was undisturbed, unconcerned . . . without burden, without activity, without any doings.
The relative existence is miserable for those who are “full of it.” If you would be undisturbed, unconcerned, without burden, without activity, without any doingness, be the emptiness. Reach the space and abide as such.
Fear not . . . nothing is coming. No judgment . . . no endless punishment . . . no nmet desires . . . nothing. Nothing is coming. No endless celestial caroling . . . no heavenly brothels and no extraterrestrial orgies . . . no endless reward. Nothing, so enjoy, NOW.
Peace, Unity, Love, and Light to you.
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:
