REALIZATION PRECLUDES EMOTIONAL INTOXICATION, BUT IT DOES NOT BLOCK THE ABILITY TO FEEL

From a site visitor: I’ve looked at this Advaita Vedanta thing long enough to figure out that Realization leaves you cold and and uncaring. I’d rather feel bad ever now and then so I can feel good most of the rest of the time. To hell with people who are cold and uncaring.

F.: The misunderstanding you have shown has been discussed on the site before, but your comments will be addressed nevertheless. You have provided evidence once more of the fact that (a) it is persons who draw conclusions without facts and that (b) it is persons who express very strong opinions on experiences that they have never had. Realize first and then discuss what it is like to be Realized.

The Realized do not emote since emotional intoxication is restricted to the realm of persons/personas/personality; yet the Realized—in the AS IF style of living—feel far more, love far move, and care far more than any non-Realized person. Once you know the unicity, then all that happens to all also happens to the Realized. The following pointer was offered earlier on this site:

Ego is believing that there’s a vast multiplicity arranged in a hierarchy and that you’re the pinnacle; humility is knowing that you’re nothing, no-thing; love is knowing that You, with a capital ‘Y,’ Are everything.

The Realized feel, but the feelings are witnessed as they rise and fall…without attachment, without emotional intoxication, and without triggering a chain of destructive actions and reactions (all the stuff of the relative existence, of course). The following pointer, however, was also offered to a site visitor who asked, “Can you, from the position of “As If Living” that follows Full Realization, feel and share Unconditional Love?” The answer:

Not only can You, but You shall. In fact, once again, no choice will be involved. It will just happen...spontaneously and unequivocally.

Last night, the news reported that men in Zambia are knowingly passing along their AIDS infections to young girls who are selling their virginity to earn money for food. The men are buying their virginity because they believe that sex with a virgin will cure AIDS. The reporter also discussed the high child-mother mortality rates in Zambia. They showed women lying on dirt floors as they give birth; they reported that women are using pieces of sawgrass to cut umbilical cords, thereby contracting infections and dying from sepsis.

Then, the reporter showed a sixty-cent “birthing kit” that contains a piece of plastic that a woman could lie on during the birthing process to prevent contact with the dirt and a sterile razor blade that could be used to cut the cord without causing infection. When the contents of the sixty-cent bag are used, mother and child have a 13 times greater chance of surviving, but most women cannot afford the bag. Fifty-percent of the time, they and their child will die for lack of a piece of plastic and a razor blade.

The Realized, watching that report and literally being the unicity, felt exactly what the mothers felt as 50% of their children die within five days of birth. The Realized, literally being the unicity, know exactly how the teen girls feel when they are informed that they have been knowingly infected. Those who watched that report and felt no tightening of the throat or a knotting of the stomach were not the Realized, so you are now invited to figure out who the persons are on the planet who are actually “cold and uncaring.”

Furthermore, because persons project their truth onto others, any who are pointing a finger toward the Realized and making charges about being “cold and uncaring” are revealing their own true nature…not the nature of the Realized. You are invited to take your own inventory before taking the inventory of “others”…or not. You are invited to consider questioning your self rather than “others”…or not. You are invited to actually have an experience before you draw conclusions about that experience…or not. And again, you are invited to Realize first and then discuss what it is like to be Realized…or not. Please enter the silence of contemplation.
TOMORROW: Consciousness Is
NOTE: Some have e-mailed to say they’re trying to select some readings but don’t know where to begin after seeing all the options offered on the site. This is for them:
REALIZATION RESOURCES:
WORKING ON LEARNING TO QUESTION IT ALL AND BEING FREE OF THE FALSE (BUT HONORED) CONCEPTS AND BELIEFS OF YOUR CULTURE?
Read IT’S ALL BULLSHIT (<-- click here for synopsis)

WORKING ON BEING FREE OF RELIGIOUS PROGRAMMING AND DOGMA? Read SPIRITUAL SOBRIETY(<-- click here for synopsis)

WORKING ON BEING FREE OF BODY AND MIND IDENTIFICATION? Read WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I DIE? (<-- click here for synopsis)

WORKING ON BEING FREE OF MIND AND PERSONALITY IDENTIFICATION? Read LIBERATION (<-- click here for synopsis)

Read THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS “PEACE OF MIND” (<-- click here for synopsis)

WORKING ON “THE FINAL PIECE” AND PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER? Read THE ESSENCE OF THE TEACHINGS (<-- click here for synopsis)

Read FROM THE I TO THE ABSOLUTE (A Seven-Step Journey to Reality) (<-- click here for synopsis)

WORKING ON ISSUES ARISING IN RELATIONSHIPS WITH THE NON-REALIZED AND ON FINDING SOLUTIONS TO “RELATIONSHIP PROBLEMS”? Read CASTING LIGHT ON THE DARK SIDE OF RELATIONSHIPS (<-- click here for synopsis)

INTERESTED IN A NOVEL STARRING A REALIZED ADVENTURER?

Read THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF WARS (<-- click here for synopsis)

INTERESTED IN A NOVEL WITH A CHARACTER WHO EVOLVES FROM A LIFE OF MISERY TO THE PEACE OF REALIZATION?

Read: The Twice-Stolen Necklace Murders

Order from Amazon

INTERESTED IN RESTORING FINANCIAL SANITY AND USING A ZEN APPROACH TO HANDLING FINANCES BY USE OF A METHOD THAT HAS A PROVEN RECORD?

Read LIVING WITHIN YOUR MEANS (<-- click here for synopsis)

Read ENDING FINANCIAL PROBLEMS (<-- click here for synopsis)

INTERESTED IN AN ADVAITA VEDANTA RETREAT? (<-- click here for information)

DISCARDING “KNOWLEDGE” WHEN IT IS ACTUALLY LEARNED IGNORANCE, Part Six, The Conclusion

Among religions and philosophies, there is no other means that can produce the necessary brain-flush save completion of the entire Advaita “journey” which invites the dissolution of all of the contamination that is “the mind.”

From a site visitor: I’m totally westernized--gulity as charged--so I’ve been trained to give great value to knowledge, which you’ve been knocking. I’m at least willing to listen to you and see if I can get your point, but looking at your bio info, you obviously attended university, acquired enough knowledge to convince someone that they should pay you to use that knowledge, and then paid your bills through use of that knowledge. Your vast knowledge in many subject areas is obvious. So, what’s the deal? Larry

F.: It should be seen, therefore, that (via the Advaita Teachings) you are being invited to discard all of the warped and perverted and insane teachings set forth by “holy” men and by all others. Some have asked, “But how am I to know if an Advaitan Teacher in not warped or perverted or insane?” and that question should be asked. First, you will not be asked to give away a percentage of your money for life or to make extravagant donations to “the latest cause,” to satiate the teachers’ sexual proclivities, to attend meetings or services for life, or to accept unquestioningly any pointers that the teacher offers.

If the teachings are twisted to encourage any of those four, leave. Find another teacher. Reliance upon the teachers’ words should only happen after evidence has demonstrated that the teacher is offering un-self-ish, sane and rational pointers instead of magical thinking and self-serving concepts. Then only should the teachings be accepted. Another test is this: the message will always be about getting rid of, never about accumulation. Stage Four of the Five Stages to Full Realization (discussed in THE ESSENCE OF THE TEACHINGS) is the de-accumulation stage that must happen if AS IF living is to follow. A sure evidence that Realization has not happened is a continuing desire, and the desire to accumulate is a doubly-strong warning.

A final point on this subject of guru-selection: the Realization process is not psychotherapy, though many nowadays try to use it as such. Yes, there might be some psychological concepts/thorns that can facilitate the removal of thorns before all of the concepts are tossed. But another problem is being seen lately among many seekers that should be noted: though AS IF living in the relative existence happens post-Realization, dissociative disorders and attachment disorders should not be mistaken for the non-attachment that accompanies Realization. Yet that is happening. Realization is not about "escapism" or "surrender" or "denial." "Giving up" belief in illusions or "giving up" attachment to worldly "stuff" is not about "giving up" on the relative existence.

That "death of ego" that is talked about does not require physical death of the body-mind as well, only a willingness to stop accepting those limited identifications as Self. Many have been seen in recent years who have suffered from problems with mental-emotional roots beyond those addressed by Advaita Teachings. (Those trying to understand their suffering do become seekers more often than those not in touch with their own pain, yes?) Many of those seekers "find" Advaita and use it to try to whitewash or understand their trauma or to rewrite their nightmarish experiences as something spiritual in nature. Many is the U.S. are even programmed by the dominant dogma to accept suffering as being "beneficial" in some "long run."

That whitewashing or rewriting or supposed "understanding" is another self-delusion that will perpetuate entrapment in personality and in personality's accompanying personality disorders. Dissociative disorders, death wishes, attachment disorders, and depression's acquiesence that is often mislabeled as "acceptance"--while all the stuff of the relative existence--are not treated by the seven-steps to Realization. In this age in which "minds" are being formed that are reaching all-time highs in their level of distortion (and in which a bastardized food supply is negatively impacting organs that affect mental-emotional conditions as well) be wary of any individual that claims that he/she has found the secret that can address and heal everything that needs addressing and healing. Sometimes, professionals are required to treat the part that Advaita was not intended to treat. The preponderance of self-help and twelve-step groups nowadays has given "armchair psychology" a respectability that can prove fatal.

To transcend identification with the body and mind does not mean that body and mind are to be neglected for the remainder of the manifestation. Indeed, when Realization frees persons of body-mind identification and restores sanity, subsequent body requirements or mental health needs are typically addressed, not ignored by use of another psychological tool called "denial." As long as a "mind" remains, it can require varied levels of treatment.

Finally, seekers who come here for a retreat or who arrange for satsanga and expect to “receive” are misguided. Those who come to this site hoping to “gain something” are mistaken. If the pointers hit their mark and shift the consciousness through each of the seven levels of the re-purification process, then you will not know more. Instead, the relative ignorance will be gone; the relative and the worldly and the other-worldly knowledge will be discarded; and that which remains will be the no-concept, non-dual Reality that You Are.

And guess what, Larry: that/That is all there ever was to begin with! This is the point to grasp. Suppose you approach a grocer and say, “I’d like to have some broccoli,” whereupon he hands you some broccoli. How insane would it be for you to look at it and then say to the grocer, “No, this is not broccoli—this is stalks and florets and stems and heads. I want some broccoli.” If he were to suggest that you are perceiving wrongly and are mistakenly believing that the various parts that you are labeling are something different from the whole “broccoli,” then you would likely think him insane.

That is the way it is with this understanding: a few have Realized and know “it’s all broccoli and nothing but broccoli” so to speak, but most persons will imagine all kinds of separate parts and will never come to understand that “it’s all just broccoli, period.” So it is. The invitation for you is to forget about trying to accumulate a body of knowledge and try to understand instead. What you think you see, you are seeing in error. Any knowledge that you cling to, you cling to in error. If you study broccoli until you know more about broccoli than any other person on the planet, it will not change the taste of the broccoli or the chemistry of the broccoli. Therefore, Larry, why not just eat your broccoli and then relax? Please enter the silence of contemplation.

PHYSICIANS DO NOT TREAT ILLNESSES BY SAYING, "WELL, JUST STOP BEING SICK"

From a site visitor: in that recent disucssion on transcendence, you spoke of allowing the ego to “die” and qualified the use of die to mean let the ego cease or disappear. Better than nothing, But why suggest that something as false as the ego can either appear or disappear? Why give credibility to something that is just a concept and talk about it didappearing when it has never appeared. It’s like “the bondage of ego.” How can one be bound by that which does not exist? Sounds pretty neo to me. I think you blew it on this one. Yes or no?

F.: First, nothing dealing with anything relative is real, including the “death” of ego, the disappearance of ego, as well as the perceived “bondage” by ego. However, each seeker’s query is addressed at the level where the seeker’s words reveal that seeker to be. Even as that approach is taken, the ultimate intent and consistent focus of these talks and writings is always for the non-dual, no-concept nature of Reality to be revealed to all seekers. In order for that truth to be seen, all lies must be seen first. For details, see www.advaita.org.uk/discourses/teachers/relevance_henderson.htm

The Teachings, therefore, must always begin with a discussion of illusion, never with a discussion of Reality. For example, in the recent series on “Transcendence” that you reference, the illusion of “Husband” was discussed. How could a discussion of the fact that “Husband” is illusory be construed as giving “credibility” to the illusion? You might ask, “Can the ‘Real You’ be bound by ego or anything else?” Of course not, but millions of persons each day, bound as they are by belief in illusions, suffer nevertheless from phobias that have no basis in reality. Yet the suffering certainly seems very real to them.

Take, for example “nephophobia,” a fear of clouds. You probably know that clouds are not even clouds. You might know that what is called “a cloud” is just a conglomeration of very fine water droplets or ice particles suspended in the atmosphere at high altitudes. You can offer that scientific truth to one suffering from nephophobia, but that alone is not likely to alleviate the misery of his/her relative existence. Until treated and released from the bondage of their illusion-based fear of “clouds,” the sufferers of nephophobia will still look at a cloud and become breathless, will sweat profusely, and will experience nausea and a dry mouth; will feel sick and will shake; will suffer from heart palpitations; will suffer an inability to speak or think clearly; will sense a fear of dying; and will develop a sensation of detachment from reality or a full blown anxiety attack. Their phobia significantly impacts the quality of their lives (all this relatively speaking) and often keeps sufferers apart from loved ones and business associates, causes loss of employment, and robs them of the ability to complete even the most basic tasks necessary for survival.

To say that such persons cannot possibly suffer from the “bondage of clouds” is to ignore the enormous effect that belief in an illusion has on those persons during their relative existence. If semantics is the issue, then it might be said more accurately that “nephophobiacs are suffering from a delusional belief in clouds, which are nothing more than an illusion which results from faulty perception and which generate fears with no basis.” Fine. The same can be said of every type of suffering that persons experience. That statement paraphrases perfectly one of the most basic of the Advaita Teachings.

Post-manifestation, there is no awareness and there is no “life” or “living.” These Teachings can have no effect other than in the relative existence. So if the Teachings do not free persons of the most palpable effects that illusions have on the relative existence of persons, then why offer the Teachings at all?

All writings here, and all talks during satsangas, focus on guiding seekers to the understanding of their true nature in order for natural “living” to happen for as long as the consciousness is manifested. That does, however, allow for a secondary consequence: namely, that Advaita’s noumenal teachings, if understood, will eliminate “personal,” phenomenal suffering during the manifestation. The “path” on the “journey” through which protégés are guided is direct, containing only seven steps that are required for the re-purification of the consciousness, allowing persons to see that they are not who they take themselves to be, inviting them to set aside body-mind-personality, and allowing abidance as the Absolute. It is all about forfeiting belief in illusions in order to be in touch with reality.

Finally, for clarification, it should be pointed out as well that no “neo-Advaita” approach is used here. How could that which guides seekers to the Original Understanding—an understanding that preceded not only certain respected “holy” writings or “special” writings or “inspired” writings but in fact preceded writing itself—be considered “neo”? If one wants to tell others what someone else said or what someone else wrote, so be it. No effort will come forth from here to dissuade their practice.

On this site, however, the invitation is never to share what someone else said, what someone else wrote, or what someone else knew. The invitation is to find that which You know. What is it that You have always known but have forgotten? No one will ever be invited to become a "devotée" or to consider “floyd” as his/her eternal guru. The invitation here is know that there is no “floyd” and that there is no “devotée.” The invitation here is to tap into that inner guru (that inner resource, that vestige of pure consciousness that has been buried via years of programming and conditioning and enculturation) and to thereby forfeit belief in all lies in order to find the truth that cannot be stated. Please enter the silence of contemplation.