A GLOSSARY OF TERMS FOR THIS SITE, Part One

A site visitor wrote: I guess I’ve been what you could call a seeker but not a finder for several decades, then I found your advaita vedanta blog while doing some Googling and that started a month-long investigation into advaita. I’ve visited dozens of sites and read all your old posts and the recent ones you’ve made since your accident. (Hope you’re recovering well.) I’m captivated by what I’ve found so far but the terms you use are confusing. I Googled “Advaita terms” and have visited several sites, but none have helped me understand many of the expressions you use. Where else can I look?”

F.: Most books that discuss the Advaita teaching in depth will have a glossary in the back that might help you. Several other internet sites you may have not yet visited are possibly available. Also, a book you can read about at http://floydhenderson.com/theessence.htm provides an in-depth explanation of many of the terms used on this site and can serve as a starting point on the Advaita “journey.” For now, though, explanations of some of the terms used on the site will be offered since the goal is to use language that is as simple as possible, considering the subject matter. These may not necessarily conform to the definitions offered by other Advaitans (especially those who use the original Far Eastern terms) but will help you negotiate the postings on this particular site. Finally, you’ll be invited as usual to pause after the reading and take into consideration any pointers offered, even those conveyed via definitions in a glossary.

Person: Anyone not Realized; a persona; the outer physical self that is limited to self-identification with the body and with the mental roles dreamed up for the body to play; one who believes that the roles he/she plays actually identify who he/she is; one who believes his images are real; one who believes the images of others are real. [While the realized are free of ego and ego-states, persons are fully absorbed in false identities and are driven by the egotism that accompanies all assumed roles].
Realization: The understanding that results after completing the entire Advaita “journey” and being free of all personas (all false identities); the awareness or knowingness that results when one has been freed of the effects of programming and conditioning and no longer believes the lies that his culture claims are the truth; that “state” which results when the contaminated consciousness has been returned to a pure “condition” that is free of concepts, ideas, emotional intoxication and belief in the lies that had been taken as truth as a result of enculturation; the restoration of the consciousness That You Are to its pure "condition"; the "highest" knowledge (derived via meditation from within, never from without) that is the complete awareness of the unity of all things.
Persona: From Latin, meaning “mask”; one trapped in an ego-state, a false identity, a personality.
Ego: from Latin, meaning “I.” Specifically, it is the pronoun used by those who believe any false identity to be real; the source of perceived separation; the source of fighting to preserve image; it follows assumption of a false identity, is used to defend false roles, and always propels a role to “super” status. (For example, as soon as one assumes the role of “a wife,” she immediately becomes “Super Wife,” deserves nothing less than a “Super Husband,” and will expect to be treated in a super fashion. The case is the same with “husband” and the same with all roles. “Super Teacher” must have “Super Students” to survive, and “Super Teacher” will fight with non-super students as if a life-and-death struggle is under way, so thoroughly is the ego-state taken to be the real.)
Ego-state: that “state” in which a persona exists, taking false roles to be true identity. An ego-state is always identified by placing a word after “I am” (such as, “I am a spouse”; “I am a lover”; “I am an employee,” “I am a teacher,” etc.)
I Am, I Amness, Is-ness: The statement of awareness by Pure Consciousness which knows that it has temporarily manifested in a space, that it is the conscious-energy that is currently abiding in the state of Amness, but that also knows It Is That…the singular, most basic That Which All Is; the expression of Pure Consciousness.
True Self: the Pure, post-Realization Consciousness that witnesses purely and accurately as long as it is manifested, aware that no subject-object duality exists and aware of the Oneness.
Atonement: Not a reconciliation between humans and an imagined external power (conceived by man and bearing the image of men) but instead the awareness of the at-one-ment, of the Oneness, of the fact that all is only That and nothing more.
Please enter into the silence of contemplation. [To be continued]

Please note: Books ordered now can still be delivered before Christmas. The most popular among Advaitans this season is:

From the I to the Absolute (A Seven-Step Journey to Reality)

Available to order at http://floydhenderson.com/order.htm. (Limited quantities in stock until after the first of the year.) If sending as a gift to a friend or relative, please put in the Message Box at the bottom of the order page their name and mailing information and the message you'd like enclosed with the gift.

SPONTANEOUS (NATURAL) LIVING, Part Two

[Continued from 13 December 2005] Yesterday’s final pointer: “The realized have transcended both the false self/selves and even the True Self and even the Supreme SELF, so all that happens among the realized merely happens spontaneously. Agenda-less living is the highest form of bliss in this relative existence.”

F.: Conversely, persons (those assuming false roles and assuming phony identities and projecting various images that they would have others take to be the real) are not in touch with the True Self, with the pure consciousness. Thus, they are having to experience something and to do something second-by-second without rest or break. They might claim that they are living spontaneously and naturally, but chaotic living should never be confused with spontaneous living. No spontaneity (agenda-less, natural living) exists among persons since their ego-states always inspire them to desire, to fear, to manipulate, and to work on body image and their other false images. Among persons, what actually exists is an addiction to chaos. Those absorbed in body-mind-personality identity have not transcended this realm and therefore experience the “stuff” that personas experience: tension, stress, strain, pressure, anticipation, ridigity and a frequent sense of urgency and panic on one end of the spectrum or boredom and depression if at the other end of the spectrum. Frienzied living might mistakenly be taken to be “spontaneous”; the immobilized life of the depressed might be mistaken as “a calm life”; or the misery of the lives of boredom lived by those in the rut of doing the same thing year after year after year might be minimized by saying “I love my job”; yet none of those modes of existence have anything to do with natural, spontaneous living.

Limited as persons are to identification with the body and the roles that bodies play, their “understanding” is also limited to three-dimensions: the height, width and depth of the body. Persons are preoccupied with those dimensions, feeling too short or too tall, too wide here or not protruding enough there. They haven’t a clue about the limitless freedom of the fourth dimension. Persons, being jerked about by the agendas of their ego-states and roles and false identities, are dreaming that they are choosing to do what they do and to think what they think and to feel the way they feel. In truth, they are thinking and emoting and behaving according to very old programming tapes that are leaving them under the control of very old, corrupted influences.

As a result of being driven by the ideas and beliefs of others, persons have no choice so they cannot live spontaneously. Since they have not transcended their false self/selves and since that results in their accepting the limited identify of the body-mind-personality triad as defining “who and what they are,” they are driven by those roles and their limited identity and by agendas that are usually even hidden from their own awareness as well. They haven’t a clue about how That Which They Truly Are came to be manifested in the space called the “body.” They have no knowledge of who or What They Truly Are. They do not know what happens when the consciousness is no longer manifested in the space. They long to live forever, really, as a body-mind-personality, but they will settle for being a Supreme SELF someday, enjoying the physical rewards of an eternal life there. With the ever-present desire to be labeled “good” and to avoid the “bad”—along with the ever-present desire to get rewards now and later and to avoid punishment now and later—they lived trapped in the agendas of their false roles and never know the freedom and peace and bliss of spontaneous, natural living; however, spontaneous, natural living is attainable by anyone willing to take all seven steps of the “journey” to Full Realization. Please enter the silence of contemplation.

SPONTANEOUS (NATURAL) LIVING, Part One

A site visitor asked: “Why would you call natural living spontaneous? Please elaborate.”

F.: Consider first the notion of “being driven.” If you are in a car and are being driven, you are either in the passenger seat or the rear seat. In neither case do you really have any true input into where you’re going, where you’re being taken. Persons, always driven, live a frustrating life, wishing for control and an ability to determine direction. The realized are not concerned about controlling happenings in the relative existence, and they are not being driven by inner turmoil or outer forces or imaginary powers. The realized witness and live the relative existence as it happens in the same way that a deer lives. How?

Consciousness can witness all but can experience nothing. Like the deer that merely moves through its manifestation, pure consciousness cannot experience tension, stress, strain, pressure, anticipation, or ridigity. Sure, a deer can feel a sense of urgency if threatened, at which instant it will move away from perceived danger, but it will not experience emotional intoxication and a life burdened with one overreaction after another; further, the deer seldom mistakes a non-dangerous posture as a threat. Only persons can experience that kind of emotional intoxication and fixate in that insane state, as happens to “husband” when “wife” walks away from him. Impartial observers would see that the action of walking away implies no threat at all. It is actually a movement that all of nature (meaning among all that are living naturally) would see as non-threatening. Only a person, absorbed in a false identity, will perceive a non-life-threatening act as a life-threatening act. So influential is the misconception that the false role is real that "husband" can be taken as a true identity and “husband without wife” can be taken to be so real that it seems a deadly state. Thus, it often is...with half of all murders in urban areas happening when one former mate kills another during a breakup. No deer has ever died at the hands of a jealous mate that is reacting from a state of emotional intoxication as a result of taking an ego-state to be the Real Self. Among persons, assumed roles like "wife" or “husband” are regularly convinced that they cannot exist without their co-dependent counter-role (which is the second role that all ego-states require to “exist”).

The realized are beyond all that, having been rocketed into the fourth dimension (beyond height, width, and depth and beyond the confines of this closed, physical realm call “earth”). Freed of the anxiety that accompanies ego-states, the realized have no fear of death (which results in having no fear of living as well). That allows for spontaneous living, which is also stable living--freed of the chaos of ego-states and the playing of phony roles.

To the contrary, those living in ego-states fight continuously for the imagined preservation of each roles they assume. With an agenda, persons will attempt to use manipulation to preserve their image, to satisfy their desires, and to alleviate their fears. Living with such an agenda, all words spoken and all subsequent behaviors will be calculated, not spontaneous. Living in a calculated and manipulative fashion becomes a job in and of itself, which is quite unnatural. The Realized witness things as they happen rather than fighting to assume control over all that happens. Deer, living naturally, have no such jobs that are rooted in self-deception or in deception and manipulation of other deer. An existence of manipulation and deception and efforts to control is ultimately a very limited existence, confined within the boundaries of a petty, artificial agenda that drives persons along a very narrow road. The Realized, conversely, know They Are the boundless and limitless THAT which has no needs, which suffers none of the constant frustration of unfulfilled desires, and which allows for a spontaneous, agenda-less existence.

While the body elements and the breath are trapped within the closed and limited confines of this planet’s atmosphere (rocket travel nothingstanding) it is the consciousness only that can move beyond the limitations and travel the limitless depths of this universe and all universes. The realized have transcended both the false self/selves and even the True Self and even the Supreme SELF, so all that happens among the realized merely happens spontaneously. Agenda-less living is the highest form of bliss in this relative existence. Please enter the silence of contemplation. [To be continued 14 December 2005]
WEDNESDAY: Spontaneous (Natural) Living, Part Two
THURSDAY: A visitor asks for a glossary of terms used on the site.

YOUR EARLIEST DUALITIES: “Good-Bad,” “Best-Worst,” “Punishment-Reward,” and “Heaven-Hell,” Part Three

The site visitor wrote: "I live my life with my head in the clouds but with my feet planted firmly on the ground, so there is no magical thinking or fantasy involved with my spiritual way of living. (I also find you to be very rude).” To continue:

F.: The author you’re quoting, Bill W., realized that many attracted to his first book and to the program he co-founded were becoming physically sober but at the expense of becoming spiritually intoxicated. They believed his notion that one can live in the dualistic fashion of having one’s head in the clouds while having one’s feet planted firmly on the ground. Yet he saw so much spiritual intoxication resulting from his words that he would later warn that spiritual sobriety was to be sought as earnestly as physical sobriety.

Religious and/or spiritual roles are still roles, and no roles can define Who You Truly Are. Bill W. agreed with Shakespeare’s advice: “To thine own self be true.” Who is that Self, that True Self? It certainly is not any role that can be played, including religious roles and spiritual roles. They are phases to be transcended on the path to finding the Great Reality he spoke of. Further, compartmentalization cannot occur. One cannot have his head in the clouds but have his feet planted firmly (that is, fixed in reality). Dual-minded people are unstable in all ways, it was said.

Yet Bill W. did offer at a core level an Advaita message by writing...
1. that The Great Reality can only be found within
2. that most of the founders came to realize that the "higher power" is an inner resource, not an outer resource of male gender
3. that what is to be sought ultimately is a reconnection with the intuitive sixth sense
4. along with residing in the fourth dimension (which is merely in the pure consciousness that is beyond three-dimensional body identification, limited to the three dimensions of height, width, and depth).

Activating the sixth sense results in natural living. Deactivating the thinking mind frees persons of the illusions of magical thinking that is the basis of spiritual intoxication and supernatural living. Freedom from assuming false identities leads to freedom from unnatural living. Seven steps are required on the journey from (a) believing that the body and the false mental selves define who you are to (b) realizing Who/What You Truly Are. The religious and/or spiritual roles are a step, yes, but they are only the third step. Those who do not transcend those roles will never be fully Realized…will never be fully in touch with Reality. Finally, being in touch with reality leaves one out of touch with the false identities/ego-states. Out of touch with ego, no persona will exist that can take offense at perceived "rudeness." Until the final ego-state is abandoned, no peace can exist since ego fights for its existence, fights for the respect it thinks it is due, and fights for its (artificial, imagined) existence. Please enter the silence of contemplation.

TOMORROW: Spontaneous Living