PREPARATION TO RECEIVE THE MESSAGE AND THEN RECEIVING THE MESSAGE

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FROM A SITE VISITOR: [Received 15 March 2007] I’ve spent some time reading all the book descriptions on your site and I want to buy some of the non-duality books but there’s a wide variety and no directions about the order to read them in. Should they be read in the order on the home page? Tell me what I need and the order I need to read them in. Also, I don’t see a package on the order page that includes all of the Advaita books. Any discounts if I order them all? Philip

F.: Hello, Philip. First, the books are not to be read in the order shown on the home page. Your e-mail does not reveal where you might be on the “path” (or if you are not even on that “path” but preparing to begin the “journey”). Since this has not been fully addressed on the site during the last two years, the order for reading—from “the most basic” to “the most advanced”—will be provided for you (and for the other site visitors who have asked the same question). You can read the information below on each and determine what might be relevant for you. The first four books on the list are used to prepare you for receiving the final teachings, preparation that cannot be skipped or avoided. (As for quantity discounts, another site visitor just ordered all six books and his price was reduced from $87 + S&H to $75 + S&H. You and other site visitors are welcomed to the same discount if ordering all six). Finally, the Daily Meditation Guides and the CD are for those who want tools to use throughout the year. They can be researched separately on the site.

IT ALL BULLSHIT (And Why Knowing It Sets You Free)
This book contains a series of “propositionalities” that would be worthless except to the extent that they prepare all seekers to become willing to question the sacred cows of your culture. Ultimately, this all deals more with the relative than the Absolute, but one cannot abide sanely as the Absolute without first seeing the insanity of the relative. If one can question his/her core beliefs that are generally held sacred by the masses, then discarding all of the other nonsense of the culture might become easier. That alone can begin the "journey" toward total freedom and total peace. Few will ever be able to discard the minor cows, much less these six sacred cows, but this book is an invitation to begin questioning what is usually taken for granted after years of programming and enculturation.

SPIRITUAL SOBRIETY (Recovering What Religions Lost)
This book is for the 6 billion+ persons who have been programmed with the dogma of the planets’ religions, especially the three outgrowths of Abraham: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It is also for those who are playing a spiritual role or who have become spiritually intoxicated (which prevents moving beyond all role-playing and Realizing Fully). It's intent is to allow persons on the "path" to transition beyond the religious and spiritual identities that are assumed at the third step of the "journey." The focus is on those three since their dogma has programmed—and corrupted the consciousness of—most persons on the planet, but the overall message reflects the truth about all religions and all “spiritual” programs or movements as well. The content reveals the 16 tenets common to those religions which evolved from the killing of virgins; exposes the contradictions of those teachings; discusses the glorification of suffering; catalogues and exposes the false promises that are made in order to attract and control the masses; explains the way that their leaders' addiction to power drives them to manipulate their followers; exposes the lies upon which those institutions are based; identifies the results of religious and spiritual intoxication; and uncovers the mental disorders that result from strict adherence to the dogma and ideology. If you have been exposed to any religious or spiritual indoctrination, or if you live in a culture where the leaders have been indoctrinated by religion, this one should be read.

LIBERATION
This book helps remove the next barrier to Realization: personality. After being freed from body-mind identification, transitioning into the next step begins the process of being freed from identification with personas and being unconsciously controlled by personality traits. This book studies the nine most basic persona types as identified in the enneagram method and offers the way to be freed of the influences of personality.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I DIE?
This book offers the opportunity to shift to the next level of understanding, the level at which you come to realize that you cannot die since you were not born. Fears generally begin to fall away after reading this work. The Foreword offers this: “If you find the answer to ‘What happens when I die—what happens after the body ends?’ the result will be that the remainder of your relative existence will be marked by an incredible lightness of being. Persons addicted to chaos will hate that possibility. Those seeking to be restored to sanity will seek the answer until it is found.”

THE ESSENCE OF THE TEACHINGS
This book is used by many as a primer and companion piece to FROM THE I TO THE ABSOLUTE. "PART ONE" includes answers to frequently-asked questions and provides an overview of terms used during the teachings. "PART TWO" provides information for those who are “close” but haven’t yet “gotten it.” "PART TWO" moves the seeker to a depth of understanding that sets the stage for the final message in FROM THE I TO THE ABSOLUTE.

FROM THE I TO THE ABSOLUTE (A Seven-Step Journey to Reality)
Most of the so-called “Spiritual Masters” addressed all of the steps that must be taken, in a very exact order, to shift from identifying with the false “I” to abiding as the Absolute. All of the steps (or “stages” to use Maharaj’s term) have been discussed for centuries, but this is the first time that the steps have been offered and explained in simple language in the exact order in which the seven steps must be taken in order to move from “the lie of the I” to Full Realization. Most of the content of this book contains the complete set of transcripts from audio tapings of a series of satsang sessions that guided the participants from step one to Realization. Some have said that by reading the questions from seekers and the immediate responses by floyd (all offered in their original easy, conversational format), they have felt as if they were present in the room, actively engaged in the satsang along with fellow seekers. This one should be read last.

See the links above to order.

Know that even after the readings, some require a brief period of tutelage, one-on-one, with a Realized teacher for the full and final and ultimate transition to happen. The Advaita site provides one opportunity for such exchanges and face-to-face satsang is also available. [ www.advaitavedantaretreats.blogspot.com ]

So, Philip, there you have the order in which the books are to be read. Best regards as you either begin (or finally complete) the “journey.” If you want to order all six books and get that discount, write a note to that effect in the message box at the links provided above.

NOTE: Postings will continue Thursday. Traveling to Austin, Texas to present the Teachings to a group there. On Thursday, a new series begins entitled, "MIND" and "MEMORIES": When Nature's "Assets" Are Warped into "Liabilities"

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.

DISCARDING “KNOWLEDGE” WHEN IT IS ACTUALLY LEARNED IGNORANCE, Part Five

Why do so few Realize? (1) Pride in worldly knowledge and attachment to religious and/or spiritual knowledge. (2) Use of a "backwards" approach, namely, knowledge accumulation vs. ignorance de-accumulation. And that is why worldwide ignorance has not been stamped out and will not be stamped out, because persons believe that the planet-wide epidemic of ignorance could be solved if only people would acquire more knowledge. The Advaitin understands that the knowledge is the ignorance and that the ignorance is the knowledge. The ignorance is that which the masses have been taught and have learned, and their ignorance will only be compounded if more of the same type knowledge is injected into the equation. Ignorance could be stamped out if persons were to forfeit their revered beliefs and ideas and concepts and dogma. Since that happens so rarely but is a prerequisite for Realization, only a few will ever Realize (that is, be in touch with reality...be restored to sanity). 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.: In yesterday’s example of a curtain blocking the witnessing of the lilies, take the lilies to represent Reality and the curtain to be the learned ignorance that blocks seeing Reality. To remove the curtain of ignorance does not require more knowledge as much as it requires seeing ignorance as ignorance and seeing most "knowledge" as ignorance as well. Take the curtain’s removal and the witnessing of the lilies to represent that “Oh my gosh!” moment of Realization when (after preparation happens, after envisioning and reading happen, after discussion with a Realized Teacher happens, and after the readiness thereby comes about) all of the knowledge/learned ignorance fades away, body-mind identity ends, the influences of personality end, and Full Realization happens. Yet nothing prevents Realization more than assuming personas (be they “The Perfectionist,” “The Controller,” “The Religious One” or “The Spiritual Giant.” And nothing supports those last two ego-states more, and nothing perpetuates entrapment in the ignorance of concepts more, than the all-time leading source of concepts: religion (or even philosophies such as Advaita when they are distorted into religions).

The Advaita process will reveal to you the ignorance of believing in concepts, dogma, and ideas that (1) were dreamed up ages ago by shrewd men with an agenda to control the ignorant masses (especially females), that (2) have been passed down as “religious or spiritual knowledge” for millennia, and that (3) must be removed if truth is be seen. Advaita is based in reason and logic, so no Realized Advaitin would insult seekers (especially “females”) by suggesting they learn the chauvinistic tales in the “holy” writings of the three dominant religions. Why accept teachings that pass on an irrational, subliminal message about how much “worse” women are than men, such as Eve who tempted a formerly “good” man; such as Lot’s wife who (unlike her “good” husband who did not look back) was turned into a pillar of salt because she did; or such as Mary Magdalene who was revamped as “a whore” when the Christian Bible was totally re-written, and its message further distorted, in the 4th century.

Advaita would never reinforce such vilification of females, portraying them (in religious texts that are described as “the inspired word of God”) as the “bad” influence on pitiable men who were previously “good” before dealing with “evil” women…women such as Jezebel, Rahab, Potiphar’s wife, and Delilah. Females would never be encouraged by an Advaitin to accept teachings in “holy” texts that denigrate women (or men). Curiously, three billion women on the planet do go right along with all of that sexist nonsense, evidence of the degree to which programming and conditioning can result in causing some otherwise intelligent people to be totally blind and totally fooled. And the fact that so many women continue to honor those beliefs and align themselves with the billions of men who adhere to such prejudicial, dualistic dogma is a wonderment as well. So it is on the “Planet of the Programmed.”

To the contrary, Advaita erases, rather than reinforces, such dualistic belief in “bad women vs. good men,” in "good men vs. bad men," in "God vs. bad people," in “differences,” in “better than,” and in “evil vs. moral.” You will never be asked by a Realized Advaitin to stretch the imagination, to start thinking magically, and thereafter believe that a human egg was once miraculously fertilized sans sperm. You would never be asked to accept that the (supposed) mass-murder-by-drowning of every inhabitant on the planet except for eight people (resulting in an act of genocide that made Hitler’s efforts look like child’s play) was a “perfectly understandable and acceptable” act that should not be questioned.

These are but a few examples of the type of fictional knowledge that currently trap over six billion persons in the imprisonment of their so-called “minds.” They do not need more to believe in--they need far less. Thus, the Advaita approach deals with “the removal of knowledge which is merely learned ignorance,” not with “acquiring and accumulating more knowledge.” 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.” And that is why Christ, after understanding the Advaita message, left organized religion and used the Advaita method not to add more beliefs but to try to remove beliefs: "A dual-minded person is unstable in all ways"; "no one will ever see the kingdom of heaven...it's within"; "heaven and earth shall fade away"; "when you speak of me, speak of me as I AM"; and "Before Abraham was, I AM." Please enter the silence of contemplation. [Tomorrow: The Conclusion]

DISCARDING “KNOWLEDGE” WHEN IT IS ACTUALLY LEARNED IGNORANCE, Part Four

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.: So to review, the Advaita philosophy is not about passing on knowledge but about eliminating learned ignorance. Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj said,

"All knowledge is like the son of a barren woman."

At http://www.advaitaquotes.blogspot.com/, the following pointer is offered:

"Ultimately, Advaita Vedanta is the Teaching that has the 'goal' of becoming the non-teaching by way of un-teaching."

More unequivocally, Dennis Waite wrote,

“The knowledge, once it has served its purpose of pointing toward the truth, is discarded too."

Ultimately, the only "real" knowledge pointed to by the Advaita Teachings per se is Self-Knowledge. Once that awareness happens, it is never forgotten. Once that awareness happens, all else is forgotten.

Thus, no one else, other than an Advaitin, ever said, “You do not need to know more or gain more or grow. You already Are That Which You Are. The consciousness that You Are has been corrupted (or seeing truth has been hampered) as a result of lies and myths that are disguised as knowledge. Treat that condition alone. See the falsity of belief in learned ignorance and watch the (relative) effects of learned ignorance end.” No one else offered a method for addressing the corrupted consciousness that offered “the full and final treatment.” No one else said, “Realize, and then you don’t need to keep coming back.” No one else said, “Realize and You are finished with all the ‘spiritual work.’ Then, You may go and be free and enjoy natural living.”

Next, you have also drawn an erroneous conclusion from your reading of any bio information. I did not attend college, I did not acquire knowledge, I did not teach, and I did not pay bills. College attendance happened; the accumulation of information happened; teaching happened (or not, some days); and bill-paying happened (or not, some days). Furthermore, the accumulated information underwent the de-accumulation process almost immediately, post-examination. Little of it was relevant to a career in teaching, and that irrelevance was noted both as it was being presented by professors and later as it was being discarded.

Further, no “knocking” of knowledge has been happening. What has been offered is an invitation to avoid developing false pride in knowledge because that will support ego-states and egotism and thereby only stand in the way of continuing the Self-Inquiry process to completion. Too, "spiritual knowledge" and "religious knowledge" will block advancement along the remainder of the “path” to Full Realization since those “Knowers,” thinking they now know it all, will thereby miss it all. Persons assuming those two "new" identities will fixate at the third of seven steps to Full Realization.

So try this: from the third floor master bedroom window, it is possible to look down on a terrace that slopes gently to the edge of a lake. The green lawns of the terrace are landscaped with scrubbery and trees and beds of flowers. Within the next three weeks, in a bed just below that window, some wild lilies will begin to bloom. To the eye, they can have a certain appeal. To gaze at them in the silence and to appreciate their relative “beauty” is calming. Even though the curtain over the window was closed this morning, and even though the lilies have not be seen for eleven months, and even though they are not yet in bloom this season, their presence is realized.

In a few weeks, what more would you think needs to be known about those flowers to be able to appreciate their beauty, fleeting though it shall be? Nothing. Yet there is that which can prevent the flowers from ever being seen, namely, the curtain. If the curtain is opened, then the flowers will be seen and appreciated fully, at least during the brief period when the blooms manifest. Nothing new will be known about the flowers that will enhance their appearance. (A pedant residing nearby once said I should know that they are not “lilies” at all but are actually "examples of the lilium philadelphicum classification." His sharing that piece of knowledge illustrates exactly how pride in knowledge prevents the natural enjoyment of anything natural.)

New knowledge or more knowledge about the flowers will not be sought or acquired. All that will happen when the curtain is drawn back is this: whatever was blocking the seeing of the flowers will be removed and the flowers shall be seen. Witnessing the flowers shall just happen, and later the witnessing of the flowers shall end, at least until another cycle happens spontaneously. Now, how does that relate to the discussion of excessive knowledge acquisition, seeing Reality, and that which blocks persons from seeing truth? Please enter the silence of contemplation. [To be continued]