[Advaita-l] Fwd: Floyd Henderson Books

[Sanjay Varma]

All,

Please comment on the point mentioned below by Floyd in the context of
the recent postings on his blog at
http://advaitavedantameditations.blogspot.com ?

Those of you who have read this book
(http://www.floydhenderson.com/iamabsolute.htm). Please comment on the
book too.

Floyd,
In case you are not on this list please follow the conversation in the
list archive (http://lists.advaita-vedanta.org/archives/advaita-l/).

- Sanjay

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: HENDERSON, FLOYD <floydhe at consolidated.net>
Date: Apr 18, 2006 7:40 AM
Subject: Re: Floyd Henderson Books
To: Sanjay <sanjay.varma.gm at gmail.com>


Greetings, Sanjay. Thank you for a relevant question and an
insightful comment. What I learned from my vision, which was
confirmed by my guide, was that bhakti generally involves
adoration and devotion. If that is accepted as a working
definition, then indeed the practice would require someone
or something to adore or someone of something to be devoted
to. And if that is accepted, then bhakti is practiced on
many levels by those not-realized as well as those moving
along the path to realization. I have witnessed persons who
are identified with nothing but the physical body who adore
their bodies and the bodies of others and who are devoted to
their bodies and to the bodies of others. Theirs is body-
bhakti. I have witnessed persons at level two who are
devoted to their "minds" and the content thereof, who seem
to worship their "knowledge" (a.k.a., learned ignorance.)
They practice "mind" bhakti. That avails them nothing, so I
concur that persons are wasting time and effort if they have
as a goal to seek gnana/jnana of any form or class. If
persons transcend worship of both the body and the "mind" or
the seeking of knowledge, then their next level on
the "journey" you have rightly identified as stage 3: there,
they will devote themselves to someone or something or will
worship or adore someone or something that is beyond the
physical and beyond the mental. Many generally describe that
as a "spiritual" or "metaphysical" or "religious" stage. It
is a stage that cannot be skipped and must be experienced.
Yet haven't the realized shifted beyond such duality? To
declare, "I am devoted to this or that" can happen at the
Step Five Witness stage with its subject-object experiences,
yet the Pure Witness is beyond, witnesses NO duality, and
would observe that It Is either (a) whatever it worshipped
or adored or was devoted to or (b) that whatever it
worshipped, adored or was devoted to was an illusion and
that "Devotee" is merely another state-of-being-this-or-
that...another false role, another ego-state. The
jnana/jnani stage must be transcended, the devotion stage
must be transcended, the child ignorance state must be
revisited, the S-O duality must happen, but eventually the
True Self can witness purely, and all of that before is seen
for what it was: another stop along the "journey" away from
ALL and to NOTHING. Adoration, devotion and objects or
concepts thereof are still "SOMETHING." (By the way, my
teacher, fully realized, still organized bhajans in his loft
on a bi-daily basis for years, though they were "attention-
getters," offerings that drew to the presence of the pure
consciousness those persons who would later be ready for the
full "journey" but who were at the time in stage 3 devotion
and adoration. So it was. So it can be now. Eventually,
however, he refused those and addressed only those proteges
who were "gunpowder," not fixed in thr "wet charcoal"
or "dry charcoal" stage.) Best regards and thanks for
stopping by and taking the time to write. f.