Evolving Beyond Thought: Updating Your Brain's Software

The seemingly insoluble problems of our species at the current time is our inability to successfully cope with the complexities of our massively-complex, highly-integrated society using our outdated software programs created when we were hunter-gatherers. This book outlines the problem areas with our current software, how to address them, demonstrates tools to facilitate this change and then gives a demonstration of how the process unfolds in a dialogue with a successful practitioner of the process and its improved software. The first section of the book focuses on a systematic approach to working directly on the problems with the current operating system (OS) and its programs. The process begins by removing our current, outdated OS I (focused on the I) and evaluating the success of the removal. An updated OS mini-me (less focused on the I) is then installed from several trusted and reliable sources. Next, the most problematic programs are removed or significantly modified. The second section provides a powerful tool to support this process, seemingly exactly tailored to it, the Ribhu Gita. Sections devoted to Am I these thoughts?, What is this mind?, Am I this body?, What problems arise from this belief (that I am this body)?, What am I? and then What are the benefits of this knowledge of the Self?. This text was a/the favorite of my main teacher, Ramana Maharshi, and aligns perfectly with his direct path of self-inquiry for nondual awakening. It is powerful to read and to chant. The third section demonstrates that this self-inquiry and letting-go-of-attachments process works in the real world with a real job. Through dialogue with someone going through the process over a significant length of time it shows how the process actually unfolds. The fourth section focuses on the most problematic, strongly-held, and tenacious of the programs in the current OS I, the issues of free will, control and predetermination. This is the stronghold of the egoic/I structure. Selected comments, questions and answers from blogposts on the issue address resistances, objections, and problems that arise.