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our inability to successfully cope with the complexities of our massively-complex, highly-integrated society using our outdated software programs created when we were hunter-gatherers.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 The process begins by removing our current, outdated OS "I" (focused on the "I") and evaluating the success of the removal.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.