Updating Your Brain's Software

Our current Homo-sapiens operating system (HS-OS “I”) is clearly not up to today’s massively-interconnected and highly-complex institutions, governments, religions, technologies, and resource constraints.   

we are confronted with highly-dysfunctional societies that have great inequities in distribution of critical resources for survival, inefficient and corrupt organizations, and unsustainable population growth that is causing great damage to the environment. 

It feels like a "tipping point”.  Without fundamental changes in how we interact and function, these issues, largely resulting from our outdated, "I"-based current operating system and supporting software, could well destroy us.   

This is not "new", as the Zen master, Alfred Pulyan said in the 1960s, in "The Technique of Awakening":

        "...what is called 'normalcy,' the state of the majority of the three billion people on this globe.  It has also been described as 'quiet despair' and indeed is a form of paranoia, unsuspected because the constellation of symptoms that characterizes it is common to all of them and so passes unnoticed and undiagnosed. 

As we have seen the prognosis for cure is lamentably 'not good' and the evil consequences flowing from it are ultimately the fruitful parents of all sickness of body and mind, and of the rapidly approaching end of life on this planet by one of the two bombs, population or atomic."

In addition to what Pulyan cited, the situation has deteriorated with the looming threat of AI.  Dire predictions are coming from folk like Elon Musk and Steven Hawking.   Hawking has changed his prognosis on our species' survival down from 1000 years to 100 years.

Changing the belief that the "I" is a constant, fixed, real, entity to understanding that it is just an "ad hoc", haphazardly-assembled, mental construct, needs to be as fundamental, obvious and clear as "the earth is round".  

How do we go about updating our brain’s software?  Well, a new book manifested from Universal Consciousness/She, "Evolving Beyond Thought: Updating Your Brain's Software", which is now available on Amazon.

  

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 outdated programs. 

The process begins with removing our current, outdated OS “I” (focused on the “I”) and evaluating the success of that removal.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/malware are removed or significantly modified.  

Ramana Maharshi

The second section provides a powerful tool for working on this process, seemingly perfectly tailored to it, the Ribhu Gita, an ancient, little-known nondual text.  

Thirty-two verses from its 2000 verses were chosen to work on, focused on “Am ‘I’ these thoughts?”, “What is this mind?”, “Am ‘I’ this body?”, “What problems arise from these beliefs?”, “What am ‘I’?” and then “What are the benefits of this knowledge?”.   

This text was a favorite of my main teacher, Ramana Maharshi, and aligns perfectly with his “direct path” of self-inquiry for nondual awakening.  There is now a video of it being chanted with mudras.  

Oskar Linares

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 Oskar K. Linares, an IT service manager at Catalonia University in Barcelona, we watch as he goes through the process.  Oskar also rock climbs and does sumi-e painting and provided the cover pic and the many pics in the book. 

The fourth section focuses on the most problematic, strongly-defended, and tenacious of the programs in the current OS “I”, the beliefs in “free will” and control.  This is at the very core of the egoic/I software.  Selected comments and discussion from blogposts on the issue deal with resistances, objections, and implications.  

Reviewer comments on the book's back cover are:

“What a treasure! Imagine browsing a shelf of obscure and esoteric wisdom books and stumbling upon this potent software manual for debugging your own mind.  

Rich Doyle

In Evolving Beyond Thought, Gary Weber offers engaging diagnostics and nondual practices of self repair for a noggin full of thought and its longtime companion, suffering.

Weber offers a practical and no nonsense overview of your buggy old operating system infected with the malware of "I", and then he shares the countermeasures… 

This book spills over with diverse recipes for hacking our minds beyond the "I" – a radiant liberation from long suffering mind. Read it, evolve beyond thought, and be free.”

Rich Doyle, author of Darwin’s Pharmacy, Wetwares, and On Beyond Living and Into the Stillness (with Gary Weber)

Chris Guimond

“…a revelation for me to learn how much the ''I am this body" idea is at the root of my self-referential internal narrative (“blah, blah”)! 

…for those that find their way to this book, it could prove to be an invaluable companion, much like I Am That.

…my husband said 'I discovered while you were away, i am not my body!’

… much softening, openness, presence, kindness, humility, love.  Incredibly radical changes in our relationship.”

                                                                                    Chris Guimond 

Robert Wright

“In Evolving Beyond Thought, Gary Weber makes the case for transcending ordinary consciousness, with its delusional self-absorption, and explores underappreciated ancient texts that illuminate the path he has followed to this end. 

Weber’s deeply personal book gives us reason to believe that ‘non-dual’ awareness, even if rarely attained, is attainable and infinitely repays the effort involved in attaining it.” 

Robert Wright, Author of Why Buddhism Is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment, The Evolution of God, NonZero, The Moral Animal and Three Scientists and Their Gods