These are some of the book reviews I have written for Amazon.com, on books relating to non-dualism, Neo-Advaita, and Indian and other spirituality topics.
Collected here because sometimes I'm asked about them and it is a nuisance to refer people to Amazon, which has long URL's and too many other people's reviews.
The following books are covered:
The Book of One: The Spiritual Path of Advaita by Dennis Waite
Naked In Ashes (DVD) ~ Shiv Raj Giri; Raman Giri; Santosh Giri
Right Here, Right Now: Seeing Your True Nature as Present
Awareness by John Wheeler
Meeting Papaji: First-Hand Accounts by Roslyn Moore
Silence Of The Heart by Robert Adams
Collision With the Infinite: A Life Beyond the Personal Self by Suzanne Segal
Perfect Brilliant Stillness by David Carse
Halfway Up the Mountain: The Error of Premature Claims to Enlightenment by Mariana Caplan
Nobody Home: From Belief to Clarity by Jan Kersschot
Awakening to the Dream: The gift of lucid living by Leo Hartong
As It Is: The Open Secret to Living an Awakened Life by Tony Parsons
Infinite Love Is the Only Truth: Everything Else Is Illusion by David Icke
This Is It: The Nature of Oneness by Jan Kersschot
For your reading pleasure.
-Tabby Cat
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The Book of One: The Spiritual Path of Advaita
by Dennis Waite
Edition: Paperback
Price: $13.46
Availability: In Stock
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Stardate 35.15, October 27, 2005
Stardate 35.15 Captain James T. Kirk Starship Enterprise
Today the landing party beamed up an object from the planet's surface. Preliminary analysis indicates it is a primitive information technology widely used on Terra as late as the 21st century, known as a "book".
...
Mr. Spock, run an analysis of the message coded in this "book" and give me your report by 1300 hours.
I have already completed my analysis, Captain.
Efficient as ever, Mr. Spock. Well then, Science Officer, please report. What does your Vulcan logic tell you about this "book" they found down there?
From a logical point of view, Captain, the message of "Neo-Advaita" described in this book is impeccable. In fact Sir, it is a tautology.
Indeed Mr. Spock? You say that like its a bad thing.
If I may summarize Captain, Neo-Advaitan doctrine appears to hold that nothing actually exists. Therefore nothing matters and nothing is actually happening other than an endless meaningless stream of sensory impressions occurring nowhere. This formulation is the ancient sterile doctrine of Solipsism, first recorded with the presocratic sophist Gorgias (c. 483-375 BC) old Terra time. If I may point out, Captain, a tautology is a logical formula that is always true, regardless of the actual situation. Therefore from an information theoretic point of view, being a tautology that cannot be falsified, Neo-Advaita is completely worthless.
Hmmm. A bit egg-headed, Spock, but I see your point. Anyway, is there anything we can use in there? Maps of dilithium crystal mines perhaps?
Captain my preliminary analysis appears to indicate that this doctrine of Neo-Advaita has never fed the hungry, healed the sick, watered the thirsty, clothed the naked or comforted the prisoner.
Can the excess verbiage Mr. Spock, and just give me a line I can use to summarize this material in my report to Star Fleet Command.
Very well Captain, here it is: A difference which makes no difference is no difference.
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Naked In Ashes
DVD ~ Shiv Raj Giri; Raman Giri; Santosh Giri
Price: $24.99
Availability: In Stock
2 used & new from $24.50
As you have asked I have told you this, April 8, 2007
A wonderful documentary on a lifestyle that is mind-blowing piece of humanity's cultural heritage.
in India there are 13 million yogis, saddhus, and babas, out of a 1 billion population. Some of them are standing babas who never sit or lie down for decades. Other keep their right arm raised continuously for years. Only a very few of them do any kind of fancy asana, beyond plain old half lotus or tailor sitting.
The main focus is Shiv Raj Giri, as he and his tiny band of disciples, including 14-year-old boy Santosh Giri, treks around between Hardiwar and the Himalayan foothills and the Kumbh Mela mega-festival. They wear no or little clothes, they smear their entire bodies with ash, they love the Ganga river. All yogi's in this movie, no yogini's. In many ways they are like homeless people the world over, though they seem a bit more content (Don't believe me about that homeless reference? Read quotes below). It also covered aghori yogi's, who live at the cremation sites full-time, and a number of others.
I could see, as the small band was filmed wandering all over Northern India, how the rest of India was kind of growing up around them, beginning to get overdeveloped with new buildings, power lines, concrete sluices in the rivers, etc. It gave them a melancholy air. Later on Shiv Raj commented on this very point, saying that the government wanted to clear out a lot of old temples and sacred natural areas, and put hotels and parking lots on them. Sad.
One other tiny group is just a duo, Hanuman Das and Barfani Das. They form an interesting pair because the lone disciple's legs are wasted, and he cannot walk. Therefore, the guru carries him everywhere they go, on his shoulders. They live in a small tent by a river and spend their days collecting driftwood for their fire. And of course chanting and so on.
Quotes from the Yogis:
"We are hermits and we will give our life for the sake of our souls."
"I have stood for 12 years to get peace in my soul."
"After one sees the Supreme Lord, this whole world is like insects, whatever you see is worms."
"The trees are being cut down. In the near future we will be scorched by the heat. We know Mother Ganga (river) comes for 5000 years. Now 3500 years are gone, and 1500 years should remain. But due to cutting trees, the time will be much shorter. Mother Ganga will go away from us soon. Clean pure air will also become rare."
"The earlier life ends, the better."
"We humans need vessels to eat. Just so, the gods need human vessels for their feeding. So man is like a vessel to god."
"Shiva is Lord of the Homeless, King of the Himalayas."
"The body has no reality."
"Even after becoming a yogi, there is no peace."
"It is not easy to go to the Parliament to voice your opinions without clothes."
"I pulled a fully loaded jeep for 1 kilometer with my penis. This penis control is not easy. No penis control, no good holy man."
"Every human has 10 senses."
"Today the population of yogi's is going down. in another 50 years you will hardly hear the word 'yogi'."
"When the body suffers one remembers god. For devotion one needs one of two things: either fear or suffering."
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Right Here, Right Now: Seeing Your True Nature as Present Awareness
by John Wheeler
Edition: Paperback
Price: $13.57
Availability: In Stock
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Gets a gold star for unrelenting self-consistency , August 18, 2006
Here we go again. I don't mean that pejoratively. But anybody landing on this page must already be somewhat clued to Non-Duality. Life is but a dream. Nothing is real but awareness. This book is a clear, consistent, unremitting, repeater-beacon on that theme. No matter what the question, there's only one answer from John.
However, some of the questioners retain a bit of their humanly spiced vacillation and weakness as they step up to the plate one more time with their little doubts and quibbles. They all take John's relentlessly polite slapdowns with good grace and are quick to blame themselves for not quite getting it yet. Both students and Master (just kidding just kidding!) all seem like nice people (if rather colorless, but after all that is entailed by the nature of their enterprise).
In one sense, what Wheeler asserts must be true. It has to be. What else could consciousness ever experience, in this world, the next world, or any world, other than "sensations, emotions, and thoughts"? There couldn't ever be anything else... see 'The Matrix' if you have trouble with that. So all the contents of Awareness are just the meaningless stream of sensory events and automated reactions occuring nowhere, to nobody. Fine, that simply must be true, it is a tautology anyway.
But a more interesting question remains. Since apparently there is no escape from this SET-stream (Sensations, Emotions, Thoughts), even after you see the empty chair behind the curtain, now the question arises, can it at least be made more pleasant? I would assert that this question might be a more practical take on the whole thing.
In other words, even though I accept the essential truth of Wheeler's bare epistemology, I think another question lurks behind it. I'm still human enough to be interested in suffering. Like The Matrix's Cypher character.
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Meeting Papaji: First-Hand Accounts
by Roslyn Moore
Edition: Paperback
Price: $12.87
Availability: In Stock
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Approach as devotee or sociologist, your call, December 31, 2005
This author/interviewer/compiler has done a great service to:
1. The many who are inspired by the image of Papaji, but who may never have had the chance to meet up with him in meatspace;
2. Sociologists of relgion;
3. Psychologists studying mass hysteria;
The obvious audience is category 1, simple would-be devotees who missed the boat in the 90's when Papaji was hot. Both interviewer and interviewees are pretty much united in their mindset that Papaji was some kind of god. (there are quotes in the interviews to this effect). I believe if you try to pin it down however, you'd be told "Oh of course not a god, he was pure emptiness pointing to emptiness". But if that's true, it's not clear why a person is needed for this function.
There really is a deep contradiction shot through this book: on the one hand, everybody is already enlightened. On the other hand, not only do we for some reason still need to awake, but its best done through the agency (or non-agency) of this one particular Indian gentleman. Nobody really steps up to confront this non-sequiter, either they don't see it, or the implications would be too troubling, or they'd prefer to dismiss it is as mere logic/mind/rationality peeing in the punchbowl as usual.
I don't mean to sound too tough on them. They all seem like super nice, sincere, wise and experienced people. I'm sure that they (such individual self as remains to them at least) believe they've awakened or gotten something from their association with this nice man. But to me the interest is more psychological or even sociological.
It is so interesting that over and over, humans have to believe that
(a) there is something transcendent out there; and most particularly
(b) that certain particular human individuals have some kind of special conduit to that transcendence.
This idea is so incredibly common in human history, yet these people show zero awareness of this human tendency. They just happily grind away at their one particular guy. This idea of 'The One' or the God-Man is the basis of most religions, royalty, pop stardom, politics, everything. It is the hardwired genuflection to the alpha chimp exhibited in any primate troupe.
It is also an interesting exercise in group think, because this loose group of devotees was a totally non-coercive, self-aggregating cult, without any of the normal disparaged mind-control mechanisms - the emanated Shakti alone did the trick. They don't seem to know that many young people who met Chairman Mao in the 1960's (to take just one example) described him in similar terms as having eyes like lightning, etc.
Although I greatly respect Ramana (the meta-guru of Neo-Advaita), somehow Papaji just doesn't ring my bell, he looks a bit shifty and tricky in his photos. Not at all the beatific infinitude of Ramana's beautiful face. But of course to the True Believer that just means that I wasn't on the scene and didn't get a toke of the real 24 karat shakti he must have radiated.
Anyway this heart-warming book serves as a monument to the beautiful, doomed attempts we humans never tire of making to bulldoze the molehill of our chemical nothingness into the Big Rock Candy Mountain of gorgeously empty brilliant shining perfection.
And it seems we need a fellow primate's face to kickstart that, every single time.
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Silence Of The Heart
by Robert Adams
Edition: Paperback
Price: $13.57
Availability: In Stock
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Nothing like it, November 30, 2005
To me, this is the most enjoyable of all Neo-Advaita books. I think I can say that, having read just about all the new wave of such books flooding out in the past ten years.
The title alone is worth the whole purchase price.
Curious though, while Adams definitely seems to have realized the Whole Enchilada of radical Awakening, yet his presentation to students differs subtly from the most radical leading contemporary neo-Advaitic edge authors.
The serious NeoA hipsters aver that there is NOTHING to "do" and NOBODY to "do" it, if there were! They are really firm on this point. And yes, Adams sometimes talks that way too.
However, though Adams' talks are mostly consistent with that tough guy view, still his material is also permeated throughout with little hints and suggestions for things to do, and soft nudges that attempting these (miminalistic) practices is somehow important or useful in attaining some kind of happiness.
For example, Adams talks about using the moment of waking up from (regular) sleep as a chance to "follow the I back to the heart" or basically not allow the I to creep its way up from the heart to the brain (because on the way to the brain, the nice big upper-case "I" (universal Self) gets funneled down into a Grinchy lower-case "i" (ordinary egoic grasper such as most of us are). He also mentions Ramana's concept of the spiritual heart as being in the center-right chest.
Probably experts will want to paint the above types of instructions and assertions as purely metaphorical, but I'm not so sure. It almost looks as though Adams is offering seekers a *gasp* PRACTICE! Heavens to Murgatroid! Orthodox Neo-Advaita holds that doing ANYTHING whatsoever, especially being an dumbass tail-chasing cat with respect to Awakening, is totally idiotic.
But Adams' talking/text is an undeniably huge tidal wave of power, warmth and brilliance. I don't know how to square the cicle of his apparent fondness for "doing something" (however mild his suggestions) vs the kick-ass Neo-Advaitic Torquemada's out there who radically assert their doctrine of the total vacuity of any and all effort, but anyway Adams' book makes for the best read of all works on Neo-Advaita, bar none.
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Collision With the Infinite: A Life Beyond the Personal Self
by Suzanne Segal
Edition: Paperback
Availability: Currently unavailable
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Enlightenment as Horror Flick, October 26, 2005
One of the most interesting and compulsively readable spiritual books ever written.
If you are into Neo-Advaita, you know that the basic message of "No self; No others" is usually painted with a smiley face. The essence of it is:
Row, row, row your boat;
Gently down the stream;
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream
The "death of the one who cares", end of your personal drama and story is meant to be good news.
But must it be so?
This book shows the dark side of the moon. It lets us see how spiritualy prescient Nathaniel Hawthorne was, in his story 'The Christmas Banquet' when the story's main character is made to say what I've quoted below. He summed up this book before its time.
(from Nathaniel Hawthorne - 'The Christmas Banquet')
"And looking back on your serene and prosperous life, how can you claim to be the sole unfortunate of the human race?"
"You will not understand it," replied Gervayse Hastings, feebly, and with a singular inefficiency of pronunciation, and sometimes putting one word for another. "None have understood it, not even those who experience the like. It is a chillness, a want of earnestness, a feeling as if what should be my heart were a thing of vapor, a haunting perception of unreality! Thus seeming to possess all that other men have, all that men aim at, I have really possessed nothing, neither joy nor griefs. All things, all persons,--as was truly said to me at this table long and long ago,--have been like shadows flickering on the wall. It was so with my wife and children, with those who seemed my friends: it is so with yourselves, whom I see now before one. Neither have I myself any real existence, but am a shadow like the rest."
"And how is it with your views of a future life?" inquired the
speculative clergyman.
"Worse than with you," said the old man, in a hollow and feeble
tone; "for I cannot conceive it earnestly enough to feel either hope or fear. Mine,--mine is the wretchedness! This cold heart,--this unreal life! Ah! it grows colder still."
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Perfect Brilliant Stillness
by David Carse
Edition: Paperback
Price: $19.95
Availability: In Stock
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The Death of the One who Cares, September 12, 2005
Very cool book.
Into the neo-advaita space pre-populated by Douglas Harding, John Wheeler, Nathan Gill and Bob Adamson etc. rolls this Harley-Davidson shovelhead hog of a treatment. Basic idea is simple: 'Life is but a dream' ... so, get over it!
But there's nothing you can do to get over it, as you don't exist and there's no actual `it' there to get over anyway. So, um, don't worry about it.
I like Carse's treatment because he delivers a straight-forward uncompromising message in a friendly, unpretentious, and sometimes humorous tone.
Carse biographs aspects of his own awakening Experience (Note: Please forgive the advaitically incorrect language of this review. "I" know very well (except there is no I, and nothing to know) that "Carse" (there is no Carse) did not Experience anything (nothing exists) ... blabitty blah blah... just fill in the necessary disqualifiers after every single word on your own from now on please). He is at great pains to assure us that the exoticism of an awakening experience, its setting or apparent cause or context, mean absolutely nothing. Therefore it is amusingly ironic that in his case the (non)awakening happened(didn't happen) in of all places (there are no places), deep within the Amazon jungle rain forest, when he was working on mysterious shamanic practices.
For god's sake! Talk about catnip to the vast Seeker hordes out there! Poor guy, all the other neo-advaita biggies try in vain to downplay their own, relatively mundane, scenes/stories of (non)Awakening (e.g. walking in a city park or whatever), but Carse really has his work cut out for him here.
He also talks a lot about supposedly huge amounts of fake non-dualism being purveyed to unwary as the Real Thing, in the shoddy spiritual supermarkets of today. This angle struck me as odd, in that he quotes, with varying degrees of apparent approbation, practically every single neo-adviatan author, Satsang vendor, or other Big Cheese on the scene in recent times. He seems to accept them all as fellow Awakeners - Gangaji, Wayne Liquorman, Ken Wilber, U G Krishnamurthi, Ramesh Balsekar, Nisargadatta, Adayashanti, and many more. He seems to validate them all, so I'd like to know who exactly he's railing against as fake? What other donkey rump is left out there to which we can pin the tail of pusher of the bogus, misleading, false advaita that Carse calls out? Anyway it doesn't matter because all the above are just puppets hanging on the strings pulled by the one infinite consciousness.
This book reminds me most strikingly of "Hardcore Zen : Punk Rock, Monster Movies, & the Truth about Reality" by Brad Warner. Though Warner writes from a Zen context, he has a similar "cut the bullspit" attitude toward the sacred cows of his own tradition (and every other).
If you have already read lots of neo-advaitan stuff or heard much of it, there won't be any new content for you here, but you'll definitely get a relentless machine gun spray of "its all fake just give it up". That may sound tedious, but if you're in the right mood it's made fun by Carse's light and amusing style. If you don't know much about the whole neo-advaitan gamespace ("life is but a dream"), then possibly you would find Tony Parson's book to be a shorter and more accessible introduction. "Stillness" is possibly best appreciated by those who've been around the neo-advait block once or twice.
Not that it matters in the slightest as you are just another dream character merely playing with yourself until you Awaken (which isn't possible).
Carse continually returns to his basic hard-nosed point, which can be summarized by him as follows:
"Annihilation here isn't referring to some party game. It is a total and radical thing, often bloody and brutal, call annihilation; wiping out of existence; ceasing to be; death. Not death of the body; nothing dies when the body dies. Real death; the only real death, as real as death gets: the death of an individual person/self."
I'm still not sure how the absolute conviction of the neo-advaits really differs from the absolute conviction of the Jesus-believing fundamentalist or any other True Believer, those who think they've got reality cornered and on the run. Basically the same emotionally invulnerable mindset as far as I can see. But that just proves how totally unawakened I am! No matter though, as Carse is completely convincing on his own terms, and I'm totally sold that he sees a lot farther than I do.
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Halfway Up the Mountain: The Error of Premature Claims to Enlightenment
by Mariana Caplan
Edition: Paperback
Price: $16.46
Availability: In Stock
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Sloppy logic?, July 27, 2005
Here we've had the greatest mystics through the ages (such as Ramana Maharishi) telling us two main things: (a) time is a total illusion and (b) everybody is already enlightened, therefore the concept is meaningless, everything is already perfect as it is.
Then we get this book which manages to gut-shoot both the above insights right in its title phrase: 'PREMATURE claims to ENLIGHTENMENT'. Well if life is but a dream to begin with, it's no harm no foul. Mountain out of a molehill. And, if this is a warning to stay away from the Jim Jones of the world, there are much better books on the whole anti-cult thing.
This book seems to be reinforcing the laborious duality that the best mystics are trying to sand-blast off of us. Meanwhile, the highlighting of commentaries from certain spiritual celebrities (e.g. Andrew Cohen), commenting on the dangers of this prematurity seems to suggest that THESE (quoted) people, at least, ARE qualified to teach us what's the view like from all the way up the mountain, so there's a kind of unspoken endorsement there, based on nothing at all apparent to me.
But for the sprinkling of cute anecdotes I've generously given it two stars.
Meanwhile, instead of the mountain I think I'll head for the beach.
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Nobody Home: From Belief to Clarity
by Jan Kersschot
Edition: Paperback
Availability: Currently unavailable
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Win the victory over yourself?, July 8, 2005
I'm generally very sympathic to (neo)advaita, as maybe the true (non)way to relief from "seeking and suffering". And I adore Ramana as maybe the greatest, truest saint of all time.
But lately I've begin to wonder, what is the essential difference between neo-advaita and other better known forms of funadmentalism? On the surface they differ greatly and at least neo-advaitan's don't bomb you as other religions do (either suicide style or Western style with Daisy Cutters).
But honestly doesn't Orwell's conclusion to 1984, below, apply to neo-advaitan overcoming the self as much as to any other religion? Though I know they would say "yes but we don't TRY so hard at it." OK that's fair.
Anyway, for my money Tony Parson's book "As It Is" is more accessible, less boring, shorter, and less snooty than this book.
"He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother."
- '1984'
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Awakening to the Dream: The gift of lucid living
by Leo Hartong
Edition: Paperback
Availability: Currently unavailable
Fine as far as it goes, July 6, 2005
The problem I have with the whole neo-advaita thing (of which this book is definitely a premier representative) is the certainty of its presentation. Granted they don't tackle you at airport baggage claim and jam flowers in your lapel, and they don't bombard you with Bibles and Daisy Cutters, but I still don't "get" how their certainty is any different from, say, the following:
(a) Typical university sophomore the first time they hear about solipsism. Not saying neoadvaita is conceptually the same, just talking about the emotional tone. "Wow like far out, so like, nothing is real! Cool."
(b) The Matrix: "Word! So wow maybe everything is just a movie piped into my brain". Again not a literal parallel, just a feeling I get.
(c) High on Jesus: Especially the newly converted. How does the total certainty of Neo-Advaita differ from the Christian fundamentalist's certainty? Granted it is nice they don't convert people at the point of a bayonet, but I feel some kind of emotionally or intellectually similar vibes.
OK life is but a dream. Great. The nursery song said it first and more eloquently. But a "real" dream has an arbitrary character. This world on the other hand, though in constant flux, has a more persistent/consistent flavor to me than the average dream. What accounts for that?
Anyway this Book and Parson's "As It Is" are two of the best intro's to Neo-Advaitt thing (and once you've been intro'd to it, there really isn't much more to say!)
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As It Is: The Open Secret to Living an Awakened Life
by Tony Parsons
Edition: Paperback
Price: $10.17
Availability: In Stock
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Belly up to the window and place your bet, July 5, 2005
This book is the classic and still best-of-breed presentation of what I call the "Third Option". What is the Third Option? Third of what I see as 3 broad choices for "What the frik is really going ON here??"
Option 1 (Cold World): This is the scientific/materialist worldview in its purest form. That means that there is no meaning, nothing but mindless DNA chemicals endlessly attempting to convert all available matter and energy (such as can be scrounged in the universal near vacuum) into pointless copies of themselves, forever. See Dawkins "The Selfish Gene" for a good explication, but all modern sci/tech is based on this idea.
Option 2 (Hot World): This is the entire grab-bag of BOTH traditional religion AND all "New Age" systems of any kind. It might seem strange to lump traditional religion together with New Age stuff given they are so often at each other's throats, but in fact they share identical premises: that there is or could be a transcendent "meaning" to human or biological existence, further that there are gradations of meaning and purity and power and value and so on ... so that a task of vertical ascent is laid out for us in all cases (pass the collection plate). It is true that the specifics of all these meaning-construction systems contradict one another, they share an over-arching commitment to a transcendent value system and gradations of achievement/progress vs degeneration/perdition as a core logical structure. In short, duality all the way down.
Option 3: (Non World): Pure non-dualism/Advaita. tracing back to ancient Indian scripture, but pioneered in modern times by Ramana Maharishi (died 1953). Now I finally get to this Parsons' book, where I find "As It Is" to be both a pioneering statement of "neo-Advaita" (Advaita stripped lean and mean for Western consumption) and probably still best-of-breed explication of the core idea. The core idea is distinguished most clearly in opposition to Option 2 above. NeoA holds that there is no meaning, there is no personal identity, there is no progress, there is no time, there is no enlightenment and no ignorance. There is nowhere to stand, nothing to do, and nobody to do it anyway even if there were. If that makes sense, ha ha! Anyway the point is that we are situated kind of like the recent cool movie "Open Water" where two divers are left stranded in the middle of the ocean by their support boat, leaving them to just ... float there in the open ocean... nothing to stand on or cling to ... nothing to do... nowhere they can go... no way to call for rescue... and things just ... happen ... (such as being eaten by sharks, hee hee). Anyway that's the feel of the purest NeoA, as best exemplified by Parson's teachings (or, non-teachings). This book is the best, shortest, clearest, least-BS presentation of this view. It should be clear how different this is from Option 2. What about Option 1? Well, it seems strange to say it given the radically distinct cultural origins of these two worldviews, but in a weird way the NeoA cosmology (if such it can be called) is actually very reminiscent of the purely coldest sci/tech world. No "meaning" in either case. No possible "progress" (teleological fantasy in evolution). We are just Dust in the Wind. However, Parsons does allude here and there to a background field of unconditional love into which the false meaning-structures and personality-structures ultimately collapse, so that could be point of difference with respect to Option 1. He doesn't make that big a deal of that aspect however.
There are the very broad, overly broad I guess, pigeon holes into which I find I can cleanly dump pretty much whatever loony new or old explanation of the world that comes down the pike.
So given the above (which you might view as pure bullspit, ask me if I care!) you got to step up to the window and place your bets. It could be "important" (sorry!) how you choose, because if you go with Option 1 or Option 3, there is no morality, and you have zero moral responsibility. Furthermore with those options you don't have to worry about improving yourself, your mind, body, or soul because it just ain't gonna signify. This is in a way, as Parsons points out, quite a relief.
On the other hand. after a lifetime of social mind control that what we do matters and that we matter, or the accepted view most of us have of ourselves that we do actually exist as "individuals" I could see the NeoA thing could be very hard for many people to swallow. Or I guess I should play word games here and say, hard for the small-i egoic mind to swallow, blabitty blah blah blah.
Anyway this book is a must-read if you want to spend the very least time possible time acquiring pretty much a perfect understanding of the terms of the NeoA thing (short of actual "awakening").
Overall it is a uniquely soothing book to read, whether "true" or not. Somehow less grating and less attitude/arrogance than the many many other new Western NeoA books now popping up like mushrooms after an autumn rain.
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Infinite Love Is the Only Truth: Everything Else Is Illusion
by David Icke
Edition: Paperback
Availability: Currently unavailable
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Trailer park Advaita for the unwashed!, May 22, 2005
It has taken David Icke 15 years (since his epiphany in 1990) and umpteen books to reach the same conclusions that he could have jumped to in 15 minutes spent reading about Ramana Maharishi.
Stripped of all the breathless scattershot verbiage, the message boils down to (as the title says) "Everything is an illusion". Individual human consciousness units are game pieces trapped in an artificial Matrix - a web of deception designed to milk fear and other negative emotions for use as energy for its own sustenance and expansion. Pretty much everything you could roll out as a topic for conversation is just another brick in that wall - space, time, nature, DNA, science, religion, technology, art, education, medicine, and of course the financial system and the endless wars - you name it.
The shape-shifting reptilians for which David Icke was once radically famous are now pretty much demoted to minor bit-player operatives in the overall scheme (and even come in for a bit of sympathy).
The book's message really is pure "Advaita" - the ancient Hindu doctrine that, well, "Everything is an illusion". The part about Infinite Love is so removed from regular human garden variety love (which all its pressures, pains, and fears) that you might as well tag Icke's concept as Advaitic "Self" (big S!) and be done with it.
A book like this (in fact most of Icke's books) also really show the influence of the Web on authorship. Anybody can be an instant expert on anything, but that fact-finding power doesn't necessarily confer logic or organization skills.
So given all this kvetching, why my 5 Star rating?
Simple! I mean the answer to that is simple, and the reason is that Icke presents the same message more SIMPLY and more humorously than the regular Neo-Advaitic authors. The presentation of core concept "Everything is an illusion" by the current crop of Neo-Advaitic authors (no, "Neo" isn't a reference to The Matrix here, it just means the Western 21st century appropriation of classical Advaita by such as John Wheeler, Nathan Gill, Jan Kersschot, and so on) are so bloodless, dull, and humorless that Icke's version cuts through them like a top-end Harley Davidson hog through a kid's tricycle race. Admittedly though Icke gilds the lily a LOT more than those purist Neo-Advait's mentioned, with his digressions about natural health maintenance, sexuality, 9-11 conspiracy, Jewish religious law (he should've gone easier on that particular one, why continue to feed the spurious charges of anti-Semitism?), and on and on.
Icke delivers the goods with a lot more sauce and fun than anybody else. However, as usual it is more diagnosis than practical working prescription (maybe it has to be this way, as in Icke's world, one sign you are dealing with The Matrix is the prevalance of RULES governing everything). That does leave us with a bit of a quandry - how to actually eject ourselves from The Matrix? Hmmm, maybe those Neo-Advaita authors are looking a bit better ...
One area where Icke is a bit naiive is that he seems to accept some kind of unit of "consciousness" as the subject for all the deception. "Your consciousness is trapped" type of thing. What is that - "consciousness"? Is there some base unit of inviduation there that we need to deal with? I remember somebody once asked Ramana - "How should we treat others?" His answer - "There are no others."
But I think Icke differs in one small way from the Neo-Advaits in that they seem to say that there is no escape apart from acceptance. 'Lie back and enjoy it' type of thing. Whereas Icke seems to feel you could really jump ship entirely, into a pool of pure infinite Love.
Anyway, I want to know HOW to escape! For now, this book will at least get you out of your cell and into the prison yard.
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This Is It: The Nature of Oneness
by Jan Kersschot
Edition: Paperback
Price: $11.66
Availability: In Stock
41 used & new from $5.92
OK as far as it goes, November 10, 2004
This is on the radical fringe of the neo-advaita scene. Absolute take-no-prisoners "everything-is-total-illusion-and-that's-just-fine-there's-absolutely-nothing-to-be-done-about-it".
For a book about non-dualism, it has a strangely two-pronged flavor.
First, it is making the general and expected points: No need to do anything, you are already enlightened (except that you don't exist and enlightenment is meaningless to begin with), etc.
Second, it has a definite under-edge of Non-Dual community infighting. At times, it has a strangely catty, insider tone. I feel it is written not so much for the general person just trying to figure things out, but for a specific narrow sub-readership of people who are very experienced shoppers in the spiritual supermarket, even or especially people who've been around the non-dual track a few times. These are the people that the author wants to reach, and get them to 'stop seeking'.
Though of course, even 'stop seeking' is "doing" something, or having a kind of program, and therefore unacceptable. Except that of course EVERYTHING is acceptable because it is all illusory anyway.
I say that this author (and his interviewees) are on the far edge of current non-dual thought in that other stars like Byron Katie still offer a kind of goal (cessation of mental suffering) and a sort of problem-solving method (4 questions) to advance that program. Or for example Gangaji is supposedly pure advaita but she subtly asserts the reality of various distinctions, such as guru v. seeker; a more lovely Satsang space v. a less-lovely one; a community of friends pursuing the goal or teachings together (as though that would help it along); etc.
But the authors of "This Is It" are uncompromising and will have none-of-the-above. EVERYTHING is equally fake (or real, but in any case meaningless) and there's absolutely NOTHING to be done about it... except the reader is still left with the feeling that s/he as a regular gal/guy hasn't quite 'got it' (but no, no, there's NOTHING to GET, dumbkoff!) and ... you still don't really understand (that there's NOTHING to UNDERSTAND, you dork!) ... that's the flavor of it.
Interesting in a way.
However, this tough-man macho version of neo-advaita makes constant use of analogies like "All the sand castles on a beach appear separate but since they are actually all made of sand there's no difference among them and they are all the same thing - namely, sand". Or similar images of water, characters in a movie on the screen all being made of the light projected from the booth, etc.
This reductionist argument is logically erroneous, in that identity of material is not absolute identity. Different individual sand castles represent different information vectors and have different entropic coding potential. They differ absolutely, at the level of information structure. Admittedly these differences in entropic coding potential are non-physical in some sense, and hard to quantify without a context, but they are real, though subtle. It is an odd and unexpectedly materialistic argument - the assertion that material identity equals absolute identity. Anyway, the only actual identity these authors can accept is equal emptiness or equally distributed 'Light' or 'Unicity'.
Of course the authors would say that comments such as mine above are just the mind (small egoic mind) trying to FIGURE IT OUT, which is completely IMPOSSIBLE anyway. And there's nothing to figure out.
However, suffering does seem to remain, no matter what. They are explicit on this point - suffering is fine, it is just more flickers on the screen. But while I'm not a Buddhist, I do accept the practical Buddhist goal of an end of suffering.
These guys have zero interest in that, because 'goal' implies 'time' which of course is utter illusion, furthermore they don't want to make quality judgements over experience. To them seeking an end to suffering (personal or universal) is merely a cat chasing his tail.
So it is truly a completely empty and meaningless teaching, a "difference which makes no difference". For all I know, it may be the simple truth. But "I" (??) suspect otherwise, because this random theory of meaningless "arising" of phenomena and experience does not account for the consistency of physical and psychological effects experienced by human beings.
But the authors would say that my small mind (which doesn't exist) is just playing stupid small-mind games. Which is ok, it's all fine as it is.
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Enlightenment Blues: My Years With an American Guru
by Andre Van Der Braak
Edition: Paperback
Price: $13.22
Availability: In Stock
19 used & new from $5.99
The Guru is a Fink, April 2, 2004
Another reviewer wrote:
"Da Free John rides again!"
Yes! That's it! Whoever wrote that really nailed the essence of Cohen, emerging from this book and the other debunking book about him, written by his own Mom *sniff*...
The progression from "There's nothing to get and you've already got it anyway" pure Advaita, through Buddhism and superficial Tantra, skimming a kind of proto-Marxism, into Judaism and on and on... as described by vdB in this book, seriously parallels the fashion phases of Da Free John - from his 1st so-called realization in the early 70's over several decades. It's as though these guys get a glimpse of something, set themselves up as "teachers" - then suddenly they realize they don't have any "stuff" to teach! Inventory crisis!
So, they cycle through the existing whatever's out there. Much as an ordinary seeker in the spiritual supermarket would do, except the problem is that these guys have already nailed up their own faces as icons to others, so they've gotta do all their try-on underwear changes right out on stage in front of the audience! Embarassing to say the least.
Actually, the uber-prototype for this particular species of real-time morphing spiritual chameleon was the Man - Ramakrishna himself! He'd go drag as the Goddess one day, pose as Christ the next, chant the Koran, then back to Shiva, etc. But he had more playful, whimsical charm in his little finger than this deadwood Cohen character could put out in a million years.
Oh well. The irony is that AC and the other phonies out there actually *are* functioning perfectly as teachers to people like vdB, instructing them very well with the endless buffoonery and ego hijinks they display - "Hey dummy - gurus are useless. Get a life!" It only took 11 years for that to sink in, way to go vdB!
So actually Cohen is to be congratulated for having taught and graduated two good students, to my knowledge - him Mom, and vdB.
Adelante, Señor!!
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