From an article by Galen Strawson, a philosopher of conciousness: Herbert Feigl remembers a conversation with Einstein in Princeton in 1954 in which he asked Einstein whether he thought that “the qualities of immediate experience” would be left out in an ideally perfect representation of the universe — given that they are not accounted for […]
Is this manonasha?
Is this manonasha? Is it a different kind of manonasha from what we see in the Tony Parsons video? Is it preliminary to manonasha? Something else entirely? The part that surprised me the most was that the “ego” doesn’t disappear at all. It doesn’t die, because it never lived. Rather, my false belief that a […]
Does philosophy help?
Riccardo asked me on Realization.org’s Discord (it was later shut down due to lack of interest): Did you find that understanding the philosophy of self-realization was of help to Realizing? Short answer: I don’t think it’s a significant help. There are traditions that claim that intellectual understanding is a huge help, even a sufficient factor […]
Manonasha
From the Ashtavakra Gita, a famous classic Advaitin text: When there is no “me,” that is liberation, and when there is “me” there is bondage. Consider this carefully, and neither hold on to anything nor reject anything. 8.4 From Jetzt TV, a German video website. I love this video. Check out Tony’s adorable laugh at […]
When Julia got stuck behind her head
An experiment with the location of "me" and an example of the use of a siddhi.
This article describes my girlfriend Julia’s experience a few years ago with a technique taught by a spiritual teacher and author named Aadi who previously called himself Anadi and Aziz Kristof. Julia has read this article, made changes, and given me permission to publish it. The story also involves the use of a siddhi. Caveat: […]
Modes of waking consciousness
Seventeen or eighteen years ago I made the most surprising and most important discovery of my life. I noticed for the first time that I had always been unconscious. During all the years I had been alive, during almost every waking minute, I had been lost in thought. When I say “unconscious” I don’t mean, […]
The energy channel in the front of my body
There are many books and websites about structures in the energy body. Most of them repeat traditional ideas. For example, some of them describe seven main chakras, the sushumna, etc. — ideas from Indian Tantra. Others talk about meridians, collaterals, etc. — ideas from Chinese Daoism. Over the years I’ve experienced lots of energy phenomena […]
I tried to grow tomatoes this summer
but planted them too late so looks like frost will kill them before we get any fruit.
I haven’t published anything here in a long time. A reader of this blog sent me an email recently, encouraging me to write. Because of his interest, I wrote a long email back to him explaining why I’ve stopped writing and saying a few other things besides. It occurs to me that other readers may […]
Bernadette Roberts’s assessment of Anadi
The headline on this post is a little misleading because Bernadette Roberts wasn’t talking specifically about Anadi when she wrote the paragraphs below, but I think they apply to him quite well. In case you don’t know, Anadi is a spiritual teacher who used to call himself Aziz Kristof and whose birth name is Krzysztof […]
Provisional definitions of ‘know’ and ‘consciousness’
To explain things clearly, fundamental words must be carefully defined.
I’m toying with the idea of writing a book about enlightenment. To help sort out my ideas, from time to time I may write chunks of that potential book on this blog. One of the ways we can clarify ideas is by choosing technical terms and defining them carefully. The word “know” I’ll give “know” […]