Dream sadhana

I’m writing this post to answer a question that A Ramana Devotee, who wrote this guest article a few years ago, asked recently in a comment. A useful concept before I start: Years ago my friend Jyothi invented the term “imposed sadhana” to describe a spiritual practice that we do without choice. Nisargadatta gave an […]

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My thoughts about this blog

For the last couple of days I’ve been trying to start posting again after a hiatus because several people asked me to. I’m having a lot of trouble because the only thing that interests me nowadays is Self-realization and I’m not Self-realized so I can’t write about it. When I say “Self-realization” I mean Ramana’s […]

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Muzika on watching the waking state come to us

Reminder: When I write about spiritual teachers I’m not necessarily recommending them or endorsing claims about their states. A couple of weeks ago I happened to listen to one of Ed Muzika’s satsang talks in which he gives a first-hand description of something that Ramana often recommended: noticing the process of waking from deep sleep. […]

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Piraro and Wayno

In case you don’t get the joke, people used to chant “What do we want? Peace! When do we want it? Now!” at protest marches against the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 70s. A good illustration of Self-enquiry: Cartoons by Dan Piraro and Waymo. See their website Bizzaro.com.

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Why I believe in auras

A friend asked today if I believe that some people can see auras. Although I can’t see them, yes I do. Here’s why. This is a true story. When I was a child my father barely survived a heart attack. From that day on I lived with the expectation that at any moment he might […]

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My experiment in the New York City subway

The subject of external aids (videos, satsangs, music, chanting, books, etc.) came up in a comment yesterday. These things can be very helpful by reminding us, inspiring us, and transmission. Incidentally, if you’ve never been in a large hall, especially a large wooden hall, where hundreds of people are chanting, try to arrange it at […]

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A childhood with Ramana

These two videos with Kitty Osborne, who spent her childhood in Ramana’s ashram, are extraordinary. I thought I knew a lot about Ramana from reading a bazillion books about him but wow, was I missing some major parts of the picture. I cried the whole time I watched these, but there is plenty of food […]

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Einstein on Consciousness

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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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