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January 15, 2025

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Hi Brian, I don’t buy so many books these days, just mostly ones that discuss findings on psychology or neuroscience and so on, such as some of those you have reviewed by Garfield (Loosing Ourselves), Anil Seth (Being You) etc. I also lately enjoyed Lisa Fieldman Barrett (How Emotions are Made) etc. and Helen Czerski (The Blue Machine). As for books on meditation, Zen, and so on, if I buy any nowadays, it’s mainly about seeing how different authors express ‘This’.

Henry Shukman seems to communicate this well, in fact, I’ll probably buy this book seeing as though he talks clearly on many issues that I have always been interested in. For example: - the true meaning of awakening: how we have evolved to be aware of our own awareness: the interconnectedness of the cosmos and: seeing through our illusory sense of self and of being separate entities.

Many people talk of love and compassion believing it is something you acquire whereas Shukman, I’m sure, will point out that love and compassion only truly arise when our sense of being separate from the world, from others (and ourselves) along with the illusion of being a separate self drops away.

Sounds like an interesting book.

"You are the person with the history, hopes, relationships, physiology, aptitudes, and fallibilities that help to define who you think you are. But you are also both much more, and much less. When we get right down to it, our sense of self is an illusion, like a mirage over a hot road, no more substantial than a reflection on the surface of a lake. To "awaken" is to realize this, and this book is a guide to catching glimpses of what that means."

our sense of self is an illusion. There is no separate self, only the appearance. However, just to say this, it becomes a theory, a teaching. To REALIZE it - it becomes your truth, absolutely without any doubt. A theory, an understanding, a belief, a teaching, a dogma, these are not realization. They can be questioned, doubted, because they arise within the mind.
Realization is not a mind construct.
If it IS a mind construct, then it is not realization, it is the stage that happens BEFORE realization, and which some people can easily mistaken for realization. I call it the booby prize. It is when you (a) understand and (b) accept as true the "idea" of oneness. It now becomes your belief, you FEEL different, hence it's easy to think you have attained something. This is the early stage, when it feels real and you will CLAIM enlightenment. You claim it because something profound has happened to YOU. It is an experience. It is a mind construct. The separate self is claiming it. It is the enlightened ego. ONENESS is only an idea.
Actual realization is not something that you can create, manage, encourage, or do anything to make it happen.
It is not even a happening. It is not an event.
It doesn't happen to an individual.
something that was always the case now is seen to be the truth.
but there is no "seer" nobody to experience the oneness.
the moment this is expressed in language, it has to appear nonsense, because all that can really be said is "IT IS"

"If this book succeeds even a little, it will open a crack in your sense of self -- a chink in the armor of your certainty, of your confidence in the basic assumptions we all make about life -- that will allow a revelation to begin to unfold in your life, as well as in the lives of those around you, and ultimately, perhaps, in the whole human family, and through it, in the great family of all animate beings."

This is exactly what the author is talking about. The book, the meditation is an attempt to "open a crack"
to question the basic assumptions we all make about life.

only then does the possibility open up.

that is the same as the dialogue between a master and disciple.
A crack open up, a possibility arises....

A non-disciple cannot see it - he is closed, so the real dialogue cannot happen, because it is not of the mind.

this meditation is designed to take you beyond the prison of logic, the prison of the mind

Ah, the usual double-down. Pay a thousand dollars every year for guru books and subscriptions to spiritual phone apps. The rest of us know sitting is all.


@ Osho R

Maybe I should not address myself to you or even write the following ....

Suppose you have toiled and studied to prepare yourself for a position in society and the very moment you are ready that position is no longer needed in society.

Or remember the transformation of the feudal China to the modern China under the Cimmunist regime as shown in the movie the "last emperor"

What I am pointing at or try to do is that we cannot revive a religions of ancient times and we should not.

We have arrived in a time that many worldviews that were still valid say 100 years ago have come to lose their value and meaning and nothing ne is at the horizon.

I hardly dear to write it down, but I do feel that whatever spiritual path that was available having its roots in long bygone, regional societies and cultures are ALL in their end days ..be they dual or non-dual

They no longer serve humanity

Not only these spiritual traditions but many other social and cultural tools humanity has lived by for hundreds and hundreds of years. ..holding on to them will destroy whatever remains of nature

And OshoR.

In the past religion served the common man as still can be seen in India where people with the millions gather for a religious event. THAT receptivity is no longer available elsewhere in the world.

Religion, and its "scholars" so to say the mystics, those that have time to spend in a religious practice instead of earning their bread. Scholars as they too are payed indirectly by the common people.

Science and religion have both driven far away from the general public and most lay people can hardly grasp what these scientific and spiritual scholars are talking about, nor do they have the need ..whatever they want to know they can easily find themselves on tiktok ..the new church with the new clergymen the influences

Do you think, that if Israel manage to get the complete control over Jerusalem, that most inhabitants are waiting for the reconstruction of the temple of Solomon in its original glory and use it as it was practiced more than 2000 years ago??

What you are discussing here is voor a paricular intelectual elite ..that is allright but that is an small circel. irrelevant for what the masses have in mind.

I'm loving watching the complete collapse of the Democrat party.
This is the greatest thing to happen in my lifetime.
It's like waking from a nightmare.
This must be how the patriots felt when the British troops were sent packing back to England.
This must be how Americans felt on VJ day.

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