Tag Archives: Francis Lucille

Book Review: European Masters – John David

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Blueprints for Awakening: European Masters: Unique Dialogues with 14 European Masters on the Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi Who am I?

Premananda, Open Sky Press Ltd, Nov 2010, ISBN 978-0956607003. (350 pages).

Buy from Amazon US
Buy from Amazon UK

Note that, when I originally reviewed this book, it also included a free DVD of extracts from the interviews. This is no longer the case.

Premananda is the author of a number of books, including ‘Indian Masters: Blueprints for Awakening’, which I have reviewed at http://www.advaita.org.uk/reading/read_general.htm#blueprints. He spent 15 years with Osho, followed by another 5 with H. W. L. Poonja (Papaji) and much of his teaching now is influenced by Ramana Maharshi. He runs the Open Sky Satsang Community in Germany (between Cologne and Düsseldorf) and periodic meetings are organized throughout Europe.

(Extended biographical details may be found at his website – http://www.premanandasatsang.org/.)  

Note that, sometime during the elapsed time since I wrote this review (around 2011), he has reverted to his (presumed) birth name of John David. All reference to the name ‘Premananda’ appears to have been removed from his website and books (although the URL remains the same). I have left the words of the review itself, and the images, as they were in the original review.

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Ramanuja vs Shankara

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Who would win in an argument between Ramanujacharya and Shankaracharya?

As non-duality can be said to go beyond, and at the same time enclose duality within itself, we can also say that Shankara, being a non-dualist philosopher, goes beyond and ‘incorporates’ Ramanuja, that is, the latter’s philosophy (it has been said: a jñani understands a bhakta, not vice versa).

Ramanuja took the ego (psychological self) as being the Self, an error for an Advaitin. For the former, destruction of the ego (“me”) will thus entail the destruction of the Self. For an Advaitin, the ego or subtle body (mind, senses, and vital breath) dissolves when the body dies – not so awareness or pure consciousness.

From the viewpoint of Advaita Vedanta, ‘consciousness’ is another name for reality/being/existence: all there is or that can be (all possibilities of existence). Neither ‘subject’ nor ‘object’, it annihilates this (mental) division, as well as sublating all concepts.

Or, as Francis Lucille, a well-known teacher wrote: ‘Simply put, non-dualism is the hypothesis that reality is non-dual, that there is only one single reality which is the substance of all things, of all phenomena, both mind and matter. If that is true, it follows that the reality of our ordinary consciousness, meaning whatever is really perceiving these words at this moment, must be this non-dual, single, and universal reality.’

Shankara said:

‘An enlightened person, after his death, does not undergo a change of condition – something different than when he was living. But he is said to be “merged in Brahman” just due to his not being connected to another body.’ Quoted from ‘The Method of Early Advaita Vedanta’, Michael Comans.

Q.512 Direct Path vs Traditional – Pt. 5

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Part 5 – Teaching method

Q: Regarding the quote by Jean Klein: In “The Book of Listening”, Jean talks about how he thinks “books are dead” and do not carry the ‘perfume’ of the words, which is what is really transformative. And that what is important is the live meetings with a true teacher, who speaks words that ‘come from silence and lead back to silence’. In many books by Jean Klein he says to not emphasize the words, that which is behind the words. To put it crudely, Jean Klein’s main method, I would say, is that of transmission. So the books of Jean Klein should be read with that in mind. So I do not think everything he says should be taken literally. There is a lot more to his teachings, but the above is a very rough summary. Whether or not this technique (transmission) is effective is another matter.

Regarding the other quotes, they are just providing descriptions of what experience is like, but I never took it that realizing that this is true alone will make you enlightened. For example, Rupert, often says that it is not enough to know what we are not, it is necessary to see what we are [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOxfCkbWTZA around 01:30 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmDTwg8fAlE around 02:05] In other words, he’s saying that it is not enough to know what experience is, you must also ‘go’ to yourself and investigate the nature of that which is aware.

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Q.511 Direct Path vs Traditional – Pt. 4

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Part 4 – Experience

Q: While I agree with your statement about philosophers over intellectualizing the truth, there is something about Greg’s writing that is so magnetic to me. I really think he is the most articulate writer I have ever come across. Usually when I write, I feel a big part of what I’m trying to get across gets lost, whereas with Greg, I feel like 100% of what he’s trying to express comes through perfectly. I’m going through Standing as Awareness at the moment and the clarity with which he writes is so so beautiful.

But as you can probably sense by my emails, I’m a bit disappointed with the direct path. It is without a doubt the clearest and most direct teaching I have come across (so far), and the teachers themselves are brilliant, and I have no doubt that they understand the truth, and also live their understanding, but I feel I am craving something more systematic and formalized, that can answer these questions I have without confusion.

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Q.509 Direct Path vs Traditional – Pt. 2

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Part 2 – Free Will

Q: We talked earlier about the difference between the direct path and the traditional path.

I was looking through the free will section in your book Back to the Truth and I found this quotation by Franics Lucille:

We are entirely conditioned; therefore, there is no free will. It appears as though we exercise free choice, but in fact we are only reacting like automatons, running through the same patterns of our bio-sociological heritage without respite, leading invariably to the same old reactions, like a vending machine dispensing soft drinks in a train station. As individuals, our freedom is illusory, with the exception of the freedom which is ours at each moment to stop taking ourselves for separate individuals and thus putting an end to our ignorance and our suffering.

On the other hand, at the level of our deepest being, everything flows out of our freedom. Every thought, every perception takes birth because we want it to. We cannot understand this at the level of thought, but we can experience it. When we are totally open to the unknown, the personal entity is absent; then we realize that the tangible and intelligible universe arises out of this openness in the eternal present. We want, create and are at every moment everything in the unity of awareness. (Ref. 8)

[Waite, Dennis. Back To The Truth: 5000 Years Of Advaita (p. 76). NBN_Mobi_Kindle. Kindle Edition.]

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Q.508 Direct Path vs Traditional – Pt. 1

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Part 1 – Prerequisites for Enlightenment

Q: I’ve been on the direct path (Krishna Menon, Jean Klein, Francis Lucille, Greg Goode, Rupert Spira) for about 3 years now and the journey has been incredible. Recently, while browsing your website, I came across Shankara’s sAdhana chatuShTaya, which, if my understanding is correct, are the prerequisites for self-realization according to Shankara. But I’m confused as to how some of these are prerequisites. I feel like some of them can only be fulfilled once one has realized their true nature, not before.

I can see how viveka and mumukShutva can be considered prerequisites – that is very reasonable. However, if we take vairAgya, or uparati, I cannot fathom how an apparent, separate self can satisfy or practice these requirements. How can it be possible for an apparent, separate self to be indifferent to joy and grief, like and dislike? A separate self is, almost by definition, strongly affected by likes and dislikes, joy and grief. In order to be indifferent to pleasure and pain, joy and grief etc., I feel like one has to have at least tasted the truth a few times and be able to (through something like self-inquiry) ‘walk back’ to and ‘rest’ as one’s true self, and only then be able to successfully practice uparati.

Then why are things like vairAgya considered prerequisites for self-realization, if (in my book) self-realization is a prerequisite for being able to satisfy the vairAgya requirement? How can an apparent separate self prepare or practice something like uparati (one of the shamAdi ShaTka sampatti), without it being completely fake? In my experience, uparati is only possible (and completely effortless) once you have realized the self. So the whole things seems backwards to me.

One explanation is that here Shankara is talking about final Self-realization in which there is no falling back to the old conditioning. But that implies that it is possible to realize the self clearly but, out of conditioning, fall back to the old patterns. (I’m not sure what traditional Advaita’s stance on this is yet). I may have answered my own question but I’d love to hear what you have to say about it!

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Two Q & A-s

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How can we consciously realize the consciousness concept?

First, consciousness is beyond concepts – language, which is dualist, allows talking of it as if separate from the subject, thus conceptually. But consciousness is a prime reality, the foundation of everything existing; same as being (which are not two). Consciousness is first, an immediate reality and, accordingly, you don’t have to do anything to realize it since you are it. Only, let the veil of ignorance drop, mostly by ‘not this, not this’ – one apavada after another; that is, by real understanding or discrimination. You are being itself, consciousness itself. The knower cannot know itself – as an object.

Who would win in an argument between Ramanujacharya and Shankaracharya?

As non-duality can be said to go beyond, and at the same time enclose duality within itself, we can also say that Shankara, being a non-dualist philosopher, goes beyond and ‘incorporates’ Ramanuja, that is, the latter’s philosophy (it has been said: a jñani understands a bhakta, not vice versa).

Ramanuja took the ego (psychological self) as being the Self, an error for an Advaitin. For the former a destruction of the ego (“me”) will thus entail destruction of the Self. For an Advaitin, the ego or subtle body (mind, senses and vital breath) dissolves when the body dies – not so awareness or pure consciousness.

From the viewpoint of Advaita Vedanta ‘consciousness’ is another name for ‘reality/being/existence’: all there is or that can be (all possibilities of existence). Neither ‘subject’ nor ‘object’, it annihilates this (mental) division, as well as sublating all concepts.

Or, as Francis Lucille, a well-known teacher wrote: ‘Simply put, non-dualism is the hypothesis that reality is non-dual, that there is only one single reality which is the substance of all things, of all phenomena, of both mind and matter. If that is true, it follows that the reality of our ordinary consciousness, meaning whatever it is that is really perceiving these words in this moment, must be this non-dual, single, and universal reality.’

Shankara said:

‘An enlightened person, after his death, does not undergo a change of condition – something different than when he was living. But he is said to be “merged in Brahman” just due to his not being connected to another body.’ Quoted from ‘The Method of Early Advaita Vedanta’, Michael Comans.

 

Two-Icings on the Cake of SAND-2013:

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For AV PostSAND-2013 has undoubtedly matured.

There is a greater participation of  Scientists well-known and respected in their fields of study spanning from Cognitive science to Computational Neuroscience, Lucid dreams to Non-linear mathematical models, Physics to Consciousness.

Susana Martinez-Conde from Barrow Neurological Institute was a pleasant surprise. A number of years ago I wrote  to her and her colleague Stephen, after seeing their work on the Perception-Reality Disconnect, about how Non-duality considers the world as an illusion and if they would like to explore this line of thought. They had no interest and disposed off my mails as if it’s all quack science. They may not remember the correspondence, but the change in their perspective is very welcome!

The highly popular Non-dual Teachers like Francis Lucille, Rupert Spira and others were also there. Continue reading →