Month: October 2022

• October 17, 2022

  Are There Two Selves, Is There Only One?

  Only one. Only: “I am.” Can’t be two. No, never. Honestly, you’ve never had, nor can you ever have, any experience of a second self. Language, here, is bewitching as sentences like “I loved myself,” I myself reflected upon the course of my life” betray a patent misunderstanding. Investigate: Can you go toward yourself? Can…
• October 13, 2022

  Atmananda’s Teaching Is Like Smoking Out Your Prey

  Atmananda’s teaching can be analogized to smoking out your prey. You have the sense that there is some prey that’s hiding off yonder. The prey, which has yet to reveal its essence, is apparently separate from you. You resort to cunning. In lieu of chasing after it (for such is futile inasmuch as you’ve treated…
• October 11, 2022

  ‘Consciousness-without-an-object Is’: An Aphorism By Franklin Merrell-Woolf

  “Consciousness-without-an-object is.” This is the first of 56 aphorisms by Franklin Merrell-Woolf. In it is contained much of the teaching of Advaita Vedanta. A brief commentary: 1. Consciousness is the ontological primitive: there is nothing more basic than Consciousness. And “everything else”–though there is nothing else–can be reduced to Consciousness-without-an-object. 2. Consciousness is also the…
• October 8, 2022

  Our Mind Is Unreal, Only ‘I Am’ Is Real

  One crux of the idealist teaching of Sri Ramana in particular, of Advaita Vedant in general can be found clearly elucidated by Michael James, who for many years was a disciple of Sri Sadhu Om (who was a disciple of Sri Ramana): All thoughts are known by us only through the medium of our mind,…
• October 7, 2022

  The Negative Way, The Traditional Positive Way, And Atmananda’s Innovative Positive Way

  I believe a considerable methodological mistake Wei Wu Wei makes can be found here: Absolute is phenomenally negative, objects phenomenally positive. That is why only by totally negating the positive can Absolute be revealed, for the negation of phenomena lays bare Noumenon. Posthumous Pieces, P. 207, my emphasis. And here (though see my emendation): [Only] When…