Month: November 2022
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The Personality Grows Out Of My Silence
The personality–not what I am–grows out of the silence of my elemental presence. It rises out in front and sets out in front. This can be directly seen, and therefore the beginning–or more than the beginning–of a Gestalt shift may already be well under way. It’s not only the case that this is clear because…
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‘Live With This Representation Of An Unthinkable Subject’
Listen very closely, openly, as a child would, to Jean Klein’s reply to a student’s question during satsang: [Student:] I find myself overwhelmed by the idea of geometrical representation which you spoke about the other day. How could one begin to approach understanding this? [Jean Klein:] You know that all you perceive is an object…
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Samskaras & Body Work: A Hypothesis
A dull mind is a lethargic body; a scattered mind is a stressed-out body; and a calm mind is a quiet, energetic body. This line of inquiry offers us a natural transition into the topic of samskaras, which can be defined as latent ego tendencies or as false, habitual identifications with some object or other.…
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Muscular Jerks During Body, or Energy, Work
The Advaita Vedanta teacher Jean Klein sometimes refers to “residues” that his students experienced during the process of releasing contractions and defenses during body, or energy, work. One of his longtime students Billy Doyle elaborates: When the neuromuscular contractions begin to free themselves there may arise a series of jerks or something that feels like…
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Taking Satcitananda As A Pointer, Not As The Ultimate Itself
Summarizing a key metaphysical point at the end of The Essential Vedanta: A New Source Book of Advaita Vedanta, Eliot Deutsch writes, Brahman may, for purposes of orienting the mind towards it and for pointing out the basic features of one’s experience of it, be represented or designated as saccidananda–as the fullness of being (sat),…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 