Category: philosophical counseling
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‘I Am Not Of The World, Yet I Am In It’
‘I Am Not Of The World’ I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They…
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Contrition As A Key To The Spiritual Life
What role does contrition or shame play in nondual spirituality? Perhaps an interesting one insofar as it could be a gateway. To what? So long as one takes oneself to be an agent, the teaching says, just so long are the fruits of one’s actions “one’s own.” Honesty, then, encourages one to admit, perhaps, that…
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Raja Yoga Vs. The Direct Path
The difference between the Direct Path of Advaita Vedanta and, for instance, raja yoga is that what the latter takes for granted is drawn into question by the former. Allow me to unpack this statement. Quite understandably, raja yogis will say, “You need to take these forms–the gross body, the energy body, and the mental…
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What’s So Special About Self-inquiry
What’s very special, it could be said, about Self-inquiry is that it’s an inquiry. But what sort of inquiry is it? Not, to be sure, a philosophical inquiry whose point is to come to unimaginable clarity in the mode of thought (see The Art of Inquiry). Usually, the conclusion of a philosophical inquiry is a…
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Metaphysics And The Technique Of Self-inquiry
This individual is not altogether unreal; he is not so in the same sense as the barren woman’s son is unreal. The Real Self is present as the Substratum on which the sense of an individual soul is superimposed, and hence even though unreal, he is taken to be real. The element of Reality of…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 