Non-Duality


The publications listed below are suggested reading on non-duality for those in the Cotswold Non-Duality Group, and anyone interested in the Direct Path teaching.

Contemporary Teachers

Presence Volume I: The Art of Peace and Happiness – Rupert Spira

Your self, aware presence, knows no resistance to any appearance and, as such, is happiness itself; like the empty space of a room, it cannot be disturbed and is, therefore, peace itself; like this page, it is intimately one with whatever appears on it and is thus love itself; and like water that is not affected by the shape of a wave, it is pure freedom. Causeless joy, imperturbable peace, love that knows no opposite, and freedom at the heart of all experience…this is your ever-present nature under all circumstances.
ISBN: 978-1626258747

 

Presence, Volume II: The Intimacy of All Experience – Rupert Spira

All that is known is experiencing, and experiencing is not divided into one part (an inside self) that experiences and another part (an outside object, other, or world) that is experienced. Experiencing is seamless and intimate, made of “knowing” or awareness alone. This intimacy, in which there is no room for selves, objects, or others, is love itself. It lies at the heart of all experience, completely available under all circumstances.
ISBN: 978-1626258778

 

The Nature of Consciousness: Essays on the Unity of Mind and Matter – Rupert Spira

The Nature of Consciousness exposes the belief upon which our world culture is founded – that consciousness is derived from matter – and suggests that the recognition of the presence, the primacy and the nature of consciousness is the prerequisite for the emerging new paradigm. It includes a foreword by Deepak Chopra and afterword by Bernardo Kastrup. This book is clear and understandable by people from any background, and it is particularly recommended for those with an interest in science.
ISBN 978-1-68403-000-2

 

Eternity Now – Francis Lucille

Francis Lucille speaks about one thing: awareness, our true nature, the Absolute. This is the ancient teaching of nonduality, the common ground of Advaita Vedanta, Ch’an Buddhism, Zen, Taoism and Sufism, the same common ground which is at the core of the message left behind by the founders of all great religions. In a loving, open, blissfully peaceful manner, Francis leads us to a deep understanding that what we are is love, the pure awareness behind and between all the activities of the mind.
ISBN: 978-0955829086

 

The Perfume of Silence – Francis Lucille, compiled by Rupert Spira

This book is about enlightenment, spiritual awakening, self realization, meditation, awareness, consciousness, happiness, love, relationships, psychological suffering and human predicament.

Based largely on actual dialogues between Francis Lucille, a spiritual teacher of non-duality, and some of his disciples, the music of freedom that it conveys resonates between the words, and gives the reader an inkling of the peace and happiness that are experienced in the presence of an authentic master.

Francis Lucille was for over twenty years a close friend and disciple of Jean Klein, a well recognized French teacher of non-duality. They both belong to a lineage of Advaita Vedanta teachers stemming from India. (Advaita Vedanta is the main nondualist Hindu spiritual tradition). Jean Klein’s guru, Pandit Veeraraghavachar, was a Professor at the Sanskrit College in Bengalore. Their teachings, despite some superficial similarities, are quite different from those of most contemporary western neo-Advaita teachers.They emphasize for instance the importance of the direct transmission from guru to disciple, through presence, beyond words, and they recognize that the same universal truth was expressed by various saints, philosophers and teachers throughout history and across the world.

That which matters here is not the form of the teaching, direct or gradual for instance, as much as the authenticity of the teacher, the vibrancy of his realization, the outpouring of his love, the freedom of his humour, the brilliancy of his intelligence, the splendor of his poetry, the spontaneous sharing of his peace.

Nonduality is the common ground of Buddhism (especially Zen and Dzogchen), Advaita, Sufism, Taoism, the Kabbalah, the Gnosis and the teachings of Jesus in the Thomas Gospel, the teachings of Parmenides, Plotinus, Gaudapada, Abinavagupta, Meister Eckhart, Ramana Maharshi, Atmananda Krishna Menon, Ananda Mai and many others.
ISBN: 978-1882874019

Standing as Awareness: The Direct Path – Greg Goode

Inspired by Sri Atmananda Krishna Menon, the Direct Path is a “pathless path.” It simply articulates the being of you and the world as loving, open, clear awareness. If this truth is realized as your experience, then nothing need be done. The path disappears, and life is lived in sweetness and celebration! But if there are still questions or doubts, the Direct Path contains unique and powerful resources that stabilize this truth as your everyday reality. This is a revised edition of the book, expanded to add chapters on the Direct Path in addition to its selection of dialogs from a decade of “Nondual Dinner” gatherings. The first three chapters unfold the basics of the Direct Path, such as standing as awareness, being in love with awareness, and exploring awareness. Included are several experiments that help establish your everyday experience as awareness, always and already. The dialogs cover questions such as the desire for enlightenment experiences, the relationship between the brain and awareness, the question of “nondually correct” language, the belief in physical and mental objects, the idea of having a sage’s experience, and more.
ISBN: 978-0956309150

The Direct Path: A User Guide – Greg Goode

This book is the “missing manual” to Greg’s earlier book Standing as Awareness: The Direct Path. In The Direct Path: A User Guide, Greg’s approach to Direct Path inquiry is presented in a detailed and systematic way from beginning to end and beyond, in a user-friendly approach. The core of the book is a set of forty experiments designed to help dissolve the most common non-dual sticking points, from simple to subtle. The experiments cover the world, the body, the mind, abstract objects, and witnessing awareness. You are taken step-by-step from the simple perception of a physical object all the way to the collapse of the witness into pure consciousness. Your takeaway is that there’s no experiential doubt that you and all things are awareness, openness, and love. Also included are three tables of contents, illustrations, an index, a section on teaching, and the notion of a “post-nondual realization.” This book can be utilized on its own or as a companion volume to the author’s Standing as Awareness.
ISBN: 978-1908664020

Multimedia

The Light of Pure Knowing: Thirty Meditations on the Essence of Non-Duality – Rupert Spira

The Light of Pure Knowing: Thirty Meditations on the Essence of Non-Duality is a box set that includes: six mp3 CDs with 18 hours of audio; a 248 page paperback book of transcriptions of the spoken meditations; and a slipcase. The guided meditations in The Light of Pure Knowing were transcribed, catalogued and selected from hundreds that Rupert Spira gave over a period of three years, from 2011 to 2013. They are a deeply contemplative and profound exploration of the non-dual nature of our experience, and have the power to take the listener or reader back to the source from which they arise. You will not encounter philosophy here, but a journey into the most essential and ever-present nature of our experience – pure Knowing, the truth of our own Being – free from the thoughts and feelings that the mind superimposes upon it. Those familiar with traditional teachings will recognise both the Vedantic approach, which, through reason and discrimination, separates out the eternal reality of all experience from its changing appearances, and also the Tantric approach, in which the entire realm of experience is known and felt to be shining with the light of pure Knowing. However, no previous philosophical, religious or spiritual orientation is required for these contemplations, for they offer a contemporary, original and highly experiential approach to the essential nature of all experience, free from all traditional religious or spiritual dogma.
ISBN: 978-0992972608 available from Sahaja Publications or at Rupert’s meetings and retreats.

Transparent Body, Luminous World: The Tantric Yoga of Sensation and Perception – Rupert Spira

This box set includes a set of six mp3 CDs with over 30 hours of guided yoga meditations; and a paperback book of the transcriptions of the spoken meditations. The 24 yoga meditations explore the actual experience of the body and the world as a continuously changing flow of sensations and perceptions appearing in, known by and made of empty, open Awareness:

“The density and solidity of the body and the otherness of the world are penetrated and suffused with the light of pure knowing, God’s infinite being, and are gradually outshone by it. The body becomes impersonal like the world, and the world becomes intimate like the body. At some point, there is a feeling-understanding that there is only God’s infinite being, and everything is that.”

These meditations are particularly recommended for those who have some understanding of the vedantic (inward-facing) path as presented in Rupert’s teaching, and now feel ready to turn outwards towards the body and the world.
ISBN: 978-0-9929726-2-2 available from Sahaja Publications or at Rupert’s meetings and retreats.

Earlier Direct Path Teachers

I Am – Jean Klein

The root of all desires is the one desire: to come home, to be at peace. There may be a moment in life when our compensatory activities, the accumulation of money, learning and objects, leaves us feeling deeply apathetic. This can motivate us towards the search for our real nature beyond appearances. We may find ourselves asking, ‘Why am I here? What is life? Who am I?’ Sooner or later any intelligent person asks these questions.

What you are looking for is what you already are, not what you will become. What you already are is the answer and the source of the question. In this lies its power of transformation. It is a present actual fact. Looking to become something is completely conceptual, merely an idea. The seeker will discover that he is what he seeks and that what he seeks is the source of the inquiry.
ISBN: 978-0955176272

Beyond Knowledge – Jean Klein

“We have come to satisfy the inner need to know ourselves, to share our oneness, to hear directly what life is. To receive life one must be open to it. Life can only be understood by life. This means that the being open is life itself. During these meetings, be open to the openness, allow yourself to be deeply impregnated by the sayings that come directly from life. To be impregnated, the mind must be free from wrong knowing, that is, free from imposing an independent existence on all that is objective. Nothing that can be known has existence in itself. It depends on a knower. The knower is consciousness. Only consciousness never changes. We must find out what never changes in us.” Beyond Knowledge is a crystallization in word-form of this timeless wisdom.To read these dialogues is to enter into a scale of inquiry and clarity that knows no compromise. It carries one through to the end of thought and to the beginning of self-knowledge. Jean Klein, master of Advaita Vedanta in the tradition of Ramana Maharshi and Atmananda Krishna Menon and author of many books on non-dualism, spent several years in India going deeply into the subjects of Advaita and Yoga. In 1955 the truth of non-dualism became a living reality. From 1960 he taught in Europe and later in the United States.
ISBN: 978-0955176289

Be As You Are: The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi – Edited by David Godman

Ramana Maharshi was one of the most significant spiritual teachers to emerge from India during the first half of the century, and remains widely admired. This recent collection of conversations between him and the many seekers who came to his ashram for guidance contains the essence of his teaching. His concern throughout his long life of imparting his experience to others was to convince his listeners that self-realisation – or enlightenment – is not an alien or mysterious state, but the natural condition of man. This state can be easily discovered by undertaking the self-investigation clearly described in these talks. The lucid instructions to each section provide further illumination of this greater seer’s message.
ISBN: 978-0140190625

Notes on Spiritual Discourses of Shri Atmananda: Volumes 1, 2, and 3 – Recorded by Nitya Tripta

A three-volume collection of spiritual discourses by Shri Atmananda Krishna Menon, 1883-1959, a living representative of the tradition of Advaita Vedanta and one of the great sages of the modern world. The discourses were recorded during the period of 1950 to 1959 by a trusted disciple. They are short and masterful talks on realizing the Truth through a recognition that our nature is always pure Consciousness.
ISBNs: 978-0956309129, 978-0956309136, 978-0956309143