Jenny Beal
Cotswold Group was originally formed in 2012 to teach the Fourth Way system as reconstructed by Dr Francis Roles. In 2014 Jenny Beal began to study the Direct Path under the guidance of Rupert Spira, a former student of Dr Francis Roles. She went on to study with Rupert’s teacher, Francis Lucille. She discovered in this teaching the possible source of several aspects of Ouspensky’s system that were not explicitly covered in the Advaita Vedanta teaching of the Shankaracharya tradition.
After some months, Jenny began introducing what she had learnt and understood, alongside the traditional Fourth Way teaching, on an experimental basis, to discover whether an exploration of some of the key Fourth Way concepts might be useful as initial preparation for following the Direct Path. Whether any such preparation is generally needed remains an open question. Either way, these papers can be seen as tracing the journey taken by the Cotswold Group towards an understanding of non-duality.
The papers that are available here fall into two groups: papers from June 2014 up to July 2015 covering both the traditional Fourth Way teaching and the Direct Path; and papers from August 2015 onwards focusing on the Direct Path as taught by Rupert Spira and Francis Lucille. The earlier Cotswold Group papers from September 2012 to May 2014 are not included as the material they contain is covered more comprehensively elsewhere on this website and in Gerald Beckwith’s book Ouspensky’s Fourth Way.
The Books section gives details of further suggested reading on the Direct Path. There is also a Facebook Group where you can ask questions.
Introduction to the Direct Path
Those who are not familiar with the Direct Path may find the following introductory material helpful, before embarking on a study of the papers:
- The Direct Path to Happiness – a magazine article introducing the Direct Path, aimed at readers who have previously followed a traditional path towards self-realisation.
- A video clip in which Rupert Spira explains what self-remembering is and how it is practised: ‘What is meant by self-remembering?’
- A set of video clips covering key concepts from Rupert Spira’s teaching: Introduction to Non-duality
Copyright
These papers or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever other than for private study without the express written permission of the publisher.
Papers: June 2014 to July 2015 – Fourth Way and Direct Path
| 20140617 The Direct Path | This paper introduced the Direct Path to the group. |
| 20140708 The Enneagram and the mini-ladder | An introduction to the enneagram that also illustrated the concept of the Absolute being present and available at every moment. |
| 2014 SUMMER PROGRAMME | Practice and holiday reading for the summer break. Seeing the resistance that arises from deeply-held beliefs. |
| 20140909 Resistance Openness and Questions | Resistance to what is currently appearing in awareness is the main barrier to realising our true nature. |
| 20140925 Time | Exploring the illusory nature of Time. |
| 20141016 From Self-Observation to Self-discovery | A scientific approach to self-discovery. |
| 20141106 The Illusion of the Separate Self | Separating pure experience from superimposed concepts of ‘I’. |
| 20141127 From Attention to Self-remembering | Focused attention, passive attention and self-remembering in practical life. |
| 20150108 States of Consciousness | Consciousness is present and unchanging throughout waking, dreaming and deep sleep. Mandukya upanishad. |
| 20150129 Thought | What should we do about the incessant flow of thoughts? Differences in approach between the Fourth Way and the Direct Path. |
| 20150226 Negative Emotion | True positive emotions have no opposite. Different approaches to dealing with negative emotions. |
| 20150326 Meditation | The Direct Path approach to meditation - a simple method of self-remembering. |
| 20150416 The Laws of Nature | How does the universe come into existence? What is the nature of the laws that appear to govern it? |
| 20150507 The Six Activities of Man - Part 1 | The triads of refinement, growth and creation. Practical examples in the Direct Path. |
| 20150528 The Six Activities of Man - Part 2 | The triads of invention or healing, destruction and crime. Practical examples. Choosing the ‘right’ triad. |
| 20150702 How things happen | The Law of Octaves. Does free will exist? |
Papers: August 2015 to present – mainly Direct Path
| 2015 SUMMER PROGRAMME | Self-enquiry - a suggested approach and useful resources for the summer break. |
| 20150910 Traditional and Direct Paths | Essay by Ananda Wood on the differences. The concept of a jumping off point from a traditional to a direct path. |
| 20151001 Am I a Material Body or Brain | First of the 5 sheaths that hide the Self - annamaya, the material body. |
| 20151022 Am I the one who makes things happen | Second sheath - pranamaya, life force, that which makes things move. |
| 20151119 Am I My Limited Mind | Third sheath - manomaya, the moving mind. |
| 20160107 Approaching Reality | Further explanation of the final part of the previous paper. The dream metaphor. |
| 20160121 Behind the Veil of Reason | Fourth sheath - vijnanamaya, reason (buddhi). Higher v lower reason. |
| 20160211 The Happiness Trap | Last sheath - anandamaya, happiness. Enlightenment is not a state of mind that comes and goes. |
| 20160310 Surrender and Welcoming | Saying an unconditional ‘yes’ to all appearances. Dealing with resistance. |
| 20160324 Time, Memory and Causation | Does memory prove the existence of time? How can we live without time? |
| 20160421 How the M5 was built | Exploring the presumptions behind our world view. Understanding the implications of Idealism and Realism. |
| 20160519 Another perspective on Self-enquiry | The need to start from a real question, with a strong desire to find the answer. Examining the assumptions behind the materialist scientific model. Living our understanding. |
| 20160616 Name and Form | How mind creates the world. ‘It is what I am.’ Names and forms keep us apart from experience. |
| 20160630 Personal and Impersonal Desires | Are desires a barrier to enlightenment? How to tell the difference between personal and impersonal desires. The desire for enlightenment. |
| 20160721 The Three Caskets | Three classes of spiritual knowledge. What is in the golden casket? Transition from the Fourth Way to the Direct Path. |
| 2016 SUMMER PROGRAMME | Practice and non-practice. How to explore our experience. Using the guided meditations. |
| 20161006 What Is Ego | How does ego arise? Do we need it? |
| 20161027 Words, Words, Words | All language is based on duality. So how can we communicate the inexpressible? |
| 20161117 Questioning our Beliefs | Testing our beliefs against our experience. |
| 20170112 The Pathless Path Part 1 - The Vedantic Path | Knowing ourselves as the witnessing presence of awareness. The effortless path of openness, welcoming and surrender. |
| 20170127 The Pathless Path Part 2 - The Tantric Path | Aligning feelings in the body and perceptions of the world with our non-dual understanding. |
| 20170209 Welcoming uncomfortable feelings | More on the tantric path. Understanding and responding to uncomfortable feelings and tensions in the body. |
| 20170309 Living our understanding | Dissolving the residues of ignorance in the body and mind, so that our lives express and communicate our understanding. |
| 20170330 Exploring the reality of the unreal world | Our senses seem to tell us that the world and its objects are real. How can it be illusion? Do objects disappear after enlightenment? |
| 20170427 Exploring the Body from the Inside | The tantric approach to exploring the body and feeling that our true body is unlimited and unlocated. |
| 20170511 A Further Investigation into Time | Time is a construction of the mind. Memory is used by mind to construct a separate self. |
| 20170615 The Ever-Present Nature of Ourself | The non-duality teaching says that we were never born and therefore cannot die. How can this be so? |
| 20170629 Objectless Love | Is there a place for devotion and surrender in the Direct Path? How can we love without an object of love? |
| 2017 SUMMER PROGRAMME | Lines of enquiry. Explaining different starting points for self-enquiry. |
| 20170928 Sleeping, Dreaming and Waking | Consciousness is ever-present. There are no levels of consciousness. The focusing of consciousness. |
| 20171019 Being Open to the Openness | Discusses the essential role of openness in both the inward-facing (vedantic) and outward-facing (tantric) paths. |
| 20171109 The Dark Night of the Soul | Understanding the fluctuating feelings that arise on the spiritual path. |
| 20171130 Nothing truly veils awareness | How can we remain abiding as awareness while engaged in activities in the world? How to deal with difficult situations. |
| 20180111 Exploring the Nature of Myself | Discovering I am that which is aware of mind, body and world. Is there just one awareness? |
| 20180201 Sweet are the uses of adversity | Do difficult circumstances help or hinder the recognition of our true nature? |
| 20180222 Dissolution of the Witness | The journey from I am the witness of all experience to I am the substance of all experience |
| 20180308 Models of Experience | All the models we superimpose on experience are limited, and not absolute truth. But objective experience doesn't obscure reality; it shines with it. |
| 20180412 Beliefs and Habits | Why do old habits which are based on thinking and feeling ourselves to be a separate self, keep recurring after we have realised our true nature? |
| 20180503 Dealing with Addiction | We are all addicted to something - thinking, TV, substances etc. Techniques based on yoga meditation. |
| 20180524 Love Knows No Other | Love is the dissolution of subject-object relationship. How to live that understanding. |
| 20180614 Not Doing | Is there a doer? Is there anything we can do to realise our true nature? Letting the moment flow. |
| 2018 SUMMER PROGRAMME | Is practice necessary? What to practise and how to practise. |
| 20180913 Abandoning all Beliefs | Keeping the teaching free from dogma. Rupert's approach to answering questions. |
| 20181004 Resistance | Are all preferences egoic? Dealing with resistance in daily life. Resistance to the teaching. |
| 20181025 Is There Anything Outside of Myself | Describes the steps that follow the recognition ‘I am that which is aware of my experience’. What does Rupert mean by the word ‘God’? |
| 20181108 Instinct Intuition Inspiration and Intelligence | Exploring the broader realm of mind. The collective unconscious. |
| 20181129 Letting Experience Flow | No need for effort and no need to manipulate experience. Space and time move through me. |
| 20190110 Happiness | Why do we expect objects to bring us happiness? Discovering the peace that pervades all experience. |
| 20190131 Living in the Now | The effect of the living in the Now. There can be no suffering in the Now. |
| 20190221 Benevolent Indifference | What is 'benevolent indifference'? Is it practical in daily life? |
| 20190314 The Feeling of Locatedness | Exploring whether I, awareness, is located inside my body. |
| 20190404 The Sense of Lack | Discovering the feeling of lack as a sensation in the body. How to respond to it. |
| 20190425 Exploring the Limitations of Mind | Models of mind. The origin of thoughts. Does mind exist? Free will. The shared world. |
| 20190516 Living in Not-knowing | Finding the balance between going with the flow and choosing to respond actively to situations. |
| 20190606 Art Archetypes and the Broader Field of Mind | What is the role af art in the spiritual path? Art from the perspective of the artist and the viewer or listener. |
| 20190620 Understanding | The answers to our questions don't lie in words - they lie in the dissolution of both question and answer. |
| 20190711 Thinking Enquiring Contemplating Abiding | What is the difference between each of these? Exploring points of difficulty. |
| 20190912 The Power of Clear Seeing | Clear seeing is all that is required to discover imperturbable happiness. Physical illness or depression can only obscure that happiness if we allow it to do so. |
| 20191003 It Is What I Am | Exploring the substance and reality of mind, body and world. |
| 20191024 Life Without a Purpose | Does life have any meaning? Should our goal in life be to help others? |
| 20191114 Sharing Our Understanding | How to share our understanding of non-duality in different types of relationships. |
| 20200109 Four Myths about Enlightenment | Mistaken beliefs that reinforce the sense of being a separate self. |
| 20200130 Being Myself | The sense of being myself accompanies and pervades all experience. |
| 20200220 Devotion | The path of knowledge and the path of devotion are the same path. Relationship with a teacher. |
| 20200312 Why does Consciousness Allow Suffering | The desire for a perfect universe. Exploring the motivation behind unkind behaviour. |
| 20200402 A non-dual response to the COVID-19 pandemic | Opportunities for spiritual growth; dealing with anxiety; helping friends. |
| 20200430 Beyond the Mind | The role of ‘higher reasoning’ in the spiritual path. |
| 20200520 The Colouring of Awareness | Discovering the joy of our true nature. Manifestation always has a colouring. |
| 20200610 Exploring the Sense of Me | The process of deepening our understanding. The sense of me is not me. |
| 20200701 Exploring the Sense of Otherness | From nothingness to everythingness. Why don't I know other people's thoughts? |
| 20200722 Ethics Conditioning and Responsibility | The role of ethics. Do we need to get rid of our conditioning? Who or what is responsible for what happens? |
| 20200819 There is Only One Reality | Exploring the universality of consciousness and reality. |
| 20200916 Post-enlightenment Sadhana | What does it encompass at the level of the mind and the level of the body? What is the energy body? |
| 20201007 Residues of Ignorance | Dissolving the sense of ‘me’ in the body. Downgrading feelings to bodily sensations. |
| 20201028 Glimpses of Truth | Partial and liberating glimpses. The role of investigation and experiments. |
| 20201118 The Path of Love | Love is love of the objectless by the objectless. |
| 20201209 Being Open to the Openness | Openness to thoughts, sensations and perceptions. Being free from all beliefs. |
| 20210113 Experiments | The path of the physicist. Experiments to test whether awareness is universal. |
| 20210203 What is Mind | Mind as a flow of thoughts, sensations, perceptions, and mind as a bio-computer. Artificial Intelligence. |
| 20210224 Exploring Idealism and Realism | Non-duality doesn't imply idealism. Realism doesn't imply materialism. |
| 20210317 The Teacher Within | Most of us need the help of an external teacher, but the real teacher is the teacher within. |
| 20210428 Does Time Really Exist | Investigating the possibility that time is an illusion and the past is not set in stone. |
| 20210519 The Role of Yoga Meditations | Yoga meditations are designed for investigating the sense of separation in the body, not for getting rid of uncomfortable feelings. |
| 20210609 Do We Have Freedom | Freedom ‘from’ and freedom ‘to’. The body-mind has no freedom to choose. |
| 20210717 Closing the Circle | Exploring the reality of ourselves and the universe. The intuition that there is only one reality. |
| 20210904 The Game of Ignorance | Why is there evil? No one is guilty. Ignorance is a choice made by awareness. |
| 20211002 The Roots of Ignorance | Investigating the fear of death and the sense of lack. |
| 20211023 What is Meditation | Different types of meditation. How to meditate. Meditation as an integral part of daily life. |
| 20211113 Our Real Body is the World | Distinguishing between the physical body and our direct experience of the body. The role of yoga meditations. |
| 20211211 The Certainty of Uncertainty | Being certain that you can never be certain is enough. |
| 20220115 Chasing States of Mind | Everything that comes and goes is just a state of body or mind. True happiness is found only in that which is permanent. |
| 20220129 Non-duality and Forgiveness | Does forgiveness have a role in the Direct Path? How to deal with unkindness and betrayal. |
| 20220226 Surrender | What is surrender in the Direct Path? Is it something we can make happen? What triggers surrender? |
| 20220326 Silence | What is spiritual silence? Is sitting in silence necessary on the Direct Path? |
| 20220416 Being Established in Peace | Steps on the spiritual path. How our understanding becomes stabilised. |
| 20220514 A Thorn to Remove a Thorn | Understanding and overcoming the limitations of language. Use of analogies, metaphors and models. |
| 20220604 Effortless Effort | Psychological and physical effort. Love of truth is the only prerequisite for the Direct Path. Ignorance requires effort. |
| 20220618 Listening | Listening to the totality of our experience. Listening to the body. The role of listening in teaching and understanding. |
| 20220806 Follow Your Enthusiasm | The role of enthusiasm in the Direct Path. How to make the best use of our time. |
| 20220903 Is There Anything We Can Do | The hot seat at the Gateless Gate to the Absolute. How to investigate and how to meditate. |
| 20221029 Science and belief | An approach to non-duality through science and mathematics. Mind can never access the ultimate reality, but we can find it in silence. |
| 20221126 After the Glimpse | Debunking common myths about enlightenment. Using everyday life as help on the path to establishment. |
| 20221217 Cut the Fluff | A detailed look at how mind, body and world can become aligned with our understanding. |
| 20230121 The Joyful, Never-ending Path of Not-Knowing | Exploring the steps on the path of not-knowing. Nondualism vs. non-duality. Practice doesn't end at enlightenment. |
| 20230218 The Pearls of Perception | The flow of perceptions is discontinuous. But there is an invisible thread of reality that connects all things. |
| 20230318 Two Conversations on Understanding | What do we mean by understanding? Does AI understand the answers it gives us? The difference between mind and consciousness. |
| 20230416 Welcoming Thoughts and Feelings | What can we do if we forget what we are? Facing existential fear. Spiritual bypassing and the shadow. |
| 20230513 Realigning the Body-Mind | Does realignment happen automatically or is there something we need to do? Emotions as a starting-point for enquiry. |
| 20230624 Memory | Exploring the connection between memory and ignorance. Functional and psychological memory. Dealing with past trauma. |
| 20230722 Flowing with the Flow | How to flow with the flow. Guilt and responsibility. Impersonal action in line with the Tao. |
| 20231021 From Witness to Witnessing | Witnessing is not a practice. It is automatic and effortless. Dissolution of the witness in the understanding ‘I am not somebody’. |
| 20231125 Decisions | If we, as separate body-minds, don't choose our thoughts, how are our decisions made? How can decisions be ‘personal’ if there are no persons? |
| 20240106 Anandamayakosha | The veil of bliss. Why do we keep seeking happiness in phenomenal experience? Nobody becomes enlightened. |
| 20240217 Dealing with Conflict | Understanding and resolving conflict in our relationships in the world, and with other truth-seekers. Relationship with a teacher. Spiritual ego. |
| 20240330 The Natural State | The experience of consciousness without objects is just the beginning of the path. It leads naturally to sahaja, the natural state of peace in everyday life. |
| 20240427 Negative Emotions, Trauma and Non-dual Psychotherapy | ‘Me-feelings’ and ‘me-beliefs’. Welcoming negative emotions. Use of non-dual psychotherapy to help with trauma. |
| 20240518 Forgetting and Remembering | Is being lost in thought a form of ignorance? Forgetting and projecting. Does ignorance ever come to an end? |
| 20240615 Living in the Now | What does it mean to ‘live in the now’? Is daydreaming a problem? Do we need to give up planning? |
| 20240713 Conflict and Violence in the World | How should we address conflict and problems in the world? Compassion and pseudo-compassion. Taking a global view. |
| 20240810 Discovering Our Borderlessness Through Yoga | What is the purpose of yoga in the spiritual path? Simple exercises to explore our borderlessness. |
| 20240907 The Path of Devotion | Is there a role for devotion on the Direct Path? Devotion to what? The convergence of the paths of devotion and knowledge. |