The Glorious Both/And

I don't align with much of Paul Bruntons' perspective on things but these insights are very well articulated: -Because a man has had some kind of inner revelation it does not follow that everything in life and the universe has become plain to him and that he has become a kind of human encyclopedia. [Youtube playlist of influential non-dualists acting as a human encyclopedia for sensitive topics that they are unqualified to give guidance on: https://bit.ly/3l6U0ZX ] -It is the  thinking  mystic who can best explain mysticism to others and even to himself. And it is the  active  mystic who can best demonstrate its worth. -The mystic who claims that his knowledge is verbally incommunicable and that it is useless trying to explain it intellectually, is stretching a difficulty into an impossibility. -One way to test a mystical claim is to push it out farther & farther until it reaches its (potentially) ridiculous ultimate! -Those who provide quick and facile answers t...

     Like many individuals who have delved into contemporary non-dual spirituality, I was once deeply influenced by Nisargadatta Maharajs' unconventional contemporary Advaita Vedanta-derived teachings on liberation via radical self-effacement. Alongside Ramana Maharshi, he is one of the primary influencers of these self-effacement teachings in our present-day Western world, particularly the extremely powerful, most pitfall-laden "direct path" approaches to "enlightenment" that cut out all preparatory stages/safeguards that existed traditionally before attempting to obliterate your sense of self. This is done in favor of a sort of instant enlightenment approach that is understandably attractive to people in the West. Nisargadattas' influence extends beyond strictly Advaita-derived teachings, encompassing the broad range of modern Western amalgamations of Eastern non-dual teachings, which typically mix and match cherry-picked elements of traditions like Advait...