Beyond Mind, Beyond Death

I have several bookcases full of spiritual books – Adyashanti, Hameed Ali, Nisargadatta, Ramana, tons more. Beyond Mind Beyond Death is a cut above all the rest – it has the potential of ending the search. This book points to going within yourself, rather than outside into someone else’s teaching . It’s for the experienced spiritual seeker: for those who have been around the spiritual track a few times, experienced ups and downs in the search, have met some spiritual frauds and fakes, and know how spirituality can cloud reality.When you go within, you can’t take a book, or even find a map to your particular psyche and process of self-realization. You’re in a field with no paths. But to get to that field, there are a few paths that essays in this book point to. Our egos are so seductive, and self-reinforcing, that only the difficult path of working against our strongest desires and fears provides any results. Yet as Bob Ferguson says, we are guided by our intuition. In a section called “Stalking Yourself”, Bart Marshall lists strategies such as absorbing teachings, being your own authority, refine your intent (self-realization is usually a means to an end of improving our lives in some way), give up knowing for unknowing, inquire into the real nature of self, choose silence, and befriend death. In another section called “The Most Practical Endeavor”, Bob Cergol says to “focus your attention on what it feels like … to be you.” He identifies how going within “requires dispassionate, detached, pure looking at experience – without spinning it. “Beyond Mind Beyond Death is a compilation of the best essays from the online magazine TAT Forum, devoted to self-realization and the teachings of Richard Rose. Going within is a complex unraveling of our ball of yarn, covering the territory of our search for meaning, finding out why we’re here, and what we truly are. This book is a handbook for that process.

Ultimate Truth. Wisdom. Enlightenment. Final Answer.If any of these words interest you, then you gotta buy this book. Or steal it. Just get it.It’s a compilation of the “best of the best” from several years of the TAT Forum, an online monthly “E-zine.” Poetry, essays, photos, humor, excerpts from lectures, metaphysical insights–just a wide variety.Digestible, for the consummate seeker of truth and meaning. Great bathroom reading, or train or bus reading, or park bench reading. Each posting can be mulled over for hours or days–or for a lifetime.I’d call it good meditation fodder for someone on the path of seeking an ultimate Answer to their life. Each piece is a vignette with a core of depth that’s surprising to encounter.

I am still reading the book, but I find very interesting and very helpful. Its a must book for the genuine seeker