[blossomingtree]

Here's a good article on Neo Advaita:

It seems that every other day another self-proclaimed 'enlightened' teacher of Neo-Advaita appears on the scene. These Neo-Advaita guru's have reduced thousands of years of Advaita teachings into the spiritual equivalent of McDonald's junk food. No longer is it necessary for the spiritual student to engage in self-inquiry or inner work on oneself. Now all that is necessary to 'realize the Self' is a constant repetitive denial of one's own identity and the (pseudo) 'understanding' that the ego and all and everything else that happens in the universe (essence and belief systems included) is 'simply an illusion'. Everything 'just happens, there is no path, no cause', so consequently there is absolutely nothing to do.

It's really simple, just like it was for Shankara, Buddha, Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Rumi and the relatively few others who are generally agreed to have been enlightened.

What? Wait a minute, I don't recall that it was easy for the above mentioned Masters. Didn't they spend years, and sometimes entire lifetimes meditating, engaged in self-inquiry and inner work? Oh yeah, they did. And this is the problem that exists now, because the Neo-Avaita movement claims lineage from and history from Advaita, but advocates none of the work. In fact they continue to espouse that it is simply not necessary. Merde!

No real work on oneself is necessary, only a constant repetitive denial of one's identity and the 'understanding' that the ego and all (and everything) that happens (essence and belief systems included) is 'just an illusion'. Everything ‘just happens, there is no path’, so there is nothing to do.

Occasionally these self proclaimed 'enlightened or awakened masters' even believe themselves to be superior or more advanced than their own teachers. For example Tony Parsons has declared that Ramana Maharshi was obviously still living from duality and Andrew Cohen has said that his guru Poonjaji was not enlightened – in other words both Maharshi and Poonjaji were asleep and Parsons and Cohen are awake. Yeah, right!

http://www.spiritualteachers.org/neo...ta_article.htm