[quote=jimrich]Hi gang:
I just spent little time researching what others with more skill and knowledge than I have to say about Advaita and Neo-Advaita. My best sources are Rupert Spira and Jeff Foster, who has some very comical things to say about Neo-Advaita - google him. Actually, there are a lot of others who might be considered Neo-Advaitins such as Lisa Cairns and Jim Newman (obviously students of Tony Parsons) and the list goes on and on so take a look for your self.
The one item I find common with all of them is Identity - who/what are you/we/I? It seems to me that, unless someone KNOWS that they are the Absolute, Self, Reality, Brahman, God, Totality, Source, etc., they are just floundering around in the muck and mire of personal, egoic dramas that are neatly placed between birth and death. So Traditional or Neo, it seems to me that locating or recognizing that THOU ART THAT is the bottom line for both forms of non-duality (Advaita) so I do not see any significant difference in Traditional vs. Neo accept in maybe some of the SILLY details and concepts as presented in this hysterical cartoon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KXidr0z1RY
Hi Jim
That is exactly the problem I (if you allow me to say that) have with Advaita, there is no direct path to it! Except through the death of the self!
I heard Tony Parsons refer to his identity or the structure of his self collapsing..and that there is only what is left! So all I can suggest about that is the energetic structure which was his own personal story before this happened has been de-energised previously through some insights gained from some discipline he was doing, the only way (I) know to do that is through analysis and insight in to what the limitations of the self are! It’s limited for sure….but it’s the insight that breaks the structure or the energetics of the self down, and he must have been a practioner of sorts, or of some kind of discipline before the story of who he once was collapsed!
I know Jim Newman (he still answers to that name) was an avid seeker before the story of who he once was collapsed…so he was obviously doing some sort of analysis of the self previously…wasn’t he a psychologist in his own story once?
(he also used to go to Tony Parsons talks)
I can only liken the experience they went through of the self collapsing was as if it was a large building that was being planned for demolition, you would have to analise where to place the explosive charges to bring it down…some buildings don’t collapse in the way expected but do come down non the less!
So all I can say about Tony Parsons and Jim Newman as it’s the only two advaita guys I have come across, is they must have been chipping away at there own block for so long…(or de-energising the self gained through insights) that at some point there limited self was bound to come crashing in to the ground eventually.
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