An Open Letter to Mr. Jiri Vacek

Dear Sir,

My recent article entitled On the Mystification of ‘Self’ in neo-Eastern Cults of Meditation was intended to raise some important questions of very general significance – and not to pass any personal judgment on you as an individual. That is why I made no mention of your name.  

It is a pity that having read this single piece of mine  you find it perfectly acceptable, on the basis of just one among scores of essays, to pass ill-formed and crude personal character judgements on me (and also on Marx, and Martin Heidegger). You do include my name in the very title of your essay (albeit without the politeness to actually spell out my first name – which, in case you don’t know, is Peter – and  without the courage to respond to my article through direct and open communication with me.

It does also seem, from what you write about me (please correct me if I am wrong!) that you have not actually read or studied in depth any of my many published books and countless on-line essays on Kashmir Shaivism, Advaita, Yoga, Tantra and many other subjects – including books dealing in great depth with the relation between  1. Marxism and Indian Thought (see my essay/e-book entitled Rudra’s Red Banner – Marxism and Moksha, as well as my book on Heidegger, Phenomenology and Indian Thought.

In addition, it seems also that you feel no responsibility in what you write to present clear and reasoned arguments that actually refer to and cite more than a single line of that one essay of mine which you responded to in an article of your own. But in this letter here I will not respond to you in like manner - but instead seek to both correct and question a number of statements you make - and do so by citing them directly.

You write about my article that it “…clearly rejects the teaching of Ramana Maharishi, Moses, Jesus, Socrates, and Shankara, it rejects Advaita Vedanta as well as Kashmir Shaivism.” To assume, without knowing me, that you have any understanding of my own understanding and interpretation of Moses or Jesus – both as a human being and as an ethnic Jew – is simply an impertinence – as well as assuming in advance (unless you are a Jehovah’s witness) that there is no question of what exactly these teachings of Moses and Jesus essentially are.

To claim, in addition, that my article also “rejects” Kashmir Shavism (which itself was both an implicit and explicit rejection of Advaita Vedanta and a transition to Shaiva Advaita - one need only read Abhinavagupta himself on this) would come as huge surprise to all other readers and writers of my essays and books on both Advaita as such and Kashmir Shaivism – some reviews of which I append for your interest…

At this point I feel it necessary to quote another remark of yours: When I read the philosophical tracts of P. Wilberg and his kindred souls, I remember a certain quote, pronounced by Ramana Maharishi, I think: “Had I acquainted myself with the blether of philosophers before I realized the Self, I would have never realized it.”

Am I to take it then, that Socrates, Shankara, Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta - whose teachings you accuse me of rejecting were not ‘philosophers’? If so, I would be interested to know how you understand the word ‘philosophy’?

Later you refer to Heidegger - the only thinker I know to have spent years meditating the question ‘What is ‘Philosophy’?’ and one of whose final essays was entitled ‘The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking’.

As for myself, as you see if you read the Memoirs I mention later on in this letter, I had my first spiritual experiences – or ‘metaphysical experiences’ as I prefer to call them – before I even knew what the words ‘metaphysics’ and ‘philosophy’ meant. And I wrote my first metaphysical-philosophical treatise or ‘tantra’ in primary school – also before having read a single work of philosophy or metaphysics or knowing the word ‘tantra’ – and yet this treatise already contained the seed of a short book I only came to write over 50 years later – entitled The New Spanda Karikas.  As for Ramana Maharishi however, I can find in his complete works little else, philosophically, than what he calls ‘blether’ – a great pity for such an otherwise very enlightened and aware man.  

I am not sure if Wilberg realizes one essential truth: human intellect was created by God, not vice versa . Many academic philosophers try to convince us, sometimes directly, sometimes covertly, that human intellect is an adequate tool with which we can judge God and regard their own conclusions as superior to God.

Here you imply that I too am an ‘academic philosopher’. That I am not - even though, I have had rigorous training in academic philosophy.  Formally, Heidegger too, was an ‘academic philosopher’. But his view of ‘academic philosophy’ was as critical as mine is.

As for the “one essential truth” you refer too, namely that the “human intellect was created by God”, whilst I have no problem accepting the essential message you are seeking to convey here, I do see questions in the words and language with which you say it - which assume in advance what is meant by the word ‘intellect’,  present it as some ‘thing’ than can be “created”. I am sure I am correct that you do not have a simplistic ‘creationist’ view of ‘creation’ – but again, correct me if I am wrong.

But let us move on to the question of Heidegger. You write that “Heidegger was a German academic philosopher.” Formally correct, of course. But the whole message of Heidegger’s work was to transcend the age-old notion that truth was a mere matter of the formal correctness of any propositions or assertions.

Instead, his entire work and manner of thinking was and is still seen as the biggest break from and deepest critique of ‘academic philosophy’ as it was - and still is - practiced (…reduced to a mere practice of writing about philosophers). 

Already in 1933 he joined the NSDAP and never left the party. Unlike the Communist Party, the NSDAP was quite selective and gathered under its auspices the contemporary German elite.

It is interesting that you write, “already in 1933”, i.e. referring to a time at which membership of the NSDAP first became a demand and pressure on countless individuals wishing to preserve their livelihood and position – whatever their attitude to National Socialism. 

Unlike the Communist Party, the NSDAP was quite selective and gathered under its auspices the contemporary German elite.

Is it not strange then, that the chief Nazi philosopher of the time wrote a personal letter to Adolf Hitler saying that Heidegger had a ‘corrupting’ mystical influence on German youth, that his thinking should be treated with great suspicion - and not seen as a philosophy in line with ‘official’ Nazi ideology and philosophy.  

You may – or may not – be aware of the huge amount of literature on Heidegger’s relation to ‘National Socialism’, one in which many authors explain his membership of the ‘Party’ was the most subversive attempt ever made to deeply question – and that against the official ‘party line’ - the true essence of how ‘National Socialism’ both could and should be understood and embodied - if it were not to be reduced to a mere racist political ideology.  You may – or may not – also be aware that the question of what is or should be meant by the term ‘National Socialism’ was also a matter of intense debate within the NSDAP – leading to the exit, exile or murder of many of its own members! And though you are happy to reduce the NSDAP to a mere “criminal organisation” I would be interested to know where, in your writing – or those of Ramana Maharishi – there is reference to any of the  ‘criminal organisations’ of today: such as the The Federal Reserve Bank, Goldman Sachs, The City of London, the Bildergerg Group, the Israeli Defence Force, the USAF, The Council on Foreign Relations, Mossad, the NSA and the CIA – to name but a few, and the last of which bears responsibility for the death of 1,000,000 people in Indonesia alone (following one of the numberless coups it backed, such as those in Chile and elsewhere). 

According to an article in the online journal Britské listy from January 15th, 2014, Heidegger was an anti-Semite, a metaphysical racist, and believed in the German national revolution that was supposed to save the world.

The phrase “According to an article in the online journal Britské listy from January 15th, 2014” already speaks volumes. My question: is this or other superficial second-hand ‘knowledge’ (dated January 15, 2014!) the sole basis for your view of Martin Heidegger, or have you actually studied even a single volume of his works in any depth? If not what right have you to pass such sweeping judgement. You actually make yourself sound like that notorious Nazi judge who presided over show trials in which he did nothing but swear at, defame and curse the accused. 

In other words, like the majority of Germans, he [Heidegger] was convinced of the German superiority over other nations.

This would (and yes, I am being ironic here) explain why Heidegger had so much respect for the uniqueness of and difference between Sanskrit and other Eastern or Oriental languages on the one hand, and the German and Greek languages on the other – so much so that he felt it too arrogant to assume that an understanding of them in European terms – and of the philosophies based on them - was even possible.

One need only read Heidegger’s ‘Dialogue on Language’ with a Japanese thinker (the first part of a collection of essays notably entitled On the Way to Language) to see Heidegger’s extreme humility in approaching Eastern and East-Asian languages: for this Dialogue concerns itself with whether it was even possible to adequately understand or translate into German - or any European languages - the Japanese word for ‘language’ itself!!!

P. Wilberg says: “Feeling is the essential activity of what we call pure awareness.” That is simply not true. The essential activity of awareness is the spontaneous, continuous and unchangeable awareness of our own self-aware existence. Awareness of our own self-aware existence never changes, feeling does — at times it is present, at times not (feelings sometimes arise, at other times they do not).

Here, the words of yours that I have underlined are intended to show how you ignore and/or confuse the fundamental distinction I make in so many of my writings between ‘feeling’ as an activity (verb) and  ‘feelings’ (plural noun).  As for myself, there is not one moment in my life in which I am not ‘feeling’. If, as you indicate there are “times” at which ‘feeling’ is not “present” in you - then I  can only feel sorry for you.

I recommend also that  1. you read my essay on feeling, touch and the nature of the body - entitled Touch, Aesthetics and the Language of the Tantras, and 2. that you do not make black-and-white judgements about any one philosophical proposition of mine (or anyone) of a sort which simply and only calls them ‘true’ or ‘not true’ - as if if no deeper questions were involved. To do so implies - in deep contrast to Heidegger’s thinking - that truth itself can be reduced to a mere ‘property’ of intellectual propositions or statements about it - an idea which I feel sure that you yourself would see as “not true”!!!

P. Wilberg mistakes the awareness of something — of the objects of awareness for awareness itself. He denies the primary nature of awareness, mistaking it for awareness of something. From here it is just a step to materialism, which denies the independent existence of awareness.

This is utter nonsense. Marx himself was not a ‘materialist’ in any conventional meaning of this word. Maybe you need to read his ‘Theses on Feuerbach’ again? And as everyone who has read them knows very well, all my writings on awareness – not least my principle book entitled The Awareness Principle, are about nothing else than “the primary nature of awareness” - distinguishing awareness itself from everything we are aware of. You still have not grasped my fundamental understanding of non-duality or Advaita as a state of inseparable distinction – from which point of view awareness is both absolutely inseparable from what it is aware of and absolutely distinct from it - just as two sides of the same coin or two poles of a magnet are both absolutely distinct and absolutely inseparable.  But it seems such ‘both/and’ thinking is foreign to you or that you would rather stick with ‘either/or’ thinking.

And if I denied the “primary nature of awareness” why would I create whole sites such as www.thenewyoga.org and www.theawarenessprinciple.com  dedicated entirely to affirming its primary nature? And why would the central mantram of my teaching be that ‘Awareness is Everything’. This is a teaching which even rejects the very idea of ‘objects’ of consciousness. When you touch - and thereby feel and sense - the body of your beloved, for example, does this feeling make it an ‘object’ of awareness? What I am saying here and have written elsewhere is that simply to talk or write, as you do, of ‘objects of awareness’ - in contrast to a deep, sensual and feeling awareness of them, is already to use a word and a phrase which, in itself intellectually objectifies both things and people.

You yourself go on to write that ‘God is love and love is God’. But in repeating this old and hollow hippie cliché you do not begin to question what ‘love’ itself essentially is. But if, essentially, ‘God’ is awareness – does the ‘love’ you write of really have nothing to do with the sort of deep feeling nature of awareness that I write of and which you reject. Is not love precisely a capacity for deep feeling awareness and understanding of other beings? If not - then what exactly is the nature of this ‘love’ and this ‘God’ that you write about?

How can we ‘love’ God or any thing or person, without a capacity to understand, get to know and identify with them in a feeling way – through ‘feeling awareness’? Or are we to understand people as mere objects of a particular ‘loving feeling’ (noun) in  ourselves - rather than as the activity of deeply feeling (verb) and understanding others – to the point of being able to use this feeling awareness to fully affirm and identify with  others in a feeling way?

To me, the essence of what you name with the now empty and hollowed out term ‘love’ is feeling awareness, is the deeply feeling activity of awareness – the very idea of which, however, you reject.

You write of ‘love’ – and in particular love of God (a strange idea if ‘God is love’) but I must admit to wondering if feeling - even basic human feeling - and feelings - have any place in your teachings or life at all?  And what are our bodies – and the bodies of all things - if not bodies of feeling awareness and in this way the primary instrument and expression – God’s instrument and expression and a portion of God’s body?

It seems instead that your teachings are dominated by concepts of ‘good’ and ‘evil’. But is not the primary source of ‘evil’ simply ignorance or a-gnosis – an ignorance that need to be lovingly understood and not just ‘fought’ or ‘attacked’? In contrast, beliefs of the sort you seem to hold – in particular belief in ‘ungodly’  ‘forces of evil’ are beliefs that are self-reinforcing and self-fulfilling. They do not help to overcome evil but, through lack of a loving, feeling, understanding actually - can lead even the best-willed people to cruel acts - acts which then of course reinforce the belief in their ‘evil’. This belief in ‘forces of evil’ is the basic  sickness and curse that has afflicted humanity throughout the ages and still does.

It is of course also made worse if this ‘evil’ is identified with a particular race or ethnic group – whether Jews or Germans – and there is a distinct undertone of Germanophobia in what you write about me or worse, a deep-seated hatred of Germans - just for being Germans. But this is something I am long used to, having being attacked as a child just for having a German name and parents – even though my mother was a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany and my father a non-Jewish German who was active in the underground German resistance until 1935, imprisoned for a year and then forced to illegally cross the border to Czechoslovakia to escape re-imprisonment – or worse. That is how, before making his way to England, he first found himself in Prague, which left him with a great love for the Czech people and also Czech music. For he was a musician and band leader himself, belonging to perhaps the only band in Germany which refused to join the Nazi musicians’ union  - and refused also to stand up and give the ‘Heil Hitler’ salute when Goebbels himself arrived at an event at which they played…

Some knowledge and feeling understanding also of the personal background and biography of those you identify with ‘forces of evil; – including me, or so it appears – would be welcome! For having grown up in an isolated family and community of Jewish and non-Jewish German ‘survivors’ of Nazi Germany, I decided at a very early age that I would not be content until I had understood the nature and essence of National Socialism itself in the broadest possible political and economic context, and also, at the deepest possible philosophical level – one free of simplistic, racist and essentially destructive notions of innately ‘evil forces’ or ‘evil Germans’. Since then I have come to understand that Germany was not actually responsible for either of the two World Wars of the last century (see The Forced War by David L. Hoggan and Conjuring Hitler: How Britain and America Made The Third Reich  by Guido Giacomo Preparata). I have also come to agree with Heidegger that ‘victory’ against Germany in both these wars ‘resolved nothing’ in terms of the questions which faced the world before these wars and still face the world today – and that in a way for which no other answers are offered but evermore and no less cruel wars, all of them still justified and created by notions of ‘evil forces’ that must be ‘fought’.

Equally informative is the fact that P. Wilberg is described as “an author with ethnic German and Jewish-German background”. Most Germans and their supporters are more or less convinced of their exceptionality and therefore also their superiority over others.

A sweeping and shockingly racist statement – and one which, implicitly, makes you and all other nations and ethnic groups innately superior to “most Germans”, does it not? Look at ‘the mote in your own eye’, Mr Vacek! And if there is also no such thing in your eyes as ‘unjust suffering’ – why complain about the suffering caused to Czechs and other nations and ethnic groups by Germans?

Is this not a contradiction, as it is also to write about Auschwitz whilst ignoring the persecution of Germans in post-war Czechoslovakia – as well as the 11 million Germans who died – most in American concentrations camps or through revenge killings, rape and starvation – after the end of WW2? Sorry Mr Vacek, but I refuse to accept such one-sided, pride-full, narrow-minded, self-contradictory and racist ‘spiritual’ opinions.  

P. Wilberg accuses Ramana Maharishi of ignorance of Marx' and Nietzsche's philosophy and of his failure to free himself from the intellectual ignorance of his environment. This I find unbelievable. Please notice that all the three philosophers he admires are Germans. So, spiritual wannabes, hurry up and start studying Marx! Would it, however, not be better to realize that Marx was one of the founders of communism and therefore also bore responsibility for all the terrible crimes perpetuated in its name, including communist concentration camps, the so-called gulags, as well as the Czech concentration camp Jáchymov?

Is it not true that you will know a tree by its fruit?

This is a no more intelligent argument against Marx than saying that the crimes and mass murder committed by the Christian crusaders were the ‘fruit’ of Jesus by which we shall ‘know’ him  - and that he bears responsibility for them! Surely this level of argumentation is much beneath the level of your own intelligence Mr Vacek.

If you have “…doubts about the extent of his [my] spiritual practice and experience” that is an important question. Perhaps you could settle those doubts by actually meeting me or at least reading my books – to begin with perhaps my Memoir of Metaphysical Experiences which is published under the title Dreams, Music and the Many Faces of the Soul, can bought or just read on-line on my homesite.

The validity of any given teaching is tested by its practice.

Alternatively, or in addition, you might first of all – and before passing your grandiose and superiority-filled ‘Final Judgement’ on me – be interested in hearing from my students and/or readers about their experience of ‘testing’ the practice and benefits of my teachings - including a few who used to be students of yours. 

He [me] advises us not to worship Eastern spiritual masters.

Here I must correct you for the sake of readers of your letter on my article. The very title of my article referred to modern “neo-Eastern cults of meditation” and to those who claim to speak in the name of ancient Eastern sages and teachings. It did not refer to all those ancient Eastern sages and teachings themselves.

But in one important way your statement here, Mr Vacek, is absolutely correct. I definitely do advise people not to “worship” any human being at all – not even any “sage” or “spiritual master”, genuine or not, old or new. That is because any ‘master’ (or even ‘god’) who has an in-built need to be “worshipped” by their believers, followers or devotees is - in my view - no true ‘god’ or ‘master’ at all. It’s that simple.

Mr Vacek. I am really not some evil demon. I am just a highly individual thinker and teacher committed to continuing to ask new and important questions – but without in any way assuming that the answers – or even the most basic questions – have already and long ago been known and settled by any ‘master’ - and so only need ‘passing on’ through this or that ‘lineage’ or ‘tradition’, Eastern or European, Indian or German.  

What a boring and dead spiritual world we would live in if this was the situation! For then there would be no more new answers - or questions - to be learned from experience - and no continuing evolution also of new types of ‘spiritual’ experience or practice by which to explore or even just discover those new questions and answers*.

Like you, I do believe in ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. Unlike you, I do not believe in a battle between good  and ‘evil’ or ‘ungodly’ forces. In fact see this very belief as ‘wrong’ – but not ‘evil’ in your sense. That is why I continue to fully respect the basic good intent behind your entire work and teachings, and do so even if I see elements of them as ‘wrong’ or even harmful. 

All I ask from you through this letter is that you adopt a similar attitude of basic respect for my work and teachings - however strongly you may disagree with or dislike them.

Yours, sincerely and respectfully,

Peter Wilberg

*For example 1. the question of ‘ego’ - which is effectively equated with some sort of ‘original sin’ in many Eastern teachings and practices. In my teaching and that of Seth, ‘ego awareness’ is essentially understood as nothing more than what I call ‘focal awareness’ - in contrast to a larger, more spacious and trans-personal field awareness – the essence of ‘pure awareness’ and of the divine. Our world is certainly full of evidence of the danger of identifying awareness in general with ‘ego awareness’ or ‘focal awareness’ alone – to the extent that it totally obscures and replaces field awareness. The practical question however, is not how to ‘dissolve’ or ‘transcend’ what is called ‘ego awareness’ and  ‘ego activity’ - without which we could not focus on or engage in a single everyday life activity - but how to ensure that both ego awareness and ego activity remain connected to and intuitively guided by their source – which is field awareness or pure awareness itself. The answer is to ensure that ego awareness does not either replace or constrict or fill up and preoccupy this divine source field of awareness or turn it into a mere ‘object’ of enquiry in the form of what is called ‘self’. This aim can only be achieved through a primary identification with pure, field awareness - but only with the added recognition that pure awareness alone is what allows a constant, on-going ‘witnessing’ awareness of the ego and of everyday ‘ego activity’ itself – and in this way prevents identification with them. Without this added recognition, field and focal awareness, Self and ego, will constantly feel at war with one another, and students of meditation find themselves asked to do battle with their ‘sinful’ egos.  My mantra: the pure awareness of ‘ego’ is not itself anything egoic, just as the pure awareness of a thought, feeling or sensation is not itself a thought, feeling or sensation – but instead is a boundlessly fertile, creative and enriching source of new thoughts, feeling and sensations.  2. As for the question of ‘thinking’, I regard myself as a thinker precisely because, in one very important sense: I do not think. By this I mean that I do not experience what is called ‘thinking’ itself as something I ‘do’ - as a mental or intellecutal activity. Instead thoughts simply and spontaneously ‘occur to’ or ‘arise in’ me. They arise in and from the light-filled expanse of pure field awareness and the warm, dark and pregnant depths of bodily, feeling awareness - both of which are the richest source of thought, in contrast to any ‘activity’ of ‘thinking’.

Some reviews of a few of my books for your interest - from readers I have not even met or taught:

Tantric Wisdom for Today’s World

Peter Wilberg is an original Guru in the spirit of Non-dual Kashmir Shaivism. ‘Tantric Wisdom for Today's World’ represents a small part of his vast creative output. This text is a powerful collection of lived understandings, fresh historical insights, awareness practices and sutra-type transmissions which are inspired by a precious and ancient lineage. At the same time, the author breathes new life into these teachings and his direct realization comes through clearly. Non-dual readers and practitioners alike will find here countless opportunities for the transformation of experience and perception.The author has devoted his life to writing about and teaching what he terms `The Awareness Principle'. The book of the same title is also highly recommended and it contains very practical ways to `apply' Awareness in everyday situations such as illness and other therapeutic/healing contexts. You could visit www.thenewyoga.org  to discover many gems of his authentic and profound teachings and writings.

Tantric Wisdom for Today’s World / The Awareness Principle

I'm very familiar with Peter Wilberg's work. In my view, he is one of the more brilliant voices of our time, for several reasons. One of these reasons is that his views, and his work, have been developed from a basis of the philosophy-science of Kashmir Shaivism, specifically its subset Trika Shaivism. These are religious-sounding terms for the most sophisticated philosophical-scientific system ever developed by humankind. For a variety of reasons, Kashmir Shaivism is little-known, even inside India. It was synthesized and articulated primarily by Abhinavagupta and Kshemaraja, arguably two of the greatest philosophical teachers in all of history, in the 10th and 11th centuries. However, per the esoteric nature of much of the content, and the fact that many of the deeper teachings of Kashmir Shaivism remain available solely in the original Sanskrit, its great potential value to the world remains largely unrealized.

Enter Peter Wilberg.

Peter Wilberg's value as an author and philosophical-scientific voice resides not just in the fact that he freshly and clearly presents the truths articulated by Kashmir Shaivism, although he does so well and effectively, but that he obviously understands that Kashmir Shaivism comprises a system - a template; a framework - a science. A science with which any person can come to experience the depths of consciousness on all levels, for themselves.

The true power of Peter's wisdom, though, comes from the fact that he directly experiences these deeper aspects of consciousness, and that he thus offers his insights on the basis of his own experience, and the insights that his experience provides, rather than on the basis of conjecture and/or reason, alone. I don't know Peter personally; I just know that his writings are based in experience, because I have similar on-going experience, and so I can see this experience reflected in Peter's writing and thought. Utilizing its toolsets, and obviously benefiting from the clarity provided by long-term use of its practices and methods, Peter Wilberg is further utilizing Kashmir Shaivism as a toolset to shine light on some of the key areas of science, of social, political and economic thought and life, and of religion, in ways that can advance each of these areas of life dramatically, if, when and as they are applied.

The Awareness Principle  See also www.theawarenessprinciple.com

I would like to express my gratitude to you for the invaluable role your writing on The Awareness Principle has played in my journey of self-enquiry. I discovered your website on The New Yoga of Awareness about two years ago and have constantly returned to the essentials of ‘The Awareness Principle’ - which have greatly helped me in both recognising and stabilising in my true nature of Awareness. I have found particularly useful your basic introductory mantrams:

• The awareness of a though is not itself a thought.

• The awareness of a sensation or emotion etc. is not itself a sensation or emotion etc…

Also the one that suggests that instead of using the word ‘I’ and thinking to ourselves that ‘I’ think, feel or experience ‘X’, we instead simply say to ourselves ‘There is an awareness of thinking, feeling or experiencing ‘X’.

These are all very practical ways to discriminate between awareness and its contents as well as a powerful aid for dissolving potential identifications. 

Heidegger, Phenomenology and Indian Thought

I commend this book highly. This book is ground breaking.  It is bold and courageous, and refreshingly original in its perspective.  It will definitely challenge and provoke thinking beyond the well versed ideas in existential thinking.  A slim book at 116 pages, and divided into four parts with a preface, every page in it got me to pause and contemplate.  

It is a book that needs to be read slowly.  I found this book strewn with gems, all the more precious as they resonate with meditative thinking and a meditative space. To read this book, it requires letting go of pre-conceived notions of existential-phenomenology itself and remain open to hear what Wilberg says.

The Illness is the Cure

One of the most inspirational aspects to your work and writing, for me, is that you take essential truth, whether from sources ancient or modern, or your own inner wisdom - and you demonstrate clearly and articulately how that truth applies in essentially every area of human living, whether in terms of direct inner experience, relationships, social and economic dynamics, and so on - and now, with your latest book, how this applies to overall health, as well. Even more importantly though, your application of timeless wisdom to these different aspects and areas of living shines new light, and brings important new information and perspective, to the topic areas themselves. This approach often supplants misunderstanding, and/or fills in gaps and blind spots which currently exist in these topic areas, per the incomplete approaches of so-called conventional wisdom.  

And some general feedback from readers I have not even met:

You are daring a synthesis that others cannot conceive.

B.J.v-D

I have begun reading your work of late and am so very thrilled to see and learn from your exquisitely integral genius and immense spirituality and scholarship. Anyway, when I access such brilliance and helpfulness such as yours, I want to reach out and thank you so very much and at least virtually, shake your hand. You are beyond a doubt an all-too-hidden-in-plain-sight gift to the human race, holy brother! 

R.K.

I wanted you to know the joy and excitement a student like me gets from discovering your work. Clearly you have written more than a lifetime of work and maybe the phrase 'pearls before swine' could arise when you realize how few of us even begin to appreciate the undoubted genius behind them.

D.Q.

I cannot begin to express to you how much it means to me to have discovered you and your work. Reading 'The Awareness Principle', 'The Science Delusion' and your book on Heidegger and Indian Thought has been, for me, much more than a 'reading' journey. It has been transformational ... a blessing!

I'm currently reading 'The New Spanda Karikas.' Jaw dropping insights.  Your sentences have seven league boots on, covering whole regions and kingdoms in their stride, whilst the clown unicycle of my mind struggles to keep up.

THANK YOU for... everything...  you have, as Wm. Blake might have put it, labored heroically in the Fires of Eden.  Your work belongs to the future archives of a more enlightened planet. I pray we make it there.

C.Y.

I have been reading your work and letting it speak to me through my life, through my thinking, through my relating and through my bodying. I would return to read whole texts then passages then just sentences and then just individual words. Even if I did not understand I would let them call me back time and time again. There, where no understanding was, there was the calling of the Word. It is my opinion now that the only way to understand who you are and what your message is, at least when it comes to you as a writer and thinker, can only be experienced through juxtaposition of your different books and subjects so we can experience their underlying (value) structures and many as yet unthought but anticipated ways of being that they open.

O.M.

Final Note:

The purpose of adding these reviews to my letter to you is simply to show that some people do me the honour and make the effort of actually reading my works before (as you do) branding my entire work as mere ‘academic philosophy’ -  or else as the expressions of an evil German who completely rejects Eastern thought - Indian thought in particular!

It seems you do not know that from the earliest years of the 19^th century, not only did many German thinkers revere and draw from Indian thought, but for a long time Germany identified itself with India and saw itself as ‘The India of Europe’ – feeling oppressed by foreign powers of the sort responsible for wiping out a third of the entire German population during the ‘Thirty Years War’.

German thinkers were, of course, also the pioneers Indology and of Sanksrit studies – indeed of linguistics as such.

It was not some feeling of innate ‘superiority’ over other nations but the immense richness of German culture, music and philosophy - long recognised by other nations - that made it unique, and that before Germany even became a ‘nation state’.