Paul Brunton: Spirituality and the Necessities of Life

Paul Brunton (1898-1981)

For those not familiar with him, the late philosopher, mystic and prolific author, Paul Brunton left a vast record of his spiritual quest and spiritual realizations. Chief amongst these was the realization and teaching that for modern man, though the pressures of our hurried lives are always pressing, daily practice of meditation and prayer is necessary if we are to attain to the heart of our being - what Brunton (like Emerson) called the 'Overself.'

In the attached video taken from his book, Perspectives (the first of sixteen volumes of his notebooks on the spiritual quest), Brunton observes that, "We need to balance our extreme tendency to activism with something of quietism."

"The fast pace of modern living and the busy clamour of modern cities," Brunton notes, "presents us from meeting ourselves. The true place of peace," he suggests, "must be found within the self by external moderation and internal meditation."





"Everyone, wants to live," Brunton writes, "(but) few want to know how to live."

"If people permit work to take up so much of their time that they have none left for their devotional prayer or mystical meditation or metaphysical study," he continues, "they will be as culpable for this wastage of life as they will be if they permit transient pleasures to do so."

"Those who have no higher ideal than to chase after amusement and to seek after pleasure may look upon religious devotion as senseless, metaphysical studies as boring, (and) moral disciples as repulsive, he observes. "(However) those who have no such inner life of prayer and meditation, study and reflection, will necessarily pay, in emergency or crises, the high price of their hopeless extroversion."

Brunton recognizes that "(t)he needs of external life are entitled to be satisfied in their place." "But," he notes, "they are not entitled to dominate a man's whole attention."

"It is quite true," Brunton notes, "that man must eat, find shelter, wear clothes and amuse himself. And it is also true that if a fortunate fate has not relieved himself of the necessity, he must work, trade, scheme, or gamble to get the money for these things. But all this is insufficient grounds for him to pass through life with no other thoughts in his head than those of bodily needs and financial strivings. There is still room there for another kind of thought, for those concerning the mysterious elusive and subtle thing that is his divine soul."

"The years are passing," Brunton warns, "and (man) cannot afford such a wastage of time, cannot afford the luxury of being so extroverted at the cost of having lost touch with the inner life."

"It is bad enough to be a sick person," he notes, "but it is worse to be sick and believe you are well. Yet the complete extroverts are in this condition, because they regard complete extroversion as the proper state for normal healthy living!"

Sri Bhagavan on "What is Enlightenment?"

Sri Bhagavan, Co-founder (with
Sri Amma) of Oneness University

In the attached video, Sri Bhagavan, a modern teacher of non-dualistic enlightenment who follows in the living Vedantist tradition of Ramana Maharhi and Sri Nisagardatta, explores what enlightenment (or mukhti) is, and what the mental barriers to such enlightenment are. "The general definition which I give of mukhti (enlightenment)," says Sri Bhagavan, "is the liberation of the senses."

"When you see," this modern sage explains, "you do not see without the interference of the mind. If you can see without the mind interfering that is enlightenment. If you can hear without the mind interfering that is enlightenment. The same applies to smell, touch and even thought." 

"Thought (can) also be observed without your getting involved with the thought," Sri Bhagavan notes. "What happens is when you are thinking, you think you are thinking. But it is actually possible to see thoughts flow as though they are independent of you"

"This is a physical reality," he explains. "Actually you can see thoughts. Any kind of thought can be coming into you and flowing out of you, and you can watch them. This is the state of (enlightenment); that is, the complete liberation of the senses from the control of the mind."

"If you experience reality as it is," he notes, "then you will just experience bliss. You will see that this whole creation is perfect, that it is the most beautiful thing, that you are in heaven, (and that) you have made it into a hell."

Furthering his explanation of non-duality, liberation and enlightenment, Sri Bhagavan takes his audience through a practical explanation of how we attach to and identify with the contents of our mind - i.e., our thoughts. He then explains how we too often fall into the trap of seeking external relief from the angst or misery that our thoughts create, and what can happen when we let go of our unexamined attachment to our egoic, self-centered thinking.

"It is possible to liberate the senses from the clutches of thought," he notes. "Thought is necessary when required, otherwise why should thought interfere? There is no need for thought to come in and interfere with actual experience."

"Now when the senses become free of the thoughts of the mind," he explains, "we say that you have discovered unconditional joy, unconditional love. Such is this joy, that you will feel you are connected with everybody. You discover true love. . . . And this is an actual occurrence. That is what you are designed to be, that is what a human being is supposed to experience all of the time."

"Since you do not experience that," he continues, "your lives have become miserable. And, to escape that misery, you have created various escape routes, through which all the time you are escaping from your misery; which misery is, itself, because you are not experiencing reality. That is why people take to alcohol or to drugs, or sex or to whatever it is," he notes. "Because otherwise what is there in your life? It becomes meaningless."

"So the whole attempt of (life) is to help you experience reality as it is," he observes. "When that happens you discover unconditional love, and unconditional joy. You feel connected with everything and everybody. You do not feel you are a separate individual; you do not live for yourself alone anymore, because your 'self 'has become everybody. You live for the sake of humanity.

"This is not a concept or some imagined thing," he tells his audience. "This is a day-to-day reality when you become enlightened, or a mukhti."

"The Work' of Byron Katie

"Life comes out of your imagination. Life is a mirrored image of what you imagine to be true,' says enlightened spiritual teacher, Byron Katie. '

The Work,' as Katie calls her process of examining and re-orienting the thoughts of the mind, is a genuine liberation practice that has changed hundreds of thousand of lives, helping its practitioners to carve a different path through a world of hurt and pain.

In a two-hour audiostream special on Global One TV, Katie takes the viewer through a tour of her doing 'the Work' with a number of audience participants in different venues, dealing with a host of issues from prejudice to resentment and fear, and from the need for approval to the feeling of being unloved and unappreciated.

Watch live streaming video from globalonetv at livestream.com

"You know those people that are so cold?," Katie asks. "They're innocent. They are believing their thoughts."

"You know those people that have been so mean to you?," she asks. "They have to be. They are believing their thoughts about you, about the world."

"You know the things you do that you're so sorry for?," Katie continues. "Those things you regret? Those things that you experience guilt over? If you go back and you look at what you were believing before you did what you did, you will see clearly that you had no choice. Zero! And whatever you were believing before you did it," she notes, "you still believe. And you will do it again. Only you will just be a little more subtle about it so that you don't get caught so obviously next time.

And, so," she observes, "we become so secretive . . . so painful."

Katie offers those who practice 'the Work' an opportunity to examine their life stories, to see where they would be without that story, and to turn that story around so that they see who they could become without their story.

"I know the taste of freedom," Katie boldly states. "I know what that is. And if you don't love your world, I invite you to question what you believe about the world."

Nisargadatta on Acceptance and Love

Sri Nisigardatta (1897-1981)

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, one in the long line of self-realized Indian sages, was perhaps the foremeost teacher and philosopher of the non-dualistic Advaita Vedanta since his predecessor, Ramana Maharshi. In 1973, the publication of his most famous and widely translated book, "I Am That," an English translation of his talks in Marathi by Maurice Frydman, brought him worldwide recognition and followers.

[Source: Wikipedia.com]

 In the attached video (below), it is explained that Nisargadatta Maharaj "refered to the illusory sense of being, traditionally called the ego, as the I-Am-ness. He says that to find the source of this I-Am-ness and fully understand it as nothing more than a conceptual idea of one's self is the way to self-realization and wholeness. Maharaj asks the seeker to be in the state which is prior to the experience of I-Am-ness."

"The concept 'I Am' comes spontaneously and goes spontaneously," says Nisargadatta. "Amazingly, when it appears it is accepted as real. All subsequent misconceptions arise from that feeling of reality in the 'I-Am-ness.' The moment the feeling 'I Am' appears, the world also appears. Any image you have of yourself is not true. True knowledge is to abide in your own Self."

"The teachings of Maharaj," it is observed, "move our awareness from the I-Am-ness, this sense of separate identity, to a non-dualistic sense of oneness with the Absolute, which is our real nature." In explaining this shift in his consciousness, Nisargadatta explained to his visitors that what he meant was that he was "free of all content."

"To myself," he explained, "I am neither perceivable nor conceivable. There is nothing I can point out and say, "This I am." You identify yourself with everything so easily. I find it impossible. The feeling I am not this or that, nor is anything mine, is so strong in me, that as soon as a thing or a thought appears, there comes the sense, 'This I am not.'"

"I find that somehow by shifting the focus of attention,  I become the very thing that I look at and experience the kind of consciousness it has. I become the inner witness of the thing. I call this capacity of entering other focal points of consciousness 'love.' You may give it any name you like. Since at any point of time and space I can be both the subject and the object of experience, I express it by saying that I am both and neither, and beyond both."

This radical acceptance of what is - this love without subject, object or conditions - an enlightened and acceptive state of higher consciousness. What is, is. And we are part of that totality Nothing could be plainer. In the beginning chapters of his book, "I Am That," Nisargadatta addresses how the fundamental problem of the mind is overcome with an acceptive love:

"What is wrong with (the mind) seeking the pleasant and shrinking from the unpleasant? Between the banks of pleasure and pain the river of life flows. It is only when the mind refuses to flow with life, and gets stuck at the banks, that it becomes a problem. By flowing with life I mean acceptance - letting come what comes and go what goes. Desire not, fear not, observe the actual, as and when it happens, for you are not what happens, you are to whom it happens. Ultimately even the observer you are not. You are the ultimate potentiality of which the all-embracing consciousness is the manifestation and expression.

[Nisagardatta, "I Am That," page 6.]

"Meditation will help you to find your bonds, loosen them, untie them and cast your moorings, says Nisargadatta. "When you are no longer attached to anything, you have done your share. The rest will be done for you."

"Only in the dissolution of the problem in the universal solvents of enquiry and dispassion,' he notes, "can its right solution be found."

[Nisagardatta, "I Am That," pages 54-55.]