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New Book
Recommendations
Amended and Updated, August 3, 2007.
Below is an expanded list of recommended books. Generally I've
told people to avoid books about Ramana's way except for Robert's, the
reason being the context tends to be very culturally and philosophically Indian
and thus hard for Westerners to understand and confusing even to Indians.
However, I do recommend these:
The Path of Sri Ramana, Part One by Sadhu Om, as translated by
Michel James. Chapters seven and eight capture the heart of self-inquiry.
A Light on the Teacher of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi, also by
Sadhu Om and translated by Michael James.
The Garland of Guru's Sayings by Sri Muruganar.
All three as well as two others by Sadhu Om and Sri Muruganar are
availbale from AHAM Publications at 4368 N.C. Highway 134, Ashebro N.C., 27205.
Their website is www.aham.com. They have many
other Ramana and other Advaita books, but I recommend these three and the others
by Sadhu Om and Sri Muruganar. Phone: 336.381.3988.
There an enormous number of books on enlightenment from a Buddhist or Advaita perspective, as both have been around for thousands of years. Advaita, though technically originating during the Eleventh Century AD, had Vedic roots in the time of the Buddha. To be precise, Advaita arose as a Vedic response to the Mahayana Buddhist concepts of various sorts of emptiness. Therefore, there are great similarities between some Advaita Texts and some Mahayana Buddhist texts.
I am not that widely read in Advaita or the Vedas. I had given up reading more or less after I met Robert. Since I met Robert in 1988, I have probably read no more than a dozen books other than those required for my job performing psychological evaluations. Of those I have read, the best are by Nisargadatta. His pronouncements are both bold and penetrating.
By far the best of any edited work of Nisargadatta is Prior to Consciousness by Jean Dunn, published by Acorn Press. She told me that Nisargadatta told her that the most recognized book out at the time, I Am That, by Maurice Frydman, was Kindergarten, and Prior to Consciousness was graduate school. There is no doubt. This is the best.
You could do no better than take most any chapter and meditate on the content for a few months. The first time I read the book, it took six months. Each chapter, in fact, each page, can cause constant small awakenings, much like a swarm of fore shocks before the big one. Even the third time I read it took six months. That is about a page and a half a day. It is that dense in understanding.
The best part of the book is its emphasis of going beyond consciousness
putting the Noumenal in the forefront instead of consciousness as does Ramana.
Do not be confused however, as Ramana and Nisargadatta both recommend the same
practices: abiding in the I Am sense of existence.
The next best is Seeds of Consciousness, also by Jean Dunn. During his last year or so, Nisargadatta no longer wasted time with beginner topics and beginner techniques. Like Robert, he focused solely on the deepest teachings for his closest students, like Jean, Balsekar and others. Therefore, the books edited from his Satsangs during 1980 and 1981 were deeper than his teachings as recorded in I Am That. After mastering Prior to Consciousness, Seeds of Consciousness is like a checking or validating your understanding.
Her third book, Consciousness and the Absolute, is good, but not of the same power as either of the two above books. In fact, Seeds of Consciousness and Consciousness and the Absolute together have less power than Prior to Consciousness.
All three together should take you a year to read properly. Read no more than a
half chapter a day, tops, then meditate on what you read. By that, I mean read the paragraph, then do not move or think. Just let the words settle and watch the reaction on your consciousness. It is not necessary to try to understand the words at all. It is not you who is listening to the words anyway. It is consciousness, as expressed and manifested through you, who is being talked to by consciousness. Consciousness is talking to itself. Just sit back and let consciousness do the working. Your only work, so-to-speak, is to buy the book, read it in a dedicated fashion everyday, and watch what the words and meaning do to you—who you really are, not the personal you.
Next, Robert’s edited book, Silence of the Heart
is also extraordinary, combining Advaita philosophy with "technique." A great amount of the book comes from the
early talks that I transcribed and copyrighted with Robert. It is available in bookstores. Several of Robert’s talks are carried on this web site, written between 1990 and 1992.
Robert Powell has also published several edited Nisargadatta books. The only one I recommend is The Ultimate Medicine, published by Blue Dove Press. This book took me four months to read. I recommend reading only one other by him, The Nectar of the Lord’s Feet, published by Element Books.
The most famous Nisargadatta book is I Am That by Maurice Frydman. I highly recommend this book even though it appears self contradictory as he speaks to students of very differing levels of understanding. Yet, it is excellent, second only to Jean Dunn’s two
superior volumes.
Of course, there is Ramesh Balsekar, who is the best-known and most prolific of Nisargadatta's students. It was his Pointers From Nisargadatta, which liberated me from Zen as well as my treading water with Muktananda. Reading it was a mind-smashing experience and I do recommend it, but with only one thumb up. I was astounded that six weeks after I finished the book and wanted to know more, that Ramesh came to town and I was able to attend a week long retreat with him. I repeated a second retreat a year later and I got to know him fairly well, especially as we corresponded somewhat after each retreat.
The problem with Ramesh’s books is that there is too much Ramesh and too little Nisargadatta. He has spun off in his own cosmic direction, which is far too cerebral for me as opposed to Maharaj’s earthy boldness. Ramesh’s prose is grossly overweight and stilted. There is a heavy emphasis on Ramesh’s interpretation of Maharaj and of Ramesh’s own understanding, which I find more conventional than Maharaj. However, he has written so many books, you might try some of his more recent ones to see if he has lightened up. When I met Balsekar, he told me that Nisargadaata said he would write four books. Apparently he was not listening because he is at about a dozen or more now.
Also, I found Ramesh often rude, not unlike Nisargadatta, and insulting. Robert, who briefly spent time with Maharaj, and may have known Ramesh from that time, joked that Ramesh was paying back the world for all of the psychological beatings Maharaj gave him.
When it comes to books about Ramana Maharshi, they are an acquired taste. They are so culturally Indian, it is difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff.
If forced to recommend a few other
books about Ramana Maharshi, I would recommend Osborne’s
Collected Works of Ramana Maharshi
which has been
heavily edited by Ganeshan at Raman Ashram. Osborne, who wrote the original,
really did not penetrate Ramana's teachings deeply.
The Ashtavakra Gita, the Ribhu Gita, and the Avadhut Gita were among Ramana's favorites and I believe the Ribhu Gita was read everyday
in the Ashram while he was alive. Ramana recommended reading stanza 26. The
Ribhu Gita is available in edited versions, also available from AHAM, but the
fullest and most accurate presentation is by Master Nome at the Society for the
Abidance in Truth (SAT) in Santa Cruz, CA.
There are two books by David Godman that I remember as being excellent, although I only skimmed through them. He also has a decent web site. Do a Google search on Godman and Ramana on the Internet to find it.
There is the wondersul Path of Ramana Maharshi Part 1, by Sadhu Om, if you can find it. So far as I know, there was no Part 2. If anyone can find a copy, please tell me how I can buy one.
The first, is the Heart Sutra, which, along with the Diamond Sutra are the keystones to Zen. It is included below in several translations.
Three other books are of value:
The Zen Teachings of Huang Po edited by John Blofeld.
This is the best introduction to Zen ever written.
Volume One of the Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa by Garma Chang;
Progressive Stages of Meditation on Emptiness by Khenpo Gyamtso Rimpoche. This sort of reflects my own experience, but unnecessarily intellectualizes it.
Please do not read too much. You WILL become confused.
Reading absorbs the mind in thoughts, which are like clouds covering the Self. Worse, the words cause confusion, and the Self is totally lost.
WEBSITE RECOMMENDATIONS
Highly recommended is Michael James site. He has a long book on Ramana's
teachings, which I have not read, free for downloading.
www.happinessofbeing.com
Also the site of David Godman who
presents his insights and a lot of free stuff on Raman and his teachings:
davidgodman.org
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