The Pathway of Nonduality 1

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I've acquired a book entitled The Pathway of Nonduality:

Advaitavada, by Raphael (published by Motilal Banarsidass).

It's about 88 pages, and I'll copy about 2 pages per day

five or six days per week. I am editing it so that it flows

better.

 

It accords with Greg Goode's philosophical work and

balances the Salon with a different kind of brain food. I

hope you'll find pleasure in dipping into this philosophy.

 

On the cover it says, "Raphael, the founder of the Asram

Vidya Order, is a practicing Asparsin and at present, after

over thirty five years of oral and written teaching, lives

at the Hermitage, devoting himself completely to retirement

and silence."

 

Preface

 

The most difficult problem discussed by philosophers down

through the ages is that of Being and non-being, of One and

many and, as a consequence, the question of generation.

 

Is the Absolute Being Unity, Duality or Non-duality?

 

Is the world of names and forms created ex-nihilo, is it

manifested or emanated? And again is it real or unreal or,

paradoxically, both, the one and the other? ..

 

What has Advaita philosophy, presented by Guadapada and

Samkaracarya and re-proposed here by Raphael, got to say

with regard to these matters?

 

We may say that this doctrine .. not only gives an answer

that is new to the West but it also points out the pathway

(Asparsavada) by which to achieve Identity of the being with

Being.

 

Raphael ... helps us to understand the 'vision' of Gaudapada

and Samkaracarya who, solidly extablished in metaphysics,

show how the Supreme Being is pure actuation which excludes

not only multiplicity, duality and ontological unity, but

also all passages from potentiality to act.

 

To speak of the ever-present and infinite Being in terms of

even theoretical phases is impossible. The Ever-Present has

no history, no actuation, no motion because It has no

generation (ajati).

 

Pure Being is what It is. It is not what was nor what will

be. And if at times one speaks of 'three levels' of Being,

this is done only to help the minds of men ... and only with

a view to free them from the illusion of 'two' and 'one'.

 

'Multiplicity', 'two', and 'one', that is, pluralism,

dualism, and the mathematical one, exasperate and disappoint

us because unconsciously we tend towards the Non-duality

(Pure Being) or the Absolute which is ever present and makes

thought and phenomenal appearance possible.

 

If the Absolute is 'that which is free from relations, that

is, exists and is what It is, without any need to be in

relationship with anything else, or what is fully

sufficient, self-sufficient independently of any other thing

or reality', then Gaudapada, Samkaracarya and Raphael

indicate the true metaphysical pathway leading to the

realization of the unqualified Absolute Being. Asparsa

means, in fact, 'free from relations', from connections with

other things; it means self-sufficiency, this is,

non-generation.

 

....

 

Measuring oneself with the Absolute, with the Whole (as

Plato says), with Being rather than becoming, implies a

precise subsequent change of all the usual points of view,

of the meaning of life itself and a new hierarchy of values.

 

The knowledge of the Whole, according to Plato, requires

'breaking chains', requires 'ascesis', demands 'dedicating

one's whole self', a change of life and, as Raphael says, 'a

transformation of consciousness'.

 

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