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Index
Contents
Introduction
Why I Wrote This Book
Communication
Awareness or Consciousness?
Beyond Awareness?
Who Would Benefit from Reading This Book?
Overview of the Chapters
Chapter 1: What Is the Direct Path?
Background
Awareness
About Self-Inquiry
Witnessing Awareness
Direct Experience
An Example of Inquiry
Inquiry Part 1—Do you find a clock in the sound?
Inquiry Part 2—Do you actually hear a sound?
Inquiry Part 3—Do you find the sense of hearing?
What the Inquiries Establish
The Fruits of Inquiry
Self-Inquiry Isn’t Performed by the Mind
From Gross to Subtle to Awareness and Beyond
The Direct Path’s Unmentioned Irony
The Tools Are Not Forever
Critiques of the Direct Path
The Direct Path Is Flexible
Which Path Is the “Highest”?
Chapter 2: The Path and the Heart
How Can There Be Conduct Toward Others When There Are No Others?
Why Ethics?
My Experience
Ethics as Preparation for Non-dual Realization
Traditional Advaita Vedanta
Madhyamika Buddhism
Ethics and Realization
Against Ethics in Non-dualism
So Why Isn’t Insight Enough?
In Favor of Ethical Teachings—Example
So, What Kind of Ethics?
Transparency
Where to Go from Here?
Chapter 3: The Language of Joyful Irony
The “Realist” View of Language—Representationalism
Nonreferentiality and the Direct Path
Approaching Nonreferentiality Through Inquiry
Approaching Nonreferentiality Through Figurative Language
The Nonreferential Approach
Even “Literal” Isn’t Literal
Literality Divided Against Itself
Stories of Nonreferentiality
The Jury-Duty Story
The Satsang Teacher Story
What Else Can You Do?
Imagination
Truth, Falsity, and the Writing of This Chapter
Joyful Irony
Getting Beyond Words
Chapter 4: The Guru Doctrine
Gurus vs. Books
The Guru Doctrine vs. Bhakti Yoga
Self-Realization According to the Guru Doctrine
The Other Atmananda
The Guru Doctrine Is Never Mentioned
Other Methods Are Given as Sufficient for Self-Realization
The Guru Doctrine Is Challenged
The Presence of the Guru in Speech vs. Writing
Back to Bulgaria
Chapter 5: Alternatives to Inquiry
The Direct Method vs. the Upanishadic Method
Karma Yoga
Bhakti Yoga
Reminders
Standing as Awareness
The Heart Opener
Sleeping Knowingly
Guided Meditations
The Yoga of Awareness
Chapter 6: Witnessing Awareness—Introduction
Direct Experience
How the Direct Path Sees Witnessing Awareness
Why Use a Witness Idea in the First Place?
How Many Witnesses Are There?
More Than One?
Less Than One?
One per Person?
So How Many Really?
How Does the Witness Teaching Work?
But Maybe the World Really Does Exist
What’s Direct About Direct Experience?
An Example of Non-dual Inquiry: Looking at an Orange
No Orange Apart from an Orange Color
No Orange Color Apart from the Notion of Seeing
No Seeing Apart from Witnessing Awareness
Conclusion
Chapter 7: The Opaque Witness
From Gross to Subtle
How the Opaque Witness Comes About
Sublation
The Body
How Does the Direct Path Investigate the Body?
Bodily Enlightenment
Solipsism and the Question of Others
The End of the Opaque Witness
Chapter 8: The Transparent Witness
Example: Is “Attention” Who I Am?
As with the World, so with the Mind
Non-dual Sticking Points and Traps
The Non-existence of Other People
The Inability to See Other People’s Thoughts
Objectifying Enlightenment
Cause and Effect
Doership
Memory
The Coherence of the World
Wanting to See Awareness
Deconstructing Awareness Prematurely
Bodily Contractions
Clarity, Transparency, and Sweetness
The Beginning of Dissolution
Chapter 9: Non-dual Realization and the End of the Witness
The Stability of the Transparent Witness
Why the Transparent Witness Dissolves
The Collapse—Inquiring into the Witness
Non-dual Realization
Then What?
Chapter 10: After Awareness—The End of the Path
Communication
Not Even Consciousness
Joyful Irony
Joyful Irony, not Relativism or Neutrality
After Awareness
The End of the Path
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
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