TABLE OF CONTENTS


Testimonials

Preface

Introductory - Our approach and why this book was written; Some caveats; Preliminary comments; In today’s world exclusivity is a major problem

[Note: chapter entries capitalized in bold indicates an article on my website at https://www.mountainrunnerdoc.citymaker.com/page/page/1522670.htm]


PART ONE: A “TECHNICAL OVERVIEW”

CHAPTER ONE
The Map - Part One: Some basic principles and questions

CHAPTER TWO
Sant Mat and Gyan; False gyan versus real gyan

CHAPTER THREE
The Map - Part Two: The Path of the Masters; Sat Bachan; Systemic comparisons; A brief note on lineage divergence after Soamiji; Two more important chakras in the Nath tradition; Vasanas; Shiv Brat Lal confirms the subtle regions are in the brain; The macrocosm is in the microcosm - can't have one without the other; A second look at the roots of modern Sant Mat theory; Three transcendental degrees; More divergence among the lineages: Faqir Chand versus the ‘spirit baptizers’

CHAPTER FOUR
The Great Causal Body - Vedanta versus Sant Mat; A major transitional stage; Self-knowledge

CHAPTER FIVE
Bhanwar Gupha, or the ‘Rotating Cave’ - Sri Siddharameshwar versus Faqir Chand; “Scrubbing” of the Great Causal Body / The stabilization of knowledge; Its meaning in Sant Mat and Vedanta

CHAPTER SIX
Belief and investigation

CHAPTER SEVEN
Differing initiation promises among lineages

CHAPTER EIGHT
The Master’s Form and the nature of visions; Do masters know when their form appears to others? How does it all work?

CHAPTER NINE
Faqir versus Kirpal: “It would not be expedient to reveal these things”; a continuation of the above discussion; Brunton’s mental switchboard analogy; Views of Swami Rama Tirtha, Kirpal Singh, Ramana Maharshi

CHAPTER TEN
Bilocation East and West: a common siddh or gift of the spirit in many traditions; The astral duplicate or “clone” teaching; Ishwar Puri explains Sawan Singh’s view; Spyro Sathi (Daskalos) on the creation of living elementals that report to a Master

CHAPTER ELEVEN
Who’, ‘what’, and ‘where’ is a Master?; An introduction to a vast topic; Does he reside in the third eye, the heart, the entire body, or everywhere?

CHAPTER TWELVE
Faqir Chand - more on his radical views: “All is phantasmagoria up to Bhanwar Gupha,” “I am a bubble of consciousness”; More on Master’s form; Counterfeit planes; Brunton on individualized terminal stages of the path; Sri Atmananda on the only form in the universe that can take you to reality ; Ramakrishna on ‘eternal forms’

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Further perspectives from Orthodox Christianity, Taoism, Vedanta, and philosophic teachings

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Throne of God

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A ‘gyanic interpretation of Sant Mat; Faqir Chand’s psychological/metaphysical descriptions of the inner stages

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Sacred Numbers: An explanation of numbers 7, 84, and 1000 in different traditions; More on counterfeit planes from Sri Aurobindo, Faqir, L. Puri; Not all Sants give the same ordering of predominant sounds for the different planes: what does this imply?

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Sant Darshan Singh praises great Vedantic sage, Samartha Ram Das, as a Sant; A common ground between Sant Mat and Nisargadatta’s lineage; ‘Nine types of devotion’ taught in both schools

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Ishwar Puri’s view of Faqir Chand; Impressions of Faqir Chand: wrapping up issues raised; The Interior Word in mysticism versus "talking to the Master inside"; the role of intuition

CHAPTER NINETEEN
This Is new and interesting: everything happens within Sach Khand! Ishwar’s teaching that when ‘you’ ‘get to’ Sach Khand, it is like awakening from a dream and you realize not only that you never left it, but that the entire drama of creation, planes, reincarnations, eons of time, and all the rest, TOOK PLACE ONLY IN SACH KHAND - and which of course you are in right now, if only you realized it.

Chapter TWENTY
My vision of “2.0+”; The changing paradigm of the spiritual search

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
More on planes and inner experiences from Aurobindo, Faqir, Brunton, Aadi, and others; Having experiences versus understanding them; People awaken in different ways; Penultimate stages are not the same for everyone, “because they come into being as human reactions, as the self’s final point of view before its own dissolution”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Sant Mat and Kriya Yoga compared and contrasted in great detail; Dissecting the brain and spinal column; More from Aurobindo; Is Sant Mat the easiest and shortest way to Self or God-realization?; Purification versus transformation; Comparative plane schema for Theosophy/Sant Mat/Daskalos/Vedanta/Yukteswar/Aurobindo/Buddhism/Kabbalah

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
PARAMHANSA YOGANANDA AND KRIYA YOGA - More depth and background in continuance of the previous discussion; Masters and WWII; Dueling reincarnations among the Masters; Mysticism and theosophy versus the philosophic view

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
KUNDALINI: UP, DOWN, OR ? - an long and extensive discussion of kundalini, shakti, prana, and shabd from advaitic, yogic, Sant Mat, Sufi, Christian, and philosophic perspectives; The views of many saints and sages; The awakening of the I-thought takes a third of a second; Unrecognized kundalini manifestations

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The waking state: its importance for realization, clearing karmas, and the realization of sahaja

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“Only the "Totality" goes from Sach Khand to Anami”: Ishwar Puri on what lies beyond the individual soul; Brunton, Plotinus, Darshan Singh

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“I heard The Big Bell, but it wasn’t where I wanted to go”: two distinct spiritual trajectories

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The death of Ramana’s mother and more on inner sounds; Nada and vichara; The time of death; Exiting through different chakras; Assurances of salvation after death;

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
DYING IN THE MASTER’S COMPANY - The death of Ramana’s mother and Kirpal SIngh’s wife; perspectives on death and dying from Zen Master Bankei, Chuang Tzu, Sri Nisargadatta, Brunton, Kirpal Singh, St. John of the Cross; The passing of Jaswant Singh; Two kinds of salvation

CHAPTER THIRTY
How far is Heaven? - Charan Singh, Ishwar Puri, Nisargadatta, Rajinder Singh, St. Paul; Heaven, the Garden of Eden, and Paradise

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
More on the waking state: jivan mukti versus videha mukti; Permanent but partial realizations; The philosopher versus the mystic; Why sooner or later Masters say almost everything

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Do we really know what the body is? The body transcended by being aware of it, and being in it

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Death for the un-liberated; Pre-incarnational planning; The second death; Fear of reincarnation implies imperfection; Why Masters come back

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
From the ‘earth-earthy’ to the ‘heaven-heavenly’ - why this is not Sant Mat 2.0+; Spiritual bypassing; “This earthly life is the “narrow gate” which opens into the kingdom”; Once again, sooner or later, Masters say everything; Kirpal Singh, Brunton, Vashista, Nisargadatta, Gurinder Singh.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Pralaya and Maha Pralaya, Sant Mat and Vedanta contrasted; Problems using temporal and spatial language in discussing these concepts; Views of Ishwar Puri, Madame Guyon, Ramana Maharshi, Sri Atmananda, Sri Siddharameshwar

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Maha Sunn and the Void; Philosophical and mystical explanations; Sub-regions in Maha Sunn; Phenomenal void versus real void; Sri Atmananda on the concept of getting stranded this stage; The borderland between objectivity and subjectivity; Charan Singh versus Ramana; Isolation of the “I”: dread and the void; A dark night; Two kinds of void

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The Master's Words: saving grace and blessed assurance; “My teacher's words came true. He knew me better than I knew myself, that is all...His words were true and they came true. True words always come true.” - Nisargadatta; A missing key to Sant Mat; Faith, reason, and stories

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
SCARE TACTICS - The methods of the masters; “There are three methods of approach used by the teachers, depending on the level of the people they have to deal with. They are: first, terrorizing the lowest type by fears; second, coaxing the better evolved ones by baits and lures; third, giving a fair, balanced statement of the truth for those people who are mentally and morally on the highest level."


PART TWO: A NON-DUAL EXPLORATION

CHAPTER ONE
The spiritual need for precise articulation and deep thinking; “In almost every person, every religion, every group, every teaching, and every teacher, there are ideas, beliefs, and assumptions, which are overtly or covertly not open to question…Often these unquestioned beliefs hide superstitions, which are protecting something that is untrue, contradictory, or being used as justification for teachings and behaviors that are less than enlightened.” - Adyashanti

CHAPTER TWO
The nature of planes and bodies; Sach Khand and the Soul - are they non-dual, or is only Anami or the One non-dual?; Atman, Brahman, Sach Khand, Anami; More depths on planes, bodies, and non-dualism; Awakening and re-awakening

CHAPTER THREE
Replicated or reflected planes; Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya, Nirmanakaya: the grandeur of a Master; Planes and sub-planes

CHAPTER FOUR
The advantage of the non-dual view: “One of the perks of the non-dual view is that it collapses stark distinctions and appearances of separation. The notion of many planes to traverse to reach a certain realization or state has the disadvantage of reinforcing dualism, making it seem like these state, experiences, realizations are so far away.”

CHAPTER FIVE
Shabda as Creator: a non-dual perspective; Shabda not Creator but a “Liberating Presence within relativity”; The apparent linear creation is actually a perpetual, spontaneous process, with no beginning or end; The scripture verse, "In the beginning was the Word" (or Logos), contains a mistranslation of the original Greek word arche, which means both beginning and authority, and the true reading is "In Authority is the Logos.” The Logos through the Holy Spirit creates the worlds, outside of time; “I was reading in a book - who can fully understand it? - that God is now making the world just as on the first day, when he created the world.” - Eckhart

CHAPTER SIX
A Buddhist creation story; Karma as the creator; Some teachings of Buddha and Christ compared; Creationism unmasked; Non-dual relief from within Sant Mat

CHAPTER SEVEN
Sat Purush: Eternal, Universal Guru; Ancient doctrines presumed an 'intermediary' is needed between the personal self and the infinite Deity, Brahman, or the One, between relativity and the Absolute, such as Adi Buddha, Cosmic Christ, or Overself; Ascended masters and disciples; Hierarchies of inner Masters; Simran and spiritual intuition

CHAPTER EIGHT
IF THERES A HELL BELOW, WE’RE ALL GONNA GO; Above or below the earth?; Levels of Hell; Saintly visitations; Annexes of Hell; Vedanta: the Nether world as the Causal Body of forgetfulness; Achieving egohood

CHAPER NINE
”It’s All Too Much For Me To Take”: Multiple Emanations/Simultaneous Incarnations and their meaning for notions of ‘Creation’; Story of Lila; Reincarnation before death; A Plotinian explanation; This may blow whatever of your mind is left: Not only advanced masters but ordinary souls may have more than one incarnation at the same time!

CHAPTER TEN
Kabir and the Four Ages: Yugas and other Cycles; The Hindu view; Sri Yukteswar’s innovative theory; Saarsathi - another strange teaching to worry about!

CHAPTER ELEVEN
Sant Mat and Buddhism: an overview of relevant topics

CHAPTER TWELVE
Shabd Yoga as a jnana path

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Second thoughts on dissolution and grand dissolution in Sant Mat; "The wonder consists in the disappearance of the universe in Me. I survive even the destruction of the world. Why worry?" - V.S. Iyer; Beyond and Beyond the Beyond

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
After death: integral realization and the non-dual view; Two parts of the soul; Bodies are gradually dropped; Nothing is lost


PART THREE: SELF-KNOWLEDGE, PROGRESS, AND THE ORDEAL OF PURIFICATION

CHAPTER ONE
Talking turkey: an introduction to a fresh look at self-introspection; following or not following rules; what to do with desire

CHAPTER TWO
Keeping a diary and related issues; “simran/diary approach versus vipassana”; Three levels of practice; Be not anxious over ones faults; The subconscious reservoir of impressions must be thoroughly drained out before it can be filled by the love of the Lord/Master; Vasanas; Contrition; Faith; Cultural factors; father force/mother force;

CHAPTER THREE
The deepening of the process: purgation, repentance, metanoia

CHAPTER FOUR
When it may not look like progress but it is; Paradoxical and unrecognized progress; Different forms and stages of progress; Don’t compare yourself with others; Even Sawan and Kirpal said that inner experiences are not it; Hitting bottom; Awareness of disease is the first step in its cure; abandoning hope of personal attainment

CHAPTER FIVE
Why don’t Masters take you up right away; The first mansion of spirituality is self-knowledge; The chalice must be ready; Patient endurance is the way to enlightenment; There is no failure

CHAPTER SIX
A note on "perfecting" oneself

CHAPTER SEVEN
The self you didn’t want to realize: dark nights of the soul; “How long will you keep that pain within you?”; Buddha’s two arrows; The way of the Cross; The chakras considered as one whole, centered in the Heart; God only asks you to allow Him a free hand to accomplish His work in you

CHAPTER EIGHT
'Down and in', before 'up and out': St. John of the Cross, Babuji Maharaj, Sri Aurobindo on the unwelcome necessity of radical re-wiring and the process of embodiment

CHAPTER NINE
An astrological model of transformation: the Uranus Station; Moving beyond the ego-structure or the ‘Ring-Pass-Not’ of Saturn

CHAPTER TEN
The Promised Land and the desert to be crossed on the way to it are both within us; The path is no joke; Oscillations of experience; Dante’s Inferno: when down is up; Master has many an arrow of love in his quiver; Two kinds of interior peace; Non-dual awakening does not bypass purification but makes it possible; Plani

CHAPTER ELEVEN
SCRUBBING - a deeper walk with the Lord. An intensive discussion on psycho-physical purification by the divine. “And no man putteth new wine into old bottles: else the new wine doth burst the bottles, and the wine is spilled, and the bottles will be marred: but new wine must be put into new bottles.” [Mark 2:22 KJV]

CHAPTER TWELVE
Zen Illness: mistaking Illumination for Liberation; Need for grounding: tending the “elixir field” or tanden

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The nuts and bolts of the non-dual view from the Heart's Gaze: The difference between knowledge and love is that knowledge always tries to banish duality but love retains it as a precious treasure and itself remains without duality; There is no such thing as personal salvation, it is selfishness of the worst kind; When a man says that he has seen his internal self, he is still a yogi, but when he says that he has seen the Universe in himself, he has become a knower of Truth; There is no best way; Beware what you pray for; A note on the ego and intelligence; Paradox is inevitable; Ancient errors; All classifications and systemizations are in a certain sense artificial and arbitrary; Integration of experience and understanding;

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
On ‘stories’ and suffering: Types of suffering; "The ego is only the story it constantly tells of itself, the experiences and difficulties it has had, the path it has followed, the wounds it carries. The invitation here is precisely to stop telling the story - Sounds pretty good, right? Except that it is wrong. The root I-thought is a contraction deep in the subconscious. It is not a “story.” It is a knot. Not telling can be a good personal discipline, but telling the story may be better than keeping it inside

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The “besetting sin” or “chief feature” as a potential roadblock to successful self-inquiry and a key finding in self-introspection - but don't take it too seriously

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Some related considerations about the ‘I’-thought, the ego, advaita and the soul

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Self-introspection 2.0+; Watching thoughts or forgetting thoughts; Self-concern or un-self-concern; Practicing self-acceptance, self-forgetting and being in the Now while striving towards the ideal, both for ourselves and the capacity to serve others; Bleaching the coffee with cream instead of just analyzing the grounds; What diary?; Cutting the branches versus cutting the trunk; Why a balanced path is recommended: the three baskets and five-pointed star; Summary of self-introspection

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The value of contemplation and study as a complement to meditation; Contemplation helps our understanding of the various states, rather than just the having of them; it fosters intuition; inspires and cultivates equanimity, balance, and tolerance. Many matters need to be pondered in order to grow in relative wisdom, without a fear-based approach to life and spirituality; Journalling and self-introspection: cultivating two sides of our nature; Balancing the revelation of the dark side with that of the hidden bright creative side of the inner self, re-awakening buried childlike qualities of innocence, expectation of the Good, curiosity and enthusiasm; Affirmations or the ‘as if’ exercise: creating new logismos or thought forms, or, "as you think, so you become." Not merely “fake it until you make it,” but more like “faking it is making it.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN
On the subject of judgementalness; East and West: "What we've got here is a failure to communicate”; Ac-centuate the positive: Are anger, fear, sorrow, depression, lusty thoughts, selfishness, our 'fault' and simply 'wrong'? One voice says, “yes," yet another says, “they are an invitation, through acceptance and compassionate, friendly attention, to free the energy beneath them, and awaken to our true nature as well”; When you accept yourself as you are, then you can change; Much judgementalism arises from posing the hypothetical, i.e., that people 'should' be different; however, if they could be, they would be; A comparative look at judgement and the body in different paths: Four Foundations of Mindfulness in Buddhism and four ‘bodies’ in Sant Mat; There is a hidden YES in everyone

CHAPTER TWENTY
The reality of stages and the need for tolerance

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
TWO SPRITES - HURRY AND WORRY - “The cessation of all worries is the attainment of the supreme truth." - Ramana Maharishi. “Worrying is praying for failure.” - Ishwar Puri

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Cultic speech, behavior, and mind-set: an essential consideration for those any spiritual path; In almost every person, every religion, every group, every teaching, and every teacher, there are ideas, beliefs, and assumptions, which are overtly or covertly not open to question; “Unless you follow me you will go to hell,” “without my practices you will never purify your karma,” “our church is the only way you can repent for your sins,” “my teachings are the one true way to obtain enlightenment; anything else is a fraud,” “I am offering you a direct connection to god and the infinite,” “fate has brought you here; if you squander this opportunity, it will be thousands of lifetimes before you get another chance to wake up”; “Spirituality is a science,” “don’t tell your experiences to others,” “You don’t have to leave your religion,” etc.; Groupthink

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Mental illness and the path; Getting real; Casualties; East versus West, a core difference in articulating a central problem

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
ON SUICIDE AND THE SPIRITUAL QUEST - a deep dive into the heart of existential despair; Dark nights of the soul versus psychological problems; Practical steps that may help; When spiritual practice may be part of the problem; Traditional admonitions often given: helpful or harmful; “I will never leave you”; Non-traditional perspectives; No standard punishment, on the other hand karma must be considered; Positive, hopeful views; Terminal illness; Special cases; The story of the Fifth and Sixth Patriarchs; Progression to non-dual realization and beyond; Final words of hope

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
A few juicy stories: “When we have a sharing of stories in Satsang, there is a lot of exaggeration, and creeping distortion is evident. Those with the juiciest stories are the worst! The same story the second time around is usually recolored and embellished to glorify the teller and the Master at the same time. Often the telling of a story is a big ego download with someone feeling special, and not serving the awakening process in anyone”; Pre-incarnational planning and the uniqueness of our experiences; “Communications that are truly from God have this trait: They simultaneously exalt and humble the soul. For on this road, to descend is to ascend and to ascend is to descend, since those who humble themselves are exalted and those who exalt themselves are humbled…Accordingly, the Wise Man’s words are fulfilled: Before the soul is exalted, it is humbled, and before it is humbled, it is exalted”; Five stories; Comments on the nature of visions

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
RAIN - “The child cries and the mother comes to give him something to eat and again goes away. Again he cries until nothing satisfies him but the mother taking him in her arms. When you want nothing else Other than Him, He comes. Just as mothers always have pity, grace for the child, so it is with Master's Love. With His little thought, you weep like anything. Do you follow?”; The spiritual value of tears; Ryokan and Father Maximos, two stories; Mysteries of tears; Tears and samadhi

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Moving towards an emergent global spirituality

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Cognitive dissonance #1

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
What comes out of your mouth is more important than what goes into it: considerations on diet and ethics; Varied diets among sages; What about the Eskimos - can they become initiates?; The Issue of eggs: nutrition; pasture-raised; what’s best for chickens as a species; fertile/infertile; Birth - Ego - Person; The garden of Eden or the cave; Animal husbandry and nutrition; Sattvic/unsattvic; Health issues never faced by Kabir or Nanak; Prophet Mohammed’s advice; Cain, the first self-righteous vegetarian; The full moral implications; The Hindu theory of the five elements and the minimizing of dietary karmas: is it partly fear-based?; OMG! Guru Nanak and the Sikh Gurus ate meat; Sikhism or Kabir - the roots of modern Sant Mat, and their influence on vegetarianism; Is even breathing a sin?; Wine!; The role of intuition; True Guru; Graduation


PART FOUR: PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES

CHAPTER ONE
Samadhi versus Satori: two fundamentally distinct experiences often misunderstood

CHAPTER TWO
The concept of Perfect Masters, or perfection Itself for that matter; No perfection exists; A specific definition for a perfect Master in Sant Mat; If it fulfills its purpose it is perfect enough; “God allows defects to remain in the dearest of His saints so that He can preserve the saint from corruption and “hide him in the secret of His presence”; Imperfection only is intolerant of imperfection

CHAPTER THREE
Is the Saint or Master omniscient?; Knowing and not-knowing; Sarvagnana or ‘knowing Reality’ is the meaning of ‘All-Knowing’; “Nobody can boast that he knows everything. Even if we know the everything - all creation - what is it? It is one ray of thought, is it not? Man cannot know everything”; “He does not claim to be a walking encyclopedia nor ask for a halo of infallibility. There are many questions to which he does not know the true answer. He is neither pontifically infallible nor deifically omniscient”; “Proclaiming oneself to be an omnipotent, omniscient and omnipotent deity is a clear sign of ignorance”; Views of Brunton, Nisargadatta, Atmananda, Ramana Maharshi; “At the higher noetic spheres you do not learn about things outside of yourself. You become those things”

CHAPTER FOUR
“The inner Master is more strict than me”; a gentle warning to pay attention to the prompting of the deeper self

CHAPTER FIVE
Cognitive dissonance #2; A recent example of “You cannot handle the truth!”; The madness of crowds; Scamming; Getting real: when the eyes glaze over even in the face of a 1 in 469,001,600 chance of something being the truth, you know there is a problem!

CHAPTER SIX
The power of a lineage; Having your back; The making of a Master; A Master is unique and not a robot! (and neither are you); Finishing school

CHAPTER SEVEN
Are Masters “above the stars”? Yes and no; What you can tell from a natal chart

CHAPTER EIGHT
What does Self-realization and God-realization mean in Sant Mat? Comparisons with Ramana, Nisargadatta, Brunton; Does the self expand, or the ego contract? "In contacting the Overself he does not really sense a bigger "I." he senses SOMETHING which is”; Saguna and Nirguna Brahman; Gradual and final liberation; It can be confusing: non-duality can be realized on any plane, but there are voids or zero-points within and between each plane as well

CHAPTER NINE
If God Is the controlling power keeping you in the body, why meditate to get out of the body; It seems one can’t have it both ways: either the Master Power keeps us here, or our sinful fallen nature is doing it and we have to struggle to reach the Master Power; drishti-shristi-vada and shristi-dristhti-vada; Mentalism; A strange case of two souls in one body

CHAPTER TEN
Leaving the body doesn't automatically tell you what the body is: The logic and need of incarnation seems to be this: one has to experience being in or as a body to know what it is like to be without a body. One cannot know what one is or what the body is in Truth solely from a dis-incarnate state. A contrast is needed. This is one reason why the waking state of earth-life has been valued in the spiritual traditions. Paradoxically, one also cannot know the unlimited nature of the Universal or Cosmic Self or Mind without being confined to the limitations of a body; The issue of attachment’; Franklin Merrell-Wolff on the use of the mind; The saints have a short-cut; The desire for samadhi is a “vicious yogic samskara”.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
The need for basic trust; Self-love and self-abandonment are both required; Embrace the shadow; Hanging on the gallows; You have a right to be here

CHAPTER TWELVE
A review of various topics: Degrees of mastership; Brief remarks on karmas; Where are the Inner realms; There is no technical way to be saved; Die to who you think you are before who you think you are dies, or surrender into the Mystery; The Master always resides in the disciple's innermost heart center.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
‘Seeing’ in Sach Khand; "May I see you face to face with the eyes of my soul, because you are their light" (St. John of the Cross); The real shabd is not a sound but your self; Seeing and hearing essentially; ‘Eternal’ forms; Ramana, Dogen, Ramakrishna, Plotinus, Nisargadatta

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A debate on “merging” - Adyashanti versus Darshan Singh; What merges with what; Commentary on Anami, Amrita Nadi, Soul, and Self; The importance of language

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Kal - psychological, allegorical, philosophical perspectives; Is Kal the Demiurge or not? What is it and what does it represent? “Sophia's Passion: Sant Mat and the Gnostic Myth of Creation”; Kabbalah; Rajinder Singh on Kal; Increasing non-judgmental presence liberates karma and transcends ‘Kal’

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Shiv Brat Lal on Kal; An allegorical story

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Kal and fear; And now for real goofiness

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Kal and the Sant Mat conception of avatars; Inner planetary and cosmic hierarchy, or ‘Trans-Himalayan lineage’; Contrasting views on avatars within esotericism; Christ, Buddha, Blavatsky, Bailey

CHAPTER NINETEEN
The Hindu conception of avatars and reincarnation; Brunton’s view; Avatars and reincarnation dissected; No one knows what an avatar is!; Meher Baba; Tenth Guru of the Sikhs; Lineage ego

CHAPTER TWENTY
Kal, karmas, and non-dualism: Three approaches from the Dzogchen perspective

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Kal - additional theological considerations: Satan, demons, the ‘Fall’

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
RESIST YE NOT EVIL: A look into complementary opposites; Archtypal forces of good and evil; A counter-syllogism to prove that not to resist evil on the basis that it is God’s will is a cop-out; The error of Lucifer was pride, the error of Satan cruelty; Humility and understanding the remedy

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Kal and spiritual experiences: St.John of the Cross on inner spiritual warfare

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Two metaphors for the path to truth: the ‘ladder’ of ascent, or ‘the bottom falling out of the bucket’; A note on short and long path practices, or ‘insight’ and ‘purification/concentration’

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Passing from objectivity to subjectivity; A major transition; The awakening of the witness; Devotional and advaitic approaches; “The Path begins in Sach Khand” - what did Soamiji and Ishwar mean?

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Do we meet past Masters inside?; Do Buddhists only go to the third plane?

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Non-dual debate among initiates: which is better, just dropping the personal self or pursuing the inner planes as an object of attention?

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Sleep: objective and subjective perspectives; Sant Mat and Vedanta; Why do Masters sleep instead of spending the whole night in samadhi? Awareness persists in sleep but not necessarily consciousness; “I knew you in your mother’s womb”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The sacrifice of the sage or master

CHAPTER THIRTY
MASTERS DIE MANY TIMES

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
More depth on the importance of human birth and the waking state; Ramana, Brunton, Siddharameshwar, Daskalos, Kirpal, deCaussade; Scorching of the vasanas; The anchor of the body that allows full understanding of all the states

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
KARMA AND GRACE - A lengthy exploration of two complementary divine laws: Karma - (Sanskrit) - “action or deed”, and Karam - (Persian) - “grace, mercy, kindness, compassion” - just switch two letters and all is explained; The views of many Teachers

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Jnana chaksu and divya chaksu: two different “third-eyes”; ‘The Eye of the Heart,’ ‘the Eye of the Mind,’ ‘the Eye of Wisdom,’ 'the Eye of Intuition’; The ajna center and the Heart; The Ultimate transcends attention; The heart-lotus is not a place; Faith and trust open it; Four lives to Sach Khand? That was a misinterpretation, there are four stage, to be done in One life; Intuition, the listening attitude, is the Ear of the Mind; A western path: Light is Knowledge and Sound is Love’s Essence

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Yoga and Vedanta: two distinct metaphysical perspectives; wakefulness versus the three states; “Causal” has a different meaning in each school; Bodies: adventitious vehicles versus upadhis; The mind as a function of the Self and not a ‘thing’

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Siddhis: what they are, how they are done, and how they relate to spiritual realization; Unique Christian miracles; Jesus is Just All Right with Me, or he's not and the deal with Kal is the gospel truth; Levitation, a strange gift; Materialization and dematerialization in Buddhism; the Rainbow Body; Death, ‘the last enemy,' even for saints?

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
A proposed model for comparing/classifying different teachings and schools; A summary of non-dualism as the heart of any authentic spiritual teaching; Re-cap: Sant Mat visualized as a non-dual path

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Marked souls and the ‘Fall’; Evolutionary enigmas; If souls started out in the Nether world how did they get to Sach Khand only to fall from there?; Three theories of evolution; Why did we leave Sach Khand only to return there; The Biblical Fall: the beginning of reincarnation?; The Cat Lady: on the karma of mice-killing; Summary: creationism or evolution; ET’s; Our human mind can hardly punch its way out of a paper bag!

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The “Mauj”; God’s will; more on the ‘moharchap’; The chosen ones; We must choose God again and again;

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The Map of Consciousness (0-1000); Ramaji, Nisargadatta, David Hawkins, Zen, Sant Mat; The Conference of the Birds; Many modern aspirants do not pass through archetypal stages of the spiritual process in the same way as those on traditional devotional paths have; Self-inquiry, radical faith, self-surrender; the Absolute

CHAPTER FORTY
Wrapping it up: Sri Ramana, Sri Nisargadatta, and the Sants contrasted

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
The concept of a center: ‘Life without a center’ versus the ‘return to our center within’; Bernadette Roberts, Paul Brunton; The I Am has nothing to do with the chakras; “The ridge-pole is split, all thy rafters are broken now” versus “Unless the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it”; Being in the Overself and the body at the same time; Transcendental stages compared: Plotinus, Ibn ‘Arabi, Chuang Tzu, Sant Mat, Brunton; Dragon’s Play; Home

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Is there only One Soul? Reflections on a remark by Ishwar Puri; Soul is one-and-many, not only one; If soul is the creator then what is God?; The non-dual union of the oneness of the perceiver and the perceived is the basis for a deeper realization; A final dive into Plotinus for some answers on soul and Oversoul; Ishwar Puri: “only the Totality goes to Anami”; What ‘Totality’? - that of the unified Soul. Is there more than one ‘Totality’? Let’s be reasonable!; Metaphor of the ocean and the drop: The ocean of consciousness is to be ‘recognized’, not ‘reached’; "This is your last illusion," said Atmananda, "that you are a gnani." All is forgotten, and one re-enters the marketplace

Concluding thoughts
“The things that are the most important are the things that are the least difficult”- Jeanne Guyon; “The task seems hopeless, until suddenly all becomes clear and simple and so wonderfully easy” - Sri Nisargadatta; “When you unfold the wings of love, you need not ascend by means of the steps” - Kabir; “Having received the protection of a God-realized man, do you think he would ever forget you? The Master always holds his disciples in the innermost heart center.” - Kirpal Singh


APPENDIX 1 - THE DEATH OF A DREAM AND A GIFT OF TRUTH - the author’s experience with Sant Kirpal Singh

The beginning
A prophetic dream
The play begins
A sad tale
An unknowing prayer
A Test in the Form of a Core Question
The ‘fish oil’ incident
The end game
Farewell to India
The years pass
Carrying out the Master’s words
Continuing saga and conclusions
Ongoing prayer
What I have learned
Final thoughts


APPENDIX 2 - SARMAD’S RENUNCIATIONS

APPENDIX 3 - THE LOST YEARS OF RAMANA MAHARSHI

APPENDIX 4 - THE ENIGMATIC KABIR

APPENDIX 5 - JACOB BOEHME - TEUTONIC SOUND CURRENT ADEPT?

Footnotes