The Baby and the Bathwater
Hey Robert,
As luck would have it, someone gave me a book or two as a Christmas gift, so guess what? I ordered your two books and am waiting for them to arrive on Saturday. I am so looking forward to reading them, as I know they are classics, as John Troy has described them.
I have already in the past read Ramana and Nisargadatta, but now I want to read a modern person like yourself without all of the Hindu superstition and myths. I don’t know if I will have any questions after reading. Possibly you will clarify everything in the books. But it is so cool that you make yourself available to answer people’s questions about the books. You are a rare breed, my friend, and I mean that as the highest compliment.
But I do have a question though before I start reading them. This has been on my mind since watching several of your YouTube videos, including that wonderful Gathering in Todas Santos. My question is this: several people say they have stopped seeking or searching after finding you and reading your books. I have heard several say this, and some of them have been seeking for years and seeing many different teachers or going on retreats. When they say they have stopped seeking or searching, do they mean they stopped reading other books like Ramana or Niz, got rid of all the other books except yours, and are just living now as human beings and no longer buying into any of this spiritual stuff? Or do you think they might still read other spiritual authors but do not have this seeking mechanism anymore? Just reading for enjoyment, but not reading to get anywhere like before?
Your friend Joan Tollifson thinks teachers and books are still helpful and not to throw out the baby with the bathwater and thinks that is what some of them are doing after reading you. That’s what I read in her review and some FB posts. If you can share anything about this dropping of seeking and searching, I would appreciate it.
Best regards, Steve.
Hi, Steve—
If you are going to dig into my books, here are two suggestions. Number one, read The Ten Thousand Things first. That may be enough. Second, Depending On No-thing is a large book with many chapters, and you might be tempted to skip around in it, but it’s better, I think, to read it from front to back without skipping around.
Some readers have said that encountering my ideas ended their search. I am not sure how to account for that. Others were initially intrigued by my approach, which includes an appreciation of some spiritual literature but no devotion to any of it, but later felt that my point of view threatened something they loved. I cannot account for that either.
As for the baby and bathwater thing, that depends on what you mean by “the baby.”
If the baby is the belief in some overarching “Truth” about what “myself” is that some geniuses have “realized,” and you can learn it from them, yes, throw that baby out as if it were toxic.
On the other hand, if the baby is an appreciation and sense of wonder that this mysterious aliveness exists at all and that all of us are part of it, keep that baby, I say, and cherish it.
So, my message is simple: Kill the Buddha, as the saying goes, and find your own mind, your own way of appreciating the gift of life and conscious awareness. Otherwise, you will always be a disciple and a seeker, hungry for table scraps. You will always make heroes of ordinary humans with ideas and viewpoints, not “Truth.”
Unless you can admit that we humans have no access to any truth about final matters and that one must live without having answers to ultimate questions, you will always imagine that Nisargadatta or whoever had the keys to the kingdom--some unique inside information you have to learn.
Some people don’t like hearing that. They find meaning or entertainment in the never-ending search and don’t want it to end. They cannot imagine living from moment to moment without a spiritual pot of gold to pursue. Even worse are the hypnotized ones who imagine themselves as “enlightened” and fit to teach others.
Others love hearing it. For them, it’s a kind of encouragement to be just as they are in each moment, “enlightened” or not.
I am not “teaching” this. I just report my own experience, and I don’t care what anyone thinks about it, pro or con.
Be well.
Chapters and excerpts to read gratis:
The Ten Thousand Things
Depending On No-thing
I love this, Robert. I totally resonate. Beautifully put.
Where I have found actual value in spiritual teachings and teachers is when they point relentlessly to right here, right now (and to the okay-ness of what is, as it is), and/or when they point out and help me to see and/or experience aspects, dimensions or qualities of this present happening that I wasn't seeing or fully experiencing, and/or when they help me to see the habitual patterns of thought that are creating unnecessary suffering. I've been lucky to have some extraordinary teachers of this kind.
Where teachers and teachings have been unhelpful in my experience is when they project an image of themselves as fully enlightened authority figures who are beyond all human difficulty and who claim to totally understand with complete certainty how the universe works. This self-aggrandizement and lack of epistemological humility is the carrot that reinforces the thought-sense of present lack and then holds out the possibility of future transcendence.
The teachers who were helpful encouraged open exploration...finding my own mind, as you like to say. The other kind generated addictive seeking, trying to get what I believed they had and I lacked.
While I've always thought of you as a dear friend and not as a teacher, you have in fact been (and you continue to be) a teacher in the best sense, definitely the helpful kind, and I cherish our friendship and very deeply appreciate what you are offering in your writing and speaking. ❤️🙏
Indeed - "Be a lamp unto yourself"....once we've taken this sentence to heart, we are well advised to kill the buddha. Not to say that we won't necessarily get anything from encountering the ideas of others - just that we ultimately need to experience OUR lives from OUR perspectives, and that this cannot be done by proxy...however attractive that fantasy might at times appear to be. I wish you well. Merry Christmas from across the pond!