Perfect Brilliant Stillness - Softcover

David Carse

4.53

242 ratings by Goodreads

9780976578307: Perfect Brilliant Stillness

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0976578301 ISBN 13: 9780976578307

Publisher: Paragate Publishing, 2005

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An intimate account of spontaneous spiritual enlightenment and its implications in a life lived beyond the individual self, Perfect Brilliant Stillness is a guidebook for the more advanced spiritual seeker who is ready to go beyond popular ‘new age’ ideas to explore in depth the perennial wisdom of the non-dual tradition of Eastern spirituality. Perfect Brilliant Stillness offers an invitation to finally let go of the false sense of individual self and to go, completed, beyond.

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From the Publisher:

The fine print:

There are many books out there that will help you to live a better life, become a better person, and evolve and grow to realize your full potential as a spiritual being.

This is not one of them.

At the time of this writing, almost every popular spiritual teacher in America and Europe is teaching that ultimate spiritual enlightenment, once attained only by certain yogis, gurus and other extraordinary beings, can now be yours; and that reading their book or attending their seminar will help you toward that end. This book will tell you that these ideas are absurd, because it’s quite obvious that neither you nor anything else has ever existed.

In fact, notwithstanding the enthusiastic blurbs on the cover, I would actually encourage any reasonably normal person not to buy this book. I say this because there’s no point in spending good money on yet another ‘spiritual’ book only to have it turn out to be of no use to you. The subject matter is such that only a very few will be interested in it. What is written about here, if it is really understood, is so genuinely strange that it is on the far edge of what the normal human brain can comprehend or accept. I wouldn’t have understood it myself, or found it interesting, before what happened in the jungle.

In addition, if you do find yourself interested, and are able to see past the words to understand at least some of what they point to, you are likely to find it quite disturbing. Few people buy books on spirituality to be deeply disturbed, so consider yourself forewarned.

And finally, if you read it anyway, and what is hinted at here resonates and is by some remote chance followed to its end, then that will likely also be the end of you. So again, a warning. With any luck, you will not come back from this with a life you can call your own; ‘you’ will not come back at all.

There’s no way to know what the chances are of this happening, but the Upanishads say that "only once in a thousand thousand years does a soul wake up," so there’s probably no need for concern. Probably.

That said, enjoy.

There is nobody home. Abruptly, instantly. Effortlessly, out of stillness. A moment, an instant, of radical, severe disorientation, discontinuity; then a stepping through that into perfect clarity, not at all unlike the experience of waking up. A dream, seemingly real, lasting all one’s apparent life. A stirring, and the sleep dropping effortlessly away. A moment of disorientation as the dream is recognized as dream and there is waking to the ‘real.’ Immediately, the dream falls away and it is known that the dream was never real, that one never was what one had been dreaming. There is no ‘before and after,’ no moment when I was ‘no longer’ david. This is the ‘gateless gate’: only the seeing that david never was...

What would you give to know, absolutely know beyond any doubt, that everything really is all right, that there is no reason to fear. That there is no need to feel despair or loss or uncertainty. That all the pain and hurt and evil we have seen truly is only an illusion, and that the most beautiful things we have experienced are only a glimpse, a small taste, of what is truly real, and truly ours. That everything is all right; that everything is perfect as it is; that all is well. This is what I see, and what I know...

At the end of human vision lies the final, ultimate Truth, inasmuch as such can be at all within our vision even at its extreme limit. It cannot be experienced or thought of or spoken of because it cannot be conceptualized... This ultimate Beingness and ultimate Consciousness overflows constantly in the Outpouring of its essence, its nature, which is pure absolute love beyond our conceptions of love: complete compassion, total truth, ultimate beauty, Outpouring...

All of this, everything everywhere, is not as it appears. This energy which everything is, is Consciousness, Being, outpouring itself in itself. This is what is called Ananda, because the very nature of Consciousness outpouring in itself is perfect love, wonder, beauty, gratitude, completion. Bliss. This streaming is what is perceived as all this, all this crazy world. But in truth, when seen as it is, this car is not a car, these groceries are not groceries, they are pure love light consciousness bliss streaming here.

This is obvious. It is seen here always; once seen it cannot not be seen. It is inexpressible. There is no way I can communicate this without sounding like a blathering nut case. But it is true. All is well. All is so incredibly well. Everyone is asleep and does not see it. How can anything, the smallest thing, not be well? Everything, the smallest thing, is ‘God’, is all that is, pure awareness, pure love, outpouring as itself...

When there is total letting go of the idea of being a separate self, then what is seen is the love compassion bliss that you are and that the slightest thing is. If nothing else, trust me on this. All is perfection, pure bliss love outpouring. Any perceptions to the contrary are simply not true. All is well. Totally.

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