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HarperCollins 100 Best Spiritual Books of the Century | Book awards | LibraryThing

HarperCollins 100 Best Spiritual Books of the Century | Book awards | LibraryThing

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This list was compiled by Philip Zaleski and published in November 1999. All books on the list had to be published in English for the first time in the twentieth century.

9 February 2017 at 21:25 ·

THE EXOTERIC PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY, PART 1

[For more articles, like this one, on esoteric spirituality, check out my blog: electricalspirituality.com.]

If you Google “the Perennial Philosophy,” you’ll find that two names dominate the search results: Aldous Huxley and Frithjof Schuon. This article, Part 1 of a two-part piece, will focus on their explications of the Perennial Philosophy.

In Part 2, I will consider the explications of other exponents of the Perennial Philosophy, including Rudolph Otto, Rene Guenon, and Julius Evola.

Why have I titled this article “The Exoteric Perennial Philosophy”? Because, in my opinion, none of these Perennial Philosophy exponents has done the “Esoteric Perennial Philosophy” justice. In other words, to this point in time, not a single Perennial Philosophy expositor has tied together the common deeper, or esoteric,

aspects of the Great Spiritual Traditions. Sans an Esoteric Perennial Philosophy, it is not possible to synthesize into an integral whole the various descriptions of the “higher” dimensions of the En-Light-enment project found in the Great Traditions.

The key component to such a synthesis is radical (or gone-to-the root) Trinitarianism; but because none of the renowned exponents of the Perennial Philosophy “cracked the cosmic code,” none of them figured this out. Hence, none of them could explicate an esoteric Perennial Philosophy.

Below, in order, are my Amazon reviews of

Huxley’s “The Perennial Philosophy” (four stars) and
Schuon’s “The Transcendent Unity of Religions” (one star) and
“The Essential Frithjof Schuon” (two stars).

These reviews make clear my view of their writings and explain some of my criticisms of the Exoteric Perennial Philosophy.

A NOBLE EFFORT

In "The Perennial Philosophy," Aldous Huxley, the celebrated novelist, turns his attention to spiritual philosophy and attempts to explicate and elaborate the Perennial Philosophy, which he considers the "Highest Common Denominator" found in the "higher religions"--Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Taoism, Judaism, and Islam. He argues that at the mystical core of these religions is "the ethic that places man's final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all Being." And because this book is an anthology, he provides excerpt after excerpt from the "Great Traditions" to buttress his argument.

I have the utmost respect for Huxley, a brilliant thinker, writer, and humanitarian; and I applaud him for his noble effort in this book, which, in my opinion, generally, but not completely, succeeds in explicating and elaborating the Perennial Philosophy.

Positively, Huxley continually points to the divine Ground, the Godhead--the God of Being rather than becoming--as the alpha and omega of true, or mystical, spirituality. Negatively, his thesis is "flattened" by his "Vedantaized" approach, which places the essence of the higher religions under a single, staid umbrella.

At the time Huxley wrote this book, 1944, he and fellow great writer Christopher Isherwood were deeply into the Hindu Vedanta teachings of Swami Prabhavananda. While I like Prabhavanda's writings--I've read books by him

on the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, Patanjali, and the Sermon on the Mount--there is a certain exoteric flatness to them, which makes them more suitable for beginners and intermediate students of Truth than for esoteric mystics; thus Huxley's book is brought down a notch by this conventional "Vedanta-ized effect."

This "Vedanta-ized effect" manifests itself in the topics and extracts Huxley chose for this anthology. In short, these topics and extracts emphasize the themes of moral purity (of heart) and self-emptying (poverty) as the keys to the Kingdom of God. One who reads this book will, mistakenly, think he has to become a self-nullified saint in order to become Self-realized, and few will find this demand enticing or possible.

Huxley misses the boat relative to God-realization because he didn't "crack the cosmic code." Hence the "astrolabe" he emphasizes for "locating" the Divine is essentially apophatic; and he essentially ignores the positive, or cataphatic, means to the Godhead, which is the practice of (Plugged-in) Presence, or Divine

Communion. The integral spiritual astrolabe is a dialectic, with Plugged-in Presence representing the thesis, self-emptying the antithesis, and reception of Divine Power the synthesis.

Because Huxley didn't crack the cosmic code, he reveals his spiritual-philosophical limitations in several places throughout this text. For example, he doesn't understand the Buddhist Trikaya (or "Triple Body"), which is

analogous to the Christian Holy Trinity; and some of his philosophizing falls flat. For example, he writes:

9+ 9+ 43

Meditation-Consciousness-Spirituality

Gardner, L. Ron, Beyond the Power of Now: A Guide to, and Beyond, Eckhart Tolle's Teachings eBook : Gardner, L. Ron: Amazon.com.au: Kindle Store

Beyond the Power of Now: A Guide to, and Beyond, Eckhart Tolle's Teachings eBook : Gardner, L. Ron: Amazon.com.au: Kindle Store

Beyond the Power of Now: A Guide to, and Beyond, Eckhart Tolle's Teachings Kindle Edition
by L. Ron Gardner (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.6 out of 5 stars 15 ratings
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Eckhart Tolle is perhaps the most popular spiritual guru in the world. His books have topped the New York Times Bestseller List, and his core teaching--achievement of liberation via the power of Now--has become the "guiding light" of the New Age movement. But according to L. Ron Gardner, author of Beyond the Power of Now, there is a problem--a big problem--with Tolle's core reaching: Tolle never explains what, exactly, the power of Now is. Is it the same thing as Hindu Shakti or the Buddhist Sambhogkaya or the Christian Holy Spirit? Tolle doesn't say. He continually refers to the Bible and Jesus in his book, but, shockingly, never once mentions the Holy Spirit and how it relates to the Power of Now. Gardner makes it clear that the true power of Now is the Holy Spirit, which is the same divine Light-energy as Hindu Shakti and the Buddhist Sambhogakaya. He explains and extols the true power of Now and castigates Tolle for failing to identify and describe it. And most importantly, he provides explicit instructions on how to connect to and channel the true power of Now, Light-energy from above. To some, Eckhart Tolle is a New Age visionary, describing a "new earth" that can materialize if mankind, en masse, awakens to the power of Now. But according to Gardner, he is simply a histrionic ranter full of empty rhetoric. Throughout this book, Gardner continually points out, from different angles, the folly of Tolle's New (or Now) Age chimera and describes the social system that represents mankind's sociopolitical salvation. Beyond Tolle's teaching about the power of Now and rhetoric about a "new earth," Gardner takes the renowned guru to task on virtually every subject he addresses. Most significantly, he rebuts his arguments that: 1) emotions can be trusted more than thought; 2) time is a mind-created illusion; 3) psychological time is insanity; 4) the present moment is the Now; 5) the "inner" body is the direct link to the Now; 6) your cells stop aging when you live in the Now; 7) women are spiritually more evolved than men; and 8) animals such as ducks and cats are Zen masters. Eckhart Tolle's teachings are replete with erroneous ideas, and L. Ron Gardner exposes the major flaws in his principal arguments while providing readers with integral solutions.
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265 pages
==

L Ron Gardner

THE PRESENT MOMENT IS NOT THE NOW

[This is an excerpt from my book "Beyond the Power of Now: A Guide to, and Beyond, Eckhart Tolle's Teachings."]

Although Eckhart Tolle deifies the Now as the Nirvana beyond pain, shockingly, he never describes the power of Now in detail or explains how it relates to the enlightenment process. The Power of Now is certainly a catchy title, but, unfortunately, it has little to do with the material in Tolle’s book.

Tolle not only fails to describe the power of Now in detail, but he also fails to provide a graphic, holistic description of the act of avoiding the Now. The denial or avoidance of the Now is not merely a matter of mind, as Tolle contends; it is a matter of the entire psycho-physical organism, the whole person. The avoidance of the Now is an act of whole-bodily recoil or retraction from the “position” of direct connectedness to the divine Being. The ordinary spiritual seeker has already retracted from whole-bodily oneness with Being into abstraction and becoming, so he mistakenly views the mind as the “problem.” But the fundamental spiritual problem is not the mind. Rather, the fundamental spiritual problem is the avoidance of organismic intercourse with the Deity.

Eckhart Tolle is a refined European gentleman, an ex-Cambridge scholar. And much of what he says is derived from the teachings of the late renowned mystic J. Krishnamurti, a European-educated Indian. Predictably, then, Tolle’s words are rather flat and formal, lacking the descriptive fullness that does the mystical experience justice. In the highest mystical experience, the entire bodily-being is not merely present to the moment; it’s also felt to be pressing against, even embracing, the radiant force field of the divine Being, which is ever prior to and beyond the moment. The divine Being floods the mystic-devotee with Its down-pouring Shakti (or Spirit-power), and when this Shakti, the Holy Spirit, penetrates the devotee’s Sacred (or Mystic) Heart-center (just to the right of the center of the chest), the devotee experiences mystical oneness with the Deity. In the rarest mystics—those blessed with extremely intense Shaktipat (down-pouring Shakti, or Grace)—the forceful down-flow of the Holy Spirit, in a “timeless moment,” severs the “knot of karma” in their Mystic Heart-center, thereby enabling them to unite forever with the divine Being.

Eckhart Tolle states that, “Time and mind are in fact inseparable.” Tolle’s statement is pure mystical poppycock. It is time and change, not time and mind, that are in fact inseparable. Mind is merely the faculty that measures time—rate of change relative to a standard—and that rate of change relative to that standard exists whether the mind recognizes it or not. For example, the Earth rotates 365 times in the course of its one-year orbit around the Sun. Whether the mind recognizes this cycle or not, it still exists. Just because the mind is rendered silent in mystical samadhi hardly negates the reality of time. Contrary to what Tolle says, even animals measure time in their own way. When birds migrate or a squirrel stores nuts for the winter, they are, implicitly, acknowledging the reality of time.

Tolle tells us to stop “creating” time. He says, “Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the primary focus of your life.” First, human beings do not create time; they simply recognize it as a reality. Second, the idea that the present moment is all we ever have sounds like a mantra Tolle extracted directly from a ’70s LSD-inspired hippie manual. Anyone with his brain intact knows that before the “present moment” there were endless past moments, and that after the present moment there will be endless future moments. Anyone who drops past and future moments from the context of his life is going to end up in serious trouble. If you don’t believe it, consider this: in 2008, renowned New Age guru Wayne Dyer was soliciting donations on public television for Baba Ram Dass, the now-needy author of the cult spiritual classic Be Here Now, who was hoping to retire in Maui.

A serious problem with Tolle is his tendency to conflate the present moment with the Now. The present moment, what conditionally is, is not the timeless Now. The present moment is the passing, or temporal, “now,” not the changeless, or eternal, Now. The present moment can be, but isn’t necessarily, a doorway to the Now. Being present to the moment opens the door to the Now—but unless you step across the threshold to the “other side,” you’ll simply be present to arising phenomena and oblivious to the noumenal Reality beyond it.

Many successful people live part of their lives in the present moment, but that doesn’t grant them automatic access to the Now. For example, living in the manifest “now” is common for great artists and athletes, who possess the ability to single-pointedly focus their attention on immediate conditional phenomena. Many of these artists and athletes possess monstrous egos, so Tolle’s claim that resistance to the present moment reflects the egoic mind hardly accords with the observable evidence.

*****

Q: The present moment is not always pleasant.

A: Eckhart Tolle says, “It is as it is,” and “by watching the mechanics of the mind, you step out of its resistance patterns, and you can then allow the present moment to be.” Put more descriptively, if you simply are present to your psychic content and allow it to be exactly as it is, without accepting or rejecting it, then it tends to dissolve, and the Now, which is prior to and beyond your mind, begins to make its presence felt.

Tolle says to accept the present moment “as if you had chosen it” and to “always work with it, not against it.” Put more descriptively, the way to “accept” the present moment is simply to allow it to arise and fall of its own accord, and the way to “work with it” is simply to be whole-bodily present to, through, and beyond it.

==

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Print length ‏ : ‎ 265 pages.

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L. Ron Gardner

I am a mystic-philosopher and spiritual teacher and have authored three books – “Beyond the Power of Now: A Guide to, and Beyond, Eckhart Tolle’s Teachings,” “Electrical Christianity: A Revolutionary Guide to Jesus’ Teachings,” and “Kill Jesus: The Shocking Return of the Chosen One.” The first two books are nonfiction, while the third is a novel.

When I’m not writing I regularly abide in a state of blissful at-one-ment with the Spirit. Over the past forty years, I have practiced Transcendental Meditation, Self-Realization Fellowship meditation, Buddhist Vipassana Meditation, Zen Meditation, Tibetan Buddhist meditation (Mahamudra and Dzogchen), J. Krishnamuti's "choiceless awareness," Ramana Maharshi's Self-enquiry, Adi Da's radical understanding, Kashmir Shaivist Shaktipat, and hermetic Holy Communion. I now teach my my own method of meditation: Plugged-in Presence.

Because I specialize in sociopolitical philosophy as well as spiritual mysticism, I enjoy mixing in sociopolitical insights with spiritual ones in my books.

I have a B.A. in sociology from the University of California, San Diego, and currently reside in Tijuana, Mexico. Beyond meditation, philosophy, and writing, my interests include working out, tennis, and travel.

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Customer reviews
4.6 out of 5 stars

Dr. Andreas Ullrich
5.0 out of 5 stars Spiritual SynthesisReviewed in Germany on 3 November 2013
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I bought this book because I previously read Eckhart's Great “The Power of Now” a few years ago and have now taken it back to hand. However, at Tolle I lacked the treatment of the energy system and the importance of spiritual energy. In addition, great is one of those authors who condemn thinking and feeling (“mind”) and see it as the main obstacle to spiritual enlightenment and as the cause of all human problems.

Ron Gardner proceeds according to the structure of Great Book and gives his own explanations and answers in question and answer form regarding the topics dealt with at Tolle. You notice that Gardner has 40 years of experience with the most diverse systems, theoretically and practically; I can judge this, because I have been on the spiritual path for 10 years and have read hundreds of books on various systems and practiced countless exercises. Gardner explores the meaning of spiritual energy (Shakti), which penetrates the body from above and enlightens the body and mind. The process of meditation is described in more detail in his other book “Electrical Christianity”. He establishes the connections between the Buddhist, the Christian and the Indian yoga path that I have not found anywhere else. In combination with his other book, one holds the essence of the highest teachings (Dzogchen, Shaivism of Kashmir, Christian mysticism) in his hand. I can only recommend buying both books with a clear conscience!
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Sheer brilliance, nothing less!Reviewed in the United States on 15 June 2017
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Mr. Gardner has done a great service for all serious spiritual aspirants. I emphasize the word serious since there isn't an ounce of wishy-washy neo-advaita psycho-babble in his books. I must admit though that I'm slightly biased in my review since I am indepted, as is Ron, to Adi Da Samraj. Even though some critical reviewer stated Gardners work to be nothing but "recycled Daism", I don't think that is the case. I'd say that Gardners work recognizes the value of Da, but adds colossal amount of clarity to the teaching-dharma of Adi Da. His criticism of Echart Tolle and his ilk is near flawless, but those who see mere criticism can't see the fact that he does on rare occasions give credit where credit is due. Granted, when it comes to Tolle this credit is very scarse. I hope Gardners books gain a wider audience due to the fact that his books can give great deal of clarity to those who have succumbed to the spell of weak-minded magical thinking (New Age preachers of Now). The way I see it Gardner is just downright real and tells you like it is, and if someone finds that offensive then that is their loss. Alas, what a loss it is!

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A. Jorge Barbosa
5.0 out of 5 stars Strange but goodReviewed in the United States on 25 September 2017
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This work pinpoints flaws in Eckhart Tolle’s thought, while synthesising apparently irreconcilable views. Quite rich and creative, I highly recommend it to readers of Tolle who find there is something false in the latter’s ideas.

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9-11 Was An Inside Job
5.0 out of 5 stars Important Corrective To A Superficial Treatment Of The "Now"Reviewed in the United States on 11 February 2013
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As Krishnamurti famously said, "You yourself have to be the master and the pupil. The moment you acknowledge another as a master and yourself as a pupil, you are denying truth. There is no master, no pupil, in the search for truth." In the same spirit, L. Ron Gardner exposes the numerous flaws in Tolle's "Now" argument, effectively knocking him off his new age guru pedestal. I am no fan of Tolle. I've attempted to read his work a few times, and found his point of view dulling to my senses -- and his "now" argument both abstract and uncompelling. I prefer physiological inquiries into the nature of reality, ala Gopi Krishna and other yogic explorations. Spiritual discussions that are absent a consideration of the animating force of enlightenment -- Holy Spirit, Kundalini, Shakti, whatever name you want to give It -- ring hollow. Gardner goes into this shortcoming of Tolle's in an exhaustive manner. As well, Tolle mistakenly deemphasizes the importance of rational thought. Unless you are born with the proverbial silver spoon in your mouth, with your every need catered to by staff in your estate's employ, the vehicle for the Now -- i.e., your body, mind, and general well-being -- needs a very competent and astute rational mind. In Gardner's view, and in mine, too, in order for one's spiritual presence and practice to be grounded in this world, one needs to develop excellent discrimination skills. That is, you can't "chop wood, carry water" i.e., hold down a job, pay the rent, and raise the kids if your head isn't screwed on right. In this sense, it is a wisdom derived from the right application of mind to the circumstances of this world that gives enlightenment -- and the physiological and cognitive development that accompany it -- safe mooring.

Gardner shows Tolle's age of aquarius fantasy to be just that -- a boomer generation pipe dream that there is an effortless shortcut path to the Now writ large. The TM folks already showed that you can have 500 meditators in a city -- with a shared intention to lower crime -- with no measurable effect on the incidence of crime. Tolle's supposed living in the Now has had little impact on the violence and suffering gripping the planet. In contrast, planetary change, argues Gardner, requires concrete political and social action. A flash of insight into the Now is insufficient in itself. That insight must inform a series of mundane actions taken by the spiritual practitioner to improve the political, economic, and educational systems of the world. Tolle does not describe what his "new earth" will look like, and hence gives no direction to where an enlightenment of the world may take us.

You may disagree with some of the specifics of Gardner's argument. But that is the beginning of the great conversation that must take place. The devil is always in the details, and that is why this superficial guru has been given the nod by the establishment: his insights do not upset the apple cart -- do not challenge the status quo. Gardner fills in the many blanks Tolle leaves us with. Gardner makes the difficult but necessary argument that increased self sufficiency and decentralized political and economic power are essential to a concrete manifestation of the Now. The federal government, with its $trillion+ deficits, immoral foreign wars, and unconstitutional destruction of civil rights domestically is no more true an expression of just governance than the Vatican and the Pope are of radical spiritual insight. Gardner, reminiscent of Ayn Rand and Ron Paul, calls for the U.S. to return to its roots as a constitutional republic as a necessary corrective to the anemic and purposeless non-vision of Tolle's. Again, the reader may disagree with some of the specifics of Gardner's arguments, but that is where any important discussion needs to start if the presence of the Now is to be made manifest on a global scale.
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Clint Baxley
5.0 out of 5 stars Good book.Reviewed in the United States on 21 September 2016
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Great book to look outside of theo bounds of the power of now.
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2022/05/01

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Gardner, L. Ron,THE EXOTERIC PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY, PART 1

Gardner, L. Ron, Beyond the Power of Now: A Guide to, and Beyond, Eckhart Tolle's Teachings eBook : Gardner, L. Ron: Amazon.com.au: Kindle Store