This morning I find this mail from James Swartz in the mailbox:
Re: I recommended your book in Advaita Nederland on Facebook!!!
Hi Hans,
I’m glad you worked through your issue about James. For Vedanta to work you have to listen to the teaching, not the teacher. The teacher is just a human being delivering a message that he or she does not claim to be his or hers. Thousands of people read my website and my books and can resonate with the criticism of Neo-Advaita. It has some value, however, and I always point out its value.
James
I’m happy that this idea of full circle has been reached.
James reacted to the mail that I send him yesterday, in which I copied for him a post of myself in Advaita Nederland:
On vrijdag 28-11-14 0:58, Hans van der Gugten wrote:
Subject: I recommended your book in Advaita Nerland on Facebook!!!
Please allow me to write a post in English here. About two month ago I happened to notice a lot of posts from this group, Advaita Nederland, on my facebook page. No idea how I became a member. Yet, here I am. The amount of cliches and illusions about advaita are to me disappointing.
I happen to have been in communication with a advaita teacher, opposing him about the way (his tone of voice) he was nagging other advaita teachers, and especially the ones he describes as the neo’s. The neo advaitins that have sprouted from someone like Poonjaji. Especially Mooji is one that he, James Swartz, is picking on when it comes to pointing out that those Neo’s miss the point. Although It was especially the WAY he was critisizing that I have been opposing, I must admit that I had the idea that he was exaggerating. Now, while reading here, I can’t help thinking regularly that he seems to be more right about all the missing the point by the neo’s than I was aware of.
And of course there is the notorious few that dominate the discussion by deadening arrogance and blind knowing for sure etcetera. For those interested in the communication between this teacher and me I give you the link to my blog, especially to the recent review that I wrote about his written statements about the neo’s. All and all an hour or so reading.
https://hansvandergugten.nl/?p=3676
When you want a clear oversight about his criticism on the neo’s, read his article: http://www.advaita.org.uk/disco…/james_swartz/neoAdvaita.htm
If you want to see his whole exposé on advaita vedanta, you might want to read his book.
http://www.bol.com/…/how-to-attain-enligh…/1001004006921618/
One chapter in this book is on neo advaita.
This is what James says about it:
James: I have a whole chapter on Neo-Advaita in my book, How to Attain Enlightenment, The Vison of Non-Duality. I do not think highly of it. Shankara would have had a good condescending laugh. It is a superficial ill-considered counterintuitive belief system that seems to be reasonable on the surface, but does not hold up when you actually think about it. Tony Parsons exemplifies the worst of the Neo-Advaita teachers. He spouts a plethora of vague advaitic ideas that have gained a certain degree of traction because Westerners are very spiritually unsophisticated and want a quick easy enlightenment. It amounts to little more than the denial that you exist as a human being and offers no methodology for preparing the mind for enlightenment, much less serious experience based teachings that patiently and effectively remove self ignorance. Traditional Vedanta completely disagrees with Tony’s statement. He is one of the most ill-informed of the Neo-Avaita types. He has virtually no knowledge of Yoga and Vedanta apart from the recycled conventional wisdom that has been circulating since Papaji’s minions infected the spiritual world with their advaita-lite version of non-duality.
(http://www.nondualitymagazine.org/nonduality_magazine.1.jam…)
Only yesterday I had sent the following email to James Swartz aka Ramji:
Dear James,
My last mail was meant to be the last one.
That was the meaning of my sentence: “Thank you so far for playing along. I’m off the hook.”
Greetingz,
hans
PS. Here is the colourfull report of my recent (re-)birth: https://hansvandergugten.nl/?p=362
I had written him a mail in which I shared something very personal, yet he came back with a answer in which he said to me: “I think you do not know that Vedanta is for people who are psychologically healthy.” Such statements are asking to be answered in my system of the world. So that is what I did.
For those rare species that even want to see that part of the conversation, I give those mails below. They were followed by my action to send him the short statement that my last email already had the intention to be the last, and my sending him my statement in Advaita Nederland in facebook, resulting in the first mail reproduced above.
End of a for me cleansing soap.
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On Wed, Oct 29, 2014 at 9:16 AM, Hans van der Gugten <gug@hansvandergugten.nl> wrote:
Dear James,
In my second last writing to you I shared with you that I found the core wound in me that made me react so strongly on the nagging of other teachers that you do.
In your answer you mentioned your good arguments for doing this nagging.
In my last writing to you I said that I would, for the first time, take a look into your arguments for what you yourself called ‘Neo-bashing’ and I did.
It took a lot of time and effort and the report of this informative journey has become a long story: https://hansvandergugten.nl/?p=3676Recently I underwent the so called sonic return Tomatis Listening Training.
It is the first half of a series that was intended to bring me back to the prenatal.
Next month I will do the so called Sonic Rebirth. (See Tomatis wiki).Maybe related to this the following came up about ‘the relationship we don’t have’.
I decided, almost two years ago now, that it felt just not okay for me to be in your audience any longer and I stayed away, yet went on doing inner and outer research on what was going on for me. Energetically I stayed in touch. There was an invisible connection, a kind of umbilical cord that kept feeding me and stimulated the going on of the search. The visible result is the series of posts on myblog of which what I send you now is possibly but not necessarily the last: Ramji and Meji 7.
Yesterday it dawned on me that in a way existence has put me in relation to your for others apparently safe teaching cave in a extra-uterine position.
In a way I am your ectopic neo renunciate sannyasin ready to be born soon.Almost yours,
hans
On woensdag 29-10-14 20:22, James Swartz wrote:
Dear Hans,I am glad that things are getting more clear for you. I think you do not know that Vedanta is for people who are psychologically healthy. I am sorry you suffered the abuse you did and I am sorry that the wound takes so long to heal but it is not my job to heal people’s psychological wounds. If, when a person’s wound is healed, he wants to discover the woundless self, then that is where I come in. When a person suffers he usually projects the suffering on someone or something else. People project wonderful things on me and they project awful things on me but I know that what they see in me has nothing to do with me so I am not bothered by their praise or blame. I didn’t create your wound and I am not responsible for healing it. I am just a person who teaches Vedanta.
Love,
James
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Ramji and Meji 1
Ramji and Meji 2
Ramji and Meji 3
Ramji and Meji 4
Ramji and Meji 5
Ramji and Meji 6
Ramji and Meji 7
Ramji and Meji 8
Ramji and Meji 9
Ramji and Meji 10
Ramji and Meji 11
