Click here to go to the next issue
Highlights Home Page | Receive the Nonduality Highlights each day
How to submit material to the Highlights
#3147 - Friday, April 25, 2008 - Editor: Jerry Katz
Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
A review of A Guide to Awareness and
Tranquillity, by William Samuel.
http://williamsamuel.com/booktitles.html
A Guide to Awareness and Tranquillity, by William
Samuel
Biography: A Baker from
William Samuel never received the attention he
deserved because he wasn't part of the Zeitgeist of the 60s and
70s. Unlike his contemporary, the popular Alan Watts, Samuel was
not involved in psychedelics, Zen, the Human Potential Movement,
Yet Samuel spoke a very modern nondual message. In
fact, let’s face it, he was, and probably still is, ahead of
his times.
A Teacher of Teachers:
It’s not to say William Samuel never had a
following, even though he didn’t encourage it: “Most
tenacious among those beliefs is the insanity that one must be
either a leader or a follower. Allness leads what? Singleness
follows whom?” He was considered a teacher’s
teacher. With a genius IQ and a gift for communication, “he
would get the most earnest and dedicated students of Truth. Quite
a number of Taoists and Buddhists had found William's message and
came to study--even some who were called Masters.” Samuel
saw fierce action in World War II, studied with a Taoist monk,
traveled around the world seeking spiritual truth, was the first
American to sit with a sage in India who would become world
famous. (The information and quotations in this paragraph are
from a short biography of Samuel at http://williamsamuel.com.)
Like Walking on Beach Stones:
This book is collection of brief letters,
conversations, lectures, writings. They are organized into
chapters, yet each short selection stands alone as a confession
of awareness, as awareness, from the Identity of peace and
tranquillity.
Every book has its own texture and this one is like
walking on a beach carpeted with smooth but hard and not
comfortable beach stones. It’s not easy to walk on such a
beach. At the same time there’s a pleasure in stepping onto
each stone, compressing it into the stones and sand beneath and
finding that you stand on a place of interest and substance.
Each writing is like that: compact, hard, and
substantial. It’s not an easy, flowing stroll over the
stones. But each writing is also sure and satisfying in its
wholeness and firmness.
Besides confessions or claims that there is only
awareness, Samuel addresses many practical issues. He brings the
practical and the confessional together.
Confessions of Awareness and Tranquillity:
First let’s look at the confessions, claims,
reports, descriptions of awareness and tranquility.
“Awareness is who we are! Awareness itself! We
are not the ego, the personality or body, who says Awareness is
‘mine.’ THAT is the incorrect identity, the ‘old
man,’ the ‘liar from the beginning,’ the ‘deceiver,’
the devil himself. THAT is the one to be ‘put off.’
That is the one to ‘come out from ... and be ye separate.’”
“Tranquillity is ever present as our very
Identity. It is always ‘here,’ but we cannot be very
well aware of it while battling the external picture, and we
cannot be aware of it at all while believing that Identity is
dependent upon, and dictated to, by a world of ‘things.’”
“Many have come here thinking the discovery of
Identity is to be an ‘illumination.’ Oh, how many times
we have talked about that! Well, it is an illumination, but it
has nothing to do with wild or unearthly emotions. It has to do
with a joy quite beyond sensation.”
Practical Advice:
Samuel covers many worldly topics, including the ones illustrated below: charity, materialism vs spirituality, and racism.
Question: What are my obligations to other people?
That is, as Awareness, what are my obligations to images and
objects of perception?
Answer: From this standpoint, we have no obligations
to other people. We simple do all that seems to be the sensible,
honest thing to do. We do this while aware that the Identity
‘they’ are is That which is being this Self-same
Awareness. What ‘they’ call miracles appear everywhere
for everyone to see.
“In order to see Truth as Truth is, it is only
necessary to be the Truth one already is – and cease from
the false identification, from the one who uses, manipulates and
‘possesses’ Truth. ... ‘But how do I do this?’
... We do this by simply being motiveless Awareness only –
which, among other things, is to perceive without opinions
(judgments), without saying ‘this is good’ and ‘that
is evil,’ ‘I like’ and ‘I don’t like.’
Inevitably, the first step is to end judgment, then to perceive
that our real Identity is Awareness itself, not the
ego-container. It is as simple as this. Words cannot tell of the
wonders that become apparent when this effortlessness is put
into practice.”
“The proof is not things! Never! If it were,
the
It was
Samuel covers other topics: attending church, grief, depression, business, money, death, love.
Refers to the Teachings of Christ:
Though this book is not a work of nondual
Christianity, Samuel does show how his teaching of awareness and
tranquillity is supported by Christ’s teaching:
In a discussion on the limitations of positive
thinking, Samuel writes, “’Who by taking thought can
add one inch to his stature?’ Jesus asked. ‘Take no
thought...’ said He. We have done with all personal
thinking, positive and negative alike!”
“We need only insist on being tranquility to feel tranquility! ‘Ask and it shall be answered. ... behold, I come quickly,’ says the Comforter. Reader, try for yourself and discover that this is so.”
You will encounter Christ not infrequently during your walk along this stony beach.
Dear Abby:
William Samuel plays Dear Abby in answering people’s
letters about life problems. To a wife who is distressed that her
husband does not share her interest in Truth, Samuel reminds her
that “We are in the beholding business, and not in the
business of judging how certain images are supposed to act or
respond. To free them of such obligations is to find ourselves
free of any dependence upon them for our happiness.”
Humor:
“Those who mistakenly identify themselves as
the old man – that silly spectre – inevitably spoof
themselves into playing the role of the Spook Inspector. In
addition, they find themselves being the spurious spectator of
other Spook Inspectors; Spook-self, self-spooked, or,
Spectre-self completely spoofed. Of course, all of this is a
fantastic fantasy of farcical foolishness, false, from the first,
and powerless – but funny, after it is seen for what it is.”
“If we are to discover the Tranquillity that is
already our here-and-now-Identity, we simply must – and
effortlessly can – stop attempting to play the part of that
stumbling, fumbling, bumbling, trembling, untranquil,
phobia-filled phantom called the ‘old man,’ the judge.”
I hope you now have a sense of the beach full of
smooth rocks which this book is. Perhaps the tide will come in
and wash you away.
Photo: William Samuel
A Guide to Awareness and Tranquillity, by William Samuel
Excerpts, ordering info, other books by the author: http://williamsamuel.com/booktitles.html