The Book of Undoing (Fred Davis)
Neo-Advaita “Poison”
[My 1-star Amazon review (NDA) of “The Book of Undoing: Direct Pointing to Non-Dual Awareness” by Fred Davis.]
If you’ve read as many spiritual texts as I have (well over 2,000), it’s easy to quickly identify a cobbled-together neo-Advaita Vedanta book like this one. It’s got all the popular buzz-word/phrases, including, but not limited to—“Clarity; fully be with; right here, right now, immediacy; awaken to the presently arising; no seer, no seen, just seeing; just this; Reality is What Is.”
In fact, the author even uses the term “grok,” which he probably got from my books or Amazon reviews, because I’m unaware of any spiritual writer other than myself who has used this recycled Robert Heinlein term in the past twenty years.
This book reminds me of John Wheeler’s book “Awakening to the Natural State” (see my one-star Amazon review), wherein Wheeler becomes “enlightened” through his conversations with Sailor Bob. In Fred Davis’s book, a guy named Blake becomes “enlightened” through his “Direct Pointing” sessions with Davis. But, of course, Blake doesn’t really become enlightened, because he doesn’t awaken Light-Energy, or Divine Shakti, without which spiritual En-Light-enment is impossible. In other words, this is a pseudo-spiritual text because it doesn’t even broach the subject of Spirit, or Light-Energy.
I laugh at the neo-Advatains like Davis who, without real understanding, take bits and pieces from Dzogchen, Zen, J. Krishnamurti, Adi Da, and Eckhart Tolle, mix them together with Advaita Vedanta, and pop out texts like this one.
Just for fun, I’ll deconstruct some of the statements in this book. Davis writes: “Enlightenment is all about right now. And it’s all about right here. It’s here or nowhere. It’s now or never. Now you see the immediacy of it. All that counts is that we are awake to the present arising. The plain ordinary arising that we find ourselves in.”
Davis is wrong: Enlightenment is NOT about “right now”; it’s about the eternal Now, not the ephemeral now, arising phenomena. The eternal Now, timeless Divine Presence, radiates as Divine Power, Clear-Light Energy. En-Light-en-ment is being whole-bodily irradiated by this Clear-Light Energy, which is the Buddhist Sambhogakaya, the Christian Holy Spirit, and Hindu Shakti.
Davis states, “There is no need for you to awaken. You are already totally awake.” This is neo-Advaita nonsense. You cannot awaken without undergoing an arduous divinization process that culminates in the cutting of the Heart-knot, which the Buddha called the “Heart Release.” A Buddha is rightfully described as a “Blessed One” in Buddhist texts—and what he is Blessed by is Clear-Light-Energy, the Sambhogakaya, or Dharma Cloud, which is the same Divine Power as the Christian Holy Spirit. Only the descent of Clear-Light Energy, radiant Shakti, can sever your Heart-knot and awaken you to your Buddha-nature.
Davis and his fellow neo-Advaitans love the term “Clarity,” which they borrow from fogged-out Tibetan lamas who misuse the term. Davis peddles “Clarity Sessions,” but be advised that spiritual “Clarity” is impossible until one can merge one’s consciousness with the Clear-Light continuum.
Davis enjoins us to “stop becoming and just Be.” He instructs us to “connect with the sense of Being... to notice the sense of Being.” Unbeknownst to Davis, one cannot awaken to true, or Divine, Being without uniting Siva (Consciousness) and Shakti (and Spirit-Energy) in one’s Heart-center. Being (or Sat) = Consciousness (Cit)-Ananda (Blissing/Blessing Energy). The true “sense,” or “Feeling,” of Being follows actual Be-ing, or Suchness, which is conscious at-one-ment with Ananda, the Sambhogakaya, or Clear-Light Blessing/Blissing Body.
In addition to “Clarity,” another perverted, off-the-neo-Advaita assembly line concept is that of “seeing,” or “looking.” Davis, in goosestep with his fellow neo-Advaitans, informs us that our true nature isn’t the seer (looker) or seen (looked at); it’s seeing (looking). He writes, “That is what you are—the looking! That’s all there is. And you are that looking.”
Unbeknownst to the neo-Advaitans, there can be no seeing without a Seer, no experience without an Experient—and the Seer-Experient, one’s True Nature, is Sat-Chit-Ananda. Function follows Substance; hence one’s True Nature is Not a verb; it’s noun, and that noun is the Divine Self, the immutable Prime Mover. Cats love looking, or watching, but cats are far from Self-realized, far from enlightened—unless, of course, they’re one of Eckhart Tolle’s Zen cats. LOL.
In diametrical opposition to the Buddha, Davis does not believe there is Nirvana, final permanent enlightenment. He writes: “There is no such thing as permanent enlightenment. There is only ongoing enlightenment. The notion of permanent enlightenment is poison...”
The real “poison” in my estimation isn’t the notion of permanent enlightenment; it’s the neo-Advaita nonsense being peddled by Davis and his fellow neo-Advaitans.
[My 1-star Amazon review (NDA) of “The Book of Undoing: Direct Pointing to Non-Dual Awareness” by Fred Davis.]
If you’ve read as many spiritual texts as I have (well over 2,000), it’s easy to quickly identify a cobbled-together neo-Advaita Vedanta book like this one. It’s got all the popular buzz-word/phrases, including, but not limited to—“Clarity; fully be with; right here, right now, immediacy; awaken to the presently arising; no seer, no seen, just seeing; just this; Reality is What Is.”
In fact, the author even uses the term “grok,” which he probably got from my books or Amazon reviews, because I’m unaware of any spiritual writer other than myself who has used this recycled Robert Heinlein term in the past twenty years.
This book reminds me of John Wheeler’s book “Awakening to the Natural State” (see my one-star Amazon review), wherein Wheeler becomes “enlightened” through his conversations with Sailor Bob. In Fred Davis’s book, a guy named Blake becomes “enlightened” through his “Direct Pointing” sessions with Davis. But, of course, Blake doesn’t really become enlightened, because he doesn’t awaken Light-Energy, or Divine Shakti, without which spiritual En-Light-enment is impossible. In other words, this is a pseudo-spiritual text because it doesn’t even broach the subject of Spirit, or Light-Energy.
I laugh at the neo-Advatains like Davis who, without real understanding, take bits and pieces from Dzogchen, Zen, J. Krishnamurti, Adi Da, and Eckhart Tolle, mix them together with Advaita Vedanta, and pop out texts like this one.
Just for fun, I’ll deconstruct some of the statements in this book. Davis writes: “Enlightenment is all about right now. And it’s all about right here. It’s here or nowhere. It’s now or never. Now you see the immediacy of it. All that counts is that we are awake to the present arising. The plain ordinary arising that we find ourselves in.”
Davis is wrong: Enlightenment is NOT about “right now”; it’s about the eternal Now, not the ephemeral now, arising phenomena. The eternal Now, timeless Divine Presence, radiates as Divine Power, Clear-Light Energy. En-Light-en-ment is being whole-bodily irradiated by this Clear-Light Energy, which is the Buddhist Sambhogakaya, the Christian Holy Spirit, and Hindu Shakti.
Davis states, “There is no need for you to awaken. You are already totally awake.” This is neo-Advaita nonsense. You cannot awaken without undergoing an arduous divinization process that culminates in the cutting of the Heart-knot, which the Buddha called the “Heart Release.” A Buddha is rightfully described as a “Blessed One” in Buddhist texts—and what he is Blessed by is Clear-Light-Energy, the Sambhogakaya, or Dharma Cloud, which is the same Divine Power as the Christian Holy Spirit. Only the descent of Clear-Light Energy, radiant Shakti, can sever your Heart-knot and awaken you to your Buddha-nature.
Davis and his fellow neo-Advaitans love the term “Clarity,” which they borrow from fogged-out Tibetan lamas who misuse the term. Davis peddles “Clarity Sessions,” but be advised that spiritual “Clarity” is impossible until one can merge one’s consciousness with the Clear-Light continuum.
Davis enjoins us to “stop becoming and just Be.” He instructs us to “connect with the sense of Being... to notice the sense of Being.” Unbeknownst to Davis, one cannot awaken to true, or Divine, Being without uniting Siva (Consciousness) and Shakti (and Spirit-Energy) in one’s Heart-center. Being (or Sat) = Consciousness (Cit)-Ananda (Blissing/Blessing Energy). The true “sense,” or “Feeling,” of Being follows actual Be-ing, or Suchness, which is conscious at-one-ment with Ananda, the Sambhogakaya, or Clear-Light Blessing/Blissing Body.
In addition to “Clarity,” another perverted, off-the-neo-Advaita assembly line concept is that of “seeing,” or “looking.” Davis, in goosestep with his fellow neo-Advaitans, informs us that our true nature isn’t the seer (looker) or seen (looked at); it’s seeing (looking). He writes, “That is what you are—the looking! That’s all there is. And you are that looking.”
Unbeknownst to the neo-Advaitans, there can be no seeing without a Seer, no experience without an Experient—and the Seer-Experient, one’s True Nature, is Sat-Chit-Ananda. Function follows Substance; hence one’s True Nature is Not a verb; it’s noun, and that noun is the Divine Self, the immutable Prime Mover. Cats love looking, or watching, but cats are far from Self-realized, far from enlightened—unless, of course, they’re one of Eckhart Tolle’s Zen cats. LOL.
In diametrical opposition to the Buddha, Davis does not believe there is Nirvana, final permanent enlightenment. He writes: “There is no such thing as permanent enlightenment. There is only ongoing enlightenment. The notion of permanent enlightenment is poison...”
The real “poison” in my estimation isn’t the notion of permanent enlightenment; it’s the neo-Advaita nonsense being peddled by Davis and his fellow neo-Advaitans.
