my article

Last June, a few weeks after I posted on my YouTube channel the May 2014 video of me answering questions at a meeting of the Ramana Maharshi Foundation UK , a friend called Jim wrote to me asking: In your latest YouTube upload you talk about being vegetarian, and sweatshops, and signing petitions. I’m confused in this point. So much is said about this waking state being exactly like our dream state, what does it matter what we eat, or wear, or where our clothes are made? If in a dream I’m eating a chicken, a carrot or a car bumper none of it matters. Upon waking I realize it’s just a dream all created by my mind. There is no boy toiling in a sweatshop upon my waking right? So why is the waking state different? The following is adapted from the long reply I wrote to him, and also from shorter replies that I wrote to two of his subsequent emails: A dream seems to be real so long as we are experiencing it How to respond to suffering seen in a dream? Waking up from a dream is the only...

This is the fourth of the following five instalments, which are a slightly modified reproduction of an interview in which I answered seven questions asked by the editor of the online Non-Duality Magazine for their current issue entitled The Celibacy Question : Self-investigation and sexual restraint Ātma-vicāra is the only means by which we can experience ourself as we really are No differences exist in the non-dual view of Sri Ramana Ahiṁsā and sexual morality Ātma-vicāra and nirvikalpa samādhi Question 5: Also have a question on Swami Suddhananda, a Vedanta teacher who seems to have violated the sanyasi dharma. James Swartz says that Vedanta works, and that one should separate "the teaching from the teacher", in this instance that would mean even if the teacher is dishonest and sexually abuses his students? Is this not just a lame excuse or like the proverbial "blind leading the blind" in a pit? Michael James: I do not know the Swami you are referring to, so ...