A reading list

Reading

Books that supplement the texts we host. Most of these are still in copyright and can't live on the site, but each is a reliable companion for the journey through one tradition or another.

Advaita Vedanta

I Am That

Nisargadatta Maharaj · 1973

The book that brought Nisargadatta to the West. Maurice Frydman's translated transcripts of the morning satsangs in the Khetwadi flat from 1970 through 1973. The single most-read book of modern Advaita.

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Be As You Are: The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi

David Godman (ed.) · 1985

The single best edited compilation of Ramana's teaching, organised topically by David Godman from the published dialogues. The book most often given as a first book to a serious seeker.

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Christian Mysticism

Awareness

Anthony de Mello · 1990

Posthumous transcription of de Mello's late retreat talks, the most concentrated record of his teaching. Shockingly direct for a Jesuit. Read alongside the desert fathers and the Advaita masters; the family resemblance is unmistakable.

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The Marriage of East and West

Bede Griffiths · 1982

Bede Griffiths' major book. Argues that the Christian contemplative tradition and the nondual recognition of the Upanishads are two languages for one underlying truth, and that the Western church has lost half of itself by ignoring the Eastern half of the contemplative inheritance.

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A New Vision of Reality

Bede Griffiths · 1989

The companion volume to The Marriage of East and West, written from Shantivanam in the last years of Griffiths' life. Wider in scope, drawing in modern physics and depth psychology alongside the contemplative traditions.

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The Practice of the Presence of God

Brother Lawrence · 1692

The collected conversations and letters of Brother Lawrence, a Carmelite lay brother in seventeenth-century Paris, recorded by Joseph de Beaufort after his death. The full text is available on this site.

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Modern Nonduality

Falling into Grace

Adyashanti · 2011

Adyashanti's most accessible book: transcribed retreat talks aimed at someone meeting nondual teaching for the first time. The clearest single starting point in the contemporary Western nondual literature.

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The End of Your World

Adyashanti · 2008

The harder, more important book. About what comes after the first awakening: the integration process, the shadow material that surfaces, the long settling in. The book most teachers point to when a student arrives confused after a recognition.

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Awake — It's Your Turn

Angelo Dilullo · 2021

A practical, clinically-minded field guide to the territory of awakening. Dilullo writes for the reader who suspects awakening is possible and wants an unromantic description of what it actually involves. The book most concrete about the post-recognition phases.

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Silence of the Heart

Robert Adams · 1999

Posthumous compilation from the southern California satsangs of Robert Adams's last decade. The book reads in his cadence: long pauses, gentle restatement, the same recognition pointed at from many angles. Often given as a first book in the Ramana lineage.

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What's Wrong with Right Now Unless You Think About It?

Sailor Bob Adamson · 2006

Bob Adamson's first widely-circulated collection, drawn from the Melbourne living-room meetings. The Nisargadatta teaching pared back to one question, returned to again and again.

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Acceptance of What Is: A Book About Nothing

Wayne Liquorman · 2000

Wayne Liquorman's central presentation of the Ramesh Balsekar / Nisargadatta teaching, in plain American English. There is no doer; whatever happens is the will of Source.

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Awakening to the Natural State

John Wheeler · 2004

John Wheeler's most concentrated short book. The Bob Adamson / Nisargadatta pointing transmitted through long correspondences with a circle of seekers around the world.

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The Truth Is

Papaji (H. W. L. Poonja) · 1995

Papaji's most concentrated published teaching. Find out who you are, and be quiet.

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The Diamond in Your Pocket

Gangaji · 2005

Gangaji's most accessible introduction. Carries the Papaji / Ramana transmission with unusual psychological tenderness toward the seeker who arrives wounded and full of story.

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Standing as Awareness

Greg Goode · 2009

Short and concentrated. The heart of the Direct Path teaching as Greg Goode received it from Atmananda Krishna Menon's lineage via Jean Klein and Francis Lucille.

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The Direct Path: A User Guide

Greg Goode · 2012

The accessible introduction to the Direct Path: a graduated set of inquiries into body, sense, and mind that progressively dissolve the apparent boundary between subject and object.

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Wonders of Spiritual Unfoldment

John Butler · 2017

The English contemplative's most concentrated short book, gathering the heart of his decades of solitary prayer practice in plain undecorated prose.

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Freedom From the Known

Jiddu Krishnamurti · 1969

The most accessible entry to Krishnamurti's mature teaching, edited by Mary Lutyens. Short, dense, uncompromising.

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Nothing Ever Happened (3 vols)

David Godman · 1998

Godman's monumental three-volume biography and oral history of Papaji. Includes the full record of the Lucknow satsangs from the 1990s and the line of teachers who awakened in his presence.

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