Customer Reviews

As It Is: The Open Secret of Spritual Awakening

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Tony Parsons is obviously one who knows what IT is. what it means to be awake. this great little book keeps pointing at the real, the truth, what we really are. what he describes has the taste and feel of something wonderful, something beyond the usual mode of thinking and knowing. he knows who he is. he knows what he is and what we all are, too. he invites us to just see it: as it is. this book is fascinating in that it points to something very special which is available to all of us, available just for the seeing. but we continue to believe in ourselves as separate beings, and in that perception of separation, the true vision cannot appear. here's how Tony puts it in his own words from the book: "this is the great game: the infinite manifests through you as a dreamed character in a grand play called life.....what you are is no thing. what you are is beyond anything you ever believed.....it's always attractive to the mind when it is offered a method or technique like stilling the mind or killing the ego. there is no possibility for the mind to still the mind, and once it is recognized that what you are is the still silent awareness that sees the mind and its activities going on, then it is also recognized that there is no need to still the mind.....ultimately, you will realize that you are not your thoughts, your mind, your body, or any other object, but that behind all of these is a still, constant, seeming nothingness from which everything emanates; this is what you are."

Tony Parson's book is another in a series of gifts to humanity: books by individuals who have realized the Holy Grail of spiritual seekers throughout history. Seeker/readers who found Eckhart Tolle's book 'The Power of Now' valuable will immediately connect with Parson's open, simple, and fundamental description of and access to the nature of the Prize. In brief, succinct introductory chapters entitled Awakening from the Dream, Context, No Achievement, No One Becomes Enlightened, Time, Expectation & Purpose, he describes his own experiences and revelations on his path and beautifully expresses that seemingly contradictory truth "that enlightenment only becomes available when it has been accepted that it cannot be achieved". These chapters conclude with "The Park" in which he recounts the arrival of the Recognition as he walked across a park in a London suburb. The remainder of the first part of the book deals with the perennial issues with which, I believe, we must each finally come to grips: Presence, the Choiceless Choice, My World (the nature and value of individual subjectivity), the Death of the Body Mind, Abstraction, Fear, Guilt, Thinking, Relationships. Part one concludes with two short descriptions of who "I Am Not" and who "I Am". Part two comprises a series of dialogues with other seekers which he prefaces with the statement that "words are not truth just as honey is not sweetness". If you have read and treasured any of the writings of Eckhart Tolle, Ramesh Balsekar, Douglas Harding, Gangaji, HWJ Poonjaji, it is my suspicion that you may well have come as far as "you" can go on the Path. From here on, the truth simply becomes more and more transparent. Tony Parsons deserves our deepest gratitude and appreciation for his assistance.

Barn's burned down.
Now I can see the moon.
--Masahide

Other reviewers will tell you what this book contains (and equally important, what it does NOT contain, including rules, rituals, practices, and techniques), so let me tell you what this book achieves.

Or what it can achieve, if you are fortunate to read it in the right frame of mind. Read this book with your mind wide open, and it will serve as a torch to burn down the barn of your self-image. Lucky you! You won't just see the moon, you'll be the moon. And the stars. And the grass. And the trash by the side of the road. And you'll love it all.

Well, that's what happened to me. Whoever I am.

Tony Parsons says that everything is the invitation from the Beloved to come home. Yes, everything is the invitation, but some things speak to the heart more than others. This book spoke to my heart, in the language of my heart. It silenced all my questions and left me with nothing but gratitude for the glimpse I was given of what is real.

Reading this book is like waking up from a disturbing dream and turning to your bedside to see a dear friend sitting beside you. "It's okay. You were just dreaming. But now you're awake."

You sit up, look around, and are amazed to see that all the furniture is made of love. The bedspread, the carpet, the window, the birds outside the window, all made of love. How could you not have seen it before? It's so obvious.

About four days after I finished my second reading of the book, the world no longer seemed whole, and made wholly of love, but fragmented, with love sometimes visible, sometimes not. And yet, this too, I know, is the invitation.

It doesn't get any better than This. But This is really quite fabulous, if you think about it. Or rather, if you DON'T think about it.

In my opinion, this book is one of the best placed, along with Tony's latest, to deliver the final coup de grace in one's spiritual search. It may well kill the search stone dead.

Some question whether the book's uncompromising approach in stating no path needs to be followed is effective. Who knows. It may be the case that the book resonates a little more for those long-time seekers who have sought and think they have found something but are still looking for some final missing ingredient. That is how all other books before I read this one made me feel. Revelations came aplenty from other books. Concepts were being broken down. But there was a very subtle sense that progress was being made on some linear journey towards awakening; that I just needed to continue along the Path. The very reason that made me try this book. I was still in seeking mode.

Reading this book, the realization came that awakening is seeing that there is no state to awaken from. No journey, path, enlightenment exists. This is it, as it is. We are IT. Every step in our life is IT: all our ups and downs, happy and sad times. It is only our thoughts that there is something beyond this that prevents us from seeing and experiencing this. Once this is seen, the journey comes to an end.

Other books I recommend that can help prise open the door to source is Byron Katie's Loving What Is, and Eckhart Tolle's Power of Now. They are both very helpful in their own way.

I love this simple and beautiful book. Tony's descriptions of "presence" are as clear and beautiful as any I have ever read. I find myself entering deeply into that profound state just after reading a few sentences of his book. It carries the purest essence of truth, coming as it does from a truly liberated human being. I was especially intrigued with his "dialogue" which is guaranteed to bring out a great deal of ego resistance. But if you feel that resistance and defensiveness coming on don't get stuck there - read it again and again and you will resonate with the deep truth of his statements. His has great gentleness but also will come on strong against your ego. Read his along with Eckhart Tolle's book - "The Power of Now." Two awakened brothers.

I had a near death experience in 1984 and from that point wondered what had happened to me. As It Is, is without a doubt them most extraordinary book I've ever read...it explains what happens in a near death experience without having one..call it a light experience. Beautiful, simple, delightful. Thanks Tony

After I first read "As It Is...", I found myself immediately making a reservation to fly to Wales to take a workshop with
Tony. In a few days my phone rang and it was Tony himself on the other end. "His" infectious humor and presence were immediately perceived when he asked, "Are you sure you want to come all the way here for nothing?" He didn't want me to be disappointed to think I was going to get something out of all of this seeking....when there was nothing to find, in the end and the beginning...he is just a friend sharing a simple message that frustrates the mind and intellect until something is seen, by no one really....everything is presence, divine, or whatever word we call that which is beyond understanding and that is the joke of it all. There is lots of humor and laughter when one is around Tony and his lovely wife, Claire. He likes to kid everyone that we pay a lot to come to his workshops for nothing, but, to me, it is worth every penny. Don't miss him or this book or his new one.

Let me tell amazon.com customers candidly that my assessment of AS IT IS has varied considerably since I bought it and started reading it about three months ago, oscillating between boundless enthusiasm and bitter skepticism. Since I am now in a state of quiet and rather benevolent skepticism, my final rating will be three stars: this is a good book. But it could have easily been two stars (mediocre book) or four stars (very good book), depending on my mood. Let me also say that AS IT IS is a very difficult book to review, if only because its subject matter is the subtlest thing in the world: enlightenment, the ego-less "state" (with quotes because it is apparently NOT a state according to the specialists).

AS IT IS is a very short work (about 140 pages) that could be read in less than half an hour. In fact, if one could really realize what is being said, the book could be put down almost instantly since its message is that enlightenment is not the result of time, which implies a total rejection of spiritual practice. If you have read J. Krishnamurti, this must sound familiar to you. But before I examine the contents of the book, let me say more about form.

If you opened AS IT IS at random, what you would probably see is a black and white photograph on the left page and a short article on the right page. Halfway through the book, one comes across short conversations with so-called "spiritual seekers", apparently most of them older upper middle class people. Therefore Tony Parsons only wrote the first part of the book, the rest is just transcripts of question and answer dialogues.

The short articles, with the longer pieces taking about three pages, are basically made up of terse sayings embodying a general truth about enlightenment, what is technically called "aphorisms". These aphorisms are grouped under one heading such as "Presence" or "Relationships"(the latter being the most disappointing entry in the whole book in my view). While the language is to a large extent jargon-free, it is not always easy to understand. I even feel that readers wholly unacquainted with such literature will find most of the book quite cryptic.

Compared with other mystical and religious masterworks of the past and recent past such as Angelus Silesius' Cherubinic Wanderer, Khalil Gibran's "Prophet" or Jiddu Krishnamurti's "Commentaries on Living", to cite but a few highly recommended names, AS IT IS is a rather mediocre piece of writing, although it does contain some gems here and there. It is not free of sententiousness and obscurities and platitudes abound.

One might ask why I make such comparisons. I make them because the publisher claims on the back cover of the book that AS IT IS was written "with an impersonal authority that emanates from absolute clarity", which is also what Tony says during his workshops. He even claims that while writing the book he attained "Total Liberation" (don't ask me what "Total Liberation" is, according to the specialists, it cannot be described and it happens to NOBODY, therefore add orthodox quotes where needed!). In plain English, this means that none less than GOD speaks in AS IT IS. I for one was accustomed to more beautiful prose from the Godhead. But then, for Tony Parsons, there is both "no God" and "God is no big deal", just plain "ordinary".

Let us now leave aside form and turn to content. Given that the aim of the book is to explain the nature of enlightenment ("point to it" might be a better way of expressing it) as opposed to telling one HOW to attain it, did Tony Parsons, or rather Nameless Clarity, make a good job of it?

To this question, dear reader, I can only give a disappointingly personal answer, the answer of someone who is moderately gifted, and hope that my personal experience may perchance reflect your own. My answer is that Unconditioned Oneness can be both confusing and enlightening, but perhaps more confusing than enlightening. The fact is I am still confused about what enlightenment really is: is everything I experience enlightenment or is it something special? Is a blank mind, one that doesn't think, already in an enlightened state or at least "near to" it? I haven't found clear answers to these questions in this book (don't fret, Tony, other books haven't completely clarified these points for me either!).

Part of the confusion and difficulty arises from the "doctrine" itself, a doctrine some have labeled "neo-advaita", new non-dualism: there is NO path to enlightenment, NOTHING one can do about it (because there is NO one in the first place) and understanding plays NO role in it. Tony even says that people had better forget his words when they leave his talks (but strangely enough he doesn't tell them they had better not come back!) and considers everything he says as "mere entertainment for the mind". In his dialogues, there is no meticulous clarification of concepts as one finds in Plato's or Berkeley's dialogues, but just short answers mostly of a negative nature: there are NO people, there is NO point in anything, you can't do anything about it, etc., etc.

One can only hope that these awesome truths are realized instantly. If they aren't...If they aren't, Tony Parsons tells you that whatever you may do or think is just "divinely appropriate". To hear this is sometimes liberating, sometimes not. Somehow living AS THOUGH one was already awakened can be hard.

The fact is one is not supposed to remember these "teachings" (with quotes because the specialists insist that advaita is NOT a teaching) or to ponder them because that would obviously be another path, and Path, Process and Practice, the three P's, is the absolute bete noire of neo-advaita. But one can listen again and again to Tony parsons' teachings LIVE. That is pointedly NOT a problem! Apparently nothing beats being with Tony's "flesh and bones". Apparently there is some kind of fluid or energy there that can help you, sorry not you but NOBODY.

Isn't that puzzling in its own "divinely appropriate" way?

Anyway, try your luck in this British enlightenment roulette (what else can you do?) and enjoy yourself if you can. My own educated guess is that AS IT IS will not by a long, long way be the last book you read about this strange beast called "enlightenment" and in case you already felt the need to find something "better" (with quotes because the specialists tell us that NOTHING is better than another thing), let me recommend "Already Awake" by Nathan Gill, a "disciple" (with quotes because...) of sorts of Tony's. He is far more explicit and articulate than "Tony" (with quotes because...) about the workings of the mind and may help...

Guess whom NOBODY may help?


PS: If you care, see also my more thorough and critical assessment of neo-advaita in my review of Tony Parsons' "Invitation to Awaken". A final recommendation: about ego and egolessness, "The Reenchantment of the World" by Morris Berman may provide you with useful insights and possible correctives to some of the errors found in neo-advaitist non-teachings.

I recently purchased Eckhart Tolles book 'The Power of Now' and thought it's message topped most other books I have read. Then I read 'As It Is' and was lifted into a new dimension altogether. The book is a bit like a Zen koan - it is almost incomprehensible yet it stirs the truth deep within. Before I read it I thought the spiritual journey was endless. That was the carrot on the end of the stick. This book showed me another way. The dreamer can just wake up. If you buy this book you'll have to read between the lines.

This book is the classic and still best-of-breed presentation of what I call the "Third Option". What is the Third Option? Third of what I see as 3 broad choices for "What the frik is really going ON here??"

Option 1 (Cold World): This is the scientific/materialist worldview in its purest form. That means that there is no meaning, nothing but mindless DNA chemicals endlessly attempting to convert all available matter and energy (such as can be scrounged in the universal near vacuum) into pointless copies of themselves, forever. See Dawkins "The Selfish Gene" for a good explication, but all modern sci/tech is based on this idea.

Option 2 (Hot World): This is the entire grab-bag of BOTH traditional religion AND all "New Age" systems of any kind. It might seem strange to lump traditional religion together with New Age stuff given they are so often at each other's throats, but in fact they share identical premises: that there is or could be a transcendent "meaning" to human or biological existence, further that there are gradations of meaning and purity and power and value and so on ... so that a task of vertical ascent is laid out for us in all cases (pass the collection plate). It is true that the specifics of all these meaning-construction systems contradict one another, they share an over-arching commitment to a transcendent value system and gradations of achievement/progress vs degeneration/perdition as a core logical structure. In short, duality all the way down.

Option 3: (Non World): Pure non-dualism/Advaita. tracing back to ancient Indian scripture, but pioneered in modern times by Ramana Maharishi (died 1953). Now I finally get to this Parsons' book, where I find "As It Is" to be both a pioneering statement of "neo-Advaita" (Advaita stripped lean and mean for Western consumption) and probably still best-of-breed explication of the core idea. The core idea is distinguished most clearly in opposition to Option 2 above. NeoA holds that there is no meaning, there is no personal identity, there is no progress, there is no time, there is no enlightenment and no ignorance. There is nowhere to stand, nothing to do, and nobody to do it anyway even if there were. If that makes sense, ha ha! Anyway the point is that we are situated kind of like the recent cool movie "Open Water" where two divers are left stranded in the middle of the ocean by their support boat, leaving them to just ... float there in the open ocean... nothing to stand on or cling to ... nothing to do... nowhere they can go... no way to call for rescue... and things just ... happen ... (such as being eaten by sharks, hee hee). Anyway that's the feel of the purest NeoA, as best exemplified by Parson's teachings (or, non-teachings). This book is the best, shortest, clearest, least-BS presentation of this view. It should be clear how different this is from Option 2. What about Option 1? Well, it seems strange to say it given the radically distinct cultural origins of these two worldviews, but in a weird way the NeoA cosmology (if such it can be called) is actually very reminiscent of the purely coldest sci/tech world. No "meaning" in either case. No possible "progress" (teleological fantasy in evolution). We are just Dust in the Wind. However, Parsons does allude here and there to a background field of unconditional love into which the false meaning-structures and personality-structures ultimately collapse, so that could be point of difference with respect to Option 1. He doesn't make that big a deal of that aspect however.

There are the very broad, overly broad I guess, pigeon holes into which I find I can cleanly dump pretty much whatever loony new or old explanation of the world that comes down the pike.

So given the above (which you might view as pure bullspit, ask me if I care!) you got to step up to the window and place your bets. It could be "important" (sorry!) how you choose, because if you go with Option 1 or Option 3, there is no morality, and you have zero moral responsibility. Furthermore with those options you don't have to worry about improving yourself, your mind, body, or soul because it just ain't gonna signify. This is in a way, as Parsons points out, quite a relief.

On the other hand. after a lifetime of social mind control that what we do matters and that we matter, or the accepted view most of us have of ourselves that we do actually exist as "individuals" I could see the NeoA thing could be very hard for many people to swallow. Or I guess I should play word games here and say, hard for the small-i egoic mind to swallow, blabitty blah blah blah.

Anyway this book is a must-read if you want to spend the very least time possible time acquiring pretty much a perfect understanding of the terms of the NeoA thing (short of actual "awakening").

Overall it is a uniquely soothing book to read, whether "true" or not. Somehow less grating and less attitude/arrogance than the many many other new Western NeoA books now popping up like mushrooms after an autumn rain.