Customer Reviews

Beyond Awakening: The End of the Spiritual Search

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Well I thought Jeff Foster's first book was good, but this one blew me away! Beyond Awakening ("the end of the spiritual search") is just crammed with exquisitely beautiful and mind-blowingly clear pointers to the non-dual reality (the Only reality!) which has been spoken of through the ages by all the religions and by nondual/Advaita teachers (Ramana Maharshi, Nisgardatta, and more recently Tony Parsons, John Wheeler, etc.) But this book makes it all so damn accessible and the writing has such power that it cannot help but change your reality. There is such compassion and love flowing through the book, something which I haven't really found in other nondual texts. I felt that by the end of this book, the search for me was really being seen through - in other words, it was clearly seen, this moment is all there is! As I read and re-read the book, the clarity becomes more and more obvious.

The author has done an amazing job using words to point beyond words. As Jeff says: "Words will never capture it, the absolute freedom of this, the undeniable and mind blowing clarity that is life itself.. and yet, the utter ordinariness and simplicity of it all, and how a mind locked in the search will never understand."

I think Jeff's writing has definitely improved since the first book which I loved (he's young for a spiritual teacher, only 26 I believe..) and I think this guy will just get better and better [...]

I have read several other nonduality books (Tony Parsons, John Wheeler, Krishnamurti, etc etc) but I think this really is the last word. After you've read the last page it's so clear there is NOWHERE to go!!!! As Jeff says:

"Your whole life, all your hopes and dreams and ambitions and goals: everything comes down to this.

Sitting on the toilet. Attending the funeral of a loved one. Listening to Mozart. Reading your favorite book. Screaming with pain in the middle of the night. Crying your eyes out. Laughing so hard your stomach hurts. Being diagnosed with cancer. Holding a newborn baby in your arms, looking deep into its eyes, shocked and saddened for a moment by the beauty and the sacredness and the fragility of this overwhelmingly mysterious thing we call 'life'."

I noticed that I was becoming very upset reading Jeff's new book. And how great is that!? After all the searching and hundreds of non-duality books and teachers, here was a book that made me feel so insecure, hopeless, disappointed to the point that I had no alternative but to relinquish any idea of ever "getting it". Whatever "it" is. The result: I was jarred into clarity.
This is not to say that Jeff's words are harsh. Quite the opposite. They resonate with honesty, integrity, and love--which imbues them with the power to go beyond just words--and mind.
I highly recommend this book to you. My wish is that it will make you as upset as it made me! They say that "The Truth hurts". But it also sets you free.
Victor Davich
author,8 Minute Meditation: Quiet Your Mind. Change Your Life.

Jeff's book, Beyond Awakening, is one of the clearest and most direct texts in pointing to your true nature.

Jeff points out that THIS, this present moment, is all there is. And in this present moment, the "ME" we've always taken ourselves to be is nothing more than a presently-arising thought, a belief and an appearance.

But Jeff says, let's not deny this appearance but see through the habitual seeking of the mind.

If you've been seeking for years and have only found frustration, this book explains why. Jeff debunks the myth of enlightenment and points directly to this open space which holds the infinite potentiality and immediate recognition of our beingness as Oneness, that which is already ever present prior to the seeking.

This is an AWESOME book and a must-read for the spiritual seeker.

love
randall
http://avastu0.blogspot.com

A sequel to LIFE WITHOUT A CENTRE: AWAKENING FROM THE DREAM OF SEPARATION (which I have not read), this present work is a singular collection of telling essays, witty reflections, an instructive interview, and even a beautiful cover photo.

Foster--who graduated from Cambridge University, with a major in astrophysics--came to the end of his spiritual search a couple of years ago while walking through the cold, autumn rain one afternoon in Oxford. Suddenly, he realized that the very effort to reach enlightenment "obscures the enlightenment that is always already present."

The 26-year old author goes on to astutely note that this was not an experience at all; but rather, "the ground of existence itself."

Though the book is only 140-pages long, it is dense with topics. They include love, death, nonduality, the myth of choice, and our essential and ever-present clarity ("Everything arises, does its little dance, and dissolves back into the nothingness that I am...and I remain untouched by any of it").

This handsome and affortable volume will make a fine addition to your spiritual/nondual library.

This is one of the most unique 'spiritual' books I've read, and i'll tell you why: it blurs all the lines between 'spiritual' and 'non-spiritual' until you just can't tell the difference,and that's a truly wonderful thing, because what it does is to reveal the 'extraordinary in the ordinary'. You come to see the miracle of what is and know the simple joy of being. Some criticism has been made that the message is too simplistic or even naive. I disagree, and I think it's the books natural radical simplicity that makes it so powerful. It totally brings you back to this moment, as it is. My only criticism of the book is that it is a little too short, and some of the ideas could have done with some fleshing-out, but this is a minor criticism in the face of the immense love that I felt while reading it. I am so tired of spiritual teachers telling us what to think and feel, or gurus who preach one thing and do another (so many examples of this!) - the great thing about the author here is that he is so clearly not trying to preach or teach, but to share this unconditional love that is at the heart of everything.

An indescribable book on an indescribable subject, but the author comes as close as any that I've read.

As for your awakening, how can you wake up what doesn't exist? If that makes sense to you, buy the book.

The hallmark of Neo-Advaita, or whatever you want to call this genre, is confession of what is. The confession falls into itself leaving nothing.

There is nothing to confess, therefore there is nothing but confession.

Or as Jeff puts it: "Everything is empty, and so everything is divine. Everything is illusion, and so everything matters absolutely." Living that truth, all you can do is confess it or claim it to be so, in an infinity of ways.

What's keeping you from seeing that? You won't know until you see it. You can do things to come close to that perception, such as meditate, do self-inquiry, engage body work, do Yoga, surrender to God, take psycho-active substances. You could have that perception for days, months, or years.

However, grace descends on some people - whatever that means -- and they come to see and know that "Everything is empty, and so everything is divine." They know it so fully that there is no one to know it.

Jeff describes this descent of grace upon him, though I don't know if he would call it that: "I was walking through the rain on a cold autumn evening in Oxford. The sky was getting dark; I was wrapped up warm in my new coat. And suddenly and without warning, the search for `something more' apparently fell away, and with it all separation and loneliness."

If the grace never comes down on you, you can at least recognize what it means when it does, and live from that disposition. That is, you can know non-separation and live out of the intelligence of non-separation, even if that life is not fully dissolved into the immediacy of what is arising.

Read Beyond Awakening and you will come to know what non-separation is like to someone - or no one - who lives in the recognition of it.

Jerry Katz

Jeff Foster says at one point that he doesn't even know why he's bothering to write this book. Gee, I couldn't agree more. To hear him tell it, no one "gets" it but him. He describes himself as no one special and than does everything through the whole book but say "I"M SPECIAL", and I'm the only one. He also says he barely remembers his "awakening" and then proceeds to descibe it in every detail. Jeff Foster's arrogance shines through loud and clear and I'm very sorry I ordered this book and was excited about reading it when it got here. What a waste of money. Stephan Bodian is much, much better.

My pet peeve is any individual who does not practice what he/she is preaching. I find the lack of internal consistency in this book to be annoying. What is preached is that everything that occurs is the way it is, good or bad (even pain and cancer are, according to the author, just different aspects of the same whole). There is no need to analyze what is because there is nothing to analyze and no-one to do the analyzing. So far, so good. However, having repeated this proposition in may ways throughout the book, Foster goes on to state that the only true reality is love and he argues that our false sense of separateness is what leads to a lack of love in the world. In making this claim Mr. Foster is contradicting the major theme of the book. If all is equal in the present moment then hate belongs every bit as much as love. Mr. Foster tells us there is nothing to believe but then expresses the belief that love is central to existence and we need to overcome our false belief of separateness. Following this logic, the belief that separation leads to the lack of love and that love is central are beliefs that according to the author don't exist. He insists there is no way we should be but then he tells us love and separatenes are ways not to believe. Mr. Foster has fallen into the trap that he accuses everyone, except himself, of having a false belief system. That is what he believes anyway. Thus the central premises of the book are squashed by ther author's lack of insight into himself. And that I find annoying. Hence I continue my search for and internally consistent view of non duality that is not self-contradicting. Heck I might write my own - its total content would be "Everything you read is true and false." Now I'll sit back and wait for the royalties to flow in.
On the back of the paperback is written: " This may be the last book a spiritual seeker will ever need". If that is true, then why does Mr. Foster keep writing books - hasn't he already said what needs to be said in this book?
Having said all that I did enjoy the read for no other reason that it does provoke some fun thinking.

Over the last seven years I have read many, many books on non-duality. My favorite authors and friends include: Tony Parsons, Leo Hartong, Nathan Gill, Unmani Hyde and Guy Smith. I have just finished reading Jeff's book 'Beyond Awakening' and found it to be clearer than all the other books. When reading this book there is a sinking into the unknown. To say any more would not do this book justice. Reading it has revealed a simplicity to it all, hither to, seemingly obscured. Thank You Jeff!

If you're unsure whether Jeff's communication is for you, please visit his website [...] and click on the 'Writings' and 'Transcripts' links to the right for about 20 pages for free dialogues and texts.