All Amareakin: A Book for Sincere Seekers of Truth and Understanding
List Price: 18.00
Available: March 2011
On American Independence Day, the Fourth of July, Thomas Anderson was immersed in an experience of his own radical independence—freedom from the machinations of the mind. A name came up for Anderson to describe a person seeking this state inner freedom, which he saw as the achievement of true excellence—All Amareakin. This is a person who is aware that they have an inner nature, it’s a person making a sincere effort to connect with what is authentic in themselves—and, most of all, it’s the person for whom this book is written.
Anderson describes in vivid detail the practices and contemplations that led to his own experience because he wants readers to see that they too can have this exalted experience. Wisdom, he writes, is knowing what to do, knowing how to do it, and then actually doing it!
Open-mindedness, self-inquiry, contemplation, and meditation—these are the practices Anderson discovers and begins to apply in his life. Once he is able to actually watch, to witness the movements of his own mind, the incessant thoughts come to a stop—and he steps across a threshold into a transcendent perspective, a state of direct knowledge. Suddenly he is able to perceive life with greater acuity; suddenly the words of the scriptures make sense to him.
For years I’d thought and thought about life’s deeper questions, but I hadn’t come to any satisfying answers. Now, just from trying to observe and restrict the part of my mind that wanted to think, think, think, I not only had my questions answered but had opened into a level of awareness and understanding that I’d never known existed. . . .
This deliciously harmonious state exposed me to an unknown part of myself that was unimaginably and undeniably sacred. It has been called the transcendent state, mystical awakening, mystical vision, one’s true Self, and many, many other names. . . .
In his Yoga Sutras the sage Patanjali says, “Yoga is the stilling of the modifications of the mind”—by which he means your thoughts. “Then the Self is revealed.” This text was written more than fifteen hundred years ago, and yet when I read it for the first time a number of years after my initial experience of this state, I recognized immediately that this is exactly what had happened with me and that Patanjali’s sutra was a perfect way to express it. . . .
This state is particularly difficult for a Westerner to describe—and even understand—because even the concept of such a state has been missing from our culture for centuries.
Anderson’s essential message is this: find this truth for yourself within yourself!
The author Thomas J. Anderson lives in northern Maine, where he practices dentistry; where he and his wife, Pam, have raised four children; and where—on a minute-by-minute basis—he has persisted in applying disciplines of awareness he took up in his twenties. These disciplines, which have their origin in what are known as the wisdom traditions, are forms of self-inquiry and meditation with such power that before he’d practiced them for very long, Anderson had experienced a luminous state of expanded awareness. This state—described by yogis, sages, and seers from all times and all traditions—is called the Self, the Witness, the One, the Tao, and a thousand other names as well. Anderson’s sole purpose in writing about this exalted state, and about the practices that opened him to it, is so that readers will see that they can have this experience for themselves.
In Anderson’s youth, he was plagued by questions about the purpose of life and the nature of the mind. Dissatisfied with the answers he got from people who were supposed to be giving him guidance, he continued to mull over these questions. Then, on a momentous road-trip after a winter as a ski bum, he experimented with what was for him a new approach to the mind: witnessing, which is watching your own mind He had discovered this practice when reading about the Russian philosopher Gurdjieff. In the simplest terms, witnessing, which Gurdjieff calls self-remembering, is watching what happens in your mind moment by moment in your life. As Eckhard Tolle says, “We are not the voice in our heads but the one who is aware of it.”
Anderson describes with clarity and in detail how he applied this ancient teaching and how, after only eight days, this practice brought him to a thought-free mind. It was this quiet inner space that then, as an act of grace, opened up to become the exalted and blissful awareness that was so much more than just witnessing. It was, as Anderson says, the Witness, the Self, the inner divinity, God itself.
Anderson writes about many of the stances a sincere seeker can have in relation to this transcendent state that is the goal of human existence. His continued search takes him to the spiritual traditions of India, to two living masters, and to further experiences of his innermost Self. Through it all, Anderson remains a buoyant and thoughtful chronicler, reminding the reader again and again that each person holds the highest Truth within their own being and that each has their own path to that Truth.