DISSOLVED BY TARUN SARDANA
Advaita is thetraditional and stepwise teaching of nonduality. If you're looking for a briefbook about Advaita that you can fall in love with, get Dissolved.
Dissolved is adelightful-to-hold-in-your-hands, attractively designed 90 page book. It is adialogue between a seeker and a sage.
Dissolved is a gentlytold Advaita: a study of mind; a question of illusion; an enquiry,"Who am I?"; a surrender to the Guru, to the Self; a dialogue onspontaneous action, pre-determination, fearlessness.
This is an easilyreceived Advaita, too: a questioning of the world of duality and reactivity; aconfession of living in the world when established in the Self; an addressingof pain and sorrow.
Dissolved is a practicalAdvaita: impermanence; the nature of happiness; renunciation, diet,helping out the world, alcohol and drugs; all these topics enter the dialogueand are crisply addressed
Dissolved is a fullAdvaita: in the end there is the dissolution into Self through surrender to theGuru and via self-enquiry.
Dissolved is filled withstories and metaphors, some of which you may have heard and all of which areheard freshly once again.
In the followingfragment, the Guru plays the role of seeker and the seeker Vivek plays the roleof Guru; this is done to test Vivek's knowledge, or perhaps the reader'sknowledge, or perhaps it is a pure demonstration of the play of Self:
Guru Ji: But still howcan [the Self-realized being] meet people, who give him hatred and abuses, withlove?
Vivek: What happens whenone throws a stone in the ocean?
Guru Ji: Water getssplashed.
Vivek: Does the oceansplash back stones in return? No. The ocean only has water to give. No matterwhat you throw it, it will only throw water back. Similarly, a Self-realizedbeing is an ocean of love. He has only love to share. No matter what you throw in,you will only get love. There is nothing else in there.
Guru Ji: Still … How isthis possible? I know, you will say they don't see anything separate from them,they see only the Self, etc., etc.
As the dynamic betweenVivek and Guru Ji plays out, the reader eventually joins to make a trinity.Sometimes the reader takes the attitude of seeker, sometimes the sage. In thisway, the reader eventually becomes another character, merging with, dissolvinginto Guru Ji and Vivek, so that all three characters become one.
In the beginning, theseeker Vivek asks his Guru for help in understanding who he is. In the end,there is dissolution into the Self, into consciousness. Dissolved, therefore,is a full-cycle, concise version of the teaching of Advaita.
Whether the readerdissolves into Vivek and Guru Ji, or dissolves into Self, or sits back with acup of tea and dissolves a spoonful of sugar into it, this book serves up manylevels of rewards.
Perhaps you are seekinga beginning education in Advaita, or further practice of self-inquiry, or maybeyou only want to enjoy the dialogue, the stories within, the story at large,the teaching, the expression. In only 90 pages of gentle dialogue, poetry, andstorytelling, Dissolved offers all this, all you could and could not imagine.
(Interested readers can have the book @https://www.craxme.com/thread-8511-1-1.html)
