Review of the book Perfect Brilliant Stillness by David Carse
This book is a solid contribution to the literature about enlightenment and non-duality. It tells the story of David Carse who wakes up in the jungle. Struggling to find himself after several failed marriages, he first gets involved in native,American Indian spiritual practices, and then goes to South America where he spends time with a Shuar shaman in Ecuador. After some time in the jungle, he feels that he is literally going to die and that his life is coming to an end.
He wakes up realizing that he has no self, that he never had a self, andthat there is no other. Only oneness is. All sense of his former self evaporates in a pop even as the shadow character David continues. The character David also lets us know that he was not in any way special or deserving of his awakening.
At the time that ‘nothing happened’ (his awakening),he was not aware of the entire seeker culture about enlightenment. While he had taken one course on world religions in divinity school (prior to becoming a failed priest), he did not have a grasp or understanding of non-duality, Advaita, or have any knowledge of gurus, disciples and the vast marketplace that caters to this culture.
Three months after his awakening, he finds himself on a plane to India where he meets Ramesh Balsekar, well known living disciple of the even more renownedNisargadatta. Ramesh recognizes that David has somehow realized his true Self. David visits with Ramesh a number of times over the next year or so.
In the rest of the book, Carse takes aim at the guru/disciple culture; he offers a useful concept about the difference between prescriptive and descriptive measures. He lets users know going to the jungle will not provide them with enlightenment.
Reading Carse can provide, at least, a vague sense of what non-duality is about. The book is good at introducing the reader to some major concepts and characters involved in non-duality. The book can serve as both an introduction to the teaching and also provide a more advanced understanding.
In the book Carse carefully avoids describing details of some of the topics he mentions. For example, one of those is that he does not provide a how-to description of what occurred with the vegetalista(native shaman) in the jungle. Since you can’t get there by going through the same steps (there aren’t any steps), he doesn’t discuss the details -- as it would just be misleading.
Another example is the story of some followers of a certain well-known guru in India who discover that their guru had a sexual relationship with some of his woman followers. The guru’s followers are outraged. Carse explains that the guru’s followers need to take responsibility for their actions for they empowered the guru with their beliefs and actions. There are numerous lessons that can be drawn from this story, but they don’t involve knowing the name of the particular guru. If you are interested, it is possible to find out the name of the guru, but it won’t help you understand non-duality. For that reason, Carse does not offer further details.
In the beginning Carse was clearly influenced by Ramesh Balsekar, but Carse explains that later on he came to see thatBalsekar had become too narrowly focused on his (Balsekar) favorite dictum that “You are not the doer.” While that statement is true, and describes the detachment that is fundamental to religious teachings, the statement alone is not capable of carrying one all the way to one’s true Self. It is just words. As Carse points out, the statement itself is dualistic.Carse comes to see that Ramesh has lapsed into dualism, and further suggeststhat a slippage of Ramesh’s mental faculties may have occurred,perhaps because ofsome physical conditions related to his declining health.
Readers will notice that Carse also quotes non-dualistic teachers while pointing out failings in some other that he observes. He describes things as he sees them—freely--without explaining how it fits in with other teachers or traditions. And to make a point, Carse will quoteWu Wei Wu,regardless of the fact that the latter had only an intellectual understanding of the teachings. If one expects the expression of realization to be packaged in a certain way, this may appear confusing, but it is also quite freeing that liberation is not confined to a particular form, as Carse points out on multiple occasions.
As the reader can tell, this reviewer is a fan of the book. If David Carse had delayed a few years before publishing Perfect Brilliant Stillness, he might have created a more polished version, but then we would be much poorer for not seeing his early development. It is terrific just as it is.
-Jim