Dissolved [Paperback]

Advaita is the traditional and stepwise teaching of nonduality. If you're looking for a brief book about Advaita that you can fall in love with, get Dissolved.

Dissolved is a delightful-to-hold-in-your-hands, attractively designed 90 page book. It is a dialogue between a seeker and a sage.

Dissolved is a gently told Advaita: a study of mind; a question of illusion; an enquiry, "Who am I?"; a surrender to the Guru, to the Self; a dialogue on spontaneous action, pre-determination, fearlessness.

This is an easily received Advaita, too: a questioning of the world of duality and reactivity; a confession of living in the world when established in the Self; an addressing of pain and sorrow.

Dissolved is a practical Advaita: impermanence; the nature of happiness; renunciation, diet, helping out the world, alcohol and drugs; all these topics enter the dialogue and are crisply addressed

Dissolved is a full Advaita: in the end there is the dissolution into Self through surrender to the Guru and via self-enquiry.

Dissolved is filled with stories and metaphors, some of which you may have heard and all of which are heard freshly once again.

In the following fragment, the Guru plays the role of seeker and the seeker Vivek plays the role of Guru; this is done to test Vivek's knowledge, or perhaps the reader's knowledge, or perhaps it is a pure demonstration of the play of Self:

Guru Ji: But still how can [the Self-realized being] meet people, who give him hatred and abuses, with love?

Vivek: What happens when one throws a stone in the ocean?

Guru Ji: Water gets splashed.

Vivek: Does the ocean splash back stones in return? No. The ocean only has water to give. No matter what you throw it, it will only throw water back. Similarly, a Self-realized being 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 is this possible? I know, you will say they don't see anything separate from them, they see only the Self, etc., etc.

As the dynamic between Vivek 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 this way, the reader eventually becomes another character, merging with, dissolving into Guru Ji and Vivek, so that all three characters become one. In such a manner, a level of dissolution is experienced.

In the beginning, the seeker 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 reader dissolves into Vivek and Guru Ji, or dissolves into Self, or sits back with a cup of tea and dissolves a spoonful of sugar into it, this book serves up many levels of rewards.

Perhaps you are seeking a beginning education in Advaita, or further practice of self-inquiry, or maybe you 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, and storytelling, Dissolved offers all this, all you could and could not imagine.

Nirvana: state in which ego-self is transcended;a thoughtless state; state beyond sound.

Enlightenment is not a huge quest through fasting and prayers. It is not a gathering of knowledge through teachers and scriptures. It is simply realizing what you truly are. In this book Tarun Sardana gives you the most simple path possible for you to awaken to the truth.
You are not your body it is a tool of your consciousness. Your are not even your mind, your mind is a tool of your consciousness. You are not your thoughts either, you have the ability to step back and observe your thoughts. You can see how they seem to randomly arise from your mind and appear and wonder from one to another, this is not you. You must be a person, with a name an address, a religion, social security number, and job title. Unfortunately, no, this is a mental construct that has been created. This is an idea that you believe along with others about who you are. You think you are the "ego-self" with your likes and dislikes,this story is a mental construct within your own mind, a story you have been told your whole life and you tell yourself. When you close your eyes who continues to see the darkness? When you concentrate it is possible to observe your thoughts rise and fall, your emotions rise and fall, you can feel the sensations of your body, you can observe your mind wander from topic to topic. You are the observing awareness of all these things, not the things. This book takes you through a conversation between the student Vivek and Guru Ji. The book gives you stories, examples, and parables that help you gain a full understanding that you are that awareness and the answers you seek are within not outside. I highly recommend this book for anyone on the path to enlightenment. I know my understanding of who I am will never be the same now that I have read this book.

I have to agree with the Jerry Katz review. He's actually the reason why I bought the boook. After receiving his review on his daily mailing and respecting his opinion so much, I thought I would give it a try. I was NOT dissapointed.

As I stated in my subject line, "brilliantly simple." Advaita, for those not familiar, can be confusing, confounding, radical, as it transcends the mind. At the same time, if you "get it", ( which I am still working on...), nothing can bring you closer to your real Self. It's like a welcome Home after a long abscence, realizing somehow you never really left.

The way the book is written is what makes this subject so much easier to understand. The Guru disciple relationship reverses, for the sake of clarity and asks questions that I would ask, should I encounter an entity who has found Enlightenment. I'm not familiar with the author, but I do hope he follows up with another simple masterpiece. If you have any interest in the subject, THIS is the book to help you on your path.