His name was Paul Brunton.
Perhaps you have never heard of him, but I gather he was pretty well known in his day. He wrote many books in the course of a long lifetime of study (1898-1981).
Recently I was moved to read A Search in Secret Egypt, which had sat unread on my shelves for many years. After the first chapter, which was somewhat slow, the book captivated me, and so I went looking to see what else he had written. I used my birthday money (i.e. gift certificate to amazon) to buy a two-volume set, two books originally published in the 1940s.
To my amazement, this examination into the true nature of our lives amid the world around us and within us repeatedly comes out with quite counter-intuitive statements that could have come straight from the guys upstairs, or Rita, or Nathaniel. Time after time, so that I hardly have to follow the logic of his presentation, because intellectually I am already where he wants to bring the reader. Unbelievable experience.
The Hidden Teaching Beyond Yoga and The Wisdom of the Overself, by Paul Brunton, apparently functioning as TGU while still occupying a body. Amazing books.
“The experience [of intuition] explains a man to himself for the first time, lights up the fact that he lives in two planes at one and the same time. It reveals his ego as the illusion which envelops his consciousness and his Overself as the reality behind his consciousness” ( “Realizing Soul” p. 286)
”. . . he knows now by unshakable conviction and by this vivid demonstration that the durable realization of the Soul is what he is here on earth for . . .” (“Realizing Soul” p. 294).
Excerpts from one of his books, linked from Wikipedia. It is like reading your sessions with TGU. I’m ordering, with guidance, “The Wisdom of the Overself.” I read much less lately in order to clarify my own internal voice, so I ‘listen’ when a book is suggested. Thanks, Frank.
Corroboration is a heady thing, isn’t it … finding/hearing/seeing/perceiving the ‘same’ information from different sources is a major part of my path and growth.
By now it’s not corroboration of the ‘truth’; more increased understanding from different words describing the ‘same’ concepts … more sparks of different ‘colors.’
He sounds like a must-read👍🏻. I searched him up online, and was drawn to his book A Hermit in The Himalayas, which I then found archived online and available as downloadable. Couldn’t find it on Amazon. Will read. (Brain Candy!!)
Thanks for the tip!
I read his “Search in Secret India” before I became aware of Ramana Maharshi. Later I went back and realized that he had found Ramana as one of the few genuine spiritual teachers.
In addition to his many published books, Brunton’s notebooks were published in 16 volumes over a number of years by Larson Publications (run by friends and neighbors as a matter of happenstance). More recently the Paul Brunton Philosopic Foundation has made them available online as part of a process of digitizing and transferring his writings to an archive at Cornell University. The entire text of the notebooks is available here:
http://paulbrunton.org/notebooks/
d.