Drivel - Rated 
Sorry but it wasn't for me. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and mine is that it is utter tosh. If, as Mr Parsons is saying, I don't exist and he doesn't exist then perhaps the £12 I paid for this drivel doesn't exist either. If so perhaps he wouldn't mind paying it back to me.
Everybody should read this book - Rated 
All I can say is this book is absolutely fantastic. I was so impressed and touched reading it. This is one book everybody should read, and it should give you a better understanding of why we are always searching for answers, but find out there's no need. I would also highly recommend, Awakening to the Dream by Leo Hartong and The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, as a must read.
The final piece of the jigsaw? - Rated
Along with Tony's other book `As It Is', this book made something inside `me' click and as Tony puts it, once the realization of what he is trying to convey hits, the final piece of the jigsaw falls into place - and the search comes to an end.
I have read several writers on this subject including Tolle, Krishnamurti, Osho and so on, and all seemed to have helped me. They all gave a pungent flavour of what this is all about, whetted my appetite for wanting to know more, learn more, keep on searching. And that...I see now, was the problem. They left me wanting more. To me, their method of conveying their message dangled a carrot of enlightenment right in front of me, so close I could almost taste it, or so I thought. But here's the rub: the thought that you are nearing enlightenment perpetuates the desire to reach it, strengthens and solidifies the concept of enlightenment as something real and attainable...and so actually ensures that you will never get there. Because enlightenment, as Tony points out, does not exist. It was never there in the first place except as a concept borne out of your desire to reach it. If there was such a thing, it might be described as the freedom experienced when one is finally free from the desire to be free; when you finally realize that there's no gold at the end of the rainbow, that it was all mind tricks, so you stop looking for it once and for all. When you stop searching, what you are freed or released from is the burden of trying to find something which doesn't exist.
The extent to which you have been led to believe in the concept of enlightenment is the extent of your suffering because it is the extent to which you will never find something which does not exist. For many people, this is crushing news to one's hopes, desires and beliefs, but yet simultaneously, may well be the start of something completely liberating. You may have learned to drop this concept (such as materialism) and that in the past, and this process, you mistook as the `path' to enlightenment, but in reality, as stated, you were simply replacing it with and strengthening another concept - enlightenment. Now, even that sacred concept must be forsaken. But can you accept that no enlightenment exists, that no one has ever been enlightened (even Buddha), nor ever will be?
Be brutally honest with yourself. If you still eagerly await the latest guru book to see if you can `learn something new', you are still seeking, which, as Tony puts it, is the most effective way to avoid liberation. It's not to say that there's no need to read other books. I'm not sure if I would have made sense of Tony Parsons without reading all the others first. Probably not. I've been to one of Tony's talks, and seen some `novices' leave more confused than ever. But for those who have been seeking for many years, turned to this guru and that, trying still in vain to make sense of it all, Tony may well provide that final piece of the jigsaw for you.
For me, 'As It Is' planted the seed of doubt into all my once cherished notions of enlightenment and made them start to crumble. 'All There Is' is a much lengthier book with many more of Tony's conversations that really demolished them further. In my opnion, both are absolute 'must haves' if you are not free. But be warned, you will not be enlightened after reading it.
|
