Radical Awakening: Cutting Through the Conditioned Mind

This is quite a roller coaster of a book consisting of dialogues with Stephen Jourdain, a Frenchman who had an experience of awakening at the age of 16. He talks about this eloquently and with great insight, at the same time as chain smoking - in other words he is not the average spiritual teacher, but then he does not aspire to be, which is rather refreshing. Here he is on his awakening: 'That indivisible unity which is the awakening has, despite everything, several names: me, being, consciousness, infinite value. But, to cap that indivisible unity, there is something more important that relates to knowledge. Not only I am but I know. Inn a sense, "I know" precedes "I am"'. This last phrase reminds the reader that his awakening took place when meditating on Descartes' cogito as a kind of koan. Elsewhere he describes the change in attention from a focused arrow to a multidirectional mode whereby one begins to see everything simultaneously. An intriguing book.