“I love The Shadow that Seeks the Sun. Within it are so many gifts to me, especially as I am a regular visitor to India.
The stories are captivating and the talks point clearly to what is most overlooked–our true nature. Bravo to the author”.
Paul Saltzman – two time Canadian Emmy award winning film and television producer-director and author of “The Beatles in Rishikesh” and “The Beatles in India.”
“The Shadow That Seeks The Sun is a pristine transmission of the teachings of oneness which many attempt but few portray so lucidly or masterfully. For this reason alone Ray Brooks is in a select lineage of teachers who share pure authenticity and essential truth —and deliver real medicine for the heart.
“As a travel writer I know about the journey that has to be taken to find unique and enriching experiences. Ray Brooks shares his fabulous and humorous encounters in Rishikesh, India with honesty and affection and guides the reader through the most important meeting of his life. A must read for travellers and spiritual seekers alike.”
–Lindsay Hawdon, Author of Jakob’s Colours and travel writer, An Englishwoman Abroad, The Sunday Telegraph, The Times, LA Times
“This beautiful book certainly deserves to be included with the luminaries of spiritual literature. Its essence presents the essential, non-dual understanding of not just the author and his many influences but the foundation of all great religious and spiritual traditions.”
–Alcvin Ryūzen Ramos, Shakuhachi master/ teacher and recording artist
“Stories with well-constructed dialogue and believable characterisation can sometimes offer a terrain filled with insight, revelation and realization that often non-fiction fails to deliver.
“Through this series of Nine Talks between Ray (the seeker) and Rudra (the realised teacher), we are taken back and forth on the time track to places and times that have deeply impacted the author, creating a powerful narrative and teaching device of clarity, insight and awakening.
“The story starts with Rudra, who is actually a quite believable blend of various teachers including Swami Dayananda, J. Krishnamurti, Rupert Spira and Francis Lucille, replying to Ray’s questions about life while sitting together on the Ghats in Rishikesh. The answers that follow lead Ray back into his own life’s trajectory to his search’s beginning as an open minded, open eyed deeply curious seeker looking for truth, after having an “awakening experience” in a nightclub in London in the ‘70s. This quickly lands him at the feet of the “guru’s guru” J. Krishnamurti in the Ojai Valley where no time is wasted, as the famous teacher firmly places Ray on the “pathless path” to his own insight and awakening with his words: “There actually are no experiences.”
Reconciling this insight with the awakening experiences that flow through the story is what delivers Ray to his eventual clarity that, “There is nothing to overcome … no-one to be found … you were never bound … never not free.
“This engaging account naturally ends where it begins, in THIS very moment where in Krishnamurti’s view, “No matter where you find yourself, no matter what background you come from, no matter what state of mind you’re in, you can still clearly look and see what is actually going on, but the observation has to be choiceless and unconditional.”
–Enza Vita, author of Instant Prescence
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