An Essay on

JNANA YOGA
(Critical Thought)
and the
YOGA OF RADIANT PRESENCE
(Experiential Actuality)

By Peter Brown
http://www.theopendoorway.org

INTRODUCTION

The sole “spiritual” problem is non-recognition of actuality as it is. (This is

so because it happens that the nature of actuality is entirely and
comprehensively non-problematic.) Actuality is always being perceived,
there being no non-actuality perceivable, but its inherent nature may be not
recognized, due to misinterpretation.

Jnana Yoga is a technical name given to the process of analytical thought

that can deconstruct and hence correct misinterpretation. Radiant
Presence is a designation of actuality as it is. It is a Yoga when directly
engaged with as a process of discovery, employing the display of its nature
as a revelation of that nature.

These two modes of investigation jointly can effectively remove the

problem of non-recognition of the nature of actuality, solving the spiritual
problem; leaving nothing other than undistorted experience of the actual
condition as it is, which state may technically be called realization or
enlightenment.

JNANA YOGA

The method of critical thought is to examine the evidential basis of any

proposition that is held to be true. This method engaged in as a process

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inevitably leads ultimately to Radiant Presence, the immediate actuality of
experiencing, as being the ultimate actuality that is the sole basis for all
propositions. The nature of Radiant Presence is discovered to be the
necessary, but not sufficient, basis for any and all propositions, which this
process reveals as being nothing other than inaccurate interpretations of
That.

This process having revealed the ultimate actuality to be the immediacy of

experiencing, then what that is can be explored by the process of the Yoga
of Radiant Presence.

YOGA OF RADIANT PRESENCE

The immediacy of experiencing at this point will be seen to be the ongoing

experiential apparition of apparent experiential characteristics, Radiant
(presenting experiential characteristics) Presence (actuality). This being the
ongoing actuality, it’s nature can be explored through careful noticing of any
aspects of the way(s) in which it seems to be that, in contra-distinction from
approaching this event in terms of various interpretive frameworks (as to
entities, situations, etc.), which may have been the predominant
experiential mode prior to the exercise of critical thought.

This noticing will ongoingly reveal that any finer aspects of the way that
experiencing seems to occur are themselves heavy-handed interpretations,
and experiencing will reveal itself to be surpassingly subtle and elusive as
to what is occurring and how it is occurring.

Further noticing, after perhaps implying ever more subtle implicit aspects of
experiencing that are all subsequently discovered to be themselves
inaccurate interpretations, will ongoingly disclose, and ultimately verify, the
absolute degree of the subtlety and elusiveness of this actuality, and its
ultimate unresolvability as to what it is, and how it is that, and of course that
these notions of “what” and “how”, and even “is”, are themselves gross and
absurd oversimplifications of the explicit nature of this actuality.

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At this point nothing remains but the “ongoing” “immersion” of
“experiencing” in “itself”, continually revealing that “it” transcends any and
every hypothesized resolvable quality or analysis, no matter how
surpassingly subtle; ever-deepeningly self-verifyingly displaying its
inherently transcendental, absolutely infinite nature.

At an arbitrary point in this process sufficient certainty is realized that This

is nothing other than the actual Transcendent Absolute. This certainty,
being continually verified by the obvious nature of the ongoing actuality,
eradicates any possibility of the felt sense of any alternative to This as it is;
and reveals the perspective of any modes that this can seem to present to
be entirely This itself, and their obvious fallacious position in terms of being
actual in their own implicit perspective. Reaching this point is what
Realization, or Enlightenment, consists of. There is hereafter revealed, as
is and has always been in fact eternally the case, that the self-engagement
of Radiant Presence alone exists, and that of course “self-engagement of
Radiant Presence existing” is an absurd and entirely inaccurate
oversimplification.

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