Chris Tong has
been a devotee of Adi Da Samraj since 1989. He is one of
the founders of this website. You can read his biographical
information in the About
Us section.
Beyond Believing Book 1 of The Practical Spirituality Series
By Chris Tong, Ph.D.
April, 2000
Practical Spirituality Press order
here
A recent Gallup poll reported that 86% of all American
adults believed in God. "Belief in God" is the primary way
many of us describe our relationship to the Greater Reality.
But why settle for believing in God, or even for some "spiritual
experiences" now and then, when the tangible, ego-melting,
suffering-dissolving Revelation of Real God, pervading,
washing, and dissolving "you" again and again (through a
lifetime of Spiritual practice), would utterly transform
your life, and fulfill your heart's otherwise unendingly
unsatisfied desire for perfect happiness?
Speaking
from my own religious experience, the occasional, personal
knowing of God, in itself, does not confer staying power
and retrieval of that ecstasy. The memories wear away with
time. However, the practice of the Revelation of God in
the presence of a Realized Master confers depth of insight
and Divine Transmission beyond one’s own limited capacity.
This is the practice that makes consequential the age-old
belief in help from higher realms. Thank you for this labor
of love!
The impulse to change springs out of dissatisfaction and
unhappiness. But what change is actually possible? And what
bearing do approaches for change actually have on our happiness?
In this book we will examine a variety of approaches to
transformation, from Sigmund Freud’s psychotherapy, to Stephen
Covey’s “7
Habits”, to the self-transcending God-Realization of
the great Spiritual Masters. We will see how how such approaches
vary in their presumptions about the full depth of the human
being (from animal-like to Divine); the faculties available
to a human being (including “higher” faculties); the natural
(or Divine) laws or principles with which human beings must
be aligned; how the heat that arises in the friction between
old and new habits is managed or endured; and what agents
of transformation are available to assist in the process
of transformation (from therapists to Spiritual Masters).
Tong
is terrific! He debunks the buzz around popular self-help
authors, claiming that the self cannot be the agent of change
on its own behalf. Since it is the soul that experiences
profound change, the self is but a step-child; it may be
the last to know things are different. However, the soul
cannot change on its own. It needs guidance.
Gabby Hyman
editor, MightyWords / Fatbrain
Habits of Highly Spiritual People Book 3 of The Practical Spirituality Series
By Chris Tong, Ph.D.
June, 2000
Practical Spirituality Press order
here
Perfect Happiness is possible through Spiritual Awakening
from the dream of ordinary life. We provide a picture of
the Spiritual practice for Waking Up, in the form of seven
habits:
Be Real.
Locate, recognize, and commune with God.
Surrender “self” to God and let God do the transforming.
Understand self in God.
Free energy and attention in the individual sphere.
Free energy and attention in the larger sphere.
Realize God by engaging the Perfect Practice.
The key to the practice is the Spiritual Master, who is
the “guise” taken by the Awakened State in the dream, and
who transmits the Morning Light into the dream to Wake us
Up.
Wake
up! This third installment in this author's spirituality
series helps you break the trance of daily routine, surrender
and allow God to transform your life.
Spirituality Editor, Fatbrain / MightyWords
You CAN'T Take It With You Book 4 of The Practical Spirituality Series
By Chris Tong, Ph.D.
July, 2000
Practical Spirituality Press order
here
Does your life have a purpose? If so, is it one that isn't
going to get instantly ripped off when you die? Many of
us spend our lives denying death, allowing ourselves to
be completely consumed and distracted by our responsibilities,
our indulgences, and our search for things we cannot take
with us after death in any overt form (knowledge, accomplishment,
fame, or friendship). But death is still coming. We get
little support from culture, society, biology, or even conventional
religion for becoming adequately prepared; indeed, we are
actively discouraged from even considering the matter. In
Western society, the “dying business” at best tends to help
us come to the point of acceptance of death (which already
should be true for us right now). And the “death business”
tends to assist the living go on living rather than assist
the dead in their transition, as more informed cultures
do. This book sensitizes us to our mortality, and encourages
us to start preparing now. (This book is intended to be
read along with Books 5 and 6.)
Neither
money, property nor prestige will follow you to the afterlife,
but you can take riches in the form of love, says Chris
Tong in this book. His spirituality series for MightyWords
continues with this essay on connecting with God to get
honest about your life and death.
Spirituality Editor, Fatbrain / MightyWords
You WILL Take It With You Book 5 of The Practical Spirituality Series
By Chris Tong, Ph.D.
August, 2000
Practical Spirituality Press order
here
What will occur after we die? This question can
be answered, on the basis of a large body of reports across
the centuries — on near-death experiences, after-life experiences,
reincarnation experiences, paranormal phenomena, and the
direct awareness of Spiritual Masters — as well as by studying
the laws of the psyche as we observe it in life, to predict
its destiny after death. The report is not all roses, though.
In fact, its conclusion is that there is life after death,
and re-birth, but it is also likely that we are going to
suffer greatly during the period between lives, unless we
develop, during our lifetime, a powerful Spiritual practice
that truly links up with God. (This book is intended to
be read along with Books 4 and 6.)
You CAN Take It With You Book 6 of The Practical Spirituality Series
By Chris Tong, Ph.D.
October, 2000
Practical Spirituality Press order
here
What can we take with us after we die? True wisdom takes
into account both the fact of our mortality and what we
are likely to carry with us after death, and uses the course
of a lifetime proactively, for the purpose of understanding
our limits, and linking up now with That which is greater
than life and death.
We focus on three key issues of the after-life, and the
means for addressing these issues: psychic attractors, which
have the power to draw us out of the Presence of God after
death; psychic bullies, from which we are constantly on
the run while alive, and which can form the stuff of “hells”
after death; and our nonrecognition of all that arises after
death as our own mind-forms (as in a dream). In the Spiritual
practice we describe, psychic attractors are outshined by
Divine Distraction; psychic bullies are “stood up to” and
disempowered by unlimited feeling; and the nonrecognition
of conditional reality as a dream is dealt with by progressive
Waking Up, first by absorption in God, and then by identification
with God. (This book is intended to be read along with Books
4 and 5.)
Beyond Spiritual Correctness Book 7 of The Practical Spirituality Series
By Chris Tong, Ph.D.
December, 2000
Practical Spirituality Press order
here
In this book we consider two tendencies that we inherit
simply by virtue of living in Western culture: spiritual
correctness and spiritual anti-authoritarianism.
Spiritual correctness is an analog of political correctness
that goes something like: "all paths to the Divine or ultimate
liberation are equal"; and anyone who suggests otherwise
risks seriously offending or insulting whomever they are
speaking with. Spiritual anti-authoritarianism began with
the Protestant Reformation, in righteous reaction to the
corruption of the Church theocracy, eliminating potentially
corrupt “priests” as necessary mediators between man and
God. We come to understand the liabilities they represent,
relative to our own Spiritual happiness and liberation.
Three Views of Reality and Human Potential Book 8 of The Practical Spirituality Series
By Chris Tong, Ph.D.
February, 2001
Practical Spirituality Press order
here
Taken together, all the great wisdom traditions around
the world and throughout history offer a wide variety of
views on (and experiences of) the nature of the Greater
Reality and human potential in the context of the Greater
Reality. In this book, we make sense of and compare the
differing views. We place particular emphasis on the views
of materialism, esoteric spirituality, and exoteric religion.
Materialism, the view that what you see (or hear,
or touch, or taste, or smell) is what you get (or all that
is real), is seen to have many limitations, including its
tendency to insist on reducing everything to its own materialistic
terms; and its inability to adequately account for human
consciousness and hence, human death. Esoteric spirituality
deepens human potential by acknowledging the Greater Reality,
and providing the means for experientially embracing It.
We briefly touch on four different dimensions of the greater
Reality — psycho-physical, Spiritual, Transcendental, and
Divine — and we will elaborate upon these dimensions, their
Realization, and the means for Realizing them, in Books
9 and 10. Exoteric religion
is understood to derive from an originally esoteric source
(such as a great Spiritual Master or a shaman). The practitioner
of a legitimate exoteric religion — one that is still in
touch with its esoteric roots — engages disciplines aimed
at bringing him or her to full human maturity, in preparation
for taking up the esoteric practices of his or her tradition.
When an exoteric religion loses touch with its esoteric
roots (e.g., by being “re-shaped” for the sake of political
and social survival), it can devolve into an illegitimate
exoteric religion that may be socially and politically influential,
but is spiritually bankrupt.
In Book 8, we identified four
different dimensions of the Greater Reality — animistic/psycho-physical,
Spiritual, Transcendental, and Divine. In this book, we
study those dimensions — the etheric and the lower astral
dimensions — associated with the animistic / psycho-physical
view, along with the practices for Realizing these dimensions.
We base our study on the understanding that we, ourselves,
are a multi-dimensional composite of elements from these
different dimensions (matter, spirit, and Consciousness),
but are primarily only conscious as the “material part”
of ourselves, and hence, primarily only conscious of the
material reality.
In the animistic / psycho-physical experience (aspects
of which are shared by shamans, medicine men, and psychics),
it is obvious that we arise as a psycho-physical being within
Nature, which has not only a “body” (the “objective reality”
of the materialists) but also a “soul”, or psyche. This
Sacred Earth is a seamless, psychic unity, populated by
all manner of etheric and psychic forces and entities beyond
the merely physical, with which we are intimately inter-connected
(in a way that is not discernable from the purely materialistic
view) and to which we can learn to be rightly, magically
related (and, in so doing, allow to be revelatory). We conclude
by studying the limitations of the purely animistic / psycho-physical
view, relative to the ultimate human potential of Complete
Awakening from the dream of changes, material or subtle.
We lay out what developments in the etheric and lower astral
dimensions of our being are necessary and useful for supporting
and quickening our Complete Awakening.