people

Like all ideas and concepts, I did not invent mine alone. Not at all. I am particularly grateful for the work and presence of the people who I mention below. The scientists I only know from their books. Robert, Shiv, Joan and Miranda I also know from exchanges on Facebook and Substack.

Robert Saltzman

A radical voice in nonduality, relentlessly honest and uninterested in spiritual clichés. His tone is warm but uncompromising. He speaks not to lead, but to dissolve the need for leaders.

I have come to know Robert as a gentle, animal-loving author who speaks candidly about what it is like for him to be an awake and fully present "Mensch". Robert is a gifted photographer, retired psychotherapist and author of a number of amazing breakthrough books, 'The Ten Thousand Things', 'Depending on no-thing', Understanding Claude and soon 'The 21st Century Self'.

Robert insists that his vision be seen as a form of self-expression and not as an interpretation of 'The Truth'. He does not want to be seen as a teacher, yet I recognize much insight in his crystal clear argument.

Shiv Sengupta

Clear, calm, and intellectually sharp. Shiv’s work blends clarity with mystery, offering a lens that strips away both belief and disbelief. A voice that invites stillness without demand.

In his own words:
"The goal of my writing since the very beginning was two-fold. To expose spiritual culture – including the people, the communities, the rituals, the texts, the practices and the postures as an elaborate smoke-and-mirrors designed to prevent seekers from perceiving the very thing it promised them – truth. Reality of life and self as it exists. My second goal was to orient readers TO that reality – the very truth in search of which they became involved in spiritual culture in the first place. But I chose to do this NOT by pontificating on some esoteric understanding, providing false or misleading promises of transcendent experiences nor even prescribing any set path or technique. Instead, I always relentlessly pointed readers back to themselves. To the very experience they were having – now. No matter what the experience. No matter how "unevolved". No matter how "mind-based". No matter how "egoic"."

Joan Tollifson

Disarmingly sincere. She brings the messy beauty of daily life into the nondual conversation, grounding it in the ordinary. She writes not from a pedestal, but from the kitchen table.

I have come to know Joan on Facebook and in her books as a particularly honest woman, who writes about her happy and open moments as well as her more dark and sad sides. She seems to be more inclusive and less critical of today's "spiritual" culture than Robert and Shiv, but still manages to separate the wheat from the chaff very well. Joan on Facebook:
"In Buddhism, they say, "If you meet the Buddha on the road (i.e. outside yourself), kill him." Or as my friend Robert Saltzman likes to say, "Find your own mind." We so easily assume that others must know more, or be wiser, more awake, more developed, or whatever than we are. We are deeply conditioned to look "out there" (to experts, authorities, gurus, writings, etc...) for answers, and to trust those who we think have something we don't (or else rebel against them, which is just the mirror image of the same phenomenon).

Miranda Warren

Poetic and uncompromising. Her writing dissolves ideas before they settle, offering nothing to grasp. A voice of elegant destruction, yet full of a fierce kind of compassion.

Miranda has been a dancer and choreographer and her look upon life reflects that. The way she talks about being awakened has nothing to do with philosophy or teaching. She just writes about what happens. For me that was and is refreshing and something I can feel into and feel with her.

Marcelo Gleiser

Marcelo Gleiser is a theoretical physicist and public intellectual at Dartmouth College working on basic research ranging from cosmology and applications of information theory to complex phenomena to history and philosophy of science and how science and culture interact. He is devoted to the public understanding of science and is a popular speaker with a strong social media presence and books published in 15 languages.

Thomas Hertog

Thomas Hertog is an internationally renowned cosmologist and professor at KU Leuven. He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge and worked as a researcher at the University of California and at CERN in Geneva. Hertog had the opportunity to conduct research with Stephen Hawking in the field of cosmic inflation, a branch of the Big Bang theory.

In 2011, after years of research, they came to a new insight by combining the mathematics of quantum cosmology and that of string theory.

Donald D. Hoffman

Donald David Hoffman is an American cognitive psychologist and author of popular science books. He is a professor in the Department of Cognitive Science at the University of California, Irvine, with combined appointments in the Department of Philosophy, the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science and the School of Computer Science.

Hoffman studies consciousness, visual perception and evolutionary psychology using mathematical models and psychophysical experiments.