Beyond Vision: Going Blind, Inner Seeing, and the Nature of the Self - Hardcover

Jones, Allan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0773552855 ISBN 13: 9780773552852

Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2018

Synopsis

In this unique and exhilarating autobiography, Allan Jones – Canada’s first blind diplomat – vividly describes how an untreatable eye disease slowly decimated his visual world, most challengingly during his postings in Tokyo and New Delhi, and how he discovered and took to heart the revelatory Indian philosophy that changed his life. Advaita Vedanta, the most iconoclastic and liberating of the classical Indian philosophies, profoundly altered the author’s experience of self and world. He found that the true self, as distinct from the individual ego, far exceeds the boundaries of individuality. It lies beneath sightedness or blindness and is absolutely unaffected by the latter. This welcome shift of perspective was reinforced by startling discoveries in contemporary physics, evolutionary biology, and developmental psychology that are fully consistent with Advaitic metaphysics. As for the practical applications of metaphysics, this book demonstrates step by step how Advaitic insight and practice significantly reduce physical and psychological tension. The most telling examples have to do with adjustments compelled by extreme circumstances. Thus Jones describes how he drew upon Advaitic mindfulness techniques to maintain his white cane mobility skills in the teeth of permanent spinal, nerve, and muscle pain. The arc of Beyond Vision moves from the claustrophobically personal to the openness of the transpersonal. It begins in a dysfunctional family background, breaking out into a full life encompassing an adventurous foreign service career, spiritual exploration, and an unconventional kind of marital love.

About this title

About the Author

Allan Jones is a former diplomat who served in Tokyo, New Delhi, and Ottawa. He lives in Ottawa.

Edition details

• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0773552855
• ISBN 13: 9780773552852
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 328