The Books of Adidam > Related Books by Devotees > Chris Tong

Related Books by Chris Tong


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.
Chris Tong

 
Beyond Believing

Beyond Believing
Book 1 of The Practical Spirituality Series

By Chris Tong, Ph.D.

April, 2000
Practical Spirituality Press
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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?

Read an excerpt from this book.

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!

Lee Sannella, M.D.
author of The Kundalini Experience



Secrets of Human Transformation

Secrets of Human Transformation
Book 2 of The Practical Spirituality Series

By Chris Tong, Ph.D.

May, 2000
Practical Spirituality Press
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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).

Read an excerpt from this book.

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

Habits of Highly Spiritual People
Book 3 of The Practical Spirituality Series

By Chris Tong, Ph.D.

June, 2000
Practical Spirituality Press
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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:

  1. Be Real.
  2. Locate, recognize, and commune with God.
  3. Surrender “self” to God and let God do the transforming.
  4. Understand self in God.
  5. Free energy and attention in the individual sphere.
  6. Free energy and attention in the larger sphere.
  7. 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.

Read an excerpt from this book.

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

You CAN'T Take It With You
Book 4 of The Practical Spirituality Series

By Chris Tong, Ph.D.

July, 2000
Practical Spirituality Press
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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

You WILL Take It With You
Book 5 of The Practical Spirituality Series

By Chris Tong, Ph.D.

August, 2000
Practical Spirituality Press
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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

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.)

Read an excerpt from this book.



Beyond Spiritual Correctness

Beyond Spiritual Correctness
Book 7 of The Practical Spirituality Series

By Chris Tong, Ph.D.

December, 2000
Practical Spirituality Press
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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

Three Views of Reality and Human Potential
Book 8 of The Practical Spirituality Series

By Chris Tong, Ph.D.

February, 2001
Practical Spirituality Press
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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.

Read an excerpt from this book.



The Sacred Earth

The Sacred Earth: Realization of the Magical, Psycho-Physical Dimensions
Book 9 of The Practical Spirituality Series

By Chris Tong, Ph.D.

May, 2001
Practical Spirituality Press
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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.

 


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