Books
Some questions ask more of us.
A question can stay with us for years. Sometimes for much of a lifetime.
What am I? What is Consciousness? Why do we suffer?
What is God? What can actually be known?
Can human beings find lasting peace and happiness?
The books gathered here approach such questions through direct inquiry,
lived experience, philosophy, psychology, science and contemplative
traditions—without requiring any of them to become an authority.
Current Books
Begin with a book
Each book begins from a different doorway, but all are invitations
to investigate rather than conclusions the reader is expected to accept.
The Essence of Knowledge
An Inquiry into Knowing, the Knower and the Known
What does it mean to know something? The Essence of Knowledge begins with the difference between information, belief and direct knowing.
Rather than offering a conclusion about the self or Consciousness, the book turns toward a more intimate question: Who—or what—is it that knows?
Fearless Journey
Meeting Death Through Inquiry, Understanding and Compassionate Presence
Fearless Journey is an inquiry into fear, mortality, identity and what it means to meet death without turning away from life.
It brings direct investigation into conversation with dying, caregiving, grief and compassionate presence without asking the reader to adopt a belief about what happens after death.
Meditation
From Practice to Inquiry
Meditation asks what happens when attention turns not only toward thoughts and sensations, but toward the meditator itself.
The inquiry moves gradually from meditation as practice toward meditation as direct investigation.
Atma Bodha
An Inquiry into Self-Knowledge
Atma Bodha begins with one of humanity’s oldest and most intimate questions: What am I?
Drawing from the contemplative inquiry associated with Vedanta, the book investigates body and awareness, thought and knower, and the seen and the seer—not as doctrines to believe, but as questions to investigate.
Bhagavad Gita
An Inquiry into Action, Knowledge and Freedom
The Bhagavad Gita begins not with certainty, but with a human being in crisis—caught between duty, relationship, consequence and the inability to know what the right action is.
This book follows the conversation between Krishna and Arjuna through action, knowledge, meditation, devotion and freedom, approaching the Gita as inquiry rather than doctrine.
In Development
The inquiry continues
Probing Consciousness is an evolving body of work.
Several additional books and creative projects are currently being developed.
In Development
In Conversation with Open Secret
An inquiry developed in conversation with the writings of Wei Wu Wei and the questions raised in Open Secret.
Rather than treating the text as an authority, the project will examine its propositions through direct experience, philosophical inquiry and the larger question of what we are.
Title and publication details to come.
In Development
Poetry
A collection bringing together poetry written across many years, including works accompanied by original paintings and visual art.
Some poems arise directly from questions explored elsewhere in Probing Consciousness. Others stand as expressions of human experience, beauty, suffering, love, nature and life.
Title and publication details to come.
In Development
The Gospel of Thomas Through the Eyes of Non-Duality
An exploration of the sayings of the Gospel of Thomas through art, poetry and commentary.
The sayings will be brought into conversation with non-dual traditions and direct inquiry without asking the reader to accept any particular theological or metaphysical interpretation.
Art · Poetry · Commentary
Publishing
A growing body of inquiry
These books are not intended to establish a new system of belief.
They begin with questions and remain accountable to the investigation.
Some works begin with direct experience. Others enter into conversation with science, philosophy, psychology, phenomenology or contemplative traditions.
Where evidence exists, we can examine it. Where philosophical arguments are made, we can examine them. Where contemplative traditions make claims about self, Consciousness or reality, those claims can also be investigated rather than simply accepted.
Where something remains unknown, it can remain unknown.
The working principle
No authority.
No required belief.
No promised destination.
Do not believe. Investigate.
Books in Conversation
Reading beyond Probing Consciousness
No serious inquiry develops in isolation.
This section will gradually gather books, essays and other works from writers, researchers and traditions that have something worthwhile to contribute to questions of Consciousness, self-understanding and human experience.
A recommendation does not mean agreement with everything a writer says. It means that we believe the work contains something worth considering, questioning or investigating.
Recommendations will be added as this library develops.
Join the Inquiry
What would you like us to explore?
Is there a book, philosophical question, contemplative text, scientific subject or aspect of human experience that you would like to see examined by Probing Consciousness?
Perhaps there is an ancient text you would like reconsidered. A contemporary claim about Consciousness that deserves closer examination. A question about self, suffering, meditation, mortality or human experience that has stayed with you.
Suggestions do not determine what we publish, but they can help us understand the questions readers are carrying and may open directions we had not considered.
A reader suggestion form will be added here.
Read as Inquiry
Do not begin with agreement.
Do not accept an idea because it is ancient.
Do not reject it because it is ancient.
Do not accept a scientific claim merely because it sounds authoritative.
Do not dismiss first-person experience merely because it cannot be placed under a microscope.
Examine the evidence. Examine the argument. Examine experience.
Continue the Inquiry
What does the evidence actually show?
Questions about Consciousness also meet neuroscience, psychology,
philosophy of mind and the careful study of subjective experience.
Research offers another way of examining what can be supported,
what remains interpretation and what is still unknown.