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You Were Never Born
Paperback, 266 pages Available from the 18th April. Website: The Natural State: http://www.thenaturalstate.org/ Excerpts Foreword by Annette Nibley The first time I laid eyes on John Wheeler, I don’t know what I was expecting, exactly, but that wasn’t it. Perhaps from attending too many California satsangs and reading too many books written by spiritual celebrities, I was somehow expecting this guy to be just another guru clone, wafting into the room on a sense of his own specialness. But I knew the moment I saw John that there was a clarity here I had not encountered in my twenty-five years on the spiritual scene. Here was a humble, working guy with no interest whatsoever in having me or anyone else look up to him, be in awe of him, or elevate him in any way. I saw a guy who knew his true nature, without a doubt in the world about it. I saw a guy who felt lucky to have ended his search a couple of years earlier by hearing what ‘Sailor’ Bob Adamson had to say, and now was moved, by love, to help others end their search as well. John cut right to the chase, telling the folks gathered there at his book-signing at East West Bookstore in Mountain View, California, about his own twenty-year search and how it ended. We were riveted by him, by the candour with which he told his story. It struck me as a little odd that he didn’t seem very interested in selling books. He held up his latest offering and waved it around a little bit, but mostly to illustrate to us that what we were looking for could not be found in there. And he went on, patiently, gently, and methodically, to tell us — show us — that what we had been looking for all these years was already so simply what we are, and what we experience as ourselves, right now. In that room, on that night, I finally understood. I didn’t mean to imply that John’s books are unimportant — on the contrary, his writings are among the most valuable and most effective that exist on the subject of non-dualism. They are as effective as they are in large part because there is no confusion in John Wheeler. None. He got completely clear on this understanding in 2003, during a visit to Bob Adamson in Melbourne, Australia, and that was it. No further doubts, no gray areas, no questions about the best and clearest way to communicate this, no sense of importance as the carrier of the message — none of these things has ever arisen for John. He is clear as a bell on the essential liberating points, and he doesn’t stray from them. I’ve even heard John referred to as “relentless,” which in some cases could be considered disparaging, but when it comes to the absolute — one without a second — a relentless approach is well-advised. It works for John — people seem to fall off the log quite often after meeting with him once or twice. John has titled this, his fourth collection of dialogues and pointers, “You Were Never Born” which speaks to the very first principle: the fact that pure nothingness is all that exists, and that all our personal problems and suffering are imaginary. John says, “You cannot speak of the birth of that which has no form or limits. We are that, and that has never come into form. So we have never been born.” This simple truth is the bedrock underlying all the slippery layers of assumptions and projections that we try to heap on top of it. There is only the one truth, only the one principle, only the one which has no form or limits, and this is what you are. And that is the point to which John returns over and over again in his dialogues and pointers. This is a great service, and rarer than we realize, because John does not muck up the truth with a lot of tangential ideas and mental diversions, as we find in so many other writings of this type. This clarity — this purity of focus — is the hallmark of John’s teaching, and what makes him unique in the field. In this, his latest book, this clarity is present, as usual, but in addition, there is a maturity that has been taking place in the means of communication. So I would not hesitate to say that this is John’s best book yet. John has a special place in my heart because he pointed out to me — and gave me the confidence to find for myself — that which I had been hungering for all my adult life. Let John speak to your heart, and you too may end your search now.
Annette Nibley
US $19.95 UK £11.45
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