On the Road to Enlightened Duality

While traveling the road on pilgrimage, or following American Baul Master, Khepa Lee Lozowick (1943-2010), in his daunting travel schedule, author Mary Angelon Young crafted a collection of essays that explore and evoke the many moods of “Enlightened Duality,” one of Lozowick’s core teachings in the path of Western Bauls. This dynamic spiritual principle suggests that the spiritual seeker can combine an integrated awareness of the nondual (“all is One”) with a lively, conscious relationship to the duality or play of opposites that is the constant fare of everyday life. Unlike those strictly nondual perspectives that relegate the human experience to an illusion of the mind, Lozowick asserted that, while nondual unity is the foundation of what is, simultaneously, life is real. These original essays cover such universal themes as Impermanence, Beauty and Transformation, and comprise one wayfarer’s reflections, reveries and research. Some are flavored with academic spice, but most are predominantly experiential, presenting a kaleidoscopic journey that unfolds much like a large, multifaceted jewel looked at from many different directions. Each essay has its own integrity and stands on its own authority. Yet, taken as a whole, they form a useful map of the tantric path, charting its depths through daily events, travel, relationships, creativity and work?all continuous, integrated aspects of the transformational path. The teaching of enlightened duality can be found in many guises within the world’s great traditions, including Sufi, Vajrayana Buddhist, and both bhakti and tantric Hindu paths. It is a universal theme, and yet the treatment here runs true to the theistic underpinnings of the lineage from which it comes: Khepa Lee Lozowick, Sri Yogi Ramsuratkumar and Swami Ramdas. From this view, the highest aim of spiritual practice is to integrate mystical experience and insights of nonduality into ordinary life. This book provides a genuine feast of practical wisdom for the hungry seeker who yearns for a path through life that is both transformational and yet honoring of the innate dignity and potential of the human incarnation. The author has travelled extensively in India and Europe; has studied the Sanskrit, Hindu and Buddhist traditions; and has written published an extensive treatise on the Baul Path, The Baul Tradition. (Hohm Press, 2014)