Extreme Spirituality
by Tolly Burkon

Introduction
What Is Extreme Spirituality?

Love lives in giving and forgiving. Ego lives in getting and forgetting.
-Sathya Sai Baba

    We live in exciting times. Millions of people have walked on fire and haven't been burned. People are willing to learn how to break boards and bricks with their bare hands, sit in sweat lodges, skydive, shave their heads, and snap pointed arrows with their throats. Some of us experience spontaneous healing. What does this all mean? Are we getting closer to our true nature? Do these things give us a compass back to God? Are we proving that we create our own realities?

    You are about to be challenged, shocked, and stimulated as you absorb the uncomplicated techniques of the new spiritual paradigm described in "Extreme Spirituality." Since 1973, when I was only twenty-five years old, I have been teaching people about inner growth. In my seminars, people find ways of tapping into their full potential. This book will take you on a journey that is similar to what people experience in my classes. You'll learn how to assume a totally spiritual perspective in every situation.

    If you accept the truth that you create your own reality, the challenging situations can be experienced in one of two ways, either with stress or without stress. By assuming a spiritual perspective, any situation can either be enjoyed in some fashion or provide insight for spiritual growth. By choosing growth over suffering, a person demonstrates spiritual maturity.

    Our spiritual selves are clothed in what has commonly come to be known as the ego. Most lay people experience the ego as that part of themselves that makes them unique. It is the interface between what I call me, and not me. Most of us are so married to the activity of our egos, we believe they are who we actually are. At any given point, however, you have an extreme experience that precipitates an awakening, an ego death, where you achieve the ability to watch your every activity, almost as though you were observing an actor on a movie screen. The omniscient watcher is who you really are. While the ego can think, feel, and be aware, the watcher is who you really are. While the ego can think, feel, and be aware, the watcher, the larger you, is aware of everything that the small, ego-encompassed you is aware of.