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One reader asks: It appears that you have a wonderful command of many schools of philosophy and scriptures. Has this understanding dissolved any remaining separate sense of self?
Well, to be honest, perfectly honest, it has helped a lot, but I still put my trouser on "one leg at a time" as they say..... I am still plagued by sexual thoughts (i am in my second marriage, 7 years) the first was 13 yrs..... I cannot control my diet as I think that I ought to.... (although I am vegetarian... but I could be a stricter vegetarian)....
but your question reminds me of the late Alan Watts,.. the first to popularize Buddhism in the west with his writings in the 1940's 1950's. Alan Watts described himself as a "spiritual entertainer".... in his autobiography "my own way" or some title like that, its somewhere on my book shelves.... he describes his life and work and writings....
but there is a biography written after his death, called "Zen Effects".. where we see a more accurate picture of a man, who is an alcoholic,... through three divorces.... burdened with a backbreaking alimony/child support payments... whose only source of income is a grueling schedule of speaking engagements, magazine articles,.. and new books....
My point is, there are people who are very skilled and knowledgable at describing philosophy or religion, but it is one thing to know something intellectually, and quite another to have internalized it as a way of life.
What comes to mind is a marvellous photographic collection (in paperback),
which you may have seen in bookstores... called "Sadhu" , which of course means "Holy Man"....
Sadhus, Holy Men of India - by Dolf Hartsuiker
The author travelled through India in the 1980's photographing various ascetics. There are a few photos of renunciates who, for me anyway, reveal in their faces the successful internalization, the actualization in there daily lives, of that "separation" of which you speak.
But, I would imagine that those Holy men, might not be able to verbalize and articulate their own "holiness" in the way that an Alan Watts, or even someone like myself, might verbalize it.
I will never forget the remark which a Hindu friend of mine once made, from Madras, Tamil Nadu. We had been speaking for an hour about Adwaita, Dwaita, Nirguna, Saguna... etc., etc., Prakriti, Purusha, all of these exotic, theological, metaphysical terms,
...the vocabulary of Shankaracharya, Madhava, Janeshwar,,,etc....
When suddenly my friend stoped and looked at me and said.....
"You know.... if we were back in Tamil Nadu... I could take you to places where there are hundreds of people who exist by scavaging garbage dumps for scraps of metal and cloth....
Whenever a religious feast comes..... they go... the attend... they dance... the sing... they help prepare food... and eat the food..... but they are illiterate... and cannot discuss or understand even one of our theological concepts....
.... thats when it hit me... that if Religion is anything.... it must be Religion for those people too,... but... western man... steeped in intellect.... ornate grammer, convoluted rhetoric and logic,.. specialized technical vocabularies....
Well.. we construct for ourselves... we fabricate.... a spiritual world... which becomes for us, very real..... perhaps more real than reality itself.... AN THAT IS NOT NECESSARILY A BAD THING FOR MODERN MAN.....
In the book "Sadhu".... there is a photograph of an ascetic devotee... who is taking three years to painstakenly circumambulate a holy site... by doing 108 prostrations,...making offerngs (pooja)... and only then, extending his body one body length in the direction of his three year progress.....
... I look at that picture... and it conveys something to me,... something which I cannot even put into words.... which has been actuallized in that ascetics life....... ....
I do not expect that I am even capable, in this life time, of joining that ascetic in his "devotional achievement"..... I suspect the very nature which I have become,,,... reading and writing as I do.... precludes my becoming... actuallizing that "other way" in my own life...
but then, we must each of us, do our best, and persevere,... with "who we are" and "what we are" and "where we are" and "when we are".... and try to find whatever measure of peace, meaning, fulfillment, enlightenment is possible for us.. in this life...
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