My response to the McKenna quotes posted by Rebecca:
Human Childhood is the ego-bound state. It is, in human children, a healthy and natural state. In human adults, however, it's a hideous affliction. The only way such an affliction could go undetected and unremedied is if everyone were equally afflicted, which is exactly the case.
I frankly don't agree that the ego-bound state in children is "healthy and natural". At what exact point does it become unhealthy and unnatural? It is simply an inevitable state given the natural arising of introspective consciousness. Ego develops in concert with this introspective capacity. When this development is fully realised and the ego fully formed, then the problems associated with it become clearer. But I don't think it makes too much sense to say that the causes of a disease are healthy.
Most human beings cease to develop at around the age of ten or twelve. The average seventy year-old is often a ten year-old with sixty years time-in-grade. Our societies are of, by, and for Human Children, which explains the self-perpetuating nature of this ghoulish malady, as well as most of the silliness we see in the world.
I agree with this. Once one's introspective nature and basic reasoning ability is properly developed, all there is left is experience and the heuristic tools we employ to facilitate life. Most people don't develop beyond the age of 12. They just become skillful children. Pretty scary, really.
For a person to transition into Human Adulthood at an appropriate developmental age would require an actual rite of passage, rather than a merely symbolic ceremony as is sometimes observed, but it would take much more than that. It would require a society of Human Adults in which to occur, so it won't. That's the bad news. For a person to transition into Human Adulthood at an inappropriate developmental age, however, can and does occur. That's the good news. The individual who wants to achieve change and growth in his own life, who wants to move beyond the state of developmental retardation imposed by a developmentally retarded society, can probably do so.
The fact that they can recognise the need means they have
already transitioned to some extent. Most teenagers spend a few years hovering on the precipice of this transition, but have no real framework from which to go forward, and absolutely no encouragement from the adult world which does all it can to circumvent this dynamic and force the kid into conventional "maturity". In my opinion most men have at least some sense of this (most men seem to express a sort of quiet guilt over their lives) but are too invested in the bullshit to be able to openly admit to it or act on it. They're usually too busy developing rationalisations for their own failure, or being lured by Woman.
This may sound a little weird, but your ego is smarter than you, way smarter, and if you don't recognize that and respect it, you stand very little chance against it. I've seen many very insightful books by very brainy men and women who were experts on the subject of ego transcendence but who, I could easily tell, had not transcended their own egos. The spiritual/religious marketplace, which should be dedicated entirely to ministering to this all-important developmental advent is, in fact, arrayed almost entirely against it.
That's because the books and teachings are written from scripts rather than personal experience. It's only that personal experience that allows one to recognise the pitfalls and how and where one might be falling into them. A teacher like Adyashanti, for example, seems utterly oblivious to the serious failing of his in continually using the term "love" in his satsangs. This is either calculated or unconscious; either way, it's foolish, especially as most of his audience tends to be female.
Ego doesn't need to be killed because it was never really alive. You don't have to destroy your false self because it's not real, which is really the whole point. It's just a character we play, and what needs to be killed is that part of us that identifies with the character. Once that's done--really done, and it can take years--then you can wear the costume and play the character as it suits you to do so, now in the character but not of the character.
Ego is very much alive. If it wasn't, no-one would be talking about it. Illusions and the delusions built from them are very real. Many a man has died of thirst chasing the water shimmering in the distance. The false self
does have to be destroyed if the true self is to manifest. It doesn't help to say we have to kill the false identification - but not the false self - when that false identification
is the false self!
The difference between Adulthood and Enlightenment is that the former is awakening within the dreamstate and the latter is awakening from it. Shallow, early-stage Adulthood is often mistaken for, and sold as, Spiritual Enlightenment, but it's not. It's just the first real glimpse of life, the death/rebirth transition from womb to world.
This is where his idea of adulthood seems like the Buddhist notion of being reborn in the human realm. It's the first genuine step into consciousness.
The most important distinction to be made between these two states is that Human Adulthood makes sense and Enlightenment doesn't.
I frankly don't like this aspect of McKenna's rhetoric. It's bullshit, basically. Enlightenment is the natural and necessary fulfillment or culmination of Adulthood. If it isn't, then adulthood is
abortive. Contrary to what he states, it's adulthood that doesn't make sense. There's no sense to awakening at all if one doesn't fully awaken. How could one satisfactorily rest in adulthood, when by definition one knows that's not all there is?
The main benefit most spiritually inclined people can derive from having a clear understanding of what it really means to be truth-realized is not so they can achieve it, but so they can dispense with it and reset their spiritual sights on something worthier than enlightenment, which is literally, the biggest nothing of all time.
This makes me think McKenna actually doesn't know what enlightenment is and has never attained it. No-one that has would characterise it as nothing.
Human Adulthood is what everyone really wants, not truth or enlightenment. This is where you find all the good stuff and a lot less of the bad.
Is this valid? It can't be valid, can it, if adulthood means having at least some appreciation for what it means to be awakened, because one will always know one is
not. This may be satisfactory for anyone who simply wants to be able to manage and minimise their suffering, but not for one who suffers for the very
fact of their ignorance or incomplete awakening. Many people may and do rest in this adulthood, but that's only because all they ever wanted was to dispense with the forms of falsity that deprived them of enjoyment of life. The problem is, as I've said, an adult human would know this. One would have to do a good job or forgetting that to really enjoy their adulthood.
You have to grow into it, of course, continue to develop and mature, learn and expand, but that's where all the perks are; profound and abiding contentment, the ability to manifest desires and shape events, the ability to do less and accomplish more, find your true calling, connect with your higher self, never stub another toe, and so on.
Highly delusional religious people can do all this, too. Plus, they don't have the problem of knowing it's still all bullshit.
And Human Adulthood is what everyone, spiritual or not, religious or not, atheist or not, should be setting their sights on. This is what I've come to understand in my years of teaching and writing. If I were to give advice, I would recommend Adulthood to everyone and Enlightenment to no one.
That might be reasonable if taken in the sense that such adulthood is necessary to have a decent perspective of the issues at hand, and therefore of the path itself. But it doesn't seem to me to be saying much more than: I'd recommend that people learn to walk before they try to run.
Human Adulthood is life-positive, Enlightenment is life-negative.
Ok, this is 100% drivel. This statement, taken alone, is almost enough for me to dismiss McKenna outright. People will read so much that is false into that, it's positively stupid to have said it.
Human Adulthood is the real prize. Spiritual Enlightenment is pointless and meaningless, and should only be sought by those who have absolutely no choice in the matter.
No-one has any choice in any matter, so this observation is redundant.
