David Quinn wrote:Which means that the enlightened person has access to a form of knowledge that the infant doesn't have and makes use of it to prevent him from slipping back.
Yes
David Quinn wrote:That's why I don't like the catch-all phrase of "transcending the limits of knowledge". It is too simplistic, and quite erroneous when applied to real life. No one ever transcends knowledge altogether, not even sages.
It depends on what we mean by "transcend". For example, we can work out that it is impossible for us to gain knowledge of what precisely occurred trillions of years ago, in previous universes generated by previous big bangs (if indeed that's what happened). So we can transcend our attempts to find knowledge of those events by dismissing it as a waste of time and moving onto something else. Yet such a transcendence is still performed in the light of knowledge, just a different type of knowledge.
If the mind does not color each experience with its knowledge, grasps the difference between true and false and does its work when required that would be transcendence.
maestro wrote:I should mention that McKenna is a Fan of UG Krishnamurti. Maybe that will explain a lot of his philosophy.
Yes, I picked that up immediately. UG is probably a bit more direct and interesting. Less padding.
If the mind does not color each experience with its knowledge, grasps the difference between true and false and does its work when required that would be transcendence.
When you say "grasps the difference between true and false", in what way does it differ from the mind coloring each experience with its knowledge?
David Quinn wrote:When you say "grasps the difference between true and false", in what way does it differ from the mind coloring each experience with its knowledge?
True and false is only within the realm of knowledge. The mind does not overlay its knowledge over experience most of the times. However it does use concepts when required.
Language and knowledge is a simplified representation of the world. In the realm of mathematics logic is binary because the truth or falsity of each statement follows from definition. While in the real world the correspondence of the definition to the state of affairs is only approximate. Thus, the truth or falsity of a statement about the real world is not binary but say a percentage.
I came to this place to learn something, but I now know that this was a mistake, because I cannot learn from something that doesn't know anymore then I know. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant!
David Quinn wrote:He's a complex character, I agree, and it may be that I am misrepresenting him out of ignorance of his entire body of work. I've simply being been responding to the immediate impressions I receive when I read bits and pieces of his work.
I think you guys may not like him after all, his books are full of philosophical discussions with women, a lot of whom end up getting enlightened.
He also claims he has enlightened around 12 students, at an average of one or two per year the number seems a tad high in my opinion.
maestro wrote:
I think you guys may not like him after all, his books are full of philosophical discussions with women, a lot of whom end up getting enlightened.
I was sure you were going to say "...a lot of whom end up in bed with him."
maestro wrote: I think you guys may not like him after all, his books are full of philosophical discussions with women, a lot of whom end up getting enlightened.
I'm with Carl here. It sounds like a sexual fantasy to me.
I was also expecting some steamy scenes in the books, since he is often alone with nubile females, but Jed seems to have little interest in sex.
David Quinn wrote:I'm with Carl here. It sounds like a sexual fantasy to me.
It may not be a fantasy, he is a guru after all. Girls have a thing for gurus. One of the reasons is due to the power and god like stature of the guru over his group.
The fantasy would be that he is having sex with them, spiritual sex, he is getting into their energetic drawers, there is an emotional charge to it, an emotional exchange similar to and in many ways more powerful than physical sex. So you are right, it is more than fantasy because on some level he is having sex with them.
That is, if that is the case. There is always the chance Jed himself is strong enough in his purpose to be able to instruct nubile young women without succumbing to the enormous biological/psychological temptation. I'm just saying that that is the razor's edge any guru walks. Undoubtedly most fall, one reason the guru role is so tainted.
Girls do like gurus. It's fun, directing your "devotion" onto something tangible. I think the sheer number of females in this position is what makes McKenna write the way he does. Over and over, he provides himself [fictional] opportunities to act from the male/female divide, and he doesn't. He treats the women like possible enlightened beings just like the males. But why would he do this if there are NO enlightened females on the planet? Beats me, but that is why I think he's a revolutionary. It gives me hope.
Here's an example of how he reacts to the "guru" impulse, from the first chapter of the 1st book:
---
How my words are received or what becomes of them after they leave my lips is beyond my ability to control. I speak, that's all. The words flow like song and soothe me. That's my thing. Nodding and maintaining a facial expression that conveys interest and receptiveness is her thing. I'm into the speaking--into my words and how well they represent the underlying ideas. It would be nice to believe that my words were clicking in her minds like the beads of an abacus, but I know they're not and I'm comfortable with that. "Act, but don't reflect on the fruit of the act," said Krishna to Arjuna. Sign me up.
"It's very simple," I tell her. "Enlightenment is truth-realization. Not only is truth simple, it's that which cannot be simpler--cannot be further reduced."
I can see from her expression that that got us nowhere. My bad. I have a copy of the Gita on the table between us. I open it at random with the intention of finding a passage well-suited to the subject I'm discussing.
Works every time. Gratitude permeates me as I read her this statement by Krishna:
"I am come as Time, the ultimate waster of people, ready for the hour that ripens to their doom. The warriors, arrayed in hostile armies facing each other, shall not live, whether you strike or stay your hand."
I fall silent as layers of meaning wash through me one after another and my appreciation causes a swelling in my chest. "Wonderful," I think. "Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful."
The young girl before me nods, understanding the words at whatever level she is able. She knows that the words are spoken by Krishna and that he is speaking to Arjuna, the mighty warrior who has thrown down his arms rather than signal the beginning of a war that will surely scorch the earth and his own family to ash. She knows that Krishna is revealing to Arjuna the truth of how the world unfolds, and she knows that at the end of this conversation--the Bhagavad Gita--Arjuna's delusion will be dispelled and he will launch the battle.
But that's probably as far as her knowledge goes. I doubt she identifies herself with Arjuna, paralyzed by confusion at the start of the Gita. I doubt she equates enlightenment with the direct experience of reality in its infinite form. I doubt she knows that in her own life war is coming and that she is a breath away from giving the signal that will spark the conflagration that will incinerate her world. I look at this young girl and I know she has no idea where this road really leads.
I smile.
"Unity consciousness is great," I say, and she looks relieved. "Mystical union, being at one with the universe, the direct experience of the infinite. Bliss, ecstasy--a taste of heaven. Beyond time, beyond space, beyond the ability of any words to describe. The peace that surpasseth all understanding."
"Wow," she says, aptly. Her name is Sarah. She's young, early twenties, and I've just pushed all of her spirituality buttons. If I were a guru, that would be my full time job. I shudder at the thought.
"Yeah," she rides on it, "that's exactly..."
"But that's not enlightenment."
"Oh."
"Enlightenment isn't when you go there, it's when there comes here. It's not a place you visit and remember wistfully and try to return to. It's not a visit to the truth, it's the awakening of truth within you. It's not a fleeting state of consciousness, it's permanent truth-realization--abiding non-dual awareness. It's not a place you visit from here, this is a place you visit from there. For instance, I myself am enlightened, right here, right now. I am free of delusion and unbound by ego, and although I have had the great fortune of experiencing mystical union on several occasions, I am not presently in that state and I have no plans to return to it. Nobody resides in a state of permanent bliss, Sarah, that's just something out of a sales pitch."
---
Here is my theory of the day: one of the main reasons women never get anywhere on the "spiritual path" is that they have a really hard time being heartless/selfish, because it's wired into their memes that if they aren't nurturing something, there is something wrong with them. The operative weapon of Maya is GUILT. They feel they can't ignore their friends or family, possibly because - yes - they are living through them. The Sufi Irina Tweedie talks about this (teacher of Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee).
On being heartless:
---
"Let me state it plainly, Arthur: I don't do heart. To the extent that I advocate any path, it is a path without heart, devoid of compassion, totally free of any thought for others whatsoever. The thinking is simple: Wake up first. Wake up, and then you can double back and perhaps be of some use to others if you still have the urge. Wake up first, with pure and unapologetic selfishness, or you're just another shipwreck victim floundering in the ocean and all the compassion in the world is of absolutely no use to the other victims floundering around you. Resolve your own situation first, and then maybe your compassion will translate into something of value to others. I suppose that sounds cruel or unspiritual or whatever, but it only works the way it works. Make sense?"
rebecca702 wrote:Girls do like gurus. It's fun, directing your "devotion" onto something tangible. I think the sheer number of females in this position is what makes McKenna write the way he does. Over and over, he provides himself [fictional] opportunities to act from the male/female divide, and he doesn't. He treats the women like possible enlightened beings just like the males. But why would he do this if there are NO enlightened females on the planet? Beats me, but that is why I think he's a revolutionary. It gives me hope.
McKenna doesn't do heart; I don't do hope. Hope is a poor substitute for real purpose and determination. It can be a trap, one that we rest in when we should be working, like a comfy sofa.
I frankly don't know why McKenna uses female characters and sometimes gives them what are really masculine qualities. I doubt when I get through his 1st and 2nd books I'll be any the wiser, but who knows. Maybe he just wants to be encouraging, which is fair enough, as he does at least place that encouragement in a very straight forward, mostly non-wafty, non-chick-magnet manner. Or, does he? I started listening to Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment because Maestro had said that first book isn't that great. McKenna says in that book that the first book is complete in itself, as a book about awakening, so I've gone back to that instead. What I noticed about his writing in the second (I got to chapter 8) is the amount of waft and "padding", as David described it. It's pretty damn tedious in places. It's the aspect of his style that I don't like at all and which I find problematic. It appeals a little too much to the wafty, the poetic, the feminine; the sort of mind that can cope with a shitty present only if it's wrapped in lovely paper. There's too much placing his ideas in storylines for me. Long, descriptive tales that are the sort of distraction from direct thinking and exorcism of demons that he talks about. At one point he describes a house he's staying at in so much detail that I found myself saying out loud: get the fuck on with it!
It's a little incongruous to me, and so far, I'm disliking that aspect of his writing a lot. But, it's a contingent judgement.
Girls like gurus because they like relation, which is the same reason they love the idea of the experience of "unity consciousnesses" - it too is all about relation. Such a feeling is really the feminine purified. It's like a continual and gigantic orgasm for a feminine minded person. To be in relation to all things at once! OMG! I'll have what she's having!
Here's an example of how he reacts to the "guru" impulse, from the first chapter of the 1st book:
<edit actual excerpt>
From that excerpt you can tell that McKenna gets that she doesn't get it, but you have to wonder why he continues. Does he think there's some chance she will? Is there a point in speaking to someone like that if you don't think they're capable of getting your point, especially when there's no other audience? Maybe the conversation never really took place and he's just using her as a literary character to make a point, one specifically about the guru complex. Don't quite know yet.
Listened to the majority of book one.First impressions are that he treats his listenener/reader as if they are an 18 year old wide eyed girl that can only take a little bit of Reality at a time and he's always qualifying anything that he sense will be a little distateful with a "it doesn't really matter anyhow".There's a helluva lot of unecessary padding, too.
Plenty of use of personal pro nouns for a guy with no self.
Nonetheless there's some interesting insights;and at least he avoids a lot of guru-speak.Hoping book 2 will really get into the nitty-gritty.
Dan Rowden wrote:Girls like gurus because they like relation, which is the same reason they love the idea of the experience of "unity consciousnesses" - it too is all about relation. Such a feeling is really the feminine purified. It's like a continual and gigantic orgasm for a feminine minded person. To be in relation to all things at once! OMG! I'll have what she's having!
I think girls like gurus because the guru is the unquestioned alpha male of his group.
rebecca702 wrote:Girls do like gurus. It's fun, directing your "devotion" onto something tangible. I think the sheer number of females in this position is what makes McKenna write the way he does. Over and over, he provides himself [fictional] opportunities to act from the male/female divide, and he doesn't. He treats the women like possible enlightened beings just like the males. But why would he do this if there are NO enlightened females on the planet? Beats me, but that is why I think he's a revolutionary. It gives me hope.
McKenna doesn't do heart; I don't do hope. Hope is a poor substitute for real purpose and determination. It can be a trap, one that we rest in when we should be working, like a comfy sofa.
Mm, I meant hope for humanity, and female-kind. That it is actually possible for us to stop being stupid. It makes me work harder, seeing that the possibilities are wide open. Maybe "hope" is not the right word. I will have to think about that.
