Jed

[maestro]

McKenna may be play-acting the part of the contrarian zen master, but you say he lacks depth because he believes that all will find truth eventually, which means consciousness surviving death. The instant belittling of such opinions, in my opinion, shows lack of depth, rigidity, and lack of imagination. It is just your opinion, as worthless as anyone else's.

On the contrary I believe consciousness survives death, because I think consciousness is simply change and interaction (of various parts of the universe) both are eternal (because time itself is an aspect of change). However enlightenment should properly be placed in the context of a conceptualizing mind (end of false concepts or delusions), the survival of which beyond death is unlikely.

[Dan Rowden]

Rebecca,

I'll mull over those quotes and get back. Human Adulthood sounds a little like being born into the human realm (in Buddhist parlance), but also not quite like it too.

Thanks for the effort in typing all that up. It should suffice for me to get a grip on what he means.

[rebecca702]

My own intuition tells me how to approach things. I listen to the inner voice of my guides.

What if your guides are leading you on a phantasmagorical tour of the Land of Delusion? Seriously. What if "your intuition" is really Maya?

[maestro]

is it ever really possible to accurately define anything at all?

I think to define something is to approximate it in terms of shared experiences. Extremely limited but very useful. Language is a means to communicate experience in an extremely constricted framework. For example if you have seen a tiger and I have not, you can perhaps define it like, it is like a cat but much larger, and with stripes. Hopefully you can find sufficient shared experiences to accurately define it. Otherwise it is perhaps impossible to talk about it.

I think this is why Jed recommends starting with the question "what is true?" and hacking your own way through the falseness.

Maybe one needs to also carefully define or explore the words true and knowledge. In fact, pondering the question "what does it mean to know something", removes a lot of cobwebs from the mind.

Do you see what I mean by the fact that he paints "truth" as a giant nothing? I feel like I don't totally understand his motives for doing that - that there's more than meets the eye.

This is my take on this particular teaching. This may not be what he meant, but it strongly struck me as follows:


I think by adulthood he means a state where the mind has dispensed with useless concepts of reality and works with more accurate concepts of reality. In this state the mind works for its own benefit using its enhanced knowledge to great use.

By enlightenment I think he means the state in which one realizes the futility of knowledge and reason, and realizes that nothing can be known and all knowledge is limited and thus false. The only truth is the experience and the moment and the all, and thus it is life negative as efforts drops away, and it seems scary for a "normal" living being. It is a state which nobody in their "right" minds would desire.

[DivineIntercourse]

I believe consciousness survives death

People believe a lot of crazy things. Dan, do you think it's right to believe in a comforting little white lie that doesn't hurt anyone?

[Dan Rowden]

No, but maestro probably has good reason to argue this point. It would rest on his notion of consciousnesses.

[Ataraxia]

My own intuition tells me how to approach things. I listen to the inner voice of my guides.

What if your guides are leading you on a phantasmagorical tour of the Land of Delusion? Seriously. What if "your intuition" is really Maya?

I know a couple of people who are right into the Gnostic/New Age flavours of enlightenment,and who are always pushing for me to discard reason and logic to instead embrace meditation and intuition;I often pose the same question to them.Without fail they always appeal to some tradition,ussually the Bible or some guru,as if that is word from the divine;the final arbitration on the matter.

Seems to me they are just replacing one delusion for another--but even worse,someone elses delusions.

As an aside is it possible this Jed is Adayshanti?

[Iolaus]

Dan,

Motherhood is simply a social role. It means nothing of itself. Like all roles, it's what you bring to it that actually matters.

Well, if you put it like that, it is of course true. But motherhood is also a fact, like the shape of your elbow is a fact. It is certainly worth doing well.

I get that he uses it as an alternative for those who can't quite do the full enlightenment thing, but I'm struggling to get what it actually means.

I don't know that he really contrasts them like that. He says there are far more cases of the one than the other which is no doubt true. One thing his descriptions remind me of is books I have read about the best in human society and often tribal societies, such as our American Indians, who I think were spiritually quite sophisticated. The thing about civilization is that it tends to cut people off from nature, from the visions of the shamans, and from group experiences such as trance, and also to take on religion, which is a set of dogmas that can induce fear and a set of musts for belief. If no belief is true, then religion is a problem for humanity. Unlike what a lot of people think, humans who are not strongly indoctrinated tend to have a set of behaviors and ideas about reality that are quite consistent, and they remind me very much of McKenna's human adulthood. Courage, good humor, generosity and a sense of gratitude for nature and the world.

Native Americans no doubt had a few beliefs, but religion invites scads of them, and endless speculation about them. The Natives could not understand the folly of fighting over God, as they saw the white people doing. They left things wide open. They said, a man or woman likes to go out alone in nature and ponder the Great Mystery.

My sense of human adulthood is that it is indeed a less egoic state, but why? For me, it absolutely was the result of a feeling of connection that was not there before, and this opened my eyes and allowed me to see things differently, and to question things with confidence. It greatly increased my confidence. Ego is more intense when there is a sense of threat. Feeling alone is also threatening. It seemed like beforehand, I was flailing about blindly, and one feels small. My interpretation of what brought it about was spiritual, that my own spiritual faculty had been activated whereas before it was dormant. Being dormant, Jed's description of the living dead is accurate.

At the same time, I considered my own experience mystical, and Jed is somewhat dismissive of mysticism, although not entirely. Yet this life changing experience is the very reason why I am here, why I understood the unity of all things, (Totality) and why I had independently come to several of the same conclusions that Jed does in his books, years earlier, and why I say I entered human adulthood.

Rebecca,

Do you have, like, a scanner or something?

I don't think McKenna was using Moby Dick as a metaphor, he is saying that Herman Melville did, and that he is the first person to figure out that this enigmatic story is really about the struggle for enlightenment, and had nothing to do with Ahab's neurosis, or vengeance, or whaling. Which is pretty cool.

There are a couple of things that Jed does which make me wonder if he is a fake. One is, that he disses a friend who he says had 30 experiences of unity consciousness, but is now riding the train to work and pushing a pencil. Now, I would certainly suppose that enlightenment might preclude that, but Jed never gives the slightest explanation as to why he has plenty of money and lives in a nice house and does not need to work. He has no family. But what if he did. He might have had one before getting enlightened.

The other is that while he indicates he used spiritual autolysis, and one day he was "just done" I find that an inadequate explanation, and somewhat unlikely as well. For a guy good at talking, he glosses over his own transition very quickly.

What if your guides are leading you on a phantasmagorical tour of the Land of Delusion?

I'd fire them!

Seriously. What if "your intuition" is really Maya?

It has led me unerringly thus far. I don't fear this, but it would be difficult to explain why. A fluidity that I have.

I had a friend, an old church friend, who when I tried to tell her a little about why I wasn't in church anymore, asked the same thing. How do you know you haven't had a spiritual fall? Well, if my spiritual fall led me to love and gratitude toward God and unconditional love of all mankind, and the tools for forgiveness, that's not a bad fall.

Are you suggesting that if my intuition is wrong, that it would be far better for me to be angry and impatient? If I was born into the world of the living in about 1994, and read McKenna in about 2004, then feeling impatient or angry about my state would sort of no longer be an option for me.

And Ataraxia,

Sorry to disappoint you, but I am on my own, and I don't meditate, but I am thinking of taking it up. It's not exactly new age, you know. And why would meditation mean you give up reason and logic?

[maestro]

I read his books out of order. I stumbled on the 2nd one, and then later read the 1st. If I would have picked up the 1st one first, I would have written him off as an arrogant a-hole after 20 pages and put it down, I think.

Thanks for the tip. I am now reading his second book and seems pretty spot on.

[Shahrazad]

ataraxia said,

As an aside is it possible this Jed is Adayshanti?

Not a chance.

[rebecca702]

I think this is why Jed recommends starting with the question "what is true?" and hacking your own way through the falseness.

Maybe one needs to also carefully define or explore the words true and knowledge. In fact, pondering the question "what does it mean to know something", removes a lot of cobwebs from the mind.

So in your view, what does it mean to know something? I see that that is a key question. Is that understanding one of those ones which can't be adequately described to another person?

I have definitely come upon a lot of confusion with the term "knowledge"... because there's the "know thyself" axiom, but then there's the "nobody knows anything" approach of Jed, Socrates, the only thing I know is that I know nothing, etc. I guess perhaps to know thyself would be to know nothing.

Or would you define it on not such an absolute level - like when you know something, it can never be taken away from you - ?

[maestro]

So in your view, what does it mean to know something? I see that that is a key question. Is that understanding one of those ones which can't be adequately described to another person?

I think writing clarifies ideas for you a lot so I really appreciate your questions as I have been pondering these issues for some time.

I can think of two ways to know something, one is knowing through immediate experience or direct knowledge, for example knowing how to ride a bike or car. Knowing the taste of lemon for example.

The other is abstract knowledge, this knowledge is through analogies. For example I know that the earth is spherical, this is abstract knowledge, I extrapolate my direct knowledge of a ball and then imagine earth is like that. Or say the knowledge of a scientist about electrons, he extrapolates his direct knowledge of various experiential phenomenon.

There could also be imaginary abstract knowledge, for example I have never seen a soul or god, but I can still form an image of them, based on phenomenon I have seen like smoke clouds, etc. This is again abstract knowledge. The difference between this knowledge and that of the scientist is that he tries to verify his abstract knowledge indirectly by predicting and verifying certain phenomenon. While in imaginary abstract knowledge such an effort is not made.


Thus it seems as if all knowledge is related to cognition.

Both forms of knowledge seem to be severely limited, first through the limited capacity of the cognitive apparatus, and then through the loss inherent in analogies and extrapolation.

I have definitely come upon a lot of confusion with the term "knowledge"... because there's the "know thyself" axiom, but then there's the "nobody knows anything" approach of Jed, Socrates, the only thing I know is that I know nothing, etc. I guess perhaps to know thyself would be to know nothing.

I think know thyself is a valid dictum. Currently for most humans the mind about itself through imaginary abstract knowledge which are flat out wrong and harmful. For example the soul, free will, personality etc. A first step would be to first of all experience mental phenomenon more carefully. If all humans were to do it, then we can actually form new words for these as they become shared experiences, thus circumventing some loss inherent in abstractions. Currently they are not shared experiences and so we can use indirect analogies such as that of a computer etc. Gurdjieff for example provides much better analogies and models for the mind.


All such knowledge is provisional and also inaccurate. But thinking in terms of truth in terms of binary true/false is also useless. It is much better to use real valued truth, so perhaps the common models of the mind have truth value of say 10%, while say Gurdjieff's models have a truth value of 70%. Even though they are still not completely true, they are still much better than before.

[Unidian]

I'm checking out this "Jed" phenomena a bit. I haven't read the books, but from what I've seen he appears to be more or less authentic. The excerpts and quotes I've seen/heard remind me a little bit of Richard Rose.

Presuming he could be contacted (which is apparently in some question), Jed would be a good guest for "The Reasoning Show," if it ever re-appears.

[Iolaus]

Hi Unidian,

Bird of Hermes here. I'm Iolaus now, because I couldn't figure out how to log in again with my old name.

[rebecca702]

I apologize for the long post. I am doing this mainly to provide the material for Jed's character "Brett" in his third book, Spiritual Warfare. Dan told me that a while ago David had created a fictional character named "Justine" that may have been similar (an enlightened woman) and David reports he no longer has the text. If anybody out there has it, maybe you can post it (and David if you don't mind).

I'm very intrigued by the fact that QRS believes the world has yet to see its first female sage.

Osho has an interesting chapter in his book The Mustard Seed: Discourses on the Sayings of Jesus from the Gospel of Thomas wherein he discusses "you must make the female male."

Basically I wanted to see what David thinks of this character. I can't help but think Jed has some motive for making many of his characters female. Equal Opportunity Enlightenment??

On a side note, I've just been informed that the Jed McKenna on the facebook site was another member pretending to be Jed. Bullocks. Had to figure on that one I suppose.

Anyway, as back-story: Jed finds out about a woman named Brett who lives on a ranch in Virginia, who came across his books after reaching the same place as him (enlightenment). She was diagnosed with cancer and retreated to her ranch to walk around a lake and battle her demons. Afterwards she finds herself with a group of people who profess to be seekers and she starts talking to them in her horse arena once a month or so. A couple of times, Jed goes to visit. Then, she's killed in a car crash and Jed gives her eulogy. This whole section really centers around "Memento Mori." Both Brett and Lisa (the character who Jed is staying with temporarily, while compiling the book, who is currently in the process) had profound experiences of death-awareness. I don't know how relevant that is.

Here's Jed's sort of preamble to the story: [...] "it was in that same hectic week that I was informed of the death of someone I knew, someone like me. Her name was Brett and she was truth-realized, enlightened, whatever. She taught a small group that met in her riding arena on her Virginia farm once a month, members of which brought my books to her attention and got me invited for a visit. She and I became cohorts and I visited several times and participated in her group meetings. She died, I learned, on her way home from running some errands. The driver of an oncoming car was distracted with a cell phone, veered off onto the shoulder, over-corrected and ran head-on into Brett. Brett was killed instantly, the other driver was okay."

---

Dr. Kim and I enter the huge riding arena building a few minutes late. We quietly take seats on a bench off to the side. Thirty or forty people are seated on a big fold-away aluminum bleacher and a woman I assume to be Brett is standing out in the sand facing them. She's wearing jeans and a denim shirt. She's a rusty redhead, strong but not stocky, mid-forties, outdoorsy and clean looking. At the moment, she also looks like her patience is being tested. A man of a youthful sixty is explaining that his spiritual mentor, shri someone-or-other, has instructed him that it is every sentient being's duty to cherish the earth and work toward the spiritual liberation of all sentient beings.
"Compassion for humanity is our reason for being," he explains. "Only in this way does our time on earth have meaning and purpose. How could I, for instance, possibly focus on my own spiritual liberation when so many are still living in darkness?"
The man exudes an oily sincerity and I wonder if I'm in the wrong place. His name, he tells us, is Stanley. He explains that he has been a long-time spiritual seeker; forty some-odd years. He rattles off a list of names of some pretty well known spiritual teachers and authors--American, English and Indian--and refers to them as his beloved gurus.
"Much of the world is rotting from poverty, violence and disease," he continues. "People everywhere live in hopelessness and despair. They don't know there's a better way, that abundance, radiant well-being and transcendent joy are their natural birthright. They don't know that they are not human beings having a spiritual experience, but spiritual beings having a human experience. My guru teaches that it is the responsibility of those who have eyes to see to come to the aid of those less fortunate, because the spiritual ascension of the human race must include everyone; we can't leave anyone behind. We are our brother's keeper, we are the custodians of this garden-planet. We have an obligation as sentient beings to share a message of love and compassion with our fellow man. Until all sentient beings are able to see through spiritual eyes--"
"If you use the word spiritual again," says Brett in a strong but quiet voice, "I will whip you raw."
Oh good, I'm in the right place.
Stanley is taken up short by Brett's threat, but he smiles condescendingly and continues.
"Okay, sure, I've heard about your tough-love approach," he says with gentle disapproval, "but if you ever want to be standing before more than a handful of students and have the respect of the spiritual community, you'll have to adopt a more compassionate tone and broaden your spiritual outlook to encompass not just the radical fringe, but all your fellow beings. We're all on the same side, you know." He smiles and clasps his hands together. "We're all in this together."
Stanley is obviously a very intelligent guy, but I've never seen intelligence as a more-is-better type deal in this regard. He next launches into what is supposed to be a question, but feels more like a lecture. It starts off being about consciousness, which almost makes me tune out because there's only one thing to know about consciousness and talking about it pretty much means you don't know it. Then there's some stuff about an experience he had in meditation during which, if I understand correctly, he melted into his mantra, followed by some divine revelation, and then his mantra and his heart became one and were purified in a way that was somehow attributable to the supreme guru from which, he informs us, all other gurus descend, and by whose grace he was able to see beyond form into essence which, in turn, is love which, in turn, is God which, in turn, is supreme guru which, in turn is Self, and so he came to truly understand that the knowledge of Brahman alone is real and the experience left his heart in a pristine, undiluted form for almost two weeks. I might not have all that exactly right. Stan ends it all with a question that has something to do with his search for happiness as it comes into confluence with mankind's quest for liberation.
"Okay Stanley," says Brett, "go ahead and take your seat."
"My teacher encourages open dialogue," says Stan, not sitting. "He says that the only bad idea is the one we don't express. In a world full of violence and contention, it would be a real travesty if those we turned to for spiritual guidance were unable to engage in a free-flow of ideas and rise above the petty tyrannies of anger and jealousy."
"Yeah," says Brett, "that'd be a helluva travesty." She turns to the group. "Now, for those of you who don't know, this ain't a debatin' society, and it sure as hell ain't a democracy. I ain't standin' out here tryin' to win your approval or sell you on my particular brand of bullshit. We ain't doin' no meditatin' or chantin', we ain't mergin' with our mantras or tryin' to cleanse our minds or purify our souls or get all happy or earn our eternal ree-ward, and we sure as hell ain't tryin' to save the world or rescue our fellow man. All we're tryin' to do here, the only goddamn thing, is figure out what the hell's going on. That's it. If you don't find that to be a worthwhile use of your time, or if you think you already know, then clear out and come back when you don't need to be dragged kickin' and screamin' every inch of the way."
She turns back to Stan.
"Stan, I gotta give you credit; I've heard every dipshit New Age cliche in the book, but I ain't never heard 'em all strung together like that before. What you need to do is give yourself a nice cranial enema and get all that forty years of shit outta your head. You're like a little boy talking about pirates and dinosaurs like you knew them all personally, except you're too old to be a little boy and that makes you hard to look at. I don't know what you been doin' since the nineteen-sixties, but it had nothin' to do with gettin' your ass woke up. Musta been some totally unrelated enterprise. I've heard a lot of foolishness in my time and a lot of it sounded like that slop you were just spewin', but listen, I tell you this as a kindness; what you're talking about is nothing. Forty years of nothing. It means nothing. It goes nowhere. You are being lied to, you are the one doing the lying, and you are the lie."
I'm definitely in the right place.
Stanley begins to reply but she holds up her hand to silence him and addresses the woman at his side.
"Why'd you bring him here, Molly? He piss you off or something?"
Molly, an attractive woman in her fifties, doesn't reply. Brett walks toward her and looks at her hard.
"Oh, I know," says Brett with a laugh. "I get it. You two started datin', right? Figured you were both spiritual folk so it was a good fit. But then you couldn't hold your own against his bigass brain and his career discipleship and his line-up of beloved goo-roos, so you brought him here to let me deal with him, ain't that right you little chickenshit?"
She says it in a kind of affectionate way so neither Molly nor anyone else takes offense. In fact, except for a certain glassy-eyed rigidity that overtook whoever she addressed, no one ever seemed too offended by Brett's abrasive manner.
I was really starting to like her. Straight talk in plain English. I had never seen anyone like her before and I found her comforting. It's like thinking you're the only one of something, and then there's another one and it makes the world a different place; slightly less alien. Not like you're connected, but like maybe you could be.
Brett steps back a few paces to address the whole group.
"Whenever you have any sort of question like that, any sort of nonsense like that floatin' around in your head, your only goal should be to climb up outta the place where such a question seems to make sense. It's a short climb, I promise, just one little step up. All that smelly talk about experience, consciousness, mankind, happiness and goo-roo is just pure stinkin' denial and it don't belong here. If that's your thing, you're in the wrong place. We ain't here to indulge in that kind of playtime fantasy. Y'all pay good attention because what you heard is exactly the kind of fertilizer they're selling you out there. This gentleman, Stanley, is like the poster child for spiritual myopia. Picture him sittin' in the lotus position formin' upturned okay-signs with his hands, eyes closed, smilin' like a little bliss-bunny, and behind him this bigass dumptruck is burying him under a massive load of steamy manure. Y'all with me so far? And driving the truck, leaning out the window giving the camera a big okay sign and smilin' the way they do, is the beloved goo-roo. How's that for a New Age poster?"
I'm keeping an eye on Stanley in case he's gonna need tackling. He's tight-lipped but composed.
"I let Stanley ramble on a bit tonight because he's a prime example of someone who has managed, despite a good heart and a powerful mind, to keep himself totally in the dark through forty years of searching for the light. That's a helluva thing he's managed to do and it's an important thing for y'all to take a look at and try to understand because Stanley here is not the exception, he's the rule. Anywhere else they'd be lookin' at this guy like he was practically a guru himself."
She turns to Stan. "Written a book yet, Stanley?"
He's watching her with a half-smile, as if indulging her.
"I happen to be working on a book about my years with--"
"Of course you are. God bless you, I wish I could keep you in a jar." She turns back to the group. "What we see here with Stanley is a complete and total evasion; a subterfuge, as they say. There ain't no answer to the kinda question Stanley just tried to ask; the question don't even mean anything, it just sorta sounds like it does. That's the point. That's why it's a subterfuge. Y'all know what a subterfuge is?"
If anyone doesn't, they're not jumping up to announce it.
"Stanley, I don't know what the hell to tell you. If I could go back forty years and find you, I'd know what to say. I'd start by givin' you a sharp rap on the nose to get your attention, then I'd tell you what I tell these folks once a month. Stop being a dumbass. There ain't no law tellin' you to be a dumbass, you're doin' it voluntary, and my advice would be to give it up or forty years from now you're gonna have some crazy broad in your face tellin' you it's too late for you, that you had your chance and you blew it, which is what I'm tellin' you now. The Chinese have a saying: The best time to stop bein' a dumbass is forty years ago, and the second best time is now. Maybe a piano will fall on your head tomorrow and knock all that horseshit outta your head, but I don't see you havin' that kinda good luck."
He starts to speak and she cuts him off.
"Don't bother mincin' words with me, Stanley. You got your self-importance and your missionary ideals to make you feel like you're someone special doin' something' saintly, but both them things is a lie; you're just another scared kid hidin' from your own damn life. I can smell it like you been dipped in cheap perfume. You're scared to open your eyes so you dreamed up a world where you get to be Jesus savin' all the lepers and poor folk, and them all just kissin' your ass for bein' such a pal. Heaven'll be strikin' up the band when they see you comin'." She turns back to the group. "Don't take it hard, none of you. That's what everybody does, includin' all your fancy men-tors and goo-roos, and the craziest thing about it is not seein' how damn crazy it is. Take five, everybody."
Stan and Molly leave the building briskly. Brett comes and sits down next to me. I guess I'm staring.
"What?" she asks.
"I think I'm in love," I reply.
"Shows you got good sense," she says. She offers a hand and we shake.
"Where are you from?" I ask. "Texas?"
"All over. Army brat."
"What about the accent?"
"Total bullshit. It's just a character that comes over me so I can talk to folks and not mess 'em up any worse than I found 'em. I ain't loud and I never cuss." She grins. "I'm shy."
"Quite a show you put on."
"Just clearin' the pipes. If you don't keep an eye on 'em they'll start bringing in their New Age buddies and the whole thing turns into a candle-lit hugfest, everyone singing Kumbaya and savin' the world. They bring me their ugly babies like I'm supposed to go all ga-ga and smooch 'em up."
"Ugly babies?"
"Their beliefs. All beliefs are like ugly babies, don'cha think? Everyone thinks theirs is the most beautiful in the world, but they all look and smell the same to me. I reckon it's our job to tell 'em their babies are ugly and to go throw 'em in the river. You ever make any sense of Buddhism?"
"No, ma'am."
"Me neither, just a lot of cheap perfume from what I can tell. I must be wrong, but I know I'm right."
"Very impressive teaching style."
"Thanks in part to you. Until I read your book I was a lot less clear out there. I knew what I knew but I couldn't find the words. The doc gave me your book and that's where I learned how to talk about all this. You have better success with men or women?"
"It's about even, I think, but women are more expressive. Men get to a point where they just go off by themselves and you don't see them for a year or two. How about you?"
"I'm battin' zero," she says, "but there's a few I'm watchin'. Give you a good feeling when someone makes it?"
I consider it for a moment.
"Not really."
She laughs and shakes her head.
"Damnedest thing, ain't it?" she says.
That was my first experience of Brett.

"Is this like satsang?" asks one girl, a newcomer.
"I ain't exactly sure what a satsang is," replies Brett, and a general discussion opens up with most everyone relating their satsang experiences. There are upward of forty people in the bleachers tonight, all of whom seem to have an opinion to express or an experience to share on the subject of satsang. Brett lets them go on for several minutes about tranquility, deep awareness, shared silence, shakti, and how evolved and elevated and enlightened various teachers were or weren't before she steps back in.
"Okay, okay, everyone settle down now. I think I got the idea, and to answer the original question, no, this ain't that. Makes me sad to hear y'all talk like that, about profound experiences and highly evolved teachers and whatnot. Seems like we can't make half an inch of progress around here. Let me say it again; I got no feelin' for all this silence, peace and tranquility business, and ain't nobody is special. Just like Mr. McKenna told ya, we're all here together in a leaky boat on a shoreless sea. Ain't no better or worse among us. No one's higher or lower, ahead or behind; we're all in the same damn boat with the same damn view. The storm is ragin' and the clock is tickin'. We don't know where we are--or who, what, why, when or how for that matter--and anyone says otherwise is talkin' out their ass. This boat is full of ass-talkers. They like to make it seem like we're all in this boat together, but the fact you gotta learn is that we are each of us alone. Black sky and black water all around and the closest thing to solid land is this little ship which, by the way, is leaking like a rusty bucket. It might go down in fifty years or five minutes, no way of knowin' when, but it will go down and that's a fact."
That shuts them up.
"This sure isn't like any satsang I've ever been to," whispers a gaunt man up front, and there's some restrained laughter. Brett laughs too.
"Y'all are in this trance," continues Brett, "and you come here askin' me to help snap you out of it. I can't help you, though. You gotta get to where you want it enough to do it yourselves, but that ain't easy cuz you got yourselves lulled into this damn complacency which sucks all the urgency our of your plight. It's like a coping mechanism. Y'all know what a coping mechanism is? It's like a tranquilizer. We keep ourselves strung out on tranquilizers all the time, but if you come here you're sayin' you want to kick that habit. We're all in the hands of a loving God, that's one kind of tranquilizer we like to swallow. Means you can just sit back and pass the time. Be nice and say you're sorry when you done wrong and your lovin' God won't cook your ass. Reincarnation is another pill that goes down easy. We're coming back again and again so we got all the time in the world. We're subject to a bunch of karma-dharma dipsy-doodle and we just gotta be good little sheep; no pressure, no urgency, nothing to do but lay low and ride it out. Or maybe we're all divine beings of light and all we gotta do is sparkle and shine and live a pretty life, play nice and not kick up a fuss."
She kicks up a spray of sand.
"Y'all startin' to see a theme emergin' here? Be nice, be quiet, be good, don't ask questions, don't use your minds, don't make a ruckus--sound familiar? That's what all this satsang talk sounds like to me, like you start feelin' a little agitated so you need a fix, got to get some more tranquility, like that's the purpose of these teachers and gurus you keep talkin' about, they keep you mellow, keep you doped up so you don't gotta face your situation. Sounds like the exact opposite of wakin' up to me."
Some heads nod, some shake, no one speaks. Most of them know what happens if they try to assert their beliefs as facts, or mistake the popularity of a belief for the probability of it being true. Brett lights into that kind of flabby talk like a mad mama bear.
Now she takes it up a notch.
"But here we are on this storm-toss'd ship, and if someone starts tellin' me everything's all glorious and divine so I should just sit down and shut up, be cool, be mellow, close my eyes and clear my mind, I'm gonna kick up some fuss. I'm gonna ask that person to make some serious sense, and I'm gonna wanna see some evidence. I ain't got no time for ass-talkers with all their dainty ideas about heavenly booty. I don't wanna hear a lot of fancy sermons and poems and clever guesswork, I want some facts. Anyone sayin' they know somethin' is sayin' they got the most precious commodity to be found on such a ship, and if they can't produce it, I'm gonna take that hard and I'm gonna wanna chuck 'em outta my damn boat, maybe do some keel-haulin'. Y'all know what keel-haulin' is? It means death to the ass-talkers. They ever tell you that in your little singsang circle-jerks?"
Nervous laughter ripples through the bleachers.
"But they ain't got no knowledge," she continues, "that's what I learned in my life, that's what I know that ya'll don't. There ain't no knowledge to be had. All they got is tranquilizers, which is all most folks want anyway. This little ship we're talkin' about is full of every kind of crafty drug pusher sellin' every kind of painkiller you can imagine, and business is always good because we're all a bunch of strung out junkies lookin' for our next fix. Y'all hear me in the back row? We gotta stay doped up. We're all just lookin' for a pill we can swallow, something that'll take the edge off, dull the senses, and make everything look all soft and rosy all the time. Once you're hooked, it's damn tough to kick. Self-deceit is the hardest habit to break cuz it tells us we ain't self-deceived."
She pauses and drinks.
"So how do we break this habit," asks the girl who started this with her satsang question.
"Easy," Brett answers. "You just gotta do two things. First, you gotta know you're hooked. I don't mean know it like you know it now, like an idea you heard someone say. I mean you gotta know it complete, like in every fiber of your being, like every thought is darkened by it, like every sight and taste and smell is poisoned by it. You gotta know it like a fiery pain. Y'all know what pain is?"
No one is laughing now.
"Then, once you get to that point," she says as she uses the heel of her boot to draw a deep line in the sand between herself and the bleachers, "the next thing you do is draw a line, just like Mr. McKenna keeps tellin' you. That's how it's gotta happen. You draw a line. You make a stand. You say, that's it, I've had enough. This is as far as I go till this shit starts makin' some sense. And you mean it with your whole life and being. You put it all on that line. Until you do that, you ain't done nothin'. You're just goin' along to get along."

(Jed conversing with character Lisa):
"It all seems so cruel." (Lisa)
"I know it looks that way, but when you look at the larger forces at work, what seems cruel is revealed as the natural order of things, as balance being restored. People want desperately not to go through what you've gone through. Everyone wants to maintain their state of radical imbalance, all their energy and lifeforce held to one side of this artificial barrier, rather than undergo this personal apocalypse. Most people manage to hold the waters back their entire lives, but you didn't, so now you get a different kind of life."
"Lucky me," she mumbles.
"Lucky you," I agree.

"Brett was fond of pointing out that there are no levels of advancement in this regard. Death and rebirth is a very specific event, not one that is gradual over many years. She said that there are no beginner, intermediate or advanced levels, and she was right. It all comes back to surrender, which follows naturally from seeing what is, rather than faith or belief which are how we muddle along when we don't see. That's a message that bear a lot of repeating, or so it seemed to Brett. And to me. You get a lot of people approaching spirituality like they know something, like they're pretty far along, and they don't realize that there is no such thing as pretty far along. You've either crossed the line or you haven't. You're either in the process or you're not. Knowledge, understanding, scholarship, experience, none of it means anything."
"She sounds like a very strong woman."
"Brett?"
"Yes."
I consider.
"No?" she asks.
"It misses the mark," I say. "The world is full of strong women. You're a strong woman, your mother was a strong woman. If you call someone like Brett strong or weak, start applying attributes, you've already missed the one thing worth knowing about her. When you get past the surface of Brett to the part that was worth knowing about, there's nothing there. That's what all this is about. The rest is costume."
"And that's true of you too?"
"It's true of everyone."

Lisa has no precedent for what's happening to her and, more importantly, she has no precedent for becoming something for which she has no precedent. Never before, in all her many personal and professional accomplishments, has she been in a situation where she couldn't see what she was doing by looking at thousands or millions of others who had done it before her. I'm only figuring it out now, as I watch her, but that's what I'm coming up with and I'm reasonably sure I'm right. She's starting to sense the broader dimensions of her aloneness.
Lisa has no idea where her life is going. It must be far more traumatic and unnerving than she's letting on, as if she woke up in the middle of the night and ran away from her tribe into self-exile, and now it's the next morning and she's wandering around in the wilderness, lost, alone for the first time, with no way to know what direction is best or how fast to go. I'm only picking up on it now as she tries to build up an image of Brett and I ask myself why she has this interest in a woman she never knew and never would. Lisa doesn't know who to be now that she can no longer be who she was. She's an actor without a character to play. She doesn't know how to dress, how to eat, how to act, what to say, what to do. She doesn't even know what her motivation is.
Good for her.

"I wish I could have met her," says Lisa, putting some Brett pages down, "though I guess she wasn't the sympathetic type."
"She was very different when she wasn't in front of her group," I say, "less fiery, less accent, nicer; definitely preferred animals to people. Whether she would have gone hard or easy on you I don't know."
"Why would she have gone hard on me?"
"For your own good. T'were best done quickly, like pulling a tooth. Brett might have felt the kindest thing would be to take a lash to you, keep you from dawdling and making things harder than they have to be."

(back at Brett's)
"If you think of this process of manifestation as a way of getting what you want," I say, "then you're already off-track. The way it really works is more of a seamless unfolding. It's not something you can improve, only impede. The only way you can make it work better is to remove ego from the equation. As soon as you start imposing your beliefs on the process, it necessarily begins to degrade. Even to impose your beliefs about time and space on the process, or your beliefs about causality and duality, is to diminish it. As soon as you start asserting your beliefs, you start closing it down to your level instead of opening yourself up. And since, furthermore, this process is really about conscious being, about who and what and where we are, developing a progressively deeper understanding of the process is synonymous with actual progress and growth. Same thing, okay?"
Lots of unconvincing nods. Brett weighs in.
"I hope y'all are listenin," she hollers from her seat. "This ain't no New Age gimmick or some late night infomercial where bikini models are washing a Ferrari in front of a mansion that could all be yours for three easy payments."
She stands and walks out front with me.
"We're livin' in a corrupt world," she tells them in her most forceful tone. "There ain't but one malevolent force in the universe, and we are it. It ain't that we're bad people, it's that we ain't fully formed, and what you get then is an abomination. Y'all know what an abomination is? It's like what them Chinese princesses do to their feet, keepin' 'em all bound up so they stay tiny instead of growin' to their rightful size. Them feet is an abomination, but the cause of them feet is this corruption I'm talkin' about. Priests who molest children is an abomination. Politicians and corporations violatin' the people's trust is an abomination. Every single one of us, even if we never done a wrong thing, is an abomination as much as the worst folks you can name. You could make a list of human abominations that'd wrap from here to the moon and back, but I reckon there ain't really but one corruption at the heart of all abomination and that's ego. There might be millions of symptoms; there ain't but one cause."
She pauses to let that set in and continues her color commentary.
"Now, I know what y'all are sittin' here thinkin'. You think Mr. McKenna is gonna let you in on some big secret, and then you're gonna be livin' on Easy Street cuz you'll have some special knowledge that gives you special powers, and in a way that's right, but not in the way that gets you a sports car or makes you a bikini model. He's talkin' about the same thing we always talk about here, the only thing there is worth talkin' about; nasty, disgusting, repulsive, slimy ego. Y'all are gonna wanna put all this magic to work in your own lives and that's fine, I reckon you can do that in some small way, but if you're gonna play with this shiny new toy, you should try puttin' it to some good use. Use it to get yourselves shook loose of all those layers of armor and baggage and filth you're draggin everywhere and callin' by your own name. Get your ass naked. Peel off all that crap so you can live your life direct instead of piecin' it together based on rumor and speculation like you do now. Desire it, pray for it, manifest it, ask the Tooth Fairy for it, but use these things Mr. McKenna's tellin' you about to get your ass woke up, so when your life is over you can look back and say you were in it and didn't just sleep through it like you're doin' now."

---

There ya go.

To answer your question Iolaus, no I don't have a scanner, I type for my job so -yes- I am that crazy.

[rebecca702]

By the way, I hope it's not an unforgiveable sin to paste someone's writing, out of context, onto an internet forum.

[Dan Rowden]

Oh, it's ok, it just means 50 years of really bad karma.

I believe that under copyright law you can reproduce 10% of a person's work without breaching copyright.

But then, if McKenna cared about that sort of thing it'd mean he's a moron.

[Iolaus]

Rebecca,

Wow, you're definitely crazy. I used to type for a living, in fact I worked in a typing pool at General Telephone before there were computers and I loved the IBM Selectric, whose keyboard no computer can match, which is why I so often drop my capitals.

But I wouldn't have patience to type out what you did. Do you have a good way to place the book?

This phrase of Brett's: " We don't know where we are--or who, what, why, when or how for that matter--"

Is exactly what I came to, word for word, several years ago. I don't recall noticing that when I read the book, although I probably did, what with my memory not being what it should be. I even added the word 'how' to the 5 W's. I remember sort of grabbing my husband by the shirt collar and trying to get him to see the magnitude of it. My analogy was of a lone atom floating in a dark universe, no coordinates anywhere.

What keeps us from freaking out is light (the sun) and other people. The sun and the objects it illuminates make us think we can see, but what we need to see we cannot see. It's all a distraction and we are blind.

I didn't think of it myself. In fact, I got it from this website, an essay that used to be here, I think by Celia Green. Once she said it I saw it, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. Now, I am embarrassed that I was in my forties and had not noted really, this obvious situation. And needed prompting.

It has bothered me ever since, and while I have a few ideas (including the nefarious entities) it is still the same. Isn't it interesting that Jed McKenna can discuss how 'done' his state is, how it would be the same for any being anywhere in the universe in any imaginable dimension, and yet this burning question about our condition is not only not answered by him, it obviously bothers him greatly?

I think that in this question, he is opening dialogue with humanity.

[Unidian]

"Brett" reads as almost certainly made-up, but that's not necessarily a problem. This is the longest McKenna excerpt I've seen, and it's intriguing. I'm leaning toward the idea that he has something worthwhile.

Then again, BSing is an art form, and Jed might just be a particularly talented artist. If I had any money, I might consider ordering the books to find out. Then again, he's not telling me anything really novel, and I have no money anyway.

Jed strikes me as slightly similar to Richard Rose, although probably not as authentic. Some of Jed's excessively "colorful" presentation sets off warning bells for me, like he's trying too hard to be "no-nonsense."

It did yield a quote a like a lot:

I must be wrong, but I know I'm right.

[Unidian]

Earlier in the thread, Rebecca said:

This is where those suicidal feelings come in, for me at least. You disgust yourself, you know you're false and all your ideas are wrong, and it's YOU that has to die. So what are you? Well, when you try to define yourself you only come up with the ego.

Indeed, but who is it that is disgusted with yourself? Yourself, again. And what self is that? You know what's coming...

This is actually a very progressive thing, in my view. Only when the ego becomes disgusted with itself can it work toward its own dethronement. One of the strangest paradoxes about "spiritual" work is that the ego must be used to get beyond the ego. The intellect must be used to get beyond the intellect. intense rationality must be used to get beyond rationality.

I don't call myself "enlightened" because the self doesn't get enlightened - enlightenment gets the self. The ego doesn't get to make the trip. It stays behind, continuing its usual antics, but it is "dethroned" as the controller of one's actions. What, then, is enthroned? Reality - but not the concept of "reality" (which is just another lifeboat for the ego), but the indescribable "X" which does not learn or know truth, but IS truth. For the sake of convenience and communication, some call it Tao, others God, others Void, Emptiness, Brahman, etc. I might call it "Agnosis" - the unknown and unknowable. Unknown, but experienced. That is the nature of consciousness itself. Like McKenna seems to ackowledge, we know nothing in the face of the Infinite, but the ego is unsatisfied with this state of affairs. Thank goodness it is, because there is no possibility of getting beyond the ego without using the ego itself as a vehicle.

When the ego is abandoned and no longer invested with belief, its antics can be observed without being acted upon. For example, my ego is cautioning me against making this post because someone might think I am bullshitting or "posing as enlightened." It is also hoping that this disclaimer will confuse such critics and convince them I am for real. By doing so, it is hoping to persuade me that it should be calling the shots, but it's position is hopeless. It is arguing with itself - a false construct intensely debating with a false construct as if its conclusions mattered. Pretty funny, really. Watching the ego at work is like watching a bunch of monkeys flinging shit at one another. There's no reason to become suicidal over the ego's attacks on itself when one can just as easily laugh - provided the ego is not taken seriously.

I'll probably have occasion for lots of chuckles ahead, as someone will almost certainly come in and dispute everything I've said, accuse me of being phony, etc. The ego is already hard at work cooking up defenses. I used to think I was lazy, but I've since come to understand that no one is really lazy. The energy we expend on egotistical concerns of all kinds could power Rhode Island for a year. Those of us who are "spiritually" inclined (in an authentic sense, not the conventional hoo-ha sense) just save a bit of energy by not putting the ego's zany schemes into action. Of course, that doesn't mean the ego disappears. It's right here insisting that this whole post exists only to make me (itself) look good in the eyes of the audience. Well, "I" (ego) sure hope it does. Reality, on the other hand, couldn't care less.

"Who am I?"

Ramana Maharshi had the right idea with that one. If we keep asking who we are, we will eventually figure out that we aren't. There is only one Being, and it has no room for outsiders. There is no room for fictional "selves" within the Infinite - except as fictions. The only "self" is no-self - the unconditioned emptiness that we experience as form.

Bullshit? Sure smells like it to "me." But who am I? To whom does the thought of bullshit occur?

[Loki]

Stimulating post Unidian!

Only when the ego becomes disgusted with itself can it work toward its own dethronement. One of the strangest paradoxes about "spiritual" work is that the ego must be used to get beyond the ego. The intellect must be used to get beyond the intellect. intense rationality must be used to get beyond rationality.

I don't call myself "enlightened" because the self doesn't get enlightened - enlightenment gets the self.

If enlightenment has gotten me, would it change the behavior of my sense of self?

[the ego] stays behind, continuing its usual antics, but it is "dethroned" as the controller of one's actions.

I don't understand this point. If the ego continues it's usual antics, then why does enlightenment entering the picture even matter?

[David Quinn]

To be honest, I'm not all that impressed with the character of Brett, nor with McKinna's writing in general. Brett seems to be a mish mash of U.G Krishnamurti and Marsha Faizi (a former long-time poster to this forum). Lots of abuse towards others, a trenchant postmodernist outlook, a holier-than-thou attitude, and lots of confusion in her ramblings.

It is good that she attacks the New Age industry, but she does it from a postmodernist perspective, not from a wise perspective. I don't detect any wisdom in her ramblings, despite her mother superior tone.

She has already made up her mind that knowledge cannot be had and that anyone who thinks he possesses knowledge is automatically deluded. Her mind is as shut as the New Age people she criticizes.

It is one thing to challenge everything and remove yourself from the prison of belief, but to do it in such a way that your mind becomes closed to logical facts and truth..... Not a good sign.

The overall sense I get from her is her desire to sweep away all opposition and all counter claims to knowledge with a broad-brush, so she doesn't have to deal with any of it. She attempts to make everyone vacuous so that her own vacuousness can seem like knowledge and wisdom.

-

[David Quinn]

When the ego is abandoned and no longer invested with belief, its antics can be observed without being acted upon. For example, my ego is cautioning me against making this post because someone might think I am bullshitting or "posing as enlightened."

That's because, deep down, you already think this yourself.

Unidian: [The ego] stays behind, continuing its usual antics, but it is "dethroned" as the controller of one's actions.

Loki: I don't understand this point. If the ego continues it's usual antics, then why does enlightenment entering the picture even matter?

In a pure self-realized man, the antics don't continue. But some people are greedy and want it all. They want the power of enlightenment and the ego antics as well. To them, that would be Paradise.

-

[Ataraxia]

When the ego is abandoned and no longer invested with belief, its antics can be observed without being acted upon. For example, my ego is cautioning me against making this post because someone might think I am bullshitting or "posing as enlightened."

That's because, deep down, you already think this yourself.

Given that he stated it,at least in part,that's self evident.

Unidian: [The ego] stays behind, continuing its usual antics, but it is "dethroned" as the controller of one's actions.

Loki: I don't understand this point. If the ego continues it's usual antics, then why does enlightenment entering the picture even matter?

DQ:In a pure self-realized man, the antics don't continue. But some people are greedy and want it all. They want the power of enlightenment and the ego antics as well. To them, that would be Paradise.

In the 'purely self-realized' man where would be the urge to,say,post this response? What is the "pay-off" for the fully enlightened man to do anything?Saying that he would be caused to;or he's is just reflecting the nature of the infinite;or 'Inshallah' doesn't seem to cover it.

One would still need to chop wood, carry water to keep the body alive, but where does the will-to-proselytize come from?

[Unidian]

Just so everyone knows, David Quinn is a total fraud.

Dan and Kevin don't acknowledge this, but here's the scoop: The deal with David is that he has a personality disorder which mimics certain characteristics of spiritual realization - namely, non-emotionalism. David doesn't experience emotions to any appreciable degree because he is psychologically disordered. His precise diagnosis is Schizoid Personality Disorder, which has the following diagnostic criteria:

• * Emotional coldness, detachment or reduced affection.
  * Limited capacity to express either positive or negative emotions towards others.
  * Consistent preference for solitary activities.
  * Very few, if any, close friends or relationships, and a lack of desire for such.
  * Indifference to either praise or criticism.
  * Taking pleasure in few, if any, activities.
  * Indifference to social norms and conventions.
  * Preoccupation with fantasy and introspection.
  * Lack of desire for sexual experiences with another person.

Of course, rather than view himself as "defective," David's ego-defense is to assume the pose of "purely self-realized" individual. If you ask David, he will admit that he has been diagnosed with Schizoid Personality Disorder, but he will insist that it is because society characterizes genuine enlightenment that way.

I rarely post for any length of time on this forum because it's very tiresome dealing with David's fraudulent objections over and over again. David thinks he can understand enlightenment rationally. Every spiritual authority including McKenna and all others disagree. But for David, no authority matters but his own, for he is (in his own mind) quite possibly the world's only truly realized being. I don't know how or why Dan and Kevin tolerate him.